“Kent?” James’s dad moved into the doorway and lowered his voice so the two boys couldn’t hear the conversation.
James looked at his friend quizzically. “So?”
“My dad said I have to stay.” Robbie sounded resigned but no longer frightened. He’d not only stopped crying, but the panicked edge was off his voice.
James couldn’t help himself. “Why do you want to go home?”
Robbie shook his head, not willing to answer.
Did you have a nightmare? James wanted to ask. Was it about the basement?
But he didn’t say anything, and seconds later his dad came in, cheery smile in place, and told them both to go to sleep, waiting until Robbie was back in his sleeping bag, and James was in his bed and under the covers, before turning off the light. “Good night,” he said. “See you in the morning.”
“Night, Dad,” James said.
“Good night, Mr. Perry.”
James heard his dad’s footsteps retreat down the hall. He almost asked Robbie if the reason he wanted to go home was because he was homesick … or because he was afraid of something. But once again, he didn’t. Instead, he lay there silently, staring upward into the gloom.
Thinking about the basement.
And the dirty grinning man in the corner.
Four
Claire looked up at the clock. It was just after ten. She was supposed to meet her sister, Diane, and their friend Janet for lunch at noon, but this morning’s only client had canceled, and she had nothing to do for the next two hours. She considered calling and rescheduling the lunch for eleven—it would be easier to get a seat at the earlier time—but both Diane and Janet were at work, and she wasn’t sure they’d be able to get off. She settled for e-mailing them, and received two quick replies, informing her that neither could meet any earlier.
Claire shook her head as she read the e-mails. She had learned to read and write before the advent of the online age and still felt out of place in the e e cummings world of the Internet, where nothing was capitalized, periods were known as dots, and the normal rules of grammar and punctuation did not apply.
At least her sister had spelled everything correctly.
Sighing, she leaned back in her chair. Shouldn’t more people be suing one another during a recession? When times were tough, weren’t people supposed to look for easy money and big payouts? The business of law didn’t really work that way, but that was the common perception, and she was a little surprised herself to find just how untrue it was. Right now, all she had on her plate were a couple of divorces, a dog bite case and a property-line dispute. She was meeting with the client disputing the property line this afternoon. The paperwork was pretty well finished on the other three cases, so there wasn’t anything for her to do until she met with those clients later in the week.
Claire glanced out the window, where David Molina was carrying out a metal rack of paperbacks and putting it next to the door of his bookstore. She contemplated routing the office phone to her cell and just going home for the next hour, but the woman bitten by the dog had been a walk-in, and she couldn’t take a chance that she might miss someone else coming in off the street. She needed the business.
On a whim, she e-mailed Liz Hamamoto, the only person from her old Los Angeles firm with whom she still kept in touch. She hadn’t spoken or written to Liz since they’d decided to move, and she made up for that by writing a long multipage message describing the new house in detail, as well as their reasons for moving, and providing Liz with her new address.
Now David was adding new paperbacks to the rack.
She was glad they’d bought the house. Just being able to walk to and from work made a huge difference, and she felt more a part of Jardine now than she had even as a child. Over the past few weeks, she’d actually made the acquaintance of some of the newer business owners, people whose establishments she’d driven by in the past and scarcely noticed. Downtown felt more like a community to her now rather than just a work destination, and if nothing else, their new home had helped integrate her more fully into the professional life of the town, which she hoped would pay dividends in increased business down the road.
The phone rang, a woman with questions about sexual harassment, and while discussing it would have counted as a consultation back in Los Angeles—and would have required Claire to meet with the woman in person and charge for the time—things were more informal here in Jardine, and she answered questions over the phone (though as vaguely as possible), hoping the woman would retain her services. She hung up having received neither a promise nor a commitment. But she had a good feeling, which was something, at least.
Claire glanced up at the clock. Fifteen more minutes. She looked outside again. The day was nice, and though she’d originally intended to drive to the restaurant, which was several streets over, she decided to walk. If she went down to the end of the block and cut across the park, it would probably be just as fast as sitting through all of those crowded stoplights and left-turn lanes as everyone took their lunch hours. Besides, she’d get some exercise and fresh air.
She turned off her computer, switched her phone so it went to voice mail on the second ring, picked up her purse and locked up the office. Outside, she waved to David across the street, shouted a hello to Pam Lowry, who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of her Cool Kids Clothing boutique, then headed down the street toward the park.
There was a rally on the field next to the playground, an angry middle-aged man with a megaphone railing against both high taxes and the president to a group of overweight men and women wearing slogan-festooned T-shirts. Claire was tempted to point out that taxes for lower-middle-class people like them had gone down under the current president, but they looked like a humorless bunch, and she was sure the irony would be lost on them. She recalled, a few years back, seeing on the news a self-contradicting placard stating, KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE! The thought of it made her smile even now, and she passed by the edge of the crowd, keeping a wide berth around a red-faced older woman who was shaking her fist in the air and shouting, “I want my country back!”
When did people get so angry? Claire wondered.
Maybe they’d always been angry. Maybe her perception that things used to be calmer and more civilized was just plain wrong. But it seemed to her that people these days, even in small towns, perhaps especially in small towns, had lost whatever sense of tolerance had enabled America to forge a unified nation out of the diverse peoples that coexisted within its borders.
The man with the megaphone was now talking about changing the Constitution so that immigrant babies born in the United States would not automatically be citizens.
“Yeah!” a man shouted.
Claire hurried through the park.
She got to the restaurant before her sister and her friend, who were both late, and got a table. Fazio’s was not only the most popular Italian restaurant in Jardine, but since the introduction of the Express Meal (“At Your Table in Five Minutes or It’s Free!”), it had become the town’s most popular lunch spot, period. The crowds were already starting to arrive, and Claire was lucky she got there when she did, because by the time Diane arrived, and then Janet, several minutes later, all of the tables were taken and the waiting area near the front door was filled.