Yates shouted over the twittering of birds and the groaning of traffic down on Broad Street, and then, surprisingly, begged his son to finish mowing the yard. Crolley saw Bree come from Miranda’s house. She walked across the street and stopped at his porch, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “Back to keeping watch?” she asked.
When Crolley shrugged, she nodded. “What’s on TV?”
He shifted in his lawn chair. “Walker, Texas Ranger,” he said.
Bree smiled sadly. “Don’t let anybody make you feel guilty, Crolley,” she said. “Don’t be nobody’s scapegoat.”
Crolley knew then that Bree didn’t believe he’d done a thing wrong and that he was no more a suspect than she was. He felt his heart surge toward her. He pointed at his television. “You want to watch?”
Bree tilted her head a little. “Not today,” she said. “I got to get home, but thanks for the offer.”
Crolley watched her stroll to her house, climb her porch steps, and slip inside. Until she had pulled up the other day with the U-Haul trailer behind her late father’s old pick-up, Crolley hadn’t even known Bree was planning to leave Kelley Street. He still didn’t know where she was going. In the past several weeks, though, he had noticed Bree coming home from work later than usual, dressed in spandex and tennis shoes, Antonio barking in anticipation when she opened the door.
Apparently Miranda and Byron had noticed Bree’s absence, too. About two months before the disappearances, they crossed the street and stood at the foot of Crolley’s porch steps.
“Crolley,” Miranda had said. “Byron and me want to go out for a little while. We just need some quiet time between the two of us.” At this, Byron winked at Crolley. Miranda rolled her eyes. “Bree seems to be gone all the time these days—otherwise we’d ask her.” She smiled and Crolley nodded. “The boys are inside,” Miranda continued. “Would you mind just keeping an eye on the house? They know how to keep themselves busy. Got more games and movies than you could shake a stick at. We’ll just be gone a couple hours.”
What else could he have done? Could he have really said no? He’d be sitting on the porch anyway, long after dark, watching TV, and those kids needed somebody to look after them. He said okay.
“Thank you, Crolley, partna,” Byron had said. “You’re a number one neighbor in my book.” Byron winked again, which Crolley didn’t understand and didn’t like, and they left.
Nobody had told Crolley that Byron and Miranda were together, but he watched Byron come and go, come and go, and he understood. He had liked Byron because he liked his sister Bree, but now he couldn’t think of a single nice thing about the man. Over the course of several weeks, rejection and jealousy had risen like acrid smoke inside Crolley’s chest. He’d been such a good neighbor to her, toiled for her, and she hadn’t given him so much as a wave until now, as if she were scared of him. And all Byron had done was cross the street, make her laugh with a few tired jokes, and he’d won her heart and her bed. Crolley didn’t understand it, and he felt ousted, cuckolded. He told himself that he was only agreeing to watch Miranda’s house for the boys’ sake, because they needed somebody to look after them, because it was a decent, neighborly thing to do.
From then on, about once a week, Miranda or Byron came over and asked if he’d watch the house and he said sure. A couple of times he moved from his perch on the porch, crossed over and knocked on the door. The boys answered it together, and he asked them if everything was all right. They nodded and closed the door, and he trudged back across the street to sit until Miranda and Byron returned a couple of hours later. They never stayed away longer than they said they would, and they always shouted a thank you before going into the house.