Set the Night on Fire (8 page)

I
t was nearly dark by the time Lila left the Evanston library. She’d spent two hours researching Alice Monroe from Indiana. Despite all the Internet search engines and databases, she came up with nothing except the writer Alice Munro. The last name was spelled differently, but that didn’t stop Lila from wondering if God was playing a cosmic joke on her.

The reference librarian, a chic woman with salon-styled hair, offered to print out lists of all the Monroes in a few cities in Indiana, but Lila told her not to bother. She had no idea where her mother’s family was, even if they still lived in the state.

She trudged the few blocks back to Danny’s. Almost dark, the snow was still coming down, whitening the sidewalk and muffling her steps. She pulled up her hood. She passed a man shoveling the sidewalk, although the snow filled in as quickly as he tossed it aside. The dry and bitter cold, despite the snow, snatched her breath away. New York winters weren’t this extreme.

As she pushed through the door of Danny’s building, she found the boxes from her father’s office in a corner of the lobby. She went upstairs and changed into jeans and a sweater, then went back down and lugged them up to Danny’s condo. Before opening them, she poured herself a glass of wine, and turned on the TV in the living room.

After moving the boxes into Danny’s study, she opened the first one. Books and photos. She opened another. More books, but also the CDs she’d made from her father’s computer files. She turned on Danny’s computer, inserted one in the drive, and waited. She’d titled them—by number, of course—as well as the date she’d recorded them.

This was
Casey 1-011710
. She clicked on the CD icon. A list of files popped up. She scanned them carefully. Some were clearly client files, with names like
Catalyst, Inc,
and
PDT Technologies
. Fledgling companies, probably. PDT sounded vaguely familiar—it must have done well. Others were articles her father had authored on wealth creation and private placement strategies. Still others included links to websites, which, when she clicked on them, dealt with entrepreneurial start-up issues.

A burst of cheering on the TV distracted her. The news was on, and the cheers came from a story about the upcoming presidential election. Something about a candidate who was making people excited about voting. As usual, the media were rushing the process, trying to crown the victor before anyone voted. Elections were like a boxing match, her father used to say, except they lasted fifteen months, not fifteen rounds.

She forced herself back to the CDs. She tried to convince herself she didn’t know what she was looking for, but that was a lie. She was looking for something, anything that would unlock the secrets of her mother’s family. Her family of origin, as the shrinks liked to put it.

It wasn’t until an hour later, after she took a break to scramble some eggs and toast a bagel, that she loaded the third CD. As with the others, most of the documents looked work-related: balance sheets and P&Ls. She sighed. There were only a couple of files left. One was a Word document titled
Tutorial.
She opened it and read:
How to Hide Images In Files
. It was a primer on something called steganography. Lila Googled the word. Steganography was the “science of hiding messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message.”

Hiding messages? Why would her father want to know about something like that? She read on. A series of steps had to be performed in order to retrieve a coded message, and the only way to do that was by using special software. She went back to the tutorial file. Whoever created it obviously assumed that her father already had the software—the directions referred to folders he needed to open, links he had to click on. She hunted around for the software on the CD, but it either wasn’t there, or it was hidden too, because she didn’t find anything.

She rose and went to the window. Apparently, her father’s secrets hadn’t stopped with his death. She lifted the sheet covering the glass and peered down onto the street. Only a couple of cars were moving, the beam of their headlights illuminating the steadily falling snow. There had to be five or six inches now, and the ground was covered by a mantle that cast a pale glow over everything. The faux daylight was eerie but better than darkness.

She went back to the computer and tried the last file. It didn’t have a name, just a number: 082768. She smiled. That was something she would do. Still, before opening it, she right-clicked on
Properties
. The file was a JPEG. An image. It had been created on April 17, 2003. Five years ago.

When Lila opened the file, her pulse quickened. It was a photo of a group of young people, and one of them was her mother. Her mother was smiling at the camera the same way she had in the only photo Lila had ever seen of her. She examined the shot more closely—it
was
the same photo. Her father must have cropped the other people out when he added the photo to their family album.

It was in color, but the colors were harsh and lacked subtlety, like snapshots from a long time ago. There were five other people in the shot: another woman and four men. Her mother and the other woman were in front. The other woman was small, with long, ash-blond hair. She wore a tank top and jeans. A pair of rimless glasses perched on her nose. One shoulder was higher than the other, and it looked like her arm was draped around Lila’s mother.

