Hear No Evil (15 page)

He leaned his hip against the counter, crossed his arms. In the small kitchen, he seemed too near for comfort.

For the first time she noticed how bedraggled she was. Dirt and pieces of leaves clung to her white sweater, and the knees of her slacks were filthy from kneeling in the dirt, struggling to budge Peyton from her hiding place.

Suddenly all the night’s emotions came swarming back so thickly they seemed to smother her: concern for Mimi, shock and despair at Peyton’s disappearance, the
panic of the hunt, the wave of relief so strong she’d been faint with it.

Her knees weakened, and she turned from Owen so he wouldn’t see her tears. She put her hands to her eyes to hide them. “Oh, God,” she said in a strangled voice. “What am I going to
do
with her?”

Immediately she despised herself for being so weak. She clamped her lips together, but her shoulders shook with repressed sobs.

She was surprised to feel his hands on her, warm and strong. “Oh, come here,” he said gruffly and put his arms around her, turning her to him and drawing her close.

She tried to resist both tears and his effort to comfort her. “Crying’s not a felony,” he said. “Just do it.”

Her body felt stiff and awkward in his embrace, and she knew she should pull away from him, but didn’t even know if her legs could support her. She gave in to the overwhelming clamor of her emotions and sank against him. She wept until she was exhausted.

He held her tightly, almost rigorously, his hands not moving. Her cheek rested against the hardness of his chest, and she could feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart. Her own hands, she realized, gripped his upper arms almost convulsively.

She forced herself to untighten her fingers, to draw back slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said shakily. “I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t even know you.”

Slowly he raised his hand and with his thumb stroked at a tear streak drying on her cheek.

She drew in her breath, held it. Hesitantly, as if against his wish, his thumb traced itself down her cheek again.

“You’ve known me for years,” he said in a low voice.

Her heart rapped crazily at her ribs. “I never really knew you. I don’t even know what you are to Jessie. Or why you’re helping us like this.”

His hand went still. Although he did not move, a distance seemed to insinuate itself between them, to grow and widen. At last he said, “When my wife was dying, Jessie—helped her.”

“Oh,” she said and thought,
Of course he had a wife. A man like this would have had a lovely wife. A man like this would have had a perfect wife
.

“Oh,” she said again. “I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” he said, his face hardening oddly.

They looked at each other. He drew back. In confusion, she tried to gather her thoughts, her dignity, her usual coolness. She turned toward the counter.

“Coffee?” she asked, making her tone brisk and businesslike.

“No, thanks,” he said. “If I’m going to Sedonia, I need to start. I’ve got a cell phone. I’ll leave you the number.”

She watched as he moved to a notepad Jessie had on the far counter. He picked up the pen beside it and quickly scrawled the number. He looked up at her, his blue eyes unreadable.

“If Peyton says anything that might help, call me.”

She nodded, trying again to be brisk and businesslike.

“I’ll be in touch with you, too,” he said. They eyed each other almost as if they were opponents taking the other’s measure.

He said, “You’ll be all right alone?”

She looked away. “Of course.” She was used to being
alone, taking care of herself. She had grown to
like
being alone.

“Right,” he said. “Well. I’ll let the dog out, then go. I’ll leave a key under the mat. If you’d let him out in the morning, I’d appreciate it.”

“Certainly,” she answered, still not looking at him. “I’ll be glad to.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Tell Jessie hello.”

She nodded. She heard him move to the kitchen door, let himself out. She heard the sound of his boot heels cross the cement porch, descend the steps, fade away.

Her heart still hammered drunkenly in her chest.

Fifteen minutes later, she heard his car pull out of the drive.
There
, she thought, with a strange surge of relief,
he’s gone
.

But she felt lonely, in a way she’d never felt in Los Angeles. The house seemed small and vulnerable and lost in the midst of nowhere. Without him, it felt as fragile as an eggshell. She was glad that he’d said he’d ordered a security system for it.

She rinsed out her coffee cup, just to keep busy, and realized that she hadn’t gone to see Jessie tonight, hadn’t even called her. “Damn,” she muttered.

She moved into the living room and picked up the receiver of Jessie’s home phone and dialed the hospital. When Jessie answered, she sounded in a combative mood. “Good of you to call—at last,” she said. “Nice of you to take time—finally.”

Eden fought back a sigh of exasperation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “There’s been a lot to take care of.”

“Indeed?” Jessie said. “I hoped you’d bring my little
Peyton to see me. How is she? How’s my little honeyduck?”

Eden knew she could not tell Jessie the truth, that Peyton had run away. She settled for the half-truth. “Peyton’s exhausted. She fell asleep half an hour ago.”

Jessie made a sound suspiciously like
hmmph
. “Have you heard anything from Mimi?” she demanded.

Eden blinked hard, gritted her teeth. Had she heard from Mimi? Or was she only imagining wild and impossible things? “Jessie, if I knew anything, I’d tell you right away.”

“I dreamed about her,” Jessie said in her sibyl’s voice. “I dreamed she was standing by the river. She was standing by the flowing river, ready to follow it home.”

“Owen’s gone to Missouri to look for her. He’s got a lead.” Eden explained about the Chevrolet dealer in Sedonia.

“Sedonia,” Jessie said thoughtfully. “I get vibrations from that name. Sedonia. What’s Peyton say about it?”

“Peyton’s not talking. She’s scared to. I don’t want to push her too hard. She gets—emotional.”

