Tami Hoag - Deeper Than the Dead

How could you do this to me? How could you leave me with him? I still need you.

Her mother had always been her sounding board, her voice of reason, her best friend. She would have told Anne she was being selfish now, but like any abandoned child, Anne didn’t care. Selfishness was the least she deserved.

At her dying mother’s request, she had left grad school and moved back home to care for her father. Instead of earning her doctorate and going to work as a child psychologist, she had taken the job of teaching fifth grade in Oak Knoll Elementary.

And now three of her students had found a murder victim.

The thought hit her as she turned on the bedside lamp. There should have been four.

Wherever Dennis Farman went, Cody Roache was right behind him. Anne had forgotten about him in the chaos and confusion of what had happened. Guilt washed through her now. Poor Cody, always an afterthought. But he had been nowhere to be seen in the park. Maybe he had never been there. Maybe he had gotten a ride home from school.

The children should all have been in bed by now, asleep and dreaming. Would they close their eyes and see the face of the dead woman?

Anne went to her window and looked out at the night and the lights in the windows of other homes. What would she see if she could look in the window of the Farman home? Frank Farman would still be at the scene of the crime with the sheriff. Would his wife be listening to Dennis’s excited account of what had happened?

Sharon Farman had struck Anne as being overworked and overwhelmed by life. She had a job, she had children, she had Frank Farman for a husband. Judging by Dennis’s disruptive behavior at school, Anne guessed his mother did her best to ignore him in the hopes that he would simply grow up and go away.

She could easily picture Wendy Morgan and her mother, Sara, tucked together in bed with the bedside lights on. The Morgans appeared to have the kind of loving, well-adjusted family seen only on television. Wendy’s mother taught art for the community education program. Her father, Steve, was an attorney who donated his free time to helping underprivileged families in the courts.

Anne’s inner child envied Wendy her home life. Her own childhood had been lonely, standing on the outside of her parents’ relationship, watching the dysfunction unfold.

As warm and loving as her mother had been with her, Anne had always known that her place in her mother’s life was second to her father’s. Even now. Even in death her mother had chosen the needs of her husband over the needs of her child. Her mother would have been horrified to realize it, but then, she never had, and Anne would never have pointed it out to her.

Anne had been a quiet child, a watcher. She had taken in everything that had gone on around her, processed it, and kept her conclusions to herself.

She recognized those same qualities in Tommy Crane. He tended to stand back a little from those around him, taking in their moods and actions, reacting accordingly. Of the children to find the body, he was the most sensitive and would be the one most affected by what he had seen. Yet he would be the least apt to talk about it.

If she could have seen inside the Crane home, would Tommy be watching and listening as his mother spent the evening on the phone arranging for him to see doctors and therapists? Would his father be the one listening to the story of Tommy’s trauma, offering comfort and reassurance? Or would Tommy have gone off to bed on schedule, no trouble to anyone, left to deal with his bottled-up feelings by himself?

Anne’s heart ached as she stared out at the night, watching the lights in the windows of other houses go out one by one. A long day was over, but for Tommy and Wendy and Dennis, an even longer ordeal had just begun.

Tommy sat alone at the top of the steps, listening. He was supposed to be in bed. He had taken a bath, like he did every other night of his life. He had put on his pajamas and brushed his teeth with his father supervising. His mother had given him his allergy medicine to help him sleep. He had pretended to take it.

He didn’t want to sleep. If he went to sleep, he was pretty sure he would see the dead lady, and he was pretty sure that in his dream she would open her eyes and talk to him. Or maybe she would open her mouth and snakes would come out. Or worms. Or rats. He didn’t know if he would ever want to sleep again.

But he didn’t dare to go downstairs either. First of all, his mom would freak out because it was twenty-seven minutes past his bedtime. It wasn’t a good thing to mess up the schedule. Second, because she was yelling-about him.

What was she supposed to do? What was she supposed to say when someone asked her about what happened? People would think she should have picked him up from school. They would think she was a bad mother.

His dad told her to calm down, that she was being ridiculous.

Tommy cringed. Bad move on Dad’s part. He should have known better. His mother’s voice went really high. He couldn’t see her from where he sat in the shadows on the stairs, but he knew the face she would be wearing. Her eyes would be bugging out and her face would be red, and there would be a big vein standing out on her forehead like a lightning bolt.

Tears filled Tommy’s eyes and he pressed himself against the wall and wrapped his arms around himself and pretended his dad was holding him tight and telling him everything would be all right, and that he didn’t have to be afraid. That was what he wanted to have happen. But it wouldn’t.

Now his mother was going on about how they would have to take him to a psychiatrist, and how terrible that would be-for her.

“I’m sorry,” Tommy whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Sometimes he was a lot of trouble. He didn’t mean to be. He hadn’t meant to fall on a dead lady.

Very quietly, he stood up and went back to his room and crawled halfway under his bed to get his bear-which he was supposed to have given up by now. People would call him a sissy and worse if anybody knew he still slept with his bear. But tonight he didn’t care.

Tonight, with his parents still fighting in the room beneath him, and visions of a dead lady stuck in his head, he was feeling very alone and very afraid.

Tonight was a night for a bear.

Wendy snuggled next to her mother, listening to her sing a song.

“Hush, little baby, don’t you cry. Mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby…”

It was a dorky song, but Wendy didn’t say anything. Her mother had sung it to her all her life, whenever she was feeling sick or afraid of the dark. Even if she didn’t like the stupid song, she liked the sound of her mother’s voice. It made her feel safe and loved.

They were cuddled together in her bed, in her pretty yellow-and-white bedroom with all her stuffed animals and dolls looking on. The lamplight was warm and soft. What had happened that day in the woods seemed long ago and far away, like a scary story she might have read once but had started to forget.

Of course, she hadn’t forgotten. Not really. She just didn’t want to think about it, that was all. Not now.

She wondered if Tommy was thinking about it.

“Will you stay with me tonight?” she asked, looking up at her mother. She had asked this question a million times already. She only wanted to hear the answer again.

“All night long, sweetie.”

Wendy sighed. “I wish Daddy was here too.”

Her mother didn’t answer right away. “He’s in Sacramento on business,” she said at last.

“I know,” Wendy said. They had already been over this a million times too. “But I still wish he was here.”

“Me too, baby,” her mother whispered, squeezing her tight. “Me too.”