Strange but True (41 page)

“That's because it
was
more quaint,” Richard tells her.

Charlene lets out the smallest of laughs, and he thinks of that girl he met at a party back in college when his friend spilled a glass of wine on her. Then he recalls their first date, when he gave her a sweater that was almost identical to the one his friend had ruined. Richard had been so embarrassed hunting through the various women's sections of department stores, describing the kind of clingy red sweater with the zigzag design by the collar and sleeves that he was looking for. But it was worth it, because when she opened the box at the restaurant where they met for dinner, she couldn't believe he had found something that was pretty damn close to the original. That sweater became something of a joke throughout their marriage, since Charlene wore it for years afterward, referring to it as the “Sweater That Made Me Fall in Love with You.”

“Even though this town has changed,” Charlene says now, “I still love the house as much as I did that very first day.”

For years, Richard wondered why she didn't sell the place and move somewhere smaller and more manageable—someplace without all those bad memories. But looking at that table last night helped him understand the reason she held onto it. The house on 12 Turnber Lane was all that remained of those days when Ronnie and Philip were young, those days when all of their lives were infused with that feeling of hope. It's then that Richard's mind goes to the memory of what he considers to be the last night of their former lives—the evening Ronnie showed up with Melissa and her sister and Chaz before heading off to the prom. It is a memory he thinks of often, and he asks Charlene if she still thinks of it too.

“Of course I do.” She pauses, both hands clenching the steering wheel, and what she says next takes Richard by surprise. “You know, when Ronnie and Chaz started dating the Moody twins, it was all part of a bet.”

He turns to look at her in the driver's seat as the pungent mothball odor of his coat fills his nose. “A what?”

“A bet. Ronnie and Chaz placed a wager to see who would sleep with which sister first.”

“Why?”

“You were a young single guy once, Richard. You know how they think. Melissa and her sister were the twin daughters of a minister. Plus, they were pretty. The boys saw them as a challenge.”

“Well, that's just terrible,” Richard says. “How do you know any of this?”

“Chaz came for a visit once when he was home from the air force. He told me. But he also said that once they got to know the girls, Ronnie developed feelings for Melissa. He fell in love with her. So he called off the bet with Chaz. He never wanted Missy to know. So I've never told anyone.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” he asks.

A silence fills the car, and Richard glances out at the dirty mounds of snow alongside the road as he awaits an answer. Finally, Charlene says, “To tell you the truth, I had almost forgotten about it until she showed up at our door the other night. I guess remembering that detail made me realize Ronnie wasn't as perfect as I like to think. The fact is, he could be just as cruel as the rest of us.”

Richard doesn't know what else to say, so he tells her, “Well, we're all a little cruel sometimes.”

The words hang in the air between them, and he expects Charlene to make a dig about the many cruelties he has dished out over the years, but she spares him.

“That's the truth,” she says as they round the final turn onto Monk's Hill Road.

Now that they are so close, Richard wonders what it will be like to face Melissa again, since she had been so terribly angry when he told her they shouldn't see each other anymore. Then his thoughts go to Philip, and he wonders whether he will even be at her house at all. As they approach the three small cottages, Richard tells Charlene to slow down. Just a single red pickup truck is parked in the driveway. Ronnie's old Mercedes and Melissa's Corolla are nowhere in sight. Charlene pulls into a small inlet of shoveled snow beside the road and asks which house is Melissa's. Richard points to number 32, and she turns off the engine, then pushes open her door.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I think we should knock just in case.”

Richard glances at his watch. Seven-thirty. “But the Mercedes isn't here, Charlene. We can't just show up unannounced at this time of day.”

“Watch me,” she says and steps outside.

At first, Richard tells himself that he is going to do just that: watch her make a fool of herself from the comfort of the passenger seat. But then something makes him open the door. When he catches up with her at the cracked cement stoop, he asks, “Why are we doing this?”

