Shadows

10

Chet Aldrich awakened slowly, his eyes automatically seeking out the blue digits of the clock radio on his nightstand: 5:47.

The alarm wasn’t due to go off until six-thirty.

Chet scowled in annoyance. He never wakened so long before the alarm went off; indeed, he invariably woke up a minute before the alarm sounded, squelching it before its irritating beep even had a chance to begin.

But something had disturbed his sleep. He glanced out the window to see the sky, already brightening. Thunder? He dismissed that idea from his mind when he noticed the moon still hanging above the horizon. Then, as he was about to roll over and bury his head in the pillows once more, he heard the ringing of the doorbell, the sound muffled through the closed bedroom door.

Instantly, the last vestiges of sleep left him. He slid out of bed, reaching for the robe he always left draped over the back of the chair in the corner. Pulling it on, he glanced at Jeanette, who was still sound asleep, lying on her left side, her hair spread out on the pillow around her head.

As the doorbell sounded again, Chet hurried downstairs, a growing sense of foreboding looming within him. Someone at the door this early could only mean bad news.

Very bad, his mind corrected, fully awake now. As he reached for the doorknob, and the bell rang yet again, an idea of what must have happened took shape in his head. His heart had begun to race even before he opened the door and saw Jeff, pale and wide-eyed, trembling on the front porch. Behind him stood Hildie Kramer, flanked by two police officers.

For a moment he had a fleeting feeling of hope — he’d been wrong, and all that had happened was that Jeff had sneaked out in the middle of the night and gotten himself into some kind of trouble. But even as the idea formed, he dismissed it, for he could read Hildie Kramer’s eyes clearly. They weren’t reflecting anger, or even disappointment.

What he saw in them was grief.

Grief, and sympathy.

“What is it?” he asked, opening the door wide so the four people on the porch could come inside the house. When no one said anything, as if each of them was waiting for someone else to pronounce the news they had come to tell him, he knew.

“It’s Adam, isn’t it?” he breathed. “Something’s happened to him.”

It was Hildie Kramer who finally broke the silence of the group. Stepping forward, she gripped his arm, almost as if to steady him. “I’m sorry, Chet,” she told him. “He’s — I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Dear God,” Chet muttered, the words catching in his throat as he felt himself begin to sink down onto his knees. Only Hildie’s strong hold kept him upright. “No. There’s a mistake.… There has to be—”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Aldrich,” one of the policemen said. “It happened about an hour ago, maybe a little more. He was on the tracks when—”

His words were cut off by Jeanette, who was now standing at the top of the stairs, her robe clutched protectively around her body, her face still puffy with sleep.

“Tracks?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

Chet, struggling once more to remain on his feet, gazed bleakly up at his wife. “It’s Adam,” he told her. “He’s — Hildie says he’s dead.”

Hildie says …

As if to leave open the possibility that Hildie was wrong, that it was all some kind of terrible mistake, that Adam was still alive somewhere. And yet the words had their effect, whether Chet had intended it or not, for Jeanetten’s eyes, wide and disbelieving, shifted immediately to the housemother and chief administrator of the Academy.

“Adam?” Jeanette breathed. “But that’s not possible. You said he was doing fine.” Her voice rose as she rejected the idea of her son’s death. “He was doing fine! Last weekend, at the picnic—”

Hildie moved up the stairs, brushing past Chet, who was still frozen in place, as if the news had drained the strength from his muscles. “We don’t know exactly what happened, Jeanette,” she said, casting about in her mind for some possible straw for the shocked woman to grasp at. “Perhaps it was some kind of an accident—”

“Accident?” Jeanette echoed. “Wh-What happened?”

Half supported by Hildie Kramer, Jeanette came slowly down the stairs as one of the policemen recounted the engineer’s story.

“He said there was nothing he could do,” the cop finished. “He hit the brakes and the horn as soon as he saw your son, but it was too late. The boy didn’t move at all, and the train was going too fast to stop.”

“D-Didn’t move?” Jeanette repeated. “H-He just sat there?”

“I’m sorry,” the policeman said. “The engineer said it was as if he was just waiting for the train to hit him.”

Jeanette slumped against her husband. As Chet’s arms went around her, she began sobbing softly. It was impossible — the whole thing. She wouldn’t — couldn’t — accept it. That was why they’d sent Adam to the Academy, just to prevent something like this. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it. It’s not Adam. It — It’s someone else. It has to be.”

