Evidence of Things Not Seen (17 page)

“This is my dad, Tommy. Maybe he knows where you are,” whispers Tara. Then, as quietly as possible, she zips the backpack closed and turns the knob on the back door.

Outside, the crescent moon is already hanging low in the sky. It’s a clear night. Tara heads for the back side of the barn and the bent fence post she knows is there. She doesn’t want to open any gates too close to the house in case they creak and wake her mom. She pulls at the post and leans it toward her so a V-shaped opening appears where there isn’t one before. Tara steps through it into the lavender fields.

She hadn’t counted on the smell to hit her quite so hard. It stuns her to where she can’t move. It’s her dad. It’s like he’s all around her. Whenever Tara gave him a hug, he always smelled of lavender. His hair, his clothes, even the sweat on his neck. It doesn’t seem possible that he is in a small plastic sack on her back. Tara pushes herself forward through the field. The lavender air caresses her skin. It isn’t until she reaches the far side of the field that she notices she’s been holding her breath and her face is wet with tears. As soon as she reaches the fence, she pulls herself over it and jumps. When she lands, she slips and falls back onto the dirt.

Tara looks up at the blanket of stars. She wonders, if one exploded, would all the other stars wobble in their orbits? Maybe only the closest ones. Maybe. Maybe it’s totally normal for stars to fade away or burn out. Maybe a sudden absence is hardly noticeable.

It’s different down here. When someone dies or disappears, everything changes.

Tara tried to keep everything the same after Tommy disappeared. She changed classes with her same group of girlfriends. She tutored in the freshman algebra classroom during lunch. She got rides home from school with Kimmie Jo. She went to the Whip In on Saturday afternoons after she volunteered at the animal shelter. She tried to keep everything normal. But it wasn’t.

Tara was pretty sure she wouldn’t see Tommy again. She couldn’t explain why she felt that way. It was those last weeks of school, seeing his face on posters everywhere. Carrying around a stack of flyers and sticking them up whenever she stopped someplace that didn’t have one. His face on the posters all over town became more real than her memory of him in the hallway.

That’s how death is. It turns your world up side down. It makes what was real seem unreal. It pulls you out of normal. Makes you do things you’ve never done before. Like sit outside in the middle of the night with a bag full of your dad’s ashes. When someone dies, your whole orbit changes.

Tara watches the stars. She knows they are exploding balls of gas. But they look cold. And immutable. If she watches long enough, could she see one of the stars explode? She wonders if it would look like a giant pickax smashing into its heart again and again. She wonders if the stars around it would shatter. Or if it would cause the Milky Way to spasm. Or would the stars continue to blink, like they’re blinking right now? Staring at her. Witnessing what she is about to do.

Tara steps carefully through the tufts of grass and rocks and looks for the little cow trail that leads down to the sinkhole. This field is a lot like the one behind the Stillwell pull-out where they’d walked in a big long line looking for Tommy. Tara thought everyone would walk hand in hand across the field, but that wasn’t how it was. They stood about six feet apart so they could cover more ground. Tara could hear some people talking. But most kept silent. It seemed like the time to be quiet. All the way along, Tara had to remind herself what she was doing. It was such a beautiful spring day. It didn’t seem like the kind of day you’d come across a dead body. They didn’t, of course, but if they had, Tara thought it should have been raining.

She spots the white ribbon of a trail curving around a stand of oak trees and heads for it. When she steps into the shadows of the trees, fear creeps up the back of her neck like the cool air lingering under the tree branches. She knows where she is going but she feels a little afraid. Her father had always been with her before. And now, even though he’s with her, it doesn’t exactly count. She stops and listens. When she doesn’t hear anything like footsteps or rustling or the snap of twigs, she exhales.

Again, she thinks about Tommy. It’s weird being out here to scatter her dad’s ashes, and Tommy keeps popping into her head. She wonders if he’d been scared right before he disappeared. Kids at school talked about him going into another dimension but Tara doesn’t think it’s possible. She wants to believe he’s alive someplace. But now she isn’t so sure. Bad things happen. Someone could be at the sinkhole right now. Tara might be attacked. Or killed.

Somehow, thinking of Tommy makes her less afraid. Like imagining the worst possible thing that could happen makes walking down to the sinkhole not so big and scary. Trying to push it away and pretend it isn’t there makes it bigger. But if she names the fear and looks at it straight on, it stops scaring her. The worst possible thing that could happen is in her backpack. She tightens the straps and keeps walking.

When she first saw the sinkhole with her dad many years ago, she thought it looked like some thirsty monster had taken a bite of the earth to drink from the pool of water underneath. He told her there were lots of natural springs running underground. In some places, like this one, where the land slopes a little, the ground collapsed above a spring. At first, it looked like a gash. Now, with the trees growing up around it and grass creeping through all the rocks, it seems like it had always been there.

Tara kneels by the edge of the water. Hot from the walk or the fear or both, she scoops up a handful and rubs it on her face. Then her hair. Then her neck. She slides the backpack off, unzips it, and pulls out the ashes. When she first had the idea of coming out here, she thought she would empty her father’s ashes into the pool. It seemed right to take him to the last place he wanted to go before he died. Maybe if they’d come here, he would have missed that call. Maybe.

Instead of emptying the bag into the water, she pours a small bit into her hand. She tries to remember what it felt like to hold her dad’s big hands. She can see them in her mind. She can even see her smaller hand in his. But she can’t remember what it felt like.

A gust of wind blows the ashes into the air. Some of them land in the water. The rest fall on the land invisible to her.

Her dad’s life had been invisible to her. She had no idea he had a secret life. He seemed happy and successful. The ups and downs of the lavender farm never seemed to bother him. When he went away, he always said he was building up business for their lavender products.