“How’s my phone line? Did Constance call?”

Eden made her voice cool and confident. “Yes. I couldn’t get much out of her. She was vague. And odd. She started by asking some strange questions.”

“About what?”

“About that plane wreck in Florida, for one thing. She wanted to know if the people suffered.”

Jessie was silent for a long moment. “I dreamed about that plane,” she said at last. “I saw a woman. She was standing with her hand full of fire. It danced in her hand like a live thing.”

Eden frowned. “A woman?”

“Indeed,” Jessie asserted. “She’s got yeller hair. Pretty as a picture on the outside, but inside she’s a burning flag.”

“A burning flag?” Eden repeated, puzzled.

“I don’t know why that come to me, it just did,” Jessie said. “I seen her hand was full of burning, and her heart was, too.”

“But a flag?” Eden questioned. “Why a flag?”

“I don’t
know
why,” Jessie retorted. “It’s what the spirits showed me. That, and the letter
d
. Somebody important in her life, their name’s got a
d
in it.”

“Jessie, millions of people have a
d
in their name,” Eden objected. “
Your
name has a
d
. So does mine.”

“I don’t care to argue,” Jessie said rather grandly.

“All right,” Eden said, “but there’s more. This—this Constance. She said she was worried about a child who took a journey. She wanted to know if she’d arrived safely. She had to mean Peyton. And almost as soon as I said the child was safe, she hung up on me.”

“Ha,” said Jessie. “I knowed it. You wouldn’t believe me. Well, now you see.”

Eden shook her head in bewilderment. Jessie didn’t sound upset or even surprised. Only triumphant.

“Jessie …” Eden paused uneasily, “Did this woman, this Constance sound familiar to you? At all?”

“Ha,” said Jessie. “I’d remember that voice. She croaks like a raven.”

“You don’t think you might know her from somewhere?”

Jessie ignored the question. “Tomorrow you bring Peyton to see me,” she said. “In the meantime, you mind that phone. Hear?”

“I hear, I hear. But—”

“Here comes the nurse with my sleeping pill,” Jessie grumbled. “They push pills down your gullet and poke you and prod you all day. You give Peyton a hug for me. I got to hang up now.”

Jessie’s receiver banged down so aggressively that Eden winced.

She turned and saw Peyton’s tablet and scattered crayons on the floor in front of the television. She bent to pick them up, but when she saw the child’s drawing, her hand stopped in midair, and her blood chilled.

The crude picture again showed the house with the angry red door. Beside it stood a woman with yellow hair and one arm stretched out before her. In her upturned hand danced a bright orange fire.

Bright orange fire flared from the match. Mimi inhaled.

It was almost midnight. Tonight, for a while, the music had made her feel almost healed, but now the music had faded, so she killed the pain with wine.

Drace hadn’t let anybody drink or smoke—except himself. And only Raylene was allowed to take pills of any kind. Mimi wished she’d stolen about a hundred of those pills.

But she had the wine, at least, and cigarettes again. Now, by the dim glow of the bedside lamp, she wrote. She sat cross-legged in her underwear on the unmade bed, hunched over the tablet, her pen moving laboriously.

The words danced and weaved in her vision. The more she’d drunk, the more erratically she’d written and spelled, but she didn’t care. One thing had become of the utmost importance to her.

Mimi frowned harder and tried to cross out the last lines. Her pen wavered, missed its stroke, made a senseless scrawl across the page.

Oh, Christ
, she thought in anger and disgust.
All I’m doing is incriminating myself. Peyton and Jessie are better off never knowing any of it. Eden, too
.

She was a fucking fool to try to explain it, there was no way to explain it, none. Suddenly she realized what was really of the utmost importance:

Don’t tell the truth to anyone
.

She rose with a lurch, stumbled into the bathroom and tore the piece of paper to bits. She flushed it down the toilet and stood, leaning against the counter.

Another drink or two, she told herself. Then she’d be able to sleep. She made her way back to the bed, refilled her wineglass, took one long draft, then another.

The drink made her eyes heavy. She closed them and sagged against the pillow. Dizzily she remembered the music and thought,
Once I had a beautiful voice and could have been somebody. I hate my voice. I hate it
.

She slept and dreamed of her childhood, of her and
Eden playing behind the trailer. They were singing together in their strong, young voices. It was a pleasant dream.

Beside her, on the nightstand, lay her show tickets and cigarettes and matches. The wine bottle was nearly empty.

The other bottle, the one that did not contain wine, still stood unopened on the bathroom counter, waiting for her.

Owen didn’t reach Sedonia until after midnight. He checked into a drab room in a humdrum motel on the edge of town. The mattress felt as if it had been stuffed with shot puts and anvils.

He slept restlessly, and toward dawn he had an unsettling dream about Laurie. She was alive, healthy, and whole again, and she was impossibly young, eighteen perhaps.

It was twilight, and she faced him across the clearing in the park, which was slightly misty. Between them stood the foolish plastic animals on their thick springs, looking empty and forlorn.

“I want children,” she said, her young face sad. “I want children.”

“I know,” he said and swallowed hard. He wanted to go to her, but he could not move. He was rooted, like the artificial animals, to the earth.

“Why can’t I have them?” she asked.

“It isn’t meant to be,” he told her. “It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t need them. All I want is you.”

Her beautiful hazel eyes filled with tears. “Why can’t I have them?”

“I don’t want them,” he told her. “I just want you.”