Manny’s had a big picture window in front with the name written on it. And inside, sitting across from each other in a middle booth, Mom and Leonard were sharing a pizza.
They were the only customers in the place.
“He’s not there,” Sofie said.
“That’s so weird. You think maybe he’s in the bathroom or something?”
“Could be.” But she sounded doubtful.
I was doubtful too. If Lucius Doyle wasn’t there, it meant he’d decided not to come. And that was the one possibility I hadn’t even considered, because it made no sense at all. He was the one who’d set up the meeting.
I gasped, then, as a hand clutched my arm just above the elbow and jerked me away from the window.
“Change of plans,” said Lucius Doyle as he performed a quick adjustment, switching the gripping hand from his right to his left so he was free to wrap the other arm around me. Now it looked less like he was dragging me away and more like he was giving me a fatherly embrace as we walked down the street together. The canvas bag hung down between us, tight and awkward, bumping against our legs.
Margo and Sofie were in front of us, leading the way. Margo had hooked arms with Sofie in this really insistent way, squeezing Sofie’s elbow firmly against her ribs. Sofie turned to look back at me, panic in her eyes. But Margo gave her a tug and muttered something. Sofie turned back around.
“Why are you doing this?” I snapped to Doyle. “We followed your exact instructions.”
He snorted but didn’t respond.
There were people around, but nobody seemed to notice us. I guess it’s a New York thing: you ignore the crowds, give one another space, pretend the other people aren’t there. Unless, of course, they’re dressed like Godzilla and handing out flyers, in which case you totally avoid them.
We weren’t that interesting—though we would be if I decided to scream. Then somebody would definitely notice. They might even try to help or call the police. On the other hand . . .
I didn’t have time to make that decision. Everything happened too fast. Just up from Manny’s was a gray metal service door. This time Margo didn’t even have to pause to pull out a key. It was already unlocked.
So this had been planned in advance, which made no sense at all. Why set up a meeting, then change the place?
The door led to a dank, dim entry space with a row of black plastic garbage bags leaning against one concrete wall. I wondered how they had access to all these weird, empty, ugly buildings. Maybe Margo worked in real estate.
Straight ahead was an elevator, the old-fashioned kind with walls of metal grating. Probably designed for moving freight.
Doyle slid the accordion door open and pushed us inside. Margo pressed a button, then the elevator made its noisy, grinding way up to who-knew-what.
“Please,” I said. “This isn’t what we agreed to.”
“Didn’t I make myself clear before?” His voice was so low and so hard, it cut through me like a blade of ice. “I am not stupid.”
“I know that.”
“You really didn’t think I’d recognize your mother? Also the man, who has visited your apartment many times?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. He was right. Totally.
“Were they there to protect you?”
“Yeah.”
“That was very foolish.”
The elevator stopped. We stepped out into an L-shaped storage room with shelves on the walls stocked with cans, bags, and boxes. A tower of cardboard cartons waited to be unpacked. Brooms and a mop leaned in a corner, next to a giant bucket on wheels, a washer and a dryer, a dirty-looking refrigerator, and a freezer chest.
I figured we must be directly above Manny’s Pizza. So probably there was some other access to the restaurant, maybe a stairway that led to the kitchen. But we couldn’t see it. Margo turned in the other direction and opened the door to another dingy office. Except this one looked like it was being used for actual business.
“Sit,” Doyle said. Once again he took a place behind the desk. I guess it was a power thing.
Sofie was as white as a corpse. I tried to get her to look at me, but she didn’t move, just went on staring at the floor. “It’s okay,” I said, reaching out and touching her arm. She nodded but still didn’t look up.
“Are we going to do this?” Doyle said.
“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”
“Let me see the platter.”
I hesitated. “It’s all wrapped up. And it’s still mine for the moment. You don’t have the right to demand it. That wasn’t part of our deal.”
He tilted his head and gave me a look. “Aren’t you full of yourself!”
“No. I’m scared. We’re both scared. But I still get to stand up for myself and Sofie.”
“Just show me the platter.”
“Why? It’s covered in Bubble Wrap and packing tape. It would be a hassle and a waste of time to unwrap it. And there’s no point. I’m not even sure why you asked me to bring it. The platter could be on the moon and I’d still have the power to make wishes. Or to sell it to somebody else, who could then make wishes. As you well know.”
“I like to see what I’m getting.”
That sounded like an opening. “You don’t trust me, then?”
“Of course I don’t.”
“Thanks, because Sofie and I don’t trust you either. I’m not saying that to be obnoxious. I’m making an important point.”
“Which is?”
“We both want to make this deal, right?” He was drilling me with his eyes, trying to see into my brain. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“So how can we make sure that both of us are being honest and fair?”
He gave me his stone face. So I reached into the bag, pulled out the contracts, and set them side by side on the desk.
The silence that followed was like a thing, a misty ghost that had slipped in under the door and had now expanded to fill the room, pressing us down. It was like a roaring in my ears.
