“That must have come as quite a blow to her.”
“She definitely didn’t see it coming. She was devastated. We talked about it a lot. Talked about it. Cried about it. He told her his marriage was over and it would just be a matter of time until they would divorce. And she accepted that. But then things got really dicey when Anna discovered she was pregnant...with you.”
I could feel the emotion welling up in my entire body.
“I’m sorry. I was sure you knew. I should have broken it to—”
“No, I knew. You just validated it. Sorry. I don’t know why that struck me so. Please go on.”
“Are you sure? We could take a break.”
“No, I’m fine. Go on.”
“So now she’s pregnant, and Al is still married, and he hasn’t talked about getting a divorce since that first time, so Anna’s not sure where she stands with him.”
“So what was his reaction to her pregnancy?”
“He was happy about it. Said he and his wife had tried to have children for years but weren’t successful.”
“I’m beginning to not like this man.”
“I understand your feelings, believe me, I do.”
“So you knew him pretty well.”
“Only through Anna. I never spent more than five minutes at a time with Al, just long enough to exchange pleasantries before and after Anna and I did whatever it was we were going to do together.” She paused. “One thing I should clarify is that Anna never said a harsh word against him. She said he was everything she could ask for in a man. He was attentive. He bought her things. He was sensitive to her needs.”
“Apparently not all her needs,” I chimed in.
“No, but other than that—and, for sure, it was a big that—he was great, according to her.”
“You would think once Anna became pregnant, he would do the right thing.”
“I think he liked their arrangement just fine. I don’t think he had any intentions of divorcing his wife.”
“And Anna went along with it.”
“Anna was in love—what more can I say.”
“Then I’m born.”
“Then you’re born, and their life goes on.”
The phone rang, and I ran into the kitchen to answer it. It was Tymon saying he was aware Essie was there and asking if I needed anything. Tymon didn’t miss much. I told him I’d call him later.
I brought the pitcher of lemonade to the living room on my way back and refreshed our drinks.
“You realize Tymon is the reason I didn’t stay here to wait for you to come home that day.”
“We figured that. But why?”
“Can you imagine my surprise when I saw him? Here, it took me I can’t tell you how long to get up enough nerve to talk to you, and then I see Anna’s old handyman at your house. I think I was in shock.”
“When you’re finished, remind me to tell you how we met.”
“All right. So they have this rather peculiar living arrangement until you were about six or seven months old.” She hesitated. “Before I go on, how much of what I’ve said so far did you already know?”
“I suspected pretty much all of it. I just had no proof.”
“This is where it’s going to get messy. I highly suspect you don’t know this part.”
I may have appeared calm on the outside, but inside my body there was a firestorm going on.
“I hadn’t talked to Anna for several days when she called me...hysterical. She asked me if I could come over, but not to her house. She gave me an address in the Austin neighborhood. I dropped everything and drove there.
“When I arrived, Anna met me at the door, and she looked like hell. Excuse my French, but I don’t know how else to put it. It looked like she had aged ten years since the last time I’d seen her. I could tell she’d been crying. Her hair was a mess. Her clothes were scruffy, and she had a black eye. My first thought was Al had beaten her up. Anyway, we went into the living room, and she told me the most horrific story I had ever heard or even read in a novel.
“Three days earlier, when Al was at work, his wife had paid Anna a visit. Anna had let her in the house and the conversation started out okay, but the more they talked the more bizarre the woman’s behavior became. And when the baby—when you—began to cry, the woman went berserk and got physical with her.”
“How do you mean, physical?”
“Like his wife got up and started pounding on her. Anna was sitting in a chair when this happened, but she managed to get out from underneath her and ran into the baby’s—um, your—room, grabbed you and headed for the back door. But the wife ran after her. Anna said she tried to escape out the back door, but it was locked, and while she was fumbling with the lock, the wife came at her with a butcher knife that she’d picked up from the counter. Anna ran back to your bedroom, put you in your crib, closed the door, and turned around to face her. The two women scuffled and before long ended up back in the living room. The woman kept trying to stab Anna, and then…somehow… Anna got the knife away from her and stabbed her right in her chest.”
I was so confused.
“You mean the other way around, don’t you?” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a dumb question—how could Anna be telling Essie this story if she had been the one who had been killed?
Essie stared at me for several seconds and then looked like she was going to cry.
“Essie?”
“Listen to me carefully.” Her voice was shaky, and I wondered if she was going to be able to get the words out. “Anna killed Al’s wife.” She paused, but not long enough for me to get it. “Grace, the man who moved into the room above Anna’s was your father.”
“I know. You told me that.”
“Your father...Adam Lindroth.”
