by Lucy Ferriss
“Why’d I never know this?” Brooke asked. And then a new possibility dawned on her. “Didn’t Alex’s dad do the accounting?”
“No one knew it, sweetheart. Not even your father. And by the time your grandpa found out, Ed Frazier was gone.”
“You mean Alex’s dad—when he had that accident—you mean it wasn’t—”
“I don’t know. No one knows. Well, all right, maybe Nancy Frazier does, and that’s why she’s been made of glass ever since. But we can’t change the past. It wasn’t your fault, or mine, or your dad’s.”
“I feel awful. Alex never even suggested.”
“Maybe it’s not a suggestion he knew to make. I’m telling you only because of the money, all right?” Stacey took both of Brooke’s hands. She was all reason, all practicality. “We are talking here about the money and what you can do about this girl—if you think she’s yours, really. Aren’t we?”
Brooke swiped at her eyes. “Yeah. Yes.”
“So listen.” Stacey’s fingers were cool and dry, the touch that had been soothing whenever Brooke had run a fever as a child. “I work with the schools, remember? I know a little something. And one of the things I know is that the state is obligated to provide an appropriate education for each and every child.”
“But they haven’t.” Brooke’s head reeled a little, from the news about the quarry. Alex’s father…had it really not been an accident? Was that part of Alex’s guilt? Should she have known? “The schools,” she managed to go on, her lips numb, “have not provided Najda any sort of education.”
“That remains to be seen. I don’t know your”—Stacey’s lips wouldn’t form that word daughter, not yet—“this girl, Najda. But if your hunch is right—”
“It’s not a hunch! I’ve seen her! I’ve talked to her grandfather! She wants to go to college, and if—”
“If your hunch is right,” Stacey repeated, “you don’t need great wealth.” She drew herself up; Brooke’s mom was not one to dillydally. The quicksand of regret did not lie on the paths she charted. “Brooke, honey,” she said. “You need to negotiate the system. You need a good lawyer.”
Chapter 25
Luisa stood outside the train station in Scranton, confused. It was the same place—same enormous columns rising from the short flight of steps, same clock above the letters LACKAWANNA, with stone eagles on either side. Ziadek had brought them all here when she was little, and they had stood in the grand waiting room and had ice cream from a vendor. Then they had boarded the enormous train for New York. She remembered it all perfectly. And yet here was the station, and people bustling in and out of it, but when she had gone through the revolving doors inside it had all been different. A fountain stood in the center of the tiled floor, yes, and golden marble columns rose from the tile, and a gilt rail ran around the balcony on all four sides. She even recognized the indoor clock, its bright face and roman numerals. Only there were no people waiting for trains, no ticket windows. No one was hurrying. Instead, the people with their luggage stood before a desk, laughing and holding hands. A black man with a little red pillbox hat had been pulling a rack of hanging bags across the smooth floor when he stopped to ask her if she was at the hotel.
“Am I?” she had asked back.
“Are you staying here?” he had said. His lips were full and pink, like the flowers in the enormous bouquet they’d set up in the middle of the fountain.
“I’m going to New York,” she’d said. “On the train.”
He’d laughed at her, then. He’d said the train didn’t go to New York anymore. Not go to New York! Where would it go, then? He’d said this wasn’t a station, anymore. It was a Radisson. If she wanted to go to New York, he said, she could take the bus. He’d led her outside, by the elbow. On the street there was construction, big jackhammers tearing up the roadbed and cops directing traffic around. Luisa put her hands over her ears. The black guy touched her shoulder and pointed down the street. “See there,” he’d shouted, “where they got the white dog blinking. That’s the place.” Then he went back through the revolving door.
She stood amid the racket, bright sun streaming onto the workers and wind blowing debris up from the street. Why would they take a train station and make it a hotel? Where had the trains gone? Walking here from the bus stop, she had seen one of the old steam trains they kept for show at Steamtown, chuffing its way across Lackawanna Street. Would they move the new trains over there now?
People brushed past her, going up the broad steps into the station that was a hotel. She lifted her eyes to the columns, the eagles. Then she turned and started down the street.
