by Joy Fielding
Nicholas reached across the table and scooped up the enormous piece of cake. “First taste,” he cried, stuffing it into his mouth.
“You’re such a baby,” Megan said.
“Okay, kids, we don’t have time to fight. You still have to get dressed for camp and I have to get ready for work.”
“You shouldn’t have to work on your birthday,” Nicholas pronounced, his mouth covered with white cake crumbs. “How old are you, Mommy?”
“She’s forty,” Megan answered, then looked at her mother with great concern. “How old was your mother when she died?”
“Sixty-two,” Lynn told her, feeling strange, as she always did on her birthday, that the woman who had given birth to her was no longer here to help her celebrate. The look on Megan’s face went from concern to dismay as she did the appropriate mathematics in her head. “I’ll be around for a while yet,” Lynn assured her quickly.
“What if something happens to you?”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“But what if something does? What if you’re in an accident?”
“I won’t be.”
“But if you are. What happens to us if you get killed in a car crash or something?”
“I’m not going to get killed in any car crash,” Lynn said with the certitude of someone who has the power to see into the future. “But if I do,” she continued when she saw that Megan was unimpressed by her omniscience, “then you’ll still have your father. He’ll take care of you.” Lynn forced these words out of her mouth with great difficulty, growing desperate for a cup of coffee. “But that’s not going to happen.” The phone rang. “I want a smaller piece of cake than that, please,” Lynn told her daughter as she reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
Lynn thought at first that the woman’s voice on the other end of the line belonged to her father’s wife, Barbara, and that she was calling to assure Lynn that today was the first day of the rest of her life, so she was surprised when birthday congratulations were not forthcoming.
“You better get over here right now,” the voice warned.
“What? Who is this?”
“They’re getting away.”
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.”
“Lynn Schuster?”
“Yes, this is Lynn Schuster. Who is this?” A blurred picture was beginning to develop in Lynn’s mind.
“The Fosters are leaving town. The moving van is in front of their place right now.”
“What?”
The line went dead. Lynn replaced the receiver slowly. The blurred photograph snapped into sharp focus, exposing Davia Messenger, the Fosters’ anxious neighbor, her geometric red hair accentuating the hawklike features of her face.
“Mom, is everything all right?”
Lynn said nothing. Where could the Fosters be going? What could she do to stop them?
“Are you going to have to leave?” Megan asked anxiously.
“Not till I’ve had my birthday cake,” Lynn told her, watching her daughter’s relieved grin spread across her face. “I love you,” Lynn said, hugging her two children close against her, her thoughts with little Ashleigh Foster. “I can’t begin to tell you how much I love you.”
“We love you too,” Megan said.
“Can I have another piece of cake?” asked Nicholas.
“As soon as the kids left for camp, I drove out there,” Lynn was explaining to her supervisor. Carl McVee, a short, balding man, whose unfashionably long sideburns only accentuated his baldness, sat behind his desk, leaning on his elbows, his lips in an unattractive pout. “The house was empty. The moving van had already left. The Fosters, of course, were long gone. I called the moving van company. They wouldn’t give me any information, but it’s a local outfit. They don’t travel out of state. So we know that the Fosters are still in Florida. I called Keith Foster’s office. They said he’d transferred to another city, but they wouldn’t tell me which one. I checked the locations of Data Base International. Their main office is in Sarasota, so that must be where they’ve gone. I called Stephen Hendrix, the Fosters’ attorney …”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“He called here immediately after he got off the phone with you.”
“Then you know he was most uncooperative.” Lynn decided she didn’t like the way her boss was looking at her.
“On the contrary, I found Mr. Hendrix to be very cooperative indeed. He’s agreed not to sue our office for harassment on the condition that …”
“What?!”
“On the condition that you leave his client alone.”
“His client is a potentially dangerous man.”
“His client is a very important potentially dangerous man. There’s a big difference.”
“You’re telling me we do nothing?”
“Lynn, be reasonable. We have nothing.”
“We have plenty. We have the testimony of a next-door neighbor …”
“A crazy lady who even you admitted in your report would not make a very impressive witness in court.”
“We have Ashleigh’s teacher, a Miss Harriet Templeton. I finally managed to get hold of her and she confirmed that Ashleigh didn’t break her arm in any schoolyard accident.”
“That doesn’t prove Keith Foster did it.”
“It proves he lied.” Lynn paced angrily back and forth in front of McVee’s desk. “I also managed to track down Keith Foster’s second wife.”
“Aren’t you the great detective!”
Lynn ignored the sarcasm. “She said that the reason she divorced the great philanthropist was because he was becoming equally generous with his fists.”
“Lynn, I admire your sleuthing, but really … the word of an ex-wife?”
“What’s wrong with the word of an ex-wife?” Lynn caught a sudden, unwelcome glimpse into her future. The dreaded ex-wife! The image of herself as an inflatable doll slowly leaking air appeared before her eyes. She felt herself shrinking, becoming less valid as the conversation progressed.
“One might question her motives,” McVee said coldly.
