A police car, ambulance, and fire truck were lined up at my neighbor’s house, and a body zipped in a black bag was lying on a stretcher. My hand flew to my mouth. What the ever-living just happened? I had heard sirens on my walk, but I always heard them and thought nothing of it. Why would I ever think they were coming to my neighbor’s home?
It was our day to watch Chris, Clay, Connor, and Claire, and yes, trying not to screw up their names was difficult. On more than one occasion, I would call the 10-year-old triplets by each other’s names. Claire, the 7-year-old, would just roll her eyes. “Grandma, you will never get it right.” I had to hand it to her. She knew her grandma well.
As we get closer to the house, I watch as they are camped out on the sidewalk, just staring, along with other neighbors, more coming by the minute.
Breathless, I let Hercules pull me to where they were, his tail wagging. “Boys, what’s going on?”
“Don’t know,” Chris said. “Heard the sirens and came out.
My eyebrows scrunch inward as I think about the hump I saw just an hour earlier that, now as I look, has been dug up and the hole emptied. So that’s what that was. But who is it? The thought makes my stomach flip flop.
My across-the-street neighbor and good friend, Leah, scurried across and met us.
“Oh my, what happened?”
“We’re still trying to figure it out.”
Leah Abernacky, no, not Abernathy, has been my friend for 20 years. She and her husband, Trevor, and their four kids moved in close to the same time we did, and apart from her impeccable style as an interior designer and the fact that she always looks like she’s hitting the red carpet, we are two peas in a pod. We’re the same age, height at 5’5, and have dark brown hair with silver streaks peppered throughout, and we both love gardening. Our boys are also the same age – Jason and Jared are 33 and 31, and her twin girls, who are gorgeous and own a law firm, just turned 29. However, neither is married, and her two boys are across the country in New York, married and with three kids between them; however, she only sees them once a year. So, she told me when my grandkids arrived that she would adopt them as her own and dub them her by-proxy grandkids.
Today, she’s wearing black yoga pants and a white tank; her medium-length, dark brown hair, is pulled into a tight low ponytail. I know she just finished working out. At 57, she looks fantastic. But it wasn’t always like that. After gaining nearly 50 pounds several years ago and developing high blood pressure, her doctor told her to lose the weight and start exercising, so she didn’t end up having a heart attack or stroke.
She took it to heart and is now a fitness fanatic, and you can tell, as she has a slim waist and somewhat of a six-pack and bulging arm muscles that put mine and our whole blocks to shame. Even though I walk, garden, and occasionally hike, I can’t compare to her two-hour daily workouts that would kill me – no joke. She also has minor wrinkles, and I swear she has Botox done.
“I just finished my workout when I heard those god-awful sirens and thought the worst.” She hugged me fiercely, nearly knocking the breath out of me. “I don’t know what I would have done if it had been your house they were going to.”
“Oh Lee,” my nickname for her. “Same.”
We all watched as the police interviewed Deanna as she stared off into space. Her eyes were fixated on the spot where they found the body. Her long blonde hair looked mussed up, and tears slid down her cheeks. I could tell she was shaken up as she wrung her hands against her black tank top, and her left foot was shaking, making her gray baggy shorts go up and down. She shook her head several times. I couldn’t see the kids and wondered if a relative had come and was watching them inside the house. A horrible thought came to my mind, and I gasped … no, it couldn’t be, could it?
“What?” Leah turned to me.
“I just thought of who could be in the bag.” We both were thinking the same thing – Troy. “ Just an hour ago, as I started walking down the street, I saw this hump right where they found the body.”
“Really?” her eyes widened.
“Yeah. It was … odd, but I didn’t think anything of it since she’s always killing her plants from insufficient water or too much, or whatever. You know what I mean.” Leah nodded. Deanna wasn’t much of a gardener; that was her ex, Troy’s, passion. He sure knew how to grow herbs and vegetables and liked that more than the flowers. Still, he wanted the yard to look nice, so he agreed when I mentioned the David Austin roses. They lined his white vinyl fence, which pretty much borders every house on the block, with stunning yellow, white, red, and pink bushes that smelled heavenly. Just shortly after he left, I noticed the asters and figured Deanna put them in. The following year, they blossomed in the spring, and I recalled how pretty they were and that they fit the area nicely. However, the roses overgrew the area, and the weeds started piling up alongside the fence.
