come down. Which made dad wake up. Which made
him think a bear was trying to get in.”
Lane laughed and then Henry laughed and soon they
were both laughing, hard—Henry so hard tears started
coming out of his eyes. And then he was crying.
“You miss your dad, don’t you?” He nodded. Lane
nodded and held him closer. “I miss him too.” She didn’t
admit that this was the first time she’d felt this way since Aaron died, that until this moment she’d actually forgotten how much she loved him.
When Henry asked if they could go back to the Old
New Normal, Lane said, “Of course,” and Henry scooted
over so there’d be room for her, just for tonight, in his bed.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning Lane toggled between a phone confer-
ence with a lawyer—his advice was that her reader try
to work with her homeowners’ association rather than
continuing to confront the cigar smoker next door—and
emails with the social worker who was putting together
a list of patients’ rights for her reader who was fighting the hospital she believed was discharging her mother too
soon. She finished her last call and headed to the gym.
Today’s swimming goal wasn’t big; she just wanted to get
in a half hour before she met Henry at the bus. The new
gym was less than a mile away, but she still hadn’t found
time to swim since the day she joined.
The gym had no bells and whistles, which was fine
with her. She briefly stretched her calves at the wall—a
prevention tip for cramps she’d read about on a swimming
blog—and lowered herself into the water. The temperature
was a little warm, but it would do.
On the first lap she thought about the house in East
Aurora, which surprised her. They didn’t lived in that
house for very long. Several breaths later she realized why the memory had come. This pool, with its overchlorinated
water and temperature a few degrees past the edge of too
warm, reminded her of the pool where she’d taken lessons
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when they lived in East Aurora. She did the calculation;
she was ten at the time.
Another memory came. There was a problem in East
Aurora. Something with the neighbors. Something with
Uncle Albie. Yes, now she remembered. Uncle Albie had
a bad bout of the blahs in East Aurora. So bad that he
had to stay in the hospital overnight. And then—what?
There was some kind of mix-up when he came back.
Right—when he came back, he somehow ended up at
the wrong house, and the people who lived in that house
weren’t pleased.
Second lap. East Aurora was also where there was that
Christmas cookie swap on their block, which her mother
refused to join in. Or maybe it was that they didn’t invite her mother to join. Either way, Lane never asked why and
no one offered. But she remembered people kept coming
to the door. Ringing the bell and banging the door. And
there were phone calls. Lots of phone calls at all hours.
Shelley would probably know more. Maybe next time
Shelley called—
Ow. The cramp came without warning. Lane stopped
swimming and grabbed her foot to straighten out her
curling toes.
A lady in a pink swim cap bobbed over. “This is a
no-treading zone.”
Lane was about to explain about the cramp when she
noticed the time on the wall clock—a large LED timer
for people trying to make their personal bests. Her time
was up. She nodded at the woman. Breathing through
the pain, she did a sidestroke to the edge and hoisted
herself out.
h h
h h
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Her cramp was gone and forgotten, her foot fine, by the
time she met Henry’s bus but Henry didn’t seem fine.
And it wasn’t because of Silas. Just as Claudine had pre-
dicted, Silas had moved away a week after he’d bothered
Henry on the bus.
“You okay?” she asked as they walked home.
He nodded but seemed subdued.
“Something happen on the bus?” He shook his head.
“Something happen at school?” He shook his head again,
but this time in a way that let her know her questions
were annoying him so she stopped.
As soon as they got home, Henry asked if there was
anything special for snack. There wasn’t, so Lane offered
what there was: two chocolate chip cookies, the last in
the box.
Henry nibbled slowly. A mouse could have finished
the cookies quicker. When he was done he scrunched
up his napkin into a ball and said, “Mabel isn’t allowed
in our car.”
“Why not?” and then, “Who’s Mabel?”
“She sits behind me. It’s because she asked Francesca
if it was true that you kidnapped her and Francesca said
yes.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I wanted to tell Mabel that Francesca wasn’t saying the story right because the police explained it was a big mix-understanding. But my mouth wouldn’t listen to me so I couldn’t.”
Lane took a breath. “That sounds like it must have
been hard.”
Henry nodded. “Did you ever fake kidnap me? Mabel
said she heard you once did that.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Fake kidnapping is when someone pretends to kidnap
you so they can get money. That’s what Mabel said she
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heard you did. Francesca said she heard it too. She’s not
allowed in our car either.”
“Francesca isn’t allowed in our car? Since when?”
