just as hard to keep him from giving up on me. I owed her thanks for one of the most important friendships of my life.
U-Keep-It Self-Storage was typical of those built in the mid-1970s. Cinder block and steel roll-up doors. I pulled up to it in the Jeep Wrangler we had just bought from a friend, Ben Sheridan. Ben is a forensic anthropologist. Thinking of him, I wondered if he might be able to help Hailey out with her story.
A sign warned that anyone entering the premises was subject to video surveillance. I entered the 4645 code, and a security gate opened to let me into the parking lot. I was parked and out of the car before it rolled shut again. O’Connor’s unit was on the second floor. I thought that was probably good- a little more secure. I took the stairs. The wide hallway was windowless and dark, but apparently a motion detector sensed my presence, because a series of bare bulbs lit overhead.
I found the unit, shoved a small flatbed cart away from the door, and fit the key in the padlock. The lock was a little stiff, but it opened. I flipped the bolt aside and pulled the door up.
Before me were about forty boxes and plastic containers, and two metal trunks. Some boxes were labeled, some weren’t. Some looked relatively new, but most appeared to be old and bore signs of long storage.
One was immediately familiar to me. Written in that misunderstood scrawl of his was a beloved friend’s name: Jack.
I heard myself exhale, hard. Seeing the box made me think of the day I first saw it, of O’Connor walking across that dusty field, holding on to it as if he were a priest carrying the last tabernacle, asking me-a green reporter-if he could help me with my story. He had worked so relentlessly to discover what had really happened on that night in 1958. For all that had been learned, there was still a great deal that was unknown.
Eric and Ian Yeager were already out of prison, supposedly living on a Caribbean island, but every now and then someone said they had seen them in town. Mitch Yeager-that old buzzard-would probably survive World War III. The only punishment he had received came from his three kids, spoiled brats who had never done an honest day’s work.
I shook off thoughts of that family from hell and stepped inside, found a light switch for the unit (a luxury item), and was surprised to find that the bulb wasn’t dead. I rolled the door down a little more than halfway. I wanted some privacy, but claustrophobia is a problem for me-I counted being able to pull the door shut at all a major victory.
The old trunks intrigued me. One was brown, the other green. They were side by side. Neither was locked, although they were latched shut. I snapped the latches open on the brown one, which looked older to me.
It was full of fragile, yellowing papers covered in a childish scrawl. I carefully lifted a few from the trunk. Each had a title, written in small and large caps, headline style: “THE MAN WHO FIXES MOTOR CARS.” “THE HOUSE WHERE MY MOTHER WORKS.” “HOW MY DA GOT HURT.” “HOW DERMOT HELPS A HORSE WIN A RACE.” “LUCKY THINGS IN MY HOUSE.” “WE MOVE TO A NEW HOUSE.” Each of these stories was clearly marked, “by Conn O’Connor.”
Lucky things in his house included a horseshoe that had come from a stakes winner, various religious medals and other artifacts, a piece of wood “from a true fairy tree” back in Ireland, a crow’s feather that “Dermot says isn’t lucky at all, but he’s wrong,” and a “dollar from my benefactress.” This last word appeared to have been carefully copied from a dictionary.
I smiled. After he had known me for a few years, O’Connor told me of the day he had met Jack Corrigan, and that Lillian had tipped him a silver dollar. I looked around me, thinking that it might well be in one of these boxes.
Maybe not. He was such a superstitious old Irishman, he probably had it in his pocket the day he died.
For some stupid reason, I started crying.
I pulled myself together after a bit and looked in the trunk again. Not far from the top were nine diaries.
The oldest one was dated 1936. I opened it carefully and read the first entry.
52
“T ODAY MAUREEN GAVE ME THIS DIARY. SHE IS THE BEST SISTER IN THE world.” A little below that was written, “Jack would say that’s hipurboily, but it’s not.”
“Best” and “not” were heavily underlined. The word “hipurboily” had been crossed out and carefully corrected to hyperbole. I sat on the other trunk and kept reading. As I read on, again and again I saw corrections. I found myself feeling amazed that a boy his age wrote so well, and had taken the time to correct his mistakes.
“Jack gave me another boxing lesson today.”
“Da had a bad day today. I tried to be quiet.”
“Jack liked the story about the horse but he is making me redo it anyway.”
“Jack said to call it rewrite, not redo. Said my diary is for me, not to show it to him again. Said I could get mad as fire at him in my diary-say anything here.”
“Miss Swan scared me again today. Asked if I am writing Jack’s stories. Told her I am only a kid.”
That one made me laugh aloud.
“Jack still likes Lily, I think. She is mad at him.”
“A good day. Jack took me upstairs to the newsroom. Met Mr. Wrigley. He is very old. Jack told him I will be a reporter for the Express one day. Mr. Wrigley did not say no.”
“Jack and Miss Swan had dinner tonight. Jack calls her Swanie. He is brave.”
Hardly a day went by without a reference to Jack Corrigan. Helen had told me they were close, as had O’Connor, and O’Connor was always full of stories about him. But seeing this day-by-day record of O’Connor’s boyish adoration of him gave me new awareness of just how close they were. Jack seemed to treat him like a much younger brother, at times almost as a son. He must have taken him under his wing from the start and had infinite patience.
Well, no, I thought-even at eight, O’Connor was obviously an amusing companion.
As I read on, I realized that while Helen clearly thought of him in that way, Lillian seemed to have been annoyed with him. She probably wasn’t aware that her snide remarks were not only overheard but dutifully recorded by O’Connor. Gradually, through the observant if not fully comprehending eyes of an eight-year-old, I saw a picture of a young, willful rich girl who was enjoying a bit of rebellion by dating Corrigan. The picture that emerged of Thelma Ducane was even less flattering. Corrigan, for his part, seemed unfazed by Lillian’s tantrums or threats, and not far into the entries, either Jack stopped seeing her or O’Connor became uninterested in reporting about Jack’s love life.
I guess Jack sought company with his colleagues for a time, because then the stories were of other reporters, often Helen Swan. I had a feeling that Jack had been smitten with her long before he married her, something that was going right over O’Connor’s young head. Maybe over Jack’s as well.
I got a fascinated child’s view of the staffs of the two papers.
In that same summer, O’Connor, the little rat, had spied on Jack one night-and saw that he was out with Lillian again. “It is wrong. She is married.” The kid should have been a gossip columnist. I turned the page and repented of these thoughts.
This page was tearstained. It said, “Jack hurt in his car. Might die. Please, God, help him. I will be good.”
The next entry thanked God “even though I was not so good.” O’Connor had managed to sneak into the hospital to visit Jack, apparently by charming a kind janitor and a sympathetic old nun. This went on for a few days. The entries were worried ones-“Jack’s ankle broke. The doctor can’t fix it.” “Jack is sad. I can’t help him.” Then, one day, “Miss Swan visited.” A report of what she said to Jack made me realize she was as tough then as she is now. But the entry ended with, “Jack likes her. He will be better, I think.”
He noted a date not much later, when she left the News. I hadn’t known about that. O’Connor wrote, “Jack misses her, I think. Talks about her a lot.”
The outside hallway light had turned off at some point, but it suddenly snapped on again. I waited, heard someone’s footsteps at the other end of the hall, the sound of another unit’s door being rolled open and down
