Page 94 of Middle of the Night

“I guess.”

Mary Ellen sighs, wishing that he’d tell her what’s wrong and that her husband were here instead of in Boston and that she could be like the other wives on Hemlock Circle and just fucking relax for an evening. Most of all, she wishes for the ability to control things that are wildly beyond her control. Because this worry—this bone-deep, exhausting, never-ending worry—is too much.

“Okay then,” she says, choosing to no longer fight this particular battle. There’ll be more in the future. More moods. More anxiety. More eagerness to grow up, which is a particular problem with Andy. It radiates off him like body heat. All of it makes Mary Ellen long to be able to preserve her sons as they are right now. That way they’d stay the same forever, and she could worry less instead of standing by helplessly as her sons get older, move out, move on.

“Have fun,” she tells Billy, before adding the final two words she’ll ever say to him. “Be careful.”

As she watches Billy slip out into the twilight, Mary Ellen’s thoughts return to Stacy, the porcelain doll she had adored so much as a child. By the time she was ten, the waiting for Stacy’s inevitable destruction became more than she could bear. Rather than delay it—worrying and fretting and ultimately losing the doll before she was prepared to say goodbye—Mary Ellen decided it was best to take matters into her own hands.

One afternoon, she marched up to her room, picked Stacy up from the shelf, and cradled her for as long as she wanted. When it was over, Mary Ellen gave Stacy a kiss on her delicate cheek and smashed her porcelain head in.

After that, she worried no more.

TWENTY-FIVE

I take another sip of coffee as I again mull the possibility of Billy’s mother being the killer. Detective Palmer is right that Mrs. Barringer fits all the characteristics of Billy’s killer. It’s the likelihood of it that continues to keep me from reaching that conclusion.

No, the Barringers weren’t the best parents in the world. Blake Barringer was present but absent. One of those very smart men who could never quite get out of his head and engage with the rest of the world. I honestly can’t think of a single time we spoke to each other one-on-one, despite having had ample opportunity.

I talked much more to Billy’s mother, who was different in her own way. Even when I was a boy, Mary Ellen Barringer struck me as fragile. I once overhead my mother refer to her as “Nervous Nellie.” Uncharitable, but accurate. She always looked slightly spooked, like at any moment she expected to see a ghost.

Detective Palmer wasn’t there when Mary Ellen Barringer dragged Andy into the yard, begging me to remember anything more about that night. She didn’t see Mrs. Barringer looking wraithlike in her nightgown and mismatched socks. Didn’t feel her shockingly strong grip on my shoulders as she tried to shake the memories out of me.

That was a woman turned mad with grief, not guilt. It eventually got so bad that Mrs. Barringer had to be institutionalized not long after they left Hemlock Circle. A few years after that, Mr. Barringer died and teenage Andy was sent off to foster care.

Then again, maybe it was the opposite. Maybe guilt had driven Mrs. Barringer mad, and instead of trying to get me to remember, what she had really wanted was for me to reveal how much I knew.

Before she leaves, I ask Detective Palmer what the next steps are in Billy’s case. It’s not promising. With Mary Ellen Barringer’s condition being what it is, there’s not a whole lot they can do. Detective Palmer tells me she plans to visit Mrs. Barringer at the state hospital, even though doctors have warned her that she’ll be unresponsive.

“So we might never know who killed Billy?” I say.

“Never say never,” Detective Palmer says. “But at this point, it doesn’t seem likely. Unless someone else emerges as a viable suspect, we might have to resign ourselves to never knowing what really happened.”

Once the detective leaves, I go back upstairs and pick the notebook up off the floor. It’s still open to the page Billy had written on.

HAKUNA MATATA DUDE

I know it was Billy because I never shared his last words to me with anyone. Not Russ, or my parents, or the police. Not even Claudia. It remained a secret because I wanted to keep something of Billy all to myself.

Just to be certain, I check the trail cam app on my phone, hoping it might have snapped a picture of the culprit as he emerged from the woods and crossed to the house. But most of the photos taken during the night are of me and Fritz Van de Veer talking in the yard. The ones in which we’re absent show no shadow or specter or even a normal human being. Just a lone deer nibbling the grass at five in the morning.

Since the trail cam provided no guidance, I cross the hall to my old bedroom and open up Billy’s copy ofThe Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits,and Other Spooks.I find the page with Billy’s handwriting in the margin and check it against what’s in my notebook. It’s not quite a match, but close enough that one could reasonably assume the words in the book and my notebook were written by the same person.

Now that I know Billy’s not confined to the woods, I look for him everywhere on the way back to my new bedroom. In the shadow behind the door. In the darkness under the bed. After a thorough search that turns up nothing, I drop onto the edge of the bed and stare at the notebook. It makes me think about The Dream and how this last go-round had been the same as all the others except for that extra millisecond in which I saw a blur of motion just beyond the gash in the tent.

A blur that I assume is Billy’s killer. That’s the conclusion this new version of The Dream and Billy’s message in my notebook, so much more invasive than a baseball in the yard, seem to be pointing to.

That I really did see Billy’s killer.

Just a glimpse.

Was it Mrs. Barringer? Possibly. Detective Palmer certainly seems to believe it, even though it’s a suspicion she’ll likely never be able to prove. That might be fine for a state police detective with no personal connection to the crime, but for me it’s unacceptable. I’ve spent thirty years aching for the truth, not sleeping, being startled awake by The Dream when I do. I refuse to exist that way for thirty more.

There’s also Billy to think about. Is it possible for his spirit to find peace if his killer’s identity is never revealed? My guess is no, hence the increased intensity of his messages.

Billy no longer needs me to play detective.

He needs me to remember.

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