Someone tied Weegee to the tree, alive, and beat him until he burst open.
A living piñata.
The weeping willow is directly outside our kitchen window. I see Tamara on the other side of the glass, opening a fresh bottle of wine. She can’t see me, not out here in the dark. If she were to step up to the sink and glance out the window, she might notice movement outside. Just shadows, but still. I have to act fast.
Weegee’s body twirls in a gust of wind. I cut him down and stuff him into the inner rim of the tire and quickly roll the whole thing to my studio until I can come back with a garbage bag. I’ll need to hose down the lawn. All that blood dripping over the grass. The bat.
I notice the tree trunk is smeared in red as well. Finger-painted, more like it. I step closer to make out its shape.
A pentagram. In our yard.
Our home.
Somebody’s fucking with me. The thought is crystalline, so clear in my head. First Professor Howdy, then the pentagram symbol on Mr. Stitch. Who, though? Who would do something like this?
And then, just like that, it comes to me: Hank. Eli’s father. As far as I know, Tamara hasn’t seen or spoken to Hank since he left her. He didn’t even show up to the hearing when the court terminated his parental rights on grounds of abandonment. Had he changed his mind? Did he want back into this family and see me as a roadblock? It’s absolutely batshit to consider, but once the idea starts to take root, I can’t stop myself from thinking it.
Hank knows. He is trying to scare me away. Mess with my head.
Tamara is on her second glass of wine when I enter the kitchen. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I echo. I can’t recognize my voice. It sounds distant, hollow.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Just went out to the studio,” I lie. I know I should tell her about Weegee. Now’s my chance. I can feel the opportunity to say something slip away. It’s easier to say nothing.
Nothing at all.
“About before. I think…” She stops herself, as if she’s still working out what she wants to say in her head. “I think all this adoption talk has just stirred up a lot, you know?”
“Am I pushing?” I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but it is dawning on me that it’s Tamara who is having the most trouble with the adoption. Dating hadn’t been a problem. Marriage was never a problem. It’s only when I came for her son that she grew tense.
“There’s just some old memories popping up,” she explains. “Shaking up a lot of dust.”
“A few too many dust bunnies you didn’t expect to find, huh?” I clear my throat, trying to figure out how to word what I want—need—to know. “Has Hank reached out lately?”
Tamara freezes. His name sucks the air out of the room. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I just…I suppose I was wondering how he might feel if he found out you married a guy who wants to adopt his child.”
Tamara shakes her head. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I gave him plenty of chances to be in this family and he never took a single one of them.”
My eyes flick over to the adoption papers on the counter for reassurance. That’s when I spot the envelope.
“What’s this?”
It’s resting on top of the adoption forms, the mound of papers on the table untouched since I printed them out. The ring of wine has dried into a deep purple.
“Somebody must have sent it to us by accident,” Tamara says, filling her glass with tap water. She swirls the pinkish water and drinks. “Found it stuffed in the mail slot.”
I must’ve stepped right over it when I was carrying Elijah to his room.
There is no address. All it says is:
SEAN.
I tear the envelope open. I can’t control the tremors in my own hand.
“What are you doing?” Tamara asks, but I’m not listening anymore.
It’s an old newspaper clipping, yellowed and brittle. It had been folded so long ago, the print has faded down the seam. The header is familiar enough.
Greenfield’s ledger. The article was ripped from the front page of the smallest of small-town newspapers. Its circulation was so infinitesimal, in fact, they only printed an issue every other day. Strange for an obituary to make the front page.
The cheap newsprint rubs off on my fingers. I hadn’t realized I was holding on to it that tightly. Whatever I touched will have my fingerprints smeared all over it.
The picture had misprinted. The four-tone ink is off by a millimeter, so the color of the man’s skin drifts to the side of his face, all the color of his flesh spiriting away from him, as if his soul is separating from his body. Even with the printing error, I can still make out my kindergarten teacher wearing an oversized orange jumpsuit.
Mr. Woodhouse.
ACCUSED “SATANIC” TEACHER COMMITS SUICIDE
By Jonathan Salk
Former Greenfield Academy kindergarten teacher Thomas Woodhouse was found dead in his apartment early Monday morning. The cause of death is an apparent suicide by hanging. No note was found. Woodhouse had recently been acquitted of six counts of sexual assault after a year-long trial in which several of his students, some as young as five years old, accused him and five other faculty members of performing ritual sex abuse and satanic sacrifices in their classrooms and other parts of Greenfield. Woodhouse was seen as the leader of this group, who came to be known in the press as the Greenfield Six.
Federal investigators would later determine that these accusations were unfounded, but it would take another year for a jury in the Fairfax Circuit Court to declare
