His sarcasm was lost on the cat who continued to chase the fruit loop beneath the table.
Max grabbed his broom, swept the cereal into the dustpan, and threw it out the back door. He could have deposited it in the trash can. It was right there, but when he started to lift the lid something in him squeezed, and without thought, he opened the door and tossed it into the yard. The colored hoops disappeared into the grass.
He brewed his coffee and gazed around the kitchen. The microwave sat on the counter. A jar of quarters sat on his kitchen table. If a burglar had broken in, one who left Fruit Loops in his wake no less, wouldn’t he have taken those items?
He wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room, noting the television and VCR. Again, nothing appeared amiss, except a single book laying face down in the center of the carpeted room, just as one had the night before.
But he’d picked it up and returned it to the shelf. Hadn’t he?
He knelt and grabbed the book, flipping it over.
Heart of Darkness he read out loud, by Joseph Conrad.
He’d taught the book the previous fall to the seventh grade students, a class that Melanie Dunlop had been in.
He set it on the coffee table and then picked it back up, returning it to his bookshelf, making sure it was held snugly within the other books. He pushed against the side of the bookcase. It didn’t budge. He hadn’t expected it to. The bookcase was an antique made from solid oak and heavy.
When he sat down at his table with the newspaper, he was disappointed to see no mention of missing kids.
Melanie Dunlop’s disappearance had shifted to page two.
21
Max drove slow through town, watching the early morning travelers walking to jobs. Mrs. Kenmore, who owned Minnie’s Flower Shop, heaved a large potted flower out her door. When she saw max, she grinned and titled her head in a wave. He lifted a hand to wave back.
The town felt emptier than usual with the school buses absent from stoplights and no groups of kids piling at street corners as they waited for the crossing guard to wave them by.
He generally met the summer with mingled exhilaration and sadness. He missed the kids over summer break, missed the routine of his day-to-day life and the students’ boisterous energy.
Throughout the summer, he’d return to the school a few days a week as he started preparation for the upcoming year, but during the first days of his break he often felt an odd purposelessness, a questioning of not only his big life choices, but also the little ones, like what will I do today?
Instead of that niggling self-doubt, Max found himself fixated on the voice of Melanie Dunlop and thoughts of the other kids: Vern Ripley, Simon Frank, and Warren Leach. Three still missing and one dead.
He slowed and directed his motorcycle to the curb, climbing off and leaving his helmet on the seat of his bike.
Baby Love, a boutique store specializing in all things baby, looked empty on the early Saturday morning, but thankfully the little open sign glowed red.
He’d received an early morning call that Matthew Herman Wolfenstein had arrived into the world at four a.m. Max’s parents were already at the hospital. Max had promised his mother he’d pick up a gift and meet them there.
As he approached the store, he gazed through the window at the display. A crib draped in satiny blankets spotted with little yellow ducks sat on a matching duck rug. A glider chair held a pile of plush blue and pink ducks.
One child had left the world the week before, and now another had come into it. Hundreds, no thousands more had been born and died in the interim.
As Max gazed through the window, a reflection appeared in the glass beside his own. He looked toward it, expecting another patron hurrying into the store for their own early morning gift. Instead, Melanie Dunlop gazed at him in the glass. Her eyes looked dark and hollow; her lips parted as if she was about to speak.
Worst of all was the red gash across Melanie’s throat.
Shocked, he spun to face her, but the sidewalk stretched on before him, empty.
“MOM, can I talk to you about something?”
Maria Wolfenstein stood back to survey her handiwork. She’d spent the morning cooking and baking for Jake and Eleanor and had stocked their refrigerator and freezer with food.
“Casserole on the second shelf?” she asked him absently. “Yes,” she agreed before he could answer. “Knowing your brother, he’ll only see what’s at eye level and poor Eleanor will spend the next week eating sauerkraut.”
She switched the dishes out and then smiled, triumphant.
“What would you like to talk about, Maximillian?” she asked, turning to face him.
He started to speak, but she held up a finger. “Did you get the mobile set up?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then. We deserve a little break. How about a cup of coffee and cake?”
“Sure, Mom.”
After Maria had sliced them each a hunk of Black Forest cake and poured coffees, she followed Max onto the sunlit porch. They settled into wrought iron deck furniture.
“You used to say Grandma Stein spoke to ghosts,” Max started.
Maria sipped her coffee and regarded him. “Oh yes. My mother had the sight to be sure,” Maria agreed, cutting a forkful of cake and holding it up to her nose. “You can smell the cherries. Have a bite, Maximillian. Don’t insult me with your meager appetite.”
Max laughed and took a bite. “I may be many things, Mother, but a stingy eater isn’t one of them. It’s delicious as always.”
He took a second bite and followed it up with a sip of coffee. “Did you ever see things? Ghosts?”
“Yes, indeed. We live in a haunted world. Every being leaves something behind. That’s what my mother used to say. When I was a girl in Hamburg, we lived during the most dreadful time in the history of Germany. The horrors…” she trailed off, gazing at her cake in woeful astonishment. “I still cannot think of them, not truly. Most of us did not believe in Hitler’s cruelty. My very best friend’s mother was in the National Socialist Women’s League, a major supporter of the Nazi Party. The city was haunted, the whole country, really. Death everywhere you turned. My mother nearly went mad with it.”
Max leaned back in his chair, watching a boy whiz by on a bicycle.
“The ghost I encountered, the one I knew was a ghost, was a little girl. I say little, but back then she was my age. Gitta was her name, and she had lived in the flat beneath ours. Her family was Jewish. They owned a little store that had closed after the boycott. The Nazis had taken her family two years before. I still remember their screams, still to this day. The crying and pleading. Her father offered to pay the Nazi soldiers.”
Maria’s face pinched with the memory.
“I remember the sounds of Gitta and her mother’s footsteps pounding up the stairs and down the hall. The mother beat on our door and begged us to let them in. My father stood at our door, his face like stone. My mother held me and rocked me, tears pouring down her cheeks, and I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. My mind had not yet grown enough to comprehend the evil that exists in this world. My parents did not support the Third Reich, but we were powerless against them.”
Maria paused, the color gone from her face as she gazed into the yard across the street, though Max knew it was not the neighbor’s newly planted flowers she observed.
“A couple years went by and sometimes I wondered what happened to Gitta, but if I brought it up, my mother would shush me and say not to think about her because I would let her in. Well, that only made me think about her more, and one night after I’d said my prayers, I climbed into bed and had only just closed my eyes when she whispered my name. Maria, she said from beneath the bed.”