Rooms(74)

“It isn’t a party,” Trenton said. He didn’t feel like explaining what it was. “Anyway, it’s over.”

“You Caroline’s kid?” Joe asked, and Trenton nodded. “One of my guys left a ladder up there. We need it for another job. You mind if I go up?”

“I guess not,” Trenton said. Why, he wondered, were they even bothering to fix the roof? Would they ever come back? He couldn’t imagine it. It wasn’t their house anymore—it wasn’t his house—no matter what the will said. They should leave the roof open and give the birds a place to nest.

Joe didn’t move right away. He stood there, sucking on his lower lip, like he was debating whether to say something else. Trenton thought he might not know where the stairs were. “Straight down the hall,” he said.

Joe nodded. “Yeah,” he said, but still didn’t move. “Yeah. I remember this place. Did some work here years ago. It was a lot different then. Smaller.” He shook his head. “Time flies.”

Then Trenton remembered: Joe Connelly. Joe Connelly was the name of the man who’d found the dead woman, the one with her brains blown out—Sandra.

“Wait!” Trenton took two quick steps forward, nearly tripping over the rug. Joe stopped, turned to face him. “Wait. You—you were the one who found her. The woman who died here.”

Instantly, Joe turned guarded. “How’d you know about that?” he said, wetting his lips with his tongue.

“My sister dates a cop,” Trenton said. He could never explain what had really happened: the voices, the visions, the sense of touch whenever Eva came near—like a cool blade running through his very center. It was all true. There was an invisible world; there was meaning gathered like clouds on the other side of a mountain.

“Oh.” Connelly was clenching his fists and unclenching them, like he was squeezing an invisible rope. “Yeah. Wrong place, wrong time. That was a bad winter. Lots of snow. Poor lady’s roof caved in.”

“Sandra,” Trenton said, watching Joe carefully.

“Something like that,” he said. “Screwy the things you forget. She didn’t have a face by the time I got to her. That I remember.”

“What happened to her?” Trenton asked. “The police—I mean, they never found out who did it, right?”

“No,” Joe said hoarsely. He turned away. “No, they never did find out.”

Trenton grasped for another question, something that would keep Joe in the room and talking to him. His pulse was going wild. He didn’t know why it was important for him to know about some stranger who’d died here decades ago, only that Joseph Connelly’s arrival seemed like a sign. There was something he was missing, something he’d forgotten. Eva had told him that the ghost Sandra had been shot; there had been an important letter, too, which was stolen.

“What about the letter?” he blurted out, and Joe stiffened like Trenton had just reached out and electrocuted him.

“How—how’d you know about the letter?” Joe asked. When he turned around, his face was awful: white and frightened, older than it had looked just a minute earlier. “Who told you?”

Trenton didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Joe stood there, still trembling like a wire, his eyes like two dark gashes in his face. Then he pulled out a chair, abruptly, and sat down.

“Are you all right?” Trenton said cautiously.

But when Joe spoke, it was in a normal voice. “Blood pressure,” he said. “I’m an old shit. You got any water?”

Trenton went to the sideboard, where Minna had lined up pitchers of ice water for their guests. He poured a big glass of water and passed it to Joe at the table. Then he sat down.

“Thanks,” Joe said. But he didn’t drink. He just spun the glass between his hands. After a minute, he said: “I got rid of it. I thought it was the right thing to do. Seeing her like that . . . There was blood everywhere.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t help to know the reason. People say it helps. But it doesn’t.”

“Know the reason for what?”

Joe looked up, frowning. “For why they do it in the first place.”

Trenton suddenly understood. He’d been chasing this story of an old murder, feeding on it like carrion birds did, but it was a sadder story than that: digging up the old, dry bones of someone’s misery.

“So it was suicide,” Trenton said.

Joe put two hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “My dad roped himself when I was a kid. My mom told everyone he bust an artery in his brain. Aneurysm. She was embarrassed. Even changed our name back a few years later, from Houston to Connelly. Connelly was her maiden name.” He shook his head again. “It doesn’t help to know. It doesn’t make it easier. Still, I shouldn’t have burned the letter. It wasn’t my business.”

Trenton sat there for a long time, thinking of his father’s many conferences and Adrienne’s letters, unanswered; thinking of a man hanging from the ceiling and his wife lying about it because she was embarrassed. He thought about faceless women. He thought about time coming down slowly around their ears, like a roof under the pressure of snow.

It was time, he thought, to bury his father. It was time to put the ghosts to rest.