‘So it is time to put skip-trace hat on, no?’ Katrina said.
I laughed and agreed it was, pretending to don a cap for her. Skip-tracing was the term used for tracking down someone who had skipped town.
‘Something tells me that there isn’t foul play involved here. Ted wanted to leave. If I can find out why, maybe I can find out where he is in time for his son’s birthday.’
‘So you start with phone records,’ Katrina said.
‘I’ve already begun cross-referencing every number he’s called and received over the previous six months before he disappeared. These are family numbers that Olive has given me.’
Katrina nodded as I showed her that over 70 per cent of the numbers listed had been eliminated. ‘That leaves me with approximately two hundred numbers to check out.’
‘Start with this one,’ Katrina said. ‘He calls it most Friday nights. Why?’
I dialled it there and then, but it turned out to be the local pizza takeout. ‘It would have been too easy to find a trace on my first attempt. Nobody is that lucky.’
We continued eliminating the numbers one by one, each bringing us down a further dead end. If Ted was making calls to plan his escape, it wasn’t on this phone.
I scribbled a note on the file. Second phone? Then a number jumped out at me and struck me as strange. ‘He’s Italian, right? So why is he calling the Irish Center on Long Island so much?’ I showed Katrina the highlighted entries. ‘That is odd,’ she agreed.
‘I don’t know why, but I’ve got a hunch this is important. It’s time for a trip down memory lane for me, I think.’
As I made my way to Long Island to the Center, a flood of memories resurfaced. My childhood weekends were either spent there at a Fèis, a traditional Gaelic arts and culture festival, or watching Dad and Uncle Mike play hurling. Then, if I was lucky, Dad would buy me a Crunchie chocolate bar, a favourite treat of Gran’s, and in turn for him, and then me. And I thought of my mom again. How had she felt, being so far from home? She was younger than me when she came here. I realized that I knew little about her early life. Corinne was right. It was time to dig deeper. Maybe if I understood more about her, I might understand a bit more about myself. Maybe.
‘Hello,’ a voice I recognized called from behind me when I walked into the lobby. Mary had worked in the Center for decades. I turned towards her and her face lit up in recognition. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. But my inbuilt antenna that I was on the right track was on high alert. I looked at the noticeboard that listed events. An author reading, a play, a ceilidh. Adverts for tin-whistle and Irish dancing classes. A book club. Orientation for new immigrants.
‘Bea O’Connor! I haven’t seen you for years. Look at you, all grown-up now. You look wonderful. Pretty as a picture, you always were.’
‘Thanks, Mary,’ I said. ‘You look great too. Do you have a minute? I’m trying to find a missing person and I’m following up on a lead that links him here.’ I handed her my business card, which she read then pocketed.
‘Course I do. We’ll be more comfortable in my office. Will you have a cup of tea?’
I nodded and watched her as she took out her Barry’s tea from a press to make a pot.
As I breathed in the scent of the tea, I felt another wave of emotion hit me. ‘Gran always made her tea in a china teapot. A Duleek one, I think it was. It was a wedding gift. God, she loved that teapot. Sorry, I’m rambling!’
‘Ramble away. There’s nothing nicer than tea made in a decent teapot. My granddaughter bought me a new-fangled fancy one from the Martha Stewart range. I can’t take to it at all! Now, tell me about this missing person of yours.’
I pulled up a photograph of Ted Spadoni on my phone and showed it to her. She looked at it for a minute, then nodded. ‘I never forget a face. And I’ve seen thousands of them come in and out of here over the years. But names, they never stick. Ted Spadoni was here all right, a regular for a while. He was in our book club.’
I had hoped for a lead. This was a bundle of them, all gift-wrapped up as one. Olive never mentioned a book club membership and certainly not at this centre. My palm itched as it sometimes did when I was getting close to a new truth.
‘You need to speak to Deirdre who runs the book club get-togethers. Let me get you her number. She might be able to tell you a bit more about him. She’s not here today, but you might be lucky and get her at home, if she’s not visiting her daughter. She takes care of her grandchildren on her day off sometimes.’
Mary scribbled down Deirdre’s number. I drank the last of my tea, then said my thanks and goodbyes, making promises not to leave it so long the next time.
Luck was on my side; Deirdre was home and told me to head over to her place in Queens. Thirty minutes later I was drinking my second cup of Barry’s of the day.
‘Yes, I remember Ted. A nice man. Friendly.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’ I asked.
‘Oh, it’s years since he was in the book club. Let me think. He was with us for that book about the Titanic. One moment. I have a notebook and keep a track of all the books we read.’ As she rummaged through her handbag I looked around her living room, which was stacked with books in every possible spare inch. Against the wall, on top of the mantelpiece, on the sofa where I sat.
‘Here we go.’ She smiled triumphantly. ‘The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor. He loved that one. I can still remember him talking about it and how it was the first book he’d read in years that made him emotional. Have you read it?’
I shook my head but promised to rectify that as soon as possible.
‘Back to that last book club meeting. When was that?’ I said, gently returning Deirdre to the question at hand. I could see that it would take very little to have her talking books all afternoon.
