Return to Paradise

CHAPTER FOUR

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE IS AN OLDER HOME IN the country, two stories tall and filled with so much wood paneling that it feels kind of like a cabin on the inside. It’s where my parents and I are staying for the time being since our house is basically a pile of ash. My parents were going to start looking at building something new when everything in town went crazy, so now we’re camping out with Nana—my dad’s mom—indefinitely.

I’m hardly out of my truck before Abby, our golden retriever, is on her hind legs and trying to lick my face. Dozer, our bulldog, stands up on the porch and looks for a moment like he’s going to come greet me too before he just falls back down and starts to snore.

Inside, the house smells delicious—like pot roast and mashed potatoes. It’s my dad’s favorite, which means he’s probably in a bad mood today and Nana is trying to snap him out of it. My guess is justified, because when my grandmother peeks around the corner from the kitchen, she tells me Mom’s staying in Cleveland for another few weeks visiting her family, which, knowing my mom, is code for “I’m going crazy in this house with my mother-in-law.” She’s been acting kind of weird and distant since the whole house fire thing, but I keep telling myself things will be fine and she’ll come back to Paradise once everything’s blown over.

Dad gets home not much later than I do. I guess that’s one of the perks of being cut out of a big investigation—you get to have dinner on time every night. He tosses his dark sheriff’s hat on a table near the front door and heads to the guest room he’s staying in upstairs. Soon he’s back down in a sweatshirt and jeans, and the three of us sit down for dinner at Nana’s ancient round dining-room table that must weigh two tons.

Nana says grace and asks us about our days. I give a vague answer about school going well—as far as my family knows, there’s no difference in who I was at Paradise and who I am at Helena. My dad asks a few questions about whether or not the administration has decided if Paradise will have a baseball team this spring or if we’ll get merged with our new school, which would be worse than having no baseball at all. I shrug and dig into my dinner.

Eventually, I get to prodding about the investigation.

“I saw Todd today,” I say between bites of meat. “He told me they’re not even letting him up to the campus, even though he’s supposed to be protecting the site.”

“Officer Charleston,” Dad says, chewing through Todd’s last name, “is not supposed to be gossiping about police affairs. And certainly not about any ongoing investigations.”

“It was my fault. I stopped by when I saw he was manning the roadblock. Forced him into talking to me. Don’t worry; he wouldn’t let me step so much as a foot past him.”

Dad doesn’t say anything, just keeps on chewing with his eyes on his plate. I clear my throat a little and keep talking.

“So, uh. Have you been over to the school? What have they got going on over there? Any ideas about who or what was behind everything?”

“The Smith kid and his father were behind it,” Dad says, parroting the same thing everyone else has been saying.

I want to correct him and tell him that Henri wasn’t actually John’s father. That he was some kind of guardian who protected me and Sarah and the others—who died doing so. And that I watched his body burn in a ceremony behind a slummy motel close by.

But as far as Dad knows, John Smith was just a quiet guy in some of my classes, and I was nowhere near Paradise High the night everything went down. So instead I just ask: “How can they be sure it was him, though?”

“They’re sure.” Dad’s voice is gruff, meaning he’s done talking about the subject.

“Who wants more rolls?” Nana asks.

“Yeah, but what proof do they have?” I ask, feeling a little bad for ignoring my grandmother. “They must have something on him if they keep telling everyone he did it.”

Dad drops his fork down on his plate and looks across the table at me.

“Do you know who the ‘they’ is you keep mentioning, Mark?”

“Uh, sort of. The FBI, for one.”

“And you’ve probably seen enough movies to know how the FBI works. And what happens to people who ask questions about top-secret investigations, right?”

“Sure,” I say. “Black bags over your head and stuff.”

“I don’t know about that, but the last thing I want is for my son to end up in trouble because he was poking around in things he should’ve let be. It’s bad enough that Sarah was involved with this boy. The last thing I want is for you to get wrapped up in it too.”

“Of course,” I say.

He picks up his fork and keeps eating, but my head spins. Sarah was involved with this boy. It’s not the fact that this is true that makes my stomach drop, it’s that my dad knows. I rack my brain, trying to think of a moment I might have mentioned that Sarah and John were dating before, or even after everything happened, but I can’t think of one. Talking about a guy who kicked my ass and stole my girl is not exactly the type of thing I would bring up with my family. If Dad knows Sarah was “involved” with John, it’s from the investigation. Meaning the FBI and whoever else is in Paradise right now must know too.

“You got another letter from Ohio State today,” Nana says as she tries to force a second round of mashed potatoes on me.

The nice thing about living in a small town is that if your house burns down, the mailman can probably still find you.

“I’ll look at it later.”

“Just like the letters from other colleges you said you’d take care of, right?” Dad asks. “The ones that have piled up on your desk? I went and looked at them earlier, and half of them haven’t even been opened yet.”

“It’s just—,” I start, but he won’t have it.

“Jesus, Mark. Do you have any idea how lucky you are? Do you have any idea how many other kids would kill to have schools clawing at each other to have you attend. To have even half of the scholarship money some of these places are offering you just to do what you love? To play football? How ungrateful . . .”

He keeps going, but I zone out a little bit. When I think back on how hard and boring I thought the application process was for colleges, I feel like an idiot. But it was the most important thing in my life at the time, trying to remember whether or not I’d sent off all the right transcripts and letters of recommendation. Now I realize there are much, much bigger things to worry about.

Dad keeps lecturing me. He’s normally a really nice guy. Good to us. Always there when I need him. The one thing he doesn’t like, though, is when he feels useless. When things get taken out of his hands or jurisdiction and he gets cut out of the loop. Then he gets cranky and starts to become a real dick at home.

I guess that’s something I must have inherited from him.