“Sort of the same difference, isn’t it? He never went back.”
“He never left.” It all spilled into place, his apartment, his relationship with the other firefighters, his relationship with Rachel. “That’s why Rachel said, ‘I would be his Amish.’”
What’s a guy who follows rules to do, when nobody else will play fair? The words of an Amish school ditty I’d found in my research came rushing back:
I must be a Christian child
Gentle, patient, meek and mild;
Must be honest, simple, true
In my words and actions too…
Must remember God can view
All I think, and all I do.
“‘God can view all I think, and all I do,’” I quoted for Ainsley’s benefit. Picturing those binoculars in Jost’s closet, I shivered. Could Jost have been trying to get the old man arrested? “Remind me to call our favorite sheriff when we get in. I need a little instruction on Samaritan law in this fair county.”
Ainsley looked confused, but hopeful.
Just the way I like ’em.
3:38:25 p.m.
Jenny usually walked around the playground during outside time. The school aides didn’t pay much attention to her when she walked. They were too busy yelling at the big kids.
“One at a time!”
“No chicken on the monkey bars.”
“Mulch stays on the ground.”
It was a good day to walk. Sunny, but cold. With her hands in her pockets, Jenny stopped under the twisty slide. It was shadowy there, like a cave. She could see out but it was hard for other people to see her.
There was a man watching the playground. He leaned against the hood of his big shiny car, arms across his chest.
Jenny couldn’t stop staring. Was it him?
His car was parked at the curb where other moms sometimes waited for kids after school. He looked like he was waiting for somebody.
She wasn’t sure if it was him. She decided to climb the slide tower for a better view.
She was only a second grader the last time she saw him. He came to The Funeral. He stayed at the back of the church though. One time, she waved hello but he turned his face away. She didn’t see him again after that.
Jenny thought he must be mad at her, maybe even hated her. It wasn’t her fault that Aunt Maddy moved in and took over. Thinking about it made Jenny feel like crying and wrecking something. If she thought about it too long, she got that shrinky feeling inside and couldn’t eat, until she smelled the inside of Mama’s closet for a long time.
From up on top of the slide, she could see pretty well. There were some trees and dumpsters and the grass field and then sidewalk.
He smiled at her and waved with one hand.
Jenny was surprised by how good she felt seeing him recognize her, like a happy memory coming back for no reason. She waved back at him with a small, secret bend of her wrist that hid the motion from everybody else. She smiled, too.
The kid behind her at the top of the ladder was getting impatient. “Go!”
Jenny pushed off and leaned back, speeding faster through the tunnel than she expected. Her stomach felt afraid and excited and sick and happy all at the same time.
The bell rang right as she shot off the slide onto the mulch.
Jenny looked at the blacktop where the other kids were running to line up. She looked back at him. He called her with a wave.
What a relief!
Usually grown-ups came to the door to sign out the kids who were going home. If the kids were on the playground though, parents usually signed them out first and then took kids home from the playground.
He probably signed her out already. Jenny was glad. She didn’t want to go back inside. She wanted to leave. Right now. She walked straight out to the curb across the grass.
He used to pick her up all the time, before. It wasn’t like he was a stranger or something. She knew not to get in a car with strangers. She wasn’t a baby. He knew it, too. He even let her sit in the front seat.
“Hi.”
“Look at you. You’ve been growing.”
“Yeah.”
His car was so big, it felt like sitting on top of the world. He told her to buckle up and she did. They started driving and for a long while he didn’t say anything. He only looked at her, quick, and then looked back at the road.
Was she supposed to talk? She bit her fingernail instead.
When they were almost at her house, he started asking her the usual stuff about school and how her fish was doing and if she still liked Scooby-Doo. He kept driving right past her house. Did he forget where she lived?
“Um? You passed it. That was my house.”
She got a weird feeling inside, bad weird. What could she do? She couldn’t think of one good thing. Pretty soon the worried feeling was a fuzzy feeling, almost sleepy. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Seen any movies lately?” he asked.
“Where’re we going?”
“You’ll see,” he answered. “I need you to understand something, Jen. Something really important. Something your mother would want you to understand.”
“Okay,” she said. Nobody talked to her about her mother. Quickly, without looking at him, she asked, “Do you think about her ever?”
He pulled over to the side of the road and snapped the stick thing between them into the slot marked P. Jenny stayed very still, wondering if she’d made him mad.
“Do I think about your mom?” Very quietly he said, “All the time.”
Jenny sighed. “Me, too.”
He turned in his seat and stared at her. “Look around. You know where you are?”
They were on the edge of the neighborhood, somewhere. She recognized the fence up the road a ways, that went around the old cemetery. She and Aunt Maddy passed it when they took walks on the Prairie Path last summer. Jenny had never gone in there.
She said yes with a tiny nod.
“You ever say anything to your aunt about me?” he demanded all of a sudden.
“Like what?”
“Like anything.” He said it in a funny tight voice.
“No.” Suddenly, it hurt her throat to say even that one word.
“Good. That’s good. I didn’t want any of this, you know.” He banged one fist against the steering wheel.
Jenny jumped. Her seatbelt got really tight. It was hard to breathe.
“Look at what I got here.” He pulled a shiny silver square out of his pocket. It was one of those medicine things with the pills in little bubbles. “You ever seen these before?”
Jenny nodded. They looked just like the ones that Tonya had for her hurting leg.
“In your house? Where?”
Jenny knew where medicine should be. “The medicine bucket?”
“No. They aren’t there.” He sounded pretty sure about that. “Where else could they be? A whole bunch of them.”
Jenny raised her shoulders up around her ears. She didn’t know. Really.
He threw the medicine in the air and said a bad word. “Okay. This is really important, Jenny. Are you listening? Don’t say anything to your aunt about me and your mother. Do you hear me? Something bad might happen if you do.”
His hand reached out, like he was going to touch her or something, and she squeezed herself against the car door. He leaned across her body to jerk her door latch. Jenny’s fingers fidgeted for her seatbelt button.
“Get out,” he said.
Jenny didn’t argue. She scrambled out, pulling at her jacket where it caught on the seatbelt.
“Take a look around. You know where you are? It’s a dangerous road. Cars everywhere. None of us are safe, Jenny.”
She shook her head yes, yes, yes, but all she could think about was getting out of that car. Her feet crunched on the gravel as she practically fell out the door. There wasn’t any sidewalk. The shoulder of the road was white gravel and weeds. The car pulled onto the road. Jenny took a few giant steps backward and fell into a tangle of bushes, poking, scratching, tearing at her clothes. The car drove away.