Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  I flashed on rumpled, freaked-out Jennifer. “What does your Mom think?”

  The waiter cleared the salad plates, brought out entrees.

  “Mom doesn’t think. She does what Dad tells her.” He slouched against the banquette, flipping his coffee spoon back and forth on the table top. “I wish she’d stand up to him, you know, make a life for herself or something, rather than running around after him.”

  “Maybe that’s all she wants.” My wariness meter inched toward the red zone, and the slug started to wake up. Why would Junior trust me with such intimate information mere hours after I’d met him? I remembered from some distant psychology course the basic premise of self-disclosure: I tell you something and you tell me something of equal importance and meaning. As we trust each other more, we begin to reveal things of greater and greater meaning. I barely knew this guy and already he was revealing family secrets?

  Paul’s words floated through my brain: Maybe you should just ask. “Why are you telling me this? Isn’t it confidential?”

  “Nah.” He waved his hand dispiritedly. “It’s an open secret.” The waiter, thinking his gesture meant he wanted something, slid up to the table. Junior flicked a finger and he went away.

  “Why is it important now? You’re grown up, living away from home.”

  “I’m not sure I can vote for him. I know him too well.”

  “You’re his son. Surely, there’s room for forgiveness?”

  It was as if he suddenly saw me. He turned his body toward me, his knees touching mine under the table, his shoulder pressed into the banquette. His hand brushed my fingers and it felt like fire. I almost thought he’d blistered my skin. Then came an image of an inferno so powerful and hot I nearly shouted for people to run from the restaurant. The minute the image passed, I had another, puzzling and brief: Winters Senior, standing legs apart, arms crossed, staring at me. It was as if I could see into his mind, and he was puzzling over me.

  “Clara!” Junior jarred me back to the present. “Are you okay?”

  I became abruptly aware that I had pressed back against my seat panting. I slowed my breathing, made myself relax. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to react that way. You…did nothing.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He had a funny look on his face, the kind I’d seen before when men feel women have wronged them. I couldn’t tell him what I’d seen. He would think I was crazy. “You were telling me why you couldn’t vote for your father.”

  He hesitated, unsure of me, then responded. “He’s a liar,” he said. “He promises things all the time, and they never happen. He said we would see Greece, Machu Picchu, Hawaii, and every single trip was cancelled, and we spent the summer in the moldy old house on Nantucket his relatives have owned since, like, 1776.”

  The waiter silently removed our empty plates, offered desert menus. Junior ordered us coffee.

  “So he broke a few vacation plans. What about the serious stuff, like paying for your college education or making sure you had a car or food on the table?”

  “You don’t get it. We never saw him. He worked seven days a week, three-hundred-sixty-one days a year.”

  I giggled. “Three-hundred-sixty-one?”

  He looked wry. “He takes off Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. The office is locked down tight those days.”

  “He must have a key. He owns the firm.”

  Junior shrugged. “Those trips, that was time for him to get to know us, me and my little sisters. He didn’t want to, I guess. He never came to my lacrosse matches; he didn’t even attend my graduation from Harvard. It was just Mom and Mary Ellen. It’s always just Mom and Mary Ellen. Sometimes, I think they’re our parents.” He paused. “Your Dad died, right?”

  “He’s been gone fifteen years now, hard to believe it’s that long.” My guilt corroded a hollow under my ribcage.

  “He owned a landscape design firm?”

  “Yes, landscape architecture, actually. He travelled all over for work. He brought pictures home to show us his gardens and the cities they lived in. He had clients as far away as Vancouver. I remember thinking that must be a magical place when I was a child.”

  “Did you travel with him?”

  “When I was little, we occasionally met him for long weekends when the job lasted more than a couple of weeks. In my early teens, Mother let me go alone once or twice. He took me to dinner like an adult, all dressed up, somewhere serious. During the day, we’d tour gardens.” I sipped the last of the espresso in my cup. “It was always better with me and Dad.”

  A look of longing crossed his face. He said abruptly, as though he couldn’t bear to hear about my father anymore, “Mary Ellen says you know things.”

  A living, breathing jolt ran through me. “What things?” It was the same question his father had asked.

  “Like about people. Was that what happened when I touched you? Did you see something?”

  Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t trust him. I didn’t know if he himself was untrustworthy, or if Mary Ellen had prepared him—or if it was because my images of him had been fiery like the ones Mother had warned me about. This knowledge saddened me, as I felt a kinship with him over the loneliness that came from being abandoned by a living parent.

  I thought briefly of Chief Dupont’s cop eyes and deflected Junior. “You startled me, that’s all,” I said. “Your aunt must have me confused with someone else, maybe Hetty. I know she does psychic readings.”

  He shook his head, but didn’t press it. Shortly, he called for the check. The waiter appeared as if from a genie bottle and deposited the leather folder on the table. Junior inserted several one hundred dollar bills and handed it back. Within minutes, the limousine collected us and headed for Connecticut.

  The next day, Mother summoned me to the jail.

