About That Night (11 page)

“Your father was talking, Jordana,” her mother says.

“Sorry, Dad. Can I, Mom? I want to take them over to Derek's parents. I mean, it's the least I can do.”

“It's a lovely idea,” Mrs. Cross says. She squeezes Jordie's hand. “I'm sure they'll have people dropping by, and I'm sure Marsha won't feel like baking.”

“Hel-
lo
?” Mr. Cross says. “Does anyone care what I was saying?”

His wife smiles sweetly at him, but before she can answer, Carly cuts in.

“You were going to say that if you were him, you'd take the money from the sale of the old homestead, retire and buy a place down in Mexico or somewhere where a person can live like a king and never have to shovel snow or even look at it again.” She grins. “Right, Dad?”

Both her parents are staring at her. Mr. Cross's mouth hangs open.

“I listened to every word you said,” Carly crows. “So I was wondering, Dad—”

“Aha!” he says. “Now we get down to it.”

Carly's smile is as sweet as her mother's. “Since I always pay attention to you, Daddy—”

“
Daddy
?” Jordie knows what's coming next. So does her father. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair to wait.

“I was wondering if you could drive Tasha and me to Minton after supper to see a movie.”

“Aha!” Mr. Cross says again.

“What will your father do while you two are at the movies?” Mrs. Cross asks. “It's an hour's drive each way. He won't be able to come home.”

“I'll go to the movie with my daughter and her friend,” Mr. Cross announces.

Carly blanches. “No way, Dad!”

Up go her father's eyebrows. “No way? You want me to do you this huge favour, but you don't welcome my presence?”

“I bet John Rocher is going to be there,” Jordie says.

Carly scowls at her.

“Ah,” says Mr. Cross. “Is this true, darling daughter?”

“Please, Daddy? We really want to go, and you're the only person who can drive us.”

Her father presses a finger to his lips and looks up thoughtfully. “If I remember correctly, there's a bus that goes to Minton.”

Carly howls. Jordie thinks about muffins. She can take them over and tell the Maughams how sorry she is and how awful it must be for them because it's awful for her and she's only Derek's girlfriend. In fact, she hates to ask, but…

Twenty minutes later, Carly and her father are leaving the house, Jordie is clearing the table, and her mother is looking for her famous graham-chocolate-chip muffin recipe.

» » »

It's colder than ever the next morning, with another few inches of snow on the ground. Jordie has to plod through it, lifting her legs higher than usual and, consequently, tiring faster, especially when she slogs up the hill to the Maughams' house. She carries a basket of muffins she and her mother made and a card she herself picked out and wrote in, which she hopes Mrs. Maugham will read only after Jordie leaves because for sure it will make her cry, and Jordie doesn't want to see that. She's nervous and keeps going over the approach she has worked out. But it doesn't sound right. It sounds phony, prying, as if she is more interested in herself than in how Derek's parents are feeling. She tries to revise it as she climbs the hill, panting and sweating into her clean T-shirt.

Mr. Maugham answers the doorbell. He smiles when he greets her, but she can tell from the gray skin under his eyes and the redness in their rims that he has been having trouble sleeping.

“My mom and I made these,” Jordie says, holding out the basket of muffins.

“Come in,” Mr. Maugham says. “Marsha isn't here. She's taken some clothes to the funeral home.” He almost chokes on the words. His eyes are so sad that Jordie has to fight the urge to bolt. But he rallies and smiles at her. It's such a brilliant smile, so warm, so wistful, and she realizes that she is the closest thing they have to Derek now, that she represents him at his most recent, his most vital, his happiest—at least, that's what Mrs. Maugham has said to her constantly over the past couple of months:
I've never seen Derek happier than he is now; you're good for him, Jordie
.

She steps into the foyer. From there she can see into the kitchen, where cake tins and Tupperware containers and boxed sweets cover the table.

“You should see the fridge,” Mr. Maugham says, following her gaze. “We have enough casseroles to last clear through to spring. I guess I should put some of them in the freezer…” His voice trails off.

