Bag of Bones

“Is it a story?”

“Not really. It was more like… oh, I don’t know. A crossword puzzle. Or a letter.”

“Pretty long letter,” she said, and then laid her head against my leg as if she were tired. “Yeah,” I said. “Love letters usually are, but keeping them around is a bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Because they…” Can come back to haunt you was what rose to mind, but I wouldn’t say it. “Because they can embarrass you in later life.”

“Oh.”

“Besides,” I said. “These papers are like your ribbons, in a way.”

“You don’t like them anymore.”

“Right.” She saw the box then—the tin box with JO’s NOTIONS written on the front. It was on the counter between the living room and the sink, not far from where old Krazy Kat had hung on the wall. I didn’t remember bringing the box up from the studio with me, but I suppose I might not have; I was pretty freaked. I also think it could have come up… kind of by itself. I do believe such things now; I have reason to. Kyra’s eyes lit up in a way they hadn’t since she had wakened from her short nap to find out her mother was dead. She stood on tiptoe to take hold of the box, then ran her small fingers across the gilt letters. I thought about how important it was for a kid to own a tin box. You had to have one for your secret stuff the best toy, the prettiest bit of lace, the first piece of jewelry. Or a picture of your mother, perhaps. “This is so… pretty,” she said in a soft, awed voice. “You can have it if you don’t mind it saying JO’s NOTIONS instead of KI’s NOTIONS. There are some papers in it I want to read, but I could put them somewhere else.” She looked at me to make sure I wasn’t kidding, saw I wasn’t. “I’d love it,” she said in the same soft, awed voice. I took the box from her, scooped out the steno books, notes, and clippings, then handed it back to Ki. She practiced taking the lid off and then putting it back on. “Guess what I’ll put in here,” she said. “Secret treasures?”

“Yes!” she said, and actually smiled for a moment. “Who was Jo, Mike? Do I know her? I do, don’t I? She was one of the fridgearator people.”

“She—” A thought occurred. I shuffled through the yellowed clippings. Nothing. I thought I’d lost it somewhere along the way, then saw a corner of what I was looking for peeking from the middle of one of the steno notebooks. I slid it out and handed it to Ki. “What is it?”

“A backwards photo. Hold it up to the light.” She did, and looked for a long time, rapt. Faint as a dream I could see my wife in her hand, my wife standing on the swimming float in her two-piece suit. “That’s Jo,” I said. “She’s pretty. I’m glad to have her box for my things.”

“I am too, Ki.” I kissed the top of her head.

When Sheriff Ridgewick hammered on the door, I thought it wise to answer with my hands up. He looked wired. What seemed to ease the situation was a simple, uncalculated question. “Where’s Alan Pangborn these days, Sheriff?.”

“Over New Hampshire,” Ridgewick said, lowering his pistol a little (a minute or two later he holstered it without even seeming to be aware he had done so). “He and Polly are doing real well. Except for her arthritis. That’s nasty, I guess, but she still has her good days. A person can go along quite awhile if they get a good day every once and again, that’s what I think. Mr. Noonan, I have a lot of questions for you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“First off and most important, do you have the child? Kyra Devore?”

“Where is she?”

“I’ll be happy to show you.” We walked down the north-wing corridor and stood just outside the bedroom doorway, looking in. The duvet was pulled up to her chin and she was sleeping deeply. The stuffed dog was curled in one hand we could just see its muddy tail poking out of her fist at one end and its nose poking out at the other.

We stood there for a long time, neither of us saying anything, watching her sleep in the light of a summer evening. In the woods the trees had stopped falling, but the wind still blew. Around the eaves of Sara Laughs it made a sound like ancient music.

EPILOGUE It snowed for Christmas—a polite six inches of powder that made the carollers working the streets of Sanford look like they belonged in It’s a Wonderful Lij. By the time I came back from checking Kyra for the third time, it was quarter past one on the morning of the twenty-sixth, and the snow had stopped. A late moon, plump but pale, was peeking through the unravelling fluff of clouds.

I was Christmasing with Frank again, and we were the last two up. The kids, Ki included, were dead to the world, sleeping off the a

“Are you all right?” Frank asked when I sat down again and took another little token sip from my glass.

I gri

“Slow. I’ve come to loathe the State of Maine court system, and DHS as well. You take the people who work in those bureaucracies one by one and they’re mostly fine, but when you put them together…”

“Bad, huh?”

“I sometimes feel like a character in Bleak House. That’s the one where Dickens says that in court nobody wins but the lawyers. John tells me to be patient and count my blessings, that we’re making amazing progress considering that I’m that most untrustworthy of creatures, an unmarried white male of middle age, but Ki’s been in two foster-home situations since Mattie died, and—”

“Doesn’t she have kin in one of those neighboring towns?”

“Mattie’s aunt. She didn’t want anything to do with Ki when Mattie was alive and has even less interest now. Especially since—”

“—since Ki’s not going to be rich.”

“Yeah.”

“The Whitmore woman was lying about Devore’s will.”

“Absolutely. He left everything to a foundation that’s supposed to foster global computer literacy. With due respect to the numbercrunchers of the world, I can’t imagine a colder charity.”

“How is John?”

“Pretty well mended, but he’s never going to get the use of his right affn back entirely. He damned near died of blood-loss.” Frank had led me away from the entwined subjects of Ki and custody quite well for a man deep into his third Scotch, and I was willing enough to go. I could hardly bear to think of her long days and longer nights in those homes where the Department of Human Services stores away children like knickknacks nobody wants. Ki didn’t live in those places but only existed in them, pale and listless, like a well-fed rabbit kept in a cage. Each time she saw my car turning in or pulling up she came alive, waving her arms and dancing like Snoopy on his doghouse. Our weekend in October had been wonderful (despite my obsessive need to check her every half hour or so after she was asleep), and the Christmas holiday had been even better. Her emphatic desire to be with me was helping in court more than anything else… yet the wheels still turned slowly. Maybe in the spring, Mike, John told me. He was a new John these days, pale and serious. The slightly arrogant eager beaver who had wanted nothing more than to go head to head with Mr. Maxwell “Big Bucks” Devore was no longer in evidence. John had learned something about mortality on the twenty-first of July, and something about the world’s idiot cruelty, as well. The man who had taught himself to shake with his left hand instead of his right was no longer interested in partying ’til he puked. He was seeing a girl in Philly, the daughter of one of his mother’s friends. I had no idea if it was serious or not, Ki’s “Unca John” is closemouthed about that part of his life, but when a young man is of his own accord seeing the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, it usually is. Maybe in the spring: it was his mantra that late fall and early winter. What am I doing wrong? I asked him once—this was just after Thanksgiving and another setback.