by David Bell
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to go home. And I thought if I started talking to Mom she’d beg me to come back. And then there was Gordon. He made it sound like Mom would be in danger if I made contact with her. I didn’t really believe his story that Mom was involved with the movies and whatever else he was doing, but I knew she was there, with Gordon. I didn’t know if she knew and turned a blind eye, or if she might really get hurt. I didn’t want to risk it. And the more time passed, the easier it was to not make contact. Or I guess I should say, the harder it would have been to make contact. You know what I mean?”
“Sure.”
“And then after six or seven months of being free and wild, things got worse for me.”
“How?”
She looked at the floor.
“If you don’t want to get into it—”
“I do,” she said. “Remember—” She reached out and placed her hand on mine. I accepted the gesture, but still felt uncomfortable with it. “We’re family now. At least to some extent.” She took her hand away. “I got into drugs,” she said. “Not just a little. And not just holding on to bad things for one of my wild friends. I went all in. For several years, I was a mess. I did things to support my habit, things I really wouldn’t want to talk about, but you can guess what they must be. In fact, whatever you can imagine, I did more than that. And worse. You asked me why I went so long without talking to Mom. That was a big part of it.”
“What was? The drugs?”
“The shame. I didn’t want her to see what I had turned out to be. Everything she warned me about, everything we fought about, I turned into that. And then some. And this happened over and over again. I relapsed many times over the years. I’ve been to rehab more than once. It finally took the last time, about five years ago. I’ve been to jail… you name it.”
“Married?”
She nodded. “Three times. Four kids. Yes, you have four nieces and nephews you didn’t even know about. And I’m a grandmother. Six grandchildren, if you can believe that.”
“Wow,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“The grandchildren,” she said. “They really helped lead me back to Mom. When I saw them so young, so vulnerable, something kicked in. I guess I realized I was getting older. Time was passing. I’d moved back here, to Reston Point. I’d lived in Ohio once before, about twenty years ago. I lived in Akron. I even thought about coming over and looking for Mom then. I checked the phone book and everything. She’d gotten married by then and had a different name. You couldn’t just look on the computer like you can now. And I thought… I guess I thought she had a new life and maybe she didn’t want me to come back and remind her of all that stuff from the past.”
“You know she wouldn’t have thought that,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “I was afraid of Gordon too. I wondered what would happen if I did see him again, so I stayed away. Eventually I realized Mom wouldn’t care about any of that. I tracked her down in Dover. I just used one of those services you pay for on the Internet. They found her, and I called her… and…”
Beth lost it then. She didn’t even have time to raise her hands to her face. The tears poured out and her body shook with the sobbing.
I looked around. Only one other family sat in the waiting area with us, an elderly man and a middle-aged couple. They all turned to look when Beth started crying, then looked away again when they saw me scrambling to find tissues. I grabbed a box and brought them to Beth. While she tried to stem the tide of her tears, I placed my hand on her back and gently rubbed. It didn’t feel as awkward as I would have thought. I felt for this woman. I didn’t want to see her suffer. And I couldn’t imagine the pain she was experiencing over first losing her mother as a teenager, then briefly having her back as an adult only to lose her again so suddenly. If we were going to have a grieving contest, I decided Beth won by a mile. It wasn’t even close.
She composed herself. She used the tissues to wipe her tears and snot away. The other people in the waiting area had gone back to their own worries and problems. I sank back into my chair. I felt tired, mentally and physically. And I still hadn’t been back to Dover to see Ronnie. Maybe Dan was still there, or maybe Paul had returned to the hospital. But maybe Ronnie was there alone, wondering where I was.
“I feel guilty,” Beth said. “So very guilty.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“But I should,” Beth said. “I should have done something to stop him once I saw him again. More than anyone else, I knew the kinds of things he was capable of. And I should have tried to stop him from hurting Mom.”
Chapter Fifty-two
A nurse appeared in the waiting room. She held a clipboard, and she read something off of it. Then she looked up and said, “The family of Neal Nelson. Is the Neal Nelson family here?” The nurse looked around, her eyes bouncing across all the people in the room. I raised my hand.
The nurse came over. She held the clipboard in front of her like a shield, as if she expected someone to attack. “Are you family members?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“And what’s the relation?”
“I’m his girlfriend,” I said.
The nurse wore a stone face. “Are there any family members here?”
“I don’t know where they are,” I said. “But the detective said they were called.”
The nurse remained stoic, but some of the sternness eased. “I’m just here to tell you that they’re beginning the closing procedures on the surgery. But it looks like everything is going to be fine.”
“Oh, thank God,” I said. Beth reached out for me. We leaned in toward each other, our shoulders touching. “He’s going to be okay.”
“Well,” the nurse said, “I didn’t say that. I’m just here to tell you it looks like he’s going to be okay—so far.”