But with three kids in tow and Deanna needing to work, there just isn’t time to garden, as she has told me repeatedly. I completely understand as she looks haggard these days. When Troy first left, it devastated her. She didn’t eat and barely looked after the kids. Her mother came to live with them for a while and helped while Deanna worked two jobs. Even though she had alimony, it wasn’t enough.
I haven’t seen Troy since he left.
I figured there would be joint custody, but I never saw him come for the kids, which I thought was strange and heartbreaking for them.
I look around the street, and a crowd has gathered by now. People taking pictures with their phones and whispering and pointing. Sometimes, I hate social media because you know that’s where the pics end up and gossip starts, and before you know it, the whole street becomes a tourist attraction.
I’m not sure when we will find out who was buried there, and by the looks of it, Deanna won’t be telling us anytime soon. The police also won’t say anything until an identity is discovered. Still, I knew the Chief of Police as I went to school with him. Maybe I can get something out of him – just not yet.
“Grandma, what’s in the black bag?” Connor asks innocently. I don’t know how to answer him.
“I don’t know, sport.” Even though the boys are all the same age, Connor is more mature and the most sensitive. He also has high-functioning autism and is a brilliant kid.
“It’s a body, dummy,” Chris chimes in – the least sensitive of the three and the one without a filter.
“Chris!” I turned to scold him. “Why did you have to say that?”
“It’s true. The kid has to learn sometime about dead bodies.”
If this kid weren’t my grandson, I would be quite tempted to reach over and throttle him. He knows his brother has a difficult time with trauma, especially because he did learn about dead bodies when someone shot a neighbor kid when he was only seven years old.
My son and his family had lived in an apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, and while Connor was walking home from school, a fight broke out in one of the apartments, and he saw a teen shoot another teen, who then went down. Connor stared at the blood pooling around him and ran home. He didn’t speak for nearly a week after. It was also the same year he was diagnosed with autism.
Connor crowds closer to me and grabs my hand. My heart melts. “It’s okay.” A 7-year-old shouldn’t have to witness death at such a young age.” How do I know? My father passed when I was only Connor’s age. Sometimes, people die when they’re young.
The opposite neighbor to Deanna had come to see what was going on, and as I watched, he stood there with a slight grin, his arms folded. I glare at him. He never liked the Carmichaels, especially Troy. “He’s so damn loud,” I heard Jack Montgomery say once a few years ago. “Always blaring his music at 7:00 in the morning while I’m trying to sleep.”
Jack is a truck driver and is on the road more times than not. His wife, Cindy, and their two kids are recluses. Cindy is paranoid about anyone coming by, or as she says, “skulking about the street.” The 12- and 14-year-old girls, Brianna and Bridget, keep to themselves and don’t do what typical girls their age do. Cindy even homeschools them. It’s like their prisoners.
Jack couldn’t care less what they do since he’s never around, but Cindy was attacked when she was a teenager, and since then, she has developed a panic disorder and is mainly agoraphobic, meaning afraid of open spaces. She told the girls of her harrowing experience, which frightened them so much that they thought the world was a dangerous place, and if they went out for more than a few minutes, someone would attack them like they did their mother.
Cindy works from home as a computer programmer, so it works for her. She can constantly “keep an eagle’s eye on them and the street,” she told me once.
I feel for her and her girls. Life isn’t meant to be fearful.
Leah hugs me. “Got to go, but let’s chat later, k?” I nod and watch as she jogs across the street.
“All right guys, the show is over,” after the vehicles left, one by one, and yellow police tape surrounded the now empty spot in their yard.
“Oh, come on, Why can’t we stay outside? It’s summer,” Clay moaned. Yeah, that’s not the reason, and they know it.
“Boys?” I plant my hands on my hips, which the boys know means case closed. Claire obediently follows me while the boys take their sweet time. As I said before, Heaven help her.
As I start towards the door, I can still see Jack staring at me before he turns and walks away. It sent shivers through me.
But the one thought I can't get out of my head is Troy. There are so many questions now that a dead body has been discovered. Why have I never seen or heard from him? Deanna and I have had plenty of coffee chats; she never mentioned him. And then I start connecting the dots, and it dawns on me.
It’s almost like he … vanished.
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