The Hiding Place

looked confused, like he couldn’t grasp why someone would feel upset by reminders of a family tragedy. “Doesn’t it freak you out a little?”

The old man looked away. Ashleigh thought he wasn’t going to answer her, that he was just going to pretend he didn’t hear the question or something, but finally he said, “It’s best for everyone to not revisit those kinds of things from the past.”

Ashleigh didn’t say it, but she thought it: Things from the past? Your son’s death is a “thing from the past”? She wanted to just walk away, to leave the old man to sit in his house and stew in his own thoughts. But she felt compelled to push him just a little, if only to defend her mom.

“But it is hard,” Ashleigh said. “For all of us.”

“You weren’t even born,” he said. “Just don’t worry. We can’t sit around and fall to pieces about it.”

“I don’t think Mom’s falling to pieces.”

The old man chose not to respond to that comment. He watched the TV, the images from the screen flickering across his glasses.

Ashleigh shrugged. She didn’t have time for him anyway. “I’m going out. Tell Mom I’ll be back later.”

“Where are you going?”

Ashleigh froze in her tracks. The old man never worried about where she was going. The two of them seemed to have an unspoken agreement-neither one asked what the other was doing. Her grandpa left both major and minor decisions about Ashleigh’s life to her mother. Ashleigh suspected-although she didn’t know for certain- that her mom had laid that out as one of the conditions for the two of them moving into the house. To his credit, her grandfather managed to leave her alone, a far cry from her childhood when visits to his house-the house she currently lived in-meant a steady stream of corrective advice from how to chew her food to the proper way to hold a pencil. Ashleigh would never admit it out loud-and certainly not to her mother or grandfather-but she kind of missed his involvement in the things she did. Sure, he annoyed the crap out of her when she was little, but she liked having his gruff, raspy concern as a part of her life.

“I’m meeting some friends at the park,” she said. “Bye.”

“Hold it,” the old man said, his voice rising.

She looked over at him in his chair. He was wearing a Cronin College T-shirt, something her mom had gotten during homecoming week, and the same khaki pants he seemed to wear every day. His feet were bare, and his face looked puffier, heavier. Being out of work meant he sat around the house more, eating instead of working. It made Ashleigh a little depressed to think about it.

“That boy, you know-Kevin,” he said.

“What about him?”

“Is he in the park?”

“Yes.”

He looked back at the TV, but Ashleigh could tell he wasn’t finished asking her questions. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Get on with it.

“Are you…going with him?” he finally asked.

“Going with?” Ashleigh said. “You mean, am I dating him?”

The old man just nodded. He couldn’t even say the words.

“No, Grandpa, I’m not going with him. We’re just friends. From school.”

He nodded his head a little, eyes still on the TV. Some tension seemed to ease out of his face.

“Do you not like Kevin because he’s black?” Ashleigh asked.

Her grandpa’s head whipped around so fast she thought he might have injured himself. “What makes you think that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I just think there are a lot of racists in Dove Point.”

“Well, I’m not one of them,” he said. He didn’t turn back to the TV but kept his eyes on her. “I just think you’re a little too young to be…keeping company with any boys, regardless of their skin color.”

“I’m fifteen, Grandpa.”

“When I was fifteen, I had a job. I worked.”

“Mom said-”

“I know,” he said. “As long as your grades were high, you didn’t have to work this summer. You’ll get into a good college someday. You do want to go to college, right?”

“Definitely.”

“Good.” He examined Ashleigh carefully, looking her over, his eyes traveling from her head to her feet. “You look like your grandmother did, you know that? She was skinny like you.”

Ashleigh felt uncomfortable under the old man’s gaze. She put her hands in the pockets of her sweatshirt. She guessed he was being nice, trying to compliment her.

“Did you know Grandma when she was fifteen?” she asked.

The old man looked surprised by the question. But he seemed to be giving it some thought. “I knew her then. We went to school together. But we didn’t go together until after high school.”

He offered nothing else, so Ashleigh said, “I’m going to go. Tell Mom for me.”

“You look like her, too. Your mom. You’re the spitting image of her when she was in school. And you’re smart like she was. Good grades. Your mom got good grades, up to a point.”

“You mean up until I was born?” Ashleigh said.

“Now don’t take it that way,” he said. “I just don’t think you should be spending a lot of time with a boy. You should be worried about school.”

“So I don’t get knocked up?” Ashleigh asked.

His eyes narrowed. She thought he might give her a lecture on the proper way to talk to one’s grandfather, but he let it go. He said, his voice a little weary, “Just do the right thing.”

Ashleigh looked at the door. She wanted to go, but she said one more thing. “Do you know why I’m not going to get pregnant, Grandpa?”

He reluctantly asked, “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to get stuck in Dove Point the rest of my life.”

When Ashleigh reached the park, her heart sank.

“Shit.”

She saw Kevin, but he wasn’t alone. He stood by a bench at the baseball diamond, and three other kids hovered around him, sitting and standing. Ashleigh knew who they were. Todd, Sarah, and Kelcey-three other kids from their class. Kevin and Todd were friends from grade school, and Todd had started dating Sarah during the spring. Kelcey hung around and made Ashleigh want to punch things.

Ashleigh wished she could turn around and go back. But she’d been seen. And she hadn’t talked to Kevin since she saw Dante Rogers in the woods. She wanted to tell him-almost did a few times-but it didn’t seem right to share something like that by phone or text. She wanted to tell Kevin in person.

Except they weren’t alone.

Ashleigh walked up, hands in pockets.

“Hey, girl,” Kevin said. “I was just telling them about this dude who came into McDonald’s today. We messed up his order, so he got all up in the manager’s face. He was like, ‘If you don’t fix this for me, I’m going to fuck this place up.’ We were in the back rolling.”

His voice trailed off at the end. Ashleigh saw the other kids looking at her and not Kevin. They seemed to be expecting something from her.

“I guess you had to be there,” Kevin said.

It was Kelcey, of course, who spoke up on everyone’s behalf. “We saw your family in the paper,” she said.

“And?” Ashleigh said.

“My God,” Kelcey said, eyes widening, mouth open so far Ashleigh could see her fillings, “we had no idea that happened to your family. No idea. That is totally wild that your uncle died like that.” She looked to the other two. “Did you guys know?”

They both shook their heads, but Todd said, “My dad remembered it. I told him I went to school with you, and he was like, ‘Whoa, I remember when that kid was killed. We were so fucking scared there was a madman on the loose.’ ”