Old Wounds (12 page)

9.

ROAD TO REDEMPTION

Sunday, October 9

The note was propped against the coffeepot.
Mum,
it read…

Sorry to do this but my mind is so full of tags and rags of half memories right now that I think I’ll be better off alone, where I can sort things out a bit. Driving always calms me, so I’m heading back to Chapel Hill now. It’ll be a good chance to let all this information simmer. I’ve realized that I have to go slower—one thing at a time—so I’m not going to try to follow up on Jared’s father this weekend.

I know you had invited Phillip out today and I’m really sorry not to be here. But I’ll be back next weekend.

Mum, it’s as if the past is a huge lake and I’m diving deep, trying to find something. But I have to keep coming up for air in the present. If I could just stay under long enough, maybe I could find what I’m after. I know this must sound crazy to you—but don’t worry, I’m fine. Just a little overwhelmed with the task I’ve set myself, I think.

I’ll give you a call when I get back to my house.

Love you. R

“Rosemary decided to go back to Chapel Hill today instead of tomorrow. She said she felt overwhelmed by all the old memories.” Elizabeth gripped the telephone a little too tightly and went on. “I have to tell you, Phillip, I’m not happy about her and this…this wallowing in the past. I’m afraid she’s going to be hurt—either by what she
does
find, or maybe by what she doesn’t. But since I can’t stop her, I’m going to help her. I want to talk to Maythorn’s stepfather and find out how to get in touch with Patricia. The sooner Rosie’s satisfied, the better. And anything I can do to speed the whole thing up—”

Phillip broke in, his voice calm. “Why don’t you come by my place and I’ll go with you to see this guy? It’ll be something different to meet a born-again saint. And then let me take you to dinner here—there’s a new Thai place I think you’d like.”

“Well…Sure, that would be great.” Elizabeth looked again at the note in her hand. She felt like crying. “Thank you. This is so unfair to you, Phillip, and you’re being a really good sport. I don’t know what’s up with Rosie—she was looking forward to meeting you, but then something changed.

“Nothing to do with you,” she added hastily, “more that Rosie’s…preoccupied. When she went in to Asheville to have drinks at the Grove Park with Jared, she was just going to get some basic information about where the rest of the family is living. Then drinks stretched into dinner. And when she finally got back, she was really quiet; said something about how seeing Jared had made her realize how much she had forgotten.

“But Phillip, the other thing I called about—have you talked to Sheriff Blaine today? Has he found out anything about the little boy—about Calven?”

“No, I’m afraid he hasn’t. He told me he sent someone out to look around Bib’s trailer over on Hog Run Branch, but there was no sign that anyone had been there recently. He did talk to Calven’s grandmother, but she didn’t know anything either—evidently Calven’s mama isn’t likely to live and the old lady’s all to pieces.”

“Phillip, I’m really worried about that little boy. It’s like Maythorn all over; he’s simply vanished. And
his
family’s not wealthy—no chance of kidnapping here.”

She had picked him up at his house in Weaverville and they were on their way into Asheville to find Moon Mullins at the mission he called Redemption House. Her anxiety about Calven jostled with concern for Rosemary and a nagging feeling that something had been left undone.

“I think this is different,” Phillip replied. “I told you what his grandmother said. ‘That young un’s got kin all over the county
and
he’s got sense enough to find him a place to stay.’ She was worried about her daughter, not Calven. He’s probably just fine. But Blaine’s still on it.”

She said nothing, her thoughts still with the little boy on the run. Phillip watched her for a moment, then said, “Let it go, Elizabeth; you’ve got enough to worry about. What was the deal with the note she left?”

Elizabeth sighed, knowing he referred to Rosemary. “It was a weird, rambling sort of note; it made me wish to god she’d just forget about the whole thing.”

“But that’s what she did before, isn’t it? And it didn’t work.” Phillip reached over and rubbed his knuckles against her arm. “Elizabeth, this is the right thing for her to do. And it’s right that you’re helping.” His hand rose to brush her cheek. “Why don’t you tell me about the Mullins family and when you first got together with them? Give me some background.”

“The first time we went to Mullmore…I’ll certainly never forget
that.
Phillip, I can’t begin to describe how weird it was that first time we went to their house. There we were, so-called ‘back-to-the-land hippies,’ just moved from the barn, where we’d lived all summer, into our unfinished house—I mean, we hadn’t even put in a septic tank yet, so we had an
outhouse,
for god’s sake! And here, just over the ridge from our humble abode, we’re being met at the door of this veritable
castle
by what seems to be a
butler.”

Phillip’s lips curled in amusement. “Tell me about the family. I looked at the newspaper stories and talked to one of Blaine’s deputies who was around back then, but I’d like to hear what
you
thought of the Mullins.”

“Well, we’d seen a good bit of Maythorn during the summer but it wasn’t till fall that we actually met the rest of them. What did I think?”

