Will asked the old woman, “Why didn’t you take that Python over to Evelyn’s when you heard the shots the other day?”
She looked down at the gun. There was a bit of petulance in her tone. “Ev told me not to come over no matter what.”
Will hadn’t pegged her as an order-follower, but maybe her bark was worse than her bite. Poisoning was a coward’s choice, coldblooded murder without the inconvenience of getting your hands dirty. He tried to push her toward the truth. “But you heard gunshots.”
“I assumed Evelyn was taking care of some old business.” She jabbed her thumb Amanda’s way. “Notice she didn’t call her for help.”
Amanda rested her chin on the walkie-talkie. She was watching Will like she was waiting for a pot to boil. She was always ten steps ahead of him. She knew where his brain was going even before he did.
She told Mrs. Levy, “I knew Evelyn was seeing Hector again. She told me months ago.”
“Like hell she did. You were as shocked to see that picture as I was when I took it.”
“Does it matter, Roz? After all this time, does it really matter?”
The old woman seemed to think that it did. “It’s not my fault she was willing to gamble away her life for ten seconds of pleasure.”
Amanda laughed, incredulous. “Ten seconds? No wonder you murdered your husband. Is that all the old bastard could give you—ten seconds?” Her tone was cutting, rueful, the same one she’d used on the phone half an hour ago.
There are other things a man can gamble with besides money.
She was talking about Will and Sara. She was talking about the inherent risks that came with love.
Will turned back to the camera. Faith was still talking. Had Roz Levy set up the camera today, or had it been there all along? The view into the house was clear. What would she have seen two days ago? Evelyn making sandwiches. Hector Ortiz carrying in groceries. They were comfortable around each other. They had a history. A history that Evelyn was trying to hide from her family.
Pigeons and bluebirds.
Will looked up from the camera. “He’s Evelyn’s son.” Both women stopped talking.
Will said, “Hector’s the father, right? That’s the mistake Evelyn made twenty years ago. She had a son by Hector Ortiz. Was the bank account used to help support him?”
Amanda sighed. “I told you, the account doesn’t matter.”
Roz made a disgusted sound. “Well, I’m not going to keep it a secret anymore.” She gleefully told Will, “She couldn’t very well raise a brown baby, could she? I always said just switch it with Faith’s. That girl was wild. No one would’ve been surprised to hear she was running around with some wetback.” She cackled at Will’s stunned expression. “Fast-forward twenty years and she did it anyway.”
“Nineteen years,” Amanda corrected. “Jeremy’s nineteen.” She looked around the room, finally realizing what Roz Levy had been up to. “Christ,” she mumbled. “We should’ve charged you for a front-row seat.”
Will asked, “What happened?”
Amanda pressed her eye to the camera. “Evelyn gave the baby to a girl we worked with. Sandra Espisito. She was married to another cop. They couldn’t have children of their own.”
“Can we get them here? Maybe they could talk to him.”
She shook her head. “Paul was shot in the line of duty ten years ago. Sandra died last year. Leukemia. She needed a bone marrow transplant. She had to explain to her son why he couldn’t be a donor.” She turned back to Will. “He looked into his father’s side of the family first. I suppose Sandra thought it might be easier. Hector invited him to a get-together. That’s how he met Ricardo. That’s how he got mixed up in Los Texicanos. He started using drugs. Pot at first, then heroin, then there was no looking back. Evelyn and Hector had him in and out of rehab.”
Will felt a burning in his gut. “Healing Winds?”
She nodded her head. “This last time, at least.”
“He met Chuck Finn there.”
“I don’t know the details, but I imagine so.”
If Will had known this earlier, there was no way he would’ve let Faith go into that house alone. He would’ve tied her up. He would’ve shoved Amanda inside Mrs. Levy’s trunk. He would’ve called in SWAT from every police force in the country.
Amanda said, “Go ahead and get it out. I deserve it.”
Will had already wasted enough time yelling at her. “What does the back of the house look like?”
She couldn’t process the question. “What?”
“The back of the house. Faith is standing in the foyer. She’s looking into the family room. The whole back wall is windows and a sliding glass door. You said the curtains were pulled closed. They’re thin cotton. Can you see anything like a shadow or movement?”
“No. It’s too bright outside and the lights are off inside.”
“When is SWAT supposed to be here?”
“What are you thinking?”
“We need to get the helicopter.”
For once, she didn’t ask questions. She got on the walkie-talkie and patched directly into the SWAT commander.
Will pressed his eye to the camera as Amanda negotiated the request. Faith was still standing in the foyer. She wasn’t talking anymore. “Is there some reason you didn’t tell me that Evelyn had a love child with Hector Ortiz?”
“Because it would kill Faith,” Amanda told him, seemingly unaware of the irony. Her next words were more directed toward Roz. “And Evelyn didn’t want anyone to know, because it’s nobody’s damn business.”
Will took out his cell phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Faith.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Faith’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She didn’t move. She just stared at her mother. Tears were streaming down Evelyn’s face.
“It’s all right,” Faith told her. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” the man echoed. “Thanks a lot, sis.”
