The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)(54)

He only saw James once that day; he was leaving the cafeteria, his large backpack slung over one shoulder. Richard thought he looked normal, or as normal as James Pursall ever looked.

At 1:35 p.m. Richard was in art class, where they were learning how to make monoprints. Richard’s body felt as though it were full of bees, his skin electric, his vision jittery. Ms. Bryant, a nervous, tattooed teacher who was not a whole lot older than her students, had looked thoughtfully at Richard’s abstract shapes. “Is it a beach?” she said.

“No, just shapes. How do you see a beach?”

She pointed out the large circle she said looked like a sun, and the blue rectangle she thought was the sea.

When Richard heard the first shot, a muffled pop that could have been almost anything, most of the kids in the classroom continued to work on their prints. But Ms. Bryant, after two more gunshots sounded, had perked up, her face angled toward the ceiling as though it helped her hear better. Richard thought she looked like a meerkat, sensing danger on the horizon.

Then the speaker system kicked in, the principal’s voice telling all teachers to shelter in place, and all the students stopped what they were doing, one girl dropping to the floor and starting to moan. Richard waited to hear more gunshots, but none came, and he knew they had done it again. Joan and Richard. Why had he ever doubted her?





Chapter 24





Kimball


I could find nothing online about Richard Seddon, nothing beyond that one mention in the Southern Forecaster that he’d been staying with Duane Wozniak and his family when Duane had gone swimming off the Kennewick jetty and drowned. There were multiple Richard Seddons in the world, of course, but none of them seemed like a match for the one I was looking for. The only promising lead I dug up was an address for a Donald and Julie Seddon who had lived in Middleham, Massachusetts. And I found an obituary for a Julie Seddon from a few years earlier, although no surviving family members were listed. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

The following day I drove out on Route 2 toward Middleham, the route familiar from my stint as a teacher all those years ago. To get to the address I’d found online, I had to pass the high school in Dartford, a single-story brick structure up a sloping hill from the road. A three-story structure was being built next to the old school and I remembered reading somewhere that a new high school was being built, and that it was going to cost somewhere around $200 million. When I crossed the town line from Dartford to Middleham the road condition changed, becoming bumpier, peppered with unfixed potholes. There was more open land, as well, remnants from when Middleham had been primarily a farming community. I found Adams Street after passing through Middleham’s small, quaint center. It was a winding, tree-lined street of mostly modest houses. I pulled into the short driveway of number twenty-nine, a ranch house, its exterior painted a light blue. I pulled in next to a parked PT Cruiser and got out of my car. A woman with a rake in her hand came around from the back of the house and peered at me through cat’s-eye glasses. I walked toward her, trying to look unthreatening, and when we were talking-distance apart, I told her I was looking for Donald Seddon.

She frowned, and said, “He hasn’t lived here for ten years. We bought the house from him and his wife.”

“Oh, yeah?” I’d removed my wallet and was holding one of my cards that identified me as a fully licensed private investigator. The woman propped her rake against the side of a cherry tree and stepped forward to take my card. “I’m looking for their son, for Richard Seddon.”

Again, the woman frowned. She wore lime-green capri pants and a vintage-y sweater with a shiny collar. I’d thought, from a distance, that she was unintentionally retro, but up close I could tell that her outfit, even for raking, had been carefully curated. While she looked at my card, I spotted a teapot tattoo on her left ankle. “I don’t think I can help you,” she said. “I’m not sure I ever met the Seddons.”

“Do you remember where they went after leaving this house?”

I expected her to tell me she had no idea, but she thought about it for a moment, then raised a finger, and said, “You know, maybe I do. I remember we kept getting mail for them and the real estate agent gave me an address to forward it. I think I wrote it down in my address book.”

“That would be incredibly helpful,” I said.

“Why do you need to find the son?” she said. The sun was low in the sky and she held her hand over her eyes.

“Believe it or not,” I said, “he’s owed some money from a distant relative. Crazy, right? And they can’t locate him.”

“Lucky him,” the woman said, and went inside the house to look for the address book. I stood and waited, getting into a staring contest with a brown poodle through one of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the house. When the woman came out, she was holding an old spiral-bound address book, folded over to a specific page.

“Don and Julie Seddon,” she said. “I knew there was a reason I never threw this book out.”

She showed me the entry, and I took a photograph of the address—42 Wagoner Road in Fairview, Massachusetts—then thanked the woman.

“Is it a lot of money?” she said as I was getting back into my car.

“They don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m just the messenger.”