The Remains by Vincent Zandri

attention to something else.
    “I should be getting back to the studio.
Thank you so much for your time.”
    She gave me an open-eyed look before turning
for the door. The look froze me. My eyes locked on her smooth face,
her long gray hair, her deep eyes—eyes that read me more than
looked at me. Her closed mouth expression spoke to me better than
words. It told me she knew I was hiding something. Caroline had
spent the better part of a lifetime trying to communicate with a
genius son who had virtually no communicative skills other than his
painting. Certainly Caroline knew better than most how to read a
face. I guess it would have been stupid for me to believe I could
fool her.
    Call it politeness or sensitivity or both,
but she chose not to push me.
    “You’re welcome here anytime,” she whispered
after a pause. “I miss you; your sister; your mother and father.
Even though you lived a few miles away from us, it felt good to
have such sweet neighbors.”
    There they were again: the forks of guilt
stabbing at the insides of my stomach.
    “We weren’t always great kids,” I
confessed.
    She laughed, set a hand on my shoulder.
    “You mean all those times you tried to get a
sneak peak at Boo Radley?”
    I felt of wash of pure humiliation pour down
my back. At the same time, I thought about the ratty novel that to
this day sat on my nightstand; all those sketched faces inside its
once blank margins.
    “Well allow me to let you in on something,
young lady. We used to get such a kick out of scaring you kids.
Francis especially enjoyed it. It was the only time you’d hear him
laugh.” For the first time since I arrived, I sensed her holding
back a tear. “In a real way, you were his only friends.”
    I turned for the door. But before I stepped
out, something caught my eye. A small black and white sketch I
hadn’t noticed when I walked in. The sketch was of Molly and me,
back when we were about twelve years old, around the time of the
assaults.
    My God, Franny was drawing us back then.
    “You and your sister,” Caroline said.
“Beautiful girls, beautiful painting. Francis must have been about
twenty-one or two when he did this.”
    I swallowed, because now it was me who was
holding back a tear.
    “Come on,” Caroline said, turning off the
light. “Francis is waiting for you at the school of art.”

Chapter 23
     
     
    CAROLINE WAS RIGHT. FRANNY was waiting for
me. But instead of hooking a right at the end of her driveway, I
turned left, drove deeper into the heart of the country. The road
was more narrow and winding than I remembered it. It followed the
up-and-down contours of the foothills instead of plowing right
through them like in the suburbs.
    After about a mile, I was able to make out
Mount Desolation situated beyond the woods and the fields that I
now called my own. The mountain was covered in the most beautiful
array of autumn reds, oranges and yellows. As it grew larger and
closer, I began to feel that tingle inside of me. It was an itch
that I used to often feel. The itch that signified the urge to
paint. Had I brought along my easel, I might have set up outside my
parents’ house and reproduced that small mountain and the dark
forest that surrounded it; reproduced it for the canvas, not unlike
Franny had just days ago.
    But I wouldn’t stay there long.
    Pulling up into my parents’ circular
driveway, the urge to create something gave way to the urge to
split the scene. But that wouldn’t be right. The three-story
farmhouse and its wraparound porch was all that remained of my
family history. I had to at least make sure the place was being
well cared for.
    I parked the Cabriolet at the top of the
drive, got out. Making my way to the front porch steps, I began to
feel my heart beat. Not a frantic pounding, but a speedier than
normal pulse that drummed inside my head. I slipped the key into
the lock and, twisting the knob, opened the door to that old
familiar creaky hinge noise. I stepped quietly