‘It’s written down right here.’ She showed me her notebook.
July 2017
Book of the month, The Girl Who Came Home.
A couple of months before he went missing. ‘Was he there for the August book of the month?’
She flicked a page on her notebook and sighed. ‘No, it appears he wasn’t. Now that I think about it, he did send me an email telling me that he was leaving the book club.’
‘Is there a chance you still have that email?’ I asked, feeling excitement build. We’d been through his email account but there most definitely had not been any mention of a book club membership.
‘I could look for it in my inbox.’
‘That would be great.’
‘Right now?’ she asked, looking a bit put out.
‘Yes, if that’s possible.’ She became flustered by my pushiness, so I threw in some emotional blackmail. ‘His son turns fifteen in April and he wants his daddy back. There might be something in the email that helps me find him.’
‘Oh, the poor boy. So young to be missing his father. I didn’t realize he had a son. What did Paula say when you spoke to her? She must be in an awful state, assuming they are still together.’
Who the hell was Paula? ‘Sorry, I’m not sure I know who Paula is. Was she in the book club too?’
Deidre gave me a look of annoyance. ‘I’m not sure you’re much of a detective, dear, if you haven’t even spoken to his girlfriend!’
You dirty old dog, Ted Spadoni. I shook my head in amazement. In his photograph, he looked like butter wouldn’t melt. ‘Do you know Paula’s second name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me?’ I tried to keep the irritation from my voice. It was like pulling teeth with this one.
‘Quigley. Paula Quigley. She left at the same time as Ted. She decided to move back home to Ireland. Cork, I think she said. Paula couldn’t settle over here. She wanted to be closer to her parents who were getting on in years. That’s nice, isn’t it. I wish my son was as thoughtful. He’s only up the road but I don’t see him from one end of the year to the other, not unless he’s looking for money. Now, my daughter is another kettle of fish. I see he
r all the time, because she wants me to mind her kids. I don’t know where we went wrong. Are you good to your parents? I bet you are. You seem like such a nice girl.’
I took a steadying breath. ‘Yes, I see my dad a lot. Are you certain Ted went to Ireland with her?’
‘As sure as you are sitting there now. They were sweet together. It was Paula who brought him into the book club. She’d been a member for about eighteen months before he joined. I’ll see if I can find that email. And there will be one for Paula too.’
She made her way to her dining room table where a laptop was hidden amongst several stacks of books. As it whirred back to life, I thought about Ted living it large in Ireland, reading books with his Irish girlfriend, while his wife and son mourned him. It infuriated me. Now I wanted to find him just so I could hit him. Olive said that she didn’t believe he was dead. Somehow though, I didn’t think she had any clue that this was what he was up to. And poor Teddy Jr. Any joy at finding out his daddy was alive would soon fade when he realized that he’d left him without so much as a backward glance.
‘Here we go,’ Deirdre said, surprising me at how quickly she’d found the email. I peered over her shoulder and sure enough there it was. It didn’t say much, other than he was leaving New York, but the email address was different from the one I had on file, given to me by Olive. I took a screenshot of the email on my phone. Then Deirdre pulled up the last email she’d received from Paula, which spoke about her sick mother and the need to be closer to her. I took another screenshot of this email and then thanked Deirdre.
Not long now, Ted. I’m coming to get you.
As I strolled back towards the subway, I spied a comic book store. On a whim, I walked in. When I’d googled magical letters, my head hurt as I fell into a rabbit hole of websites about time portals. But often, linked to the stories I read, were comics. I had no clue what I was looking for or expected by stepping inside, so I just walked along the rows of graphic comics, bright, colourful and surprisingly dark. There were dolls and figurines too, some I recognized and others new to me. Stephen King’s Grady twins from The Shining made me scurry away from that aisle with speed.
‘You look like you could do with some help.’ One of the sales clerks walked towards me; he looked no more than fifteen years old. I felt ancient.
‘Just browsing. I’m interested in comics where the hero can effect change, by say, writing to their younger selves.’ I half expected him to start laughing at my ridiculous question.
‘Ah, Ray Bradbury wrote a short story in 1952 that coined the phrase, The Butterfly Effect,’ he answered without a smirk or smile. ‘A small change can make much bigger changes happen. A butterfly flaps its wings in Chicago and a tornado occurs in Tokyo.’
‘Oh! That makes sense.’ Was that what had happened with my sage warning to my younger self about smoking?
The clerk made his way towards the back of the store and I followed him as he continued his lesson. ‘In Bradbury’s story, a group of hunters go back in time to hunt a T-rex. And the idea is that they will only kill a dinosaur that was going to be killed anyhow by a falling tree. But one of the hunters gets his freak on and runs away, stepping on a butterfly as he runs. He alters the world as a result.’
He handed me a comic. ‘EC Comics, illustrated by Al Williamson. Another classic. And you might want to check out the 2007 graphic novel I Killed Adolf Hitler. Classic Grandfather Paradox.’
‘What’s that?’ I gave him my most winning smile, so he didn’t lose interest in me and my questions.