“I can do that for you, Mr. Maugham,” Jordie says, happy to have something to do to allow her to ease into the heavy atmosphere of the house. She pulls off her boots and coat and goes through to the kitchen.

The fridge shelves are stacked with glass and aluminum casserole pans, some covered in foil, some in plastic wrap. As Jordie carries them to the freezer in the mudroom at the back of the house, she notices that each is labeled on the bottom with the name of the woman who prepared and delivered it. She makes a note to herself to see that they are returned. She is sure Mrs. Maugham will not want to do it, not if it leaves her open to talk about Derek, to memories and to tears.

When she finishes, Mr. Maugham thanks her and presents her with a mug of tea.

“How are you holding up, Mr. Maugham?” Jordie asks.

He squeezes her hand. “About as well as you, I guess.”

She doubts that. “And Mrs. Maugham?”

To her astonishment, his eyes grow instantly moist. He lifts his own mug of tea and turns away from her, seemingly so that he can look out the window.

“Mr. Maugham?”

He keeps his gaze steady on the window.

“She's doing her best. We're all doing our best.”

Jordie wishes now that she hadn't come. The poor man is utterly crushed. Derek was his only son. Their only child. She sips the tea she doesn't even want.

“Did they—” She breaks off. How can she ask? But how can she not? “Mr. Maugham, I was wondering if they…if the police…if they gave you back Derek's belongings.”

“His belongings?”

“What he had with him…at the time.” God, this saying things without saying them is hard. She almost hates herself for even bothering the poor man.

Mr. Maugham sets down his cup and leans against the counter, his hands gripping its edges.

“I didn't want her to have to see him, not like that. I thought it would be easier if she remembered him the way he was, not the way he ended up. But she insisted. She may not look it, but she's stubborn. She said she had to see. His head—” He stifles a sob. Jordie waits. This is a mistake, she tells herself. But she can't leave him now, not after she's already reopened the wound. “They kept his clothes. They said they needed those. They kept his backpack too. They asked us if anything was missing, like maybe they thought someone had robbed him and he fought back, and that's why he was killed.”

She waits for what she hopes is a respectful interval before she asks, “Was anything taken?”

“I don't think so. His wallet was there. His Christmas money was in it, and his debit card and credit card. He still had on his watch, not that it's worth much, and his phone. He's not one of those flashy kids. You know that. He doesn't carry around a lot of stuff. So whatever it was, now they think it wasn't robbery. It was something else.”

“Did they give you back everything?”

Mr. Maugham nods. “There are pictures on the phone—quite a few of you and him together. His mother insisted on keeping that. She's been scrolling through them.”

“I have a bunch of pictures on my phone too,” Jordie says, feeling good for the first time since she arrived. “I can print them out for you if you want. Or email them to you. Or both.”

Mr. Maugham's eyes get waterier. “That would be nice.” He stares past Jordie, out the kitchen window. Jordie turns and looks too, and realizes that from where he is standing, he can see out over the tops of the trees below, down to where she found Derek's scarf, down to where he drew the last breath of his life. “I just don't understand who would do this to him,” Mr. Maugham says. “He was a good kid. He didn't have any enemies that I know of. Did he, Jordie?”

Jordie meets Mr. Maugham's eyes. He is all but pleading for an answer.

“Everybody liked Derek,” she says.

Slam! Mr. Maugham's fist, balled tight, comes down hard on the countertop, making Jordie jump.

“Clearly, everyone didn't.” There is fire in his eyes. “Someone killed him. Someone killed my son. The police say he was hit on the head several times. The back of his head—” He breaks off, biting his lips, pressing them tightly together, trying, Jordie realizes, not to break down in front of her.

“Maybe the police are wrong,” Jordie says. “Maybe it was meant to be a robbery, but something happened, something went wrong.”

“I wish that was true,” Mr. Maugham says. “It would be easier for his mother to think that some drug addict or crazy person tried to kill him for the few dollars in his wallet or for his cell phone than that someone did it out of hate or, I don't know, for no reason at all.”

Jordie guesses it would be easier for Mr. Maugham too.