FORTY-ONE
Regarding Anna
I couldn’t say how long it took Essie to tell me that the man who had raised me, the man I had thought was my father for the first seventeen years of my life, the man I had then doubted was my real father for the past five years—Adam Lindroth—was, in fact, my real father. Time must have shut down for me in the stunned silence that followed her telling me this.
“Do you need time for that to sink in?” she asked.
I nodded.
“I’ll be right back. I need to use the restroom.”
My brain must not have been working properly because all kinds of ridiculous scenarios were running through it. I felt the sweat building up on my forehead and dripping through my cleavage. I wished Tymon was there. I needed someone to hold me and make me feel safe. He could have done that.
Essie returned. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m so confused.”
“I know you are. But hold on tight, Grace, the story’s not over.”
I closed my eyes for a brief moment and tried to control my breathing, which was coming in short gasps.
“Okay. Go on.”
“Adam’s wife...was Rosa Lindroth.”
“I, of all people know that, Essie.”
“It was his wife who died that day—Rosa Lindroth.”
“Essie, my mother died with my father when I was seventeen. In their house. Carbon monoxide poisoning. I was there.”
“Anna died when you were seventeen, hon.”
I stared at her for several seconds. I didn’t believe her. She had the whole thing confused.
“No, she was murdered when I was just a baby. I have the newspaper articles.”
“The woman you called mother all those years—that was Anna.”
The tears began to gush—there was no stopping them. I felt like I was floating in time, somewhere between what she had just said and what it actually meant.
“What are you saying?” I cried out through wails.
She didn’t wait for me to gain composure. “After she stabbed Rosa, Anna called Adam at work, and he told her not to do anything until he got there. She wanted to call the police and tell them what happened—that she had kil
led Rosa in self-defense. But Adam had other plans. He sent Anna and you to his home in Austin while he straightened up the room, cleaned up the blood, and put some of Anna’s clothes on Rosa before he staged her body on the sofa.”
“To make it look like what?”
“I’m not sure what he was trying to make it look like because he put Anna’s purse near her, with her driver’s license and everything else still in it except money, so maybe he wanted it to look like she was robbed. I don’t know.”
“Did Anna know what he was doing?”
“At the time, I don’t think so. But eventually he told her because she told me about it.”
“It’s hard to believe the man I knew as my father could have done all that.”
“I’m sure it is. Anyway, then he got busy moving Anna’s things to his house. Not everything of course. He left enough behind to make it look like she had lived there. But not your things. He removed all your things.”
“So it didn’t look as though a baby had lived there.” That matched what Tymon had told me.
“Exactly. Then after Adam hauled away Anna’s things, he called the police and told them he was worried about his landlady and asked if they could check on her. He waited for them, identified the dead woman as his landlady, Anna Vargas, and left.”
“So he intended for the police to think the dead person was Anna from the get-go.”
“It looks that way.”
“And she went along with it?” My disbelief suddenly morphed into anger. “And then Adam went back to his house like nothing happened and played house with Anna, and all those years I was growing up, she played the role of Rosa. Do you know how much time I have invested in trying to find out who my real mother is, how much of myself I have put into this, just to find out—. All this time I longed to have a life with my mother, my real mother, and I could have...but I didn’t...because she... I shed tears over that woman’s grave, for God’s sake!”
I stopped my rant.
“I’m sorry. You’re the last person I should be yelling at.”
“I understand. Believe me, I do. Look, Anna didn’t want anything to do with it at first. Trust me. It took a lot of convincing on Adam’s part and a lot of soul-searching on her part before she went along with it, and she carried that guilt her whole life.”
“Even so, I don’t think anyone could have convinced me to do that.”
“Adam was an expert manipulator. He knew just how much charm and praise he had to give in order for her to give in. And he had a knack for creating a false sense of fear and doubt in her, not to mention the guilt he laid on her. Eventually, she became blind to his faults and surrendered to his will completely. I think the guilt of it all did her in.”
“How he was able to transform her into someone she really wasn’t was so unfair. I just figured she was always very passive, easily influenced by others.”
“Far from it, I’m afraid.”
“So, afterward, you and Anna stayed friends?”
“Well, yes and no. Adam was clear he didn’t want her to tell anyone about what happened, including me, so we had to hide our friendship from him. It was rare we could meet in person. Most of our conversations took place over the phone when he wasn’t around.”
“You could have gone to the police.”
“I could have, but Anna begged me not to. She convinced me no good would come out of that. So I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“What about her other friends?”
“She didn’t have any other friends that I was ever aware of.”
“Why? Because he wouldn’t allow it?”
“That may have been part of it. Then afterward...”
“Afterward what?”
“It wasn’t the same. She wasn’t the same person afterward.”
We both laughed—in the very same instant getting the irony and humor of what she had just said—a much-needed break for me, maybe for her as well.
“So you think you were her only friend before all this happened?”
