struggled back up. At the top I looked out the kitchen window to see my mother pulling into the driveway.
“Gussy,” she said as she stepped into the kitchen, stamping the snow off her boots. She stared at the projector bundled under my arm. “What’s that for?”
“Oh,” I said, “I found some of these old films of our hockey practices and I thought, you know, with all that’s going on, it might be interesting to watch them.”
In silence she hung her coat and scarf in a closet by the door. She knew I was lying. She shut the closet and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. “Can I fix you something to eat?” she said.
“No, thanks, I’ve got to get back. I didn’t see you at the hearing.”
“I didn’t go.”
“I thought I’d see you.”
“Well, maybe I’ve had enough of the past for one week.”
She was upset. She closed her eyes and leaned against the counter, letting her hands hang over the sink, dripping. I set the projector down, stepped behind her, and put my hands on her shoulders.
“Are you OK?”
She shook her head. “It just seems like the whole town is falling apart.”
“Come on.”
“Leo. All these questions about Jack. Everything was fine before that snowmobile. Now wherever I go, everybody’s talking about what really happened to Jack, what really happened to Leo, and I know they’re all thinking I have the answers, just because I happened to be here that night, trying to get some sleep. But I don’t have any answers. I don’t have any answers, Gus.”
She pulled away and went to the fridge and removed a carton of orange juice. As she took a glass from the dish drainer and poured, I saw that her hands were trembling. I grasped her shoulders and gently turned her to face me.
“Mom.”
“Dingus called,” she said. She took a sip of the juice, then set it on the counter. “The police want to see me. And that TV woman called.”
“You didn’t talk to her, did you?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t polite.”
“What can you tell Dingus that you didn’t tell him ten years ago?”
Her eyes flitted over the projector on the floor. “I worry,” she said.
“About what?”
She folded her arms. “Do you remember the time you called me a bitch?”
Of course. We’d been fighting for the hundredth time about whether I could spend the night in Coach’s billets with the other River Rats. Unlike other kids my age, I didn’t fight much with my mother, maybe because since Dad died we were all each other had. But this time I might as well have slapped her across the face. We didn’t speak to each other for two days. When I finally apologized, all she said was, “You’re too young to understand,” and it made me so mad that I almost called her a bitch again.
“Yes,” I said.
“I wasn’t just being a bitch.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“No. You don’t know.”
“What? Why do you keep talking in riddles?”
She took my hands off of her shoulders. “Those little houses,” she said.
“What? It’s not like we had to go there to drink and smoke dope.”
“Never mind,” she said. “Why do you care if I talk to that TV woman?”
“I don’t.”
“Please.” She turned back to the sink and started wiping the counter, which needed no wiping. “Don’t you need to get to work?”
“Mom,” I said. “Tell me.”
“That night,” she said. “Leo…” She dabbed at an eye with the towel. “Leo told me…he said he did a terrible thing.”
“What terrible thing?”
“I wouldn’t let him,” she said. “He kept trying to tell me. I wouldn’t let him. Then the police came, and we never talked about it again.”
“Do you mean he killed Coach? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” She put the towel down. “Go to work.”
“Mom.”
“Be careful with your father’s projector.”
She pushed past me and disappeared into her bedroom.
When I walked into the Pilot newsroom, Joanie was on the phone, frantically scribbling notes. I went up front and found Tillie hunched at her computer, smoking and typing. “You have a message,” she said, gesturing toward a pink While You Were Out sheet on the counter. Someone had scribbled on it, “Mr. Carpenter, I’m a reporter with the Detroit Times. Any chance I could borrow your newsroom to file a story this afternoon? Many thanks, R. Kullenberg.”
“Someone from Chicago called too,” Tillie said. “Didn’t leave a message.”
“They’re descending,” I said. The out-of-town reporters would come and interview the regulars at Audrey’s and Enright’s and then write their overwrought stories about the little town with the big trial. And in a day or two they’d all be gone again, and I’d be stuck putting out the Pilot. I tossed the message in the garbage. “Did all the stringers’ stuff come in?”
“Except for the wrestling meet, yes,” Tillie said.
“Can you handle the wrestling story?”
“I cannot wait.”
On her phone the number 38 glowed red in the message window. “Whoa,” I said. “Did we get that many Sound Off calls?”
“It’s not many more than we usually get,” she said.
I let it go and punched the button to hear the first message: “This is Phyllis T. Fraser of 661 Oak Lane.” The elderly woman sounded like she was underwater. “My opinion is that of course there are tunnels in the lake. In point of fact my uncle Sherman’s boy Kevin, a graduate of the Michigan Technological University, says it has been studied by hydrogenists from his institution. And anyway, the tunnels are a tradition we’ve held dear for as long as I can remember, and I’m seventy-six, actually almost seventy-seven. We’ve always believed it. Who would think-”
“Hydrologists?” I said, while pushing the button for the next message. A man’s voice came on. “Can I ask you something?” he croaked. He cleared his throat, coughed, coughed again. “May I ask why you waste valuable space on items like this? Who cares about tunnels when we have a Social Security system that is-” I shut the machine off. Tillie was smiling.
“Any good ones?” I said.
“I’m on deadline.” She waved her hand in Joanie’s general direction. “Worry about your star reporter. She’s getting her precious career started, and what better way than to shovel dirt on a dead man’s grave?”
“What’s with you?” I said.
“Gus!” Joanie called out.
I went back to her desk. “What’s her problem?” I said.
Joanie glared past me in Tillie’s direction. “She spends most of her day eavesdropping,” she said. “My sources are always asking why I’m whispering.”
“What’s up?”
She lowered her voice. “The lawyers are going to be too chicken to run this story. Maybe you will be, too.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. What is it?”
“I got the kid in Canada.”
“Which kid?”