“One might question yours.” There was a moment’s silence. “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand why you’re so reluctant …”
“Lynn, we had a doctor examine the little girl, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we …”
“He found no evidence of any abuse, isn’t that right?”
“He found no evidence of abuse, that’s right. But you know as well as I do how long the Fosters delayed bringing Ashleigh in here. Any bruises she might have had …”
“Are pure conjecture.”
Lynn forced her gaze to the floor, afraid that her fury would show if she looked at her supervisor’s face. Since when did he use phrases like “pure conjecture”? When did he get a law degree? “The Fosters refused permission to let me question their family doctor.”
“Perfectly within their rights.”
“I know that, but …”
“But nothing, Lynn. The case is closed.”
Lynn continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “But Patty Foster as much as admitted to me that her husband broke her daughter’s arm.”
“You badgered the poor woman into admitting that her husband has a temper.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Patty Foster’s confession, if you will, tells us nothing except that the woman was distraught. In the next breath, she denies everything. Lynn, face it, we have nothing that we can take to court. Nothing we can use to force these people into counseling.”
“We can …”
“We can do nothing. We have nothing,” he repeated for what felt like the umpteenth time.
“We have a ticking time bomb.”
“Aren’t you being rather melodramatic?”
“I’d like permission to alert the child welfare agency in Sarasota.”
“Permission denied.” Now he sounded like a Supreme Court judge, Lynn thought, watching h
im lift and then drop her report on his desk for added emphasis. “I won’t risk a lawsuit over evidence as flimsy as this.”
“You’re not one who normally caves in to outside pressure,” Lynn said, trying a different tack, her attempt at flattery sounding as false as the words themselves. Carl McVee was notorious for caving in to pressure from any source.
“I don’t call it pressure. I call it common sense.” Lynn was about to object further when he added, “Something you seem to be a little short of these days.” Whatever Lynn had been about to say froze in her throat. “People love to gossip, Lynn. Word gets around, even all the way up here to the second floor.” He paused. “I understand there was quite a scene in your office last week.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about. There are many scenes in my office.”
“Involving your husband?”
Lynn said nothing, again directing her gaze to the floor.
“I understand that he was very upset about your recent behavior.”
“I don’t see where this has any relevance …” Lynn began, finding her voice, pushing the reluctant words out of her mouth.
“You’ve been with the department a long time, Lynn.”
“Yes, I have. I still fail to see how my personal life has any bearing on what …”
“Sometimes we make errors in judgment. Sometimes these errors can spill over from one area of our lives into another.”
“I did not leave my husband, Carl. He left me. The error in judgment was his, not mine.”
“And this affair you’re having with …”
“I’m not having an affair with anybody! How dare you imply …”
“All right, all right,” McVee said, waving his hands as if he were warding off a physical attack, “perhaps I’ve overstated my case.”
“I’d say you owe me an apology.”
“I apologize,” McVee said quickly.
Lynn sank into the chair across from his desk, seeing the inflatable doll collapse in a heap, the fight—as well as the air—gone out of her. She said nothing. She had nothing more to say.
Carl McVee came around the side of his desk and balanced his broad backside on the edge. “I really am sorry, Lynn. My remarks were uncalled for. You’re the best front-line worker I have. But as far as the Foster case is concerned, all we really have are your instincts. A good lawyer—and Stephen Hendrix is a good lawyer—might argue that those instincts have been thrown slightly out of kilter lately.”
So he really wasn’t apologizing at all, Lynn realized. Just using the words of apology to remake his point.
“We can’t save the world, Lynn. Some things are beyond our control.”
“And so a little girl forfeits her childhood, maybe even loses her life, because you won’t let me pick up a phone.”
Carl McVee looked pained, but ignored the latter part of her remark. “We don’t know that.”
“We know exactly that.” Lynn took a deep breath. “Is that all? Can I go?” Lynn was aware she had more than skirted the edge of rudeness, but she felt the overwhelming need to be out of this man’s office before she pushed him through his second-story window.
McVee nodded, extricating his bottom from the corner of the desk and moving around behind it, about to sit down again, when he suddenly stopped and smiled at her as if seeing her for the first time today. “By the way,” he said, “happy birthday.”
TWENTY
Renee sat in her white Mercedes and stared at the house in which she had grown up, trying to persuade her body to move, her hand to open the car door. Why was it the same every time she came up here—the shortness of breath, the trembling in her fingers, the constriction in her chest? They were her parents, for God’s sake. They loved her, even if they found the words difficult to express. Besides, she had never been one of those people who needed to hear “I love you” every day. They were only words, after all. They weren’t that important. Yes, they were, Renee understood, folding her hands in her lap. Words were that important.
She sat behind the wheel of her car, directing her gaze to the front window of her parents’ living room. The curtains were closed, as they always were, to the midday sun. Were her parents even at home? She should have called first. She knew her mother hated being caught off guard, that she was wary of surprises because they made her father uncomfortable. Renee looked at the small box wrapped in silver paper that sat on the seat beside her. It was her mother’s birthday this week. It had been years since she’d bought her a present. Her father had decided when his daughters were still quite young that gift giving was an unnecessary expense. Renee couldn’t remember the last time she had received anything from either of her parents on her birthday, although they had given her a generous check when she and Philip were married.
