Osprey Island

And then, suddenly, there in Roddy’s truck in the middle of the driveway, more than a full day after the news of Lorna’s death had been made known to him, Squee began to cry. What broke him right then was anyone’s guess. Most likely he was too tired to hold it in anymore. His face did not contort and twist. He did not look like a child crying. He looked as though his tear ducts had been pierced and left to run themselves dry.

“Oh, baby,” Suzy said, and she reached past Roddy to open the door, step close, and take Squee in her arms. She cupped a hand around the back of his head and held him to her, stroking, soothing. Instinct drove her movements, and Roddy backed away.

Squee did not sob, or choke, or cough as crying children do. Suzy held him to her like a slump of towels. Every so often he gave a gasp on the intake of breath, but otherwise he wept silently, too exhausted to do anything but let the tears drain from his body. Then, somewhere in the midst of that outpouring, his body gave a sudden jerk. He seemed surprised. He pulled himself away from Suzy for a second and waited, then spasmed again. Hiccups. It took about three rounds for his brain to catch up and figure out what was going on, and then he began to cry harder, more ardently, as though his own desperation had been fully revealed. And maybe it was that he lost his resolve in the momentary chaos of emotion, but he didn’t put up any struggle at all when Suzy lifted him—a limby, dragging bundle—out of the truck and carried him toward her own idling vehicle. She kept a hand on Squee’s head and craned around to Roddy, mouthing words he couldn’t make out.

“SHERIFF, GOOD MORNING.” Eden opened the door as though Sheriff Harty paid her a visit every day.

The sheriff tugged off his hat and clutched it to him as he shifted in Eden’s doorway. “Eden, how are you?” He replaced his hat.

“Oh,” Eden said, “under the circumstances . . .”

“You busy this morning? I wonder if I could talk with you. Is it a bad time, Eden?”

“Coffee, Sheriff?” she said by way of invitation, and held the door as he entered.

“Oh,” he said, “sure, thanks, if it’s not too much trouble. Haven’t got much sleep . . .”

Eden went to the kitchen. The sheriff stood awkwardly, then strolled around the living room, inspected Roderick’s gun collection, and finally took a seat in the least comfortable-looking chair in the room.

“Eden,” he began when they were settled, “I’m not meaning to be like some detective about this, but I’m no good at the sensitive stuff and I’ve got sensitive stuff I got to talk about and I know you’re not one to stand on ceremony or beat around the bush so I’m just going to tell you what I’ve got to tell you and say what I’ve got to say and ask you what I got to ask you, and then we’ll just take it from there, OK?”

“You go right ahead, Duane.”

The large envelope he was carrying opened with a crack of Velcro. “There’s something we found at the scene of the fire . . .”—he looked up to make sure Eden was following him—“and it’s probably not exactly one hundred percent police protocol for me to be here like this . . .” He paused. “Well, no, actually it probably is—it’s just, I’m not asking anything in a real official-type way. But here: there was a small refrigerator in the laundry shack—not in operation, but used as a kind of a storage cabinet—totally against the law, and thank god we didn’t have some kid get themselves trapped in there in a game of hide-and-seek—I can only imagine . . . So, but, well, the contents of that fridge survived the fire real well—mostly just junk, but also something else we found, and it’s only been seen now by Deputy Mitchell and myself and we’re both of us tied in knots about what to do and so we decided I’d come and talk to you, on account it seems by the contents of the thing that you’re perhaps familiar with the contents—some, at least, already, and so I guess . . .” From the envelope he removed the thin lavender spiral notebook that had served as Lorna Squire’s diary. “We’ve got this thing,” said the sheriff, “and we don’t know what the hell to do with it.” He passed the book to Eden.

The sheriff, wiped out by this delivery, sank against his stiff-backed chair, then remembered his coffee and seized the cup as if it held the key to his survival.

Eden held the notebook, the warped metal curls of its binding like the spine of a small animal. On the cover, the ballpoint letters traced over so many times they were nearly engraved, it read: THE DIARY OF LORNA MARIE VAUGHN SQUIRE.

“Duane”—Eden looked the sheriff in the eye—“why’re you showing this to me?”

The sheriff set down his cup. “Like I said, Eden, or tried to . . . There’s mention of you all over in there—says right on the first page you’re the one suggested she write down her thoughts in the first place. Back when it starts at first she writes the date in—late ’seventynine is it?—then it just kind of drops off. It’s right there on the first page . . .”