by Joy Fielding
The door to the bedroom opens. A young boy steps into the room, followed by his older sister, her hands resting nervously on his shoulders. They’re similarly dressed in gray sweatshirts and jeans, and their eyes flit fearfully between their mother and her visitors. In the background, angry voices continue. I can’t believe you let that woman into our home after everything she’s done.
“Hello, Hope, Spenser,” Amanda says.
“You remember Amanda Travis,” Hayley says politely, as if she’s reintroducing an old friend.
“This is Ben Myers, my—”
“—associate,” Ben says quickly, offering his hand. “How are you holding up?”
“Is something wrong?” Hope asks her mother, ignoring both Ben and Amanda. “We could hear you arguing above the telly.”
“Everything’s fine, darling. These people were just leaving.”
“We just need a few more minutes of your mother’s time,” Ben says.
“It doesn’t look like she wants to give you any more minutes,” Spenser tells him, breaking away from his sister to stand between his mother and her unwelcome guests.
“Spenser …,” Amanda begins.
“Go away or we shall be forced to contact the authorities.”
Amanda almost smiles, wondering if it’s the young boy’s clipped British accent or the formality of his phrasing that makes him sound so mature.
“It’s all right, Spenser.” Hayley’s smile is filled with motherly pride. “I can handle this. You and Hope go back to your program.”
Hope’s body sways toward the bedroom. Victor’s responsible for this, and you know it. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“Positive. I’ll be in straightaway.”
Hope nods, signaling for her brother to follow her with a cock of her head. Spenser crosses one arm over the other, widens his stance, refuses to budge.
“I’m fine,” Hayley Mallins assures her son again. “I can manage here. Go on now, Puppet.”
And then the blood rushes into Amanda’s ears, and the room explodes into silence.
TWENTY-NINE
“WHAT did you say?” Amanda says when she can find her voice.
Spenser takes a step back, clearly frightened by Amanda’s tone.
“What’s the matter?” Hayley asks, sensing a shift in the air, looking warily toward Ben.
“Spenser,” Ben says. “Why don’t you go with your sister.” This is an obvious directive and not a request.
“Go on, love,” his mother urges.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Please, darling. It’s all right. I promise.”
Still the boy hesitates. “You’ll scream if you need help?”
“I assure you that won’t be necessary,” Ben says as Amanda fights the urge to start screaming herself.
Reluctantly the boy sways from his mother’s side and creeps toward the bedroom door.
“What did you call him?” Amanda asks, walking briskly after him and closing the door behind him.
“I don’t understand,” Hayley stammers, her eyes appealing to Ben for help.
“You called him Puppet.”
“Yes. I suppose. Why?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t understand. It’s just a nickname.”
“Not just a nickname.”
“I’m afraid I’m not following.”
Amanda takes a few seconds to regain her composure. Is it possible that Puppet is a more common nickname than she thought? That it is on a par with Pumpkin and Sweetie? That it transcends countries and cultures? That Hayley’s easy use of it is merely a remarkable coincidence? Is that possible? “My mother used to call me that,” Amanda says, “when I was a toddler.”
“Really?” Hayley’s voice is so low in her throat it’s barely audible. “Well, I suppose it’s not that uncommon.”
“I think it is,” Amanda says, answering her own earlier questions.
“Well …,”Hayley says, then offers nothing further.
“When I was little, I used to love puppets … marionettes … whatever you want to call them. And my mother used to hold my hands and dangle me from her fingertips, and she’d say, ‘Puppet, Puppet …’ ”
Hayley’s skin goes from pale to cadaverous. “ ‘Who’s my little puppet?’ ” she whispers, as the two women lock eyes, the shallowness of their breathing echoing one another’s. It fills the room like the shuffling noises of a drum. “Who are you?”
“My name is Amanda Travis,” Amanda says slowly, carefully measuring out each word. She pauses, not for dramatic effect, but because she finds herself dangerously short of breath. “Gwen Price is my mother.”
Hayley stumbles back against the nearest chair, her hand reaching for her chest. “Mandy?” The word emerges as a gasp for air.
Amanda feels every hair lift from her body, as if she just stepped on a live wire.
“My God.” Hayley’s eyes widen to take in every detail of Amanda’s face. “I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection.”
Amanda inches forward. “What connection?”
Hayley takes a few seconds to respond, her glance darting between Amanda and the door to the hallway, as if she is considering trying to escape. “I only knew you as Mandy. My God. You don’t remember me?”
“Should I?”
Hayley shakes her head, her eyes refusing to settle. “No, of course you wouldn’t. You were just a baby the last time I saw you.”
“Who the hell are you?” Amanda asks, throwing the other woman’s question back at her.
“Your mother didn’t tell you?”
Amanda shakes her head. “Who are you?” she asks again.
Hayley hesitates, looks toward the window, as if searching for answers in the bright lights of the surrounding city. Then, quietly, haltingly: “My name was Hayley Walsh.”
“Walsh?”
“I lived next door to you on Palmerston.”