Henry shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes and
when he opened them again they were wet and full. “I
tried to whisper to Francesca that you never kidnapped
anybody and that what happened with her was a big
mix-understanding. But she put her hands over her ears and screamed and then Miss Fiske ran over. Miss Fiske
was really mad. She told Francesca to take her hands off
her ears right now. So she did. Then she told Miss Fiske she was only holding her hands on her ears so I wouldn’t
whisper in them anymore. She doesn’t like it when I do
that.”
Lane took Henry’s hand. “I’m so sorry, buddy.” His
hand was damp from wiping his eyes.
“Mabel asked Miss Fiske if she knew that Francesca
got kidnapped by you and Miss Fiske reminded her that
in our class we have a rule that no one can talk about
something if they weren’t there when it happened. She
said, ‘If you weren’t there it’s called gossip and there is no gossip allowed in my room.’”
Lane forced herself to breathe. “That sounds like a
good rule.”
“It is but it didn’t work because Francesca said she
was there the night you kidnapped her so it’s not gossip when she talks about it.”
“What did Miss Fiske say to that?”
“She said a lot of people were there that night
and that’s beside the point because the point is a
new point,
which is adding.” He stopped and nibbled
his cookie.
“What does that mean?”
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“You know. Adding. She clapped her hands five times
to get everyone’s attention and asked, ‘Who here knows
how to add numbers in your head?’”
Lane nodded. “Sounds like a tough afternoon. You
know what, buddy? I’m going to email Miss Fiske. I think
we need to have a talk about this. And Mrs. Lindsey. And
Francesca’s mother.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Francesca’s mom is
mad at me. Everyone is mad at me. I think I should go
draw.”
Lane started to protest but Henry had decided what
he wanted so she said, “Okay buddy. Good idea. Go
ahead and draw.”
He retreated to the living room. He liked to draw
there in the late afternoon because of the way the light
came in through the back window. He stayed drawing
quietly until the doorbell rang. At the sound of that, he
grabbed his sketchbook.
As Lane went to answer the door Henry, sketchbook
Nathan, with the contractor who’d come to check on
the electrical panel.
h h
h h
In the basement, the contractor identified the problem
right away. “This here’s your culprit.” He pointed to the
wire stapled around the periphery of the electrical box.
“See this white part? Rust. Copper pipes rust green. Steel rusts red. White rust? Aluminum. With a house this age
that means someone took out your copper wires and put
in aluminum. Which is cheaper. But rusty aluminum
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wiring?” He shook his head. “Not a good thing. If it
were me, I’d replace it. Fast.”
“Okay.” Nathan turned to Lane. “You can’t stay here.
I’ll book you a room in a hotel. I’ll help find you another house. A safe house.”
“This is not an emergency situation,” the contractor
told Nathan. “You guys don’t need to move,” he told
Lane. “You need to replace the wires. Probably the box
too, now that I’m looking. I mean if you want a bigger
house, a bigger yard, a warmer climate, be my guest.
Move. But you’ll still have to fix this. Rusty wiring is
going to be a problem for inspection.”
“Oh, we’re not—” Lane started.
“Together,” Nathan finished. “I’m not that lucky. I’m
just the landlord.”
“I’m just the contractor telling you, you got a problem.
It’s wear and tear. Nothing fatal.”
“Story of my life,” Lane said.
Nathan offered a lopsided smile. “I’m really sorry.”
The thought popped into her head that someone at
Dana’s house didn’t like him. One of the neighbors. Maybe
more than one. Why? It didn’t matter. “You didn’t know.”
“He couldn’t know,” the contractor said. “It’s an old
house. With a house like this, it’s all about what’s behind the walls. You can’t know anything until you open up
the walls. Old walls can hide cracks, corrosion—”
“Be nice.” Nathan grinned. “You think you’ll be
young forever? A hundred and twelve years from now
when you’re my age you’ll be relieved if the worst you
are is corroded.”
Lane laughed and Nathan told the contractor how he
wanted to proceed. “To make it safe, to do it right, how
long will it take?”
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The contractor smiled. “I always tell my wife, I got
two kinds of customers. The ones who want to know how
much and the ones who want to know how long. He’s
a good one,” he told Lane. “Let me take a look around.
But I won’t know anything for sure until—”
“you open up the walls,” Lane and Nathan said
together.
The contractor left to see what he could see.
“Come out to dinner with me,” Nathan said. “You
and Henry. An apology dinner. For my house falling
apart on you.”
“Thank you but Henry doesn’t like restaurants. He
doesn’t like to talk to strangers.” She stopped to consider about how much more she needed to share.