“It’s a contract,” I finally managed to say. “Two identical copies. One for you and one for me. All it says is that we will both do what we agreed to do—what you already offered to do. The only change to your original proposal is that we want a little more time so we can say good-bye to Sofie. It’s going to happen, I promise. Sofie wants this even more than you do. And, thanks to the contract, you won’t have to rely on my promise, because I’ll sign—”
“Please stop talking.”
I sat up straighter, gripped my hands together in my lap, and pressed my lips together.
He was looking down at the two contracts. I saw him glancing from one to the other, making sure they were identical. The ghost of silence grew heavier in the room, sucking out the air. It was hard to breathe. I could hear my heart going rump-a-tump-thump.
Margo went over and stood almost directly behind him. And in a sort of embrace, she leaned down, one hand resting on the desk on either side of him, her cheek almost touching his as they read the contracts together. It was odd to see them like that, Lucius Doyle and his lady love in an affectionate pose. It made him seem almost human.
It didn’t take them long to read. Margo went back to her chair.
Sofie was shivering now and I was scared again. What if he refused? It occurred to me that I could do something like what I’d done to Chloe—wish him to sign it. But then I thought, no, that would be forcing him to do it. And if he didn’t sign of his own free will, the contract might be invalid. I didn’t know for sure, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance.
“How many people know about this?”
“Just my family.”
“The man sitting with your mother is not part of your family.”
“Yeah, he is. He’s engaged to Aunt Jen.”
“Who is not your aunt and isn’t part of your family.”
“She is too!”
“What about the boy?”
I nodded. “He knows.”
&n
bsp; “The little girl with the red hair?”
“Abby? No. Absolutely not.”
“The neighbor with the hair and the tattoos?”
“Nobody else at all! Not a single person! And I only told my family because I had to. They didn’t even know the truth about Sofie until that night. I said she was our neighbor’s cousin. But then I came home late from school with rope burns on my wrists and Mom went ballistic. She wanted to call the police. I had to explain why she shouldn’t.”
Lucius Doyle thought about that. He stared into space, mechanically stroking the back of his right hand with the left, fiddling with his rings.
I turned to Sofie and this time we locked eyes. I raised my brows, trying to send a message of faint but real hope. She pulled her head down into her shoulders, like a turtle retreating into its shell.
“Also,” I said, “Mom saw us looking in the window, so she knew we were there. Then we disappeared and you didn’t show up. I told her what you did to me before—though I made it sound a lot less awful than it really was, because that would have made things worse. And she has a cell phone. She may already have called the cops. I hope not, because that would really mess things up.”
That first part was a lie. Mom actually hadn’t looked up. But the rest was real. We were late, and she’d be worried.
Doyle thought about it for a few seconds. Then he pulled out his own phone and handed it to me. “Call her.”
“What should I say?”
“Everything’s all right. Your mother is not to worry, just stay where she is. You’ll be there in a minute.”
I took the phone and punched in her cell phone number. I did it slowly because my hands were shaking. She answered on the first ring.
I tried really hard to sound normal and follow the script I’d been given. But Mom didn’t make it easy. She kept asking questions that were hard to evade, like “Where are you?” I could hear the panic in her voice.
“Mom, please,” I said, cutting her off. “It’s fine! Just hang in there. We’ll see you in a minute.”
I hung up and handed the phone to Doyle. He slipped it back into his pocket.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “But I understand it.”
And without another word, he produced an expensive-looking pen. And in real ink, in beautiful script, he signed his name.
22
Old and Wise
JACKSON SLOAN HAD A BEACH house on Long Island, near the town of Bridgehampton. He let us stay there for a few days—just Mom, Sofie, and me.
Actually, he did a lot more than that. He sent a limo to pick us up and take us out to the house. And when we got there, toward evening, we found fresh flowers in all the rooms. And on the kitchen island there was this big tray of food, like at a party. Four kinds of cheeses, fancy crackers, figs and pears, grapes.
And that was just for starters. The fridge was stocked with salads and lunch meats, clam chowder and Bolognese sauce. We could have stayed there for weeks and never run out of food.
Based on the limousine—which I later found out wasn’t Jackson’s at all, just something he hired to be super nice to Mom—I was expecting his house to be really grand and decorator perfect. Like Abby’s ginormous pile on Martha’s Vineyard, which I’d never actually seen, but Abby had described in disgusting detail.
But it wasn’t like that at all.
True, the house was big. It’d been built a long time ago for the Sloan clan to gather in the summers—grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and their friends from school.
I could imagine all those squealing little kids playing croquet on the lawn, running in and out from the beach with sand on their feet, wet towels draped over the porch railings, toys and sand shovels lying on the steps.
Grandma Sloan would be sitting on the covered porch in an Adirondack chair, looking out at the ocean, a straw hat on her head and a book in her lap. Meanwhile, someone in the kitchen—maybe Jackson himself—would be cooking up a pot of fish stew for dinner.
The house seemed full of happy ghosts and good memories. And everything about it felt right—the sound of the waves and the wind, the damp, sometimes chilly air, the sun on the dune grass. The cozy little bedrooms with wonky ceilings and dormer windows with cushioned seats. The crayon marks on the wallpaper.