Faith flinched at the word. How blind she’d been. How selfish. It all made so much sense now. The extended leave her mother had taken from work. Her father’s sudden business trips and angry silences. Evelyn’s expanding waistline when she’d never been overweight before or since. The vacation she had taken with Amanda the month before Jeremy was born. Faith had been furious when, after nearly eight months of shared imprisonment, Evelyn had announced that she was going to drive to the beach for a week of fun with Aunt Mandy. Faith had felt betrayed. She had felt abandoned. And now, she felt so stupid.
Remember our time together before Jeremy—
That’s what Evelyn had said in the video. She was giving Faith a clue, not strolling down memory lane. Remember that time. Try to recall what was really going on—not just with you, but with me.
Back then, Faith had been so wrapped up in herself that all she cared about was her own misery, her own shattered life, her own lost opportunities. Looking back now, she saw the obvious signs. Evelyn wouldn’t go outside during the daytime. She wouldn’t answer the door. She woke at the crack of dawn to shop at a grocery store on the other side of town. The phone rang plenty of times, but Evelyn refused to answer it. She isolated herself. She cut herself off from the world. She slept on the couch instead of in her marital bed. Except for Amanda, she talked to no one, saw no one, reached out to no one. And all the while, she had given Faith the one thing every child secretly longs for: every ounce of her attention.
And then everything had changed when Evelyn returned from her vacation with Amanda. She called it “my time away,” like she’d gone down to the springs to take the cure. She was different, happier, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. Faith had seethed with jealousy to find her mother so altered, so seemingly carefree. Before the trip, they had luxuriated in their shared misery, and Faith could not understand how her mother could so easily let it go.
Faith was weeks from delivering Jeremy, but Evelyn’s life went
back to normal—or as normal as could be expected with a sulky, spoiled, extremely pregnant teenager in the house. She started going back to their regular grocery store. She had lost a few pounds during her time away, and she set about taking off the rest with strict diet and exercise. She forced Faith to take long walks after lunch and eventually started calling old friends, her tone of voice indicating that she’d survived the worst of it and, now that the end was near, was ready to jump back into the fray. Her pillow was no longer on the couch, but back on the bed she shared with her husband. She let the city know she’d be returning after Jeremy was born. She had her hair cut in a new, short style. In general, she started acting like her old self. Or at least a new version of her old self.
There had been cracks in the happy façade, something Faith only now realized.
For the first few weeks of Jeremy’s life, Evelyn cried every time she held him. Faith could remember finding her mother sobbing in the rocking chair, holding Jeremy so close that she was afraid the baby couldn’t breathe. As with everything, Faith was jealous of the bond between them. She had sought ways to punish her mother, keeping Jeremy away from her. Staying out late with him. Taking him to the mall or the movies or any number of places a baby didn’t belong—just to be spiteful. Just to be mean.
And all the while Evelyn had been aching not just for a child, but for her child. This angry, soulless young man who now pointed a gun at her head.
Faith felt the phone stop ringing. Almost immediately, it started back again. She told her mother, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
Evelyn shook her head. It didn’t matter. But it did.
“I’m so sorry, Mama.”
Evelyn glanced down, then back at Faith. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, her injured leg straight out in front of her. The dead man lay on the floor less than two feet away. The Glock was still stuck in the back of his pants. It might as well be miles away. Evelyn could hardly jump up and grab the gun. Still, she could’ve reached up and taken off the tape covering her mouth. The adhesive was already detaching. The corners of the silver tape were folding back. Why was she pretending to be silenced? Why was she being so passive?
Faith stared at her mother. What did she want her to do? What could she do?
A heavy thunk got their attention. They both looked at the man.
One by one, he pushed the remaining books off the shelves. “What was it like growing up here?”
Faith was silent. She wasn’t going to have this conversation.
“Mommy and Daddy sittin’ around the hearth.” He kicked the Bible on the floor. Pages fluttered as it flew across the room. “Musta been real nice coming home every day to milk and cookies.” He kept the gun at his side as he walked toward Evelyn. Halfway there, he turned back, pacing in a tight line. His street slang slipped again. “Sandra had to work every day. She didn’t have time to come home and make sure I was doing my homework.”
Neither had Evelyn. Bill worked from home. It was her father who’d made sure they had snacks and did their book reports.
“You kept all his shit in your closet. What’s up with that?”
He meant Jeremy. Faith still didn’t answer. Evelyn had made her keep everything because she had known that one day, Faith would cherish it more than anything else save for Emma’s things.
She looked at her mother. “I’m so sorry.”
Evelyn glanced back down at the dead man again, the Glock. Faith didn’t know what her mother wanted her to do. He was at least fifteen feet away.
“I asked you a question.” He’d stopped pacing. He stood in the middle of the floor, directly across from Faith. The Tec-9 was pointed straight at Evelyn’s head. “Answer me.”
She wasn’t going to tell him the truth, so she gave him the last clue that had clicked it all into place. “You changed out the lock of hair.”
His smile turned her blood cold. Faith had realized this morning that the strand of Jeremy’s hair hadn’t darkened with time. The baby blue bow holding the lock of hair together was different from the one that held Jeremy’s. The edges were crisp, not frayed, where Faith had rubbed them like a talisman the last few months of her pregnancy with Emma.