Last night she had stayed in a motel room outside Towanda. She had spent forty-two dollars of Ziadek’s money, she had spent twenty minutes in the hot shower, and she had watched TV until three in the morning. This morning she had slept until noon, when the motel’s breakfast was all finished, and the manager had let her have a stale doughnut, but that was all. Then she had waited for the bus into Scranton.
They must miss her by now. They probably missed Ziadek’s money, too. She should feel bad about taking it, except it was his fault. He had been about to take a lot more than money from her. Her daughter. She loved Ziadek but she would never forgive him, never. Maybe they would figure that she had taken the bus as far as Scranton. Katarina would drive to Scranton and bring Najda, and they would come look for her at the train station. She wouldn’t be there, because the trains weren’t there, so they would have to drive up and down the street until they found her. They would tell her how sorry they were and they weren’t going to talk to that lady or to those stupid schools again.
The bus station wasn’t nearly as nice as the train station. It had a grimy counter with a lady on the other side watching a reality show on her little TV. The three o’clock to Port Authority had broken down outside Elmira, she told Luisa. They expected it in by six thirty; it would pull into New York before midnight. Luisa found a place to wait. Across the room—yellowing posters on the wall, a drinking fountain at one end, gray doors leading to restrooms—a newsstand featured hot dogs revolving slowly on warm metal cylinders, but at four o’clock the guy running it pulled down a grate. As soon as he clicked the padlock, Luisa felt hungry. Around her, people were dozing in plastic chairs, drinking out of paper bags; one tired-looking mom was feeding a little baby. Hoisting her backpack, Luisa went up to the counter. “Can I get something to eat somewhere?” she asked. Her voice sounded hollow.
The lady glanced at the clock—a digital one on the wall, nothing like the clock at the train station. “Newsstand closes early on Sunday.”
“I wanted to take the train. They have food on the train.”
“Yeah, well, you’re out of luck, aren’t you.”
“Somewhere nearby?”
“McDonald’s over on Spruce Street.” She glanced at the clock again. “You got two hours, sweetheart. Go for it.”
“Where’s Spruce Street?”
Now the lady looked at her close. She got up from the table where she was sitting and pulled a map out from a display. With a red pen she marked the route. “You turn left out of the station and go a couple blocks—here, see?—and then left again, past the parking garage and the fitness place. You’ll see it by the bank, across from the newspaper building. Do you understand me? Here’s the time the bus leaves.” She wrote that down. “Do you know your left and your right?” She was talking loudly now. That was how people talked to both Luisa and Najda, and before Najda got those ideas in her head, thinking she was so smart, they used to laugh together about it. Now Luisa just took the map and went out of the station. It was darker outside now, and getting cold. She pulled her knit cap over her ears. She hadn’t brought mittens. What if they never came after her? What if she went to New York and it got colder and colder?
She walked farther than she should have, and suddenly she was blocked by all the construction again, in front of the train station that wasn’t a train station. She didn’t know where
to turn; she went up one street and down another, trying to find the right sign. The blocks were empty of people. Finally she asked an old black man walking his skinny dog, and he turned her around. After another block there it was, the golden arches and the bright signs. She was really hungry now. She ordered a Double Quarter Pounder Value Meal and paid for it with Ziadek’s money. She sat by the window, looking out on the street. Were they looking for her? They had to be. Najda was probably crying, she was so sorry, she missed her mom so bad. Luisa got a lump in her own throat just thinking how bad her daughter would be feeling. Who would help Najda in and out of the shower? Who would listen to her recite her sad poetry?
Luisa looked at the clock above the counter at McDonald’s. Five thirty, it read. What had the lady said about the bus? She pulled out the map she had given her. 6:30 was written and underlined in red right below where the lady had marked the streets. Outside, the light was falling; the sun slipped behind a gray cloud, making everything darker than it should be. Across from the McDonald’s was a white brick building, with Times-Tribune in fancy black script above a loading dock. The newspaper. Ziadek read it every day. Other newspapers had terrible stories, with big photographs, and people bought them from the rack in the Quik Mart every day. If anyone tried to stop Luisa—she decided, finishing her fries—she would tell the newspaper. She would tell how the lady who looked like Najda had thrown her baby away. True, it had been a boy Luisa had seen, leaving the little bundle in a crate behind the motel, but boys don’t have babies. This lady had had the baby, and the baby had become Najda—only that wasn’t what this lady had wanted, not back then. She had wanted the baby to die. Now, if the lady promised to go away forever, Luisa would not tell. Or no—the lady would have to give Luisa some money first, then go away. That was a better plan.