Even her mom seemed surprised. She said that he’d done drugs and ran with a pretty rough crowd. But that was before Tara was born. Her mom swore that he was done with it. That’s why they moved to the country and started farming. Because he was done with that life. Because he was a father. She swore it. To Tara. To the police.

Tara pours another small bit of ashes in the palm of her hand and releases them into the water. They float on the surface for a bit and then gradually sink. In a way it’s like watching him disappear when he left town. Tara remembers how he used to hug her so tight and tell her to be good and take care of her mom. He also whispered, “I love you, baby girl.” Then he got on his Harley and rode away. Again and again.

How could her mom not know? He went away for such long stretches. Where did she think he was going? Sometimes, Tara felt infected by her mother’s anger. She wanted to be sad that her dad was dead. But then she’d think about the girl who killed him. Tara saw her picture in paper. She was only a year older than Tara. How could he make love with her? Did he make her fall in love with him by whispering, “I love you, baby girl,” in her ear? Is that what made her want to kill him?

She reaches in the bag and pulls out another scoopful. Maybe her dad has other families besides Tara and her mom. Maybe he has other baby girls. Maybe in a year, someone else will show up looking for him. Maybe Tara will have a half sister or brother.

Bit by bit she pours her father into the palm of her hand. One palmful, she blows into the wind. Another, she lets fall into the water. Another, she sprinkles on the ground. It seems fitting somehow that her dad is everywhere and nowhere; that she has made him disappear like he had disappeared on them.

When all that is left is one palmful of ashes, she closes her hand tight around the ashes and puts her hand into water. The water sneaks in between her fingers and the ashes slip out of her grasp. That’s when she remembers how she would wiggle her small fingers in between her dad’s big ones until she can feel his whole hand covering hers. Then she feels him slip away between her fingers like he’d always been slipping away but they never knew it.

He’s gone.

Tara watches her empty hand float on the surface of the water. She still has to go to school and deal with all the questions and looks and whispers, but she isn’t worried about it. This part is done. She said good-bye to her dad and the world didn’t end. She hadn’t realized until right then that she’d been afraid of falling into a black hole when she let her father’s ashes go. That all the light and air would get sucked away when he was really gone. But it didn’t happen. Maybe everyone needs to say good-bye to Tommy.

The crescent moon had set by the time she gets back home. She creeps upstairs and pauses outside her mother’s bedroom. She must be sleeping on her back because she’s snoring a little. Tara hopes she’s taking a rest from all her anger. She wonders if her mother would ever be sad or remember good things about her father. She hopes so.

Tara goes into her room and lies down. When she finally falls asleep, she dreams of Tommy. She dreams she is looking out the window at the Milky Way. It looks like a stream of glittering ashes trailing across the sky and Tommy is floating in it.

SEPTEMBER 7 . FOUR MONTHS MISSING

THE LAST DANCE

Like always, Frank starts braking on the gravel road, a good fifteen or twenty feet before it intersects with US 281, and, like always, the car skids a little on the pebbly surface. When it stops, he looks over at Stella. Like always, she has the visor down and is looking in the little mirror, fiddling with her hair.

“You know you don’t need to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Check yourself in the mirror. I can tell you if something’s out of place.”

“But then you couldn’t keep your eyes on the road because I’d be asking you to look at me all the time.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Frank glances in his rearview mirror. No cars are coming. He slides the gear into park and faces Stella. She is a beauty. A natural beauty. With high cheekbones and sparkling blue eyes that glint like the sunlight on water whenever she smiles. Frank loves to make her smile.

“You ready?” he asks.

Stella stops scooping her hair around ears for a moment and stares at herself. Her hands slide down to her neckline and she pulls her light blue sweater closed, buttoning the top button. Then unbuttoning it.

Frank reaches over and puts his hand under her chin. He looks at her beautiful face. “Are you feeling all right, Stell?” Her eyes dart from his face to the windshield to her lap. He takes both her hands in his and sings,
“Would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?”

Like he hoped, that song makes her smile. And giggle. She tips her face up toward Frank’s and kisses him. He loves it when she does that: seals the moment with a kiss. It feels like an exclamation point after that smile. Both of them take Frank’s breath away. But that smile is what he lives for. If he drew his last breath making that smile cross her face, he would die a happy, happy man. He leans into her lips, bending his head over hers, lingering in the kiss, and turning the exclamation point into a comma.

Honk. Honk. Honk.

Frank jumps away from Stella.

A car skids to a stop behind them and then pulls around, still honking. The driver yells, “Get a room,” as he accelerates onto the highway.

Frank laughs. “Oh hell. Just when I was going to get a little.”

“Frank!” Stella sounds embarrassed but she giggles.

“Shall we go to the dance, Stell?”

Stella turns around and faces front. She leans forward a bit, straining against her seatbelt, like she is willing the car forward. “Let’s go, Frankie.”

He slides the car into gear and eases it forward, looking both ways before turning north onto 281.

Frank rolls his window down. The sun is about to set. It’s going to be a pretty evening. The glare of summer is over. Frank loves the early fall when the light is softer and the night comes on a little earlier. He reaches over and holds Stella’s hand. He glances at her. She’s leaning back a little bit. She looks a little bit more relaxed, as if the wheels moving farther down the road are unwinding the worry. That’s what it looks like to Frank: worry. Kind of a high-strung, nervous worry. Sometimes he can’t get her mind off whatever she’s worrying about. Singing, talking, telling her a joke—that usually works. Asking her directly what’s bothering her makes it worse. It’s like drawing attention to a problem she can’t fix. She starts grabbing at her collar or her skirt, and whatever thought is in her mind takes her over. Usually, he can hold her hand and that eases the worry some. Always, a drive brings her back to him.