formed, he dismissed it, for he could read Hildie Kramer’s eyes clearly. They weren’t reflecting anger, or even disappointment.
What he saw in them was grief.
Grief, and sympathy.
“What is it?” he asked, opening the door wide so the four people on the porch could come inside the house. When no one said anything, as if each of them was waiting for someone else to pronounce the news they had come to tell him, he knew.
“It’s Adam, isn’t it?” he breathed. “Something’s happened to him.”
It was Hildie Kramer who finally broke the silence of the group. Stepping forward, she gripped his arm, almost as if to steady him. “I’m sorry, Chet,” she told him. “He’s — I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“Dear God,” Chet muttered, the words catching in his throat as he felt himself begin to sink down onto his knees. Only Hildie’s strong hold kept him upright. “No. There’s a mistake.… There has to be—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Aldrich,” one of the policemen said. “It happened about an hour ago, maybe a little more. He was on the tracks when—”
His words were cut off by Jeanette, who was now standing at the top of the stairs, her robe clutched protectively around her body, her face still puffy with sleep.
“Tracks?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
Chet, struggling once more to remain on his feet, gazed bleakly up at his wife. “It’s Adam,” he told her. “He’s — Hildie says he’s dead.”
As if to leave open the possibility that Hildie was wrong, that it was all some kind of terrible mistake, that Adam was still alive somewhere. And yet the words had their effect, whether Chet had intended it or not, for Jeanetten’s eyes, wide and disbelieving, shifted immediately to the housemother and chief administrator of the Academy.
“Adam?” Jeanette breathed. “But that’s not possible. You said he was doing fine.” Her voice rose as she rejected the idea of her son’s death. “He
Hildie moved up the stairs, brushing past Chet, who was still frozen in place, as if the news had drained the strength from his muscles. “We don’t know exactly what happened, Jeanette,” she said, casting about in her mind for some possible straw for the shocked woman to grasp at. “Perhaps it was some kind of an accident—”
“Accident?” Jeanette echoed. “Wh-What happened?”
Half supported by Hildie Kramer, Jeanette came slowly down the stairs as one of the policemen recounted the engineer’s story.
“He said there was nothing he could do,” the cop finished. “He hit the brakes and the horn as soon as he saw your son, but it was too late. The boy didn’t move at all, and the train was going too fast to stop.”
“D-Didn’t move?” Jeanette repeated. “H-He just sat there?”
“I’m sorry,” the policeman said. “The engineer said it was as if he was just waiting for the train to hit him.”
Jeanette slumped against her husband. As Chet’s arms went around her, she began sobbing softly. It was impossible — the whole thing. She wouldn’t — couldn’t — accept it. That was why they’d sent Adam to the Academy, just to prevent something like this. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it. It’s not Adam. It — It’s someone else. It has to be.”
“I’m so sorry, Jeanette,” Hildie Kramer told the distraught woman. “I wish it
Jeanette only shook her head, her body suddenly filling with an unnatural strength. “I want to see him,” she said. “I want to see him for myself.”
Jeff had been standing silently just inside the door, his face pale as he listened to his parents being informed of his brother’s death. Now he darted across to his mother and pressed himself wordlessly against her. Almost unconsciously, Jeanette’s hand smoothed her remaining son’s hair, but her eyes remained fixed on the policeman who had just told her what had happened. “I want to see where it happened,” she said almost tonelessly. “And I want to see my son. I think I have the right, don’t I?”
The young officer shifted uneasily. “It’s not really necessary, ma’am,” he replied. “I mean, there isn’t any doubt about what happened—”
“No!” Jeanette said sharply.
As her voice rose again, taking on a note of hysteria, Jeff pressed closer to her, and Hildie Kramer exchanged a glance with the policeman. “I can stay here with Jeff,” she said. “Can you take Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich?”
Now Chet spoke, his voice strangling on his words. “Jeanette, we don’t have to do this. We—”
But Jeanette only shook her head once more. “No, Chet. I have to do it I won’t believe it unless I see it for myself.” Gently, she disentangled herself from Jeff’s arms.
“Can I go, too?” the boy asked.
Though Jeanette seemed not to hear the question, Chet shook his head. “You don’t want to, son,” he said, his voice breaking. “Just stay here with Hildie, and well be back as soon as we can. All right?”
“But I want to go,” Jeff protested, his face setting stubbornly. “I want to see what happened, too.” Though he’d said nothing about his dream either to Hildie Kramer or anyone except Josh MacCallum and Brad Hinshaw, it was still fresh in his mind.
And in his dream—
No! What had happened in his dream wasn’t real The only thing real was that Adam was dead. But he couldn’t be dead! He couldn’t be! He’d said he was going away—
“Come on, Jeff,” Hildie said quietly, gently steering the
boy toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “Let’s leave your parents alone for a little while, all right?”
Jeff, still trying to piece it all together in his mind, to reconcile the dream of his brother’s death with the reality of it, allowed himself to be guided down the hall as Jeanette and Chet, escorted by the two policemen, left the house.
The police car pulled over to the side of the road. They were some four miles north of Barrington. A hundred yards ahead the road, and the railroad track next to it, curved away out of sight, following the contour of the coast. Beyond the track a concrete retaining wall held the cutaway hillside in place, and as Jeanette emerged from the car into the steadily brightening morning sunlight, she felt a chill as she saw the blood that was smeared along the retaining wall.
People swarmed over the site, taking pictures, making sketches, and taking various measurements that would eventually determine the precise speed at which the engine had been traveling when it struck Adam Aldrich. Two members of the train’s crew hovered nervously near the caboose, but the engineer himself was nowhere in sight.
“They took him down to the station to check his blood for alcohol or drugs,” one of the detectives told Chet when he asked where the engineer was. “Not that we expect to find anything,” he went on. “The rest of the crew says Lawrence — that’s the engineer, Gary Lawrence — is a real teetotaler. His wife was an alkie, and he won’t touch the stuff. No one’s ever seen him with anything stronger than coffee.”
While Jeanette gazed silently at the spot where the train had struck her son, Chefs eyes reluctantly searched for any sign of the body’s presence. The detective, sensing what Chet was looking for, lowered his voice so Jeanette wouldn’t hear his words. “They’ve already taken your boy away, Mr. Aldrich. It’s — Well, it’s pretty messy, and I’m not sure you’ll want to see him.”
Chet nodded, feeling a sense of relief that for the moment, at least, both he and Jeanette would be spared the stark reality of what had happened to their son.
“Where did they take him?” Jeanette asked, emerging from her reverie. “Where is he?”
In unconscious imitation of the cop whose job it had been to inform the Aldriches of the death of their child, the detective shifted uneasily. “They’ll have taken him to the hospital in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Once he’s been pronounced, they’ll keep him until you give them instructions.”
