Benz into the driveway and slid right into a tree. That impromptu hockey game cost $5,300. At least, that was the repair bill for his dad’s precious Mercedes.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Jordan overheard him yelling at her. “Jesus Christ, Stella, this house is a sty half the time because of you and your projects. And I’m still finding pony crap in our backyard. Haven’t we talked about this? Did you go off your medication again?”
When their parents had first separated, Jordan had been kind of glad, really. It would mean an end to all the fighting. He’d imagined he would stay with his mom and that his dad would move out. But it was his mom who left, and “the people who decide these things” forced him to stay with his dad—and a series of nannies and housekeepers.
His first weekend with his mother after the divorce was at the family’s bayside house in Cullen. It had been three weeks since he’d last seen her, his longest time between visits. He remembered seeing the name
Jordan remembered how she came running out the front door as his dad pulled down the driveway. Jordan got so caught up in seeing her again that he almost jumped out of the car while it was still moving. His dad had to hold him back for a moment. Once the car stopped, he bolted out and raced into his mother’s arms. She hugged him so fiercely, Jordan could barely breathe.
One of the first activities she’d lined up for them was a hike through the hilly woods beside the house. She’d donned a big backpack for their excursion, and after a while trudging uphill on the forest trail, Jordan could tell she was having a hard time lugging it. Her breathing became more and more labored, and sweat glistened on her forehead. He kept asking if he could carry the backpack for her, but she said she was fine. They found a bald spot in the woods she’d been talking about for most of the hike. There was a break in the trees that offered a gorgeous, sweeping view of Skagit Bay. Jordan gathered sticks to build a fire. They roasted hot dogs his mother had packed in a cooler. She’d also brought Cokes and potato salad. For dessert, they made s’mores with marshmallows, Hershey bars, and graham crackers.
It was during this feast that she asked him if he’d noticed anyone following them. She insisted a man was always a few feet behind them, hiding behind the trees and shrubs just off the trail.
“I didn’t really see him, Jordy, but I know he’s there,” his mother said. She moved her marshmallow-roasting stick away from the fire so she could wave it in the general direction of the woods. “He’s hiding out there somewhere. I’ll bet your father hired someone to spy on us. He doesn’t trust me with you. I’m sure that’s why he bought that dumpy little place over on Cedar Crest Way last month, just to keep an eye on us when we’re here together. He says it’s because he loves it here on the bay, but no…no…” Shaking her head, she moved her marshmallow away from the flame and started making another s’more.
After they put out the fire, his mother left behind the backpack and the cooler. “Some lucky hiker will be happy to find this stuff,” she reasoned out loud.
For the whole rest of the hike back, Jordan was scared. He kept looking around for the man his mother said was following them. At one point, he thought he saw someone duck behind a berry bush. “Who’s there?” he shouted.
His mother shushed him. “We mustn’t let him know that we’re on to him,” she whispered. “We have to pretend he’s not there.”
But later, as darkness fell over the house on the bay, his mother could no longer pretend the elusive man wasn’t there. She claimed she saw him in the backyard, creeping up to their windows. Jordan didn’t even want to pass by a window—for fear of seeing some kind of apparition hovering outside. He was terrified and clung to a baseball bat while watching a video with his mom in the sunroom after dinner that night.
The movie was
When Sheriff Stuart Fischer’s patrol car pulled into the driveway, he had the red swirling strobe going, but the siren was off. Jordan watched from the living room window. He was relieved to see the police lights out there, where it once had been so dark and foreboding. He quickly put the bat away because he didn’t want the police to think he was scared. Seconds after he returned to the window, a bright searchlight on the side of the police vehicle went on. Aimed at the house, it blinded Jordan for a moment. He stepped back from the window and rubbed his eyes. When Jordan peered outside again, Fischer had turned the cop car around and was shining that intense light toward the forest at the edge of the driveway. As the bright beam moved across the trees, it created a ripple of shadows. Jordan kept waiting to see a man hiding amid those trees, but there was nothing.
Sheriff Fischer got out of the car, then lumbered around the house with a flashlight. He even went down to the dock and checked around where they’d moored the junior kayak his mother had recently bought.
“Well, if someone was truly out there, Ms. Syms, I’m pretty sure I’ve scared him away,” Fischer said. He stood in the dining room with a can of Sprite in his hand. Jordan’s mother had offered him something to drink—and she’d told Jordan to go watch the movie. But he was distracted by the other drama unfolding in the dining room next door.
Fischer was a tall, wiry but potbellied man with a mustache and dark, receding hair. When he called Jordan’s mom
“You don’t have a description of the guy?” he asked—for the second time.
“No, like I told you, I only caught glimpses of him,” Jordan’s mother explained, shaking her head. “I never really saw his face—not this afternoon in the daylight. And tonight, it was just shadows and—and movement. But I could see someone was out there.” She shuddered, then tugged together the front of her white cable-knit cardigan. She was always cold at night; even during the summer she usually put on a sweater after dinner.
“Well, you probably just ran into some hikers or hunters in the woods earlier,” the sheriff surmised. He glanced toward the TV in the sunroom. “Who’s that blonde? She looks familiar.”
“Eva Marie Saint,” Jordan’s mom answered, rubbing her forehead. “Listen, Sheriff, hikers or hunters wouldn’t be lurking around this house at eight-thirty at night.”
“Well, I’m guessing you had some teenagers checking the place out, Ms. Syms,” Sheriff Fischer said. He sipped his Sprite. “They go around looking for empty rental houses they can mess around in. On top of that, you have a dock, and it’s a pretty night. That’s an invitation to all sorts of shenanigans.” His eyes strayed toward the sunroom again. “Isn’t Jonathan Winters in this movie?”
The sheriff didn’t stay long. He assured them that he’d make another drive-around search on his way out, and he’d have his deputy conduct an extra patrol of the vicinity tonight. “You folks will be all right—right as rain,” he told them.
Jordan’s mom was still scared and asked Jordan to sleep in bed with her. Several times that night, she threw back the sheets and got up to look out the bedroom window. Jordan would watch his mother as she stood by the window, a sweater over her nightgown. Then she’d climb back into bed.
“Didn’t the sheriff promise we’d be okay?” he asked her—after she’d gotten up and come back to bed for the fourth time.
“I suppose,” she muttered, patting him on the hip. “I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about. I’m just kind of wound up. Pay no attention to me. You try to get some shut-eye, kiddo….”
“The police will protect us, Mom,” Jordan remembered saying—just as he’d started to drift off that night.
But of course, he’d been wrong….
There hadn’t been any noise from the trunk since he’d pulled off the bumpy dirt trail and turned onto Carroll Creek Road. Either Meeker had passed out, or he’d just gotten tired of pounding, kicking, and whining.
It was out of his way, but Jordan drove to Birch—as far as the end of the driveway, where there had once stood a mailbox with