It was the perfect place to spend our last few days together.
Mom had met with the principal on Thursday morning. She’d explained that, due to a “family situation,” we’d be away from the city for a while. She was fully aware that I’d already missed nearly two weeks of school, but we needed these few more days. After that, Mom promised I’d work really hard to catch up. She’d get me a tutor if that would help.
Mrs. Chaffee had been amazing. She’d acknowledged that it had been a difficult time for us, and she regretted that the school situation had made things worse. She said it wasn’t a problem if I missed a few more days. And when I came back, if I needed help with my schoolwork, St. Mark’s would make sure I got it.
I let Abby and Barrett know we’d be gone for a while. Then we left that same afternoon and stayed till the limo picked us up again on Monday.
We waded in the surf, but only up to our knees because Sofie didn’t know how to swim. And besides, the water was cold.
In the basement we’d found a collection of little plastic buckets with tiny rakes and shovels to go with them, along with a fair amount of last summer’s sand. We made a sand castle using the little kids’ toys, but the tide took it overnight.
Sofie tried to make something philosophical out of that, along the lines that life is fleeting and precious, and we should accept the beauty of every moment. I didn’t really want to go there, to be honest, but Mom got tears in her eyes. And then I did too. However much I knew it was right, it was hard to say good-bye, knowing I’d never see Sofie again.
We got teary a lot while we were there. It was a really emotional time. But I could tell that, despite everything, Mom was happy. It wasn’t like before.
She had her phone out constantly, not to make calls but to take pictures of Sofie and me—splashing water, posing behind our castle with our toy shovels, wearing funny hats, posing in front of the house.
She said they’d never had any family photos when she and Claire were children, not even of Christmas or birthdays. Now she understood why. It would’ve been too obvious that Anne was growing and Claire was not. It would have been Claire with the infant Anne. Claire looking just the same with four-year-old Anne. Claire still the same when Anne was seven. But because there were no pictures, not a single one, it meant that after Claire disappeared, there hadn’t been anything to remember her by. And memories fade with the passing of years.
Mom was making sure that wouldn’t happen again. These pictures would be printed and put in frames. We’d look at them every day.
The first three days, the weather was nice, so we spent a lot of time on the beach. Mom would take pictures and we’d collect shells: scallop shells in all different colors, from white to yellow, brown, and red, always with the delicate ridges that fanned out like a sunburst. Sturdy clamshells, which we mostly left behind. And the delicate little moon shells, gray as the sand and forming a perfect spiral. Strangest of all were the jingle shells—little odd-shaped, wrinkled flakes that looked like an old man’s toenails, if toenails were made of shining, golden mother-of-pearl.
There were mermaid’s purses—fat black packages with four thin spikes. Mom said they were the egg cases of sharks. There were crab’s legs everywhere, and seagull feathers.
We collected them all. When we got back to the house, we’d wash them and lay them out on the kitchen island to admire.
On the second day, Mom said we should each pick our favorite shell. It would be a sort of beauty contest. But pick a small one, please.
We went back and forth for a while. It was hard to choose just one. But in the end we both went for scallop shells. Mine was pale pink with darker pink on the ridges. Sofie’s was yellow, almo
st orange at the base, growing lighter as the shell fanned out, with tiny spots of orange against white along the edge.
Once we’d made our choices, Mom carried them downstairs to the basement. Twenty minutes later, when she came back up, she’d drilled little holes in the bases so we could make them into necklaces.
We wore them constantly after that. We called ourselves the Shell Sisters.
But more than anything else, wherever we were or whatever we were doing, Mom and Sofie talked about their past. “Do you remember?” they’d say, over and over.
“Do you remember the stars we pasted on your ceiling?” Mom said. “And you insisted that all the constellations had to be absolutely correct, just like in your star book?”
“Do you remember,” Sofie said, “when we made that snow fort and you wanted to capture a rabbit and put it in prison? And I said it would be too hard to catch one. Also, the rabbit would probably jump right out. And even if it didn’t, it would be mean to the rabbit. So you put your toy dog in prison instead. Then you left it there, and it snowed, and we didn’t find the dog till spring?”
I was like the fly on the wall, listening as their secret past was revealed for the first time. I knew how important it was. They were mending an old wound, setting the story straight.
It turned out that Mom actually had a happy childhood—for the first seven years, anyway. She didn’t know how strange and isolated their little world was. It seemed perfectly normal to her. She had a wonderful sister, who was also her best and only friend. And she adored the parents she later came to think of as monsters.
Like all parents everywhere, they had made mistakes, mostly having to do with Claire. Then, like my teacher Mr. Crocker, they’d made matters worse by handling the situation badly. After that, things fell apart.
As a result, my mom had rewritten the story of her childhood to make it dark and grim. Now, little by little, her long talks with Sofie were bringing back the real, true story. The good parts.
It was like opening the big French doors in the back of Jackson Sloan’s house and letting in the ocean breeze, so it could scurry around the rooms, rattling papers and stirring the flowers. It always made me feel clean and full of hope. That’s what they were doing.
Joplin, Wishing Page 14