I could live with that. I thanked the nurse. Then she turned on her heel and briskly walked away, still clutching the clipboard.
“I’m so relieved,” I said to Beth.
“I know.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes. Then I said, “I hate to go back to this, but I’m wondering why you feel so guilty about Mom’s death and Gordon. You’re being too hard on yourself.”
She paused. I saw that her hands were clenched, the fingernails digging into the fabric of her chair.
“Gordon found me about a year ago,” she said. “I don’t know how. For all I know he used one of those Internet people finder things. Or else he hired someone to find me. Whatever it was, he found me here in Reston Point. He told me then that he’d been thinking about me a lot and hoped we could reconnect. He gave me a whole line about how sorry he was about the past and everything that happened when he sent me away. He said it was a misunderstanding, that he really didn’t mean for me to never come back. I’m ashamed to say I fell for some of it. I guess I was so desperate to connect with someone from my family—this family that had been taken away from me—that I was willing to believe he might be a changed man.” She looked at me, her face serious. “People do change, Elizabeth. Take it from me—they really do. I know that better than anyone.”
I nodded.
“I asked him about Mom, of course. He told me what he knew—that she had remarried and had two kids. He said he’d been in touch with her and maybe it was a little soon for me to go rushing back into her life. I found out later, from Mom, that he had only gotten back in touch with her because he knew she had some insurance money from your dad and wanted to try to get something out of her. Gordon hadn’t been living in Dover for very long. I still don’t know where he’d been living. Columbus maybe. But the money was all he wanted. She said she hadn’t seen him in ten or fifteen years, and then he showed up again. Hell, I think he probably wanted money from me, but one look at my life and he’d know the cupboard was bare. But he said he’d help smooth the way and prepare Mom for meeting me if I wanted. I went along with that too.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I said before,” Beth said. “I still felt that shame, that fear that the life I had led in the past would be… difficult for Mom to accept. I wanted to be sure I was ready for anything.”
“Did you ever think Mom wanted to send you away?”
Beth paused a long time. “I guess at first I might have. We didn’t get along. She was frustrated with me a lot.” She shook her head. “But she would never do that. I don’t blame her. I never would. And I know she thought I was dead. If she thought there was a chance I was alive somewhere… well, I just know she would have tried to find me.”
“So how did you meet Mom, then?”
“About six months after Gordon found me, I could tell he was starting to stall a little about getting me and Mom back together. I was getting impatient. I was ready. As ready as I was ever going to be, and I thought if I didn’t do it soon I might never do it.” She took a deep breath. “He let something slip once. I knew he was seeing Mom somewhere south of Reston Point. I guessed it was Dover because there really isn’t much else down here. Even with a town the size of Dover, finding one person when you only know their first name is like finding a needle in a haystack. And I was afraid I’d run across someone I used to know. A kid from school or whatever. I assumed some people might remember me, and I didn’t want Mom to find out through someone else that I was around. I wanted to have some control over how it went. Instead, in a roundabout way, it was Ronnie who helped me find her.”
“Ronnie?” I asked. “How?”
“Gordon told me once that Mom had a son with Down syndrome. That’s all I knew. I didn’t even know his name. Or your name. But I did know they had that place in Dover, that center where people with disabilities spend time and get jobs and things like that.”
“The Miller Center.”
“Right. I worked with a woman who had a nephew who used to go there,” Beth said.
“Did she know Mom?”
“No. I just went to that place, the Miller Center, and I asked around. I lied and said my son had Down syndrome, but he had died. And I said there was a woman I met there who had been very kind to me, and I wanted to thank her but I only knew her first name. ‘She has a son with Down syndrome,’ I said. ‘And her name is Leslie.’ The volunteer said it must be Leslie Hampton. I had it then. That’s how I found Mom.”
“Did you just show up at her door?”
“I didn’t know what to do. Finally I called. She thought it was a cruel joke at first, but then I told her things no one else could know. How old I was when I got my first period. The name of my stuffed bunny when I was little. That was all it took. We agreed to meet at her house one night. Ronnie wasn’t there, but as soon as she saw me, she knew it was me. And I knew it was her. It was like something was completed that night—something clicked inside me that hadn’t clicked in a long time.”
The nurse with the clipboard came out again and spoke to the other family in the waiting area, using a low voice. The family nodded happily, and I found myself relieved that they appeared to be receiving good news as well.
I turned back to Beth. “How did that mean you led Gordon to Mom? He obviously knew where she was before you did.”
“I think there was something else going on,” Beth said. “I think Gordon was blackmailing Mom with information about me. He knew where I was, and he knew where she was. And I think he told Mom that if she ever wanted to see me, she’d have to pay up.”
I thought of those bank withdrawals over the past year. All that money leaving Mom’s account.
