Help for the Haunted(33)

The girl’s hand in hers now, she led her to where we stood by the curb in the spot my uncle’s truck had been only a few moments earlier. As rain began to fall once more, misting my cheeks and dampening my hair, I studied the girl more carefully. No shoes. One sock. Ratty shorts and T-shirt. Her cherub cheeks and arms scratched, same as the man’s. Her bright blue eyes stayed trained on my mother and no one else. She opened her mouth, actually moved it up and down in a vague, marionette sort of way, but no sound came.

Still, my mother seemed to understand. “It’s okay,” she said, turning to the man. “Come take her.”

With my mother’s blessing, he stepped toward the girl and held out his hand. When she took it, he spoke in an astonished voice to my mother, “It’s true what people say. You have a gift.”

She gave a small nod, but that was her only response. After so many years, my mother still did not like to be made the center of attention. And more than likely, her mind was on her oldest daughter, out there on the dark roads with her drunken brother-in-law at the wheel.

Before they turned to go, the man reached out his scratched hand and shook my mother’s. “Thank you, and God bless. My apologies for intruding on your difficulties.”

“It’s okay,” she told him. “You needed help. And certain kinds of help are hard to come by in this world.”

“Well, I’m grateful to you for understanding,” he said. “By the way, my name is Albert Lynch and this is my daughter, Abigail.”





[page]Chapter 9

Little Things



WITNESS SURFACES WHO MAY CLEAR SUSPECT IN KILLING OF FAMOUS MARYLAND COUPLE.

The headline could not be missed on the newspaper folded neatly in the wastebasket by Boshoff’s desk. When I walked into his office the morning after Halloween, I glanced down to see those words and Albert Lynch’s unlined face—his bald head, long nose, and wispy mustache—staring up at me.

I’d been avoiding stories about my parents’ case in the papers ever since Cora gave me what I thought was her only worthwhile advice: “The things people write will mess with your head. Better off letting the detectives and lawyers keep you abreast of what you need to know.” So I did my best to focus on Boshoff, who unwrapped a cough drop and placed it on his pink farm-animal tongue before telling me, “I read a poem last night that put me in mind of you, Sylvie.”

“A poem?”

“Yes. I’ve been anxious to tell you about it all day.” As I took a seat, he went on to say that when he had trouble sleeping, he read poetry. Cookbooks were his favorite reading material, but he had worked through all the titles on his shelf, and they were too costly to buy more. “Some people would claim that’s not much of a change, since recipes are little poems in their own way. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I nodded, remembering the recipe my sister recited before I left for school. Considering all that happened the night before, it was no surprise I never slept. Not long after the sun came up, a car turned into the driveway. Peeking through my window, I glimpsed Cora tugging the Hulk into her backseat while Rose burst through the front door and began vomiting downstairs.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Rose said, wiping her mouth and straightening up after I followed the retching sound to the kitchen. The green makeup was washed from her face, though clumps still clung to her hair. “You’re thinking: don’t puke in the sink. But who says the toilet’s the only place a person can puke? Now that I think about it, the sink’s way more sanitary.”

Actually, I’d been thinking about the boys who had come to the door and the light in the basement. I opened my mouth to tell her about them, but Rose broke in before I could speak.

“I’m going to make a pizza. Want some?”

“You’re cooking?”

She reached for a 7-Eleven bag on the table. “Here’s my recipe: open box, remove frozen crap, nuke in microwave. I’m no Julia What’s-Her-Tits, but I’ll manage.”

“The poem has nothing to do with your situation,” Boshoff was saying, luring me back to the here and now of his office. “But it contains a few lines that might offer you a helpful approach. It’s called ‘Little Things’ by Sharon Olds. I would have written it down, except I was in bed with my book-light on, so I didn’t have a pen. Plus, I didn’t want to wake my wife. She needs her rest these days.”

The tight-fitting band on his finger should have led me to consider the existence of a Mrs. Boshoff, but I never had. When I tried to picture her what came was a woman with white hair and rosy cheeks, a kind of Mrs. Claus, tucked under the covers beside him. “Why does she need her rest?” I asked.

Boshoff quit clacking his cough drop. “I’m afraid my wife’s not well.”

I knew how it felt when people pushed on a sensitive topic, so I told him I was sorry, but I didn’t ask more. He nodded his thanks and we let that be enough. I watched him slip on his glasses and lean over his desk, doing his best to recall the poem. As his pencil scratched across the pad, I felt Albert Lynch’s eyes upon me. Since there had only been one witness at the church—me—I wondered who could have come forward to clear his name.

“Here we go, Sylvie. I can’t remember the entire poem. Just the part that made me think of you.” Boshoff swiveled his chair in my direction and read aloud. When he was done, he pulled off his glasses and asked if the passage put me in mind of anything in particular. I had no clue, so I shook my head before remembering to speak my answer. Glasses back on, he tried again. This time, I listened carefully as he read: “ ‘I learned to love the little things about him, because of all the big things I could not love, no one could, it would be wrong to.’