  Chapter 14

  I showed up at the jail in a gray, pinstriped pant suit with a neon pink chiffon scarf I’d borrowed from Mother’s scarf drawer. I’m not sure what kind of statement I was making by parading her own clothes in front of her, but maybe provoking her would produce a chance to ask her about the photographs I’d found at Hetty’s. Maybe she would know why Hugh was in them.

  “Is that mine?”

  “Isn’t it pretty with this suit? I hope you don’t mind. So many of my things are in storage.” I planned to return to Paris, hadn’t shipped all my things home.

  She raised an eyebrow, a dark slash on pale skin. “You have more?” She hadn’t lost any energy or fight.

  “What do you need, Mother?” If I could get her talking…

  “You dined with Andrew Winters, Junior, last night.”

  “Who told you that?”

  She twitched a bony shoulder. “I have my sources, Clara. I’m not completely cut off from the world in here.”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “Pete Samuels.”

  How disturbing. “Where’s he getting his info?”

  “He’s a police officer, Clara.”

  “Why would he share anything with you?”

  “Does this matter for some reason?”

  “Don’t you think it’s curious?”

  “I’ve known Pete since he was three, and he’s doing something nice for me by keeping tabs on you while I can’t.”

  Maybe that’s why he’d taken me to dinner. “You need to keep tabs on me?”

  “You’re running around with Andrew Winters, Junior.”

  “So?” I didn’t mention the squitchy feeling in my gut or the pain in my arm, but I did wonder why she trusted Pete. I didn’t.

  She leaned across the institutional gray table. “If the devil existed, that family would have sold their souls to him for power and money.”

  “Junior didn’t try anything he shouldn’t have, he paid for dinner, he dropped me home at a decent hour, and he was polite.
What more should I want?” Besides, only Junior thought it was a date.

  “You have flawed judgment when it comes to men, Clara. Speaking of which, how is that divorce of yours going?”

  I was getting whiplash from her conversation shifts. “We’re still negotiating.”

  “What’s to negotiate? He keeps what he brought into the marriage and you keep what you brought in.”

  “Ah, yes, but he hasn’t worked in a dog’s age, so he thinks I should pay him alimony so he can continue to ride his bicycle: working would get in the way of training. My lawyer and I disagree with that; his lawyer is trying to talk some sense into him, but so far, Palmer’s got his heels dug in. My lawyer will call when she has a tentative agreement in hand.”

  Just laying it out for her exhausted me.

  “You’re pretty cavalier about a man you said you’d love ‘til death do you part.’”

  “You would be, too, if you’d lived with him. He seemed perfect; he had charm, could make everyone in the room laugh at his jokes. Once you got beneath the charm, you realized he was nothing but a self-centered bastard who wanted whatever his greedy little self could lay its hands on.”

  “Sounds like Andrew Winters.”

  “Maybe the son isn’t cut from the same cloth as the father. You’re not always right, Mother.”

  “Oh, yes I am! I can’t imagine why you consistently choose so badly; your father…” She stared at me. “He was such a good man.”

  “How very Freudian of you. Since we’re discussing Freud, maybe it’s you I inherited my man judgment from.” She looked at me in shock. I’d never criticized her before. Not aloud. I held my breath, waiting for the lightning to wham through the cement block walls and ignite me.

  “Clara—”

  I plowed over her, hoping for thirty more seconds before spontaneous combustion. “Sneaking around with a married therapist for twenty years doesn’t count as the greatest of role models for your daughter.”

  She drew herself up. “Hugh and I didn’t ‘sneak around.’ Maria knew all about it and came often for dinner when she was in town.” She sounded ­defensive, and the pink dusting her cheekbones turned an angry red.

  My first piece of a real, hard fact. “When did this non-affair start?”

  “After your father died.” She asserted it, daring me to question her.

  That part didn’t matter as much as she might imagine. My father had given up expecting things from her a long time before he died.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said.

  “Had it ended?”

  “Six months ago. We remained good friends, but Hugh liked women, and I got tired of being one among many, even if he assured me I was the most important.”

  Something in me cracked open and dissolved in relief. She was talking. If I could just keep it going. “If everyone knew Hugh slept around, why did they attack you for it? And what about—?” I stopped. I couldn’t ask her about the new boyfriend. Not yet.

  Her face was slowly returning to its normal color. “Jealousy, I suppose. I hung onto him the longest. Besides, Mary Ellen had wanted him since god-knows-when, and anything I have that Mary Ellen doesn’t is fair game. She spread the rumors, Clara. No one else cared enough to be vitriolic about it.” She shook her head and muttered the next bit, scratching at something on the table surface with a manicured fingernail: “As if she hasn’t taken everything from me.” Then, while I was wondering not only what that meant but how she maintained a manicure in jail, she looked at me again. “That’s why I don’t want you hanging out with that family.”

  “Because Mary Ellen has taken everything from you, Mother? What has she taken?” I asked it quietly, as if I were coaxing a sparrow to take a seed from my hand. This was more important than the photographs, and for a moment, I thought she would tell me. Her face softened and she reached across for me. “Nothing. I have you, right? How could I blame her for anything when I have you?”

  I almost couldn’t breathe. She had me? That hadn’t seemed to matter to her one iota all these years. But now, it almost felt as if she cared. In that moment, I would have given her anything.

