Mortal Sin (11 page)

A frigid wind swept in off the Charles, stirring up sand and leaving stinging particles in her eyes. She blinked away an involuntary tear, rubbed at the corner of her eye where the offending grain of dirt had lodged, then lifted the hood of her parka and tightened the drawstring until her face was nearly enclosed. It was the coldest walk of her life. When she reached the Boston side, she continued on to the Mass Ave T station, where she squandered a precious subway token so she could go inside and get warm.

As always, the temperature change was dramatic. The T was always steamy. Within a minute or two, her hair was damp, and she could feel sweat trickling down her neck. She lowered her hood, slipped off her jacket, and pulled out a hairbrush to try to tame her hair. She hadn’t washed it in three days, and it felt icky and snarled. Maybe she could sneak into a public bathroom somewhere and wash it, once the day wanned up a bit. She’d stolen a grimy towel from the Sir Charles, so she could at least towel it dry. If she didn’t, and went outside while her head was still wet, pretty soon she’d have icicles instead of hair.

She finished with the hairbrush and tucked it away as the inbound train pulled into the station. Kit had discovered that for the price of a single token, she could ride the train for hours, from station to station, getting on and off at will, even changing lines, from green to orange to red. She varied her routine so people—especially the MBTA police—wouldn’t notice her sitting in the same place, hour after hour.

This morning she got off at Park Street, which was more like a miniature city than an underground train station, a place where you could buy a newspaper or a Coke or a dozen doughnuts, if you weren’t flat broke like she was. There was always music, some of it pretty good, some of it simply awful. She was beginning to recognize some of the regulars, like Jamal, a scrawny black kid who spent hours every day playing on some kind of percussion instrument she couldn’t identify. He was about her age, and he’d told her he’d been playing in the subway since he was eleven years old.

When she got off the train, Jamal was already comfortably ensconced in his favorite spot. Kit sat on a nearby bench and tried to look like she was waiting for a train. With one foot tapping in time to Jamal’s rhythm, she picked up a discarded copy of the
Metro
, the free newspaper put out by the Transit Authority, and began reading it.

“Hiya, Princess. Read anything good in there?”

She looked up from the newspaper, leaned back against the grimy tile wall, and cautiously eyed the man who stood looking at her. She wasn’t a complete rube. She possessed a few street smarts, enough to know that survival depended on a couple of things: using common sense, and knowing better than to trust strangers.

On the other hand, as strangers went, this one wasn’t bad on the eyes. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders. Incredibly good-looking, with artistically disheveled blond hair and a tiny gold loop in his left earlobe. His forehead was high, his blue eyes clear and lucid, his fingernails clean, and he wore his expensive leather coat with style and panache. “I’ve seen you here before,” he said. He sat down beside her and took a bite of the jelly doughnut he’d just bought from the doughnut stand across the tracks.

Her stomach growled. She watched with undisguised interest as he ate. He caught her watching him, and she felt her cheeks flame as she rapidly swiveled her head to look in the opposite direction.

He touched her shoulder, and a rush of adrenaline shot through her. Fangs bared and claws unsheathed, she wheeled around to defend herself. But he wasn’t bent on attack, he simply held out half of the jelly doughnut. “A beautiful woman,” he said, “should never have to go without.”

The automatic fight-or-flight response subsided. While she considered his offer, the Riverside train rolled into the station, momentarily drowning out Jamal’s music. The conductor opened the doors of the train and passengers spilled out onto the platform. Kit snatched the piece of doughnut and devoured it.

When the train left the station, the man was still sitting beside her. He leaned, wiped a few loose sugar crystals from the corner of her mouth, then licked it off his thumb. “Sweet,” he said. “So what are you doing on the street, gorgeous? Things that bad at home?”

Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

He held out a hand. “My name’s Rio. What’s yours?”

She eyed the hand, but she didn’t take it. “Rio?” she said. “I’m supposed to believe your name is
Rio?’”

He grinned widely. “You want to look at my driver’s license, Princess?”

