For the second time in three days, police and paramedics filled the end of the street in front of the house on the hilltop. Their red and blue lights spun color across the windows and bricks, a flashing carousel in the early morning gloom. Anyone left on the street had come out of their homes: Cora and Maeve, Alan and Brian, Niecey, Tom and Ann. They were gathered on the sidewalk, speaking quietly amongst themselves, Maeve recounting again how she'd stumbled across the body, Alan claiming he'd board up Dottie's broken window so "those damned cats" couldn't go in and out. The shimmering dawn, the frosty mist gave the entire scene a surreal effect, especially as those huddling with one another were hardly friends, barely acquaintances. It was a weird street, with weird people, and now one of them was dead.
"I hardly even knew him," Ann was loudly saying to her husband.
"He was very reclusive," was her husband's reply. "It's not our fault he was alone."
"They said the cats were eating him. Wonder what his family will think of that." Niecey croaked her addition to the conversation and turned to head back into her house, struggling with her walker.
Cora had been standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, attempting to avoid Brian though not really needing to try as he stood a good twenty or so feet away from her. Seeing Niecey's predicament, she hustled over to the old woman and bent down to pull the foot of the walker from a crack in the pavement, where it'd stuck. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"He had dementia," the old woman responded, ignoring Cora's question.
"Dementia? You mean, like, he was losing his mind?"
"Don't we all, though? You think you're spared because you're young?" She laughed hoarsely.
A bit weirded out, Cora continued walking alongside the old woman, partially because she worried Niecey would stumble and partially out of some compulsion. That photograph she'd dug out of her neighbor's trash had been simmering in the back of her thoughts for some time, but she didn't know how to ask about it without revealing that she'd been snooping.
"Your house," Niecey went on before Cora could say anything else. "Why was he at your house, eh? What do you think? Came all the way up the street. For what?"
The woman was moving steadily down the pathway that led to her front door, her walker's legs grating against the concrete. Cora walked in the crunchy grass, glad her furry slipper boots kept the damp out. "I don't know why he—"
"Because he knew, that's why. Even in his muddled head, he knew. Hadn't he lived here his whole life?"
"Knew what?"
"Something straight out of hell, it's what he knew."
Cora frowned, unsettled. The woman sounded angry, bitter even, speaking as if to herself. Placing a hand on the walker to stop it, Cora asked firmly, "Niecey, what are you talking about?"
Suddenly, the woman seemed to recognize her, bobbed her head a bit. Light entered her black eyes; a smile revealed a few of her teeth. "You wild girl, you! I saw that handsome young man come to visit you last night. I always liked them rebellious, myself."
She was talking about Ben, obviously, but Cora didn't want to discuss him. "You said the old man, the one who died in my yard—Mr. George, right?—you said he knew something."
"I did?"
"Yes. What did he know?"
Niecey's cordial smile wavered. "I'm sorry, hon. I don't know what you mean."
There was no point in pushing. Cora sighed, finished helping the woman to her door, made up some excuse about being unable to come in and look through Niecey's old clothes to see if she wanted any, and returned to the dispersing group of neighbors. Just as she reached her mother's side, she caught sight of Brian's retreating figure. She'd not spoken or texted with him since the night before, when they'd parted on unfortunate terms. Whatever he'd said to Ben had apparently stopped Ben from trying to get into her house, and she was grateful for that. She wanted to talk to Brian, but she was unsure how to start a conversation.
The back of the coroner's vehicle slammed Mr George's body into itself, forever shutting the doors on an old man's life. The police exchanged some parting words and documentation with her mother then entered their cars, and the morbid convoy headed down the quiet street into the gray beyond.
Cora suddenly felt too tired to stand anymore. She wanted to be back in her room, warm and at peace, sedating herself with some hot drink and bleak poetry. She began to climb the hill, a mixture of restlessness and disquiet contending within her, put off by Niecey's comments and Dottie's gross cats and the thought of an old man dying alone on the frozen ground in her backyard. The porch swing looked inviting in its gentle sway, but Cora's toes were beginning to grow a bit numb. She pushed through the front door and gave a quick glance toward the kitchen, but her mother hadn't made any coffee (presumably because she'd been distracted by the dead body), so she went ahead and filled the pot, dumped the old filter and put in the new, and began brewing, figuring her mother deserved as much. Then Cora was off to her room.