The silverware. The pens. The snow globes. Sara was right. It was something a kid would do for attention. When Faith first met the man in the bathroom, she had been so concerned with remembering his description that she hadn’t processed what she was seeing. He was Jeremy’s age. He was around Faith’s height. He had chewed his lip the way Jeremy did. He had Zeke’s bully bluster. And he had Evelyn’s blue eyes.
The same almond shape. The same deep blue with specks of green.
Faith said, “Your mother obviously loved you. She kept a lock of your hair.”
“Which mother?” he asked, and Faith was startled by the question.
Had Evelyn kept a lock of his hair for all of these years? Faith had an image of her mother at the hospital, holding her baby for what she knew would be the last time. Was it Amanda who had thought to find a pair of scissors? Had she helped Evelyn clip a piece of hair and tie it in a blue bow? Had Evelyn kept it with her for the last twenty years, taking it out every now and then to feel the soft, baby-fine strands between her fingers?
Of course she had.
You didn’t give up a child and not think about him every day, every moment, for the rest of your life. It wasn’t possible.
He asked, “Don’t you even want to know my name?”
Faith’s knees were shaking. She wanted to sit down, but she knew that she couldn’t move. She was standing in the front foyer. The kitchen door was on her left. The front door was behind her. The hall was to her right. At the end of the hall was the bathroom. Beyond that bathroom was Will and his Colt AR-15A2 and his excellent shot, if she could just get this bastard to make a move toward her.
He turned the gun on its side, gangster-style, as he lined up the sights. “Ask me my name.”
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your name, little brother?”
She tasted bile on her tongue. “What’s your name, little brother?”
“Caleb,” he said. “Caleb. Ezekiel. Faith. I guess Mommy likes her Bible names.”
She did, which was why Jeremy’s middle name was Abraham and Faith’s first name was Hannah. Why had Faith chosen Emma’s name because it was pretty instead of honoring her mother’s tradition? Evelyn had suggested Elizabeth or Esther or Abigail, and Faith had been stubborn just because she didn’t know any other way.
“This is where he grew up, too, right?” Caleb waved the gun, indicating the house. “Your precious Jeremy?”
Faith hated the sound of her child’s name in his mouth. She wanted to punch it back down his throat with her fist.
“Watched TV. Read some books. Played some games.” The bottom cabinet of the bookcase was open. He kept one eye on Faith as he pulled out the board games and tossed them on the floor. “Monopoly. Clue. Life.” He laughed. “Sorry!”
“What do you want from us?”
“Damn, you sound just like her.” He turned back to Evelyn. “Ain’t that what you said to me, Mommy? ‘What do you want from me, Caleb?’ Like you can pay me off.” He stared back at Faith. “She offered me money. What do you think about that? Ten thousand bucks to go away.”
Faith didn’t believe him.
“All she cared about was protecting you and your spoiled bitch kid.” The platinum tooth glimmered in the low light. “You got two kids now, right? Mommy can’t keep her little brown baby, but you got no problem keeping yours.”
“It’s different now,” she told him. Evelyn’s condition may have been a secret, but Faith had brought down enough shame on her family to last a lifetime. Her father had lost longtime clients. Her brother had been forced into exile. What would they have made of Evelyn Mitchell raising a child who was obviously not her husband’s? There had been no good choice. Faith could not begin to imagine how her mother had suffered. “You have no idea what
it was like back then.”
“Two for two. Mom said the same thing.” He pointed to her pocket. “Are you going to get that?”
Her phone had started vibrating again. “Do you want me to?”
“SOP,” he said. Standard operating procedure. “They wanna know my demands.”
“What are your demands?”
“Answer the phone and we’ll find out.”
She rubbed her hand on her leg to wipe off the sweat, then pulled out the phone. “Hello?”
Will said, “Faith, this guy is—”
“I know who he is.” She stared at Caleb, hoping he could see every ounce of hate she had for him. “He has demands.” She held out the phone to Caleb, praying that he would come get it.
He stood rooted to the floor. “I want milk and cookies.” He paused as if giving it some more thought. “I want my mom to be there every day when I get home from school. I want one day to go by where my ass isn’t dragged to mass at the crack of dawn and my knees aren’t sore from having to pray every night.” His hand swept in an arc toward the bookshelf. “I want my mom to read books to me about happy goats and moons. You did that with ol’ Jaybird, right?”
Faith could barely speak. “Don’t say his name.”
“You took little Jay to the park and to Six Flags and to Disney World and to the beach.”
He must have memorized every picture in Jeremy’s keepsake box. How much time had he spent in her home? How many hours had he spent pawing through Jeremy’s things? “Stop saying my son’s name.”
“Or what?” He laughed. “Tell ’em that’s what I want. I want y’all to take me to Disney World.”
Faith’s arm was shaking from holding out the phone. “What do you want me to tell him?”
He snorted in disgust. “Hell, I don’t need nothin’ right now. I got my family around me. My mom and my big sister. What else do I need?” He went back to the bookcase and leaned against the shelves. “Life is good.”
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