The waking place, p.6
The Waking Place, page 6
Would they still be fighting, or had they made up?
A shadow moved across the window to the left of the open one, passing a curtain on the window beside it. I followed the figure until it stopped behind another curtain where a smaller figure stood farther away. Jules.
“You can’t!” the large figure, the Commissioner, shouted and something else came out muffled as I wandered toward the tree line to hear them.
“The least… in public! I’ll do it!… Confront her once and for all!” Jules screamed.
“The hell you will!” he hollered, taking a step toward her.
“You’ve embarrassed me, John,” she cried.
The Commissioner raised his hand and brought it down upon her face like a hammer. It knocked the air from my lungs, sending a cloud of hot air up before me, blocking my view as Jules’ scream followed.
I took a step forward and braced myself against the trunk of a maple.
What could I do?
I shoved my cold hand in my pocket, and the whole thing fit. I’d forgotten my phone.
The large shadow moved back the way it came, stopping before the glowing window, and I patted my other pocket with no luck. The Commissioner wore a dark dress shirt and waved his hands as he spoke. Jules followed him in her pastel blouse, past the open window. Another high-pitched scream came, despite the distance between them, followed by something deep, angry and guttural.
I needed to go for help, but by the time I did, it could be too late. I kept watching in horror as my heart raced.
He walked toward the front of the house and she followed him, out of focus.
“No,” I hissed to myself. “Just let him go.”
She shouted something at him and slammed the door on him, before running through the house to the back door, and before I realized it, she emerged outside, running until the railing of their wooden deck stopped her. She swayed against the impact, grabbing hold of the wooden edge with both hands. The motion sensor light flicked on, and a backlit shadow of Jules sobbed, holding her cheek.
At once, the moment felt private, my presence intrusive, but the young girl in me who once faced abuse at the hands of Donnie’s son egged me on, out of the woods, across their back lawn toward her as crickets chirped around us.
“Jules?” I called out.
She gasped, scanning her yard for me in the dark evening, wiping her eyes. “Lane, oh my.” She looked in my direction, but squinting against the light behind her, I couldn’t make out her features. “I’m—I’m sorry, I’m such a wreck. What are you doing back here?”
I inched closer, able to make out her red cheek and the tears glistening down them, onto her bruised neck.
“I was just on my walk.” I wouldn’t lie and pretend I hadn’t witnessed it all, so I stopped a few feet away to give her space.
Her crestfallen expression told me she already knew, and I didn’t have to say anything more. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m no shrinking violet, you know.” I could barely hear her, so I took a few steps closer. She fussed with her hair until it hid more of her face. “He can’t keep me down.”
“You don’t have to make excuses or make it seem—seem like anything. You shouldn’t have to put up with that. That’s not right what he did.”
She glanced over her shoulder, back toward the house.
“How can I help you, Jules?” She turned back to me. “Can we call the police together?”
“The police?” she hissed in a whisper. “No, no, no. The police are his friends. There’s no calling the police.”
A chill ran down my spine and I stopped just before the railing of the deck, staring up at her sullen face. “That can’t be the end of it. You can’t let him get away with this.”
She laughed and shook her head, light falling on her bright pink cheek. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen, whether I like it or not, so I find a way to deal with it. I never wanted anyone to see it. I’ve never wanted anyone to pity me.”
“Jules, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can come to our place. Stay there.” She let out a laugh and shook her head wildly. “Or stay with a friend or family if you’d rather? It’s probably safer that way.” We could hide her or take her somewhere safe. Donnie would’ve done anything he could to help his old friend out and I felt the need to do the same as an extension of him.
“I can’t run.” She gripped the railing. “I can’t hide.” The short spurts of cloudy breath escaped her lips, disappearing soon after she tilted her head down to face me. “I can find a way to get through it without making it worse, and that’s what I do, and while I appreciate your concern, this is where the conversation ends.” She tapped her palm gently against the wooden railing and backed away.
“Wait.” I grabbed the railing on the stairs beside us and her eyes opened wide, glancing behind her.
Was she worried the Commissioner would come back and see me, realizing I knew what was going on?
I froze and she did, too.
“You can never say anything. Not a word of this to anyone.” She met me at the railing again and reached her hand out to me. “Promise me, Lane.”
I took her cold hand in both of mine.
A short call in the distance startled me and she squinted past me into the woods, pulling her hand away.
“Lane!” my sister called, her voice full of panic, raising the hair on my arms.
Oh, no. Donnie. Something’s happened to him.
“Who’s that?” Jules took a step back.
A figure ran through the woods from the direction of the Gaudreau’s.
“Cece?” I called.
“Lane!” she called back.
“I have to go,” I stammered, and walked backward toward the tree line. “You can always talk to me, Jules. I’m here if you need me. Anytime.”
“Would you—come for tea tomorrow? When you get home from work?” She backed away, toward the sliding glass door.
I stopped, shocked she’d let me in after what I witnessed.
