“And have you found out anything so far?” Bailey asked softly.
“The truth is that I’d like to know what happened to my father. I grew up hating him and knowing I would never have done what he did, but I’m older now, and I’ve realized that people don’t live by their brains alone.”
“Right,” Bailey said. “People live by their emotions. Their emotions can drive them to do all manner of extraordinary things.”
“Speaking from experience?” Matt asked, his eyes twinkling, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “What do you say that we go see a movie? How about if we do something normal for a change?”
“That sounds nice,” Bailey said as she watched Matt put the photos back into the box. But as he lifted the folded papers to straighten them, one fell to the floor, and Bailey reached down to pick it up. He hadn’t shown her all the photos in the box, and she wondered why. Did he have secrets, just as she did?
The photo she picked up was of two teenagers, a boy and a girl, both of them pudgy and sullen-looking. They were wearing ill-fitting clothes, and the boy had a complex
ion that even in the out-of-focus black-and-white photo looked splotchy. “Friends of your dad’s?” Bailey asked, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. She couldn’t imagine the well-groomed class president, Kyle Longacre, being friends with these two.
“No, they’re—” Matt began, but cut off when Bailey wouldn’t release the photo.
Slowly, with a face as white as the woodwork behind her, she moved the photo closer to the light. “Who are these two?” she said, her voice a husky whisper.
“I don’t know,” Matt said. “That was in the batch of photos I found in the garbage. Do you know who they are?”
“No,” Bailey said, then stronger, “no, of course not. How would I know someone in your photos?” But the way Matt was looking at her made her know that he didn’t believe her. Bailey gave a laugh that she hoped sounded carefree and unconcerned. “They just reminded me of a couple of truly dreadful people I used to know,” she said. “It gave me chills for a moment.”
“Want to tell me about them?” Matt asked softly.
“They aren’t interesting,” she said quickly, then stood up. “You know, I’m going to pass on that movie, if it’s all right with you. I think I’m a bit tired, and I’d like to go to bed and read for a while. Well, good night,” she said before he could reply, then she nearly ran to the privacy of her bedroom, where she shut the door and leaned against it.
The teenagers in the photo were Atlanta and Ray, and they were standing in front of the house that Jimmie had left her, the house that she was in now.
Fifteen
Once she was in her bedroom, Bailey picked up her address book and turned to Phillip’s numbers. Maybe she should call him and tell him what she’d just seen. Maybe it was significant that she’d seen a photo of Jimmie’s brother and sister in front of the house that Jimmie had left her.
But Bailey put the address book down. She’d always known that this house belonged to Jimmie, hadn’t she? And if he grew up here, so did his brother and sister. And it wouldn’t be unusual for a person in a small town to have photos of other people in that town, would it?
As she opened her chest of drawers and got out her nightgown, she told herself that it would be best if she just stayed out of whatever had happened so long ago. She’d seen the way Janice had reacted today, and she’d seen the way Matt’s hand quivered when he showed her photos of his father. It would make everyone feel worse if she started asking questions about the past. “Who are these fat, sulky teenagers, and what is a photo of them doing in with pictures of the Golden Six?” was not something she could ask. If she could make Janice furious with one remark, imagine what she’d do if she asked a hundred questions.
She put her address book back into the bedside table drawer and headed for the shower. All in all, it would be better if she concentrated on the business she was trying to start with Patsy and Janice.
Feeling better with the decision made, she turned on the shower water, then saw headlights reflect off the trees outside her bathroom window. It looked as though Matt had decided to go to the movie by himself.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Bailey turned off the shower water, put on her big terry cloth robe, and left her bedroom. The house had that empty feeling that it did when Matt wasn’t there to fill it up. “Matt?” she called, but there was no answer.
Her heart beating in her throat, she walked softly down the short corridor to his bedroom. The door was slightly open. “Matt?” she called again, then put her hand on the door. If he shows up, I’ll tell him that I was . . . She thought, but she couldn’t come up for a reason for her snooping, not to herself, much less to tell him.
On his bed, which she saw was neatly made, was the shoe box full of photos. Bailey didn’t think; she just sat down on the side of the bed, turned on the lamp, and removed the lid.
There were three photos that Matt hadn’t shown her. One was of a very young Matt and his brother Rick, wearing pajamas, standing in front of a Christmas tree, surrounded by opened presents. Sitting on the floor, looking at his eldest son with eyes full of love, was his father.
The picture made Bailey, knowing what happened later, want to cry.
The second photo was of an older Matt sitting on his father’s lap behind the wheel of a car. When Bailey looked on the back, the picture was dated July 1968. In less than two months, this man would walk out on his family forever.
Shaking her head, Bailey put down the picture and picked up the one of the two teenagers. She held the photo up to the light and looked at it for a long time. There was no doubt that they were Atlanta and Ray. And it was no doubt that the house in the background was the one Jimmie had left her.
Find out the truth about what happened, will you, Frecks? Jimmie had asked. But the truth about what? About Atlanta and Ray? Were they somehow connected to the Golden Six? Is that why their picture was mixed in with photos of Matt’s family? Matt said he didn’t know who they were or why their pictures were there, so maybe it was just a coincidence, or an accident. Maybe Matt’s mother had thrown out lots of pictures, but Matt had saved only the ones of his father. Maybe this photo had been stuck to the back of one of the good ones with a bit of ketchup.
Bailey turned the photo over. There was no sign of ketchup or any other stain, but there was a faint date penciled on the back. She turned the picture this way and that and all she could make out was 196—. The last number of the year, she couldn’t read.
Slowly, she put the photos back just as she’d found them, then stood up and smoothed the bed. She didn’t want Matt to know that she’d been snooping.