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The old Wallace place is a wreck and, if he’s honest, that’s what Harley Granger likes about it. He’s always loved a broken thing, not seeing its ruin but its potential for rebirth. Broken things get discarded, left as trash. Most people don’t have the time or the energy or thevisionto see what a thing might become if you just give it a little time, a little attention. That’s why Harley finds things that other people can’t. Not because he has any special gift for investigation. But because he simply takes the time to look and look again.
He tosses the wrapped hardcover book on the rickety wood table in what was—and will be again with any luck—the dining room. In neon green paint on the far wall someone has sprayed,We Are All In Hell Here. Harley, of course, has taken copious pictures of the brutalized structure, it’s peeling paint and graffiti scrawl, the gaping holes in the roof, the shredded wallpaper and buckled wood floors, posted them all over his social media. He doesn’t do anything in a vacuum. Not anymore. Sometimes he thinks every thought in his head needs an audience.
Tomorrow the roofers come. That’s always first because without a good roof, any weather will damage whatever work is accomplished inside. Even he knows that, his slim knowledge of renovation and home repair gleaned from hours of watching HGTV while sitting in the hospital with his dad. He may have, sort of, implied in his various posts that he’d be doing the work himself. But no. He doesn’t have time for that. He’ll make sure to help with the demo, get some good footage of his taking a sledgehammer to the walls. Then the hired crew will take the place down to the studs and under flooring.
When that’s done, when the place is stripped to its bones, that’s when rebirth can begin.
He draws a finger along the wrapped Christmas gift. It’s artfully done, every edge precise, bow festive. It’s true that it’s what his father would have liked. But the old man doesn’t read anymore. He can’t even feed himself. Still, when Harley goes to see him on Friday, he’ll bring the gift, open it for him, and read aloud while Dad sits glassy eyed, propped up in his chair. Harley knows he’s alive in there. Sometimes, he can see that gleam of mischief in the old guy’s rheumy eyes. The nurses at Shady Grove are unusually hot, especially Charlene the night nurse. Alzheimer’s is a cruel thief of life and memory, light, and hope for all involved. But the old guy can still pop a boner and does.
“He’s an old devil,” Charlene says with an uneasy laugh.
She doesn’t know the half of it.
It was Dad’s sudden decline that brought Harley back to this area, that got him interested in Evan Handy. Funny how things work, the twisting path that life takes. How one thing leads to the next. How you make all kinds of vows to yourself about what you’ll do and won’t do. And then break them.
He sits at the table now and opens his new laptop. That’s another thing Harley likes, dichotomy. The sight of the brand-new iMac, sitting on the splintery old table—this gleaming epitome of design and engineering supported by a piece of furniture that will likely be chopped for kindling before the week is out. And someday, this piece of equipment so new and on the bleeding edge of technology will be a piece of junk too. Entropy. Everything on its way to falling apart. Nothing permanent. Nothing solid. Why this idea gives Harley comfort, he can’t say. It’s not exactly a cheery thought.
He opens his email and there’s the predictable slew from his publicist-slash-assistant Mirabelle—well, she’s becoming more than that, isn’t she? The memory of their last night together still lingers, the arch of her back, the echo of her moans. Those eyes. The sound of his name on her lips. Truth is, he thinks about her all the time.
There are several more emails from the producer of his podcast, one from the studio he found in the adjacent town quoting rates. More. He scrolls and scrolls. And then he finally sees it, the one he’s been waiting for. He knew it would come, but it took longer than he expected. Evan Handy, agreeing to a visit and an interview.
Dear Mr. Granger, I was wondering if you’d ever take interest in my case. I am available to talk. In fact, I have nothing but time. And I have lots of information for you.
There it is. That little thrill Harley takes at looking inside a story, one that everyone thought had been told, to find something new, alive, squirming inside the shell of what others believed was the truth.
Harley replies saying that he’ll go through the channels of requesting a visit from the prison, and be there within the week, if possible. He’s careful not to seem too eager, or to make any promises. Right now, he’s just curious. Could be that this is a false start.
He’s had them before. Like his career as a fiction writer, which took off like a lead balloon.Three books, a smattering of positive reviews, shockingly low sales, and finally a failure on the part of his publisher to make an offer on his next book. Then a failure of his first agent to sell his fourth book to any other publisher. The unloved manuscript still sat in the top drawer of his writing desk, in storage with the rest of his possessions. A long, dark night of the soul followed where he had to wonder what he was exactly if not a writer, the only thing he had ever wanted to be.