“Perfect. I know just the place.”
Which is how Lane, Henry and Nathan ended up
at a small café where Henry got to pick out his dinner
from a well-stocked wall of grab and go shelves. It was
the perfect choice for him. The café had the feel of a large family kitchen with walls filled with shelves of cookbooks and a center island that held tin trays for people to use to carry stoneware ceramic plates and vintage flatware to
their table. Sturdy glasses sat beside help-yourself jugs of water, lemonade and iced tea. No interaction required.
It was over dinner that Nathan told Henry about his job
doing voices for video games. “Only evil ones,” Nathan
shared. “Can you believe it? In real life I’m a good guy
but in video games I’m evil all the time. Want to hear?”
Henry nodded.
Nathan cleared his throat. “Lock him in the dungeon
and drop that key into the moat. That’s my evil king. I also have an evil emperor and a bunch of evil knights. Scottish knight. French knight. Knight from the planet Vlargh. ” He add 225
Nancy Star
a snarl to that one. Henry laughed. Nathan met Lane’s
eyes and smiled.
She felt herself blush and smiled back. She really knew
with Henry, which was pretty much all she needed to
know.
“I really want to play a hero,” Nathan told them. “I
keep asking my boss and he keeps saying no. Does that
seem fair to you?”
Henry smiled and shook his head and Lane said, “Not
at all.”
“I know. But I don’t complain. Because—” He leaned
forward to whisper his secret. “The evil guys get the best lines. Besides, what can I do? I was born with a good
voice for evil. You were born with a knack for drawing.”
Lane expected Henry, who’d spent a good part of
dinner quietly drawing, to close his sketchbook but in-
stead he beamed.
“You probably have a knack for a lot of things,” Nathan
said. “I bet you could do evil voices if you wanted. It’s all in the throat. You retract your chin, you compress your
neck, you get a little phlegm going on.” Nathan adjusted
his chin, made some phlegmy noises and growled, “If
you’ve done nothing wrong you shall not be punished. Want to give it a try?”
Henry laughed and shook his head.
“I think Henry prefers to draw,” Lane said. It was a
hard habit to break, speaking for him.
h h
h h
It was after dinner, in the car on their way back to the
house, that Nathan gave them a heads-up. “Just a warning:
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this probably won’t happen, but if we bump into each
other on the street tomorrow
and I look like I don’t know
who you are, it’s because I’m a little face blind.” He looked at Henry in the rearview mirror. “You know what that
is?” Henry shook his head. “It’s when you have a hard
time recognizing faces. Some people have it really bad.
They can’t even recognize their own face.” Henry looked
wide-eyed. “I don’t have it like that. But it has happened that I’ve run into people who I know who recognize me
and I have no idea who they are. Apparently, from what
people tell me, it’s extremely annoying. It’s better than it used to be. I’ve developed some tricks that help. I’m good at recognizing voices, for one. And smiles.” He directed
the next to Henry. “I always recognize kids. No problems
there. I have no idea why.”
Henry looked relieved to hear it.
Back at the house the electrician was gone and an
envelope with an estimate was poking out of the mail
slot. Nathan took it, thanked Lane again for being un-
derstanding about the repairs, and said goodnight.
When he turned to leave he looked up and stopped.
“Check out that moon. Looks like a fingernail in the sky.”
Henry looked up. He held out his arm and pointed
his finger at the moon to compare.
“Wow,” Nathan said. “You and the moon. Perfect
match.”
Seeing how much Henry liked Nathan, Lane could
feel herself being drawn to him too. For Henry it was
probably all about missing his dad. But for her—she
had no idea. She hadn’t felt anything for anyone in a
long while.
“I should go,” Nathan said. “School night, right?”
Lane nodded. “Come on, buddy. Time to go in.”
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Henry shuffled, slowly, toward the house. He started
to unzip his jacket and slowed even more. He seemed to
be unzipping one zipper tooth at a time. He was moving
in the right direction but his steps were getting smaller
and smaller until he stopped. At first Lane thought it was a ploy to delay going in. Then she noticed he was yanking
the zipper, hard. It was stuck.
“Can I help?” she offered.
With a curt shake of his head, he ran over to Nathan,
lifted his chin in the air and pointed to the pull.
“Do you mind?” Nathan asked Lane. She told him
she didn’t. Nathan tried to yank the zipper, first up, then down, but it wouldn’t budge. “Can you wriggle out?”
he asked.
Henry tried. He got his jacket over his head and
wormed it up as far as his ears but he couldn’t get it any farther than that. Arms up, head covered, he stomped