The Unquiet

Rachel’s parents had gone away for the weekend and weren’t due back until Monday, so Rachel’s sister had come to stay in order to help with Sam. Sam had grown so much, even in the few weeks since I had last seen her, or perhaps that was just the view of a father conscious of the fact that he was separated from his daughter, and that the stages of her development would from now on be revealed to him in leaps rather than steps.

Was I simply being pessimistic? I didn’t know. Rachel and I still spoke regularly on the phone. I missed her, and I thought that she missed me, but on the recent occasions when we had met, her parents were present, or Sam was acting up, or there was something else that seemed to get in the way of talking about ourselves and how things had become so bad between us. I couldn’t figure out if we were allowing these intrusions to become obstacles in order to avoid some kind of final confrontation, or if they truly were what they seemed to be. A period apart to allow us both to figure out how we wanted to live this life had become something longer and more complicated and, it appeared, more final. Rachel and Sam had moved back to Scarborough for a time in May, but Rachel and I had fought, and there was a distance between us that had not existed before. She had been uncomfortable in the house that we had once shared more easily, and Sam had trouble sleeping in her room. Had we simply grown used to being without each another, even though I knew that I still craved her, and she me? We existed in a kind of strained limbo, where things were left unsaid for fear that to speak them aloud would cause the whole fragile edifice to collapse around us.

Rachel’s parents had converted some old stables on their property into a large guesthouse, and that was where Rachel lived with Sam. She was working again, employed on a contract basis with the Psychology Department of the University of Vermont in Burlington, taking tutorials and lecturing on criminal psychology. She told me a little about it as I sat at her kitchen table, but in the casual, passing way that one might describe one’s pursuits to a stranger at di

Sam was squatting on the floor between us, playing with big plastic farm animals. She gripped two sheep in her chubby hands and pounded their heads together, then looked up and offered one to each of us. They were slick with baby drool.

“You think it’s a metaphor for us?” I asked Rachel. She looked tired, but still beautiful. She caught me staring and brushed a strand of hair back over her ear, blushing slightly.

“I’m not sure that knocking our heads together would solve anything,” she said. “Although admittedly I’d get a sense of satisfaction from knocking your head against something.”

“Nice.”

She reached out and touched the back of my hand with her finger.

“I didn’t mean it to sound quite as harsh as it did.”

“It’s okay. If it’s any consolation, I often feel like beating my head against a wall too.”

“What about beating mine?”

“You’re too good-looking. And I’d be afraid of ruining your hair.”

I turned my hand palm up and held her finger.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “My sister will look after Sam.”

We rose, and she called her sister’s name. Pam entered the kitchen before I had a chance to release Rachel’s finger, and she gave us both a knowing look. It wasn’t disapproving, though, which was something. Had Rachel’s father seen us like this, he might well have reached for his rifle. I didn’t get on with him, and I knew that he hoped the relationship between his daughter and me was over for good.

“Why don’t I take Sam for a ride?” said Pam. “I have to go to the store anyway, and you know how she likes people-watching.” She knelt in front of Sam. “You wa

Sam let her aunt pick her up without complaint. Rachel followed them and helped her sister to get Sam ready, and to fit her into the child seat. Sam cried a little when the door closed and she realized that her mom wasn’t joining them, but we knew that it wouldn’t last long. She was fascinated by the car, and seemed to spend most of her time in it either watching the sky go by or just sleeping, lulled by the movement of the vehicle. We watched them drive off, then I followed Rachel across the garden and into the fields that bordered her parents’ house. She kept her arms folded across her chest, as though uneasy about the fact that she had held my hand earlier.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Busy.”

“Anything interesting?”

I told her about Rebecca Clay and her father, and the arrival of Frank Merrick.

“What kind of man is he?” asked Rachel.

It was a strange question. “A dangerous one, and hard to read,” I replied. “He thinks Clay is still alive, and that he knows what happened to his daughter. Nobody else seems to be able to say different, but the general wisdom is that Clay is dead; that, or his daughter is the best actress I’ve ever met. Merrick tends toward the latter view. He used to be a freelance button man, a hired killer. He’s been in jail for a long time, but he doesn’t strike me as being rehabilitated. There’s more to him than that, though. He looked out for one of Clay’s patients while he was in the can, even getting himself sent to the Max so he could be close to him. I thought at first that it might be a jail thing-older guy-younger guy-but it doesn’t look like it was that way. Merrick ’s own daughter was one of Clay’s patients at the time that she disappeared. That may be why there was a bond between him and this kid, Kellog.”

“Maybe Merrick also hoped to learn something from Kellog that might lead him to his daughter,” said Rachel.

“Probably, but he shadowed this kid for years, and he protected him. It wouldn’t have taken him long to find out what Kellog knew, but he didn’t cut him loose. He stood by him. He took care of him, as best he could.”

“He couldn’t protect his own daughter, so he protected Kellog instead?”

“He’s a complex man.”

“You sound almost as though you respect him.”

I shook my head. “I pity him. I think I even understand him some. But I don’t respect him, not in the way that you mean.”

“There’s another way?”

I didn’t want to utter it. After all, it would lead us back to one of the reasons why Rachel and I had parted.

“Well?” she pressed, and I knew that she had already guessed what I was going to say. She wanted to hear it spoken, as though to confirm something sad but necessary.

“He has a lot of blood on his hands,” I said. “He doesn’t forgive.”

I could have been talking about myself, and once again I was aware of how much like Merrick I once was, and might still be. It was as though I had been given an opportunity to witness a version of myself decades down the line, older and more solitary, trying to right a wrong through force and the infliction of harm upon others.

“And now you’ve crossed him. You brought in the police. You got in the way of his efforts to find out the truth about his daughter’s disappearance. You respect him the way you’d respect an animal, because to do otherwise would be to underestimate him. You think you’re going to have to face him again, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

Her brow wrinkled, and there was pain in her eyes. “It never changes, does it?”

I didn’t reply. What could I say?

Rachel didn’t pursue an answer. Instead, she said: “Is Kellog still in jail?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to talk to him?”

“I’m going to try. I’ve spoken to his lawyer. From what I hear, he’s not doing so good. Then again, he was never doing good, but if he stays in the Supermax for much longer, he’s going to be beyond rescuing. He was troubled before he got there. It sounds like he’s bordering on insane now.”