“I think so.”
“She had lived there a few years. She hadn’t made friends?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think she was embarrassed about her lifestyle, how she could support herself without working, and then later the affair with Adam and a child without being married.”
“What I don’t understand is how the police didn’t know there was a baby in the house when Anna died. The nursery was there. And Tymon tried to tell them, but from what he told me, they thought he was crazy. Surely others knew—neighbors, the local grocer, people where she banked. They must have seen her pregnant.”
“Anna didn’t show much until toward the end, and then I would run errands for her. And those first few months after you were born, I would sit for you whenever she needed to go out. It doesn’t surprise me that no one knew about you.”
“So what were her plans for later—when I wanted to go out and play, when I was old enough to go to school?”
“I don’t think she thought that far ahead.”
“What about Rosa? Didn’t she have friends? Or relatives. And what about their neighbors? They would know Anna wasn’t her.”
“My only guess is that Adam had been as controlling with Rosa as he was with Anna. And as far as neighbors, look at your old house—tall evergreens on both sides and in the back. Park across the street. It was very private.”
“That it was. Even when I was small, I remember feeling so isolated playing in the backyard, fenced in by all the trees. Many times I tried to escape to the front of the house where it was more open. I wanted to see other people, but out front was off limits for me. To this day I’m uncomfortable being surrounded by too many trees.”
That memory pulled me back to my childhood and my mother’s peculiar behaviors. She had spent a lot of time by herself, off in her own world, and didn’t always seem that interested in me or what I was doing. Had Adam been that demeaning?
“I can understand how what she went through would change her,” I said. “Look what she had hidden her whole life. And something tells me he wasn’t much of a comfort to her. I think I understand now why she was the way she was.”
“How do you mean?”
“Distant most of the time with me but not with my father. She was more in tune with him than with me. She looked for and then followed his lead, almost to the point of being subservient. I remember one time my best friend Beth’s mother told Beth how proud she was of her for something she had done. When I heard those words of praise, I thought how much I would have loved to hear my mother say something like that to me, even just once.”
“But she was proud of you. I know she was.”
“Well, she never said it to me.”
“She was a changed person. I don’t know what else to say.”
“You left off when Anna assumed Rosa’s identity.”
“Part of Adam’s plan was to—”
“And what about Anna’s, or I should say Rosa’s, death certificate? I couldn’t find one.”
“Adam saw to it that it would never resurface.”
“Did the police ever suspect Adam had something to do with it?”
“I don’t know, but Anna later told me he had given them a phony name.”
Thoughts were running through my brain faster than I could process them.
“Looks like Adam thought of everything,” I said. “Except the attic. Why did he leave all that behind?”
“You mean the paintings and things from her uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Much to Adam’s protest, Anna wanted nothing to do with any of that. She loved her uncle, but she was sure he had acquired those things…underhandedly, shall we say.”
“That’s why she left the key to the trunk out in plain sight.”
Essie chuckled. “That’s exactly why, but she never told Adam that. She told him she had sent it all back. So you know what all was in the trunk?”
“I’ve had it appraised.”
“A substantial amount.” I stopped for a moment and smiled. “It’s funny. I was never sure what I was going to do with it, but I told Tymon that if it had been gotten illegally, I didn’t want anything to do with it. Looks like I may have inherited at least one of her traits.”
“Grace?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve inherited more than just one of her traits.” She paused. “You really have.”
More tears. I liked her.
“So now they have all of Anna’s things. Then what?”
“They settle into Adam’s house—the house you grew up in.”
“The one he and Rosa had lived in? That must have been difficult for Anna—living in that house.”
“Oh, she didn’t like it, but she had no choice, because Adam wasn’t about to leave that house.”
“Why?”
“Adam had a younger sister who disappeared when she was just in her teens, and they had been close. The police had considered her a runaway. Anyway, he never gave up hope that one day she would return, and when she did, he wanted her to be able to find him. How much do you know about Adam’s parents?”
“Nothing. They died before I was born.”
Essie raised her eyebrows.
“What? That was a lie too?”
“Well, I’m not sure. He never knew his father.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“And his mother went to prison when Adam was ten or twelve.”
“What?”
“The way Anna told me the story, Adam and his sister lived with their mother and uncle, and one day when his uncle was off somewhere, Adam fell off a woodpile or something and broke his leg. His mother didn’t drive, but his uncle’s car was sitting in the driveway, and she decided to drive Adam to the hospital.”
“And she had never driven a car before.”
“Right. And on the way, she lost control of it and hit an old man and his grandson who had been walking down the road.”
“Oh, my. What happened?”
“They died, and Adam’s mother went to jail for manslaughter.”
“Manslaughter? But it sounds like it was an accident.”
Regarding Anna Page 29