The Hiding Place

He studied her for a moment in the dark, his facial features obscured by the shadows. “I’ll show you,” he said.

He moved out into the center of the clearing. Janet thought he was going to stop in the middle, as close as he possibly could get to the spot where Justin’s body was found. But Michael didn’t pause. He walked past that point and over to the far side of the clearing. There, he turned back to Janet and faced her through the murky darkness, his body practically just another shadow among the shadows.

“This is where I was,” he said.

Janet waited for an explanation, and when he didn’t offer one, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“I think this is where I stood that day. The day Justin died.”

Michael closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and he crouched down in the darkness, bending at the knees until he was in a squatting position. He covered his face with both of his hands.

Janet didn’t know what she was supposed to do. She still didn’t understand what Michael wanted from her. She waited while Michael remained in that position, his face hidden, his body quiet. Someone who stumbled upon him that way would think he was praying-or grieving. And maybe he was.

He finally shifted his hands from over his mouth and said, “I can see it, Janet. That day.”

“I can see it, too. Always.”

“No, Janet.” His voice sounded harsh, impatient. “I can see that day, of course. But I can see this spot. This very spot.” He slid his hands all the way off his face and shifted his weight. He leaned forward and rested on his knees, his body kneeling in the soft dirt. “Remember, I followed Justin into the woods when he chased after that dog.”

“Sure.”

“And this is where he came. To this exact spot.”

“Are you saying you were here? You came this far into the woods?”

“Something’s happened to me since I’ve been back in Dove Point. It’s exactly what my therapist told me would happen. Since I’ve been here and living in this place, a flood of memories has come back to me. Everything. Smells and sounds and sights. I’ve been a little overwhelmed.”

“It’s hard for me to really understand,” Janet said. “I never left like you did.”

“Trust me. Memory is a powerful force.”

For a long moment, there were only the night sounds. Then Janet said, “You told me in the coffee shop that you think you saw your dad in the woods that day. Did you see him here? In this clearing?”

“I went to our old house today, the one we lived in when I was a kid. You know, Dad has it on the market. I made an appointment with the real estate agent. I didn’t tell Dad that I was doing it. He was at work while I went through with the agent. I’m not going to buy it, of course, but I wanted to see what the old place was like.”

“I didn’t know he was moving.”

Michael made a bitter laughing sound. “He’s getting married. Did you know that? He’s marrying his fucking secretary. Some girl younger than us, and he’s marrying her.”

Janet thought of her own dad. She couldn’t imagine him marrying again, or her reaction to it, but there were days she would gladly have accepted a twenty-five-year-old stepmother if it brought the old man out of his funk.

“It’s been a long time for him-”

“No,” Michael said. “No. I don’t want to hear excuses for him. He left my mother. I know you went to the house the other day. I know you saw how she lives.”

Janet understood. She didn’t know the particulars between Ray and Rose, but she understood that Michael would believe his mother had got the shaft. On the surface, it certainly seemed that way.

“So you went through the house?” Janet said, hoping to steer Michael away from the anger at his father and back to what he had to say about his memories and the clearing.

“I did.”

“You didn’t tell your dad?”

“We’re not really talking right now. I don’t want to talk to him.”

“Okay.”

“It’s funny. You’re back in your house, and I went back through my house. Did we ever think we’d be doing that when we were sixteen?”

“We figured we’d be in New York or LA. At least one of us made it out.”

He made the bitter laughing noise again. “For a while. Anyway, when I went through the house, a lot of things came back to me. The way I felt as a kid. The way I felt about my father. I opened up the medicine cabinet and saw his aftershave. I sat in the recliner he always sat in. I didn’t tell the real estate agent who I was or that I used to live there. She probably thought I was nuts, wandering around so lost in my thoughts. And then, at the end, I just left. I didn’t take her card or the sheet about the house. I just left.”

He scratched his nose. “I feel like it made a lot of sense to go there like that. It served as preparation for the other things I needed to do. A warm-up exercise, if you will.”

“And what were you warming up to?” Janet asked.

“When I left the house and the real estate agent behind, I walked over to the park. I followed the exact course that he would have taken to get here. Out our backyard, through the neighbor’s yard, and over to the path into the woods. I walked all the way back here, right to this spot.”

“And what did you find?”

“He was here, Janet.”

“Today?”

“Then. That day. He wasn’t just in the woods. He was here. Right here.” He closed his eyes again. “I can see him. I can see him in this clearing.”

Janet shivered. The sweat on her body seemed to have suddenly cooled. “With Justin?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would your dad be here in the first place?” Janet asked. “Why would he just be walking through the woods in the morning?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if my dad was involved somehow. If he did something.”

“But what reason would he have for doing anything to Justin? Why?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t know, Janet. I don’t know any of it. I just know that something is wrong with my dad. He walked away from my mom. He walked away from his responsibilities as a father.”

“It doesn’t make him a killer,” Janet said. “And there’s a guy claiming to be Justin running around town-”

“And the convicted killer says he’s innocent,” Michael said. “So if Dante Rogers is innocent, that means someone else committed the crime. Someone who was here and close. And my dad was here.” Michael pointed at the earth. “He was right here.”

Something snuck up on Janet, a memory of her own. Except it wasn’t from years past. It was from earlier that day.

“My dad,” she said.

“What about him?”

“I just found out today that my dad was home the morning Justin died. Not only was he home, but he…I don’t want to say he lied, but he…”

“He what?”

“He told the police one thing about where he was that morning, and my mom said something else. But he was home that morning when he was supposed to be at work. Why would they both be home in the morning? Did you ask your mom about this?”

Michael shook his head. “I can’t. She’s too fragile. She’s not over the asshole yet. It’s pathetic.”

Janet wrapped her arms around her body. She looked at the ground where her brother supposedly died. “What happened here, Michael?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t even know if I’m supposed to trust these memories you’re having,” she said. “I can’t remember what