“I'm sure the police will find the person,” she says, wondering if her confidence is warranted. She can't remember the last time there was a murder in town. She has no idea how many homicide investigations the local police have handled.

Mr. Maugham's gaze slips back to the kitchen window.

“Mr. Maugham, I was wondering…” Wondering what? She's pretty sure that if the police had found what she's looking for, Derek's father would have said so. So either whoever killed him took it, or…“Would it be okay if I saw Derek's room?”

“His room?” Mr. Maugham doesn't seem to understand.

“I was hoping—I would never take anything without your permission. Never. But I was hoping there might be something that Derek and I shared, something I could have, you know, to remember him by.”

Mr. Maugham's face softens. A tear trickles down one cheek. “Of course.”

“If there is anything, I'll show you first. I would never take anything without your okay.” She feels she can't say this often enough.

“It's fine, Jordie. Go ahead.”

Jordie leaves the rest of her tea on the kitchen table and starts up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Derek's room is at the back of the house. The door is closed.

She pushes it open. It looks exactly the way it looked the last time she saw it. It's always neat, but she knows that isn't because of Derek. It's Mrs. Maugham, not Derek, who changes the sheets, vacuums the floor, scrubs the sink and the toilet in his bathroom. It's Mrs. Maugham who sets his books and magazines neatly in their places, who dusts his dresser top and his desk, who folds his laundry and puts it away in his drawers.

Jordie steps across the threshold and looks around. Bed, bedside table, highboy dresser, mirror, desk, computer, beanbag chair, basketball hoop and Nerf basketball, bookshelves, stacks of hockey magazines, hockey posters on the wall, four or five hockey sticks leaning in one corner, hockey jersey framed on the wall. She can't remember whose it is. Not Gretzky's—ninety-nine is the only hockey number she knows, thanks to her dad, and this one isn't ninety-nine.

She creeps to the bedside table. Besides the lamp on it, there's a science fiction novel with a bookmark in it from where Derek left off reading, a small framed picture of Derek and Jordie together at the mall, smiling at each other, and a Bart Simpson clock—not the digital kind, but the kind with an hour hand and a second hand, and it's showing the wrong time. The glass over the clock face is broken, and when Jordie picks up the clock to wind it, something inside rattles. The clock is broken. She sets it down and slides open the bedside table's lone drawer. Keys, an old combination lock, a bunch of matchbox cars with chips of paint missing, a Sesame Street Cookie Counter, which makes her smile, a heap of pennies—but not what she is looking for. She slides the drawer back in. From there it's to the desk, then the highboy and finally the top shelf of his closet, where he has stacks of boxes that turn out to contain hockey cards (five boxes full) and shoes (four boxes). She keeps glancing at the door as she searches, worried that Mr. Maugham will show up and wonder what she's doing. But if it's here, she can't find it. Does that mean he had it with him when he—when he died? Did whoever killed him take it? Or do the cops have it? Is there some way she can find out?

She is about to leave when she recalls what she told Mr. Maugham. She goes to his closet and pulls out one of Derek's old hockey sweaters. She holds it to her nose and inhales. It smells like Derek. She's still holding it to her face when a voice behind her says, “What do you think you're doing?”

Jordie whirls around.

“Mrs. Maugham, I thought—”

“You thought what?” There is none of the kindness, none of the warmth, in her eyes that Jordie saw in her husband's. Mrs. Maugham's voice is sharp. She glowers at Jordie. She is angry with her, but Jordie doesn't know why.

“Mr. Maugham said you were out. He said it was okay if I—”

“He told me what he said. And he's wrong. I don't want you touching Derek's things.” She stares at the sweater Jordie is holding and, before Jordie can do anything, snatches it out of Jordie's hands.

“I'm sorry, I—”

“How did you know where he was?” Mrs. Maugham demands.

“What?”

“Derek. You came up here and told us that he'd come home that night. You didn't say why. And the next thing I know, you're out behind the house and the police are here, looking where you told them to look. There were search parties out looking for Derek, but you're the one who finds him.
You
. What happened that night? What did you do to my Derek?”