Lippman, Laura (20 page)

The woman in the hospital bed—he was running out of ways to think of her—jumped in, eyes gleaming. “Did you know that ‘factoid’ actually means false? Originally. Its meaning has…migrated, if you will, so the dictionary now accepts ‘small fact’ as one of its definitions. I was kind of disappointed in that. I think language should hold the line, not allow its own corruption.”

“I’m not here to talk about language.”

“Okay, here’s what you want. Up Interstate 83, just over the Pennsylvania line, the first exit, up around Shrewsbury. It wasn’t very developed then, and street names may have changed. But there was a farm on something called Old Town Road, which ran from Glen Rock to Shrewsbury, all the way to York. The farm used a P.O. box to get its mail, but there was a mailbox at the foot of the drive, and the number was 13350. The driveway is a mile long, almost exactly. The house was stone, the door was painted bright red. There was a barn. Not far from the barn was an orchard. You’ll find my sister’s grave there, beneath a cherry tree.”

“How many cherry trees are there?”

“Several, and there were other kinds of trees mixed in as well. Apple and pear, a few dogwoods for color. Over time, when I wasn’t being observed, I managed to scratch a random pattern into the bark. Not her initials. That would have been noticed. Just a little ring of
X
’s.”

“We’re talking thirty years ago. The tree could be gone. The house could be gone. Earth
moves
.”

“But property records remain. And if you research the address I’ve given you, then I’m confident that you’ll find a name you’ll be able to cross-reference with the personnel files of the Baltimore County Police Department.”

“Why not just tell me the fuckin’ name of the man who did this to you?”

“I want you to believe me. I want you to see the farm, see his name on the records, then match it with your own files. I want you to have my sister’s bones. Then when you find him—if you find him, he could be dead for all I know—you’ll know that much is true.”

“Why not go there with us and show me? Wouldn’t that be simpler, and faster?”
Or is simple and fast the one thing you don’t want, girlie? What are you stalling for? What’s your angle
?

“That,” she said, “is the one thing I will never do. Not even after almost twenty-five years. I never want to see that place again.”

He believed that much—but only that much. The fear in her face was real, the shudder in her shoulders visible even beneath the shawl. She could not stomach the thought of this journey. Wherever she’d been headed Tuesday night, it wasn’t Pennsylvania.

But that still didn’t mean that she was Heather Bethany.

Heather wrinkled up her nose the moment she crossed the threshold into the Forrest house.

“I’m allergic to cats,” she told Kay, speaking as if Kay were a dim-witted real-estate agent. “This won’t work.”

“But I thought you understood—I told you my son, Seth, was earning extra money by looking after the family’s plants and pets.”

“I guess I heard only the plant part. I’m sorry, but—” She turned her head and sneezed, a dainty, dry sneeze. A catlike sneeze, in fact. “In just minutes I’ll be all red and puffy. I couldn’t possibly stay here.”

Her cheeks did seem to be reddening, her eyes watering. Kay followed Heather back outside, onto the fieldstone porch on the front of the house. A black woman was walking down the street with her daughter, and although the girl was astride a bike with training wheels, she was outrageously well dressed in a pale yellow pinafore and matching shoes. The mother wore a complementary shade of celery green. She turned to study the two women on the porch, clearly suspicious of them. A neighbor, Cynthia something. Mrs. Forrest had said she was a one-woman neighborhood watch, that she wouldn’t have worried about the house at all during their vacation if it weren’t for the plants and the cat, Felix. Kay waved, hoping the gesture would reassure the woman, but she did not wave back or even smile, just narrowed her eyes and nodded curtly as if in warning.
I see you. I’ll remember you if anything happens
.

“Well, now I’m stumped,” Kay said. “You can’t stay here, but I can’t take you back to the hospital either. And without those options—”

“Not jail,” Heather said, her voice raspy and hoarse, but maybe it was still the effect of the cat. “Kay, you have to see why a woman who’s accusing a police officer wouldn’t feel safe there. It’s hard enough having a cop posted wherever I stay. And not a shelter,” she added, as if in anticipation of Kay’s next question. “I just couldn’t do a shelter. Too many rules. I’m not great with rules, with other people telling me what to do.”

