The Pieces We Keep (31 page)

T
he day grew quiet as the sun retired from its post. Children at the fountain had come and gone. Mothers and nannies had pushed countless strollers down the path. A welcome breeze fluttered its fingers at the tree above the bench where Vivian remained.

Since Gene’s departure from the park, she had lost all concept of time. She had shed the tears that begged to fall, but once again the numbness protected her from ruin. She was gazing at the mosaic of filtered light dancing across the grass when a large shadow appeared on the ground.

“It’s time to go.”

She raised her head, expecting a park patrolman to usher her along. Instead, it was Gene.

“I said I’d take care of you.” His tone was tense but level. He didn’t look in her eyes. “I made a promise.”

“Gene . . .”

He grabbed the handles of their travel bags and started toward the street. He was several strides away when he paused, a signal for her to follow.

Alas, he had returned here out of decency, to keep his conscience clear. With nightfall soon arriving, he would ensure she made it home before he walked away forever.

Wearily, she came to her feet. She accompanied him to the sidewalk and on toward the bus depot. They continued in silence over a stretch of city blocks and into Foley Square. When he began to climb a wide set of concrete stairs, she realized where they were.

“This is the courthouse.”

He proceeded without speaking.

“What are we doing here?”

Again, no response. Just more steps.

“Gene, stop.” She grabbed his arm to cease him. “Tell me what we’re doing.”

He shifted his body toward her, though still avoided her eyes. “The baby needs a father,” he said coarsely. “The way I feel about everything else ... I don’t know what to make of yet. All I know is there’s an innocent baby in this mess-a baby that ought to have two parents. There’s no reason it should have to suffer.”

Vivian withdrew her hand. Pride commanded her to refuse. A strong, independent woman would not allow a man to do this, no matter how charitable his intent.

But pride, she realized, would not feed and clothe her child. Nor would it provide a respectable standing on which that child could build a life. Her unborn baby deserved much more than Vivian could supply on her own.

After all the damage she had unwittingly caused, she could do this. If Gene was willing, she would do this.

With a single nod, she acquiesced and the two resumed their ascent. She followed him through the doors, into the corridors of justice, and prepared to say her vows.

 

Before long, the papers were signed and scripted words recited. The official pronouncement was made. There was even an official kiss, though it passed with all the warmth and length of a pinprick. Gene paid two extra dollars for strangers to stand as witnesses. Luanne and an Army buddy had long since left the courthouse by the time Vivian and Gene arrived.

“I’ll call them tomorrow,” he had intoned when Vivian asked about updating the others to explain the delay in the ceremony. She imagined he would create a plausible excuse, perhaps cab trouble or temporary cold feet, but he did not confirm this. In fact, he said nothing more.

At the hotel, she soaked in the tub until the water had cooled her to a shiver.

Dressed in her white, silken nightdress-she had packed only this for sleepwear-she left the haven of the bathroom. Gene was lying beneath the covers on the far side of the bed. One hand under his head, he gazed at the ceiling. Lamplight outlined the bare surface of his chest, the muscles she had felt only through a layer of fabric.

“I see there’s a bottle of champagne on the bureau,” she said. She craved conversation of any kind, the slimmest sense of connection. “Are you thirsty?”

He flicked her a glance. It was the same attention he had extended during the ceremony and every minute since. “No,” he said.

Vivian simply nodded.

She clicked off the tasseled lamp on her nightstand and slid beneath the covers. Moonlight slanted between the drapes, drawing a line across the carpet and over the fluffy down bedding. The room was relatively spacious, by Manhattan standards, the decor elegant in soft yellow and cobalt blue. She could understand why Gene had chosen it for their first intimate encounter. Their first night of marital bliss.

She lay there for several minutes, clasping the pressed sheets covering her chest. From the hallway came the laughter of a couple passing by the door, an enviously happy sound. Then it went quiet, save for the city noises below. It was the sort of quiet that could turn a person mad.

At last, Vivian rotated her head toward Gene. Her groom, her husband. The pillow rustled like cellophane in her ear.

“Gene,” she said, before considering what would follow. There was so much to say, but with endless doubts of how to phrase it.

“Does anyone else know?” he said.

It took her a second to comprehend the question. “No. Agent Gerard is the only one I’ve told about Isaak.”

“What about the baby?”

How stupid of her. Naturally, that’s what he’d meant. “No one but the doctor knows,” she assured him. “And now you.”