“I’m so sorry, Jeanette,” Hildie Kramer told the distraught woman. “I wish it were somebody else. But there isn’t any mistake.”

Jeanette only shook her head, her body suddenly filling with an unnatural strength. “I want to see him,” she said. “I want to see him for myself.”

Jeff had been standing silently just inside the door, his face pale as he listened to his parents being informed of his brother’s death. Now he darted across to his mother and pressed himself wordlessly against her. Almost unconsciously, Jeanette’s hand smoothed her remaining son’s hair, but her eyes remained fixed on the policeman who had just told her what had happened. “I want to see where it happened,” she said almost tonelessly. “And I want to see my son. I think I have the right, don’t I?”

The young officer shifted uneasily. “It’s not really necessary, ma’am,” he replied. “I mean, there isn’t any doubt about what happened—”

“No!” Jeanette said sharply. “I have doubts. I want to see him! Can’t you understand? He’s my son, and I want to see him!”

As her voice rose again, taking on a note of hysteria, Jeff pressed closer to her, and Hildie Kramer exchanged a glance with the policeman. “I can stay here with Jeff,” she said. “Can you take Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich?”

Now Chet spoke, his voice strangling on his words. “Jeanette, we don’t have to do this. We—”

But Jeanette only shook her head once more. “No, Chet. I have to do it I won’t believe it unless I see it for myself.” Gently, she disentangled herself from Jeff’s arms.

“Can I go, too?” the boy asked.

Though Jeanette seemed not to hear the question, Chet shook his head. “You don’t want to, son,” he said, his voice breaking. “Just stay here with Hildie, and well be back as soon as we can. All right?”

“But I want to go,” Jeff protested, his face setting stubbornly. “I want to see what happened, too.” Though he’d said nothing about his dream either to Hildie Kramer or anyone except Josh MacCallum and Brad Hinshaw, it was still fresh in his mind.

And in his dream—

No! What had happened in his dream wasn’t real The only thing real was that Adam was dead. But he couldn’t be dead! He couldn’t be! He’d said he was going away—

“Come on, Jeff,” Hildie said quietly, gently steering the

boy toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “Let’s leave your parents alone for a little while, all right?”

Jeff, still trying to piece it all together in his mind, to reconcile the dream of his brother’s death with the reality of it, allowed himself to be guided down the hall as Jeanette and Chet, escorted by the two policemen, left the house.

The police car pulled over to the side of the road. They were some four miles north of Barrington. A hundred yards ahead the road, and the railroad track next to it, curved away out of sight, following the contour of the coast. Beyond the track a concrete retaining wall held the cutaway hillside in place, and as Jeanette emerged from the car into the steadily brightening morning sunlight, she felt a chill as she saw the blood that was smeared along the retaining wall.

People swarmed over the site, taking pictures, making sketches, and taking various measurements that would eventually determine the precise speed at which the engine had been traveling when it struck Adam Aldrich. Two members of the train’s crew hovered nervously near the caboose, but the engineer himself was nowhere in sight.

“They took him down to the station to check his blood for alcohol or drugs,” one of the detectives told Chet when he asked where the engineer was. “Not that we expect to find anything,” he went on. “The rest of the crew says Lawrence — that’s the engineer, Gary Lawrence — is a real teetotaler. His wife was an alkie, and he won’t touch the stuff. No one’s ever seen him with anything stronger than coffee.”

While Jeanette gazed silently at the spot where the train had struck her son, Chefs eyes reluctantly searched for any sign of the body’s presence. The detective, sensing what Chet was looking for, lowered his voice so Jeanette wouldn’t hear his words. “They’ve already taken your boy away, Mr. Aldrich. It’s — Well, it’s pretty messy, and I’m not sure you’ll want to see him.”

Chet nodded, feeling a sense of relief that for the moment, at least, both he and Jeanette would be spared the stark reality of what had happened to their son.

“Where did they take him?” Jeanette asked, emerging from her reverie. “Where is he?”

In unconscious imitation of the cop whose job it had been to inform the Aldriches of the death of their child, the detective shifted uneasily. “They’ll have taken him to the hospital in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Once he’s been pronounced, they’ll keep him until you give them instructions.”