She would take the train to New York and then she would wait. That was one thing Luisa was really good at, waiting. She waited for Najda to be finished at the library; she waited for Martín at the Quik Mart to give her something to do; when Najda was little, she used to wait for her to finish sleeping so they could play with Najda’s toys. While Najda slept, Luisa would study her pursed mouth, the tiny scallops of her closed eyes, her shallow, regular breathing. Katarina liked to tell the story of how she found Luisa once lifting the baby’s eyelid because—according to Katarina—Luisa said she wanted to peek at Baby Najda’s dreams. But Luisa didn’t remember that. She knew dreams didn’t happen in the eyelids.
At five forty, a bunch of guys came into the McDonald’s. They were loud and spread out all over the restaurant. One of them, a tall skinny white guy with a tattoo snaking up his arm, leaned over Luisa and nipped a French fry. “Hey!” she said, covering the tub.
“Got to watch the calories, beautiful,” he said.
She smiled at that, him calling her beautiful. It felt good to smile. But the man and his friends were being too loud. Two of them stood at the counter calling the serving girl names. “Come on, sugar! Give me a double bitch on a bun! How ’bout some sliders? Hey? Slide me some of that brown breast!” The girl got the manager, a fat young man with a walkie-talkie, who told them both they were drunk and had to leave. Then they stood outside the window, making monkey faces at their friends, until they gave up and skipped off into the night.
“So coked up,” said another who remained, two tables over from Luisa. This one had darker skin, long hair. “Fucking goons.”
Luisa crumpled up her food bag and stood. “Where you going, little puppy?” said a third guy. He had dark blond hair and a baby face, with small eyes buried deep, the upper lids like little pillows. His voice wasn’t mean. It was soft, like a warm towel.
“To the train station,” Luisa said, even though there was no train station. She wasn’t supposed to talk to them—they were strangers, and drunk—but it felt better to get words around the lump that had appeared, without warning, in her throat.
“Catch a train to the moo-oon,” said the skinny one. He flung out his arm. The tattoo was of two snakes, twisting their way up his muscles.
Luisa pushed out the door of the restaurant onto the street. The sky was darkening; a cool wind blew papers across the sidewalk. Streaks of sunset laced the Times-Tribune sign.
“What a surprise,” said the dark-skinned one, trotting after her from the restaurant. “That’s where we’re going, too.”
“That train must be late,” said the baby face in his warm-towel voice. He wore his hair long, too, all twisted into strands, falling over the collar of a dirty leather jacket that he was buttoning up, now.
“Got some time to kill, then,” said the first.
Walking faster, trying to keep ahead of them, Luisa had started to cry. She cried because no one had come after her—and they should know where she’d gone, they should know how much she liked McDonald’s, they should have found her by now. She cried because the drunk guys were all around her now, and she knew she was caught, she was like a fly in a spider’s web.
“Little hooch, honey?” said the tall one. He stuck a paper bag under her nose and Luisa smelled whiskey. She shook her head.
“No, thank you,” she said softly. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk. One crack, another, another.
“Come on, puppy, come on here,” said the baby-faced one. She liked his voice, and it scared her the most. She couldn’t make out his eyes. “Let’s take a little rest in here. Come on.”
Ahead of them was the construction, bright lights and jackhammer sounds far away at the end of the street. Babyface put his hand in the middle of Luisa’s back. He steered her toward an alley. “Little bitch,” said the tall one behind her. “Chasin’ cars, maybe you catch one.”
“Vroom,” said the one in the leather jacket.
