The Lovers

But already the little girl was moving away, receding into the mist and the trees, her right hand raised in a mocking gesture of farewell. Mickey took his chance and made a final dash for the car. He wrenched the door open, slammed it behind him, and hit the internal locking button hard. His fingers didn’t fumble, despite his fear, as he started the car and pulled onto the driveway, looking neither right nor left but staring only ahead. He hit the road at speed and hung a sharp right, back over the bridge toward Scarborough, the headlight beams assuming a definition of their own as they tried to slice through the mist. Houses appeared, and then, in time, the reassuring lights of the businesses on Route 1. Only when he reached the gas station on his right did he slow down. He pulled into t J seoughe lot, and hit the brakes, then leaned back against his seat and tried to get his breathing under control.

The traffic signal at the intersection began to change color. The action drew his attention to the passenger window, and what had seemed at first to be random patterns in the moisture now assumed a definite shape.

They were words. On his window, someone had written:

STAY AWAY FROM MY DADDY

Mickey stared at the words for a few moments longer, then hit the button to wind down the window, destroying the message. When he was sure that it was gone, he drove back to his motel and went straight to the bar. It was only after a double vodka that he found it within himself to begin updating his notes, and it took another double to stop his hand from shaking.

That night, Mickey Wallace did not sleep well.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I DIDN’T FIND WALLACE’S card until I opened the back door on the afternoon of the next day to put out the trash. It lay on the step, frozen to the cement. I looked at it, then went back inside and dialed his cell phone number from my office.

He answered on the second ring. “Mickey Wallace.”

“This is Charlie Parker.”

He didn’t reply for a moment or two, and when he did he sounded initially uneasy, although, like a true professional, he quickly rallied. “Mr. Parker, I was just about to call you. I was wondering if you’d considered my offer.”

“I’ve given it some thought,” I said. “I’d like to meet.”

“Great.” His voice rose an octave in surprise, then resumed its usual timbre. “Where and when?”

“Why don’t you come out to my place in, say, an hour. Do you know where it is?”

There was a pause. “No, I don’t. Can you give me directions?”

My directions were intricate and detailed. I wondered if he was even bothering to take them down.

“Got that?” I said when I was done.

“Yeah, I think so.” I heard him take a sip of liquid.

“You want to read them back to me?”

Wallace almost choked. When he had finished coughing, he said: “That won’t be necessary.”

“Well, if you’re sure.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parker. I’ll be with you shortly.”

I hung up. I put on a jacket, then went down the drive and found the tire tracks beneath the trees. If it was Wallace who had parked there, Kpar¤[1]ithhe’d left in a real hurry. He’d managed to churn up ice and snow to reveal the dirt beneath. I walked back to the house, sat in a chair, and read the Press-Herald and The New York Times until I heard the sound of a car pulling into the drive, and Wallace’s blue Taurus came into view. He didn’t park in the same spot as the night before, but drove right up to the house. I watched him get out, take his satchel from the passenger seat, and check his pockets for a spare pen. When he was satisfied that all was in order, he locked the car.

In my drive. In Maine. In winter.

I didn’t wait for him to knock. Instead, I opened the door, and hit him once in the stomach. He buckled and dropped to his knees, then doubled over and retched.

“Get up,” I said.

He stayed down. He was struggling for breath, and I thought that he might vomit on my porch.

“Don’t hit me again,” he said. It was a plea, not a warning, and I felt like a piece of grit in a dog’s eye.

“I won’t.”

I helped him to his feet. He sat against the porch rail, his hands on his knees, and recovered himself. I stood opposite him, regretting what I had done. I had allowed my anger to simmer, and then I had taken it out on a man who was no match for me.

“You okay?”

He nodded, but he looked gray. “What was that for?”

“I think you know. For sneaking around my property. For being dumb enough to drop your card while you were here.”

He leaned against the rail to support himself. “I didn’t drop it,” he said.

“You’re telling me you left it for me in the dirt on my back porch? That doesn’t sound likely.”

“I’m telling you that I didn’t drop it. I slipped it under the door for the woman who was in your house last night, but she just pushed it back.”

I looked away. I saw skeletal trees amid the evergreens, and the cha

“What woman?”

“A woman in a summer dress. I tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t say anything.”

I glanced at him. His eyes couldn’t meet mine. He was telling a version of the truth, but he had hidden away some crucial element. He was trying to protect himself, but not from me. Mickey Wallace was scared to death. I could see it in the way his eyes kept returning to something behind the window of my living room. I don’t know what he expected to see but, whatever it was, he was glad that it hadn’t appeared.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I came out to the house. I thought you might be more amenable to a discussion away from the bar.”

I knew that he was lying, but I wasn’t about to call him on it. I wanted to hear what he had to say about the events of the previous night.

“ JI slyiI saw a light, and I went around to the back door. There was a woman inside. I slipped my card under the door, and she slid it back. Then-”

He stopped.

“Go on,” I said.

“I heard a girl’s voice,” he continued, “but she was outside. I think the woman joined her at some point, but I didn’t look, so I can’t be sure.”

“Why didn’t you look?”

“I decided to leave.” His face, and those four words, spoke volumes.

“A wise choice. It’s just a shame that you were here in the first place.”

“I just wanted to see where you lived. I didn’t mean any harm by it.”

“No.”

He breathed in deeply, and once he was certain that he wasn’t going to throw up, he rallied and pulled himself up to his full height.

“Who were they?” he asked, and now it was my turn to lie.

“A friend. A friend and her daughter.”

“Your friend’s daughter always goes walking in the snow in dense fog, writing things on other people’s windows?”

“Writing? What are you talking about?”

Mickey swallowed hard. His right hand was trembling. His left was jammed in his coat pocket.

“There was something written on the window of my car when I got back to it,” he said. “It said ‘Stay away from my Daddy.’”

It took all of my self-control not to reveal myself to him. I wanted so badly to look up at the attic window, for I remembered a message written on the glass there, a warning left by an entity that was not quite my daughter. Yet the house did not feel the same way that it had felt then. It was no longer haunted by rage and grief and pain. Before, I had sensed their presence in the shifting of shadows and the creaking of boards, in the slow closing of doors where there was no breeze, and in the tapping on windows where there were no branches to touch them. Now the house was at peace, but if Wallace was speaking the truth, then something had returned.