Stay (ARC) Read online

  62

  Stay

  “Right. Right.”

  With that he walked down the hall and into the

  kitchen.

  The kitchen had big windows that let in a spill of sun.

  It was the only fairly light room in the Barneses’ house. I

  could see the shadows of Connor and his mother stretching

  out halfway into the hall, enveloped in that wide beam

  of light, as he said hi to her and she said hi back to him.

  Connor’s ice cream was already starting to drip. It

  didn’t seem right to lick it, so I let it drip onto my hand

  and then licked it off my hand before it could drip onto

  the rug.

  “So, hey, Mom,” I heard him say. Timidly, I thought.

  “You know anything about something that happened a

  long time ago with a lady named Zoe Dinsmore?”

  Silence. I moved down the hall a few steps in case she

  was speaking but too quietly for me to hear.

  “You’re not saying anything,” Connor added after a

  time. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Was that some-

  thing I shouldn’t have asked?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, and paused. Her voice sounded

  as though the question had rattled her. Or just weighted

  her down too heavily. I couldn’t tell which. I just knew

  she didn’t like it and was trying to wiggle past it and squirt out the other side. “I do wish you wouldn’t ask me about those kinds of things. You know I don’t like to talk about

  things that are so sad like that. Life is sad enough without dredging up the worst of the past. Those poor families

  probably never got over it. The whole town never really

  got over it. But it was before you were born, so can’t you

  just grow up and be happy?”

  If Connor answered, I couldn’t hear him. But it

  struck me while I was waiting—and licking—that it

  63

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  was a ridiculous question. Of course Connor couldn’t be

  happy. He hadn’t been happy a day that I’d known him.

  And I’d known him since we were three.

  I looked up suddenly to see him walk out of the

  kitchen and down the hall to where I stood.

  I reached out to hand him back his cone.

  “You didn’t lick it,” he said. “Did you?”

  “No. I didn’t lick it. That would be gross.”

  “Okay. Thanks. You’ll have to go to the library, I

  guess.”

  “Thanks anyway,” I said. “You know. For trying.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Flint was an interesting character, I thought. She

  seemed to have studied books and old movies and absorbed

  every possible stereotype about small-town librarians—and

  then imitated them to the letter.

  She had mousy brown hair, pulled back into a bun.

  Oversized tortoiseshell reading glasses. She wore gray or

  brown skirt suits over starched white shirts with button-

  down collars. She looked like the fictional librarian in just about every film or television show ever made.

  I stepped up to her desk, and she whispered to me.

  Because you whisper in the library.

  “Lucas,” she said. “I don’t see you in here very often.

  Can I help you with something?”

  “I need some information,” I whispered back.

  All of a sudden I felt deeply in touch with how uneasy

  it made me to ask about this situation. Whatever it was.

  “That would be my department, yes.”

  “I need to know about something that happened in

  town before I was born.”

  64

  Stay

  “Okay. Do you have the date?”

  “Um. No. I just know it was before I was born.”

  “If we’re looking in the microfilm of the county

  newspaper, we’ll need a date.”

  “I know the name of the person it happened to.

  Or … I don’t know. Because of. Or something.”

  She made a discouraging little noise in her throat and

  shook her head.

  “It’s not like we can scan every paper for years’ worth

  of articles just looking for one name. Although … if it’s

  important enough to you, I can leave you in there and

  you can hunt around as long as you like. What’s the name?

  Maybe I already know something about it.”

  “Zoe Dinsmore,” I said.

  The silence that followed was a stunning thing. It

  seemed to zoom around the room. Bounce off the walls.

  I watched her face get a little whiter and her lips set into a long, tight line.

  “December 18th, 1952,” she whispered.

  “You know the date?” I might’ve said it too loud.

  “Hard to forget that date. It was exactly one week

  before Christmas. It was the last school day before the

  children went out on their holiday vacation.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her to tell me about it. But

  she got up from her desk.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. And walked away.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  I felt my heart bang around in my chest, but I wasn’t

  even sure why. I mean, this whole thing had nothing to

  do with me. Did it? I hadn’t even been born yet in 1952.

  Still I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in it chest

  65

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  deep now, whatever it turned out to be. Whether I liked

  it or not.

  I looked up to see Mrs. Flint motioning me into the

  back room.

  I stepped inside and sat down in a hard chair in front

  of the microfilm machine. It was a big white box that

  projected one page of the newspaper onto a vertical screen

  in front of my face. It had a crank on either side to move

  the film from one reel to the other, a page at a time.

