What's Left of Her (6 page)

When she reaches the last aisle, she finds her cart in front of the magazine section. Glossy covers stare back at her, their brightness shouting to her,
Look at me! Look at me!
Her gaze sweeps over them, skids to a stop at the top section, a travel display with a series of brilliant waterfalls on the outside. Niagara Falls…Niagara on the Lake…

Evie touches the magazine, the feel of the cover slick under her fingertips. Niagara Falls…Niagara on the Lake…She can almost hear the waterfall spilling over in great gushes, the roar filling her ears. Her mother wanted to take her there, let the beauty of the water soak through Evie, and the beauty of art and artists in Niagara on the Lake captivate her. It was all planned, an adventure, just the two of them, a grand awakening of sorts that would beckon her, hold her.

But then her mother died and everything changed. Evie’s fingers slip down the shiny cover, settle at her sides as she stands there, limp, alone.

***

Rupe smacks his work boots together, one, two, three times, dislodging clods of mud and grass. It is still damn hot for September but the rain last night makes the ground heavy and difficult to work. Evie hates washing muddy clothes, says it is so much easier to get out dirt and dust that isn’t ground in water.
Hell,
he’s a mess today. He stands in socks that used to be white but are now brown-smeared pieces of tan cotton, and tries to decide if he should strip down to his pants and just roll it all in a bundle and stuff it in the washing machine. Of course, Evie will have a fit about that, too. She prides herself on getting stains out, ground-in, flattened mud especially, and she’ll want to see to these right away. He decides to strip off his socks and T-shirt and find her.

“Evie?” He opens the back screen door, steps into the kitchen. There are potatoes in a pan filled with water on the stove, green beans sitting in a colander on the counter. A slotted spoon and a paring knife rest next to the beans. Neat. Organized. That’s his Evie; but no smells of cooking, except the faint remnant of French toast and syrup from breakfast. “Evie?” He’s starving and dinner, potatoes, green beans, and whatever else, is at least a half hour away. Maybe she’s still at the store buying Delmonicos or even ground chuck, he doesn’t care, he just wants to eat. “Evie?” He works his way into the family room. The morning paper is stacked beside his chair like it always is, waiting for his after-dinner ritual. Everything else is in place, too: the magazines wedged in their rack, the coasters piled one on top of the other, the blinds open wide.

Rupe heads back into the kitchen and pulls out a beer. He might as well relax and get a shower since dinner’s definitely going to be late tonight. Had she told him she had a meeting with the kids, maybe a school function? Annalise always seems to need extra help, or maybe it only appears that way because Quinn is so damn smart. He’s a tough act to follow with his straight
A
’s and teacher recommendations. Rupe takes a long swig of beer. He might as well shower, have another beer, and wait for Evie to come home. He’s two steps out of the kitchen when Quinn walks in carrying his drawing pad and a handful of pencils. “Hey, boy, where’s your mother?”

“Haven’t seen her.” Quinn sets his pad down and opens the fridge.

“Where’s Annalise?”

“Next door.” He pulls out a carton of orange juice, flips the top open, and takes a healthy swallow.

“Don’t let your mother see you doing that.” Rupe laughs. “She’ll have your hide.”

Quinn smiles, takes another chug, and sticks it back in the fridge. “Saves on glasses.”

“I don’t think your mother will see it that way.”

“Yeah, I doubt it.”

Rupe takes a swig of beer, swipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and lets out a long belch. He’d never do that if Evie were around. “Did your Mom leave a note or something to say where she’d gone?”

“Nope.” Quinn opens the plastic container on the counter, pulls out two chocolate chip cookies, jams one in his mouth.

“Well, call your grandmother, see if she’s over there.”

“Okay.” He pulls another cookie out of the container. “What’s for dinner?”

Rupe looks at the clock on the living room wall. “Far as I can tell, potatoes and beans.”

Quinn reaches for the phone. “I’ll call Grandma. She’s probably over there.”

“Well, tell your mother to come home because we’re hungry.” Rupe swigs the last of his beer, belches, and lets out a loud laugh.