Behind the ash hair was a young man with curly brown hair. His hands rested on the blonde’s shoulders. He was wearing a sleeveless brown vest, and a string of beads hung around his neck. Lila stared. Something about this man was familiar. Very familiar. Holy shit! It was her father!

Yes. Now she could see it. The same eyes, the same features, so different from her own. The same challenging expression he took on when he had a strong opinion and wanted you to know it. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, but he looked confident, Lila thought. Even brave.

Behind her mother stood another man. He was a good head taller than her father, and had straight dark hair down to his shoulders. Thin and rangy, he wore a t-shirt with the words MOBE MOVES in block letters. In contrast to her father, his arms hung straight at his sides.

Two more young men completed the group, one on each end. The man on the left, small and sinewy, wore jeans and a T-shirt with the peace symbol on it. A red bandana was tied around his blond hair, which reached to his shoulders. The other man, handsome with dark hair and eyes, wore a white, short-sleeved shirt with an alligator emblem on the pocket. Aside from long sideburns, his hair was relatively short. Alligator man was the only one not looking directly at the camera. He was turned toward her father, as if he was talking to him when the photo was snapped.

A canopy of trees formed a leafy backdrop. They were in a park, the breeze making her mother’s blond hair float around her head like a halo. Her mother and the other girl were smiling; the men weren’t.

Lila checked the file again: 082768. She labeled files by date; if her father did too, the number meant August 27, 1968. Forty years ago. Was that when the picture was taken?  Her father would have been in college. At Michigan. No. Not in August. Plus, Val said her father had dropped out at the end of his freshman year. He would have been back in Chicago.

She returned to
Properties
. The photo might have been taken forty years ago, but the file had been created only five years ago. Which meant that was when he’d scanned it into his computer. Or received it from someone else. Or found it on the Internet. She tapped a finger on the mouse. No. That couldn’t be. The picture of her mother had been in the family photo album for years. He must have had the photo for a long time and only decided to scan it five years ago. She understood—if this was the only photo of her mother, her father would have wanted to make a digital backup for safekeeping.

Then her eyes caught on something else—the file had been accessed on December 22nd at 10:07 p.m. The night before the fire. Her father had opened this file the night before he died. Did he do that often, to remind himself of his youth and his long-lost love?

Lila gazed at her mother one more time. She was the center of the shot, in more than a physical way. The others surrounded her like the spokes of a wheel, but her mother was at the core. She smiled shyly out at Lila, wisps of hair framing her face, loving her through time. She’d never really missed her mother—how could you miss someone you’d never really known? Still, Lila felt her throat get hot.

B
y morning Lila knew what her next step would be, and the knowledge focused her in a way that had eluded her for weeks. She even hummed as she brewed a pot of coffee. She filled her mug and checked the time. Only 7:30. She drank her coffee, showered and dressed, checked the clock again—8:05. But it was an hour later in Michigan. She turned on the computer and waited impatiently for it to boot up. She Googled the number, then reached for the phone.

“Alumni Office.” 

A female voice with an expressionless, business-like tone. Probably not a student on work-study. Which would make things trickier. “Hello. My name is Lila Hilliard, and my father went to the University of Michigan.”

“How can I help you?”

“Unfortunately, my father passed away a few weeks ago, and . . . ”

“My sympathies.”

“Thank you. That’s why I’m calling. I’m planning a memorial service for him in Chicago, and I wanted to invite some of his fellow alumni. But I’m not sure who or how many to include.” She hesitated. “I was hoping you might be able to give me some names and addresses of alumni in the Chicago area.”

“What was your father’s name and what year did he graduate?”

“Casey Hilliard. Class of . . . er . . . 1971.”

“Hold on.”

A tinny instrumental rendition of
Benny and the Jets
came on the line. Lila waited. She heard a click, and the voice came back.

“I’m sorry, but we have no record of Casey Hilliard attending the university.”

“Pardon me?”

“I checked the Class of ’71 as well as two years on either side. He’s not in our database.”

“I don’t understand. I have pictures of him on campus. In fact, I’m looking at one now.” Lila was surprised how easily the lie came.

“We only have records of every student who graduated. Is it possible your father . . . er . . . didn’t?”

“You mean dropped out?”

“That’s one possibility. Or perhaps he transferred to another school.”

“I . . . I would be surprised if that was the case. I’m sure his diploma is here. I think he even showed it to me at some point.”