  The headline of the article caught my eye immedi-

  ately, along with the photo. It was the front page of the

  morning paper, the Taylor County Gazette. December 19, 1952. The day after the incident.

  The photo was black and white and printed large. It

  was a school bus, partially submerged in the river. Upside

  down. It made me queasy to look at it.

  I remembered a handful of nonredacted words from

  my brother Roy’s letter.

  “…in the trees, upside down…”

  The font of the headline was huge and bold. “Tragic

  School Bus Accident Claims the Lives of Two Local Children.”

  “This should be everything you need,” Mrs. Flint said,

  her eyes averted. From the news, and from me. Both. “I’ll

  just leave you alone with it.”

  She walked out, closing the door behind her. Leaving

  me in a darkened room lit only by the glow of the screen

  against my face. Leaving me to learn what I had been so

  sure I wanted to know.

  To say I was no longer sure would be an understatement.

  I began to read. How could I not?

  Yesterday tragedy struck the town of Ashby

  as a bus serving the Unified School District

  66

  Stay

  veered off River Road and rolled down an em-

  bankment, landing upside down in the river.

  The driver, Mrs. Zoe Dinsmore, suffered only

  minor injuries, and managed to pu
ll most of

  the children to safety, diving back in again and

  again and wading to shore with them two at

  a time. But two children did not survive the

  crash.

  They are: Wanda Jean Paulston, 7, of Ashby

  and Frederick Peter “Freddie” Smith, 6, also

  of Ashby.

  One child whose name has been withheld

  is hospitalized in stable condition and seven

  others were treated and released with injuries

  ranging from minor to moderate.

  Mrs. Dinsmore has been driving a school bus

  route in Taylor County for well over twenty

  years. “Everybody loves her,” said Charlene

  Billings, the superintendent of schools, when

  reached for comment. “Students and parents

  alike, everybody looked forward to saying

  good morning to Mrs. Dinsmore. And she

  had a spotless driving record. Not even so

  much as a parking ticket.”

  Mrs. Dinsmore was held at the Taylor County

  Sheriff’s Office for several hours, where she was

  subjected to questioning, as well as tests to as-

  sure that her blood showed no signs of alcohol

  use or other impairment. No such impairment

  was found, according to Deputy Leo Brooks.

  67

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Mrs. Dinsmore told sheriff’s deputies that

  her two young girls, Katie, 4, and Delia, 5,

  had influenza, and she’d been up most of the

  night caring for them. She said she thinks she

  fell asleep behind the wheel of the bus for less

  than ten seconds, and that it was the shriek-

  ing of the children that woke her. But by then

  the bus had begun to roll down the river’s em-

  bankment, and there was nothing she could

  do to bring it back under control.

  The Gazette attempted to reach Mrs. Dinsmore

  for comment, but was told she had gone into

  seclusion and was speaking to no one.

  The crash has been officially ruled an accident,

  and no charges will be filed.

  The Gazette will announce the dates and times

  of the funerals and/or memorials for Wanda

  Jean Paulston and Freddie Smith when such

  information becomes available.

  I read it completely through a second time. I really

  couldn’t say why.

  Then I sat back and turned off the machine. The room

  went completely dark. There were no windows in the

  microfilm room, and the darkness all around me was a

  good match for my insides.

  In that moment the whole world felt dark.

  68

  CHAPTER FIVE

  You Know Now. That’s Too Bad.

  When I returned the dogs to the cabin the following

  morning, I got into quite a back-and-forth with myself

  over whether I should knock.

  I had run with them at least a mile each way up and

  down the River Road, and I was pretty convinced that

  Zoe Dinsmore’s daughter had gone home again. Because

  there had been no parked rental cars anywhere to be seen.

  I was worried about the lady. You know, whether she

  had everything she needed. Whether she was feeling well

  enough to get everything she needed. That sort of thing.

  I stepped up onto the porch. Walked boldly to the door.

  In that moment I was the very picture of decisiveness.

  I was actually proud of my courage. Noticeably proud.

  Briefly.

  I raised a hand to knock, then lost my nerve and turned

  away. Strode two steps to the edge of the porch. Stopped

  myself and turned back. Walked to the door. Raised a

  hand again. Spun away again.

  I turned back to the door one more time, and this

  time I planned to force myself all the way through the

  thing. But I never got that far.

  A sudden voice from behind made me jump out of

  my figurative skin.

  69

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Make up your mind. You want to knock on my

  door or don’t you?”

  I knew it was Zoe Dinsmore because no other voice

  sounded like that one.

