building were still sleeping. Ms. Leech hadn’t answered that first time, nor the second time, so this time I pounded on her door with the side of my fist. “Ms. Leech! Open the door!”
Her door did not open, but 309 at the end of the hall did. Cecile Dreher stuck her head out, her hair still in curlers, and prepared to yell at me, then thought better of it when she saw I was covered in dirt and grime. She gave me an angry grunt and ducked back inside.
“Ms. Leech!” I knocked again, this time with the spine of the yearbook. “Ms. Leech!”
“Dammit…” I went back to my apartment and shuffled through the keys hanging near the front door. They weren’t labeled, but I knew Leech’s key was silver with the brand-name Curtis stamped on the side. She gave the key to Auntie Jo years ago. Ms. Leech had a key to our apartment too, although I don’t think she ever used it.
Back across the hall, I slipped the key into her lock and snapped the dead bolt open, then let myself in. “Ms. Leech? It’s me, Jack Thatch. I’m coming in.”
The last time I had been in Ms. Leech’s apartment was with Gerdy, nearly a year ago. Since then, the stacks of newspapers had continued to grow, leaving little space to maneuver around them.
A light glowed in the back bedroom.
“Ms. Leech? It’s Jack, from across the hall. I know today’s not grocery day, but I have to talk to you. You didn’t answer your door, so I let myself in. Are you awake?”
As I turned sideways and worked my way through the mess, I began to wonder if something was wrong. Leech rarely had visitors. If she had a heart attack or stroke or even slipped and fell, she might go days without being found, maybe weeks. As far as I knew, her only contact with the outside world was with the weekly grocery deliveries, and I had no idea who Matteo arranged to take care of that.
I found her, very much alive, sitting on the edge of her bed.
Her face looked frightfully white, the wrinkles set so deep in her skin they might have been carved in with a chisel. She watched me enter the room with unblinking eyes. Her left hand held a fistful of quilt. She squeezed the material, kneaded the cloth like raw dough. Her right hand disappeared under the sheets. She wore a nightgown similar to the ones Auntie Jo had worn, all frilly lace and silk, stolen from someone’s closet in the seventies. Her feet were bare, her toes pressing into the hardwood.
“Ms. Leech, are you okay?”
“Okay, yes,” she said the words, then went silent. Her lips continued to move, though. A soundless mumble.
Had she had a stroke?
At her age, anything was possible. What was she now? Mid-seventies? Eighty? I had no idea. A twang of guilt hit me. I should know. This woman practically raised me with Jo, yet I knew so little about her.
“Do you want me to call a doctor?”
She said nothing, only stared, her lips quivering.
I snapped my fingers in front of her face. Bits of dirt flaked to the floor. “Do you recognize me, Ms. Leech? Do you know who I am?”
“I know what happens next,” she sang this more than spoke the words, a high girlish tone. Her lips formed a quick grin, then fell flat. She followed this with, “You are Jack Thatch, son of Edward Thatch and Kaitlyn Gargery, the boy across the hall, the bringer of groceries. Stealer of books. That’s who you are.”
Gargery. My mother’s maiden name.
I held up the yearbook and opened to her page. “Do you know why these people are circled? Look—here’s my mother, and my father, Stella’s father, Richard, and her mother, Emma…”
“Ah, Stella,” she said softly. “Cute as a button, that one.” Her eyes looked to some distant object. Then, she added for no reason, “Twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven what?” I flipped through the pages, holding the yearbook up to her face as I came to each circled image. “There are thirteen people circled. Who are they? You knew them all, didn’t you? Why are they circled?”
Her gaze was blank again.
I showed her the inscriptions at the front. Hey Eddie, Get a haircut, you shit! – Gene Glaspie. Gene Glaspie’s photo was not circled. I checked. “This is my father’s yearbook. Eddie. He’s not in his grave. Where is he? Do you know? What happened to him? Why did he leave