“Well . . ., ” the woman let the word hang, as if she couldn’t be responsible for inaccurate records or faulty memories, “I’m sorry, but if I can’t find a record, there’s nothing I can do.”

Lila got to the point. “Please. He . . . he died in a fire. Right before Christmas. It was sudden. I need to do something. I was counting—I don’t know where else to turn. I really want to find people who knew him.”

There was a pause, then a sigh. “I understand how distraught you must feel. I’ll give you the number of the Chicago alumni club president. Maybe he can help.”

“Thank you.”

Lila disconnected and called the number she’d been given. A hearty voice-mail welcomed her back to the Maize and Blue at the University of Michigan Club of Greater Chicago. She should listen to the following four options. Lila ignored the suggestions and punched “0” several times, harder than she needed to. She reached another recording, a woman this time, telling her to call back between noon and 4:00 p.m. Perhaps she could find the answer to her question on their website, the voice added helpfully, and cited the Alumni Club’s URL.

Lila hung up in the middle of the recitation and took her coffee to the window. The streets had been plowed, leaving neat banks of snow at the curb. The snow was still white, unsullied by exhaust fumes, and a bright sun made it glint and sparkle. Why did the morning after a storm always seem so perfect? As if Nature were apologizing for its wrath the night before?

She turned back to the room. Over the past few weeks she’d learned grief was in the little things: scanning her father’s files, making her brother’s bed, catching a whiff of his aftershave. But so, too, was joy. Looking outside at a perfect winter day, some of her darkness fell away, and she felt a kernel of hope.

* *

Early that evening, she drove Danny’s Jeep down to Chicago’s Gold Coast, an affluent neighborhood of million-dollar condos and even more expensive brownstones. She parked in a lot on State Street and walked around the corner to Astor Place. Purple twilight was dismantling the day, but faint streaks of light in the western sky signaled the onset of later sunsets. Still, it was January cold, and people scurried past, thinking, no doubt, about hot meals and cozy evenings at home.

She’d called the Alumni Club back that afternoon, and, through a combination of persuasion and desperation, wangled the name of a Michigan alumnus who graduated in 1971. With a little work on the Internet, she found his address and phone number. She considered calling, then decided just to show up. It was riskier—he might not be home, and if he was, he might slam the door in her face. Still, it would be harder to turn her down in person.

She stopped in front of a three-story brownstone and checked the address. A large bay window extended from the second floor, and light blazed through the drapes. A good sign. A wrought-iron fence surrounded a tiny front lawn, but the gate was unlocked. Another good sign.

As Lila stepped through, a ferocious barking erupted inside. She waited. The racket stopped. She went to the front door and tentatively rang the bell. This time the barking rose to a frantic pitch. She heard a shuffling noise.

The petite Asian woman who opened the door had short black hair threaded with gray. She wore a green silk kimono with a matching obi and bustle in back. On her tiny feet were sandals with two-inch platforms. With her size eight boots, Lila felt like a giant. The woman clutched the collar of a small white Maltese, who was still barking. Lila was ready to talk slowly and use lots of sign language, when the woman held up her palm. She dragged the dog into another room and closed the door. The barking stopped. Returning to Lila, the woman straightened up and spoke in perfect English with a Midwestern twang.

“Hello, there. How may I help you?”

Lila swallowed her surprise. “I . . . I’m sorry to disturb you. I was looking for James Redaker.”

 “I’m Mrs. Redaker. Was he expecting you?”

“No.” Lila felt an attack of nerves. She was good with numbers, not people. Maybe she should go home. But if she did, she’d never learn anything. “My name is Lila Hilliard. It’s a personal matter . . . about my father.”

Mrs. Redaker looked puzzled.

Lila shifted. “He passed away recently. But he was at Michigan at the same time as Mr. Redaker, and I . . . well, I was hoping Mr. Redaker might have known him.”

Mrs. Redaker gazed at her with the same puzzled look. Lila knew she was debating whether to let her in. She fought her desire to flee. Finally the woman nodded. “Come inside, dear. It’s cold. My name is Natsumi.”

Lila nodded her thanks and stepped in. A gush of clean, comforting warmth blew over her. She could hear the dog snuffling behind the closed door.

