anything at all. The pulse in my belly was throbbing heavily. My father said, “Don’t stare, Terry. Old Shep’s got some pride left.”
“Oh, sorry.”
I turned away and started back down the hall. I moved to the bottom of the second-floor stairs. I looked up and could see shadows playing against the corridor wall. I heard the creak and thrum of water rushing through the pipes. I took a step, thinking, Maybe I should wait.
“Jesus God, what the fuck am I doing?” I whispered.
“Who’s that?” Grey called.
I climbed the rest of the stairs and d trostood in his doorway. Grey was stripped down, with a towel around his waist, about to step into the running shower. He was laying a suit out across his bed. Steam coiled through the air.
I said, “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Let it wait until I come out, right? This goddamn floor is like ice.”
“Sure.”
He padded to his bathroom and shut the door. I had maybe ten minutes to search the room. I hit all the key spots where anything of importance might be hidden. I found forty g’s in cash split among three caches but nothing else of note. If Collie’s knife was here, I couldn’t find it. No trophies, no newspaper clippings. I needed proof. I needed to know for sure. His wallet was on the corner of his bureau. I went through it and discovered nothing that mattered.
I checked the suit he was about to put on.
I reached into the inside jacket pocket and found a photo.
It was old. It showed a pretty teenage brunette smiling happily, head half turned over her shoulder, her hair a wild flurry in the wind, dark and blurred branches of shaking trees in the background. I didn’t have to guess who she was. The only girl he’d ever truly loved. She looked a little like Rebecca Clarke. Roxie Drayton. Dale. All this time later, all the times I’d heard the same story, and I still didn’t know her name. She’d left him at the altar and broken his heart, and in his sickness she continued to haunt him, crawling through the seams of his mind. Every young pretty brunette became a part of the same obsession. My mother had said it herself.
Inside jacket pocket. Right over his heart.
I could see him putting the suit on, working the tie until it was perfect, then slowly dragging his thumb across the left side of his coat like he was touching the cheek of the woman.
Maybe I should do a more thorough search, check the rest of the house, his car. Maybe I should wait and watch him longer now that I suspected.
But I wasn’t a patient man. I couldn’t imagine leaving him alone in this house another night with my sister near him. I didn’t know how far into the underneath he was. I didn’t know if I was right or wrong about him. Maybe Collie was going to his bunk each night laughing himself to sleep that I was out here running in circles. Maybe Gilmore hid his trophies elsewhere. Maybe there was a killer in the woods watching the house right now. Maybe my father had gone to see Kimmy for some other reason.
I had to get Grey alone.
I went to my room and shut the door. I thought of all the years I’d spent here feeling safe, surrounded by my family, my father and uncles on watch. I could feel the underneath tugging at me, that insane sense of panic trying to make me jump the wrong way. Vertigo made my legs wobble and I reached out to touch the wall. Behind it was our legacy, three generations of junk.
I sat on the bed and put my head between my knees. When the dizziness passed I called information and got the number for Rocko Milligan’s pawnshop. He answered on the fifth ring with a flamboyant, “Yallooo?”
“Rocko, this is Terry Rand.”
He sucked air. “Holy shit, a ghost from the past. Let me guess, you’re on the narrow and yhe sou met a girl you want to marry, and now you need a good deal on the ring. You know I’m the man to talk to about that.”
“Not entirely on the narrow yet, Rocko, but if I ever gear up for marriage, I’ll get the ring from you. Now listen to me. Do you ever sell my father figurines?”
Rocko coughed out a chuckle. “Terry, not for nothing, but your father is loopy for the fucking things. I don’t get it. They’re not worth shit.”
“When was the last time he came by?”
“He hits me up every month or two. Been a while. I think he goes out east, checks the antiques shops in the Hamptons for this crap. The old ladies out there like their porcelain too. Or they did years ago. Now their grandkids are inheriting it all and dumping it at garage sales.”
“I want you to call him for me,” I said. “Tell him you’ve got a few nice pieces in.”
“I never call him, Terry, he just comes in on his own.”
I listened to Grey moving around in his room, getting dressed across the hall. I almost hung up because it all suddenly seemed so stupid to me. I’d been wrong about everything so far, why should this be different? But I continued to clench the phone to my ear. “I’ll square up with you and make it worth your time.”
“My time’s worth two C-notes,” Rocko said.
“Fair enough. Call him now.”
I walked downstairs. My parents were on the couch, watching a news channel, with Gramp in his chair beside them, a blanket over his lap. His hair had been trimmed. His face was clean and pink. He smelled of baby powder.
My father turned his head in my direction as if to say something, but he didn’t get the chance. The phone rang and he stood to answer. I took his seat and pretended to be interested in the news. My mother was tsking and saying how terrible, how sad. My father asked Rocko what was so special about the pieces, and Rocko must’ve known what to say, because my dad actually said, “Oohh,” with a great delight. It was a sound that at once amused and alarmed me. It was further proof I didn’t know my old man as well as I thought I did.
He hung up and reached for his jacket off the back of the kitchen chair. “Rocko Milligan’s got some bisque figurines from ’46. Another buyer is interested so I’m going to run over there.”
“You should go too, Ma,” I said. “I’ll watch Gramp.”
She frowned at me. “What? To a pawnshop?”
“The two of you can go out to dinner.”
“He didn’t ask me to dinner.”
My father looked a little embarrassed, but his expression quickly shifted to one of enthusiasm. The bisque figurines had put him in a tenuous good mood. It was an overreaction in the face of Mal’s death, but I was glad for it. “You want me to take you out to eat tonight?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve still got half a roast in the fridge. Why would we go out to dinner?”
“Leave the roast. We haven’t gone out together in a while. We can eat at the Nasgonset Inn. We always liked their Italian.”
“They have a good house wine. All right. Let me get dressed and put my face onx20.”
“You look fine,” I said.
“He’s right,” my father agreed, “you’re beautiful. And I don’t want to wait two hours or we’ll never get out of the house. Come on.”
My mother reluctantly agreed with a timid smile. Once again I grew aware of just how burdened they both were by how ugly things had become over the past few years and my part in that. This might be her last smile, the last I’d ever see. My name would be spoken with shame from now on, just like Collie’s. I almost took a step toward her, but my dad gripped her hand and led her out the door. She looked over her shoulder once and met my eyes. I watched his back muscles moving beneath his shirt as he walked onto the porch. Outside, JFK lumbered to his feet and licked my father’s hand. My mother gave the smallest of waves. Then my old man tugged her across the porch and to the car. I watched my parents pull out of the driveway.
I looked at the ceiling and listened to Grey’s footsteps. My breath hitched. I shut my eyes and tried to center myself, but too much flashed across the screen of my mind. I kneeled beside my grandfather’s chair. I had no idea what he’d seen, what he knew. Maybe he did have some shame left, maybe not. His chin was resting against his chest. I reached for the remote and turned the cartoons on for him with the sound down low. His head lifted.
