“Mom!”
“Be right there!” Jessie gives up on matching socks and pulls on two black ones that are close enough, then goes back to the closet to find her ancient pair of UGGs, hand-me-downs from Petty. She’d begged for them in middle school and grown tired of them after a season.
“They’re so out of style,” she’d scolded Jessie when she’d caught her wearing them a year or two ago.
“You’re kidding, right? For what we spent on these, I’m going to be buried in them. Maybe they’ll be back in style by then.”
The UGGs are on the closet floor, buried beneath a couple of her sweaters that have fallen off the hangers. Billy again.
“Mom!” Theodore’s voice is in the front hall.
“I’m coming! And you’re supposed to be in the sunroom!”
“Someone’s here!”
Oh—the repairman. She’d forgotten.
She hurries to the stairs, finger-combing her wet hair. “Sorry, I was just—”
She stops short on the landing, spotting Theodore below with a uniformed police officer. He’s young, had played high school baseball with Chip.
“Mrs.—Jessie. Sorry, I tried to call, but the phone was—”
“What happened, Shawn?”
She waits for him to tell her that it’s not about Billy, or her kids, that nothing horrible has happened, that he’s just stopped by to visit, maybe looking for Chip, or even Billy . . .
But she’s seen that expression of regret and sorrow before, on her husband’s face, whenever he leaves the house in uniform to deliver bad news to a family whose lives are about to shatter.
Chapter Fifteen
In a rocky wilderness that lies just a few blocks from the Ithaca Commons, a gorge trail follows the rushing Cascadilla Creek all the way up to Cornell’s campus.
As a student, Amelia had walked the path in all seasons. Its incline can be treacherous in icy weather, and the access points are officially closed in winter. In spring, the ice thaws to release majestic waterfalls, and in summer, you can cool off in the rippling pools beneath them. But autumn is by far her favorite season in the gorge, like stepping into a luminous impressionist canvas.
For a while, she simply walks, ascending the ancient bedrock trail and stone stairs, thinking about Aaron, and Saturdays. How they used to live for them, reminding each other all week that Saturday was coming. They could sleep in and dine out, see movies, shows, friends—or just lounge around the apartment in sweats, watching TV or trading Times sections across the couch. They’d load their favorite CDs into their high-tech—for the time—stereo and sing along to household chores or meal prep.
Those cozy weekends are as long gone as the stereo and CDs. Now music, like dining and television, is a solitary experience in their disquietingly quiet household. They listen to their own playlists plugged into earbuds, even when they’re in the same room at the same time. Now he schedules business trip departures for Sunday evenings instead of Monday mornings, returns for Saturday mornings instead of Friday nights.
“I hate getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the way to an airport,” he’d said when it all began to shift. “And I can’t miss any more early meetings.”
But what about me? Do you miss me, Aaron? Do you miss us?
They have some decisions to make when they’re both home again. But she can see the familiar stone footbridge looming ahead, and she wants to call her mother’s cousin before she leaves this peaceful oasis.
She dials the Georgia phone number, prepared for a voice mail greeting or even a recording telling her the phone has been disconnected.
A woman answers, though, with a pleasant “Hello?”
Lucky. She sounds like Bettina. Not just the rich drawl, but the pitch.
“Hello? Hello?”
“I’m . . .” She swallows. “I’m sorry. It’s Amelia. Bettina’s daughter.”
“Who?”
“Amelia Crenshaw. My mother . . .” She clears her throat, begins again, stronger this time. “My mother was your cousin Bettina, up north.”
“New York City.” She draws out the words in wonder, as if she’s there, marveling at the urban skyline.
“That’s right. How have you been?”
“Just fine, just fine. It’s been a lot of years since your mama passed, and mine, too. I’ve seen you on television,” Lucky adds, without quite as much warmth and depth, like a hearty soup cooled with a touch too much water.
“Oh . . . yes. Part of my job,” Amelia tells her. “As an investigative genealogist. You know.”
“Oh, I know.” A pause, during which Amelia imagines the woman might be about to add that they’re proud of her—the whole Georgia family, proud of their successful, famous cousin. Or maybe she’ll ask whether Amelia has made any progress in trying to find her biological parents.
But she doesn’t do that. Is it because she herself had been illegitimate, and she doesn’t approve of Amelia delving into the family’s ancestral roots?
Or because she knows the truth?
The water rushes and Amelia’s feet climb and the footbridge looms, and she has to say it. Just say it. Just ask.
“I’m calling because I’m wondering what you know about my birth?”
“Your birth?”
“Yes. I just found out that Bettina was really my mother after all.”
A long pause. “Did you now.”
She waits for Lucky to ask how she knows that. Having already decided that Quinnlynn’s role in this can wait, she isn’t sure quite how to answer.
But Lucky says only, “Well,” like she’s sitting in a porch rocking chair with all the time in the world to ponder.
“Why do you think Calvin told me that story? About finding me in the church?”
“I don’t know, child. I only met your daddy a time or two.”
“And my mother . . . Bettina . . . do you remember when she was pregnant with me?”