Elizabeth fell silent, trying to remember her first impressions of the Mullins—first impressions untainted by later experience. She smiled at a sudden memory. “Patricia came over to invite us to dinner—we didn’t have a phone yet. When she left, Rosie said that she looked like a Barbie doll. And she did! I’m afraid that Sam and I referred to her as Mrs. Barbie for a while. My first thought was that she had married up—out of her class.” A rueful laugh escaped her. “Lord, is that un-PC or what? I sound like a Victorian novel—or my mother. What I really mean is that Patricia wasn’t as educated as her husband. I’m sorry to say I pegged her as a dumb blonde; though, in time, I came to see that she was really quite sharp.”

She hoped that Phillip hadn’t noticed the bitterness creeping into her voice. But his expression was neutral as he asked, “And what about her husband—Moon?”

“Moon was smart enough to make it through some Ivy League college—though the kind of money his family had may have helped some. He used proper grammar and seemed well read, but the main thing about Moon is that he was a drunk. Not a falling-down or yelling sort of drunk, he just worked on a bottomless glass of iced tea and vodka all day long, and by the afternoon he wasn’t particularly coherent.”

“Yeah, Blaine’s guy mentioned that about him. ‘Drunk as an owl’ was what he said. But the deputy put it down to the shock that the whole family was going through at the disappearance of the little girl.”

Phillip’s face grew still as if he were trying to unravel some knotty conundrum. Elizabeth waited for further comment but none came. Finally she said, “Moon was drinking heavily when we first met them…. Patricia told me all about ‘his little problem’ that first time we went over there.”

She glanced over at him. “Phillip, you aren’t thinking that…?”

His head jerked. “Wha—? No, I’m not thinking about Mullins. I was wondering about ‘drunk as an owl.’ I always think of owls as pretty solemn,
sober
types. Sorry. Go on. Who else was there in the household?”

“Maythorn, of course, and her half-sister, Krystalle—a baby Barbie—very like her mom. Krystalle was four or five years younger—around Laurel’s age. And Jared, the stepbrother. He was from
Moon’s
first marriage. I guess Jared was at least sixteen back in ’84; I seem to remember he had his own car.”

“What was he like?”

“Rosie seemed impressed with him last night; she said he was very helpful—”

“No, not now.
Then.
What was Jared like then?”

“I don’t really remember him that well. He was very handsome…they all were. I started looking through some old photo albums last night after Rosie went to bed—I was pretty sure that the Mullins had sent us one of those Christmas cards that first year, with a family picture. And that I’d stuck it in an album.”

She reached for the envelope propped on the dashboard in front of her. “Just seeing the pictures brought a lot back.”
Maybe more than I wanted,
she added silently as she passed the envelope over to Phillip.

“There’re
three
guys.” Phillip was frowning at the photo card. “The one with his arm around Mrs. Barbie—appropriate name, by the way—I assume is Moon. But then there’re two more—and they’ve all got that white-blond, blue-eyed Aryan look. Kind of creepy, actually. And Mrs. Barbie and Barbie junior are blondes too—Maythorn’s definitely odd man out in that family. Wonder if she felt that way. But who’s the third guy? It just says ‘Season’s Greetings from all the Mullins.’”

“That third one would be Mike—Moon’s younger brother.” Elizabeth’s eyes were fixed on the highway. “He was there as a kind of mentor-slash-tutor for Jared. I think, if I’m remembering this right, Jared stayed with his mother when Moon left her for Patricia. Then, not too long before we moved here, Jared’s mother sent him to live with Moon. I don’t remember if I ever heard why exactly; I think Patricia mentioned his mother couldn’t handle him.”
Whereas Patricia let him do anything he wanted. Most of the time she treated him as though he were her age, flirted with him outrageously…and god knows what else.

Elizabeth realized that her jaw was set in an unbecoming clench and that her teeth were beginning to grind. “But anyway, Moon’s brother, Mike, had some experience working with quote ‘troubled youth’ and he was brought in to kind of pal around with Jared. As I told you, Moon was hopeless—he just wandered around with that drink in his hand and occasionally told the lawn crew that came in twice a week from Asheville what to do. And Patricia had about as much idea of how to deal with a teenage boy as…as a Barbie doll would.”

The large brown-shingled house sat on the corner of a busy street, just across the expressway, where the stores and businesses of Asheville faded into a run-down residential area. The size and location of the building, together with the long utilitarian-looking clapboard addition at the rear, hinted at its probable past as a boardinghouse from an earlier time, when invalids flocked to Asheville for the health-giving mountain air. A sign by the front walkway read, REDEMPTION HOUSE. Patches of well-trodden grass and weeds on either side of the walkway were adorned by semicircles of white plastic lawn chairs, all occupied by bedraggled-looking men and women enjoying the mild weather and warm sun. They ranged in age from teens to completely indeterminate.

A heavy, pasty-faced woman in green sweatpants and an ample Hawaiian shirt stubbed out her cigarette on the arm of her chair, tossed the butt into the scrawny evergreens that did service as foundation planting, and hailed Phillip and Elizabeth as they approached the steps.