Goodnight Nobody (26 page)

"Did he have one for you?" I asked.

She ducked her head modestly and quoted, "She walks in beauty, like the night."

"Very nice." I swept the pictures and the poetry into the folder. "I can never thank you enough for doing all of this for me."

"Well, it's for me too. My story."

"If there is one," I grumbled. "It's probably going to turn out that the mailman did it." I got to my feet, shoving the folder into my WGBH tote bag, which I'd carried to prove that I was absolutely, positively not trying to impress Evan McKenna.

Janie stood up and put her hand on my shoulder. "Hey."

I looked up. "What?"

She looked deep into my eyes and solemnly intoned, "Do you ever have that not-so-fresh feeling?"

"Huh?"

She sighed, nudged me back down into a chair, and sat down. "I'm worried about you. Only I don't know how to talk about it. As you know, I'm not very maternal, so I've been watching television."

"You've been watching television commercials," I said.

Her eyes flashed. "And a
Hallmark Hall of Fame
movie, which I want credit for. Those are two hours of my life I'm never getting back." She grabbed my hands, looked into my eyes again, and said, "Seriously, Kate, I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine," I said.

"How are things with Ben?" she asked.

"They're fine."

"And the kids? No, wait, let me guess," she said, scowling at me with a look of absolute aggravation. "They're fine too."

I looked at my best friend, twisted a lock of hair around my finger, and came clean. "Ben told me I needed a hobby," I said. "He said I'm a housewife, not a detective."

"Oof."

"Do you think I need a hobby?"

Janie pulled off her glasses and folded them carefully in the cylindrical leather case that said Prada. "I think," she finally said. "I think that I want you to be careful. I think if anything ever happened to you, or your kids--"

"Janie!"

"Well, have they found Lexi Higgy-Whoosit yet?" she demanded.

"Hagen-Holdt," I said, and shook my head. "Nothing's going to happen to us," I said, but even as I spoke the words, I wasn't sure I believed them. There was a line of the poem stuck in my head.
A tall woman, stained, sour, sharp...
Was that Kitty? Was it me?

"I love you," Janie said, leaning across her desk to give me a hug. "I just want you to be safe. Safe and happy."

"Love you too," I said. But even as I was hugging her, even as I was thanking her for everything she'd done, I was glancing to be sure that the photographs and the mysterious poem were secure in my bag, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop now, not even if I wanted to.

Thirty-Four

I got to the bar of the Time Hotel fifteen minutes before noon, when I'd arranged to meet Evan, and saw that we would have the place to ourselves. There were a dozen low, round tables, circles of polished stone surrounded by overstuffed, squishy rectangles. All of them were empty. The lights were low; the room felt warm after the wind outside. Two televisions hanging over the bar were tuned to celebrity poker. I checked my coat, put my hat and mittens in my bag next to Janie's file, went to the ladies' room, and studied myself in the mirror. The lights were unforgiving. My skin was sallow, my hair was a wreck, and the only thing I had in my purse to remedy the situation was a single tube of lipstick that could very well have dated back to the time when I'd still held out hope that Evan and I could someday be a couple. I sighed, wet a paper towel and rubbed it above my lip and underneath my eyes. Then I broke out the lipstick, carefully shaded my lips, then smeared some on my fingertip and adding a judicious swipe across the top of each cheekbone. I looked down at the lipstick, a pearly pink color, and wondered whether it could serve as eyeshadow too.

I risked another look in the mirror and wished I'd put on more makeup before I'd left the house. I wished I'd gotten my legs waxed. I wished I'd let Janie talk me into that Japanese hair-straightening treatment. I wished I'd worn a different outfit, something other than khaki cargo pants and a black sweater that I thought had looked pretty good when I'd left the house. I wished I'd had time to go shopping. I wished I hadn't let Sophie record over my Yoga for Weight Loss tape with
Elmo's Adventures in Grouchland.

This is ridiculous,
I thought. I was a grown-up, a married woman, the mother of three, not some foolish fourteen-year-old meeting her junior high crush in the band room during lunch. I popped a mint into my mouth, smoothed my hair, hummed several restorative bars of "I Am Woman," and pushed through the bathroom door.