Maybe she didn’t want to be alone when he got in after work.
“Yes. Tomorrow!” I called and ran into the woods; scared of what I’d find when I found my sister through the dark brush.
“Cece!” I shouted.
“Lane,” she choked, stopping just short of me. “Come on, we have to go back. Donnie’s crying and he won’t stop calling for you.”
“Did something happen?” Leaves rustled along the forest floor behind me until I found the path.
“I don’t know. I left the room to go to the washroom, and all of a sudden...” She gasped for breath. “He was crying. And I couldn’t. Help him.”
He got scared at times when he didn’t know where I was, but it hadn’t happened in a while.
I broke into a run for several minutes before easing into a jog as the frigid evening air stung my lungs.
“You didn’t have your phone on you,” she panted behind me. “Or I wouldn’t have left him. I didn’t know what else to do.”
We reached the cedars and I dashed between them to the back door, twisting the knob, but it wouldn’t give.
“Front,” she gasped.
I ran down the side of the house, around the cars in the driveway to the front door, hanging open.
“Why did you leave it open?” I hollered before running inside, through the freezing foyer.
“I didn’t!” Her voice echoed from outside, and my stomach dropped.
6
Cece
My cell phone rang, vibrating in my hand as I ran into the kitchen again. I pressed it to my ear, walking toward the back door, staring out at the pitch-black night.
“He’s not in here,” I blurted out, before she could say anything, staring at the empty mat. “He has to be out there. His shoes are gone.”
“He wasn’t by the pottery shed. I always find him around the shed...”
Her frantic voice sent me into management mode. “He couldn’t have gotten far—”
“He always goes out the kitchen door, but it’s locked. Right?”
I ran my hand over the safety lock. “It’s locked.”
“He hasn’t been out front, alone, in months! He’ll be confused. He always goes to the shed.”
If she panicked, she’d make a mistake. She knew him best. She was the key to finding him, and I had to get her to calm down so she could think.
I took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry. I should have locked the front door behind me when I came to get you. I wasn’t thinking.”
Her heavy breath filled the space between us.
Was she silently cursing me or was she focused on finding him, and she’d get to me later?
“Did you check the path?” I stared out the bay window. “Is that a place he might have wandered down?”
“Yeah, I checked the path by our place. I don’t think he’s back here, unless he wandered further in, but it’s so dark. It’s so dark, Cece.” Fear permeated her voice, a helplessness. For the first time, I wondered if she had the answers.
She emerged from behind the cedars, phone pressed to her ear, but instead of coming to the back door, she jogged down the side of the house toward the front.
I spun around to the empty kitchen. “We have to call the police.”
Her steady gasps for breath filled the space between us.
“Lane?”
“I see something. By the road!” Gravel crunched in the background and I rushed to the front door, opening it. She bent down by the road to pick something up. “His hat! He must have come out the front and to the road and…”
“Lane?”
She turned to me, hat in hand, eyes wide open. “He might have gone down the road like he used to do with Toto a long time ago. He might have gone their route. I have to go. I’m taking the car.” She ran back up toward the house, and I grabbed her keys by the door, tossing them to her as she approached. She caught them and shouted, “I’m going to ask the neighbours if they’ve seen him. You call the police and stay here in case he comes back.” She booked it to her car. “Leave the doors unlocked.”
“Okay, I will.”
She got in and sped back down the driveway as I closed the door and went to the back door to unlock it. I called the police, and while speaking to dispatch, I double-checked all the closets in the home. As I entered Lane’s room for the final check, and for the first time since I’d arrived, the snow globe on her dresser caught my eye. Donnie had a matching one in his room. I checked the closet, and then walked to the dresser, picking it up with care.
The motion stirred the light dusting of snow on the forest floor around tiny fir trees with snow painted on the tops. They surrounded a miniature version of a cabin. No, a shed. Their pottery shed. They’d crafted it to scale. The detail astounded me.
I knew their pottery shed was a special place, but perhaps it was worth more to them than I’d realized if even after forgetting so much, he was still drawn to it. I understood Lane’s fear when she couldn’t find him there at their old spot.
I rested it back in its place and stepped out of her room. Blue and purple lights flashed against the walls of the foyer through the stained-glass. I bounded down the steps and opened the door as the police approached, letting a gust of wind whirl in. I shivered and rubbed my arms, stepping back to allow the officers room to enter.
Donnie would freeze if he wasn’t found soon. I should have been out there, looking for him, but once the police arrived, I hoped they’d help to cover more ground.
Sickness washed over me, churning my stomach as I waved the officers in.
“He must still be out there somewhere,” I told them, closing the door behind them. “My sister is out, asking the neighbours if they’ve seen him. She found his hat by the road near the end of the driveway.”
“Your name, ma’am?” the taller officer asked.
“Cecilia Carpenter.”
“His name is Donald Carpenter?”
The other officer wrote on their notepad.
“Or Donnie. He answers to both… on his good days. Did they tell you he suffers with dementia?”