‘Say your grandfather is an asshole, maybe he knocks you about. You go back in time to shoot him. Only you don’t kill him. You just cause him brain damage, which in turn causes him to be the asshole in the now. Or you do kill him, but then you are no longer born. Whatever way you look at it, you can’t change the past.’
‘What about the future? Can you change that by altering a choice we made in the past?’
‘Give me an example.’
‘What if I tell my younger self not to start smoking.’
He smiled. ‘You can’t change the past. If you hopped into a time machine and took the cigarette from your younger self’s mouth, you’d still find a way to smoke. The past has already happened and it can’t unhappen, no matter how hard you try to stop it.’
‘But what if I’m not talking about a time machine.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Say I wrote something in my teenage diary. And my sixteen-year-old self read it and listened to me. The past is altered and so is the future. What then?’
‘Oh then you’re into what’s called Plastic Time territory. Where you can make small changes to history, but any big events will be met with resistance.’
‘So this diary in theory could change small things. But if I tried to save my mother’s life, for example, it couldn’t do that.’
‘Exactly. Basically, you’ve got to ignore everything that Marty McFly taught you about time travel. Fun movie, but nonsense. Listen, I’m due to go on my break now. Do you want these?’ He held up the two comics.
I didn’t but felt obliged to buy them as he’d been so helpful. As I walked back to the office, I thought about his words. If I believed him, my magical letter couldn’t exist. But that felt wrong too.
I felt surer than ever that my letter was pushing me towards something.
Stephanie led me to Corinne.
Corinne led me to my mother.
Now where does my mother want to lead me?
26
BEA
February 2020
Innisfree, Prospect Avenue, Brooklyn
I found Dad, eyes closed, in his thinking lazy-boy chair. He sat there to tease out plot lines in books, always had done.
‘Hi, Dad.’
He opened his eyes and we looked at each other warily, as we figured out if we were still angry with each other. I decided I wasn’t and I suppose he did too, because he offered to make us both lunch. I followed him into the kitchen and watched him as he made us both a roast beef sandwich. I’d not eaten since breakfast and my stomach growled in anticipation.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure? It’s not like you to call in midweek.’
‘Do I need an excuse?’ I said. But even as the words left my mouth I knew that they were a lie. I had come here for a reason, but now that I was sitting beside Dad, with his rapt attention, I couldn’t find the words to ask him. So instead I told him about Ted and his secret life in Ireland.
‘That poor woman,’ Dad said, looking horrified by the story. ‘So what happens next?’
‘I’m going to get a location for him in Ireland. Confirm that it’s really him before I break the news to Olive and her son. I can’t imagine how horrific it will be for them to find out that he’s done this to them. I mean, fair enough he fell in love with another woman. But be a man and break it off with your wife. Don’t just disappear!’
‘He must have had his reasons,’ Dad said. ‘These things are never as cut and dried as they might look from the outside in.’
I thought about Corinne. Was he thinking about her too? I decided that now was as good a time as any to find out. ‘I need to tell you something. I went to see Corinne. But we ended up fighting yesterday before I had a chance to tell you.’
He started to choke on a mouthful of his sandwich. His face turned tomato red and it took him a brimming glass of water to calm down.
‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said, genuinely upset that I’d nearly choked him to death. ‘I didn’t mean to give you a scare.’
‘No, it’s fine, love. Just that I haven’t heard her name in a long time. How is she?’
‘She looks brilliant, Dad. Happy. Still living in her gorgeous brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.’
‘Why did you go to see her? I’m not sure I understand. Is it to do with the time-capsule letter she sent you?’
‘Kind of. But I also wanted to apologize for my behaviour that night she left. Remember when I tripped.’
I thought about that and wondered how much I should share with him. I didn’t like to keep secrets from Dad. But I wasn’t sure how I could break the news to him about temporal paradoxes in my letters. Even with his writer’s imagination, I figured that would be too much for him. I also knew that the best thing to do was tell him as much of the truth as possible.
‘The letter has made me reflect, I suppose. On what I wanted back then and who I am now. And Corinne was a big part of my life then. I didn’t realize how big at the time, but now I do. She never tripped me up that night Dad.’
He nodded. ‘I knew that. And she did too.’
‘Yeah. She told me. You know, I always thought that you broke up because I made you choose between us. She said that you’d not been getting on for a long time before that. And that there was another reason why you fought that night. That I should ask you what that was.’
He shrugged and then sighed. ‘We had been fighting for a while. Little things adding up to one big thing, I suppose. The crazy thing is that now I can’t remember most of them. At the time they seemed so important.’
‘I got the feeling that there was something specific though. She said I should ask you, that it wasn’t her place to say.’
He closed his eyes and for a moment I thought that was his way of saying subject closed. I felt my temper snap. But before I had the chance to yell at him, he spoke. ‘We fought about your mom that night. Corinne felt that my past with your mom had too strong a hold on me. She said that it was strangling me. She wanted me to let it go, to move on. It was an impossible situation.’
‘Is that what the moving of her photograph was about?’
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