“Detective.” Dad had risen from where he sat and stepped in front of me. “I don’t know what transpired up the street. I don’t know what law enforcement protocol is. I only know Rachel Barren typically visits me once a week just to check in and say hi. Ask if I need anything. Her boys play with my grandchildren. She and her family are our neighbors. You live in the same community. We’re concerned for the people we care about. Can you blame us?”
Spanner watched us like he was waiting for something more, then said, “David Barren is deceased. Rachel Barren, Asher Barren, and Joseph Barren’s whereabouts are unknown.”
I didn’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
David was dead, and Rachel and the boys were missing.
I came back to the last half of Spanner’s question and asked him to repeat it. “This noise you heard, a bang—what time was it?”
“Around two a.m., I think.”
“Hear anything else?”
“No. A car, maybe, but that was all.”
“Mm-hmm. And what is your relationship to Rachel Barren?”
I was a top losing its centrifugal force. Wobbling. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you a friend or just a neighbor? Something more?”
“We’re neighbors. She’s a friend. She stops in to check on Dad, like he said.”
“So what were the two of you discussing yesterday at the farmers market?”
“We . . . she was asking about Dad. How he was doing.”
“I thought you said she checked in on him herself.”
“She does, but she hasn’t been here in a while.” That at least was the truth. She hadn’t dared come over to Dad’s since the night of the note.
“Uh-huh. And how did she seem to you? What was her state of mind?”
“Fine. I don’t know. She was fine.”
“Notice anything out of the ordinary? She say anything that seemed odd?”
“No, nothing. We literally talked for a minute.”
Those beady eyes. Probing. Waiting.
Instead of asking any more questions, he stood and moved toward the door. “If either of you recall any other details, call the station. We’ll be in touch if we have anything further. Thank you for your time.” He stopped at the door and threw a half grin over one shoulder. “Oh, and Andy? Don’t leave town.”
8
When the snow had finally melted and stayed away for good a few weeks ago, Rachel and I met at a mountain lookout several hours from Sandford.
David was at a conference out of state, the boys on an overnight trip with her parents. She told me she was worried about Joey. He’d been distant and more anxious than usual. Hadn’t wanted to go to school or anywhere else at all. She hoped the trip with her parents would do him some good. I asked if she wanted me to talk with him, see if I could help. I was thinking of Emma, how sometimes the quietest and most reserved people were hurting the worst. There was a long pause before she shook her head. So much in that small dismissal, a boundary between us I wanted to tear down.
During our marriage, Sharon and I had discussed kids. She’d been ambivalent, but I’d definitely wanted them. Just another set of lines in our relationship that had never intersected. In my secret heart I saw myself stepping into a role for Asher and Joey, someone more than the fun neighbor who played Frisbee or soccer with them from time to time or told them silly jokes—trying to make them laugh along with their mother. Someone they could really confide in and trust.
In other words, a father.
But it was something unsayable. At least then it was.
We left her car at the lookout and drove up farther into the hills, finally stopping at a pull-off I knew from childhood, one of Dad’s many secret places where he took us camping when we were kids. Ours was the only vehicle in sight when we left it parked on the scant piece of blacktop.
We hiked for a few hours, the cool morning air slowly warming until we had to strip off our sweatshirts. The trail we were on switchbacked a dozen times before emptying out on a rocky spine overlooking a lake so crystal clear, it was tempting to drink from. At the end of the spine, an abandoned fire tower stood lonesome but sturdy. The day before, I’d deposited a picnic lunch in the tower: blankets, pillows, a bottle of wine.
We stayed there all day, swimming for a few freezingly brief minutes in the lake, drying off and lounging on the rocks in the sun before spending the afternoon in the tower. The scattered clouds were so low, they felt like ceiling tiles, and we could see into the distant horizon until it became a white-gray haze the color of infinity.