Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen Page 0,56

Donald I’d once known would think of, not something that would impress other people but something that would send a message just to me, that he hadn’t forgotten.

“It’s great,” I said to Donald’s grandfather. “I’ll write and tell him so. Now I have a place to keep my necklace.”

“Hey, hey,” Steven said. “Don’t take that necklace off.”

“That’s some gift,” Donald’s grandfather said, about the necklace, not the music box.

I think a fair amount of time passed between that moment and when the state police pulled up. But when I thought about it that night, after I went out and had a couple of rum and Cokes with Steven and found myself staring at the cracked ceiling of a stuffy room in somebody’s apartment, feeling like I was going to throw up the quick pickles and the cookie, it all ran together. My shoes, the cake, the bills in my pocket, the blue fairy, the glass bowls with the last spoonfuls of potato salad, the chicken bones that had fallen underneath one of the tables, the pink paper tablecloths flapping a little, and then police car cherry lights. No sirens. Thank God no sirens. My mother’s face got white enough when she turned and saw the car.

“You stay right where you are and take care of the guests,” my father said in his low voice, and he and Mr. Langer walked over to the troopers together. We didn’t have local cops out where we lived. The Miller’s Valley police only took calls in town proper. Otherwise it was the staties, who came from miles away, so that everybody who lived in the valley said that before you called the police about someone breaking into your house you’d best call your closest neighbor with a gun. My father had taken more than a few of those calls over the years, although usually the burglar turned out to be a bear trying to turn over a trash can.

The men standing by the police car were talking low, but everyone else had stopped talking, so we could catch a word here or there. Clifton ran to my father, and my mother tried to catch him as he went by. But he got past her and threw his arms around my father’s leg, and my father absently picked him up, although he was getting so big that his legs dangled halfway down the length of my father’s body.

“Dear God, no,” said my aunt behind me, but I knew she couldn’t hear a thing and was just offering up some general bad-news prayer. Then there was some shaking of hands and nodding of heads, and the two state police guys got back in their car and drove down the road.

“Everything’s okay,” my father called, but the party broke up pretty fast after that and there we were, sitting in the yard on lawn chairs, waiting for my father to spill it.

“They’re looking for your brother,” he said to me and Eddie, and Debbie put her hand to her mouth. “He beat somebody up pretty bad last night.”

“So they say,” said my mother.

“Oh, come on, Mom,” said Eddie.

“Don’t you ‘come on’ me, Edward. The police have been known to accuse all kinds of people of all kinds of things they didn’t do.”

“That’s right,” said Steven.

“Dad, you want me to go look for him?” Eddie said.

“Let them look, son,” my father said. “They’ll find him, or they won’t. Then they’ll put a warrant out, or whatever they do. We can’t do anything until they find him, and talk to him, and charge him.”

“Maybe charge him,” said my mother. “Maybe not. We don’t know.”

“Miriam, if it wasn’t this it would be something else. Everyone in the county says he’s dealing drugs, and he’s torn up the tavern twice, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some other girl turns up here in trouble, and who knows what else.” He looked around suddenly, but Clifton was across the road, talking to the cows. “Be realistic.”

“You give up on your own son, you do it alone, Bud.” She went inside, the screen door slamming. My father called over his shoulder, “Ruth, if that boy is in your back bedroom again, you better come clean about it right now. Don’t make me search your place.”

“He’s not here, Buddy, I swear.” She sniffled, loud enough to be heard outdoors.

“Maybe I better go looking for him,” said my father wearily, using both arms to push himself out of the chair. “Mimi, you stay here in