Ronald Malfi - Floating Staircase

“A lot,” he said, drying his hands on a dish towel. “I can’t remember the last meal I ate.”

I loaded the bread with mounds of sliced turkey and shook some pepper on it. I rinsed the lettuce in the sink and laid several leaves on top of the turkey. Then I lathered mayonnaise on the underside of the bread. Setting the plates down at the table, I watched my brother stare out the window over the sink and at the pinpoints of light across the cul-de-sac and through the woods. The cops had left the porch lights on across the street.

“It’s not a pretty thing,” Adam said, still looking out the window.

“I want to know.”

“Cause of death was due to severe head trauma. Heavy fracture at the back of the head, consistent with the fall Elijah would have taken off the staircase on the lake. We’ll have more specifics once the autopsy comes back, of course, but it’s pretty evident what happened.”

He turned around and sat at the table. Together we ate.

Several minutes passed before Adam spoke again. “There’s no way a grown human being could fit in that crawl space. Not even Veronica and especially not David.”

“I know.” I wasn’t surprised. I’d known all afternoon, it seemed. “He must have crawled in there after Veronica took him to the house. When she turned her back on him, he went up the stairs and hid in his special place.” I was talking but I wasn’t listening to myself. Instead, I was remembering the story Althea Coulter had told me that day at the hospital—about how she’d come to the house two days in a row and never saw the boy. How David had answered the door, an oddity in itself. How, on the third day, Elijah had simply admitted to Althea that he had just gone away.

“The DA dropped the charges against David and Veronica,” said Adam. There was mayonnaise at one corner of his mouth. “David still could have been prosecuted for lying to the police, but both the DA and Strohman figured this thing was already such a fuckup they just wanted to sweep it under the rug and be done with it.”

“So what’s going to happen to them?”

“I don’t know. I guess they go back to their lives. At least they know the truth now.”

The idea of that child crawling through the darkness of the crawl space to die, like a wounded animal, was too much for me to comprehend. For some reason, the idea that he had been murdered was easier to swallow.

“Listen,” Adam said, rising from the chair and tugging up his pants. “Why don’t you go inside and get some sleep?”

“I will. Not just yet.”

“That’s my kid brother. Always thinking.” Rubbing his forehead, he suddenly looked so old it nearly brought tears to my eyes. He smiled wearily at me and headed into the hallway. Then he turned around, his face cloaked in darkness. “Does this finally put him to rest for you?”

I knew he wasn’t talking about Elijah. After a moment, I said, “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said.

“For what?”

He shrugged. “I’m not quite sure.”

“Well, thanks.”

“I love you, Bro.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I love you, too.”

Five minutes later, in my underwear and socks, I slipped beneath the fresh sheets on my brother’s pull-out couch. I was careful not to wake Jodie, but as I eased my head onto the pillow and listened for the sound of her breathing, I could tell she was awake.

“Hey, you,” I said.

“You know we can’t stay,” she whispered, her back in my direction.

“I know.”

“You’re going to miss him.”

For one insane moment, I thought she was talking about Elijah Dentman, my obsession with him.

As if reading my mind and finding the need to clarify for me, she added, “Adam.” I closed my eyes. “Yes.”

“It’s too bad. You both had the chance to be close again.”

To my own surprise, I had to fight back tears. “Jodie?” I said. Distant.

“What is it?”

“I need to tell you something.” Like a fading star, my voice wavered. “It’s about Kyle. About what really happened.”

She pulled closer to me. I could feel her warmth. “Good,” she said. “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Perhaps the only event of any significance during our last remaining days in Westlake, Maryland, occurred two nights before Jodie and I were scheduled to drive out to California where we had a nice little apartment waiting for us just outside San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. I’d spent the last month packing our belongings and stowing much of them at a personal storage facility in town. Since the day Elijah’s body had been extricated from the wall, Jodie had refused to return to the house, not even for a minute. I couldn’t blame her. So we sustained at Adam and Beth’s house for the remainder of that month while I scrambled to secure a new life for Jodie and me somewhere far, far away from Westlake, the house on the lake, and the tragic memory of the Dentmans.

Utilizing my remaining college contacts, I got in touch with an old acquaintance. He was a screenwriter in Los Angeles and, for the better part of our phone conversation, confessed to me that he was jealous to the point of clinical depression of his pseudonym’s success. Nevertheless, the conversation proved profitable: he knew of an apartment that had recently gone up for rent, and the owner of the complex owed a friend of a friend of a friend. The prospect of leaving the cold winters behind for the West Coast pleased Jodie, which meant it pleased me, too.

Two days before our scheduled cross-country drive, I sat at the bar at Tequila Mockingbird for the final time while I waited for Adam to meet me after his shift. I had a map spread out before me, and I was tracing possible routes with different color markers. The plan wasn’t to rush things. It was to use that time to strengthen what had weakened between Jodie and me over the past couple of months.

“Here,” Tooey said, setting a fresh pint in front of me. “On the house.”

“This actually looks good,” I commented, picking up the glass and examining it in the light. “I think you may have mastered the recipe.” I took a sip. “Wow. It’s great.”

“Thanks. It’s Sam Adams.” Leaning over the bar, he peered down at the map. “California, huh?”

“I can hardly believe it myself. I’ve never even seen the Pacific Ocean.”

“Fell in love with a woman from California once.”

“Yeah?”

“Name was Charlie. Funny name for a chick—Charlie.”

“What happened?”

“She lost her mind.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. She was convinced time was changing.”

“Times are changing,” I informed him. “Didn’t Bob Dylan tell you?”

“Not times, Travis. Time.”

“ I don’t follow.”

“She became convinced that each day was getting shorter by thirty seconds. That in two days, it would be a minute earlier than it was two days before at the exact same time. If you can wrap your head around that.”

I whistled.

“She seemed very concerned about it,” Tooey said. Then he leaned closer to me, like a conspirator. He was staring at something over my shoulder. “Have you noticed our friend there at the back of the room?”

I started to turn my head.

“Don’t make it obvious,” he warned, then slipped farther down the bar.

Taking a long swallow of my beer, I casually rotated around on the barstool.

David Dentman sat alone at one corner of the barroom, perched buzzard-like over a pitcher of beer. He wore a red and black flannel shirt, the sleeves cuffed to the elbows. The skin of his face seemed to be dripping off his skull and into his beer, and there was a bristling sheen of beard at his jaw. Sensing my eyes on him, he glanced up and stared me down.