Gene angled his eyes in her direction. She strained to read the emotion beneath them, veiled by the dimness. “For now we keep it that way,” he told her. “And the secret of its father, that stays with us for good.”

She nodded and whispered, “Of course.”

His gaze lingered over her face. It already seemed an eternity since he had truly looked at her. After a notable stillness, she uncurled her stiffened fingers. She edged them over to touch his shoulder, needing even scant reassurance that he did not despise her.

Barely had she brushed his skin when he rolled the other way.

That’s how they remained through the long hours of night, together in their solitude, both grieving over a life that would never be theirs.

E
verything had changed in a day.

The custody case had been officially dropped, releasing Audra from the bindings of a darkly tenuous future. She and Jack could at last continue on a path with promise, the fresh start they would launch together.

Now, if only Tess would share her enthusiasm.

“You do realize you don’t absolutely have to move,” she said to Audra, emphatically pointing with a potato chip from lunch. It was the umpteenth time she had stated the reminder since the legal development a week ago.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve mentioned it.” Audra put a fifty-cent price sticker on an old purse. She returned it to the spread of garage-sale items covering her bedroom floor, where she and Tess were seated cross-legged.

“Seriously, though. Why would you want to live where people say things like ‘shiesty’ and ‘wicked good’? Those don’t even make sense. It’s like a bad translation of a foreign film.”

Audra smiled, unable to argue. “Well, considering I’ve given notice on the apartment, and I’d actually be employed in Boston, I’d say it’s the best option.”

“Oh, please. Hector would hire you back in a millisecond. I’m not kidding when I tell you the new girl’s weird. Her name should’ve been a clue. Cheyenne. What normal person is named after a city in Wyoming?”

Audra started tagging the pile of baseball caps. “I thought you were the one who recommended her.”

“Yeah, well. She had a good resume. There’s no way I could’ve known she’d talk to every patient in a coochie-coo baby voice.”

“Maybe it’s ... a phase she’s going through.”

“Like how she doesn’t shave? Legs I get, but armpits? That’s plain wrong.”

Although the vision did make Audra wince inside, she aimed for a solution: “So, just don’t look under her arms.”

“I’ve tried. It’s as easy as not watching a train wreck.” Tess picked up another CD and groaned. “Audra, really? You still own
Cher’s Greatest Hits?”

Tess had taken the day off and was supposed to be pricing the music and books, but between commentary about work, the East Coast, and every eighties album in the stack, she wasn’t making much progress. Good thing they still had two days until the PTA’s community flea market. Hosted by Grace’s school, it was a convenient way to clear out anything Audra didn’t want to pack for the big move in three weeks, all while supporting a worthy cause.

“Mom?” Jack asked gently from the open door, his arm now free of a cast.

“Yeah, buddy? What is it?”

“Can I get a hundred coins?”

Grace called out from the living room couch: “It only costs two dollars! Then his penguin can buy a jumbo flat-screen TV for his igloo.”

Audra hated spending money on Internet games that trended like pop music hits. But, with her savings mostly intact, there was less need for frugality. Besides, she wasn’t about to discourage any of his positive social interactions.

“I suppose that’s fine,” she said to Jack. “Nothing else though, okay? We don’t need a whole penguin village living in my laptop.”

“ ’Kay,” he replied. Before he turned for the couch, he sported half a smile.

His nightmares were still a regular part of their routine, but Audra hoped the depletion of her anxiety would soon rub off on her son.

Tess waved a CD in the air. “Now,
this
one I’m keeping. I love the Go-Go’s.” She set the case aside and continued through the pile.

Audra laughed and began to organize board games that Jack had long outgrown. She was collecting cards for Candy Land when Tess spoke in a secretive tone.

“Hey, you have to tell me. Have you figured out anything about Sean?”

The question pulled Audra’s head up. She hadn’t told Tess about the hayloft, as she still hadn’t processed the encounter, and worried what had given her away. She answered in an equally hushed voice. “What about him?”

“Did you figure out why Jack wanted to find him at the festival?”

Internally Audra sighed, her thoughts redirected. “I’m not sure it happened like that. I think he just . . . recognized Sean from his picture in the paper.”

“Or ... ,” Tess drew out, “he could have been looking for him, but in a different way than you originally thought.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It’s like in that movie,
Sleepless in Seattle.
How the boy snuck off to New York, in order to meet some stranger, because he wanted his dad to have a new wife.”