Charlene holds her fist a few inches from the door and says, “Remember how you had a feeling that you should come home yesterday? Well, I have a feeling too. Something isn't right.” With that, she gives a few hard raps. They stand in silence, watching their breath fog the air before their faces. When no one comes to the door, Charlene pounds harder.

“Come on,” Richard says after there is still no answer. “Let's forget this.”

Charlene points to the next house, only fifty feet or so away, and asks who lives there. Richard thinks back to that chipper, snowy-haired woman who showed Melissa and him the place all those years ago. Then he remembers her husband, who struck Richard as the kind of guy you might spot sitting in a pub in any number of seaside towns—strong arms, a gravelly voice, a weatherbeaten face. “The landlords,” he says.

“Well, I think we should ask if they saw Philip here yesterday.”

Knocking on Melissa's door is one thing, but Richard doesn't want to wake the couple just because Charlene has a feeling. “If you're so concerned, why don't you try calling Philip again?”

“Fine, I will.”

She retrieves her cell phone from her pocket, presses the Callback button, and holds it to her ear. That's when something odd happens. Richard hears two faint rings that are not coming from the phone in Charlene's hands. As far as he can tell, the sound is coming from somewhere around the side of the house.

“Do you hear that?” he asks.

“Hear what?”

“The phone. It's ringing.”

Charlene shakes her head. “Of course it's ringing, Richard. I just called Philip back.”

Instead of trying to explain, he reaches up and takes the phone from Charlene. “Listen.”

A moment of silence follows, and Richard begins to wonder if he imagined the sound. But then he hears it again: a single muffled ring from somewhere around the side of Melissa's house. Richard can tell by the puzzled look on Charlene's face that she heard it too. Quickly, they step off the cracked cement stoop and look in the small yard between the two houses. There is nothing to be seen except a trampled patch of snow by the landlord's basement window. Just beyond, that third house sits at the edge of the woods, all its windows covered with cloudy sheets of plastic. They appear to shiver in the breeze. The ringing has ceased, so Richard holds the phone to his ear, where he hears Philip's voice asking him to please leave a message after the beep. He hangs up, intent on calling back right away so he can listen for that sound again. But just as he is about to press the button, another noise comes from that third house in the back. It is the creak and slap of a door opening and closing, followed by heavy footsteps. A moment later, the landlord with the weathered face appears from inside the vacant cottage. He places a shovel against the side of the house, then walks toward them, wiping a thick layer of dirt from his fingers and coming to an abrupt stop at the trampled patch of snow.

“Morning,” he says.

Richard holds his thumb to the Callback button but does not press it. “Good morning,” he says as Charlene falls silent. She is still holding out her neck, listening for that ringing even though the sound has long since stopped.

“Can I help you?” Bill Erwin asks.

Behind him, the plastic over the windows of that vacant house shivers more violently with a passing gust of wind. Richard notices a number of black birds perched on the sagging roof. He looks away from them and into the deep-set eyes of Melissa's landlord, who is standing with both his unlaced boots planted in the snow. Charlene is keeping her silence, so Richard takes his thumb off the Callback button and says, “I don't know if you remember, but we met years ago. I'm Richard Chase. I came here with Melissa when she first looked at the place.”

Bill shifts one of his large dirty boots against the ground. “That's right. Nice to see you again. I must admit that I'm not used to getting visitors this early.”

“We're here to see Melissa,” Charlene tells him, speaking up at long last.

“Melissa? Well, she's at the hospital. Someone from there called early this morning to tell my wife and me that she had the baby.”

At the mention of the baby, Richard sees a residual glimmer of hope flash across Charlene's face. It is quickly replaced by the slack look of disappointment he remembers from the night before. “Is she at Bryn Mawr?”

Bill reaches up to scratch his forehead, accidentally knocking his hat from his head. Richard and Charlene watch as it falls to his feet, seemingly in slow motion, before he stoops down and clumsily drags it across the snow to scoop it up. When he is standing again, the hat squeezed in his two thick hands instead of back on his head, there is a pained expression on his face. “That would be the place,” he says and offers a weak smile.