Amanda sees a giant walrus of a man smirking at her from the middle of the shared driveway between the two homes. “Old Mr. Walsh’s daughter?”
“I used to babysit you when you were little. I called you my little puppet because you were so crazy about those damn dolls.”
“That was you who carried me around the house?”
“ ‘Puppet, puppet. Who’s my little puppet?’ ” Hayley repeats, tears suddenly spilling from her eyes to stain her ashen cheeks. She stares at Amanda as if she is preparing to swallow her whole.
Amanda walks over to the sofa, sinks into its soft pillows, fighting the desire to lie down, fall into a deep sleep. It occurs to her that everything that is happening is a dream, and that if she simply brings her feet up and closes her eyes, this whole surreal episode will vanish as soon as she reopens them. Slowly, she allows her eyes to close. When she reopens them seconds later, Hayley Mallins is still there, lowering herself into the nearest chair, her knuckles growing white as she grips the armrest. “I don’t remember Mr. Walsh having a daughter,” Amanda says finally, reluctantly accepting the reality of her situation, and trying to make sense of these latest revelations.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. You were so young when I left.”
“Left?”
“Ran off,” Hayley corrects.
“You ran off? Why? Where did you go?”
Hayley lowers her head, stares into her lap. “To England.” Her breath quivers into the stillness of the room. “With Rodney Tureck.”
It takes Amanda several seconds to absorb what she has just heard. “I don’t understand,” she says finally, looking toward Ben. “How would you have met Rodney Tureck? My mother wasn’t married to him when she lived on Palmerston. She was married to my father.”
“Mr. Price, yes,” Hayley agrees, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “He was a lovely man.”
“He died eleven years ago.” Amanda struggles to contain the tears that have rushed to her eyes.
“Yes. I read in the paper that your mother wa
s a widow. I’m really very sorry for your loss.”
“Why should you be sorry?”
“Because I liked your father very much. He was always exceptionally kind to me.”
“None of which explains how you met Rodney Tureck,” Amanda says, surprised by the impatience in her voice.
“Does it matter?”
“It definitely matters.”
Hayley nods, takes a moment to compose her thoughts. “I met him when I was coming home from school one afternoon. I was carrying all these books, and I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk in front of your house, and the books went flying off in all directions, and suddenly there he was, on his hands and knees, picking up everything for me.” She stops, as if trying to recall the precise order of the events. “Anyway, he was on his way to see your mother, and I mentioned I often babysat for her, and we chatted a bit, and he cracked some jokes, and I laughed, and I don’t know, we just kind of connected.” She tucks her hair behind her right ear, smiles sheepishly. “I was in my rebellious teenage phase. The idea of an older man—one who listened to me and took my opinions seriously—well, that was very appealing. And he was very charming,” she continues, the same word Gwen Price had used earlier. “I was quite flattered by the attention.”
Amanda thinks of Sean Travis, sympathizes with what Hayley is saying in spite of herself. “You obviously saw him again after that afternoon.”
“He’d call when I was babysitting. At first, he pretended to be phoning to speak to your mother, but after a while, he admitted he was calling to speak to me. He said he enjoyed our little talks, that I was refreshing and sweet and delightful, all the things I was desperate to hear. We started meeting, secretly of course. He said people wouldn’t understand, and he was right.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“That I was beautiful, that I was wise beyond my years, that I was an old soul who made him feel young, that we were destined to be together. Stuff like that.”
“He convinced you to run away with him?”
“He didn’t have to do much convincing. By that time, I was crazy mad in love with him.” Hayley shakes her head. “It’s funny because he wasn’t much to look at. Not really. But when he looked into your eyes, he made you feel as if you were the most beautiful woman on earth, the only person in the world who mattered.”
“So you ran off to England.”
“Yes. It was terribly romantic. And surprisingly easy.”
“Did he ever say anything about my mother?” Amanda asks.
The question seems to catch the other woman off guard. “Like what?”
“Like what he was doing coming to visit her, why he was calling?”
Hayley takes a deep breath, releases it with deliberate slowness, as if she is blowing smoke from a cigarette. She seems reticent about answering the question. “He said he had business with her.”
“What kind of business?”
“The unfinished kind,” Hayley says after another deep exhalation.
“Meaning?”
“Look, I really don’t think you want to get into this.”
“I think I do.”
“It’s not going to help your mother.”
“What kind of unfinished business?” Amanda repeats.
Hayley rises from the chair, walks to the window, stares into the darkening sky. “He said your mother was a thief, that she’d stolen a great deal of money from him. He asked me to have a look around the house when I was babysitting, see if I could find anything.”
Amanda feels a sharp stab of pain to her chest, realizes she is holding her breath. “Like what?”
“Bank books, safety-deposit-box keys, stuff like that.”
“And did you?”
“No. I didn’t feel right about it. I told him I couldn’t do it.”
“And what was his response?”
“He said it just proved how sweet and lovely a girl I was, and that it made him love me even more.”
“What a guy.” Amanda buries her head in her hands, trying to push away the headache gnawing at her temples.
