A Bend in the Road

A minute later, with the pencil broken in half, he turned toward the door and tossed the remains in the garbage.

"Madge?" he bellowed.

She appeared in the doorway.

"Get me Harris. Now."

She didn't have to be asked twice. A minute later, Harris was standing in front of the desk.

"I need you to go out to the Timson place. Stay out of sight, but keep an eye on whoever goes in and out of there. If anything looks out of the ordinary--and I mean anything--I want you to call. Not just me--I want you to put it out on the radio. I don't want any trouble out there tonight. None at all, you got me?"

Harris swallowed and nodded. He didn't need to ask whom he was watching for.

After he left, Charlie reached for the phone to call Brenda. He knew then that he, too, was going to be out late.

Nor could he escape the feeling that the whole thing was on the verge of spinning out of control.

Chapter 28

After a year, my nocturnal visits to their home ceased as suddenly as they'd started. So did my visits to the school to see Jonah, and the site of the accident. The only place I continued to visit with regularity after that was Missy's grave, and it became part of my weekly schedule, mentally penciled into its Thursday slot. I never missed a day. Rain or shine, I went to the cemetery and traced the path to her grave. I never looked to see if anyone was watching anymore. And always, I brought flowers.

The end of the other visits came as a surprise. Though you might think that the year would have diminished the intensity of my obsession, that wasn't the case at all. But just as I'd been compelled to watch them for a year, the compulsion suddenly reversed itself and I knew I had to let them live in peace, without me spying on them.

The day it happened was a day I'll never forget.

It was the first anniversary of Missy's death. By then, after a year of creeping through the darkness, I was almost invisible as I moved. I knew every twist and turn I had to make, and the time it took to reach their home had dropped by half. I'd become a professional voyeur: In addition to peering through their windows, I had been bringing binoculars with me for months. There were times, you see, when others were around, either on the roads or in their yards, and I hadn't been able to get close to the windows. Other times, Miles closed the living room drapes, but because the itch was not satisfied by failure, I had to do something. The binoculars solved my problem. Off to the side of their property, close to the river, there is an ancient, giant oak. The branches are low and thick, some run parallel to the ground, and that was where I sometimes made my camp. I found that if I perched high enough, I could see right through the kitchen window, my view unobstructed. I watched for hours, until Jonah went to bed, and afterward, I watched Miles as he sat in the kitchen.

Over the year, he, like me, had changed.

Though he still studied the file, he did not do it as regularly as he once had. As the months from the accident had increased, his compulsion to find me decreased. It wasn't that he cared any less, it had more to do with the reality of what he faced. By then, I knew the case was at a standstill; Miles, I suspected, realized this as well. On the anniversary, after Jonah had gone to bed, he did bring out the file. He didn't, however, brood over it as he had before. Instead he flipped through the pages, this time without a pencil or pen, and he made no marks at all, almost as if he were turning the pages of a photo album, reliving memories. In time, he pushed it aside, then vanished into the living room.

When I realized he wasn't coming back, I left the tree and crept around to the porch.

There, even though he'd drawn the shades, I saw that the window had been left open to catch the evening breeze. From my vantage point, I could glimpse slivers of the room inside, enough to see Miles sitting on the couch. A cardboard box sat beside him, and from the angle he faced, I knew he was watching television. Pressing my ear close to the window's opening, I listened, but nothing I heard seemed to make much sense. There were long periods where nothing seemed to be said; other sounds seemed distorted, the voices jumbled. When I looked toward Miles again, trying to see what he was watching, I saw his face and I knew. It was there, in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth, in the way he was sitting.

He was watching home videos.

With that, recognition settled in, and when I closed my eyes, I began to recognize who was speaking on the tape. I heard Miles, his voice rising and falling, I heard the high-pitched squeal of a child. In the background, faint but noticeable, I heard another voice. Her voice.

Missy's.

It was startling, foreign, and for a moment I felt as if I couldn't breathe. In all this time, after a year of watching Miles and Jonah, I thought I had come to know them, but the sound I heard that night changed all that. I didn't know Miles, I didn't know Jonah. There is observation and study, and there is knowledge, and though I had one, I didn't have the other and never would.

I listened, transfixed.

Her voice trailed away. A moment later, I heard her laugh.

The sound made me jump inside, and my eyes were immediately drawn to Miles. I wanted to see his reaction, though I knew what it would be. He would be staring, lost in his memories, angry tears in his eyes.

But I was wrong.

He wasn't crying. Instead, with a tender look, he was smiling at the screen.

And with that, I suddenly knew it was time to stop.

After that visit, I honestly believed that I'd never return to their house to spy on them. In the following year, I tried to get on with my life, and on the surface, I succeeded. People around me remarked that I looked better, that I seemed like my old self.

Part of me believed that was so. With the compulsion gone, I thought I had put the nightmare behind me. Not what I had done, not the fact that I had killed Missy, but the obsessive guilt I had lived with for a year.

What I didn't realize then was that the guilt and anguish never really left me. Instead they had simply gone dormant, like a bear hibernating in the winter, feeding on its own tissue, waiting for the season yet to come.

Chapter 29

On Sunday morning, a little after eight, Sarah heard someone knocking at her front door. After hesitating, she finally got up to answer it. As she walked toward the door, part of her hoped it was Miles.

Another part hoped that it wasn't.

Even as she reached for the handle, she wasn't sure what she was going to say. A lot depended on Miles. Did he know that she'd called Charlie? And if so, was he angry? Hurt? Would he understand she'd done it because she'd felt she didn't have a choice?

When she opened the door, however, she smiled in relief.

"Hey, Brian," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you."

"Sure ... come in."

He followed her inside and sat on the couch. Sarah sat next to him.

"So what's up?" she asked.

"You ended up calling Miles's boss, didn't you?"

Sarah ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah. Like you said, I didn't have a choice."

"Because you think he'll go after the guy he arrested," Brian stated.

"I don't know what he'll do, but I'm scared enough to try to head it off."

He nodded slightly. "Does he know that you called?"

"Miles? I don't know."

"Have you talked to him?"

"No. Not since he left yesterday. I tried calling him a couple of times, but he wasn't home. I kept getting the answering machine."

He brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed.

"I have to know something," he said. In the quiet of the room, his voice seemed strangely amplified.

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

"I need to know if you really think that Miles would go too far."

Sarah leaned forward. She tried to get him to meet her eyes, but he looked away.

"I'm not a mind reader. But yeah, I'm worried, I guess."

"I think you should tell Miles to ju

st let it go."

"Let what go?"

"The guy he arrested...he should just let him go."

Sarah stared at him in bafflement. He finally turned to her, his eyes pleading.

"You've got to get him to understand that, okay? Talk to him, okay?"

"I've tried to do that. I told you."

"You've got to try harder."

Sarah sat back and frowned. "What's going on?"

"I'm just asking what you think Miles will do."

"But why? Why's this so important to you?"