  I spun around to face the voice and saw, to my embar-

  rassment, that she was just leaving the outhouse. She was

  wearing an old pair of men’s green plaid pajamas. Her

  hair was pulled back into a gray braid.

  “Yeah,” I said, making my voice sound stronger than I

  felt. “Yeah, I was going to knock. Just to … you know…”

  While I was stalling, she walked right up to me and

  stared directly into my face. It made me nervous, which

  made me lose my train of thought.

  “No, I don’t know,” she said in that deep signature

  voice. “I barely know my own mind, kid. I wouldn’t even

  pretend to know somebody else’s.”

  She looked even more deeply into my face for a mo-

  ment, as if running after something she thought she’d seen

  there, and I averted my gaze to the point of stressing my

  neck muscles. As if I could run away from her without

  ever moving my feet.

  “Oh,” she said. And she was disappointed in me. I

  only needed that one word from her to know it. “You

  know now. My daughter said you didn’t know. But now

  you do. That’s too bad.”

  “I don’t know why you say that.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “But I mean … how do you know that?” I realized,

  the minute the words were out of my mouth, that I had

  just admitted she was correct. I stood there with my neck

  craned away and felt my face burn.

  “You think after seventeen years I don’t know the

  look on somebody’s face when they know? I wish I didn’t,

  70

  Stay

  kid, but I know it better than I know the inside of my

  own eyelids. And when I close my eyes, most times

  I don’t even see the inside of my eyelids, I see those

  looks. Well, if you came here to ask me about it, or offer

  your opinion on it, you’re out of luck. I’ve been there

  and done that, and I’m not going there again for anybody.

  It may be news to you, kid, but to me it’s anything but.

  I don’t exist to help you get things settled in your own

  head.”

  When I was sure she was done, I adjusted my neck into

  a more normal position, nearly facing her, and defended

  myself with the truth.

  “I didn’t come for that. Not at all. I was only about to

  knock on your door because it looked like your daughter

  had left again, and I was just going to ask if you were

  okay or if you needed anything.”

  I waited, but she didn’t speak. I didn’t dare look at

  her face to try to get a bead on what she was thinking

  or feeling.

  So I added, “Did she go back?”

  “Yeah. She’s gone. Not that I blame her. She’s got

  an eighteen-month-old son. Babysitting me hardly fit in with her plans. So, okay, I’m not the best at apologies.

  Not my strong suit. But anyway, sorry I didn’t give you

  credit for trying to be helpful. Hope you can see your

  way clear to let that go by.”

  “Yes, ma�
�am.” I felt all the tension leave my body, and

  I was stunned by how much tension it had been. I felt

  like I could float away after it lifted out. “So … do you need anything?”

  I braved a glance at her face. Fortunately, she was

  looking away. Off toward the cabin, as though it helped

  her think.

  71

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  “Milk was sour when I got home,” she said. “It was a

  little close to the line when I left, but if I’d been home, I could’ve finished it. And if I was feeling better, I could’ve gone out for more.”

  “I could bring you back a quart of milk.”

  She looked right at me, and for a split second I looked

  right back. And in that second, something was established.

  Some wall was broken through. We were no longer two

  wild animals who would spook and flee at the sight of

  each other, or try to claw each other apart for our own

  safety. We had made the initial connection on the as-

  sembly line of trusting each other.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll go inside and get you a

  dollar.”

  * * *

  When I got back with the milk and her change, she took

  it from me, but didn’t say much. I mean … she did say

  thank you. But not much more. She carried it inside. To

  put away in the fridge, I guess.

  I waited on the porch with the dogs, but I wasn’t sure

  why. And I wasn’t sure if she’d meant for me to. I had

  asked her what she needed. She’d told me. I’d brought it

  to her. That should have been the end of it.

  It wasn’t.

  I sat down on the edge of the porch, poking around

  inside myself for the reasons I didn’t feel like I could leave.

  It was a sort of generalized paranoia. Something bad

  would happen to the lady if I left. And then for the rest

  of my life I’d have that thought in the back of my head.

  Or maybe it would be a ball of feelings in my gut. What

  if I’d played that day differently? What if I hadn’t left her alone?

  72

  Stay

  For the first time I truly understood how Connor felt.

  Also it might’ve been a look through the window

  into what the lady had been going through for seventeen

  years. What if I’d called in sick that day? Had that extra cup of coffee? What if I’d pulled the bus over, even though that would’ve made the kids late for school?

  I heard her footsteps on the porch boards behind me,

  and I glanced over my shoulder. The dogs jumped to

  their feet and wagged at her in greeting.

  “I can’t help noticing you’re not gone,” I heard her