It wasn’t until drinks in a Brooklyn craft brewery with his college buddy Rog, who had just been downsized from his junior producer position at NPR, that the idea for a podcast hatched. A fiction writer turns his narrative skills to investigating cold cases, unsolved cases, or cases where reliable people believe that justice has not been served. For Harley, it would turn out that the truth was not only stranger than fiction, but also way more lucrative.
But after his visit with Madeline Martin, he didn’t think the Evan Handy story was a false start. That scar on her pretty face. How the set line of her mouth, when she realized who he was and what he wanted, reminded him of the locked box his father used to keep on the top shelf of his bedroom closet. It contained the old man’s revolver. As a kid, Harley had been fascinated by the box, knew he wasn’t supposed to touch, or go anywhere near, or even look at it. But it drew him back to the closet again and again. A box with something dangerous locked inside was unbearably fascinating for a twelve-year-old boy.
That’s the other thing Harley likes. Forbidden things.
Madeline Martin is a locked box. But there is always a key. You just have to find it.
Closing his laptop, he walks into the expansive living room. The big dark fireplace at the end of the space gapes, a whispering maw where the wind howls through. He has erected a big tent in the living room, and inside is a cot—comfortable enough—and a battery-operated camping light for ambiance, though he has electricity. He stores his few provisions in a cooler that he keeps refreshing with bags of ice from the general store in town, since the refrigerator is trashed, door unhinged, and he hasn’t had time to buy a new one.He eats out mostly at the diner on Main Street, usually only eating one meal a day and snacking the rest of the time if he gets hungry. But he isn’t that into food in general.
In the corner of the huge room, he’s erected a big Christmas tree, one he got from Stritch Farm down Old Farmers Road. It reaches almost to the tall, sagging ceiling and needed two big lumberjack types to deliver it and lift it into its base. He’d festooned it with white lights but no ornaments. He is not the type of person who collects ornaments. Maybe one day if he ever finds love, has a family, he’ll have memories he wants to keep. The only memories he has now, including those of his unhappy childhood Christmas mornings—like the one where he woke up to find his father passed out drunk on the couch, no gifts, and his mother gone for good—he’d rather forget.
He climbs onto his cot and watches the glittering lights glow in the darkness of the house. It reminds him of his mother, who loved Christmas—the joy, the cooking, the surprises, the glittering prettiness of it. He didn’t blame her for leaving his father. He just never understood why she didn’t take him. They’d talked about it some with a therapist; she was afraid, had no money, knew the old man would never lay a finger on Harley—which was true. It made perfect sense to adult Harley. He, as his therapist counseled, had forgiven his young mother for all her failings. But inside, little Harley was still crying himself to sleep at night. Or so his shrink told him.Stop whining, his father might say.You had a roof over your head so be grateful. His shrink called that “emotional abandonment.”
The house creaks and moans. It has a thousand stories to tell. Harley is going to give it a voice. It was a masterstroke, if he did say so himself, buying the old place from
Mrs. Wallace. She needed the money, and for Harley it was a way inside the story. The home of the two missing girls from the cold case he was investigating. His social media following went wild when he did the Instagram live, bringing them all into the space. Mirabelle was over the moon, already working on placing a feature story that might eclipse the unflattering oneNew York Magazinedid last year.
A flash of lights, the sound of an engine.
He rises and goes to stand in the window.
In the drive there’s an idling old sedan. He stands to the side of the frame, knowing that he’s obscured in darkness. Probably just kids looking to come party; he’s chased a couple carloads of teens off before tonight.Tell your friends that this is private property now, he’d shouted at a group of punks just the other night as they tore away in a minivan. They made it all the way to the porch before he heard them laughing and whispering.
It’ll be a while before he can get the gate and wall erected.
The car idles, headlights staring, unblinking eyes, the occupants of the car not visible. Harley thinks about the old revolver that he keeps now loaded in an unlocked box under the cot. He’s had his share of death threats over the years, and the house is, at the moment, little better than a campsite. The other morning, he woke to find a raccoon in the kitchen helping himself to the leftover pizza Harley had left on the counter. The little bandit had managed to open the back door.
