“Yes,” I said very evenly. “You are correct, Mrs. Archer. Did you have something in mind?”
“Perhaps I do, Mr. Archer.” Cynthia gave me a smile and kissed me very lightly on the lips.
“Won’t Grace seem suspicious when I tell her we have to run the whole way to school?”
“Just go,” she said, and ushered me out the door.
“So what’s the plan?” Grace asked as we started off down the sidewalk, next to each other.
“Plan?” I said. “There’s no plan.”
“I mean, how far are you going to walk me?”
“I thought I’d go right in with you, maybe sit in class with you for an hour or so.”
“Dad, don’t joke.”
“Who says I’m joking? I’d like to sit in class with you. See if you’re doing your work properly.”
“You wouldn’t even fit in the desk,” Grace pointed out.
“I could sit on top of it,” I said. “I’m not particular.”
“Mom seemed kind of happy today,” Grace said.
“Of course she did,” I said. “Mom’s happy lots of times.” Grace gave me a look to suggest that I was not being totally honest here. “Your mom has a lot on her mind these days. This hasn’t been an easy time for her.”
“Because it’s been twenty-five years,” Grace said. Just like that.
“Yeah,” I said.
“And because of the TV show,” she said. “I don’t see why you guys won’t let me see it. You taped it, right?”
“Your mother doesn’t want to upset you,” I said. “About the things that happened to her.”
“One of my friends taped it,” Grace said quietly. “I’ve sort of already seen it, you know.” A kind of “so there” tone in her voice.
“How did you see it?” I asked. Cynthia kept Grace on such a short leash, taking her to and from school, supervising playdates. Had Grace smuggled home a tape, watched it with the volume down while we were up in the study?
“I went to her house at lunch,” Grace said.
Even when they were eight, you couldn’t keep a lid on things. Five years and she’d be a teenager. Jesus.
“Whoever let you see it shouldn’t have,” I said.
“I thought the cop was mean,” she said.
“What cop? What are you talking about?”
“The one on the show? He lives in a trailer? One of those shiny ones? Who said it was weird that Mom was the only one left? I could tell what he was hinting. He was hinting that Mom did it. That she killed everybody.”
“Yeah, well, he was an asshole.”
Grace whipped her head around and looked at me. “Fox pass,” she said.
“Just swearing isn’t a fox pass,” I said, shaking my head, not wanting to get into it.
“Did Mom like her brother? Todd?”
“Yes. She loved him. She had fights with him, just like lots of brother and sisters do, but she loved him. And she didn’t kill him or her mother or her father, and I’m sorry you saw that show and heard that asshole-yes, asshole-detective suggest such a thing.” I paused. “Are you going to tell your mother that you saw the show?”
Grace, still a bit dumbstruck by my shameless use of a bad word, shook her head no. “I think she’d freak out.”
That was probably true, but I didn’t want to say so. “Well, maybe you should talk to her about it sometime, when everyone’s having a good day.”
“Today’s going to be good,” Grace said. “I didn’t see any asteroids last night, so we should be okay at least until tonight.”
“Good to know.”
“You should probably stop walking with me now,” Grace said. Up ahead, I saw some schoolkids about her age, maybe even her friends. More kids were funneling onto our street from side streets. The school was visible three blocks up.
“We’re getting close,” Grace said. “You can watch me from here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You start pulling ahead of me. I’ll do my old man walk. Like Tim Conway.”
“Who?”
I started shuffling, and Grace giggled. “Bye, Dad,” she said, and started pouring on the speed. I kept my eyes on her as I took my tiny steps, being overtaken by other children walking and on bikes and skateboards and inline skates.
She didn’t glance back. She was running to catch up with friends, shouting, “Wait up!” I slipped my hands into my pockets, thought about getting back to the house and having a few private moments with Cynthia.
That was when the brown car drove past.
It was an older American model, fairly generic, an Impala I think, a bit of rust around the wheel wells. Windows tinted, but it was one of those cheap tint jobs, the glass covered with air bubbles, like the car had measles or something.
I stood and watched as it headed down the street, down to the last corner before the school, where Grace was chattering away with two of her friends.
The car stopped at the corner, a few yards away from Grace, and my heart was in my mouth for a moment.
And then one of the brown car’s rear taillights started to flash, the car turned right and disappeared down the street.
Grace and her friends, aided by a crossing guard in a bright orange vest and wielding a huge stop sign, made it across the street and onto school property. To my amazement, she looked back and waved at me. I raised my hand in return.
So okay, there was a brown car. But no man had jumped out of it and run after our daughter. No man had jumped out and run after anyone else’s kid, either. If the driver happened to be some crazed serial killer-as opposed to a perfectly sane serial killer-he wasn’t up to any serial killing this morning.
It appeared to be some guy going to work.
I stood there another moment, watched as Grace was swallowed up by a throng of fellow students, and felt a sadness wash over me. In Cynthia’s world, everyone was plotting to take away your loved ones.
Maybe, if I hadn’t been thinking that way, I’d have had a bit more of a spring in my step as I walked back in the direction of home. But as I approached our house, I tried to shake off my gloominess, to put myself into a better frame of mind. My wife, after all, was waiting for me, very likely under the covers.
So I sprinted the remainder of the last block home, walked briskly up the driveway, and as I came through the front door I called out, “I’m baaaaaack.”
There was no response.
I thought that had to mean Cynthia was already in bed, waiting for me to come upstairs, but as I hit the base of the stairs I heard a voice from the kitchen.
“In here,” Cynthia said. Her voice was subdued.
I stood in the doorway. She was sitting at the kitchen table, the phone in front of her. Her face seemed drained of color.
“What?” I asked.
“There was a call,” Cynthia said quietly.
“Who from?”
“He didn’t say who he was.”
“Well, what did he want?”
“All he said was he had a message.”
“What kind of message?”
“He said they forgive me.”
“What?”
“My family. He said they forgive me for what I did.”