Lying on her back on her bed, the girl stared up at the dim ceiling, wondering what dying was like. Perhaps for a disintegrated mind, it wasn't so bad. Mr. George--whom she'd met only once in passing--may not have even known he was dying. Maybe it'd happened like falling asleep; he'd just laid down and drifted off, the cold claiming him with its icy fingers. Or had it been a heart attack? She'd probably never know. It wasn't as if she had any right to know. He wasn't her family, which is why it was so weird that he'd come all the way up the street to her house. That man could hardly walk, let alone make it up the sloping hill and then the even steeper mound on which sat her house. What had caused him to do it?
Niecey said he'd lived on this street his whole life. It seemed a pathetic existence.
Still wrapped in her blanket like a burrito, Cora wriggled out of it and sat up, reached toward her dresser for her markers. She'd been drawing on her walls, mostly to kill time, but also because once she'd started, one doodle had looked dumb. Two had looked even dumber, so she'd decided to go all or nothing and just keep it up. Her mother had walked in and seen her artwork one day, gaped, sighed, said nothing, and left. Cora figured that was permission enough to keep going. She'd mostly been drawing in the corners with the thought that they'd be easier to hide, but now that it didn't matter, she'd started making her pictures around the window frame next to her bed.
Black permanent marker uncapped and ready to go, Cora was suddenly startled when her phone actually rang. It never rang. And when she picked it up off the floor where it had fallen, she saw it was Brian.
A brief anxiety fluttered through her, but she went ahead and answered. "Why are you calling?"
"Hey to you, too." Brian's voice may or may not have sounded slightly hurt--it was difficult to tell without being able to see his expressive brown eyes. "I don't know. Just wanted to have a conversation. It's easier this way."
"Nobody calls anybody anymore."
"I thought you weren't like everybody else. Don't you still email your grandma?"
Cora bit her lip; she'd told him a while ago about Luce. She got back up on her bed and sat on her knees, began to doodle absent-mindedly. "Fine. I guess it's okay."
He took his time going on, at last saying, "I wanted to make sure you're good, is all. I'd be kind of upset if I found a dead person in my yard."
"You could've said as much when we were standing out there, like, five minutes ago."
"You . . . didn't really look like you wanted to talk."
Cora huffed a short laugh. "I wonder why not."
A sigh from the other end. "Yeah, all right." The girl could visualize Brian rubbing his face in resignation. "Look," he added, "I'm sorry about last night. I didn't mean to come off as a jerk."
The conversation lulled. Cora figured he expected her to say something, but she wasn't going to make it too easy for him. "Is that all?"
"Well--"
"No explanation?"
"I'll explain, if you want me to. But I want to do it in person. I . . . I want to take you somewhere. Are you feeling up for it? Or are you still sick?"
The girl's mouth hung half-open in reply, unsure how to feel about his request. But then she licked her lips, heart dancing a little. "You mean . . . today?"
"Yeah, I'm off today. Sunday, you know."
"Right. Um, yes, then. I guess I'm feeling okay."
"Oh, great!" he returned, noticeably enthusiastic. "Unless you're doing something with your friend, I mean. I saw his car is still there and everything."
Cora's hand paused mid-sketch. She turned on her bed and sat with her feet on the ground. "Ben? He--he didn't stay with you?"
"What? No. Why would he?"
"Well, I . . . I suggested he stay over with you, or sleep in his car."
"It didn't look like he was in his car."
Cora's body slumped. She stared at the music box and the little pile of jewelry on her dresser without actually seeing any of it. "Well, he isn't here, either." Her eyes refocused on the room. "I'll call him and figure it out. But--but yeah, I mean, I can go out for a while. Just nothing social, ok? I don't want to be around people."
"Perfect."
"Okay. I'm going to do some stuff. I'll come by later, like, this afternoon."
They agreed on a time and hung up. For a moment, Cora contemplated actually communicating with Ben. Did she really want to talk to him, after last night? He'd gone too far, that was for sure. It'd be inviting trouble to try to bring him back. Still . . . it was weird that his car was parked out front, without him. It didn't seem like something he'd leave behind. But maybe he'd come back. Maybe she didn't have to do anything about it. He'd totally come back. Right now, she wanted only to sleep for a little while, to lose herself somewhere else.
Capping her marker, tossing it onto the floor, Cora lay back down on her bed, noticing with a slight shiver and a mild concern what she'd drawn along the side of her window--a long, lanky, corpse-like figure, and though it would've made sense for it to represent Mr. George, the girl had the definite impression that it was meant to be someone else.