Natsumi led Lila into a sitting room. Then she shuffled down the hall, her sandals making a swishing noise. Lila sat in a straight-backed chair that was surprisingly comfortable. The room was full of bamboo: shades, lamps, a floor-length screen. The rest of the furniture was edged in black wood. The floor was white marble, and the faint scents of pine and jasmine hung in the air. In the corner under a spotlight was a yellow and red glass bowl shaped like a large flower. A Chihuly. These people had means. And yet, the clutter she often found in wealthy peoples’ homes was absent here, and Lila felt both soothed and energized. Maybe there was something to feng shui.

The murmur of voices floated in from another room. First Natsumi, then a deep, male voice. A moment later, Natsumi reappeared, followed by a man.

James Redaker didn’t so much occupy a room as dominate it. About five ten, he had receding blond hair and ice blue eyes. Like his wife, he wore a dark green kimono that almost reached his knees. Pants peeked out underneath. He was wearing sandals, too. But where his wife was small and wiry, he was as wide as he was tall. A jock gone to seed. Lila rose from her chair, trying not to stare at the Nordic-looking bull of a man in a ceremonial Japanese kimono. Beneath her docile Geisha manner, Natsumi must be formidable.

“Natsumi says you have questions about your . . . late father,”  Redaker said.

“Yes. First, I want to apologize for intruding.”

“You’ve clearly gone to some trouble to find me. The least I can do is hear you out.” He waved a hand and sat heavily in a matching chair. She was surprised it held his weight.

Lila sat back down. “My father started at Michigan the same year as you.”

He grinned. “Class of ’71? Did he tell you about homecoming freshman year? We played Penn State. I was defensive tackle. First freshman from Hartland to make varsity.”

The combination of college football and Japanese culture was just this side of bizarre, but Lila kept her composure. “I doubt my father could have made third string.”

Redaker folded his hands regally, as if accepting his due. “Yes. Well, you didn’t come here to hear stories about the Wolverines.”

Lila rummaged in her bag and pulled out a manila envelope. “My father and my brother died in a fire last month. I never knew my mother, . . . or her family. But I’d like to find them now. I have this picture of my parents.” She slid it out of the envelope. “There are some other people in the photo as well. I know the chances of you recognizing any of them are slim, but I was hoping you might have a yearbook I could check. Maybe I’d recognize someone who could help me track down my mother’s family.”

“Enterprising of you.” Lila couldn’t tell if that was a compliment until she glanced at Natsumi, standing at the back of the room. When she nodded, Lila felt better.

“What was your father’s name?”

“Casey Hilliard.”

“Do you know what dorm he was in?”

“No.” 

“Well, let’s have a look.”

Lila handed over the photo. Redaker stared at it, his eyes squinting into slits. Lila held her breath. Then he frowned.

“These people . . . were all of them at Michigan?”

“I’m . . . I’m not sure.” Lila motioned toward the picture. “But my father is the one in the vest. With the beads.”

Redaker pursed his lips, making his disapproval clear. “He doesn’t look familiar.” He twisted around to his wife. “You were there too, Natsumi-anata. Have a look-see.” He held out the picture.

Natsumi sidled up and took the photo. Then she looked over at Lila. “Wait here.” She shuffled out of the room. Lila could hear her rummaging around in another room. She came back in, holding a college yearbook that said
Wolverines 1968
. She gave it to her husband.

Redaker opened the book and flipped through a few pages. “I remember those days. Hippies, protestors, SDS. Flower children. Most of them from good families, too.” His nostrils flared. “They tried to set fire to the research building. Almost tore down the student union, too.” He nodded absently. “Strange time to be in college.” He looked up at his wife. “You remember, don’t you, darling?”

Natsumi nodded, but her eyes were calculating. She took the book from her husband, skimmed a few pages and then stopped. Smoothing the page with her palm, she brought it to Lila and thrust it into her hands.

“Look at this.”

A large black-and-white photo was splashed across two yearbook pages. It showed a crowd of students gathered outside. A banner in the background said
Students Against the War
.  Some of the students sat on the grass; others stood in knots of three or four. Most of them wore black armbands, headbands, and angry expressions. In the center was a podium on a dais. A young man, tall, with dark hair, stood behind it. He wore a t-shirt and blue jeans, and his fist was raised high in the air.

Lila froze. He was one of the men in her father’s photo. The one behind her mother. She compared the yearbook picture with the one she held in her hand. The same dark hair, rangy build, the same brooding expression. It was definitely him.

The caption underneath the photo read: 
Student activist Dar Gantner leads a MOBE anti-war rally; Fall, 1967.