“I want to go to the hospital,” Jeanette announced. “Now, please.”

Chet felt his stomach tighten as he helped his wife back into the car. She insisted on being taken to see her child and would not be dissuaded.

Straws, Chet thought. She’s grasping at straws. But he knew that for now there was nothing he could say to her, that all he could do was stay with her, offering her whatever support she needed while she came to grips in her own way with what had happened.

And yet, he reflected, what about him? To whom was he supposed to turn? The knot of grief that had begun forming inside him from the second he’d opened the door and seen the look on Hildie Kramer’s face now threatened to strangle him. How long had it been? Half an hour? He glanced at his watch, wondering if it was possible that only thirty minutes had passed since he’d heard of his son’s death.

And in those thirty minutes, he’d felt himself turning numb, dealing with the cold reality of Adam’s death by turning cold himself, going through the motions of dealing with the situation even while he, in his own way, rejected the reality of it no less than Jeanette.

Was it really possible that Adam was dead? That he was never going to see his son’s face, so different from Jeff’s, yet so much the same, again?

An image of Adam came into his mind, a quiet image, of Adam as he so often was, alone, exploring some world within his own mind that was totally unknown to anyone else, even his twin brother. For it had always been Jeff who was the extroverted one, Jeff who made friends with other kids, and dragged Adam, often protesting, into his games.

Was what had happened this morning Adam’s Anal pro test, his final rejection of a world he’d never really been a part of? Or had it been just a momentary whim that he would have gotten over, given enough time?

Chet realized that he would now never know. Adam was, irretrievably, gone.

They arrived finally at the hospital’s emergency entrance. Together, the Aldriches went inside, where they were met by a pale, lanky man in a rumpled white coat, a resident whose young face reflected the ravages of the long hours he’d put in during the night. He came toward them almost reluctantly, and Chet caught himself abstractly wondering if this was the first time this doctor had ever had to deal with parents who had just lost a child.

“Mr. Aldrich? Mrs. Aldrich?” he heard the doctor saying. “I’m Joel Berman. I was on duty when they brought your son in.” He gestured toward a sofa and two chairs arranged around a messy coffee table in the reception area. “If you’d like to sit down …?”

Jeanette shook her head. “I want to see Adam,” she said, but her nerves were beginning to betray her, and her voice was unsteady as she uttered the words. “Please, I have to see my son.”

Joel Berman’s face tightened. “I — Mrs. Aldrich, I’m not sure you want to see him.”

“I do,” Jeanette said simply. “I have to.”

Berman seemed about to object further, then apparently changed his mind. “This way,” he said softly. He led them down a short corridor and then into an examining room. On a gurney, covered by a sheet, was the form of a body. Jeanette paused at the door, but then steeled herself. Moving across to the gurney, she hesitantly touched the cover, then gently pulled it back.

She stared into Adam’s face.

Smeared with blood, and battered by the impact of the locomotive, it was barely recognizable, and yet she knew instantly that it was her son. At last the wall she’d built inside her broke and she began sobbing. “Oh, Adam,” she whispered, the words choking in her constricted throat. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you just come home? I would have made it right, honey. I would have taken care of you.” Her tears flowing freely, she bent down and, oblivious of the blood that still stained her son’s cheeks, gently kissed him.

Only then did she allow the doctor to cover her son’s face once again, and her husband to lead her out of the room.

A few minutes later, her hands trembling, she tried to force herself to drink a cup of scalding hot coffee while the doctor did his best to reassure her that Adam hadn’t suffered.

“He would have died instantly. Apparently he was sitting in the middle of the tracks, his back to the train. The first contact would have killed him. I’m sure he felt nothing at all.”

But the terror, Jeanette found herself thinking. How he must have felt, hearing the train thundering toward him. In her mind she heard the blast of the horn, the roar of the locomotive; she even imagined she could feel the tracks vibrating as the train rushed toward her son. She shuddered, and the coffee slopped over, staining the white terry-cloth robe she was still wearing.

Through it all, she’d never once, until that very instant, realized she’d left the house without dressing. Shakily, she put the coffee cup down. “Take me home, Chet.”

As her husband led her out of the emergency room and back to the waiting police car, grief at last began closing in on Jeanette Aldrich.

