“About the weapons? Doubt it. He wouldn’t have stood for it. Would have put those sorts of items away where they belonged.”
You consider whether to tell him about the bones. But you pause because you haven’t even mentioned them to Emily. And you’re not sure who Hewitt would tell. But you don’t know when you will have an opportunity like this again. “I broke the door down,” you begin, but then you catch yourself. “Well, I took the door down.”
“The basement door with all them carriage bolts.”
“Yes. I took it down, and I found bones in there. In the dirt.”
He sits forward, alert for the first time. “From what sort of animal?”
“Human.”
“Unlikely.”
“Some I am sure are digits from fingers. One is clearly a human arm.”
“And you are sure of this because you went to medical school when you weren’t flying airplanes?”
This was, you like to believe, merely a harmless dig-he meant nothing especially hurtful. And you’re honestly not sure why it seems to cut so deep. “I have some education,” you answer simply.
He shakes his head. “I hate to think of the animal that must have dug its way into that corner and then couldn’t dig its way back out. Very, very sad.”
“You really believe the bones belong to, I don’t know, a dog?”
“Or a feral cat. Or a fox.”
“The bones are too big.”
“Even those little ones you think are finger bones? You’re one hundred percent sure of that?”
“Not one hundred percent, no.”
“You show them to a doctor or professor? I used to work at the school here in town. St. Johnsbury Academy. I managed the physical plant. You want, you bring me them bones and I can show them to a teacher there. How’s that sound?”
It is an interesting idea. “Can I think about it?”
“ ’Course you can. I don’t expect I’m going anywhere.”
“That’s a very compelling offer. One thing…”
“Go on.”
“I haven’t told my wife about the bones. I don’t want to scare her.”
“That’s up to you.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
He shrugs. “Are people making a big deal out of the greenhouse on the property?”
“My girls. They seem to love it.”
“I meant the women.”
“Not really. There was some talk the other night when Emily and I were at a dinner party. But I think my children have already claimed it as a playhouse.”
“Well, that’s good. I think you will be much better-off if you keep it a playhouse. My mother… Oh, never mind about my mother.”
“No, tell me. I’d like to know.”
“Nothing to say. You just keep that greenhouse for the girls-the twins. You just keep them twins safe.”
“As their father, I try. Is there anything specific I should be worried about?” you ask, recalling the sad fact that his twin brother took his own life.
“No. No, I’m just a morbid old man,” he says, and he uses the armrests on the chair to push himself to his feet. You remind him that he is only a decade and a half your senior and really not an old man at all, but you can tell by the way he is standing-pressing both hands on the table for support-that your visit is over. A few moments later, as you are outside on his front steps and putting your gloves back on, you hear him speaking in the living room. You are barely out the door and already he has picked up the telephone and called someone. You wonder what this means-whether you have merely embarrassed yourself or whether there will be consequences for revealing what you found behind that door in the basement.
A mong Chip and Emily’s acquaintances in West Chester was an FBI agent who had retired early and was now a security consultant. His name was Steve Hopper. At a holiday cocktail party at a mutual friend’s house their last December in Pennsylvania, Emily had seen Chip and Steve and a woman she didn’t know chatting near the fireplace, and when she joined them the woman was telling Chip, “I just think it’s unbelievable you didn’t panic. I mean, weren’t you scared to death? I would have been shrieking bloody murder.”
The woman clearly had had way too much to drink; her words were slurred, and no sober individual would have asked her husband if he had been terrified. Few sober people would even have been willing to bring up the doomed aircraft.
But Chip seemed to view this conversation as merely one more element to the cross he believed he was destined to shoulder. He was nodding, formulating a response, when Steve jumped in.
“I would wager my friend here was too busy focusing to be frightened,” he said. “My money is that bravery never entered into the equation. That right, Chip? Good CRM?”
Emily knew that CRM stood for crew resource management, and she wasn’t all that surprised that Steve knew, too; he seemed to know all sorts of arcane trivia. But this woman with them couldn’t possibly know, and Emily wondered if she would ask. She was swaying slightly, and it was probably a good thing that her glass was only half full; otherwise she would have sloshed some of the alcohol on either Chip or Steve.
“Well,” Chip said, looking first at Steve and then at this other woman and then at her, “there was a lot to do and not very much time. Mostly Amy and I were-”
“Who’s Amy?” the woman asked.
“She was my copilot.”
“She must have been peeing in her pants.”
“No, I don’t think she was.”
“So you really weren’t scared?” the woman asked, circling back to her original question.
“No,” Chip said. “I think there were two things filling up that part of my brain that might otherwise have been wanting-to use your term-to shriek bloody murder. The first, just like my friend Steve here said, was focus. Amy and I were pretty focused on the tasks at hand.”
“And the second?”
Emily watched her husband stare down at the flames in the fireplace for a moment. “I always thought I could do it,” he said finally. “I’d seen the Airbus land in the Hudson. I saw in my mind the CRJ landing on Lake Champlain in just the same way.”
The woman was about to say something more, but Steve took her by the elbow, said jovially that he wanted to freshen up both of their drinks, and then led the two of them away from her husband.
O n the way home from St. Johnsbury, you race into the supermarket because you recall you don’t have after-school snacks in the refrigerator for the girls. And since Molly is with them, you want to be sure you have something special. In minutes you have rounded up a six-pack of juice boxes, two pints of ice cream, apples, and peanut butter. In the parking lot on your way out, as you are opening the front door to your car, you run into Anise. She has pulled into the space right beside yours.
“Chip, hi,” she says, climbing out of her pickup with a grocery list and a chaotic raft of coupons in her hand.
“No time,” you tell her, smiling. “I have to race up the hill and beat the school bus.”
“Goodies for the girls?” she asks, motioning at the grocery bag that you have just now plopped onto the passenger seat.
“Absolutely.”
“Here, take these, too,” she says, reaching back into her pickup and handing you a plastic bag with cookies she has baked. “Vegan,” she informs you. “And totally scrumptious. They’re maple. There should be a sugar run tomorrow, so I decided it was finally time to use the very last of last year’s syrup.”
“Thank you, Anise. That’s very kind of you.”
“Try one,” she says, and to be polite you are about to open the bag she has given you. But before you can, she is handing you a cookie that she has, seemingly, pulled out of nowhere. “I baked this one especially for you,” she says, and for a split second you are a bit flustered because you presume she is serious. But she winks, and
