Georgia
I THOUGHT I SAW MOSES drive off in Lisa Kendrick’s white van. He drove past our house with his head averted, as if he really wished I hadn’t seen him. I had just come back from the post office and was stepping out of my little Ford pick-up when the van shot past. I never drove Myrtle again after Eli died. My dad had sold her to a friend in Fountain Green so I didn’t have to see her anymore. Maybe it was melodramatic. But as my Dad had kindly said, there are some battles you have to fight in order to heal, and this isn’t one of them. Just sell the truck, George. So I did.
I watched the van as it slowed at the corner, turned, and headed for the highway. He was headed north toward Nephi. Which could mean anything, but considering Tag had left the night before in Moses’s truck, I had a pretty good idea that’s where Moses was headed too. But in Lisa’s van?
I slammed the door and headed for Moses’s house, not caring if I was being a nosy neighbor. I wanted to get the photo album, and now I wouldn’t have to face Moses again in order to do it. He’d asked me about Eli’s pajamas . . . his Batman pajamas. I thought for a minute he was trying to wound me. But he couldn’t have known Eli died in those pajamas. He couldn’t have known. But it had shaken me, and I hadn’t lasted very long after that. I wondered if Moses had continued turning pages after I’d gone.
The front door was unlocked and I called up the stairs as soon as I entered.
“Hello?” I thought I could hear water running. “Hello?”
The water shut off and a woman’s voice shouted back down to me. “Just a minute!”
“Lisa? Is that you?”
Lisa Kendrick rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, wiping her hands on a rag, her hair frizzing out wildly from her head.
“Oh my gosh! Georgia, you scared me!” She fanned her face with the damp rag. “This whole house gives me the creeps.”
“Did you let Moses take your van?” I asked, ignoring the comments about the house. The whole town needed to get over it already.
“Yes. I did . . . Should I have said no?” The teenager immediately started worrying her lip. “His friend took his truck, I guess. He just needed to get into Nephi, and he offered me $500 bucks. But my mom will kick my trash if anything happens to the van. But he said he’d bring it right back! I shouldn’t have let him take it. He gives me the creeps too, actually. He’s hot. But he’s creepy. Kind of like Johnny Depp in Pirates? Totally hot, but way freaky.” She was babbling and I was already bored.
“I’m sure it’s fine. Don’t let me get in your way. I just stopped by to grab something I left last night.” Lisa’s eyes widened, and I could see that she really wanted to know what I could possibly have left in the creepy house of a freaky hot guy, but she restrained herself and turned back to the bathroom, albeit slowly.
“I don’t mind you sticking around. I don’t like being here alone,” she added. “My mom told me I couldn’t take this job. But when I told her how much he was paying, she gave in. But I’m supposed to call her every half hour. What if she stops by and the van isn’t here?” Lisa’s voice rose in alarm. “I am going to be in so much trouble.”
“I’m sure it will all be fine,” I repeated, waving as I ducked through the arch and away from the girl. It amazed me that people were still talking about Moses Wright. Clearly, Lisa’s mom hadn’t shared the fact with her daughter that Moses and I had been involved at one point. I’d gotten my fair share of talk when Eli was born. People had quickly spread their conclusions about my baby’s parentage. But maybe because I never talked, because I kept my head down and just lived, the talk had died and people stopped starring at Eli when we were out. I foolishly thought I would never have to talk about Moses. But then Eli had turned three, gone to pre-school, and suddenly, he had his own questions. And my son was as stubborn as I was.
“Is Grandpa my dad?” Eli had asked, spooning up mac ‘n’ cheese, and trying to get it in his mouth before the little noodles escaped. He refused to let me help him, and at the rate he was going, he was going to starve.
“No. Grandpa’s my dad. He’s your grandpa.”
“Then who’s my dad?” And there it was, the question that had never once come up before. Not in three years. And it hung in the air, waiting for my response. And no amount of head ducking or holding my tongue was going to make it go away.
I shut the fridge calmly and poured Eli a glass of milk, stalling, stalling.
“Mommy! Who’s my dad?” Eli had given up on the spoon and had scooped up a handful of noodles. They were squishing out the sides of his little fist, but so far there were none in his mouth.
