We sat in the kitchen, Asa Durand and I. Through the window, I could see a copse of silver birch where the garage used to be. Durand followed my gaze.
“I heard about what happened,” he said. “A terrible thing.”
The room was filled with the aroma of Durand’s pot roast. It smelled good.
“Yes, it was.”
“They knocked it down, the garage.”
“Who did?”
“The Harringtons. The neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Rosetti—they were probably after your time by a couple of years—told me about it.”
“Why did they knock it down?” But even as I asked the question, I already knew the answer. The only surprise was that it had stayed intact for as long as it had.
“I guess there are those who feel that, when something bad happens in a place, the echo of it remains,” said Durand. “I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not sensitive to such things myself. My wife believes in angels”—he pointed at a wispily clothed winged figure hanging from a hook on the kitchen door—“except all her angels look like Tinkerbell to m="0‘kerbell te. I don’t think she can tell the difference between angels and fairies.
“Anyway, the Harrington kids didn’t like going into the garage. The youngest one, the little girl, she said it smelled bad. The mother, she told Mrs. Rosetti that sometimes it smelled—”
He paused, and winced for a third time. It seemed to be an involuntary response when anything discomfited him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Go on, please.”
“She told her that it smelled like a gun had gone off in there.”
We were both silent for a time.
“Why are you here, Mr. Parker?”
“I’m not sure. I think I have some questions I need answered.”
“You know, you get the urge, at a certain point in your life, to go digging around in the past,” said Durand. “I sat my mother down before she died and made her go through our whole family history, everything that she could remember. I wanted to have that knowledge, I guess, to understand what I was part of before anyone who could clear that stuff up for me was gone forever. And that’s a good thing, to know where you came from. You pass it on to your children, and it makes everyone feel less adrift in life, less alone.
“But some things, they’re better left in the past. Oh, I know that psychiatrists and therapists and Lord knows who else will tell you different, but they’re wrong. Not every wound needs to be poked and opened, and not every wrong needs to be reexamined, or dragged kicking and screaming into the light. Better just to let the wound heal, even if it doesn’t heal quite right, or to leave the wrongs in the dark, and remind yourself not to go stepping into the shadows if you can avoid it.”
“Well, that’s the thing of it,” I said. “Sometimes, you can’t avoid those shadows.”
Durand pulled at his lip. “No, I guess not. So, is this the beginning, or the end?”
“The beginning.”
“You got a long road ahead of you, then.”
“I think so.”
I heard the front door open. A small, slightly overweight woman with permed silver hair stepped into the hallway.
“It’s me,” she said. She didn’t look toward the kitchen. Instead, she first removed her coat, gloves, and scarf, and checked her hair and face in the mirror on the coatrack. “Smells fine,” she said. She turned to the kitchen and saw me.
“Goodness!”
“We got company, Elizabeth,” said Durand, and I stood as his wife entered the room.
“This is Mr. Parker,” said Durand. “He used to live here, when he was a boy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Durand,” I said.
“Well, you’re—”
She paused as she made the connection, and I watched the emotions play upon her face. Eventually, her features settled into what Iu c‘ into wha suspected was their default mode: kindness, tinged with just the hint of sadness that comes with a lifetime of experience, and the knowledge that it was all coming to an end.
“You’re welcome,” she settled upon. “Sit, sit. You’ll stay for dinner?”
“No, I can’t. I have to get going. I’ve taken up too much of your husband’s time as it is.”
Despite her inherent decency and good nature, I could see that she was relieved.
“If you’re sure.”
“I am. Thank you.”
I stayed on my feet to put on my coat, and Durand showed me to the door.
“I ought to tell you,” he said, “that when I first saw you, I thought you were someone else, and I don’t mean one of the Harrington boys. Just for a second, mind.”
“Who did you think I was?”
“There was a man came here, couple of months back. It was evening, darker than it is now. He did what you did: stared at the house for a time, even went as far as to come onto the lawn so he could take a look at the back of the house, out where the garage used to be. I didn’t like it. I ventured out to ask him what he thought he was doing. Haven’t seen him since.”
“You think he was casing the house for a robbery?”
“At first, except that when I challenged him, that’s not what he said. Not that a burglar would tell you he was casing a place, not unless he was dumb as dirt.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Hunting.’ That’s what he said. Just that one word: ‘Hunting.’ Now, what do you think that means?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Durand,” I said, and his eyes narrowed as he wondered if he was being lied to.
“Then he asked me if I knew what had happened here, and I said I didn’t know what he was talking about, and he said that he thought I did. I didn’t care for his tone, and told him to be on his way.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
“Not so well. He was wearing a wool hat, pulled down over his hair, and he had a scarf around his neck and chin. It was a cold night, but not that cold. Younger than you. Late twenties, maybe older. A little taller too. I’m nearsighted, and I didn’t have my spectacles. Keep leaving them places. I should buy a chain.” He realized that he was drifting from the subject at hand, and returned to it. “Apart from that, I don’t recall much about him, except—”
“What?”
“I was glad to see him leave, that’s all. He made me uneasy, and not just because he was on my lawn, snooping around on my property. There was a thing about him.” Durand shook his head. “I can’t explain it right. I could say to you that he wasn’t from around here, and that would be as close as I could get. He wasn’t from anywhere like here, anywhere at all.”
He looked out over the town, taking in the carsuo;‘ in the c moving on the streets, the lights of the bars and stores near the train station, the dim shapes of people heading home to their families. It was normality, and the man who had stood on his lawn did not belong in it.
Night had now come. The streetlights caught the patches of frozen snow, making them shine in the gloom. Durand shivered.
“You be careful, Mr. Parker,” he said. We shook hands. He stayed on the step until I reached the sidewalk, then he waved once and closed the door. I looked up at the window with the broken pane, but there was nobody there. That room was empty. Whatever remained there had no form; the ghost of the boy was inside me, where he had always been.