“What happened after you got to England?” Ben asks.
“Rodney Tureck became John Mallins,” Hayley answers. “We moved around for a few years. Eventually we settled in Sutton.”
“North of Nottingham,” Amanda says quietly, massaging the bridge of her nose.
“He bought a small shop, we got married, started a family.”
“Lived happily ever after,” Amanda says, louder than she’d intended.
“Pretty much,” Hayley says.
Amanda looks over at Ben. He looks back at her. “Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?” they ask together.
“How could I?”
“How could you not?” Amanda asks.
“Think about it,” Hayley tells her. “What was I supposed to tell them? That twenty-five years ago, when I was still a minor, I ran off with my neighbor’s ex-husband, that we changed our names and spent years hiding from the authorities, that my husband’s real name was Rodney Tureck, and that he was probably wanted by the police? Why would I tell them that?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s the truth?” Amanda asks in return. The truth, she thinks. What a concept.
“When the police first told me that John had been killed, I was too stunned to say anything. John had gone out first thing that morning. The children and I had been waiting for him to come back to the hotel. There was a knock on the door, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s strange, I guess John forgot his key.’ So I asked, ‘Who’s there?’ Because John was a stickler for never opening the door unless you were absolutely sure who was on the other side. And this very deep voice answered, ‘Mrs. Mallins, it’s the police.’ Well, my first thought was that John had been arrested, that they’d discovered his real identity, that they’d come to arrest me too. A million thoughts. But none of them the right one. Have you ever noticed that? That you project ahead a million possibilities, and none of them is ever right? That the reality is always the one thing you haven’t thought of?”
Amanda nods. She knows exactly what Hayley is talking about.
“When the police told me that John was dead, that he’d been gunned down in the hotel lobby, I insisted they’d made a mistake. They asked me a million questions, what we were doing in Toronto, if we knew anyone in the city, if I could think of any reason why someone might have targeted my husband. I just kept repeating what John had told me to say if anyone ever asked why we were here: that we were here on holiday.”
“And when you found out the woman who shot your husband was Gwen Price?”
“I’m not sure what I thought. I guess I assumed she’d tell them the whole story.”
“And when she didn’t?”
Hayley swallows, pushes several lifeless strands of hair away from her face. “Well, it was too late then, really. What was I going to do? Tell the police I’d been lying? That my whole life was a lie? Think about my children,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper, looking toward the closed door of the bedroom. “They’d just lost their father. To learn that he wasn’t the man they thought he was, that the woman who shot him was his ex-wife, a woman I used to babysit for. I was so afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That the police would take my children away from me.”
“Nobody is going to take your children away from you,” Ben assures her.
“They’re all I’ve got,” Hayley says, wiping away a fresh parade of tears.
“Nobody’s going to take them away from you,” Ben says again.
“After we got married, I got pregnant straightaway,” Hayley says, speaking more to herself than to either Ben or Amanda. “But then, four months into the pregnancy, I suffered a miscarriage. And then several more in the years that followed. And then there were two stillbirths. That was the worst. To carry a child full term, for it to be so perfectly formed, for it not to be breathing. I can’t begin to describe … I’m so anxious to
take my children back to England.”
“Why do you think Gwen Price hasn’t told the police the truth?” Amanda asks, interrupting the other woman’s reverie.
“I don’t know. Maybe why she shot him isn’t really very important.”
“And you’re not at all curious?”
Hayley shakes her head. “They shared a past,” she says, as if this is reason enough. For several seconds, the ramifications of that simple sentence ricochet off the walls like tiny stones. “I’d like you to go now,” she says. “Please. My children will be beside themselves with worry.”
“I guess we’ve said enough for one night,” Ben agrees, as slowly, reluctantly, Amanda pushes herself to her feet.
“You’re not going to tell anyone about any of this, are you?” Hayley asks, following them to the door. “I mean, it would just open up a whole can of worms, and it wouldn’t do anybody any good. Clearly your mother feels the same way. Please,” she says, reaching out, her hand closing over Amanda’s as she reaches for the door. “Please, Mandy.”
The name drops from the other woman’s lips onto Amanda’s skin, like acid. It burns through her flesh and into her brain, the accompanying hiss obliterating all other sounds. Somewhere in the distance, Amanda hears Ben’s voice. “We’ll be in touch,” she thinks she hears him say.
Please, Mandy.
Somewhere far away, a door closes. Another one opens.
Please, Mandy.
“Are you okay?” someone is asking.
“Fine,” someone answers back.
“You’re sure?” The voice is louder, closer.
“What?”
Please, Mandy.
“I asked if you’re okay,” Ben says.
Amanda snaps back into the present, as if propelled there by an elastic band. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” she says, stepping inside a newly arrived elevator and pushing the button for the lobby. “Just because I find out that the one nice memory I have of my mother isn’t about my mother at all? That it’s about the babysitter! The fucking girl next door. Except that this girl next door was fucking my mother’s ex-husband.”
“You’re not okay,” Ben says.
“I’m fine.”
“Fucking fine or just fine?”