IT WAS ONLY four for dinner. It should have been five.
But the fifth was six feet under.
Jamison sat next to Zoe.
Decker sat next to Amber.
They were in the kitchen at the small oval table in the center of the room.
“How was school, Zoe?” asked Jamison.
“Okay,” said Zoe, as she pushed food around on her plate without actually ingesting any of it.
Amber had lost weight, and she had been thin to begin with. Her features were strained, her eyes painfully red and her manner as though she had been drugged.
“Mommy, can I go to my room? My tummy hurts.”
Amber said absently, “Sure, sweetie. I’ll be up to check on you in a bit.”
Zoe got up from the table and hurriedly left. They could hear her shoes clattering up the stairs.
“She’s not eating,” said Amber miserably.
“Neither are you, sis,” said Jamison. “You’ve got to keep your strength up.”
Amber waved this off. “I’m fine. Just not hungry right now.”
Jamison glanced at Decker and then laid her fork down.
“What do you plan to do?”
Amber looked up from her plate. “What do you mean?”
“I mean will you stay here or move?”
Amber looked at her sister incredulously. “I haven’t gotten that far. For God’s sake, it hasn’t even been a week since Frank died, Alex.”
“I know. But I don’t think there’s anything keeping you here. You could move closer to family. They can help out.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Amber conceded. “And even with the life insurance, I’ll have to go back to work. I’m the breadwinner now.”
“You are going to bring legal action against Maxus, right?” said Jamison.
“Damn straight I am. But to uproot Zoe again, so soon? I’m just worried how that will affect her.”
“A fresh start somewhere else might be best for her and you,” replied Jamison.
“How can I be sure of that?”
“Have you talked to Zoe about this?” interjected Decker.
They both looked at him.
“Decker, she’s only six,” said Jamison.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have an opinion.”
“I’m not sure she can possibly understand the circumstances,” retorted Jamison.
“All I’m saying is that her mother should talk to her about it. If it’s going to affect her, why not?”
Amber and her sister exchanged a glance.
Amber said, “I actually think he might be right.” She rose from the table. “I’ll talk to Zoe and then I’m going to bed. I’m just very tired.”
Jamison rose too and hugged her sister. “I’m here for you, sweetie. Whatever you need, for as long as you need.”
“Alex, you have your own life, and you have a job. You can’t babysit us forever. Not that I’d want you to. I’ll get my life together. I have to, for Zoe.”
She glanced at Decker. “Thanks for the advice, Amos.”
Decker nodded.
She left the room and Jamison sat back down.
Decker rose and poured himself another cup of coffee.
He sat down and drank some of it.
“You going soft on me, Decker?”
He looked at her. “How do you mean?”
“You’re worrying about other people a lot lately.”
“I investigate homicides. That means there are always lots of people to worry about.”
“Do you think they should stay here or leave Baronville?”
“I don’t have a good answer for that, because I’m not them.”
“But there’s nothing for them here.”
“Frank Mitchell is here,” replied Decker. “He’s always going to be here now.”
Jamison changed color and looked down. “Right. I…I guess I wasn’t thinking about things that way.”
Decker took another sip of coffee and glanced out the small window into the dark. “I didn’t want to leave Burlington. And at the same time, I wanted to get the hell out of Burlington. My family was murdered there. They’re both buried there. When I left, I felt like I was abandoning them. I used to go to the graves every day when I lived there. I would sit and talk to them. Now I haven’t been in months.” He set his cup down. “I don’t want to end up with my only connection to them being faded pictures on the wall, Alex.”
“You of all people should never worry about forgetting them.”
“It’s not the same. I buried them there. That is my connection to that place. It will always be a part of me whether I want it to be or not.”
“So, based on that logic, you think my sister should stay, then?”
“I think…everybody is different.”
With that he rose, cleared the table, and he and Jamison loaded the dishwasher. Then he left the kitchen and went to his room.
Decker opened his closet and pulled out two things: the construction drawings he had found in the hall closet, and the piece of graph paper he had uncovered at Toby Babbot’s trailer.
After looking over the pages for about a half hour he decided he needed something else in order to make sense of it.
He left his room, walked down the hall, and knocked on the door.
A few moments later, a sleepy-eyed Zoe opened the door. She was in her pajamas and was holding her cat.
“Zoe, I’m working on a very important project and I think you might have something I need.”
At this, the little girl perked up. “Sure, Amos, what do you need?”
“A ruler. Do you have one?”
She nodded, hurried over to a small white-painted desk set against one wall, and opened a drawer. She pulled out a green ruler and brought it over to him.
“Thank you very much, Zoe,” he said, taking it from her.
“You’re welcome.”
Decker had turned to go. But then he faced her once more.
“Did your mom talk to you?”
She nodded. “She asked me if I wanted to stay here or move someplace else.”
“And what did you tell your mom?”
Zoe shrugged. “Daddy’s here. I don’t want to leave him all alone.”
Decker knelt down so he was eye to eye with the little girl.
“I can understand that.”
Zoe stared back at him. “You told me that when I visited Daddy he would know I was there. That he would know here.”
She touched the center of her small chest.
“Yes, I did.”
“So, I can’t leave him or else he’d be sad. He would be sad here.” She touched the center of Decker’s chest. “Right?”
Now Decker wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Right.”
She yawned.
“You better go get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay, Amos.” Zoe gave him a hug and he quietly returned to his room, his gaze downcast.
Life really is a bitch sometimes.
He sat down on his bed and looked at the plans spread out there.
Then he looked down at the ruler. Written on it in Sharpie was the name “Zoe Mitchell.”
He got up and walked over to the window and looked out over a town that was in despair, but that was perhaps slowly coming back.
But at what price?
And how many more people were going to die before it was back?
He turned his head in the direction of Zoe’s room.
Should they stay or should they go?
It would be very easy to say they should go.
Flee the violence and danger. Go to a safer place.
But where exactly was that anymore?
I guess if I have any purpose in life, it’s to help make sure there are safe places left to go to.
With that thought in mind, he sat down and used the ruler to go over every dimension of the construction drawings and Toby Babbot’s version of the same.
He used paper and pen to make his calculations, and when he was done he had found only a single discrepancy between the two documents.
But what a discrepancy it was.