Evan was standing at the bar green eyes shining, looking just the way I'd remembered him, most recently in sessions involving my shower nozzle, just the way he had, all those years ago, before he'd broken my heart, before the kids had come, before my husband had started making unilateral decisions about where we'd live and what I'd be permitted to do with my time. Before I became invisible.
Goodnight nobody.

"Not much of a lunch crowd," I said as I made my way through the empty tables toward him.

"Kate," Evan said, and smiled, looking me over, taking me in. His hand was shaking slightly as he picked up his glass and walked toward a table in the back corner of the room. I eased myself down, feeling my face flush and my heart pound. Evan took the seat beside me and set his drink on a napkin.

"Whatcha got?" I asked.

He grinned at me. "You go first."

I shook my head. "Tell me about the Dolans," I said.

"Well, Kevin wasn't having an affair with Kitty. From everything I've been able to find out, he's completely devoted to his wife and has been since they got married."

I nodded, feeling disappointed that my theory about Kevin pining for Kitty wasn't true, but happy that at least one Upchurch marriage seemed to be on solid ground.

"However," Evan said, "Delphine Dolan doesn't exist."

"What?"

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, a photocopy of a marriage license between Kevin Dolan and Debbie Farber.

"Debbie Farber?"

"Born in Hackensack, New Jersey. She must have changed her name, or just started calling herself Delphine." He refolded the piece of paper. "Now you go."

I wriggled around on my rectangle and told him about Lexi Hagen-Holdt's disappearance and about Ted Fitch--what he'd said, what he'd done, what I'd learned about him (leaving out that I'd learned it by sneaking into my husband's office under the pretense of redecorating).

"You think Kitty was a hooker?" Evan asked, as a waiter brought us glasses of water and I ordered what I knew would be an eight-dollar soda.

"I think that at one point in her life she might have been sleeping with men in exchange for things," I said, remembering the pearl earrings Dorie had told me about, and wondering why a woman like Kitty would have sold herself at all, and why she would have sold herself so cheaply.

"So, a hooker," said Evan.

"Not that official," I replied.

"What?" he asked. "She didn't join the union?"

I groaned and closed my eyes.

"Stop thinking so hard," he said, and placed one warm hand in the center of my back.

In my head, I shoved him away in a firm but good-natured fashion, I opened up Janie's folder, and we moved on to a further analysis of the men they'd both investigated. In my head, I pushed myself to my feet, picked up my bag, and thanked him with a brisk handshake and a promise to keep in touch. In my head, I caught a four o'clock train back to Upchurch, and made it home in time to prepare my family a healthful dinner of lean protein and whole grains, to bathe my children individually, scrubbing the tub in between each child, to read them bedtime stories, dispense hugs and kisses, and be in my own bed by ten o'clock, where I would rekindle marital relations with my husband in a flurry of apologies and promises of immediate improvement.

In real life, I let Evan tilt my head back. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, and when he pressed his lips against mine, gently first, and then with more force, I kissed him back, leaning into his body, feeling the warmth of his skin, so close I could hear his heart beating, and it was just like I'd felt the first time he'd kissed me. The dim bar, the Time Hotel, Kitty Cavanaugh's murder and possibly illicit double life, the whole city, the whole world receded like a wave, leaving just the two of us with our arms around each other.

Evan drew back, breathing hard. "We could get a room," he said.

I pulled away. My lips were swollen, my cheeks felt flushed, my whole body was shaking with yearning, and I knew that if we stayed here another minute with him kissing me like that, I would lose all power to reason.

"No." I got unsteadily to my feet. "I can't."

"You can," he said, and held my hands. "You can do whatever you want. I wish..." His voice trailed off as I wiped my lips off with a paper napkin soaked in ice water. "I wish it had all happened differently with us."

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
I yanked my red wool hat down tight over my hair and slipped on my red wool mittens. The left one snagged on the stone of my engagement ring. "I have to go home."

He nodded. "Will you call me?"

"I..."

He stood up and readjusted my hat, then kissed the tip of my nose. "I'll be thinking about you," he said.

"Goodbye, Evan." I said, knowing that I'd be thinking about him too.

Part Three

Goodnight Nobody

Thirty-Five

Carol Gwinnell's house smelled like apple pie when I knocked on her door at five thirty. "Mommy!" my kids cried, pelting across her kitchen floor and wrapping their arms around my legs. Carol waved at me from the stove.