By 7:45
P.M
., Rupe isn’t laughing. Evie isn’t at his mother’s, his sisters’, or any of his brothers’. He’s hopped in his truck and driven downtown looking for her car. Twice. No sign at St. Michael’s, or Furmano’s, though the manager, Bob Bell said he saw her walk in sometime in the early afternoon. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, Rupe pulls his truck up Brenda Coccani’s cracked cement drive.

The house is old with peeling paint and a front door that was red but has faded to pale pink splotches from too much sun. The screen door handle is broken and dangling from its frame. The bushes are overgrown and scraggly.
Damn
, but the place is a mess. The Coccanis need a man around, someone who’ll see to fixing up, but neither one of them has been able to keep one. It’s their mouths that send any prospects out the back door, faster than they’ve come in the front. Even Brenda’s father, Bud, left, probably barely escaped alive with all the nagging mouthiness from those two. The mother and daughter have more balls than most men he knows and damn if they don’t know how to use ’em.

He hates coming here, asking that bitch if she’s seen his wife. There’s something sad about a man running around town asking people if they know where his wife is. It makes him feel like a capon and look like a fool. But right now he’s run out of options; he needs to find Evie. He trudges up the cement steps, rings the doorbell, and waits.

“Hold on, hold on.” Brenda’s voice, which twangs like a badly strung guitar, sets him on edge. She reaches the door, dressed in bright pink baby-doll pajamas, her tan-in-a-bottle arms and legs more rust than brown. She wouldn’t be half bad-looking if she scrubbed her face and flattened the bees’ nest on top of her head. “What do you want?” But there will always be that mouth to contend with, a sure-fire killer to any man’s desire.

“You seen Evie?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Why?” She crosses her arms over her chest and her tits plump up and almost out of the baby-doll top.

Rupe shifts from one foot to the other, looks away, and rubs the back of his neck. He’s glad the screen door separates them; maybe she can’t see the worry on his face, and the near panic. “She’s not home, didn’t leave a note or anything, and I’m starting to get worried about her.”

Brenda snorts. “Maybe she finally got some sense knocked into her and took off.”

Why is she looking at him like that when she says “knocked into her”? Has Evie told her what he did?
Dammit
, he doesn’t like the tone Brenda’s using or the smart-ass look on her face.
She knows.

“Look, I need to find her.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, can you help me out? Give me an idea where she might have headed? For all we know she could have rolled the wagon and is lying in a ditch, unconscious, or worse.”

“State boys would’ve found her by now.” Brenda snaps her gum, once, twice, three times, the sound of it exploding in his head.

She’s right. The locals know every square inch of Corville and the state troopers take over at Ebbons Road. And old Boo Whittaker covers everything in between. Rupe shrugs, itches the back of his neck. “I need to find her.” He doesn’t try to keep the panic from his voice this time and maybe that’s what makes her inch the door open, make way for him to step inside.

“You want a beer?”

“Sure.” He follows her into the kitchen, sits down on one of the red wooden chairs, looking huge and out of place. Brenda pulls two beers from the fridge, hands him one. “Thanks.” He pops the tab and takes a long swallow, his eyes traveling the cramped kitchen, taking in the dingy rose wallpaper, grease-stained beside the stove and sink, peeling at the ceiling. An ancient microwave the size of a small refrigerator sits on a preassembled cart. The room is stuffed with Thomas Kincaid decorator plates lining the wall in random regard, their shiny, hand-painted beacons making a feeble attempt to brighten the kitchen. There are cookbooks, thick and thin, a roll-out dishwasher connected to a black hose, a chipped stove and matching refrigerator with a door handle wrapped in silver electrical tape. In the center of the tan-flecked counter top is a stainless steel coffee pot, the kind with the built-in thermos. Big. Expensive. And beside it is a framed picture of Brenda, her arms wrapped around a man. A man who looks a hell of a lot like Les.

Rupe jerks his eyes away. Brenda is watching him, daring him to open his mouth and say something that will challenge what he’s just seen.
You think he doesn’t care?
He can almost hear her nasal twang.
You don’t know anything. He might be married to her, but he’ll always come back to me.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs his neck again. “I came home and she wasn’t there. I thought she was at the grocery store or maybe my mother’s. I called, I went, I checked the side streets, the back roads, looked for tracks where the wagon might have gone in a ditch.” He shakes his head. “Nothing. Not a damn thing. Last person who saw her was Bud Bell at Furmano’s; said she was in there around 1:30 or so.”

