That’s when he’d opened the night stand and discovered the stack of photos.
Months ago, right after the accident, he’d snuck back into the house and removed the obvious photos of him- one from the fridge and one from her bedside. “Play it cool” was the plan, especially with a reporter in the family. He’d stayed away from the kid at the funeral. Done everything he could to convince the guys that his relationship with Gina was short-term only.
He picked the photo off the top of the pile-he was smiling, Gina was smiling, a birthday party?-and he sat down on the bed. Nobody appreciated what he’d done to keep things under control. His sacrifices. His feelings.
Maddy O’Hara was one selfish, lazy bitch all right. This sad, dusty room proved it.
If she continued to make things difficult, more sacrifices would have to be made.
But this time around, Maddy O’Hara was the one who’d be making them.
Ainsley kept shaking his head and shooting me sidelong glances while he maneuvered the truck out into traffic.
“What?” I asked. I’d no clue what his problem was; pretty typical manager’s meeting as far as I could tell. I snapped my phone shut. “No answer at any of the Tom Jost addresses. Let’s try the farm. See if we can talk to somebody out there first.”
“Oh sure. Why not?” Ainsley said. He sounded a little on the sarcastic side.
“Just drive.”
It didn’t seem to take as long to get to the Jost farm this time. Either I was getting used to the distances or the absence of Ainsley’s singing improved our wind resistance. He parked the truck on the road and said we should walk to the farmhouse from here. He made a point of mentioning, “It’s considered polite not to park on their property.”
“Okay, Miss Manners. Before we get too close to offend anyone, get me an establishing shot of the whole scene, a view downhill from here of the hanging tree and a nice tight shot of each of the outbuildings.” It was the kind of stuff I could use with a voice-over, while recapping Tom Jost’s childhood.
We went to work. I took my camera out and shot a few stills. The farm buildings were all weathered wooden structures, painted either white or dark red and grouped at the end of a winding drive. There were two black buggies parked in the gravel near the house. No sign of the usual ugly 1950s slab house beside an old picturesque barn like most of the modern farms around here. There were no people to be seen but we heard children’s voices when the wind carried the right direction.
College hung behind me a few steps, but he had the camera up and rolling. As we came up the driveway a rangy-looking dog loped out to greet us, stopped fifty feet away and started barking his head off.
“Camera down,” I ordered. I’ll argue a person to the mat for the chance to hang around and shoot. Dogs don’t negotiate. “Someone will come now. Let’s see what they say before we shoot anymore.”
“‘See what they say,’” Ainsley mumbled to himself. “Right.” He lowered the camera immediately. The old camera jocks I’ve worked with would never stop just because I told them to. Now there’s a benefit to snapping the kid fresh out of college I hadn’t considered.
“Rascal! Rascal, stop that.” A young woman in dark fairy-tale clothes appeared in the doorway of a small outbuilding. Her face was obscured by the brim of her bonnet. “Rascal, come.”
“Good afternoon,” I called. “We’re looking for Mr. Jost.”
The girl took a half step back, into the shadow of the doorway, her long dress and hat cloaking everything but her face and the silver pail she carried in front of her. I knew her face. It was the girl I’d seen hiding in the bushes.
“Hello, again.” I tried a smile.
She remembered my face as well. From her expression, I’d say she considered me unpredictable and potentially disease carrying. “Who are you? Police?”
“No. I’m Maddy O’Hara. We’re from WWST, the television station. Do you watch television?”
She shook her head vigorously.
“Is Mr. Jost around?”
“I’m here,” a man called from the doorway of the barn. He was dressed in the Amish uniform with suspenders to hold up his pants and a straw hat. Together with the wiry, gray beard covering the lower half of his face, he also resembled someone lifted from the pages of a Grimm’s fairy tale. Another much younger man, his whiskers still black, appeared in the doorway behind Jost. On the porch, two women stepped through the front door. A small girl-child peeped curiously from between the folds of their long skirts. Another face appeared in the upstairs window. People seemed to appear from thin air, all eyes on Ainsley and me.
“Good afternoon, sir. I’m Maddy O’Hara with WWST. I know this must be a difficult time for your family. I’d like to ask you about your son Tom.”
“I have no son. You don’t belong here. Please, you will leave.”
“We were told Tom Jost was your adopted son. Mr. Lowe spoke very kindly of the way you took the boy in.”
Jost’s face shifted from blank to grim. “Lowe is a good man. He’d be a better one with his mouth shut.”
“So Tom wasn’t your son?”
“Go away.”
“Father?” the girl called out from the shadowy doorway, her voice high and thin with concern. Inside the shed, a commotion of clucks and caws erupted. She was standing in a chicken coop; I’d never seen one before.
“No, Rachel. Not now.” Jost turned his back and shuffled out of sight, back into the barn.
I thought about following him but the crowd of onlookers was not encouraging. I nodded at them, and signaled a retreat to Ainsley. The men went back into the barn, the women into the house.
We had almost made it back to the truck, when I heard the fast crunching sound of feet behind me.
Rachel ran toward us, bucket swinging in her hand to the rhythm of her stride. When I turned, she stopped short, as if afraid to approach too closely.
“You said…‘this must be a difficult time.’” In the sunlight, her eyes seemed endlessly dark against her pale face. “You said… ‘was.’”
I’ve known since I was a kid, I was born to play messenger. It’s the kind of calling that makes you tough, fast. Everybody knows it can get you killed. Not everybody knows it kills you pieces at a time. Still, I have to look them in the eye.
“Tom Jost is dead,” I told her.
The pail in her hand dropped. Seed spilled everywhere.
Rachel backed away from me before she turned and ran.
“We should go,” Ainsley called softly.
I watched her run toward the barn, toward her father. It was hard to make myself move.
Ainsley started back to the truck. I walked the other way. Righting the girl’s pail, I tried to scoop the fallen seed back inside. I took out one of my freelance cards and scribbled my new home phone number on the back with the words
“What a bust,” I groaned. “Let’s try the phone-listed Tom Josts again. Even if they aren’t home we could do a drive by.”
“I thought we did pretty well,” Ainsley said.
“You need to set your standards a little higher than thirty seconds of establishing shot, College.”
“No, really. Amish don’t allow photography. I’m surprised we got all the way up the driveway with the cameras at all.”
“What do you mean they don’t allow photography? I’ve seen coffee-table books on Amish, College. They must allow some pictures.”
“No, really. It’s against their religion. Those rules they follow, you know.