"Did you guys have fun?" I asked.

"Yes!" said Sam.

"Yes!" said Jack.

"Thank you for a lovely afternoon," Sophie said politely, before grabbing my hand and looking meaningfully toward the door.

"One second, honey. I just want to say thank you to Mrs. Gwinnell."

"Oh, you're welcome! Come any time!" Carol said. She lowered her voice as my kids pulled on their coats. "Nobody's heard anything about...anything. Call me when you get home, all right?"

"Do you think the same person who"--I dropped my voice to a whisper--"killed Kitty had something to do with Lexi too? Who did they know in common?"

Carol crinkled her nose, and her earrings chimed faintly. "Only everyone. Same school, same church, same friends, same pediatrician, same gym..." She peered past me, into her family room, where the television was tuned to CNN, with the volume muted. "I've got to get dinner started. Call me when you're home, okay?"

I promised that I would, then led the kids to the car, with Carol standing in her lit doorway, with a red-and-white gingham apron around her waist, watching us drive away.

"Charlie doesn't flush the toilet when he's done," Sophie whispered as I buckled her into her seat and handed her and each of the boys a single piece of Halloween candy that I'd kept in the glove compartment for an occasion just like this.

"Well, that's not very nice."

She waved her hand, already bored with the conversation. "Can I have kimchee for dinner?"

"Sure," I said. "Sure."

I got home, locked the doors behind us, and called Carol to check in. I fed the kids dinner (turkey hot dogs for the boys, kimchee that I'd mail-ordered from Zabar's for Sophie), gave everyone a bath, and read
Cinderella,
which the boys pretended not to like.

At eight-thirty, when everyone was sleeping, I took a shower, pulled on a baggy, frayed nightgown and a pair of touch-me-not panties with the elastic missing from one leg, and crept into the kids' bedrooms and made sure they were tucked in, sleeping, safe. When I slipped under my own covers and closed my eyes, I felt sure it was just for show, that I'd no more be able to sleep than I'd been able to keep myself from kissing Evan McKenna, but when I woke up, sleet was splattering against the windowpane, my kids were squabbling about something, and judging from the wrinkled pillow and crooked comforter on the guest room's bed, my husband had come and gone without my even noticing.

"Oh my God," Janie squealed on my cell phone. "You didn't!"

"I didn't," I said as my stomach rolled over lazily. I cut up slices of cinnamon toast and set the plate down in front of my children. The enormity of what I'd come so close to doing hadn't really hit me until that morning, but it had hit with a vengeance--either that, or the guilt had weakened my immune system. Ever since I'd woken up, my stomach had been aching and I'd been running to the toilet every ten minutes, much to my kids' amusement. "But I wanted to."

She paused. "I could still have him deported," she said.

"Don't worry. I'm never going to see him again." I'd decided that much on the train ride home. I wasn't cut out for adultery. I felt wretched, sick with guilt...and logistically, it wouldn't work. The sneaking around I was already doing had taxed me to the limit. There was no way I could think up any more fake excuses to get me into the city. Ben might buy that Dr. Morrison's office had lost my Pap smear once, but not twice.

"Do you still love him?" asked Janie.

I groaned in response.

"Do you still love Ben?" she asked.

I groaned even louder. "What does it matter?" I asked. "I'm married. I've got kids."

"I think that they let you get a divorce these days even if you do have children. Not that I'm encouraging you to get a divorce," she added hastily.

"Of course not," I said. I reached for my glass of flat seltzer and forced myself to take a sip. "It was a one-time-only thing," I said. "I needed his help."

"And he helped you."

I managed another sip of seltzer. Then I made my way to the bathroom on trembling legs and sat on the toilet, wondering how this had happened, how I'd turned, overnight, into the kind of woman I swore I'd never be. A liar. An almost cheater. Someone who'd toss away a marriage and break up a family for cheap thrills in a hotel. "He found out Delphine Dolan doesn't exist."

"Huh? She looked pretty real at your party."

"It's not her real name," I said. "She used to be Debbie Farber."

"Oh," Janie said. "Well, in that case, call Stan and tell him to arrest her right now."

