Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

Why hadn’t he died in the bike crash?

Why had Cate died instead?

Why hadn’t Gavin shot him?

Nicholas stopped. He was at the corner of Lambeth Street. If he turned up it, in two minutes he’d be with his mother and Suzette. But he could feel no answers waiting there.

He walked on.

Another block and he reached the corner of Airlie Crescent. Without thinking, he let his feet change direction-just as he used to let his hands turn the wheel of his van when he trundled through narrowlaned English villages hunting for knickknacks. He strode up a shadowy footpath he hadn’t walked in two decades, in and out of tiny pools of streetlight, to stop outside number seven.

The Boyes’ house.

It lay watching from within a nest of tall laurel trees, which hissed disapproval at his arrival. Though the house was, to his adult eyes, smaller than he remembered, it was still huge-a looming colonial with deep verandas draped with filigreed ironwork that had grayed with neglect and hung between posts like cobwebs. The hedges had rambled and shrubs were creeping out to reclaim the yard. Dim lights shone within; a brooding Halloween pumpkin.

Nicholas entered the yard and mounted the wide wooden steps to stand outside the lattice doors. He rang the doorbell.

Here was the landing that he and Tristram had dared each other to jump off, commandoes from a C-47. And Nicholas, to his credit, had jumped, albeit pale and terrified. Tristram had jumped whooping. Tristram had been the brave one.

Across the shadowed veranda, the dark, glossy front door opened a crack and Mrs Boye squinted at him through the gap. Her white hair spilled like a judge’s wig around her dressing-gowned shoulders-she could have stepped from a scene of Shakespearean mania. Her eyes narrowed.

“Yes?”

“It’s Nicholas, Mrs. Boye. Nicholas Close.”

Mrs. Boye set her lips. “Oh, Nicholas. I’ll tell Tristram you’re here. But I don’t want you two yelling about the yard! Mr. Boye has had a very full week.”

Nicholas thought better of arguing with her.

“Thanks, Mrs. Boye.”

“Tristram!” she called. “Tristram Hamilton Boye? Gavin, where is that brother of yours?”

The old woman walked back into the house, shutting the door behind her. Again, Nicholas was alone on the steps. Why am I here? Avoiding my own mother. Avoiding my sister. Avoiding sleep. A minute passed, and no one returned to the door. Nicholas gave up, and was halfway down the stairs when he heard the front door open again.

“Hello?” A younger woman’s voice. He turned.

Laine Boye’s hair was dripping wet and she held a bathrobe closed with one hand.

“It’s Nicholas Close, Mrs. Boye.”

“I can see that,” said Laine. Her face was in shadow. “Can I help you?”

He walked slowly back up the stairs. “Yes. Well, I just was walking, and happened to be…”

He watched her watching him. She was barefoot, drenched, even thinner than when he saw her last. She held her chin up and out, her head cocked.

“I’m sorry to come unannounced, Mrs. Boye, but…”

He felt his hand close around something in his pocket. He pulled it out. Something silver and small rested on his palm.

“I found Gavin’s cigarette lighter. At home. I thought…”

He held out the Zippo.

Laine took a half-step back, as if the sight of the lighter offended her. Again, Nicholas noticed the color of her eyes. A seashell gray; an equivocal color that could be contented or angry, serene or melancholy.

“I thought maybe we could talk a little,” he said. “About Gavin.”

She watched him a moment, frowning at some argument in her head. Then she nodded and unlatched the lattice door.

“Come inside.”

Nicholas followed her in.

The sensation of being drawn back through time made him wish he’d walked up Lambeth Street instead. Some rooms had been refurbished, and a few of the furnishings had changed. But the tall paneled walls, the polished cherrywood dining suite, the fireplace over which were mounted painted portraits of Tristram and Gavin as boys, were all exactly as when he’d seen them last, twenty-five years ago.

Laine stopped in the dining room. She seemed shorter in bare feet. Square-shouldered. In the softer light, her features were finer, less angular. Her skin had an olive hue.

“Give me a minute. I have to dry my hair.”

She frowned at Nicholas, then stepped into the room that had been Gavin’s and shut the door. On the floor outside it, Nicholas saw a small collection of packing boxes. Some were taped shut, and over the tape the boxes’ contents had been neatly printed in permanent marker: Shoes, Shirts amp; Trousers, T-shirts. Their ordinariness-as if Gavin were simply moving house, not dead and being filed away for good-was prosaic and mournful. One box remained open, only half-filled. He stepped closer to peer inside.

Some VHS tapes with documentary titles handwritten on the spines. A pair of worn hiking boots. A curled bunch of shooting magazines… and something else. Nicholas bent closer to see-

“Who are you?”

He whirled at the shout, startled.

Mrs. Boye stood behind him, brandishing a fireplace poker.

“Nicholas. Nicholas Close,” he replied, hiding the tremor in his voice. A woman who could spit on Christ from twenty paces would be a wildcat with a poker. “How are you, Mrs. Boye?”

“Ah, Nicholas,” said Mrs. Boye, lowering the weapon. “You want to see Trissy. Tristram!” She wagged a bony finger at Nicholas. “I don’t want you two making a racket.” She gestured for him to follow.

She led him through the house to Tristram’s bedroom door. The sight of it made Nicholas feel suddenly cold. She rapped sharply.

“Tristram? Your friend is here.”

She looked at Nicholas with an expression that said: boys, how intolerable. “Go in, but I need you going home by five. We’re dining early.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Boye.”

She walked away, stiffly whistling a tune that should have been tripping and joyful, but from her sounded broken and lost.

The large house became eerily quiet.

Nicholas twisted the low-set knob and opened the door.

He flicked on the light.

The room had not been touched since Tristram’s death. A Battle Beyond the Stars poster was stuck to one wall with yellowing tape, one corner detached and weeping down. The alarm clock had burned out, its paneled numbers frozen at 11:13. The air was husky and dry and smelled like sick soil. A thick film of dust coated the wooden floorboards. In the middle of the floor sat a board game; at its center was a hard plastic bubble in which was a die on spring steel that would have click-clacked loudly when it was last pressed by small hands. Now, the steel was rusted and dust had painted the dome a cadaverous brown. Cobwebs hunched in the ceiling corners and around the depending light shade. A large spider had spun a web above the bed; the creature seemed to creep a sly step toward him. Watching. The small single bed was still unmade, a gritty patina of insect husks on the Empire Strikes Back sheets. The room was unutterably sad.

“Nicholas?”

He turned.

Laine stood behind him, dressed in jeans and a wool sweater. Her anxious fingers twined among themselves.

He stepped out of Tristram’s bedroom and closed the door.

Laine looked at the floor a moment, then up at him again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Getting changed, I thought about it. I don’t think I really want to talk with you much about anything.”

Nicholas felt a guilty stab of relief. He nodded. “I don’t think I have anything to ask.”

She gestured toward the hall. He could see her fingers vibrating. She was holding herself together with sheer willpower. Husband suicided. Yoked instantly with the care of a senile mother-in-law. No one to help. She led him to the hall.