Chevy Stevens - Always Watching

He paused, looking at me expectantly. Was he actually trying to justify his actions by blaming me? I waited him out in silence.

“I’m really sorry,” Levi said. “I’ve felt bad about it for years.”

He felt bad about it? He watched a man attack me, then carry me into a room, where he nearly killed me, something so traumatic that I’d blocked my memories for decades, and he felt bad. Another wave of rage made me clench my hands.

He shrugged. “You didn’t say anything about it to anyone, so I figured maybe you didn’t want anyone to know.”

What else had he kept to himself all these years? Then I remembered what Steve had said, that Levi had seen a woman with Finn, and a dark feeling unfurled in my stomach. I didn’t want to be there anymore, didn’t want to hear what Levi had to say, but I couldn’t stop the words. “Why did you retract your statement to the police after Finn died? You told them you saw a woman.”

“Your mother, she was dancing with Finn, and she took him into the woods….”

I could see it now, remembering how she loved the little children, making daisy chains for their hair, then picking them up and singing as she twirled them around. I imagined her wandering off, in one of her foggy states, stoned out of her mind, showing the small boy a path and forgetting that she’d set him down.

Levi was still talking. “She never came back with him. I told the cops when they were questioning everyone. Aaron pulled me aside, told me I had to keep it to myself.” He added, “Robbie knew—I told him at the commune.”

Another piece of the puzzle snapped into place: Robbie’s real reason for distancing himself from Levi, why he hadn’t turned him in after the fight.

How did I ever think Levi fun and affable? Now I saw him for what he really was. An insecure kid who snuck around and stole drugs.

Robbie was right. Levi was a coward.

I turned and started to walk away.

He said, “Where are you going?” Sounding scared, like he wanted to keep the conversation going. “I’m sorry. I know I should’ve done more.”

I didn’t answer, just kept walking.

After I talked to Levi, I still felt uneasy, like I was missing something. I didn’t know if Mary had any answers either, but I couldn’t leave Shawnigan without at least asking. Since she had been released, she was back at her farm. But the police were still keeping an eye on her—in case Daniel tried to contact her.

When I pulled in her driveway, she was running a hose to fill up a bathtub in the horses’ corral while they drank. The horses pulled their dripping muzzles out of the water to watch me, their tails flicking at the flies on their hind ends. The air was scented with hot fir trees and dried manure, dust from the gravel road as a truck roared by. In the distance, I could still hear the river, but softer and slower now. I studied the barn, expecting to be assaulted with painful memories, but it just looked like an old building. Harmless in the spring sun.

Mary watched me come closer, a hand stroking the blaze on one of the horses, who was drinking again, its back leg kicking up at the flies on its belly.

She said, “I’m sorry about your daughter.” She didn’t say it, but her eyes told me that she was also sorry about what had happened that day at her home.

I nodded. “I’m sorry about your son.” Despite my feelings toward Daniel and what she’d done, she was still a mother.

“I’ve already told the police everything I know.” She turned back to her task. One of the horses was getting greedy. It nipped at the one beside it, squealing its annoyance. “Cut it out, Midnight!” she said. The horses put their muzzles back in the tub, snorting and playing in the water.

“I’m more interested in what you haven’t told the police. Someone has been watching my house and it could be Joseph. If he is still out there, then your son is also in danger. It would be better if the police find him before Joseph does.”

She was silent, her back still to me.

“Mary, if you know anything, you have to tell me. Too many people have died already, now both our children are missing. This has to end.” I started to cry.

She turned around, squatted low, and sat on the railing, leaning forward slightly and resting her arms on dusty jeans. She was wearing gum boots, and hay was mixed in with her white hair.

She said, “I think about the fire every day, wondering if I’d gone to the cops when you first came here, would they still be alive.” Her face was pale and heavy with guilt. She seemed to have aged another ten years in days.

I wiped my tears away, took some breaths. “We can all play that game with ourselves, but we don’t know what else Aaron might’ve had planned. Did Daniel know Joseph was going to set the commune on fire?”

She shook her head. “He would’ve warned them.”

“And you have no idea where Daniel is now? Or Joseph? Did they have a safe house somewhere?”

She met my eyes. “I don’t know where any of them are. I’m sorry.”

I saw the truth in her face, the sadness, and felt drained by it.

“Levi didn’t know anything either.” I leaned against the railing, watched one of the horses. “I talked to him before I came here. He told me some stuff about my mother, things that happened at the commune.”

I felt Mary studying me. She said, “You look like her, but you’re a lot stronger. She talked about you all the time. She was here the night she died….”

I turned to face her, caught off guard. “I’ve never really thought about where she was going that night. Dad just told us she’d gone for a drive.”

“Kate and I stayed in touch. Not a lot, but sometimes when she was fighting with your dad, she’d come out here and we’d smoke a joint.”

I flashed to an image of the two women, sitting on the back porch, their shared memories of living in the commune surrounding them, mixing with the sweet marijuana smoke in the air, following them wherever they went.

“What was she doing here that night?”

“You’d visited, asking about the commune. It stirred some stuff up for her. She’d felt bad for a long time about what had happened to Finn.” She said the last part like she was testing the waters, wondering how much Levi had told me.

“You knew she was responsible?”

She nodded. “I was with her when Aaron told her what Levi had said. She was really upset—she’d been so stoned that she could barely remember walking off with Finn, but she knew she’d done it. She’d left him somewhere and planned on going back for him, but fell asleep in the field. She wanted to tell the police herself, but Aaron said social services would take you and your brother.”

My mind filled with a memory. Finn’s mother had sobbed and fallen on the ground, screaming that they were stealing her baby. Now I remembered my own mother crying in the background, Mary’s arm around her shoulders.

“Whatever happened to all the marijuana?”

She looked down, eyeing me from the side, still not trusting.

I said, “I’m not going to tell the police if you had anything to do with it.”

She studied my face for a couple of beats, then said, “There was a logging truck driver who used to come by—he liked the girls. We’d give him bales of pot, and he’d sell it for us, keeping a bit of the profit.”

Larry and his red truck. I remembered now, the sounds of air brakes the night Finn went missing. I said, “So he got rid of it before the police came?”

She nodded. “We took it up to the road, and he loaded it on his truck. After that, he wanted a bigger cut. That’s when Aaron decided to leave Shawnigan—he didn’t trust him. So I told him I’d stay behind to keep an eye on things.”