“Your dad is Moses,” I answered at last.
“MO-SES!” Eli laughed forming each syllable with equal emphasis. “That’s a funny name. Where is MO-SES?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
Eli stopped laughing. “How come? Is he lost?”
“Yes. He is.” And that fact still made my heart ache.
Eli was quiet for several seconds, filling his hands with more pasta. I thought maybe he’d already lost interest in the discussion. I watched as he finally managed to press several orange noodles past his lips. He grinned, pleased with himself, chewed happily, and swallowed noisily before he spoke again.
“Maybe I can find him. Maybe I can find MO-SES. I’m a good finder.”
He brought me back, Moses had said. Maybe Eli had found him after all. The thought made me stumble, and I shrugged the memory off as I walked through the kitchen and snagged the photo album from the counter. I paused for a moment, considering whether I should leave something for him. I knew there were duplicates, or pictures that were close enough that I could part with one of a similar shot. But I didn’t want to start pulling my book apart. And I didn’t want to leave the precious pictures in a stack on the counter for Lisa to see and for Tag to thumb through. I couldn’t do that. And then I knew what I would do. I would make Moses a book too. I would make copies of the pictures I didn’t have duplicates of, and I would write descriptions and dates and paste them alongside the photos so he would have the details he claimed he wanted.
Having reached a decision, I scooped the book up in my arms and turned back toward the front door. As I did, my eyes glanced off the living room walls, and my gaze stuttered and caught. In the middle of the back wall, about three-fourths of the way up, the paint was peeling. And it wasn’t just a little bubble. It was a circle about the size of my palm, and the white edges were bubbled back, revealing dark swirls beneath.
I approached the spot and raised my hand to try to smooth it back, wondering what had happened. It reminded me of the time my mom had repainted the kitchen when I was ten. The original paint had been there since the seventies, and when she tried to put a fresh new coat of pale blue over the top, the paint had bubbled just like this. It had something to do with oil base and water base, though as a kid I didn’t care. I’d just enjoyed peeling the long strips of paint from the wall as my mom had bemoaned all the time she’d wasted. They had ended up having to treat the walls with some kind of stripper and they’d even sanded them for good measure.
I tugged at one of the edges, unable to resist, and another section came off in my hand.
There was a face there.
The piece I’d pulled from the wall revealed an eye, a piece of a slim nose, and half of a smiling mouth. I peeled a little more, freeing the entire face. I remembered this picture. I’d only seen it once. I’d only seen it that terrible morning. I had never come back inside the house. Not until last night. And last night the wall had been perfect. Pristine.
It wasn’t Molly. I don’t know why that relieved me.
People had talked, especially when they’d found Molly Taggert’s remains near the overpass. They said Moses had to be involved. They speculated that it was gang related, that he’d brought his violent affiliations with him. I’d just kept my head down. I’d just stayed silent. And I tried not to believe the things they said. I tried to focus on the life inside of me and the days in front of me. And in the back of my mind I kept the door open, waiting for him to come back.
Last night the wall had been perfect. Pristine. But now there was a face in a sea of white. I turned from the wall, scooped up my photo album and left the house.
Moses
THE LITTLE CLEANING GIRL was sitting on the front steps when I finally made it back to Levan with Tag driving my truck, bringing up the rear. Luckily, my truck hadn’t been towed and Tag had been released with some cash and a signature. She rose when I stepped out of her van and hurried down the walk toward me.
“Can I go now, Mr. Wright? I’m done,”
I nodded and reached for my wallet, pulling out seven, one-hundred-dollar bills and I laid them in her shaking hand. With a nod and a tight grip on her windfall and her bucket of supplies, Lisa Kendrick ran for the van like she had dogs on her heels. She leaped inside and started it up, while Tag and I stared after her, a little surprised at her skittish behavior. She rolled down her window a few inches, and her words came out in a jumbled rush.
“Her name is Sylvie. Sylvie Kendrick. My cousin. She used to babysit me when I was little. She lived in Gunnison. She disappeared eight years ago,” Lisa Kendrick said. “It was a long time ago. And I was only nine . . . but I’m pretty sure it’s her.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I started to question her, only to have her hit reverse and peel out of my driveway as if her nerve had finally failed her.