Audra gasped at the revelation. “Ohhh, so you’re saying Jack wants me to have a new wife.”

Tess sat back and rolled her eyes. “Just think about it. When you consider what Jack told you about wanting two people together, maybe that’s his real message. That he wants you to be with someone—like Sean—because he wants you to be happy.”

So finally she can be with him.
Granted, it could apply, but Audra doubted that was the case. It was no different from a tarot-card reading: Look hard enough and any prediction could be stretched to fit.

“Tess, if this is another strategy of yours, pushing a romance to keep us from moving, it won’t work. But I do appreciate the effort.”

With a grin, Audra returned to the board game pieces. She wasn’t about to share that Sean had called, asking to see her tomorrow. After all, there would be no chance for a relationship. That’s why she had suggested a coffee shop near the apartment. A public meeting place not only clarified expectations as platonic but would also reduce her own temptations for more. Her goal was to simplify. The day would be complicated enough, as it would be her first trip to her in-laws’ house since the case began.

After several days of pondering Robert’s words, she had been tucking Jack into bed when he asked about his grandparents.
Can we go visit them before we move?
he’d asked, and she was reminded that he knew nothing of what had occurred.
Of course we can,
she’d answered, a verbal reflex. In the late hours of the same night, she had concluded it was time to reach out. Though part of her still harbored resentment, it was impossible to discard compassion in light of the couple’s past.

At this point, it was a toss-up as to which meeting tomorrow would clench the prize for tension and awkwardness, but as a means for proper closure they were tied.

The phone rang.

Tess salvaged the cordless from the mound of books and checked the screen. “It says
Shuman.
Do you want it?”

The name didn’t sound familiar—at first. Then recognition set in. Audra had forgotten all about the woman’s voice mail. Cringing from her blunder, she answered the phone and finally connected with Taylor Shuman.

“I’m so sorry. I completely meant to call you back. With summer break starting, and everything else, it’s been pretty hectic.”

“I totally understand,” Taylor said. “I was just worried you didn’t get my message, so thought I’d better try your home number too. I do have some information for you, if now’s a good time.”

The polite thing to do, obviously, was hear the woman out. Then Audra would thank her profusely and assure her it was the perfect amount of details to finish a family project. Another way of saying there was no need for more.

“Now is a great time. I’d love to hear it.”

“Wonderful. I have the file right here.” Papers faintly shuffled over the line. “Let me tell you, Sean was right about this guy, Jakob, being a challenge to track down. It became a personal mission of mine. I even recruited a friend to help out. He’s an archivist at a military museum and has a knack for uncovering this kind of stuff.”

The more Audra learned of people’s wasted efforts, the worse she felt.

“Anyway, it took some digging, but we did locate a file that was recently declassified. Actually, it might have been the one you had trouble viewing online. Turns out, he was, in fact, one of the spies convicted in that saboteurs’ case in 1942.”

Audra grappled with the statement. She hadn’t expected the connection. No article she had read ever included him. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m looking at a summary of the case right here. It states that Jakob Isaak Hemel was tried by a military—”

“I’m sorry. Did you say Isaak? As in, his middle name?”

Tess scrunched her brow at Audra, direly curious from catching a single side of the conversation.

“That’s right. Apparently he was tried in a separate case. That’s why he wasn’t listed with the others. According to this document, he was declared guilty and given—hold on, where’d it go?—oh, yeah. He was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in prison.”

“So ... he wasn’t sent to the electric chair.”

“Looks like he got off for collaborating. Only two others in the group weren’t executed. Eventually, at different times, the three were deported to Germany. And that’s the most intriguing part.”

Audra pressed her hand to her temple, fully aware that she wasn’t prepared for the rest. “What is?” she asked.

“There’s no record of him after that. Not a shred of evidence he ever made it there.”

At the suspenseful pause, Audra sank further into confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Honestly, I don’t know if they’re linked in any way, but there was a memo in Jakob’s file. It mentioned a missing plane over the Atlantic within a few days of his release. An Army transport. From what we can tell, something about it was covered up, though we don’t know what.”

A shiver ran through Audra’s body from scalp to toes. She gripped the phone tighter.

Tess demanded in a whisper, “What’s wrong?”

But Audra couldn’t answer. Her mind was too consumed by the thought of her son in the next room, a young boy who once again threatened all that she believed.