She hesitated, then turned away to feign interest in a movie poster affixed to the opposite wall. “Thank you for the doughnut,” she said primly. “But I’m not a princess.”

“You could have fooled me. You sure look like one, with all that yellow hair and those big blue eyes. You could be a movie star, like Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts. Or even—yeah, now I know who it is you remind me of. Not Julia Roberts. Julia Stiles. She is one hot chick. You look just like her. Something about the cheekbones. What was the name of that movie she made with Freddie Prinze, Jr.?”

“Down to You?”

“Yeah, that’s it. You look just like she did in that movie. As a matter of fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was her, sitting here beside me on this old wooden bench.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Honest to God. Could this face ever lie to you?”

He wore the sweet expression of a Boy Scout, and he continued to ply her with that guileless smile and those soulful blue eyes. Two benches over, a studious-looking black kid with wire-rimmed glasses and a backpack had his nose buried in a fat paperback copy of Shakespeare’s tragedies. A couple of housewife types, in from the burbs for a day of shopping, studied the subway map on the wall, heads close together as they held a private conversation and avoided eye contact with anyone who might jeopardize their safe return to their safe suburban homes on their safe suburban streets in their safe suburban neighborhoods.

In the background, Jamal continued to play. The Arborway train hurtled into the station, and the man named Rio stood. “This is me,” he said. “You take care of yourself, Julia.”

He walked away, casually tossed a dollar bill into Jamal’s open instrument case. Jamal nodded thanks without breaking rhythm. Rio climbed the steps onto the train and staked out a space near the door, stood there as several women squeezed past him to get a seat. The door closed and the train began to move. At the last possible instant, he looked up, met her glance through the dirty window, and raised a hand to his brow in silent salute. Then the tunnel swallowed him up.

The house was so empty without Kit. Instead of all that youthful energy, instead of the teenage angst and the constant clutter and the daily overdose of MTV, there was just… nothing. Sarah wandered from room to room like a lost soul, waiting for a phone call that didn’t come. She hated having Clancy Donovan’s phone number on that flyer instead of hers, hated it passionately, even if she did understand his reasoning. Because she bounced perpetually between the house and the bookstore, she risked missing an important call. As pastor of a large parish, the good Father was on call twenty-four hours a day. There was never a time when his cell phone wasn’t with him. It made sense that they should use his number instead of hers, but she still didn’t like it. Patience had never been her strong suit, and this business of sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop was driving her to the brink of insanity.

She wasn’t sleeping worth a damn at night. Instead, she lay awake, night after night, thinking about what she might have done differently. Somehow, she knew, this was all her fault. If only she’d listened more closely, if only she’d been a little less rigid. It had been a challenge, having instant motherhood thrust upon her in the form of a wayward and high-spirited teenage girl. But she’d risen to the challenge with enthusiasm, and with gratitude for having finally been given the opportunity she’d waited years for. That she’d failed so miserably at such an important task was a heartbreak she would carry with her for the rest of her life.

She paused at the dining room window and drew back the curtain. Outside, the snow gleamed bluish in the moonlight. A dried leaf, caught by the wind, scuttled across the lawn. Sarah dropped the curtain and went back to pacing. She couldn’t abide sitting here like some helpless B-grade movie heroine, wringing her hands and waiting for the hero to rescue her. She wanted to be Erin Brockovich, out there on the street, kicking ass and getting things done. She needed to find Kit before something god-awful happened to her, something Sarah would never forgive herself for allowing to happen.

Earlier tonight, she’d called Remy in New Orleans, just because she didn’t know who else to talk to. To his credit, her ex-husband hadn’t said, “I told you so.” Instead, he’d sounded concerned, for her as well as for Kit. “You can’t blame yourself,” he said. “If anybody’s the villain in this piece, it’s Bobby. If he’d been any kind of father at all, he would have handed her over to you the day Ellie died. You wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

“How can you be sure?” she argued. “Maybe I would’ve messed her up as bad as Bobby has. We come from the same gene pool, after all. And I haven’t exactly lived the most stable existence. Maybe Connellys just aren’t cut out to be parents.”

“Or maybe your guilt’s more about the past than the present.”