“When was that?”
“It would have been back in mid-1967, into ’68.”
“I didn’t see Bettina at all during those years. The last time I ever saw her was in ’65.”
“Do you remember hearing anything about me being born?”
“Oh, I’m sure she wrote and told us about it, but I don’t remember.”
“Are you sure? I’m just wondering because . . . because my father told me that crazy story about being abandoned, you know?”
Does she even recall that phone call back in 1991, when Amelia had offered her condolences and her story, and Lucky had chosen to call her abandonment an “adoption”?
Silence on her end, so Amelia goes on, “For all these years, that’s what I’ve been thinking. That he found me in a church. And now I don’t think it’s even true.”
“No, I don’t suppose it was.”
Amelia pauses. Nods. Wants to cry.
“I was thinking . . . you know, if you wouldn’t mind . . . maybe I could come down there. To Georgia. To get to know the family. I think my mother would have liked that.”
“I’m sure she would have,” Lucky murmurs. “You’ll have to do that sometime.”
“I was thinking maybe . . . soon.”
“Okay. Of course. That would be right nice.”
“Okay.” She bites her lip. She’s stopped walking, allowing herself to sink onto a low stone ledge in the shadow of the arched footbridge, so close to the falls that the cold spray dampens her face.
“I don’t want to cut this short, child, but I have to get to—”
“One last thing,” Amelia says, “and then I’ll let you go. My mother gave me a ring. I was wondering if it was some kind of . . . family thing. Heirloom. Do you remember a little gold ring with sapphires, and a blue C etched into it? Not—”
“’Fraid I don’t.”
“But it was—”
“I don’t know anything about any initial rings for babies in this family,” Lucky says firmly. “I’m sorry, child.”
“All right, then .
. .” Amelia hesitates. “I’ll call you in a few days, to see when would be a good time.”
“A good time?”
“For me to visit.”
“Oh, of course. You do that. And you take care now, you hear?”
They hang up.
Amelia heaves herself to her feet, dries her damp cheeks on her sleeves, and walks on, going over the conversation. The Collegetown trail entrance is in sight, the rickety old wooden staircase replaced earlier this year by new concrete and stone steps.
Everything changes. Everything—
She stops short.
“I don’t know about any initial rings for babies . . .”
Amelia had told her the ring was small and etched with a blue C. But Lucky had cut her off before she could clarify the description. For all she’d known, Amelia could have been talking about a small-sized ring for a grown woman, etched to depict a blue sea—a scroll of waves, or something like that.
Initial rings for babies . . .
Something else comes back to her now. The last time they’d spoken, after Auntie Birdie had died back in ’91, Lucky had told Amelia that Birdie might not even have known who Lucky’s father had been, and that she had never asked.
“There were certain things you just didn’t talk about back then. Shouldn’t talk about them now, either, or ask questions. Just count your blessings and move on.”
All right, then.
Amelia’s counting, and she’s moving.
But she may not be done asking after all.
In the spot next to the one where the Angler had parked the stolen car, a young couple is loading a pair of pink-clad toddlers into a double stroller. Both girls are munching cookies. His stomach growls, still empty after he’d deserted his diner breakfast, now flitting with butterflies.
He’s found the boy. He’s actually found him—here, close by. All he has to do is figure out where the foster family lives.
He climbs into the car and finds the cell phone he’d left in the console, powered down so that Cecile can’t bother him. Now he turns it on. When it lights up, there are a barrage of texts from his wife, which he ignores, and a pop-up window asking whether he wants to allow data roaming while he’s out of the country.
Only for a few minutes, and just the applications he’ll need to find local real estate listings, and the names—Hyland, Hanson—along with a map to figure out where to go from here.
He opens the phone’s settings and scrolls down the list of apps. An unfamiliar red icon jumps out at him.
Wait a minute. What the hell is this? He clicks on it, heart racing.
Something called . . .
Stealth Soldier?
The app is tracking him.
Cecile must have gotten her hands on his phone and guessed the password to unlock it so that she could install it. It wouldn’t have been hard: 1–9–3–7—the four corners of the keypad. Easy for him to remember; also easy for her to guess if she’d seen him crisscross tap the phone.
But why? Why would his aloof wife, who’d basically encouraged him to take a mistress, suddenly care where he goes when he isn’t with her?
People don’t change character from one day to the next. Not that drastically.
Anyway, she’d have nothing to gain from knowing where he’d been.
Who would? Who else in the world has access to his phone and would have had any reason to track him?
The police. They must be onto him, must be following his every movement.
But no, that can’t be possible. They’d have arrested him in the all-night supermarket parking lot, or they’d have stopped him from leaving the country.
Then who else . . . ?
Monique.
Monique, making a run for it on that last desperate night . . .
He’d wanted to believe that something had finally snapped inside her, that she’d chosen to save herself and sacrifice her child. Women do that. They run away, they leave their children behind, leave them at the mercy of cruel, violent men.
His own mother had done it. Why wouldn’t he expect Monique to do the same?
