Bree Wilson, Byron’s sister, was the only person on Kelley Street in the habit of talking to Crolley. She lived in the boxy white house next door, the house she and Byron had grown up in, the house their parents died in. Her chihuahua was always running away, and Bree often stopped at Crolley’s porch steps to ask if he’d seen the dog. Crolley would point in the direction he’d seen Antonio trot.
The evening of the disappearances, Bree let Antonio out to squat in her front yard. After helping her brother and Miranda look for the children, Bree had stayed inside for the rest of the day. The police had kept her from Miranda’s house, and later two officers searched her U-Haul trailer—the smallest she could rent—to make sure the missing boys hadn’t decided to hide there, somehow suffocating in the airless heat inside. Bree knew that this was unlikely, because during the time the boys went missing, she was out picking up the U-Haul, and besides, the Shifflett boys weren’t that adventurous and they’d never bother other people’s stuff. Still, she understood it was better for the police to be safe than sorry.
She had planned to move away from Kelley Street the following day, Tuesday. She was headed to Ocean City, Maryland, a place she’d been planning to move for months because the name sounded pretty and she was tired of the mountains. She wanted the coast. She’d been trying to leave Harrisonburg for years and had finally gotten her chance when her brother moved in with Miranda Shifflett. But then these boys, who never caused anybody any trouble in their lives, suddenly decided to get lost. Thwarted, Bree thought, thwarted. Immediately she prayed for forgiveness for the thought. Her brother would need her; Miranda needed her. Bree had cried for the boys twice already that day, first while she’d jogged Kelley Street looking for them, and again while the police searched her U-Haul, partly because she feared that the children might actually be trapped inside, slumped over and half-dead among her meager things, and partly because she thought Josh and Dusty weren’t in there and the cops were wasting the time they could be using to search someplace else.
Now, out in the yard, Antonio finished pissing and bolted down the street. Bree caught him just in front of Crolley’s porch. Antonio squirmed in her arms, and Bree told him he was a little bastard. He licked her arm. Bree noticed then that Crolley wasn’t on his porch, but he’d left his TV out. Like the rest of her block, she’d watched her brother and Miranda blame him for the kids’ disappearance, which she felt was entirely unfair—if Miranda and Byron were foolish enough to leave the boys alone without somebody in the house to watch them, then they had no right to use Crolley as a scapegoat. Two police cars and a child services car were still parked outside Miranda’s house. Bree approached Crolley’s porch steps.
“Crolley,” she said. “You in there?” When there was no answer, she said, “You better take your TV in before somebody grabs it. And it’s supposed to rain, Crolley. Won’t be good if it gets wet.” She stood there a moment longer, biting her lip, and then walked back to her house with Antonio.
Crolley watched her from his dim living room window. He liked Bree, and not just because she was the only one on Kelley Street who paid him attention. She also had great legs. They were russet-brown and long and smooth, casting a waxy sheen as she walked Kelley Street, or as she crossed and uncrossed them while reading Ebony on her porch. All the kids on the block went to Bree for burnt CDs of the latest hits, for which she charged fifty cents a copy, or for band-aids and Popsicles, which were always free.
Once, Bree had asked Crolley why he watched TV outside, and he said he was afraid he’d miss something on the block. In the last five years, Crolley and Bree had exchanged enough one-liners to amount to a two-hour conversation. Only once did she set foot on his porch. She and Byron had gone down to Newport News for a funeral, and she had asked Crolley to keep an eye on her house for a few days. He walked the perimeter of her yard every day and took in her mail. When she returned, she baked him a red velvet cake to thank him. Crolley thought the cake was too dry, but he ate it all, appreciating the gesture.
When Bree had gone inside her house, Crolley stepped out and hauled his TV back into his living room. He just couldn’t stand to face Miranda’s tears or more squinting policemen or more neighbors craning their necks to stare accusingly at him. He’d done nothing wrong, but a rank, persistent guilt filled his chest like so much roadside trash.