Alex drove east from Windermere as the sun lowered to the west. He had plugged the BlackBerry into the car charger, to keep it from running out of juice, but he had not heard from Brooke. Nor had he tried to call. He had spent the morning in his big-brother role, fixing pancakes with warm applesauce for all the young people. He had listened attentively to the kid, Pablo, who had indeed found his way to Windermere in order to be with Charlie. That was the case, no matter what story Pablo was creating about heading west in his car, remembering Charlie’s phone number, deciding to stop off for the hell of it. An awkward kid with an eyebrow ring and slumping shoulders, Pablo spoke with the extended vowels of a pothead, but his soft brown eyes followed Charlie as she padded around the kitchen. “Whaddaya think?” Charlie had whispered to Alex as they packed a lunch for a morning hike into the Alleghenies. Alex had squeezed his sister’s shoulder, told her he thought Pablo was the real deal. And maybe he was. In any case, he wanted nothing more than to take Charlie and her friends on their camping trip and ferry them back to Boston. Alex was off the hook.
Last night he had dreamed, as he often did, of Dylan. In the dream Dylan was alive, not as he had been in his last few months, but younger—a true toddler, with that impish grin showing his pearly row of teeth and the fat dimple in his cheek. Only Alex had made a mistake, had thought Dylan had died, and so he had left Dylan behind somewhere and not taken care of him for days—no, weeks, months, for a span of time that stretched longer as the dream went on and Alex grew slowly aware of how long he had been considering his son to be dead, while all the time Dylan had been alive, his grin slowly fading while his gleaming dark hair waned thin and dull, while his body withered and grew faint, transparent. In the dream Alex was walking, then running, trying to get back to the place where he had left his son because he thought Dylan was dead. Whatever had possessed him, to think such a thing? And now Dylan lay in a coffin, ready to be buried, and he would die indeed, all because Alex had forgotten he was alive. Is this what you wanted? someone asked in the dream, and Alex cried out No! No! But as so often happens in dreams—and now he knew he was dreaming, and in the chair, but he had to get there, to Dylan, he couldn’t stop running now—he made no sound. In his ear came Dylan’s laugh, Da-addy, Da-addy, like it was
all a joke. But Dylan wasn’t joking now. Alex’s legs churned, unable to move through the thick air, and how could he think his son was dead, and so kill him? No! he had cried again, and woken up.
As he hiked Hearts Content after breakfast, Alex had done his best to dismiss the dream, to shrug off the crazy encounters of the day before. That family! Brooke would seize on them as a cause, at least until the pixie dust wore off and she realized it was a false coincidence. The trailer park happened to lie across the highway from the motel. The girl happened to have fair hair and an irregular nose. And the story—which could be manipulative—was that she had been found. And would it allay Brooke’s guilt, or her judgment of Alex, to invent this tale of a child crippled rather than a premature infant killed? Not in the end. Finally, when the family took her money and spent it however they pleased, Brooke would come to her senses.
By then, Alex realized as he trudged up the narrow trail, he, too, would have moved on. He was—maybe he had always been—a man in bad faith. He was never going to face Charlie’s shock and judgment, was never going to shame himself before his brittle, fragile mother. Maybe, with Brooke at his side, he would have had the strength. He would never know, now; he would keep his crime as his bedfellow regardless of what Brooke did or did not do.
He had left Pablo and Charlie and their giggling friends at the Hearts Content trailhead, poring over maps. By now the four of them were probably at the New York border. He pictured them laughing at a hikers’ bar. Maybe tonight, camping in a tent, his sister would make love with Pablo. The thought brought a smile to Alex’s face. He had grabbed lunch, driven back to Windermere, sat for a while with his mother as she did the Sunday crossword, and then told her he was heading back to Boston, he had a full workday tomorrow. This was a lie—he had put in, already, for two personal days, planning on his great confession—but being with his mom made him antsy. The year after his father died, she had stopped coloring her hair, which had quickly paled to an ivory white. Blessed with a soft prettiness—Alex had his full cheeks from her—she seemed to have aged three years for every year that had passed since then. She had never worked. These days she left the house only to volunteer at the Presbyterian church or to play card games with older women at the assisted-living place.