“Maybe she’s just taking a little breather,” Brenda says. “You know, we all need little breathers now and then.”

“A breather? From what?”

She sinks into the chair across from him, wraps her long red nails around the can. “You know.” She lifts a shoulder, shrugs. “Everything. Life.”

What the hell is she talking about? “Evie doesn’t need a breather. She’s fine.”

“Okay, she’s fine.” She lifts the can to her lips, takes a sip.

He slumps forward, stares at his hands. “I don’t know where the hell she is. I drove all around town and into Checkering and Pikeston, looking for her wagon, but there was no sign of it.”

“She’ll be back, Rupe. Evie isn’t going anywhere.” Her voice is soft, drifting to him. “We all know that. Evie isn’t going anywhere.”

Chapter 8

It has been fifty-two hours and they still haven’t found her. Detective Olnowski came to the house yesterday morning and filled out a Missing Person’s report and took down all the necessary information to post a five-county search.

Quinn is lying flat out on his bed, stomach down, head buried between his arms. He tries to lose himself in his music, but even the Rolling Stones can’t blot out images of his mother, first quiet glances of her doing ordinary things: washing dishes at the kitchen sink, smiling at him over her canvas as he paints next to her, waving good-bye on her way to the grocery store. Simple snapshots. Normal life. And then the other visions intrude, the ones of her slashed and bloodied, dumped in a ditch, clothes ripped, body violated. He pushes them from his mind, wills them away, but they return, over and over, first in sleeping hours and now, during waking times.

He tries to remember the last time he saw her, tries to pull out the details but already they are fading. Was she wearing a red shirt that morning or orange? She had on a jean skirt, of this he is certain. He can picture her at the kitchen sink rinsing syrup off the dishes. She made them all French toast that morning but he slept in and only had time for a quick gulp of orange juice. Then out the door. Had he said good-bye?

She has to come back soon, wherever she is, they have to find her and bring her back. Maybe she fell, maybe she ran out of gas and was walking to the gas station when she fell and now she has amnesia and can’t get to them.

His father is a basket case. He’s been in the kitchen the past two nights with his Jack Daniel’s, one eye on the rooster clock over the sink and the other on the back door. Waiting. That’s what they are all doing: just waiting. The police have been to the house seven times, asking questions, taking information, borrowing one of his mother’s shirts. For the scent, Detective Olnowski tells them, the dogs need it. Quinn’s life has suddenly turned from routine to erratic in the span of fifty-two hours.

She’ll be back, he knows it, and there will be a good reason for her absence, he knows this, too. It will all make sense the second he sees her face, hears her voice, then everything will be all right, back to normal.

He lifts his head from the tunnel of his arms, blinks to adjust to the light. The alarm clock on the nightstand reads 3:18
P.M
. Annalise will be coming home from Aunt Rita’s soon, and then she’ll be looking for him, knocking on his door, peeking in, making sure he isn’t going to disappear, too. Quinn has taken to putting her to bed at night, removing the barrettes and elastic bands from her long brown hair, pulling the blanket to her chin, tucking her in with Penelope, the pink hippo, sometimes even reading her a few poems from
Where the Sidewalk Ends
. Ten-year-old brains aren’t equipped to handle death, or loss, unless it is a squished worm or a sick hermit crab, and even then, the tears and questions can resurface for days. But parents don’t die in a ten-year-old’s mind and they never just disappear; washing T-shirts and underwear one day, gone the next.

No one has told Annalise they don’t know where her mother is or when she’ll be back—not if, but when. They say she’s gone on a trip to Philadelphia for a few days to visit a sick relative and Annalise, unfamiliar with the adult world of lies and deceit, believes them. There are no questions, not who the relative is, aunt, uncle, cousin, or why she’s never heard of this person before. It is all simply accepted.

Lies. They tell her lies, Quinn, too. He feels bound to expand on the reasons his mother isn’t home:
a very sick aunt who’s bedridden and in danger of losing a leg. Mom had to leave right away, plane to catch, no time to say good-bye.
On and on he goes with the convoluted tale, until Annalise yawns, curls up on her side, and pulls Penelope to her. He watches her until she drifts off, wishing he could be ten again.