With the coffee maker burbling quietly behind me, I remembered the last time I had seen my sister’s rushed, angular scrawl. It had been in her diary, which I had read when I was thirteen. There was a period of time when Jill had seemed to be sleeping somewhere different every night — at the homes of friends, no doubt so that she could have free access to the boys and men she was known to be having relations with at the time. I admit that I would often snoop in her bedroom when she was gone, in the precise hope that I would find her diary there. But until this particular night, she had always taken it with her to her sleepovers.
This time, however, she had forgotten, and I sat on the edge of her un-slept-in bed, reading as quickly as I could. And I had been right to rush, because she actually came home to get it, launching herself from the back of a car out of which loud rock music was blaring, and stomped up the stairs to snatch it from my hands as I read. She actually struck me, as I remember, and I struck back, and it took my exhausted mother to pull us apart. In fact I seem to recall my mother ending up on the floor, weeping, and me helping her up and leading her to bed.
But it was the diary itself that truly rankled, as it contained all manner of lascivious fantasy about my father, horrible desires and distasteful proclivities that she had invented for him, clearly to satisfy some deep, childish need to blame others for her own failings. Even at thirteen I understood this — Jill was always rather transparent, pathetically so, and God forbid that someone close to her should suggest that her actions were motivated by self-deception, or a need to relieve herself of responsibility for unfortunate things she had done. Of which, as I have said, there were many.
This is not to suggest that I regarded my father as a paragon of virtue. He was not — indeed, I would be the first to admit that he was deeply flawed, emotionally stunted, and of course extremely careless. But to make the insinuations my sister did in her diary was simply wrong, even if they were, ultimately, for her own private consumption.
Sitting there at my kitchen table, I was not especially happy to revisit these memories. I have already established that I am not one to live in the past, and I feel that the anger which results from recalling past injustices is among the most impure of emotions, and damaging to heart and soul. But it was not my sister’s fault that her handwriting happened to bring these recollections to mind, and I had to admit that, misguided as they may have been, the words of her apology and offer of friendship were sweet, almost touching. And so I took the unusual step of affixing the card to the refrigerator with the magnet from the bank, if for no other reason than to inoculate myself against the effect her handwriting imposed upon my mind.
By now the coffee was finished, and I poured myself a cup. All that was left of the mail, aside from the official-looking letter, was a thin white envelope without any return address. My own address was neither typed nor printed, but written, in a neat, precise hand. I carefully opened it, and unfolded the single sheet of paper within.
The paper bore only three words, in the same hand as that on the envelope: Doctor Avery Stiles.
I had no idea who had sent me this cryptic message, but the sight of those words caused my stomach to turn over. I sipped my coffee, in order to calm it.
The handwriting was not one I recognized, and I cast about in my mind for whose it might be. There were very few people who knew where I lived — my sister, the employees of the real estate agency, the lawyer’s office. Heph the electrician, Randall from the hardware store, Jeremy Pernice. And, of course, whomever those people might have told about me — though it seemed unlikely that my purchase of the house and land would qualify as gossip worthy information.
I studied the envelope and paper once more, and determined that the handwriting was liable to be a woman’s. And after a few moments, I had it, or thought I did: it must be the girl from the law office, the one who had insisted that my land’s previous occupant could not be identified. Perhaps she meant to indicate that Doctor Avery Stiles was that occupant! I got up, retrieved my land-purchase folder, and located the office’s number.
“Barris and Haight.”
“Hello, Andrea?”
“Yes?”
“This is Eric Loesch.”
There was the slightest hesitation before she said, “Yes, hello, sir!”
“Andrea, I’m calling about Doctor Avery Stiles.”
Again, a pause. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean.”
“I realize that you don’t wish for your employers to know that you told me his name. But perhaps you could answer yes or no to a few questions.”
The pause this time was longer, and when she spoke, her voice had changed. It was more pliant now. “All right,” she said.
“This is the man whose name was blacked out on the title abstract?”
“Yes,” came the muted reply.
“Do you know who this man is?”
“No…”
“Do you know why your employers wanted to keep this information secret?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Will you meet me,” I asked, “to discuss this further?”
She sighed. “I don’t know if that will be necessary…”
“You’ll need to eat lunch. May I treat you?”
“No, I don’t…”
“Or coffee. Or just a moment of your time. I’ll tell you what. Meet me at 12:30 at the end of Jefferson Street, by the abandoned football field. You may stay in your car. I’ll just pull up beside you. I just want to ask you some questions.”
The wait for a reply was very long, this time, but her voice, when it returned, was resigned. “All right.” And then, as if someone were walking by, she said brightly, “That will be no trouble at all!”
“I can’t thank you enough, Andrea. I’ll see you then.”
“Goodbye,” she said, and hung up.
Her car was there, a little red Volkswagen with a crooked front fender. She had parked on the side of the road just before it turned to mud, and was facing south, toward town, presumably to reserve the possibility of a quick getaway. Frankly, I was surprised. I had assumed that she had no good reason to meet with me, and expected to have to stop by the law office to draw the information out of her. I pulled up slowly, giving her a friendly wave as I approached. As if by reflex, she waved back.
We rolled our windows down. Her car was filthy from the April mud and rain, though the sun shone today, as it had during my adventure on the rock. Having the taller vehicle, I was forced to lean down to speak to her, and she to tip her face up.
By any standard, she was a lovely girl, with wispy blond hair framing a face the shape of an ash leaf. Her eyes were gray, and her small pursed mouth betrayed her nervousness, and perhaps a fierceness that I had not, to my surprise, detected over the phone. She was dressed for work in a silk blouse and woolen skirt, but was huddled inside a ski jacket, despite the warm weather. A small diamond glinted on her ring finger, and I wondered what kind of man had managed to catch her. I smiled and thanked her for coming.
“I don’t have anything to tell you, really,” she said.
I merely nodded, remaining silent. It is the rare interlocutor who can bear to leave a silence uninterrupted.
She let out breath and trained her gaze out the windshield of her car. A pop station was playing quietly on her car radio. “So yeah,” she said.
I offered a gentle prompt. “Doctor Avery Stiles?”
She spoke without turning back to me, her voice full of resolve. “He was some kind of weirdo in the sixties,” she said. “Like a psychologist? He taught at the college but then got kicked out. That’s what they said anyway. I never heard of him.”