The Hiding Place

“He killed my…he killed Justin that day.”

Janet came farther into the room. She moved around the end of the bed to the side near the wall. She sat next to him and placed her arm around his back. “Dad?”

He didn’t resist her touch. He didn’t move closer to her, but he didn’t move away.

“Dad, I thought that since you knew all along, ever since that day, that Justin wasn’t your son…You never talked about him. You never cried for him.”

“Did what you found out about your mother make you love her any less?” he asked.

They both knew the answer without Janet saying anything. Janet had spent many hours thinking about her mother, turning the news about her and Ray over in her mind. No matter how long she worked at it, Janet couldn’t reconcile the two things: the way she felt about her mother and her mother’s infidelity. In the end, she split her mother into two. The woman who raised her and the woman who loved Ray Bower. It was the only way she could do it. To do anything else threatened to strip the gears from her mind.

“Did knowing that I’m not Justin’s father make you love him any less? Or make him any less your brother?” he asked. “I raised him. For four years, I raised him. That makes him mine. I guess I spent twenty-five years trying to pretend he wasn’t, but he is. He’s mine.”

“He’s ours,” Janet said.

Her father’s body still felt rigid under her touch, so she brought her arm down and folded her hands in her lap. She didn’t know where to go next, what to say or do to help her father. She didn’t even know how to help herself.

“Don’t go anywhere, Dad. Promise?”

He brought his hands together, intertwined the fingers and moved them around. They tangled up like knotted roots. The pressure he exerted by squeezing his fingers together looked painful and almost made Janet wince.

“What am I going to do anyway?” he said. “I couldn’t protect Justin from him back then. I couldn’t keep my wife away from him. I couldn’t protect you from…”

“From boys?”

“From a boy,” he said.

“And we have Ashleigh because of it.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ve had to absorb a lot. And accept a lot. It’s not easy for me, with you moving in. I know you had to move in when I lost my job, but it’s not easy for me.” He sighed. “Just do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I know you love that Michael Bower, and I know he’s back in town. Maybe for good. Just promise me something. Promise me that if you have to be with that guy, if you love him and want to be with him, promise me he’s a better man than his father. Can you promise me that?”

“Michael’s gone, Dad. He’s gone, and I don’t think he’s ever coming back to Dove Point.”

Chapter Fifty-two

The noise brought Janet out of her shallow sleep. In her dreams, she saw the faces of Michael and Justin. But it was the noise-something faint, something distant-that woke her.

“Ashleigh?”

She thought someone had knocked on her bedroom door. She never kept the door locked, a habit left over from Ashleigh’s childhood, when Janet felt she always needed to be within reach of her daughter. Janet rose from the bed, pushing the covers away. She walked to the door and pulled it open. The darkened hallway was quiet. The entire house was still. Janet moved down the carpeted hall to the door of Ashleigh’s room. She listened outside until she heard faint, regular breathing sounds.

Had it been her dad?

No, Janet decided. He wouldn’t come to the door, knock, and then disappear. A dream. She concluded it was a dream.

But when she returned to her room and slipped back beneath the covers, the noise came again. A light ticking against the windowpane. Janet moved quickly. She tossed the drapes aside and lifted the window. The thick darkness prevented her from seeing anything. Not even shapes or figures. But then she caught a glimpse, a movement at the edge of the yard. A light-colored fabric darted and then disappeared.

Janet wanted to call out, but didn’t want to wake everyone else in the house.

Steven Kollman was in jail.

It could be only one person. Janet dressed and set out to follow him.

The park was quiet.

Janet hoped, as she approached, that she would find Michael waiting in one of the public areas-a picnic shelter or the jungle gym. Tall sodium arc lights lit portions of the park, some attempt by the police to keep unsavory elements away after dark, and in their hazy glow Janet saw no sign of Michael, no sign of another soul. The absence of any other people set Janet even further on edge. She didn’t expect anyone to be in the park, and when they weren’t there, she felt even more alone. She knew where Michael would be waiting. Back in the woods at the scene of Justin’s murder. All she needed to do was turn around and go back to her house. If he really wanted to see her or needed to see her, he could knock on the door in daylight. But he would not do that.

Janet couldn’t deny the fundamental truth-she couldn’t walk away and risk not seeing him again. Her dad was right: knowing certain things about certain people didn’t change Janet’s feelings about them. Janet wondered if she was going into the woods to prove that her feelings about Michael hadn’t changed-or to make sure they did.

Janet moved down the path. The humid night stuck to her skin. As she walked, she listened for Michael, but she heard nothing except herself. Every step she took seemed magnified. The rustling of the leaves and branches she passed sounded like the shifting of tectonic plates. While she walked, Janet thought of home, of Ashleigh and her dad. She hadn’t left a note, hadn’t told them she’d gone out of the house. With Steven in jail and Ray in custody, they should be safe. Then she had to ask herself, were they safer than she was?

Janet passed the pond. In the darkness, something plunked into the water. Janet gasped, raised her hand to her chest. Was it just a fish? A turtle? She looked ahead in the darkness. The opening to the clearing came into view. Janet approached slowly, squinting into the night, trying to make out a shape or a human figure. Anything, really.

“Michael?”

She listened. She thought she heard breathing.

“Michael? It’s me. I can’t see you.”

“Over here.”

His voiced sounded faint, a little worn and cracked.

“Where?”

“Keep coming,” he said.

Janet entered the clearing and still didn’t see him. “Michael, I can’t-”

“Over here,” he said.

He sounded insistent. She tracked the sound of his voice and went through the clearing and out the other side where the vegetation grew thicker and denser. Several yards off the clearing, she made out Michael’s figure, his white shirt glowing in the darkness.

He sat on the ground, Indian-style. The shirt hung open at his throat, and his olive-colored pants blended into the darkness, appearing to become one with the earth. Janet let her eyes take him in. He looked tired, ragged. He breathed heavily, as if he’d just run a distance, even though he looked to have been sitting in that same spot for quite a while.

“What’s wrong, Michael?”

“You talked to Steven, didn’t you? You had to. I know he’s in the jail. He must have told you and the police what I said to him in that bar.”

“He told me that you wanted him to get me thinking about the murder again,” Janet said. “He said that you told him about Ray, and you wanted Steven to come to me and get me to think Ray did it. Why did you do that, Michael?”