“I haven’t touched him,” Ella Dane shouted. “I’m up here with my daughter; she’s pregnant. Can’t you send the ambulance and quit asking me these questions?”
“He’s dead,” Lacey said. “He killed them all and he killed himself. Because he was guilty too.” Something occurred to her. “You’d better get rid of the herbs before the cops come.” She pushed her mother away and stood up. “I’m going next door. The hospital’s not safe. Drew’s found me there before.” She saw the picture, the small fair boy next to the great piano, tucked in with a dozen other pictures on Harry’s windowsill. “I need to find out what Harry knows.” And this time she wasn’t going to be polite and let him change the subject or slide her out of his house. This time she was going to keep asking until he answered.
Chapter Forty-four
UNLESS HE WAS GOING TO VISIT the old man, Lex avoided Austell Road. It sucked him toward home, where he could not go, no, never. It was worst in April, when the dogwoods bloomed white and pink, each one a tall fair woman in a wide-skirted dress, and memory rubbed like a stone in his shoe.
Tonight, he found himself on Austell Road driving west. He knew the names of every side street (Green Acre, Valley Church, Eston’s Farm), because his dad taught him to read maps, and made him draw maps of the neighborhood, with all the streets and names. There was no church on Valley Church Road and no farm on Eston’s Farm Way. “Names remember,” his dad told him, “even when people forget.”
Lex forgot names. That didn’t make him crazy. He could remember if he tried. On Austell Road, the streets said their names in his father’s voice, remembering, as he followed Jeanne’s gray Corolla, license plate PTY 796. PTY for pretty, he said when he bought the car for her, so she would remember. Where was she going, seven at night, fifty-eight miles an hour when the sign said forty-five?
She slowed at Burgoyne’s Crossing; Lex jammed his brakes, and the car behind him honked. If she turned left at Burgoyne’s Crossing, she’d drive past his school, and then she’d turn left on Forrester Hills Avenue and right on Forrester Lane and go home, and take the baby inside where everything was waiting for her and for him. Everything, a shadow full of names, remembering.
Still honking, the car behind him changed lanes and pulled alongside. Jeanne carried on past Burgoyne’s Crossing, and he accelerated after her, cutting off the other car just as it swerved to rejoin his lane. Honking and shouts followed him. Jeanne passed the big mall and the little mall. She turned left without signaling into a confetti burst of yellow, green, and red, neon and trumpets, a building with a roof like a huge Mexican hat and some kind of party in the parking lot.
Jeanne found a spot near the entrance. Lex nosed his car past hers and parked far back in the lot. He turned his lights off and stayed in the car. It looked dangerous. Jeanne slammed her door and turned her face toward the party.
No baby. Was the baby at home? Big Jeanne’s car was gone. That was why he followed Jeanne, to find out where she was taking the baby. And he’d seen her put the car seat in the back.
He should go home. There was no time. Time, time, time; his dad kept them all on a schedule, homework from four to seven and if you run out of homework, boy, I’ll pick a name from the encyclopedia and you can write me an essay on him, remember all the names, remember; Lex hadn’t heard his father’s voice so clearly for years. He used to set fires, and the roaring voice of fire would swallow up his father’s roaring voice. Time, time, time is running out. You forgot something. What did you forget?
It wasn’t just a party, here in the new building with the Mexican hat for a roof. It was a fiesta. With a mariachi band, men in bright colors with gold braid on their shoulders, and trumpets tongued with gold. Not just the building, but all the people wore broad-brimmed Mexican hats with bright striped ribbons around the crown.
Remember the names of things. Sombrero. “Bienvenidos, amigo!” a girl said. She had long, straight hair, pure red from root to tip, and she jammed a sombrero onto Lex’s head. “Arriba!” she trilled. “Welcome to the grand opening of Taco Mania.” She swung her hips, and her wide striped Mexican skirt spiraled around her, released itself from her knees, and spiraled the other way. Her beauty amazed him. “These are Taco Pesos.” She gave him a book of coupons. Buy Two Tacos Get One Free, Free Coffee with Purchase of Donut Burrito.
“I’m looking for my wife.”
“She’s wearing a hat,” the red-haired girl said. She laughed. “There’s free tacos inside, beef, chicken, bean, and our fudgy dessert taco! Kids’ meals come with a free bean.” She pressed a large plastic bean into Lex’s hand.