“That’s true of emergency shelters, where beds are given out daily on a first-come, first-served basis. But there are mid-range placements, too. Not many, but if I made some calls—”

“It just wouldn’t work for me. I’m used to being alone.”

“You’ve never lived with anyone? I mean, not since…”

“Since I left the farm? Oh, I’ve moved in with a boyfriend a time or two. But it’s not for me.” She smiled with one half of her mouth. “I have intimacy issues. Go figure.”

“You’ve been to counseling, then?”

“No.” Fierce, insulted. “What makes you think that?”

“I just assumed…. I mean, by the phrases you used. And because of what you’ve been through? It would seem…”

Heather sat on the porch, and although Kay could feel the cold and damp through the soles of her shoes, it seemed only right to join her there, to be on her level, instead of looming over her.

“What would I tell a shrink? And what would a shrink tell me back? My life was taken from me when I was barely a teenager. My sister was killed in front of me. The fact is, I think I’ve done pretty well. Up until seventy-two hours ago, my life was fine.”

“And by fine you mean…”

“I had a job. Nothing impressive or fascinating, but I did it well and I paid my bills. On weekends, when the weather was good, I biked. If the weather was bad, I picked a recipe out of a book, something challenging, and tried to replicate it. I had as many failures as successes, but that’s part of the learning process. I rented movies. I read books. I was—You wouldn’t call it happy. I gave up on happy a long time ago.”

“Content?” Kay thought about how sorry she had felt for herself after the divorce, how easily she had tossed around words such as
unhappy
and
sad
and
depressed
.

“That’s closer to it.
Not
unhappy. That’s what I aspired to.”

“That’s so sad.”

“I’m alive. That’s more than my sister got.”

“What about your parents, though? Did you ever think about what they must be feeling?”

Heather tapped two fingers against pursed lips. Kay had noticed the gesture before. It was almost as if the answer were right there, inside her mouth, ready to jump out, but she first wanted to think through all the consequences.

“Can we have secrets?”

“Legally? I have no standing—”

“Not legally. I know that you could be forced to tell what you know in a courtroom. But I don’t expect to see the inside of a courtroom. Gloria says I won’t even have to talk to a grand jury. As people, human beings, can we have secrets?”

“You mean, can you trust me?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Heather instantly registered that her words were hurtful, unkind. “Kay, I don’t
trust
anyone. How could I? But really, in my own fucked-up way, don’t you think I’m a success story? The fact that I get up every day and I breathe and I feed myself and I go to work and I do my job and I come home and watch crap television, then get up the next day and do it all over again, and I never hurt anyone”—here, her lip started to tremble—“never hurt anyone on purpose.”

“The child in the accident is going to be fine. No brain injury, no spinal-cord damage.”

“No
brain
damage,” Heather repeated bitterly. “
Just
a broken leg. Oh, boy!”

“For which the father is equally at fault, if not more so. Consider his pain.”

“To be truthful, that’s hard for me. Other people’s pain. When I’m at work and I hear people talking about what they think is painful or difficult, it’s like I want to explode, want something horrible and slimy to burst from my innards, like in a science-fiction film. Other people’s notions of pain are pretty lame. This father, okay, he can beat himself up all he likes about what happened. But he was reacting to my error—”

“An error caused by road conditions that weren’t your fault,” Kay reminded her.

“Yeah, but…do you think the person in the previous accident, much less the half-assed county worker who didn’t hose down the highway properly—do you think they’ve even made the connection? No, and they never will. Blame falls where it falls, fair or not.”

They had wandered away from whatever Heather had been on the verge of confiding. Kay wondered if she could guide her back there. Her interest was not prurient, she was sure of that this time. She felt as if she might be the closest thing Heather had to a disinterested ally. The police, Gloria—this woman was almost secondary to their agendas. Kay didn’t care who she was now, she didn’t care about solving the mystery of her disappearance.

“We can have secrets,” she said, remembering the original phrase. “You can tell me things, and I won’t repeat them, not unless they involve harming yourself or someone else.”