I said goodbye, hung up the phone, and went back to the kitchen, where the kids were squabbling about the crayons, or the dollhouse, or the identical books of stickers I'd bought them in New York. "No," Sophie screamed, waving a piece of toast like a judge's gavel. "No, you poopy baby, give it
back
!"

Kate Klein, this is your life,
I thought, and tried to sort out the latest skirmish in the Crayola Wars.

I built a fire in the living room fireplace and played three games of Chutes and Ladders and four of Candy Land. I heated up canned chicken soup for lunch, knowing that every other mother in Upchurch, including my pie-baking pal Carol Gwinnell, was probably feeding her kids homemade.

When the weak sun broke through the clouds, I washed hands and faces, left the dishes in the sink, and piled everyone into the minivan. The ground was still wet, but the temperature had climbed into the low fifties, and there was a balmy wind blowing. I figured we should play while we could. The forecasts were already calling for six to eight inches of snow that weekend.

There were two news vans clustered at the corner of Apple Dell, where Lexi lived, and a third that I saw out of the corner of my eye parked in front of the Cavanaughs' house on Folly Farm Way. At the park, the Upchurch mommies stood in a tight knot by the swing set, talking in low voices, eyes constantly darting left and right to make sure no bundled-up pitchers with big ears were listening.

"Did you hear?" Rainey Wilkes asked. She had her daughter Lily crammed into a BabyBjorn, even though Lily was almost two--a good year and at least ten pounds over the recommended guidelines. Between her powder blue down snowsuit and the constraints of the Bjorn, poor Lily couldn't even wiggle her arms.

"Is it Lexi? Did anyone..." I swallowed hard. I couldn't bring myself to say
find her,
because it sounded like I was talking about a lost dog--or a body. "Did she come back?" I asked instead.

Rainey shook her head. "I heard they've called in the FBI. They're searching the woods around her house." She paused, swallowed hard, and lowered her voice. "They've got dogs looking too. I saw them out this morning."

I pressed my mittened hand against my lips. I couldn't help but imagine Lexi the way I'd found Kitty--sprawled on her belly in a pool of cooling blood, a knife protruding from between her muscular shoulders.

I sank down on a bench. Sam and Jack, in the matching red tasseled caps Janie had bought them, were playing some kind of elaborate pirate game behind the swing sets. As I watched, they waved imaginary swords at each other and roared. Sophie, in her pink tasseled cap, had been roped into a round of hide-and-seek. Carol Gwinnell sat down beside me, clutching her embroidered purse in her lap.

"Rob wants to put the house on the market," she said. She reached into her bag, releasing a puff of patchouli scent, and I caught a glimpse of something unthinkable--a red and white pack of cigarettes. She pulled out a butterscotch candy, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth. "It's like everything's gone bad here." Her laughter was high and shrill. "I can't stop eating. I went through an entire bag of M&M's last night."

"Where will you go?"

She shrugged, crumpling the cellophane candy wrapper in her fist. "Maybe White Plains or New Canaan. Someplace with good schools, not too far from the city." She leaned in close. "We aren't the only ones," she said. "I called a Realtor and she said I was the third one so far, that day." She reached into her bag again. "Butterscotch?" she asked.

"Thanks." I sucked my candy, feeling miserable and numb, and listened to the whispers swirl around me, as the supermommies of Upchurch digested the new knowledge that their little Eden wasn't paradise after all. The truth was, the talk was almost comforting. It took me back to my days in New York, when the other mothers were as bewildered and exhausted as I was, where every week it seemed like someone else's marriage was in trouble, where husbands lost their jobs or complained ceaselessly about the ones they had, where wives entertained giggly crushes on their obstetricians or their plumbers or an old boyfriend who'd come back into town, looking better than he had a right to.

"Mommeeeee!"

Every single one of us whirled around. Sophie was crumpled at the base of the slide, clutching her stomach.

I got up and ran faster than I'd run in years, right through the steaming puddle a few feet in front of Sophie, and swept her into my arms.

"What? What happened?"

"My tummy is all bad," she moaned. Then she gagged and threw up, all over the shearling jacket I'd finally purchased so that I'd look just like everyone else on the playground.

"Oh, Soph, I'm sorry. Come on, let's get you home." I piled the three kids into the car. "Are you guys all right?" I asked Sam and Jack.

