The Wall Behind My Baby’s Crib

Lily’s cough started to ease within four days of us moving her crib out of that room entirely, before the remediation crew had even finished the teardown. Dr. Tobin, when we told her the whole story, went pale and immediately pulled Lily’s chart to reconsider the asthma diagnosis in light of prolonged mold exposure, and started her on a different course of treatment built around clearing her airways rather than managing a chronic condition she likely never actually had. Within three weeks, my daughter was sleeping through the night for the first time in her short life, gaining weight, laughing in a way I had almost forgotten she could do.

I tried, in that same stretch of weeks, to reach Gene Porter directly. I called the number his daughter Denise had given us during closing. I left two messages, careful ones, asking only that he call me back so we could talk. He never did. When I finally drove out to the assisted living place on the edge of town and asked at the desk, I was told Mr. Porter was not receiving visitors that day, and the day after that, and the day after that. I had no lawyer, no lawsuit filed, no piece of paper that could force him to answer for anything. All I had was a contractor’s word, a rotted wall, and a rusted tin with someone else’s grief inside it, and a whole town that still tipped its hat to Gene Porter every time he came into the hardware store.

I might never have gotten the truth out of him at all, if not for the Caldwell County Harvest Festival, three Saturdays ago, on the courthouse lawn.

Gene still went every year, festival board tradition or plain stubbornness, I never learned which. That year he was seated near the cider booth in a folding chair with a blanket over his knees, greeting a slow parade of townsfolk who stopped to shake his hand the way they always had. I had gone with Andy and Lily, mostly because staying home and stewing had stopped feeling like an option, and because Lily, finally well enough for an afternoon outside, deserved a normal Saturday in the sun. Moose came too, on his leash, tail wagging, paws healed.

Gene’s grandson Caleb, seven years old, had been let loose to run around the lawn while the grown-ups visited, and it was Caleb who spotted Moose first and came barreling over, delighted, the way seven year olds are delighted by any dog. He crouched down to pet him, and then he looked up at me holding Lily on my hip, and his face did something small and confused, some private math clicking into place behind his eyes.

“You’re the new people in Grandpa’s old house,” he said. “With the baby.”

“That’s right,” I said.

Caleb nodded, satisfied, and then, with the total lack of filter that only a seven year old carries into a crowded public lawn, he said, loud enough for the cluster of festival-goers near the cider booth to hear every word, “Grandpa told me not to say anything about the black wall in the baby’s room, he said it’s a secret like it was with Grandma, and I’m not supposed to tell anybody it’s still there.”