Another ragged half grin. “Everyone has a loophole.”

“It’s called ethics.”

“Okay, here’s my secret: Once I was on my own, I tried to keep track of my parents, over the years. My dad was easy to find, because he was at the old house. I was told he wasn’t, but he was. But my mom—I couldn’t find my mom. That is, I found her, then I lost her again about sixteen years ago. I assumed she was dead, but I didn’t look that hard, didn’t do everything I knew how to do. It was a weird kind of relief, thinking she was dead, because I had come to believe what they told me, that she didn’t care, that she wouldn’t want to see me.”

“How could you believe that?”

A shrug, so like a teenager’s, like Kay’s own daughter, Grace.

“As for my dad,” she said, not even bothering to answer Kay’s question. “As for my dad, a day came when…well, I don’t want to get too specific. A day came when I knew he wasn’t at the same address anymore, and I couldn’t imagine him moving. This would have been in 1990 or so. He would have been in his fifties then. That freaked me out, because it had to be, you know, a heart thing or cancer. So I’ve been walking around, assuming I wouldn’t live much past fifty. Now they say my mother’s alive, but I just can’t believe it. She’s been dead to me for so long. And I’ve been dead to her, most likely. The fact is, much as I want to see her, I’m kind of dreading it, too. Because she’s not going to be the person I’ve been remembering all this time, and I’m not going to be the person she’s been remembering.”

“Did you ever—I’m sorry, this may be inappropriate.”

“Feel free.”

“Did you ever look at those drawings on the Internet? The ones that attempted to guess what you would look like as you aged?”

This time her smile was genuine, not ironic. “Pretty spooky, huh? How close they came. It can’t work that way for everyone. I mean, some people get
fat
. Oh—sorry.”

If it hadn’t been for the apology, Kay would not have connected that remark to herself. She’d noticed this childlike tactlessness in Heather before.

“Look,” Heather said, her gaffe already behind her, “I’m sure you don’t make much money, but couldn’t you put me up in a motel, some old chain? The Quality Inn on Route 40 may not still be there, but something like that. You could put it on a credit card, and assuming we get all this sorted out before long, I’ll be able to pay you back. Hey, maybe my
mom
will pay you back.”

The thought seemed to amuse her.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” Kay said, “but my kids and I live pretty close to the bone. And it’s just not right. I’m a social worker. There are lines that I can’t cross.”

“But you’re not
my
social worker, not really. All you did was find Gloria for me. Time will tell how that works out.”

“You don’t like Gloria?”

“It’s not about
liking
. I’m just not sure her self-interest aligns with mine. And forced to choose, who do you think she’ll pick?”

“Her client’s. Gloria is odd, I grant you, and she loves publicity for herself. But she’ll do things your way. As long as you’re not lying to her.”

Again the tapping motion, two fingers against her lips. It reminded Kay of the way young children once played Indian, making war whoops with their hands by beating a similar tattoo on the mouth. She wondered if children still did that, or if heightened sensitivity had meant the end of such games. Certain cultural icons did disappear. Alley Oop, for example, cavemen dragging their women around by the hair, and who could really feel nostalgia for that? Did Andy Capp and Flo still go at it in the comics? She hadn’t glanced at the comics page in years.

“C’mon, Kay. There’s got to be a solution.”

“Perhaps if I took Felix to our house?”

“No, this place is
suffused
with cat hair and dander. But what if you and the kids came here and I took your house?”

The very reasonableness with which Heather made this proposal floored Kay. She did not see it as an imposition, much less as odd. Kay was careful about throwing around clinical terms, but there was a shading of narcissism in Heather. Then again, perhaps that had been essential to her survival.

“No, Seth and Grace would not be agreeable to that. Like most kids, they’re creatures of routine. But—” She knew she was walking a fine line. Hell, she was crossing a thick one, agreeing to a breach that could get her in a lot of trouble at work. Still, she plunged ahead. “We have a small room, over our garage. Not heated, and not air-conditioned, but that shouldn’t be an issue this time of year, not with a space heater. It was set up as an office, but there’s a couch, a small bath with a shower. Perhaps you could stay there, at least until your mother arrives.”