Run Away(43)

A family plot.

Simon stopped.

Behind the clearing was indeed a roaring brook and a faded teakwood bench. Simon didn’t think the dead cared much, but for the living, this would be a Zen place to grieve and meditate on those you lost.

A man Simon recognized as Wiley Corval, Aaron’s father, stood alone, staring down at a newer tombstone. Simon waited. Wiley Corval eventually lifted his head toward him.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My name is Simon Greene.”

Wiley Corval looked a question at him.

“I’m Paige’s father.”

“Did she do it?”

Simon said nothing.

“Did she kill my son?”

“No.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“I don’t.” The man was about to bury his son. It wasn’t the time to lie. “I could tell you my daughter is not a killer, but that’s not going to offer you much comfort, is it?”

Wiley Corval just stared at him.

“But I don’t think it was Paige. The death…it was violent. Do you know the details?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think she could do that.”

“But you don’t know, do you?”

“I don’t, no.”

He turned away. “Leave.”

“Paige is missing.”

“I don’t care.”

In the distance, Simon could hear the scream-laughter of children, probably coming from the corn maze. Aaron Corval had grown up here, in this Norman Rockwell painting come to life, and look how it ended up. Then again, in all fairness, hadn’t Paige been raised in a slightly altered version of an idyllic childhood? And not just on paper. We all see the picket fences or the pretty facades, the two smiling parents, the healthy siblings, all that, and part of us gets that we have zero idea what’s going on behind closed doors, that there is anger and abuse, shattered dreams and blown expectations.

But that hadn’t been the case with Paige.

Were their lives perfect?

Of course not.

Were their lives pretty close to perfect?

As close, Simon imagined, as you get.

And yet their daughter had succumbed to the worst out there. Simon had asked himself a million questions, pondered every decision—had he shown enough interest, paid attention to her friends and studies, supported her hobbies? Were they too strict or too lax? There was that time Simon had exploded in anger and actually thrown a glass on the floor during dinner. Just once. Years ago. He remembered how Paige, only eight at the time, had started to shiver.

Was that to blame?

You go through every damn moment like that because even though his mother had warned him, “Kids don’t come with instruction manuals,” and you quickly learn that your child comes to you hardwired, that in the battle of nature vs nurture, nature kicks complete and total ass—still, when things go wrong, when something this dark invades your child’s soul, you can only wonder where the hell you went wrong.

From behind him, a woman asked, “Who’s this?”

Simon spun toward the voice. Again he recognized her from the picture in the foyer—Aaron’s mother, Enid. There were people traipsing down the path with her, ten or twelve, Simon estimated, including a man with a clergy collar carrying a Bible.

“Just a nice gentleman who walked down the wrong path,” Wiley Corval said.

Simon considered countering that with the truth—full-on confrontation, to hell with niceties—but he concluded that it would probably backfire. He muttered an apology and started past the family and friends and back up toward the farm. There was no one close to Aaron’s age here, and Simon remembered Paige telling him something about Aaron being an only child. That meant there’d be no sibling to question—and none of these people looked the right age to be a close friend, if indeed a junkie like Aaron had any close friends.

So now what?

Let them have their service, he thought. Whatever their son had turned into, Wiley and Enid had lost him now—brutally, suddenly, unnaturally, permanently. Give them this moment.

When he got back to the clearing, a group of kids Simon estimated were around ten or eleven years old emerged from the maze breathless. They all started high-fiving each other. Simon pulled out his phone. There were a lot of messages. He went to his favorites. Ingrid was listed first. Yvonne was second, and then Paige (whose number no longer worked but he still kept it in Favorites), Sam, Anya. Age order with the kids. Only fair.

He hit Yvonne’s number.

“No change,” Yvonne said.

“I have to be there with her.”

“No, you don’t.”

He looked back at the kids who’d just finished the corn maze. They all had their phones out now, some taking photos, both selfies and group shots, others doing whatever it was we all do on those screens.

“Reverse roles,” Yvonne said. “You’re the one shot. You’re the one lying here in a coma. Do you want Ingrid sitting next to you and holding your hand? Or—”

“Yeah, okay, I get it.”

“So have you found Aaron’s family?”

He filled her in on what had just occurred.

“So what’s your plan?”

“Hang here. Wait until the service is over. Try to talk to them again.”