Fourteen

FOURTEEN

Jake brought his bike to a skidding stop along Bassler Road’s gravel shoulder. I followed suit. We walked our bikes the rest of the way. As we turned onto Mr. Trung’s property, his trailer leaped from the darkness, a dim white ghost partially lit by one porch light.

To our left the rows of blueberry bushes looked like dark, impenetrable walls of a maze. On the other side of the trailer lay Mr. Trung’s beautifully manicured flower gardens and his koi pond . . .

Mr. Trung, praying in the koi pond.

The koi praying to him.

. . . and I felt a surge of inexplicable relief that Mr. Trung’s trailer blocked my view of the garden and that koi pond.

The koi.

Praying to Mr. Trung.

“Here,” Jake whispered as he cut off the road, across the shallow ditch and along the edge of Mr. Trung’s property. “Quieter than the driveway.”

I followed him—still tugged along by some strange insistence I didn’t understand—looking at Mr. Trung’s darkened trailer. No lights shone in the windows. Only