He Never Forgot Read online

  Maybe they, as kids, had tried to make up for the lack of love that their parents showed.

  For his mother, another baby was just another problem. More trouble. More tears. Another mouth to feed. She would be in bed for the first few weeks. Zachary had thought this normal, and it wasn’t until he was an adult that he realized it wasn’t. Mothers didn’t just hand over their newborns and take to their beds for weeks after birth. But it had been normal in his family, and Zachary and the older girls had taken the babies and cared for them the best they could, rotating through the duties of feeding and changing and trying to keep the little ones quiet so that their mother could sleep, until she finally got out of bed and started to see to her responsibilities again.

  And there was something else niggling at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t think of what it was. He couldn’t quite seem to reach it. Like an itch in the middle of his back.

  “Tyrrell?”

  There was no response on the other end of the phone. Zachary sat down on the couch. He readjusted the pillows and pulled a blanket over him and lay partly reclined, listening to Tyrrell breathing.

  14

  Kenzie rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers through her mussy hair, looking at Zachary.

  “Where were you? I woke up and you were gone.”

  “Just here. I didn’t want to keep you awake.”

  “You should stay. You don’t have to leave if you’re having trouble sleeping.”

  “You’re working today. You needed to get your sleep.”

  “Well, so do you.”

  “Not as much. And if I need to stop and take a nap in the middle of the day, I can.”

  “And when is the last time you did that?”

  Zachary didn’t answer. If Kenzie thought about it, she knew the answer to the question. He had done little but sleep after the assault. He would get up late in the morning, try to do some work, and fall asleep in the middle of it. His brain just shut down, not letting him function. It had taken some pretty intense work with Dr. Boyle before he’d been able to start to regulate his sleep schedule again. As regular as it could be.

  He preferred not being able to sleep to sleeping all the time.

  “Do you want coffee, or are you going to shower first?” he asked Kenzie.

  Kenzie yawned and considered. “I think I’d better have the coffee first, or I’m going to fall asleep in the shower. You want one?”

  Zachary passed her his mug. “Yes, please.”

  “How many have you had?”

  Zachary looked at the mug in her hand, considering. “I think… two.”

  “You need something other than coffee for breakfast.”

  “A granola bar?” Zachary suggested.

  He knew the sugary granola bars weren’t the healthiest choice. But he was usually too nauseated to eat in the morning. Kenzie had tried enough different breakfast possibilities on him to come up with a limited list of acceptable choices, one of which was chocolate chip granola bars.

  So she nodded without arguing about it and went into the kitchen.

  “Are you feeling okay this morning?” she asked when she returned and they were both sitting down with their mugs. “That nightmare really seemed to bother you.”

  “Yeah.” The horror and grief of the nightmare had faded over the hours that he’d been up, puttering away at the pile of computer work and billings that were always piling up. “It’s fine now. I’m not sure why it bothered me so much.”

  “It wasn’t… a dream about Archuro this time?”

  “No.” Zachary described the dream to her. She listened with a frown.

  “Huh. I wonder what triggered that.”

  “Current case, I think, but I don’t know about the part about choosing between twins.”

  “Oh.” Kenzie took a sip of her coffee.

  Zachary frowned. “What?”

  “Twins. I can only think of one reason you’d be thinking about twins right now.”

  Zachary analyzed the expression on her face. She wasn’t happy about it. Few things would put that expression on her face other than Bridget.

  Bridget was expecting twins. Or at least, that was what Zachary assumed from Gordon’s mention of “the babies” rather than “the baby.” Hopefully, “the babies” only meant twins, and not triplets or more. He couldn’t imagine Bridget, who had steadfastly refused to consider having children when she and Zachary were married, agreeing to carry more than two babies to term. It must have taken some convincing for Gordon to persuade her to keep twins.

  “I hadn’t even made that connection,” he told Kenzie.

  “Are you worrying about her having twins?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think it was keeping me up at nights, but… it’s hard to get it out of my mind.”

  “You think she can’t handle it?”

  Zachary shook his head, trying to put it into words. “Well… what do you think?”

  “She’s not exactly the most stable person.”

  “Kenzie…” he protested.

  “She’s fixated on you. She says she wants you to leave her alone, blows up if she even happens to see you somewhere, and pops back into your life acting like she’s concerned about you or because she wants a favor.”

  “She’s just… we were together for a long time and it was a very emotional relationship. And I made a lot of mistakes; she’s right about that.” It wasn’t a new argument. And it was something probably best left for their next session with Dr. Boyle.

  “Well, maybe having twins will take her focus off of you. She’ll be distracted by other things.”

  Zachary nodded. “Yeah. Maybe it will be good for her.”

  But he still worried. How was Bridget going to manage it? He couldn’t help returning to his thoughts the night before of how his mother had been after she gave birth, and how impossible it would have been for her to handle twins. Bridget had sophisticated tastes. She liked the company of adults, attending events and going to museums and fundraisers. She didn’t even like children, as far as Zachary could tell. He’d been the one in the relationship who was baby hungry, who’d been happy when she had a positive pregnancy test.