In Richard's memory, this man had been warm and welcoming that summer when they first came to look at the place. He even remembers him talking to Melissa about his garden, telling her that she could help herself to anything he grew there. He told her that in the wintertime she could use the firewood he kept out back as well. At the time, it made Richard feel good that Melissa would have someone watching out for her. Now, though, Bill Erwin seems shifty and nervous, different from that memory. “Is everything all right?” Richard asks. His fingers have grown cold, so he slips the cell phone into the pocket of his old suede coat.

Bill's smile widens. “Everything is fine. Why do you ask?”

Richard decides to let it go. It's early, after all. Besides, the man probably doesn't like the idea of people wandering around his property unannounced. “No reason,” Richard says.

“Well, then, I better get back inside. It's cold out here. Good seeing you again.”

“Wait,” Charlene calls as he turns to go. “By any chance, do you know if Melissa had a guest yesterday?”

Bill stops, then slowly turns back to face her. “A guest?”

“A young guy with his leg in a cast. He was driving an old cream-colored Mercedes.” She pauses. “Our son.”

Bill wrings his hat in his hands, considering the question. “Can't say that I saw anyone like that around here. Things were pretty quiet, though they won't be for long with the baby and all.” After that, he excuses himself once more and disappears inside the largest of the three houses.

When the back door scrapes open and shut, Charlene says in a loud whisper, “What a creep.”

Richard agrees, then pulls the cell phone out of his pocket and presses the Callback button. As they wait to hear that muffled ring, Charlene takes a few steps into the side yard, getting closer to that patch of snow where Bill Erwin had just been standing. But there is no ring to be heard anymore. Richard holds the phone to his ear and listens as the call goes through to Philip's voice mail. Again he hangs up and calls back. This time, Richard steps into the side yard too, staring over at that abandoned house, where those birds have congregated on the roof. Bill Erwin's shovel remains propped against the wall just below one of the plastic-covered windows. When there is still no sound, Richard says, “Maybe we imagined it.”

“No,” Charlene tells him as her eyes scan the yard. “I know what I heard. Try again.”

He does try again. As a matter of fact, he tries three, four, five, six more times. And when there is still no ring, even Charlene's certainty begins to fade.

“I could swear I heard it,” she says, letting out a sigh. “But it was just that once. Maybe you're right. Maybe we just got carried away.”

Richard gazes over at the landlord's house. All the curtains are drawn, but he can't help the feeling that they are being watched.

“What should we do now?” Charlene asks.

“I think we should go to the hospital,” Richard tells her, turning away from those windows at long last and staring into her worried eyes. “Maybe Melissa can help us figure out what's happened to Philip.”

“HELP ME,” SHE SAYS, WINCING FROM THE PAIN. “I'M ABOUT TO
have a baby.”

The woman behind the desk grabs a telephone, punches in a few numbers, and barks into the receiver, “I need assistance up front, right away.” After putting down the phone, she springs from her seat and calls to someone at the other end of the hall. In what seems like seconds, Melissa is surrounded by nurses, who are less organized than she might have imagined. A short one, whose lumpy body is stuffed into her tight white pants and shirt, calls for a wheelchair. When a young male orderly appears and wheels it toward her, they ease Melissa into the seat. Another nurse, who has the same sort of papery skin and snowy hair as Mrs. Erwin, asks Melissa if she has been timing her contractions.

“No,” Melissa tells her. “Not really.”

“That's okay.” The woman holds up her wrist and looks at her slim silver watch. “We are going to start now. You just let me know when you feel the next one coming on. All right?”

“All right.”

“Who is your doctor?” she asks.

“I don't have one.”

“Do you mean that you don't have one affiliated with this hospital, or you don't have one at all?”

“I don't have any doctor at all,” Melissa says, feeling ashamed of this fact for the first time. She thinks of Dr. Patel all those years ago and his list of plastic surgeons. She thinks of Ronnie's father and that ID card he used to wear around his neck, just like the ones hanging from all the nurses' necks right now. “I haven't visited a doctor in a very long time.”