Page 77 of Middle of the Night

Joyce had frowned at the paper, confused. “A what?”

“A nondisclosure agreement. In short, it means you can’t mention a word of what you saw tonight to anyone.”

“Not even Fred?”

“No,” her boss said. “Not even your husband.”

That seemed way too extreme for her. How could she tell anyone about it when she didn’t even know what she saw?

“And—” Joyce hesitated, afraid to ask the question that was nagging at her. “What will happen to me if I do tell someone?”

“Mr. Hawthorne will sue you.”

“Can he do that?” she said.

Her boss flashed a smile that was in no way friendly. “Mr. Hawthorne has enough money to do whatever he wants. If he wants to sue you, he will. And he’ll make sure he wins. His lawyers are very good at keeping his secrets.”

Joyce had no more questions after that. With a trembling hand, she signed the paper that guaranteed a lifetime of silence, went back to her office, and quickly gathered her things, including the stupid watch she’d bought for Fred.

Thinking about it now makes her want to start crying again, mostly because she knows she’ll never give it to him. On Monday, she’ll return it to the store and get back her money, which she’ll quietly deposit into the joint account.

The watch is now a luxury she can no longer afford on her own.

TWENTY

I continue to stare at my phone, studying the picture of a picture. I zoom in on my mother. A long-ago version of the woman she is now. Her hair is the chestnut brown I remember from my youth, and her face is narrower, the skin tighter.

Looking at it, I’m hit with a jarring thought: I’m older now than my mother was when that photo was taken.

Even more jarring is the fact that she never told me she worked at the Hawthorne Institute the summer Billy vanished. Knowing it now changes everything I’ve thought about that place, about that time, abouther. Did she know what went on there? Was she aware that Billy had been there? ThatIhad been there? Most of all, I wonder if there are other things she hasn’t told me about that summer.

Yet I’m also mad at myself. I’m her son. I should have known where she worked. The fact that ten-year-old me was so self-centered that I couldn’t be bothered to find out fills me with so much shame it brings heat to my cheeks. They remain red as I steady myself with a deep breath and FaceTime my mother.

“Hi, honey!” she says when she answers, bobbling the phone enough for me to see she’s working on a jigsaw puzzle.

“Is Dad there, too? I need to talk to both of you.”

My mother summons my father into the frame, and the two of them sit shoulder to shoulder, like they’ve done all my life. The familiar sight brings with it years of memories, to the point where I see them not just as they appear now, but as they did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. They are simultaneously young and old, an idea that carries over to myself. I feel both childlike and utterly ancient.

“They found Billy’s remains,” I announce, still uncertain if I’m allowed to be telling them and beyond caring if I’m not. “Two miles from our house. He was murdered.”

A moment passes in which my parents sit as if spellbound while memories of that time come at them from all sides. I know because I felt the same thing. The past crashing like a wave into the present.

“That poor, poor boy,” my mother eventually says.

Nodding in agreement, my father says, “Does his family know?”

I tell them the same answer I was given. That Mary Ellen Barringer’s doctors were told, which isn’t quite the same as telling her, and that Billy’s brother currently can’t be located. Then I utter the words I’ve been dreading to say.

“We need to talk about that night.”

Until now, I never once considered my parents suspects. They had no reason to hurt Billy. TheylovedBilly. Most of all, they love me, and I know they would never purposefully do anything to cause me pain. But suspicion has a way of breaking through even the strongest barriers. It slips through the cracks, seeping in drip by drip. That’s what finding out my mother worked at the Hawthorne Institute has done to me: let in enough doubt that I can no longer avoid it.

“Of course, sport,” my father says, his voice earnest, as if he not only knows what’s coming but expected it decades ago.

That doesn’t make what I’m about to do any easier. There’s a dull thud at my temples. A headache coming on. I try to ward it off by tilting my head back and pinching the bridge of my nose.

“I’m going to ask you this only once. So please be honest with me.” I pause, tremulous, fighting the urge to hang up. The very last thing I want to do right now is pose this particular question to my parents. A willfully ignorant part of me thinks I’m better off not knowing. I’ve gone thirty years without answers. What’s another thirty more?

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