“Did Mom say anything about it?” I asked.
“At some point she said it would be a relief to have Gordon off her back. She didn’t get specific, but she indicated she’d been helping him out. I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded like money. I think Gordon was telling her that he’d let her know where I was as long as she kept giving him money. He strung her along as much as he could.”
“It’s hard to believe Mom would put up with that,” I said. “Getting strung along that way.”
“I agree,” Beth said. “Except—”
“She was desperate to see her child again.”
“Exactly. And when I found Mom on my own, Gordon lost his leverage over her.”
“So you think…”
Beth nodded. “I told Mom the whole story about why I went away. I think Gordon tried to get more money out of her, and she told him to get lost—that she knew everything, and not only would there be no money, but she might have even threatened to go to the police. It wouldn’t make sense for him to kill her if she was giving him money, would it? But once she knew me again and what he’d done to me, she took a stand. I think she said, ‘No more.’” Beth took a long pause. “I think that’s when he killed her.”
Chapter Fifty-three
“You think he killed her because she wouldn’t give him money anymore?”
“She didn’t have to,” Beth said. “And what’s more, she also knew it was him who drove me away that night. He probably thought she’d turn him in to the police. Maybe he killed her just to shut her up.”
It all made sense to me. And there were other implications that went with it.
“If he might have killed Mom to shut her up, then—”
“Me,” Beth said. “I know everything too. My guess is that he was working up to it. Maybe he thought if I was in the will, he might be able to get some money out of me. Who knows what he was coming to the house for tonight? Your friend got in the way, or else who knows what would have happened. To both of us.” As she said that, something crossed her face. Some recognition that widened her eyes. “Jesus. Now you’re in it too. You know what I know.”
“I was in it already,” I said. “Hell, I was in it before I was even born.”
I stood up and paced around. While I did, a couple came hustling through the waiting room. The man was tall and thin, and except for the nice suit he was wearing he looked a great deal like Neal Nelson. The woman with him was wearing a fur coat, and even from across the room I could see multiple gold rings on her fingers as she patted her helmet of hair into place. They spoke to the volunteer on duty. I saw relief spread through their posture and across their faces. The volunteer made a phone call, and the clipboard-bearing nurse came out and led the couple back through a set of doors, presumably to a post-op recovery area. I took it to mean Neal was doing okay.
And we had done everything we could do at the hospital.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” I asked. “Or do you want to take a drive down to Dover?”
Beth didn’t hesitate. “It doesn’t look like my house is a very safe place to be, does it?”
“Probably not.”
“Then I’m game. What do you have in mind?”
“Would you still recognize Gordon’s handwriting?”
• • •
Beth and I didn’t talk much while we made the one-hour drive to Dover. We were both worn out, exhausted from the evening’s events as well as reliving the things that had happened to her over the previous thirty-seven years.
And we both knew something else—there was still more to come. Things weren’t over. Not even close.
During the ride, Beth leaned over and turned the radio on low. I didn’t recognize the program, but it was a guy giving people advice on all sorts of problems—some financial and some personal. He gave his number at every break, and at one point I said, “We should call him and tell him about us. His head might explode.”
Beth smiled a little, but she didn’t say anything. Her life had been brutal, and I hadn’t even heard the half of it. If I knew all the details, they might make my head spin. I wanted to ask her if she’d gotten help, therapy or something. And I wondered whether she felt she’d managed to beat her addictions once and for all. But I didn’t. I gave her space and time to think. I couldn’t take anything for granted, but it looked as if the two of us would be getting to know each other even more in the future.
; I did ask one question. “Did Mom like to read when she was young?”
“All the time.”
“That never changed. She thought every problem could be solved with a book.”
Beth didn’t say anything else, but I understood why Mom wanted that book from Mrs. Porter. Beth had no doubt told Mom much of the same story—or some sanitized version of it—and I knew Mom would have taken it all to heart. I hated to think how much guilt she would have felt over the life her daughter led when she was sent away. At least she died knowing Beth was still alive.
When we got closer to Dover, Beth said, “You still haven’t told me what we’re doing. Do you want to see Ronnie?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Although we can do that later if you want.”
“Visiting hours are probably over,” Beth said. “I kind of figured we weren’t seeing him.”
“Visiting hours,” I said, my voice mocking. “Do you think a little thing like posted visiting hours can stop us? After all we’ve been through? We’re Leslie’s daughters, right?”
Some cheer returned to Beth’s face and voice. “Right.”
Dover Community looked appropriately deserted. We parked close to the door and stepped out into the cool night. The sodium vapor lights overhead illuminated us, casting our faces and bodies in a half glow. I stopped before we went in.
“You’ve been here before, right?” I asked.
Beth nodded. “I came to visit Ronnie. Once. It didn’t go well.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want, but what was it that upset him so much about your visit?”