Because he’d so often seen her tenderly cradling her son, rocking him back and forth to soothe him, doing whatever she had to do to keep him safe, healthy, alive. Because . . .
People don’t change character.
He stares at the tracking app on his phone, remembering how she’d told him, on the night they’d met, that she’d run away from home because her boyfriend had been cheating on her with her best friend.
Charmed by her adolescent outrage, he’d asked her how she could be sure. “Vous l’espionnez?”
She’d smiled a smug little smile, and told him that yes, she’d been spying on the boy.
He’d teased her, asking if she’d followed him around wearing a sexy trench coat and dark glasses. Not like that, she’d said. No need for sexy trench coats with modern technology.
A pity, he’d said at the time.
Modern technology.
Monique hadn’t been leaving her child behind the night she’d escaped; she’d been trying to save him. She’d been going for help because she’d had a way to locate the boy without the Angler’s cooperation.
How, though, when, could she have gotten her hands on his phone? He wants to believe that it would have been impossible, yet he knows it had not. A brief distraction on his part, a moment of recklessness on hers . . .
“Imbecile!”
He sees the young couple turn to gape, then hastily push their pink toddlers away in the stroller.
Reckless, reckless . . .
She’d betrayed him.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said when he’d caught her. “Please. I lost my head for a second there, I just didn’t think.”
Oh, yes, she had. She’d thought about it, for far longer than a second. She’d planned, and schemed, and spied. If she’d gotten away, she’d have flagged a passing car, called the police, and they’d have found him, arrested him, taken his phone . . .
The tracker would have led them straight to the kid. Maybe they wouldn’t even need the phone for that—or him. He’d been as dispensable to her as bycatch—he’d taken the bait and she’d been about to throw him away.
Catch and release.
She only cared about herself, and the kid.
This time, there will be no reckless mistakes.
This time, the kid will die.
“Every living creature is equipped with natural instinct, Stockton. Listen to yours.”
Wash had given Barnes that advice years ago, when he’d been an aspiring detective. It’s served him well on the job, even better in his personal life . . . and today?
Every time he looks over his shoulder, he seems to catch a stranger’s scrutiny. He isn’t seeking an elderly man, an adolescent boy, a young woman. Nor, presumably, are they looking for, or perhaps even at, him . . . are they? Is he under surveillance? Do they think they are?
Paranoia all around.
Kurtis still hasn’t returned to the casa particular, unless he’d been there and left again.
Barnes grabs his cell phone on the way back out.
“No public Wi-Fi along the malecón,” Rob tells him.
“I just want it for the camera.”
“Good idea. It’s a beautiful spot.”
Yeah, he’s sure it is. But scenic pictures aren’t what he has in mind. If he spots Perry Wayland or Gypsy Colt again, he wants photo evidence.
The midday heat sears the top of his head as they walk single file down the narrow street toward the turquoise sea in the distance, Barnes glancing into every shadowy nook, Rob brooding along behind him.
“Where is he, do you think?” he asks Barnes.
“Kurtis? Probably the same place I was the other night.”
“In Santa Maria del Mar with Ana Benita?”
Barnes laughs. “I wouldn’t blame him. But I’m sure he was out in some bar and he met a hot woman, and he’s just—”
He stops short.
Rob slams into him from behind. “Barnes! What the hell are you doing?”
“Sorry, I was just . . . I thought I saw . . . Kurtis.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. It wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t anyone,” Rob says, following his gaze down a cobblestone alley.
It’s empty, lined with brick walls and garbage cans and strung overhead with laundry on clotheslines like a vintage Lower East Side movie set. Yet Barnes could have sworn he’d seen a furtive figure duck into the shadows. Not Wayland, though, and not Gypsy, and not Christopher Columbus’s ghost.
A young man, maybe planning to rob them. It’s a foreign country; they’re tourists. That’s probably all it is, but . . .
“Barnes.” Rob lifts his sunglasses above his forehead and studies Barnes’s face. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? And you don’t want to tell me?”
Can he possibly know? About the Wayland case, Stef, the bribe . . .
“You don’t think he was just out on the town last night, living it up on vacation, do you? You think something happened to him—that gut instinct of yours, right? You think he bought some drugs, got arrested, thrown in jail, or—no. You’re a missing persons detective, and you think he’s missing.”
Barnes stares, digesting words that make no sense . . .
Until they do. Rob isn’t talking about Wayland. He’s talking about Kurtis.
“Oh . . . no. I don’t think that at all. I mean, I think you two have some things to work out. But right now, here, I’m sure he’s fine. It’s not like he could text to let you know he was staying out all night even if he wanted to, which I’m sure he didn’t. And at his age, I don’t think he should have to.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t know the worry, Barnes. You’re not a parent.”
The words sting, but he can’t blame Rob for stating the truth. Biology and one-night stands aside, he isn’t a parent, and he doesn’t know. Not that worry.
He’d had a taste of it, though, in the hospital when Charisse was in the neonatal ICU. He’d stepped up, paid for her care.
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