Free Neighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern Page A

wonder if modern science can draw DNA from pen ink or the ancient cells deposited from the hands that brushed over this page.
    “Wow,” I say. There are seventeen names on the list, though in my memory more people were there that last night. When I point this out, Marianne says, “Some people didn’t sign in. Linda Sue never would.” She sighs as if, even in death, Linda Sue’s arbitrary stances could be annoying.
    I read down the list of names and see ones I don’t recognize and others I’ve so long ago forgotten, I can’t put a face to them. At the bottom Trish Rashke is printed out in bubbly teen-girl handwriting. “Trish was there?” I say. “I don’t remember that.”
    Marianne looks over, reading with her bifocals. “I suppose she was. Those were the days when I tried to include her in things so she wouldn’t sit in her room, listening to music that made her want to kill herself.”
    This is as close as Marianne has ever come to mentioning Trish’s problems. I don’t know if she doesn’t talk about it, period, or if she keeps her silence on this subject with me in particular, sensing my old feelings, that I was more interested in Trish than I probably should have been. I wonder aloud about contacting some of the people on this list. “I don’t have any phone numbers for them. It’s not like anyone kept in touch.” Marianne seems to have a point she’s trying to make. This was hard on everyone, not just you.
    Except for Paul, there was no one from the old neighborhood at the party last night. But surely they haven’t all moved that far away. If strangers have been following my story, I have to assume my neighbors have, too. So why wouldn’t Marianne have called them up? When I press the issue, she finally admits, “I tried a few. They all said they were sorry but it would just be too painful to come back.”
    I served twelve years in prison for a murder I didn’t commit, and coming back here would be too painful for them ? Marianne waves away whatever she’s just implied. “Everyone just feels terrible that they didn’t do more for you back then. They don’t know what to say.”
    Maybe they feel guilty because one of them is .
    Later that morning, after Marianne’s gone out to the grocery store, I poke around the house, though I don’t go near her office. If she’s using this outing as a test, she’ll know if I go through her papers, and I can’t risk that just yet. I notice a tray of mail by the front door and something odd in it—an envelope addressed to Alocin Bell at C.L.E.E.R. Enterprises in Alabama. It’s hand-typed with this address. It must have something to do with John, who lives in Alabama. I don’t move it or touch it (amazing how aware of fingerprints one can be after leaving too many at a crime scene). Instead I go through the kitchen through a doorway that matches one I remember in our old house. There’s a dark wooden set of stairs and no light so I hold fast to a splintering rail on one side and make my way slowly. At the bottom, there’s a cement landing, and somewhere straight ahead a door to the finished apartment. “Hello?” I call, and then louder, “HELLO?”
    The door opens a crack and light spills in a line across the floor. “Yes?” I hear a low voice, disembodied and male.
    “Roland, it’s Betsy. I wanted to say hello.”
    Is this strange that I’ve been here for a day without saying hello, or stranger that he hasn’t come up himself? The door opens wider, and there he is. After all these years, my breath catches for a moment in surprise, but of course time hasn’t stopped for him, either. His thick hair is mostly gray, his narrow face lined. The glasses are the same, as is the slight stoop of his shoulders and the gentle smile. “Betsy. My God. Look at you.”
    “It’s nice to see you again, Roland.”
    In truth, this isn’t the first time I’ve been down here to visit Roland. The first time I came innocently enough to ask about his work