She didn’t have an answer to that, probably because he was right.

“Look,” he said, “kids ran away every day. Most of them come home sooner or later, maybe a little the worse for wear, but not irreparably damaged. It’s the parents who suffer, because teenagers have tunnel vision. They don’t understand that the things they do hurt the people who love them. They’re too self-absorbed. Kit’s a smart girl. She’ll be okay. You’re the one I’m worried about. You need to get some sleep. If you don’t, the worrying’s apt to kill you.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And call me again if you need anything. I mean it, Sarah. Just because we’re divorced doesn’t mean… well, you know. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

They’d ended their conversation after that, because there really was nothing left to say. She understood the truth in his words. She just wasn’t sure she could apply it to her own life. Guilt was a powerful motivator. And so was love. Put the two together and you created an unstoppable force.

She wandered to the living room and turned on the television. The man whose face filled the screen was fair-haired, charismatic, fortyish. He smiled into the camera, surrounded by a young, attractive, athletic-looking family. “Tom Adams,” the voice-over said solemnly. “Standing tall for the Commonwealth.”

So this was the esteemed Senator Adams. What was it Steve had said about him?
He’s so conservative he makes Rush Limbaugh look like Dennis Rodman
. Adams hardly looked like the spawn of Satan Steve had made him out to be. His politics may have leaned a little further to the right than she preferred, but wasn’t that what the majority of the voters seemed to want? Josie was right. Adams looked agreeable enough, if you could get past the fact that he was probably one more rich boy who would never have to worry about the demise of Social Security, because his trust fund was bottomless.

Sarah clicked a button and the senator’s face disappeared. She knelt before the hearth, took a long-handled match from the box on the mantel and struck it. The match flared into flame. She touched it to the stack of kindling arranged neatly in the fireplace, fanned it with her breath, and watched the fire dance to life.

Determined to enjoy its cozy warmth, she poured herself a glass of white wine, popped in a Patsy Cline CD, and settled on the couch with her bare feet tucked up underneath her. While Patsy sang about walking after midnight, Sarah stared into the flames, absently twirling her wineglass by its stem. She’d been so sure she was doing it right this time, so sure she’d finally turned around that string of bad luck and worse choices that had followed her around for the past sixteen years.

She and Remy had parted on friendly terms. But when she’d announced her intention to pack up Kit and move to Boston to take up residence in the house she’d inherited from her father’s sister, he’d been aghast. “Why would you want to do that, sugar?” he asked. “The place is falling down, Boston is an icebox, and the people there are the rudest I’ve ever had the misfortune of doing business with.”

Dear Remy. He truly meant well. And the house had its faults, for sure: it was desperately in need of paint, and the front steps were about ready to fall off. Sooner or later, she was going to have to replace the roof. The interior could use fresh wallpaper and updated kitchen appliances. It was going to take time and money to bring the place into the current century. But she’d fallen in love with the old wreck the instant she turned her key in the lock. It was hers, all hers, and she loved it in a way she couldn’t adequately explain to her ex-husband.

“Stay here,” he’d argued. “I’ll put you and Kit up in a nice little apartment. I’ll take care of you financially. You won’t have to worry about a thing.”

“But that’s the problem,” she’d told him. “I need to pay my own way. I need to stand on my own two feet and be a responsible adult. I need to be a momma to that poor little girl.”

He argued until he was blue in the face, but she refused to back down. She needed to make a new start, needed to reassess her life. She started looking at business opportunities in the greater Boston area and found a charming little bookstore that had just gone on the market. She flew to Boston to check it out, then put together a business plan, liquidated her assets, and took the plunge.

Bookmark was doing well. And after years of being married to one man or another, she’d discovered she really didn’t mind being alone. Between mothering Kit, running the bookstore, and trying to keep the house from falling down around their ears, her life was too full for the absence of a man to even register on her radar. She’d begun to flex her muscles, both physically and emotionally, had begun to plumb her inner depths and to discover her own strengths, strengths she’d never imagined she possessed. It was empowering to discover she didn’t need a man to survive.