At a little after seven o’clock that morning, Steve Conners arrived at the Academy, and knew at once that something was wrong. Two police cars were pulled up in the driveway in front of the main building, and he could see Dr. Engersol’s dark blue Oldsmobile as well. Ignoring his usual morning routine of going first to his classroom in the west wing building, he parked next to one of the black-and-whites and mounted the steps to the broad loggia. As he let himself in through the front door, the first person he saw was Hildie Kramer, talking to one of the policemen. Near the foot of the stairs a knot of children whispered among themselves, their eyes wide as they watched the policeman talking to their housemother.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked as he joined Hildie.

Hildie’s eyes shot briefly toward the group of children by the stairs, but then she decided there was no point in retreating to her office. Certainly, there wasn’t a child in the house who didn’t already know what had happened. “It’s Adam Aldrich,” she said. “I’m afraid he killed himself last night.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Steve groaned. Suddenly he remembered the things he hadn’t done yesterday.

He hadn’t mentioned either to Hildie or to George Engersol his concerns about the boy. He’d intended to, but then something had come up — he couldn’t even remember what it had been right now — and the whole thing had slipped his mind.

Slipped his mind! And now Adam Aldrich was dead.

His horror at the thought must have showed clearly on his face, for Hildie was staring curiously at him. “Steve, what is it?”

Steve shook his head as if to push back the tide of guilt that was washing over him, but the gesture did no good. “I should have done something,” he said. “I knew something was wrong. I was going to talk to you about him. And George, too.”

Now the policeman’s eyes were fixed on him. “You know something about the boy?”

Steve nodded unhappily. “He’s in my English class.” Briefly, he filled in the policeman — and Hildie Kramer, too — on what had happened in his class the previous morning. “I knew he was upset about something, and I was going to talk to you about it, but it just went out of my mind. And now—”

“And now you feel as though you could have prevented it,” Hildie finished for him. Her attention shifted momentarily back to the police officer. “If you’re finished with me for now, I think I’d better have a talk with Mr. Conners.”

The officer nodded, closing his notebook. “I think I’ve got all there is to get. It doesn’t seem like anyone talked to him or heard him leave. And the note on his computer is pretty clear. If there’s anything else, I’ll call you.”

When he was gone, Hildie took Steve Conners into her office, and gestured him into a chair. “Steve, I’m not going to pretend that your forgetting to speak to me about Adam wouldn’t have made any difference. It probably would, at least in the short run. But there’s something else you’ve got to understand, or you’ll never be able to deal with this school.” She paused, as if waiting for a response from the young teacher. When there was none, she went on. “This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a student this way, and it won’t be the last. In fact, it’s one of the reasons we exist. Our students almost all have problems of one sort or another, and several of them have tried to kill themselves in the past. Adam was among them. And, of course, had you told me what happened yesterday, I would have talked to him, possibly even put him into counseling immediately. But I probably wouldn’t have put him under a twenty-four-hour watch.”

Conners frowned. “But why not? If he’d tried something like this before—”

“The last time he tried it, no one thought it was truly serious. Often — in fact most times — when children try to kill themselves, they aren’t truly serious. Most children really have no concept of death, you know. They know it exists, but only in the abstract. Most children feel immortal — they have no sense that they’re ever going to die. For a child, even growing up is something that’s barely comprehensible. So I doubt that I would have hospitalized Adam, given all the circumstances. I would have talked to Dr. E, of course, but there’s no guarantee that this wouldn’t have happened anyway. And I have to tell you that there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen to other of our students. In fact, I can almost guarantee that it will. Sad as it is, there’s no way, short of isolation of every one of them, that we can stop it entirely.” She smiled wanly. “I doubt you’d be any more in favor of locking these kids up than anyone else here is.”

Steve Conners listened to her words silently, knowing that no matter what she said, he would still feel the guilt for what had happened, perhaps for the rest of his life. He’d known the boy was in trouble, but done nothing about it.

Because it had slipped his mind.

Slipped his mind!

And now there was nothing he could do about it, nothing he could do to put the situation right, nothing he could do to bring Adam back to life.

Except see to it that from now on he kept a better eye on the kids, never again failed to act if he saw that one of them was in trouble.

But even as he made his silent oath, he knew that it still wouldn’t be enough.

No matter what he might do, it wouldn’t assuage the guilt he felt over the death of Adam Aldrich.