Someone Else

Chapter 29 (Jeff)

Centerville, Utah slept deeply, dreaming of church assignments and soccer games, Pampered Chef parties and Disneyland vacations. Any mischief to be found in the middle of the night in this homogenous suburb, twelve miles north of Salt Lake City, certainly wouldn't emanate from Revere Rydell's quiet cul-de-sac of eight nearly identical starter homes, six minivans, and an astonishing twenty-five kids under the age of eleven. Parents in the neighborhood were simply too tired from chasing after toddlers—or secretly medicated—to be up at this hour. Statistically speaking, they might also be having procreation-oriented sex.

Jeff weaved Cleo's red Honda through an obstacle course of discarded scooters, abandoned bikes, and half-deflated soccer balls before pulling up in front of Rev's home. It had slipped his mind that Rev and his family—not-to-mention the entire neighborhood—would be sleeping.

Tucked into the top corner of the cul-de-sac, Rev's home still sported Christmas lights that had been hung before Thanksgiving, but not turned on since New Year's Eve. The snow in the front yard had been trampled by the tiny boots of Rev's children, who still viewed snow as an adventure, a mysteriously conjured substance that transformed their yard—their entire world—into a magical playground—cold, wet, slick, and wonderfully exotic.

A sane person would wait until morning to approach his brother with this strange request, but Jeff couldn't shake the feeling that he and Cleo would be discovered if he didn't swap cars soon. He also realized, with a smirk—that after the string of decisions he'd made in the past twenty-four hours, he could no longer be considered "sane."

Rev was his best option. He could convince his brother to loan him his car for a day or two. More importantly, Rev would ask the least amount of questions. His sister Maddie, on the other hand, would not only drill him for details, she'd require him to provide proof of insurance and two forms of I.D. before she'd even consider letting him take her car. And asking his parents was out of the question.

Once Jeff had convinced Steph that she couldn't come along, that he needed her to manage the store while he was gone, the plan had seemed simple. Now as he sat in front of Rev's darkened home, he realized that knocking on the door at this hour would not only be awkward, it would scare the hell out of Katie and probably wake his niece and nephew—the ultimate sin against bleary-eyed parents of young kids.

"Why don't you text him?" Cleo suggested, pulling out her phone.

Jeff declined to reach for it. He didn't know his brother's number. He couldn't miraculously pull it from the ether the way he had with Steph's. "Uhhh, let's go around back instead."

Cleo followed him to the backyard, their feet crunching on the well-trod snow. He approached a closed gate that led to the patio and fiddled with a latch until the gate swung open, revealing odds and ends of patio furniture stacked haphazardly against the home's aluminum siding. A small path, the exact width of one shovel, had been cleared from the backdoor of the home to a grill sitting underneath a plastic tarp, but the rest of the yard remained buried in snow. A dozen icicles, several at least two-feet long, hung from the rain gutters like jagged teeth.

Jeff pointed to the corner window on the second story. "Pretty sure that's his room," he whispered as he wrestled a deck chair out of the pile, brushed off a layer of snow, and placed it under the window.

He stepped carefully onto the chair, the cheap plastic wobbling under his weight, and lightly rapped his knuckles against the pane to the classic knock-knock tune, Shave and Haircut. Except he stopped before "two bits."

He listened for any movement inside the home. When nothing stirred, he tried again, using the same pattern, knock knock knockknock knock. Cleo could hardly refrain from tapping the two finishing notes of the song, but the night remained quiet.