Moses
“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO SAND IT DOWN OR SOMETHING.”
Tag and I stood looking at the face that peered out of the white wall, a face that hadn’t been there the day before. I was guessing, from what Lisa Kendrick had said as she’d rushed off, that the face belonged to Sylvie Kendrick.
“There’s just something off in this house, Moses.”
“It’s not the house, Tag. It’s me.”
Tag shot me a look and shook his head.
“You seeing things that other people can’t doesn’t make you the problem, Mo. It just means there are fewer secrets. And that can be dangerous.”
I walked toward the wall and pressed my hand over the face, the way the girl had done the night before. She’d touched the wall, demanding that I see her.
“I think we need to get out of here, Moses. We need to sand that down, slap another coat of paint on that wall, and we need to go. I have a bad feeling about all of this,” Tag insisted.
I shook my head. “I can’t go yet, Tag. I turned away from the wall and faced my friend.
“Yesterday you wanted to leave. You were lined out, ready to go,” Tag argued.
“That girl knew her. Lisa, the girl who cleaned. She saw this face, she recognized it. And it freaked her out. She said it was her cousin. But she disappeared eight years ago. What does that have to do with me? What does that have to do with anything? I’m sure I saw her last night because of the connection with Lisa. That’s how it works.”
“But you painted her before last night,” Tag argued.
“And I painted Molly before I met you,” I responded, my eyes returning to the wall.
Tag waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t, he sighed. “Molly and that girl,” he pointed to the wall, “and now another one. Three dead girls in ten years isn’t all that remarkable. Even in Utah. And you and I know it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you. You’re just the unlucky son-of-a-bitch that sees dead people. But people here have already decided you had something to do with it. I heard those guys last night, and you saw that girl take off out of here like you were Jack the Ripper. You don’t need that shit in your life, Mo. You don’t deserve it, and you don’t need it,” he repeated.
“But I need Georgia.” There. I said it. I’d known it since she’d shown up the night before with a photo album clutched to her chest. She’d opened the door just a crack and she’d stuck an olive branch through.
Tag couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d slapped him across the face with that olive branch. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me too, and I found myself gasping for breath.
“It looks like the stick-figure kick to the head knocked some sense into you.” Tag whistled. “Just seven years too late.”
“I can’t run this time, Tag. I’ve got to see it through. Whatever that means. Maybe I just end up making peace with my skeletons. Making peace with Georgia. Getting to know my son in the only way I have left.” I couldn’t think about Eli without feeling like I was caught in a downpour. But water had always been my friend, and I decided maybe it was time to let it rain.
“I can’t stay, Mo. I’d like to stay, but I have a feeling if I hang around here too long with you, I’m going to be a liability. There’s something about this place that isn’t agreeing with me.”
“I understand. And I don’t expect you to. I may be here for a while. The house could use more than just a little paint and some new carpet. It’s been empty a long time. The bathroom is ancient, it needs a new roof, the yard looks like crap. So I’m going to fix it up. And then I’m giving it to Georgia. Maternity expenses, four years of child support, funeral costs, pain and suffering. Hell, the house probably isn’t enough.”
“Salt Lake is two hours away, less than that the way I drive. You’ll call if you need me, won’t you?”
I nodded.
“I know you, Mo. You won’t call.” Tag shot a hand through his mop and sighed.
“I’ll call,” I promised, but knew in my heart Tag was probably right. It was hard to need.
“You want my advice?” Tag asked.
“No,” I answered. He just rolled his eyes.
“Good. Here it is. Don’t go slow, Mo. Don’t go easy. Go hard and go fast. Women like Georgia are used to holding the reins. But you broke her, Mo. And then you left her. I know you had your reasons. You know I get it. But she won’t let you break her again. So you have to take her. Don’t wait for her to say please. ‘Cause it won’t happen.”
“We’re not talking about a horse, Tag.”
“The hell we aren’t. That’s her language, Mo. So you better learn it.”