  Only the test had been wrong.

  And that had been the beginning of the end of their marriage. Not just the revelation that she had cancer, but the fact that he had been happy about the possibility of a baby, and she had unilaterally made the decision to terminate.

  “Gordon has money,” Kenzie said, her eyes on Zachary’s face. “They can afford all of the nannies and maids they need.”

  “Yeah.” Zachary crumbled the granola bar into the bowl that Kenzie had given it to him in. “She’ll have lots of help.”

  15

  Burton was up earlier than usual, surprising Zachary by calling him before noon.

  “Are you free? What time could we go to see the house?” he demanded.

  “I’m pretty open today. But remember, Ms. Pace said that it might not be there. She thought it might have been redeveloped.”

  Burton snorted. “That was just so I wouldn’t go look. I don’t know why she didn’t want me to go. I don’t care what anyone says about it, I’m going to go back.”

  “Okay. You could be ready in an hour?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready any time.”

  “All right. I’ll give you a call when I get there.”

  But as it turned out, he didn’t need to call Burton when he got to the hotel. Burton was already outside the Best Western in the parking lot, chain-smoking. He tossed his cigarette aside when he saw Zachary, and climbed into the car, immediately filling it with the smell of cigarette smoke. Zachary rolled the windows down farther than he had on the previous occasion, glad that he was wearing a jacket and that it was warmer than it had been recently. Burton made no comment about the windows and made no apology for the cloud of smoke that clung to him.

  Zachary had checked to make sure he knew where Peach Tree Lane was before leaving his apartment, and also had his phone in it
s dash mount with the maps app on display in case he had any trouble finding it.

  “I can’t believe I’m finally going to see it,” Burton said, sitting forward in his seat and staring out the window like it might come into sight at any minute. “You must think I’m crazy for being so attached to a place I can’t even remember. But… I have to see it. That’s all I can say. I really, really need to.”

  Zachary nodded. “I actually don’t think it’s that strange. Why do people build monuments? Some places are important in our lives. Sometimes, we just need to stand where our ancestors stood. Or where we came from.”

  Burton nodded. For a while, he just watched out the window. He broke his gaze to look over at Zachary. “Thanks for agreeing to come with me. I know I could have just taken a cab, but I… could use your support. I didn’t want to do this alone.”

  It was too bad that he hadn’t brought his parents or a friend along with him. Zachary felt like a poor substitute for the emotional support that Burton needed. But maybe he had burned too many bridges with his previous behavior.

  “We’re getting close now,” Zachary said, pulling off of the main road into the development. He glanced around. “You might start to recognize some of the landmarks in this area. I don’t know what they looked like twenty or thirty years ago, but a lot of these places look like they’ve been standing for a good while.”

  Burton nodded. He didn’t say what he recognized, if anything. His face was very pale, a stark contrast to his hair and eyes.

  Zachary slowed, looking at the street signs and at the crossroads marked on the GPS map. Two more blocks. They seemed interminably long. Much longer, he was sure, for Burton, who was sitting so far forward on his seat that Zachary worried what would happen to him if they were in an accident.

  “Just coming up to it now,” he warned.

  At the next intersection, he turned onto Peach Tree Lane. Burton rolled his window down all the way and hung out the window like a dog, looking at each of the houses with ravenous eyes.

  Zachary slowed the car to a crawl. He didn’t want to be responsible for Burton getting hurt if he suddenly decided to jump out of the car, or be unable to stop the instant Burton saw what he was looking for.

  “Is this it? Is this it?” Burton called out, gesturing.

  Zachary hit the brakes. Burton jumped out. He looked at the house they had stopped at.

  Chain-link fence. Bungalow. It hadn’t been replaced with a duplex. Nor had it been knocked down and replaced with a new single-family dwelling. The structure was clearly more than thirty years old.

  It was run down. Faint blue paint, cracked and peeling. A couple of windowpanes broken and taped over with cardboard. The front lawn was brown and probably wouldn’t grow unless it were reseeded. There were no peach trees ready to bloom. In the front yard, there were a couple of old, rusted tricycles. A family lived there. Or had lived there at some point.

  Burton stood on the sidewalk outside the yard, looking in.

  “Is this it?” Zachary asked.

  Burton didn’t answer. Zachary took a picture of the house, then took a couple of pictures of the corners of the yard.

  “Do you want to look at the back or ask if you can go inside?”

  Burton looked back at him with wide eyes. Zachary gave him time to think it through. He knew it had to be pretty difficult for Burton to work through. If Zachary had been able to go back to his home, or had even gone back to the lot where it had once stood, it would have been impossible for him to talk about it or do anything. Not for a long time.

  Zachary looked around the neighborhood. It was the type of area he had envisioned. Low income, an older area. Not quite a slum. There were people in yards or on the sidewalk. Not behind closed doors, afraid of gangs.