"Tummy hurts," Jack said. Sam clutched his belly and groaned. Oh, boy, was this going to be an action-packed afternoon.

I swung by the minimart and sat in the parking lot with my head in my hands. Bring the kids in? Leave them in a locked car for the two minutes it would take me to buy chicken broth and saltines?

I couldn't do it. I put the car in drive and headed home, where I spent the next four hours ferrying sick children in and out of the bathroom, washing clothes and sheets, and eventually, spot-treating the rug in the boys' room after Sam didn't make it to the bathroom in time.

By five o'clock, all three kids had fallen asleep. I transferred a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, shucked off my foul-smelling sweater, and turned on my computer.

I told myself I was going to spend five minutes looking at the news--the
Upchurch Gazette
's website, maybe even CNN.com--to see if there was any updates about missing mothers of Upchurch. "You have one new message," said my email. My heart stopped when I saw what was on top of my in-box. "From: Evan McKenna. To: Kate Klein. Subject: You."

As always, Evan was short and to the point. "I miss you," he'd written. "When can I see you?"

Oh, God. Oh, God.
I hit delete, then hit empty trash, and then, for good measure, hit delete temporary files. Then I hit restart and waited for the computer to chug through its shutdown. I had to tell him to leave me alone. But what were the moral and ethical consequences of breaking my promise never to speak to him again in order to tell him that I never wanted to speak to him again?

I stood at the foot of the stairs, listening, and didn't hear a sound. So I took my cell phone into the garage, far enough away so that I felt I wasn't soiling my hearth with infidelity, but close enough to hear the kids if they needed me. I sat on the cold concrete with my back against the minivan. Finally, I punched in his number.

Evan answered on the first ring. "Kate," he said.

I felt my mouth tighten even as my knees trembled at the sound of my name in his mouth.

"Please don't email me," I blurted.

"O-kay," he drawled. "So how are we going to keep in touch? Smoke signals? Singing telegrams?"

"We're not going to keep in touch," I said. My delivery would have done credit to any number of kick-ass action movie heroines. I almost sounded like I meant it. "We have no reason to keep in touch."

"Not even for the simple exchange of information?"

I leaned against the car. "What kind of information?"

"A nice little tidbit about Delphine Dolan, aka Debbie Farber," he said. "It's good. And some information on your vanished neighbor."

"Tell me."

He chuckled. "I have to tell you, Kate, I'm feeling a little used here."

"Tell me!"

"Well, thing is, it's not as much of a 'tell' as it is a 'show.' Meet me at the end of your street at midnight tonight."

My mind whirled. "I can't...Ben's been coming home late...all the kids are sick..."

"Fine, then. Midnight tomorrow."

"Evan. Evan!" I was talking to a dial tone. "Shit." I turned to go back in the house. And there was Sophie, with Uglydoll, a plastic stethoscope looped around his neck, in her arms and strands of sweaty hair clinging to her cheeks.

"You said the S word," she said.

"I did," I said, feeling queasy with guilt. "That wasn't so good."

"Why are you in here?"

"I had to make a phone call, and I didn't want to wake you guys up." I took her hand. "Are the boys downstairs?"

She nodded gravely. "I said to color."

Sam and Jack were sitting at the kitchen table, coloring in unnatural silence. "Hi, guys!" My voice sounded too loud and too bright to my ears. "Is everyone feeling better?"

Wan nods from around the table.

"Is anyone ready for a snack?"

Sam shrugged. Jack nodded. "Rice Krispies treats?" asked Sophie.

Thank God she was still at an age where affection--or at least silence--could be bought for puffed rice and marshmallow goo. "You're not going to throw up anymore?"

Sophie answered for all of them, looking up at me soberly. "No, we won't."

I let Jack pour the Rice Krispies. Sam measured the Fluff. Sophie stirred, counting out loud with each turn of the spoon. "One, two, three, four, five, six, Evan."
Oh, God.
Had I heard her wrong? Had she overheard me? What if she said it in front of Ben? Had I ever even told my husband I'd once hoped Evan would be more than friend? Or maybe I'd heard wrong because I was guilty and paranoid, and Sophie had said "seven" after all. But maybe--