He reached for one of her hands and took it.
“Bear was afraid of his grandfather,” he said.
“How do you know?”
He described the change in the boy’s expression when he heard his name called; he described what he had said. That’s my grandfather. I don’t like him much. He did not say outright what he was thinking, but Maryanne did.
Then she began to cry.
“What’s wrong, Maryanne?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Please.”
She swiped at her nose. “All right,” she said. “I’m crying because I think you’re probably right.”
Her shoulders were hunched and miserable. Her head was down.
“And because I think no one will believe you,” said Maryanne.
• • •
Neither of them could sleep. Maryanne tossed and turned. Carl lay still, looking up at the dark ceiling, feeling the ache of his heart as it thudded inside him. He had managed to find an appointment with a doctor at Glens Falls for Monday morning. Until then, his only job was to keep calm: an increasingly impossible task.
At some point they heard a knock at the front door. Maryanne sat up, listening; it came again louder. Carl didn’t know what time it was. Midnight or one, maybe.
“I should get that,” said Carl. But again, when he tried to sit up, he found his vision dimming at its edges.
“You stay here,” said Maryanne. She moved to the closet and retrieved from the top shelf a shotgun that had been her father’s. She loaded it. Headed for the door.
“Maryanne,” whispered Carl, feeling useless. “Whoever that is can come back in the morning.”
But she ignored him.
• • •
He listened hard. The front door opened. He heard the voices of men, low and murmuring. He propped himself up, straining to hear more.
A pause, then, followed by footsteps on the stairs—lots of them—which meant Maryanne was not returning alone.
Carl ran his hands over his face, around his mouth. Three days of stubble had made his chin rough. He was wearing a white undershirt, yellowed at the neck and armpits.
Then into the room came Maryanne, followed by Dick Shattuck, Bob Lewis, and Bob Alcott.
The three big men overtook the little low-ceilinged room. Carl, looking up at them from his bed, felt like a child.
“Carl, these men have something to tell you,” said Maryanne.
• • •
The police would be coming for him in the morning. His friends wanted to alert him before they did.
“We don’t believe you had anything to do with the boy’s disappearance,” said Dick Shattuck. “Want you to know that. That’s the reason we’re here, I guess.”
Carl put a hand to his chest.
“What should I do?”
He heard that it sounded pathetic.
“Run for the hills,” said Bob L. “These yahoos’ll hang you.”
“Bob,” said Shattuck, admonishingly.
“Sorry, Maryanne.”
“I don’t know, Carl,” said Shattuck, head lowered. “I wish there was something we could do.”
For a moment, there was silence in the room.
“They have no evidence,” said Bob Alcott. It was the first he’d spoken. He was a quiet man, a history teacher at the central school. “All their evidence is circumstantial. That won’t cut it in a court of law.”
Carl wasn’t certain what that meant, but it was the first thing he’d heard that brought him comfort.
• • •
They had a brief conversation, after the men had left, about whether he should, in fact, disappear. Maryanne was for it. Carl against. His chest was hurting more than ever; he had to consciously remind himself not to put his hand to it, because each time he did, Maryanne looked like she was going to cry.
