Nikita was a busy woman, and this American culture was still new to her. It always would be. She hadn’t the tools to measure nuance here. That was someone else’s job. “Just be lucky he’s never been alone in a room with you, Sam Singh!… He hasn’t ever been alone with you, has he?”
“I don’t think so?” Sam asked.
Nikita visibly began to shake.
* * *
Charlie Walsh had an even harder time.
“Mom, you’ve got it wrong. Shelly was the one who went after Julia. Her family’s nice. She’s the nicest girl on the block. I like her. I’ve been over their house a hundred times,” he told Margie. She was sitting at the polished kitchen table, scrolling through a grant proposal for Habitat for Humanity.
“Can I tell you something?” Margie asked. “This is for grown-ups. It’s a grown-up matter. I know you think they’re good people. Maybe they are good people. But good people do bad things. That’s why it’s so awful.” Her tears had welled, as if from personal experience. “Look at what they come from. That song about heroin and cartoons. That’s a true story Julia’s dad sang, about his own life. That kind of history leaves scars, Charlie. It damages a person. Victims turn into predators… I know this from experience… Tell me the truth,” she asked, earnestly and for the ninth time, “has he touched your penis?”
“No, Mom.” Charlie backed away, one foot after the other, until he was out of the well-lit study, and in the dark hall.
He approached Sally Mom after that. “We have to stand up for them. They’re innocent,” he said.
Sally looked up from her papers, the model of practicality. She was shut up in her home office, her printer singing as it pooped out another land-use proposal. She did property law and he saw her for maybe a half hour a day. But he liked her. If they were strangers, he’d seek her out, and he had a feeling she felt the same. This wasn’t love, necessarily. It was that lucky thing you have when two people understand each other utterly.
“This isn’t our problem. If they didn’t do it, no one’ll file charges. We’ll all forget about it in six months. Not even Rhea Schroeder can hold a grudge that long when she’s in the wrong.”
“But someone threw a brick at them!”
“And the police have been hunting them down all morning. Let Margie Mom have her way on this. Trust me. This kind of accusation isn’t something people like us can fight.”
* * *
Dave Harrison sucked it up and approached both his mom and his dad. This wasn’t a pleasant endeavor. They really had divided the house with a black Sharpie marker.
He started with his dad, Tim, who hadn’t worked in years. Some days he was dizzy, other days he ached. There were fevers and chills. He’d been sick for so long that everything scared him. He was scared of public places and too hot days and anyone with a cough or head cold. He was especially scared of the hole—afraid it was radiating cancer. The doctors and Dave’s mom called it hypochondria. Long ago, they’d stopped believing his complaints, so he’d turned to hypnotists and aura readers and scammers who’d promised cures and never delivered. Dave didn’t think it was hypochondria. The old man really was sick. But after more than a decade of sharing his body with an enemy he couldn’t evict, he’d lost faith.
“It’s gone too far,” Dave said. They were in the den with the old, Scotchgard-covered couches made of chemicals that were now banned in forty states. His dad’s shoes had tracked bitumen everywhere. The floor was sticky goo. This whole crescent was seeped with it.
Tim blew a lazy raspberry, eyes closed, as he lay on the couch. The only channel that got reception was local news. The static-riddled story was about a potential pedophile on Maple Street, implicated in Shelly’s death, whom sources claimed was the ex-rocker Arlo Wilde. The camera showed footage of the Wilde house, and of the hole, too. Nobody except Rhea Schroeder was available for comment. I can’t tell you anything for certain, she exclaimed, her eyes bright and fanatic. But there’s no way Shelly went out into that park, unless she was running from something.
“FJ Schroeder threw that brick, didn’t he?” Dave asked. “Were you there?”
Tim’s face was puffy from the Chinese herbs his holistic healer had given him. He smelled like plum flower.
“God, Dad. I told you it was all a lie. What’s wrong with you?”
Tim finally opened his eyes: creepy green lights, focused on nothing, clots of luminescent sand oil in their crevices. “You don’t understand the kind of evil a person can do,” he answered. “I’m protecting you.”