Renee checked her watch. It was half past one. Would her parents be home? Would they be on the golf course? She remembered that they played golf every Saturday. She just couldn’t remember what time. If they were at home, would she be interrupting their lunch? She couldn’t remember what time they ate. She should have called first to make sure they would be home. She should have called to make sure she wouldn’t be disturbing their lunch. She shouldn’t have come at all. Why was she here? “What am I doing here?” she asked out loud. “Why do I put myself through this?”
“Because you’re still trying to please them,” she heard Philip’s voice reply with calm logic. “You’re still trying to be Daddy’s perfect little angel.”
“But I never was. I was never his perfect little anything.”
“But that’s what you always wanted to be.”
Was he right? Was that why she was here? Was that what she was doing wasting half a Saturday afternoon, one of the few times she had to herself, sitting in front of a house that had never been a real home to her, shivering with fear despite the intense heat, knowing that no matter what she said once she got inside that house, it was bound to be wrong? Why did she always seem to find herself in places she didn’t want to be?
Philip rarely put himself in that position. “My time’s too precious,” he would say. “Life is too short.” And he was right. Why should he spend his Saturday visiting people he had no use for? She didn’t blame him for not wanting to come with her. Debbie would be returning to Boston at the end of next week—not soon enough, Renee thought guiltily—and it was only right that he chose to spend the day with her. She even understood the fact that he hadn’t included her in their plans. It was important for a father to spend some time alone with the daughter he too seldom saw. Renee looked back toward her parents’ house. It had never been very important to her own father.
She had hoped she could persuade Kathryn to join her. But Kathryn had simply shaken her head no and crawled back inside her bed, lifting the sheet over her head, refusing to discuss it.
Since the afternoon Renee had come home from work early to find her sister in bed, Kathryn had spent the better part of the week in her room. She had no fever, no outward symptoms of flu, but she ate little and said less. Any progress she had made in the almost eight weeks of her visit seemed to be rapidly disappearing. She was retreating into herself again, becoming silent and withdrawn. Renee had mentioned her concern to Philip, who said he’d try to talk to Kathryn again, do whatever he could to help.
He was a good man, Renee thought, understanding for the first time that her family must be as big a trial for him as his was for her.
The image of her sister, pale and frightened, appeared in the reflection of Renee’s car window. She saw Kathryn sitting in her bed, pulling the white sheet up around her chin. She saw Philip in the doorway, the white towel draped expertly around his hips. “What say we go out for an ice-cream cone?” he had asked.
A small black-and-brown dog ran by Renee’s car and barked, scaring the image away. Good, Renee thought, though she wasn’t sure why. She watched the dog bark indignantly at her unwarranted intrusion onto his territory, and then make a hasty retreat. Renee c
ould tell he was an old dog by the way his backside waddled as he ran, as if it couldn’t quite catch up to where the rest of him was headed. Just like me, she thought, except I don’t even know where I’m headed. “Yes, I do,” she said out loud, full of sudden, fresh resolve. “I’m headed inside that house. I’m going in there and I’m going to confront those two people who claim to be my parents and I’m going to tell them that I love them. And I’m not going to leave that house until I hear them tell me the same thing.”
Renee didn’t move. She sat behind the wheel of her white Mercedes. “See that car out there?” she heard herself say to them. “That’s my car. My husband, Philip, bought it for me. He’s handsome and successful and every woman who sees him wants to get her hands on him, but he’s mine. He loves me. And he bought me that car because he’s like you, not very good at telling other people how he feels.” Renee fingered the small gift-wrapped parcel on the seat beside her. I love you, Mommy, she thought. Do you love me? Do you love me, Daddy? What can I give you that will make you love me?
She remembered that when she was a little girl they were always taking things away from her. First it was her thumb that they prodded from her mouth, initially with cruel taunts, then with strong fingers, and finally, when those tactics failed to dissuade her, with the aid of some foul-tasting liquid. Next to go was her favorite blanket, a blanket she had cradled since infancy, little more than a flannel rag by the time it entered its fifth year. “You’re too old for blankey now,” they told her, using the baby word she had discarded years ago, and even though she hid the blanket from them each morning when she left for school, sometimes under the mattress, sometimes folded inside her underwear, always in a different place, she had come home one day to find it gone. “You’re too old for blankey now,” they told her again when she howled her protest, and then left her to cry in her room with neither her thumb nor her blanket for solace.
“This is ridiculous. What is the point of rehashing this now? I’m being stupid,” Renee said, pushing open her car door and stepping out onto the street. A few roadside pebbles immediately found their way into her sandals. “Great,” she said, reaching over to dislodge them, almost losing her balance, and barely managing to rescue the gift before it fell to the ground. “Off to a good start.” She looked both ways, the way she had been taught as a child—were they watching her?—and then crossed the street, deliberately sidestepping the concrete path that led to the front door of her parents’ house in favor of the freshly manicured grass. She kicked off her sandals, shaking free a pebble that had stubbornly wedged between her toes, and dug the soles of her feet into the temperamental Florida grass.