  People were watching them. Neighbors watching to see what was going on. Curious about the strangers staring at a random house along the street. Debt collectors? Cops? Salesmen? Missionaries? They didn’t quite fit any of the usual scenarios.

  Eventually, a man came along the sidewalk to talk to them. Taller than Zachary but shorter than Burton. Lots of tattoos, piercings, and a straggly beard. He was heavyset. Someone who sat in front of the TV a lot, or maybe on a motorbike or driving a truck or bus.

  “Help you, guys?” he challenged.

  Zachary gave Burton a few seconds to explain and, when he didn’t, but kept staring at the house, Zachary filled the biker dude in.

  “My friend used to live here. He wanted to see it again. He just needs… some time to process it.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed, thinking about this. He shook his head. “Lived here when? What’s the problem?”

  “When he was a child. Very young. He’s been trying to find it for some time. To reconnect with his heritage.”

  The biker looked around, his bushy brows pushed together. “Reconnect with his heritage? What kind of crap is that? What’s the point in that? Seeing the house he lived in? It’s not like a foreign country or different culture. It’s white trash growing up in a white trash neighborhood.”

  “No, this isn’t what I grew up in,” Burton said. He looked around him, taking in the rest of the neighborhood for the first time. “This is nothing like what I grew up in.”

  The man gave a short laugh. “Well, good news for you. Congratulations. Don’t know why anyone would want to come back to a trash place like this.”

  Burton put his hand down on the chain-link fence and looked at it, like his hand was something alien. Did he remember the fence from another perspective? How tall it had been when he had been four or five years old? Was he remembering his little-boy hand grasping the links of the fence, trapped like an animal behind it? Burton stared, mesmerized.

  “You guys should move along,” the biker advised. “You’ve seen what you came for. So get out of here. Go back to your fancy houses and leave us alone.”

  Zachary bit back a sharp retort. It wasn’t like they were hurting anything, standing there looking at the house. But he’d dealt with guys like this before. It would be very easy to trigger a negative reaction, and Zachary had no desire to end up in some kind of physical altercation with the stranger. He was the one who was off of his own turf. The police would not be sympathetic to someone who had trespassed on the hospitality of another neighborhood and stirred up trouble.

  “If you could give him just a few more minutes,” Zachary said. “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but this is the only piece of his past that he has. He just needs a few minutes.”

  “Well… wrap it up quick. I don’t want to have to warn you again.” The biker gave a curt nod, and left them alone again.

  Zachary breathed out slowly. He studied Burton, wondering how long it would be before he could suggest moving on.

  “Do you want me to take a picture of you here?” he suggested.

  Burton looked at him, eyes hollow. “What do you think happened?” he asked.

  Zachary raised his brows. “I don’t know what happened. Do you… remember something? Have an idea?”

  “No,” Burton growled, as if Zachary had been pestering him about it. “I don’t remember.”

  “You have… a bad feeling about it?”

  Burton nodded jerkily.

  “Do you want to go around the back? Talk to the owner?”

  “They don’t live here anymore. Tell me they don’t live here anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t expect so. People in neighborhoods like this… they don’t stay for decades. A year or two maybe. I’m sure your birth parents don’t still live here. Do you want me to make inquiries? We shouldn’t stay too long; I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “What would you say?”

  “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell them who you are and to see if you can go inside? Or do you want me just to get some general background? How long they’ve been here, and if they know who owned it before they did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to go in?”r />
  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you just wait here, then, and I’ll go see if there is anybody home?”

  Burton nodded jerkily.

  Zachary breathed slowly and evenly. While Burton’s reaction made him anxious, it wasn’t like it was his own house. It wasn’t part of his past. He could do what he had set out to do, helping Burton to find what he needed—just inquiring for a client. He pushed back the catch for the gate and let himself into the yard. He closed the gate behind him and made sure the latch caught. If they had a dog or a child, they wouldn’t be thanking him for letting it out of the yard.

  He walked up the broken sidewalk blocks to the door and knocked politely. A woman opened the door. She had dark hair and eyes and was around Zachary’s age, some fine lines on her face, especially around the eyes. She hunched her shoulders, looking at him fiercely.

  “Who are you? What do you want here?”

  “I’m just helping out a friend, ma’am.” It wasn’t the time to be announcing that he was a private investigator. “He used to live in this house a long time ago.”

  Her eyes went to Burton, still standing outside of the yard, then back to Zachary. “So what? Why do I care about that?”

  “I just wondered how long you’ve lived here. If you know any of the history of the house?”

  “The history?” She shook her head, scowling. “What would I know about the history of a place like this? I live here. My son lives here. His children. We don’t know anything about the house.”

  “I understand. Have you lived here long?”

  “What does it matter? A few years, that’s all.”

  “Do you know who lived here before you did? The previous owners?”

  “Same owners, probably,” she told him. “I don’t own this pile of sticks. I just rent.”

  “Oh, of course. Sorry. And the owners haven’t changed?”

  “I told you I don’t know. I only live here. I rent. I don’t ask anyone questions.”