  Abruptly, she changed the subject. “How is your meditation training going with Paul?”

  “My, uh, meditation training?”

  She snapped, “You went a couple of days ago. Don’t play with me, Clara. I don’t have time for it.”

  So much for our moment of connection.

  “Fine. Thanks for asking.” She was going to have to pry it out of me.

  “Did you see anything?”

  Her look was feral, as if she would dissect my soul to get what she wanted. Rage welled up, like tears. “Nothing but a bunch of wolves,” I snapped. “I don’t know why you’re interested. You never listened when I needed you, when I was too young to understand the dreams and visions.” I took a shaky breath. I wasn’t ready to confront this. “When it mattered, you didn’t care at all.” Hot tears formed behind my eyelids and I blinked to keep them in place. “It’s my fault that Father died, but you’re culpable too.”

  “Wolves,” she muttered to herself, as if she hadn’t heard the rest. “That’s very good.”

  “Mother.” My voice sharpened with years of pent-up resentment.

  She looked up from her meditation on the table. “I heard you, Clara, but I can’t explain it now. Not here in jail with all these cameras and listeners. Persuade Kyle to let me out, since he won’t listen to me, then we’ll talk. I promise. Meanwhile, the wolves will protect you.”

  I shook my head, my body raging with pain and dizziness. I tried one last time. “Nat sent you a message. He says it’s time to tell your story, or, and I quote, ‘you’re creating a monster.’”

  She paled, but I saw her resolve harden. “You tell Nat I know what I’m doing.”

  On that cryptic note, she dismissed me, but not without one parting shot. She stopped the guard as he turned to lead her down the corridor, the harsh institutional light graying her face and etching lines in her skin: “I mean it, Clara. Stay away from the Winters. If you don’t, you’re risking everything.”

  On the way out, I ran into Chief DuPont. Well, okay, I took three deliberate wrong turns, climbed a set of stairs, and asked four people before I ended up casually outside his office. Mother had derailed me from asking about the photographs, but the chief might know something by now. I looked into his office, “Oh, hey. How are you? I seem to be lost.”

  He looked up from a stack of paperwork. “Ms. Montague, I’ve had three phone calls letting me know you were on the way.”

  I slumped against the door and laughed. “So much for subtlety.”

  “Perhaps you’ve come to explain those photographs you sent me?” His tone was cold, the warmth and humor I’d come to expect from him absent.

  I sat on the edge of one of the faux-leather chairs, pulling my purse into my lap like a little old lady. “I was visiting my mother, thought I’d say hello.”

  “That woman is driving me insane.”

  “Welcome to my world.” I grinned at him.

  He glared at me. “I mean it. She’s got my officers running errands for her. They’ve brought her a reading lamp, pillows, a duvet, take-out meals from the country club, and they’ve checked up on you in their off-hours. If I could catch them at it, I’d put a stop to it, but truthfully, there’s not much I can do about their off-duty activity.” He threw his pen down on the desk in disgust. “Not,” he added, addressing his blotter, “that I think that keeping an eye on you is a bad idea, since apparently you’ve gotten yourself into trouble again.”

  “I thought the photographs would be helpful.”

  He pressed three fingers into the middle of his forehead as if locating the source of a headache. “Hetty is welcome to do whatever she likes in her own home. I haven’t had a complaint from any of the people in
the pictures. And I can’t barge onto private property without reasonable suspicion or probable cause—and a warrant. You didn’t even know she was taking pictures of you until you saw that wall. Catch her in the act of stalking you—if, in fact, that’s what she’s doing. She could be exercising her right to take a few long-distance photos of beautiful people.”

  At first, I thought it was a compliment, then he lifted his head, and I looked into the eyes of a bull just released into the Plaza del Toros.

  “She took the photos on the voodoo dolls!”

  “How am I going to prove that? There’s a similar photograph on the memory card, but did Hetty take the picture? You can’t prove the camera or the memory card belong to her. And if I had a good reason to question her, she’ll want to know who broke into her house. Is that what you want?”

  “Obviously not,” I said, roundly chastised. “And anyway, I didn’t break into her house.” I crossed my fingers under my purse. “That memory card was in her garbage, and the garbage was sitting outside on her steps. Fair game. Can’t you investigate? Check her out?” I leaned forward and the edge of the chair dug into my thighs.

  “With what resources?” He waved his arm at the nearly empty squad room outside his door. “I’m up to my neck in Christmas mayhem. Some idiot decided it would be fun to break into houses and steal Christmas presents. Our good citizens are crashing into each other or the curb trying to fit into parking spaces too small for their SUVs. Yesterday, some guy ripped off The Open Toybox, stole a vanload of gift toys meant for the kids at the women’s shelter. I think one of my officers is dirty, and then, I have your mother in my jail, creating havoc. What a nightmare.”

  I looked at his utilitarian office with its gray carpet and cream walls. The only bit of color was the green blotter centered precisely in the middle of his oak desk. A picture sat in the right corner, but it was turned away from me so I couldn’t see its subject. I hardly knew this man, and he had little reason to trust me.