“Yes, ma’am. How long has he been gone for?” The same officer asked all the questions while the other wrote.
It felt like the night, the time since I’d realized he was gone, stretched into the next day. But when I checked my phone, I scoffed. “Less than an hour. That’s good, right?”
“He has dementia, ma’am?” the officer asked.
“Yes, and he’s done this before. We have locks on the doors inside, but one of them was open. It was my fault. He was crying, calling for my sister, and she was out on her walk, and she didn’t take her phone—”
“Slow down, ma’am.” The officer held up both hands. “My partner is going to check the perimeter of the home while I ask you some more questions. You just need to remain as calm as possible so we can understand the information.”
The information. I was the wrong one to have kept home to question. I never paid attention well enough. I wasn’t the one who knew everything they might need to know to find him before something terrible happened.
The memory of the blood on his hands resurfaced and I shook it away, checking my phone screen, but no new notifications had appeared. “Can I have my sister on the phone? She’s his caregiver and I know she’ll have more answers than I do.”
The officers exchanged a look before the quiet one left through the front door, letting in another gust of wind, and the other took out a notepad from their pocket.
“I’m just going to call her.” I dialled her number and pressed the phone to my ear.
“Did you find him?” Her desperate voice held hope, enough to make my heart sink.
“No, but the police are here, and there’s an officer looking around outside already.”
“The Gaudreaus haven’t seen him, and no one else is home, or they just aren’t answering—”
“I’m putting you on speaker. The officer needs to ask some questions.”
“Can I have your name, ma’am?”
“Elaine Carpenter.” Her voice shook, and I imagined her in her car, driving along the S-shaped road, looking into the trees for any movement.
“Relation?” the officer asked.
Her heavy breathing filled the air of the foyer. Was she having a panic attack?
She’d experienced them as a child sometimes, the worst after she’d come home from Donnie’s with a cigarette burn on her leg. She told me it felt like she was dying, laying there in bed that night, and I worried she was feeling that again since she wasn’t talking.
“Lane? They need all the information you can give them to help find Donnie. We’re going to find him, but you need to focus.”
“Relation?” the officer asked once more.
“Great-niece of Donald Carpenter.” Her voice eased my nerves. “He, uh, he has dementia and began exhibiting signs of it almost two years ago but was formally diagnosed a year ago.” She sniffled and cleared her throat. “His doctor is Dr. Campbell from Auburn Hills Walk-In Clinic, and he knows his condition has been deteriorating. Uncle Donnie got out a few nights ago and was injured, suffering cuts and scrapes from the thorn bushes out back. He usually goes around back, to the pottery shed. He’s never gone out front before, but I found his hat by the road.”
I turned to the officer. If they shared empathy for the pain in her voice, they didn’t show it, but I was so proud she’d pulled herself out of the spiral.
“I told them.” I squeezed in, aching to feel useful in any way.
“I’m just at the intersection, now. I’m coming back up—”
Static buzzed over the officer’s radio, and someone spoke, but I couldn’t make out the words.
The officer stepped closer to the door and responded. “What’s that?”
“… by the shed out back… feet from the house.”
“On my way.” The officer reached for the doorknob.
“What is it?” Lane shouted. “Did you find him?”
The officer opened the door, and I followed behind.
“Please stay here, ma’am. I’ll be back.” They turned to the open door as cold air filled the foyer.
“Officer,” I pled, “if he’s out there, it’ll be better for him to see a familiar face right now.” Although he might not have recognized me, he was growing more comfortable around me, and that was something. That had to be something while Lane was gone.
The radio buzzed again but they didn’t move to answer it.
“… need an ambulance… drive.”
Ambulance.
My heart thudded in my ears at the mention, and without thinking, I turned the other way and ran through the kitchen, unlocked the back door, and sprinted past the cedars to the shed.
“Donnie?” I called out toward the tree line, fear saturating my voice.
I needed to calm down and stay focused.
“Cece?” Lane’s voice came from the phone I’d kept clenched in my fist, and I jogged down the short hill, through the maples and firs.
“Toto?” Donnie’s voice echoed from ahead.
“Uncle Donnie,” I gasped and slowed down.
A dark figure ran from behind a tree ahead, disappearing behind another, and I stopped, squinting through the darkness.
“Uncle Donnie?”
But even as I said it, I knew he couldn’t have moved that fast and chills ran up my spine, prickling at my neck. I shivered, walking slowly in the other direction, glancing over my shoulder.
Had he found me?
A desperate fear sprung in my chest, sending shivers over my body again.
“Toto,” Donnie called, his soft raspy voice leading me in the other direction.
I followed it back toward the thornbushes, stealing one last glance over my shoulder.
As the quiet officer came into view—his arms wrapped around Donnie’s—I ran toward them. Donnie struggled against his arms, swaying back toward the thorn bushes with blood-covered hands.
If Donnie was there, who had I just seen running through the trees?
Was I seeing things again, like at the bar?
