Typical Michael. He wouldn’t apologize for not showing up. He’d just say he couldn’t make it.
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” she said, thinking back on Stynes’s words. She’d been turning them over ever since the detective left and coupling them with the words spoken by the man on the porch that night.
“I said I just couldn’t make it.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said. “I don’t care about that. The reporter was just a little college girl. She wanted to score some kind of big scoop, I guess. She was annoying and pretty.”
“Pretty?” Michael perked up.
Janet knew he was joking, but she still felt a twinge of envy. He was free to come and go. If he wanted to give Katie College Girl a call and ask her out, he could. He wasn’t beholden to anyone, unlike Janet.
“I meant to tell you how good you look,” Michael said.
“Me? Right now?”
“You look young,” Michael said. “You haven’t changed that much since high school really.”
Janet felt her face flush. “Anyway,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about what you said today on campus. You asked me what really happened at the park that day, and I just wanted to know what you meant by that. Why did you ask me that question?”
Michael looked around, his eyes restless like they were in the parking lot. This evasiveness was a new trait. When they were kids, Michael didn’t look away from people. He didn’t avert his eyes from things. If you asked him a question, he answered it.
Janet waited until he was ready to talk, the clacking of the wooden Jenga pieces and the teenage conversation the only sounds she noticed.
“You think about that day a lot, don’t you?” he asked.
“I do.”
He looked away again, eyes restless still. “I do, too,” he said. “Almost all the time lately.”
“Why? Did something change?”
“My parents getting older, I guess. Thinking about that and the anniversary got me thinking about it. I can’t think about home without thinking of that day.”
“That seems normal to me.”
“I guess a lot of people around here think about it,” he said. “That’s why they did the newspaper stories, right? How did that go with the reporter?”
“It was a little tough talking about it,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be. I really didn’t. I hadn’t talked about it since the last parole hearing, I guess. I don’t talk about it with Dad. Or with Ashleigh.”
“Did you read the story about Dante Rogers?” Michael asked.
“Yes. Did you? Did you have the same reaction I had?”
“What was that?”
Janet tried to think of what she wanted to say, but there seemed to be only one way to say it. “I felt sorry for him.”
Michael was nodding. “Exactly,” he said. “I felt that, too.” He licked his lips and leaned in, lowering his voice. “And I couldn’t help but think he’s a victim, too.”
“How?”
“It’s the system, Janet,” Michael said. “A black man like Dante in a town like this-what chance does he have?”
“That’s what the reporter was asking about today.”
“Was she?”
“Yes.”
“I wish I’d been there now,” he said, shaking his head. The waitress came and brought refills. Coffee for Michael, hot water and a new tea bag for Janet. When the waitress was gone, Michael continued. “We put him there, Janet,” he said. “We threw him into that system.”
Janet had never thought of it that way. She told the truth to the police when she was a child. She saw that man in the park, and when they asked, she told them. She had never stopped to consider everything else that went along with it. She’d been a kid then, only seven. She didn’t think of the larger implications.
“I asked you that question on campus because I really wanted to know,” he said. “What do you remember from the park that day? What did you see?” Despite the importance of the question, he didn’t seem to want an immediate answer. He pressed on. “I’m not sure anymore what I saw. I know what I told the police, and I know they acted on it. And I know they arrested Dante and put him on trial. But I’m not sure anymore if I remember what I saw, or if I remember what I think I saw. I don’t know if I can trust my own memory anymore.”
“Michael, I have something very important to say about that.”
“When I was in Portland and again in LA, I took some recreational drugs to try to regress my memories back there. I did some hypnosis, too, with a therapist, but I didn’t trust it. I didn’t think I could really get back to that place.”
Janet was ready to jump out of her chair. “Michael,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“There’s a man,” she said. “And this man came to my house. And he says he knows what really happened in the park that day.”
Michael froze in place for a long moment, his lips slightly parted. “What do you mean?” he finally asked.
She told him the story of the man coming in the middle of the night, appearing on the porch out of the blue and spinning his strange tale. Janet told Michael that she kept waiting for him to come back, to explain what he meant by his cryptic words, but that so far he hadn’t returned. While she spoke, Michael listened. He didn’t interrupt, and he didn’t ask questions. He just listened, his face rapt. Janet knew that not only would Michael be fascinated by the story, but he would listen to her without judgment. He wouldn’t laugh. He wouldn’t call her crazy. She knew this about him, and so he became the first person she had ever told.
“That man on the porch,” she said. “Sometimes I think he’s just like that day in the park. Sometimes I can’t really believe that he came to the door. I’m the only one who saw him. I don’t know him. He didn’t give me anything. He appeared like a ghost. In fact, I know I’m overreacting, but I thought I heard someone in the yard when I left the house tonight. I almost didn’t come because of it. I thought it might be that man and maybe he meant to hurt someone. Ashleigh. Or me.”
“But you came.”
“I figured I was being silly. And I just texted Ashleigh in the car, and she’s okay.”
Michael shook his head. Just a little, but the shake was there. He looked surprisingly agitated. “See, you need to forget about this guy,” he said.
“Why?”
“He sounds like a kook. Aren’t you worried he’s dangerous? Coming to your house in the middle of the night? What if he is sneaking around the yard? What if he’s crazy?”
The same thoughts occupied Janet’s mind at least once a day. She wasn’t naive. She knew sickos got kicks from tormenting the families of crime victims. She knew strange men shouldn’t be knocking on the door in the middle of the night.
“I know,” she said.
“Did you call the police?” Michael asked.
“The guy said not to.”
Michael looked satisfied, his point made. “See.”
Janet felt uneasy leaving the house sometimes, wondering if the man watched what she did, making sure she didn’t contact the police. Did he see Stynes at the house that very day?
“Forget about this guy, Janet. He’s a creep. Tell me, answer the question-what do you remember from that day?”
Janet looked down. An oily sheen had formed on the top of her tea, swirling around in the wake of her stirring. Janet had been asking herself this question-really asking it-for the past three months, ever since the man appeared on the porch raising questions of his own.
“It was hot. Very hot.” She looked up at Michael, and he nodded. So she went on. “And Justin and I were there first. We were playing in the park, and then a little while later you showed up.”
“See, I don’t remember that, but I believe you. I thought I was there the whole time.”
