by Wendy Walker
She looked now at Baby Will curled up beside her, then at the book on her other side. It didn’t matter what her father had revealed. The past was back, living inside her. She could feel it now, now that she was stopped dead in her tracks. The daily tasks that had occupied her for years were being done by others’her mother, Bill, and her friends’as she lay in bed, her back in agony. There was nothing for her to do but think. And remember.
THIRTY-EIGHT
GETTING IN DEEP
“I’LL GET IT. You go home,” Randy said, reaching for the receiver. Marie mouthed a thank you, then started for the door.
“Wait!”
When she turned around, he had his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s the Farrells’ neighbor,” he said in a whisper, his eyebrows raised.
Marie dropped her bag at the door and bounded back to the desk, waving her hand for the phone.
“Can you hold on a second?” Randy asked the woman’the one neighbor who had children in the same age range as the Farrells’. Randy had left a message for her two days before, but had since given up on hearing back. He hit the hold key, then looked at Marie.
“What’s her name? “
“Andrea Rasman. Three kids’ten, six, and two. The two-year-old is a little girl.”
“That’s how old Simone Farrell would be.”
Randy nodded. “They’re a few houses down from the Farrells’ old place.”
“OK.” Marie exhaled deeply as she reached for the phone. She looked at the red blinking hold key, but did not touch it. There was no doubt in her mind that something was not right with the Farrell case. The domestic disturbance that no one had mentioned’not even Connely, Carson’s fear of Marie asking too many questions of his wife, and his insistence that Marie help him get to the other kids’increased visitation, overnights, vacations. He had not sanctioned an interview with his neighbor. In fact, he had instructed her not to dig into their past beyond what he himself was willing to disclose. She was violating his trust, her fiduciary responsibility to him as a client.
But there were three small children whose baby sister was dead.
She looked at Randy for reassurance, a first-year law student who couldn’t possibly know which call to make. She looked to him just the same because he knew what was going through her mind and, at the very least, could share her uncertainty.
“Want me to do it?” he asked, giving her an out. He wasn’t a lawyer yet. The worst thing that would happen to him was a scolding from their client.
Marie shook her head, then placed the phone on Speaker and released the Hold.
“Mrs. Rasman?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Marie Passeti. I’m a lawyer down in Hunting Ridge, Connecticut. I was hoping you could help me with a case. It involves the Farrell family.”
“The Farrells?” The woman sounded curious.
“Yes. Did you know them?”
There was a slight pause before the answer arrived. And when it did, Marie could tell from the woman’s tone that a decision had just been made. “We did. They don’t live here anymore.”
“I hope you don’t mind the Speaker. I’ve got my hands full at the moment,” Marie lied. She wanted Randy to hear the call, but wouldn’t risk involving him further.
“No. That’s fine.”
“I’m representing Carson Farrell in the divorce.”
Andrea Rasman let out an audible sigh. “Oh,” she said. “They didn’t make it?”
Marie looked at Randy, who was now taking notes at his desk.
“No. And now Mrs. Farrell wants sole custody. Because of the accident, she’s claiming Carson isn’t fit to care for the children.”
“That’s too bad,” she said, and Marie found herself surprised at the woman’s apparent sincerity.
“It is. I was hoping you could give me your impressions’about both parents. Carson appears to be a good father.”
“He was. You know, from what I saw. Mostly I was with Vickie and the kids. They all went to school together. Most afternoons they’d wind up in one yard or the other.”
“I know how that goes. I have two of my own. It’s great living so close to other families.”
“We knew all the kids. They moved here just after their second was born. Then they had the next two. It was so tragic. Simone was the sweetest little girl.”
“That’s what I hear. Carson is still shaken up about it.”
There was no response.
“Is there anything you can tell me about the family’the Farrells’ relationship, or any problems with the kids?”
“Oh, no. Those kids were angels. Did great in school.”
“Did any of them see a psychiatrist for any reason?”
“Not that I knew of. They were always home after school. No regular appointments or anything like that.”
“And the parents?”
“That I wouldn’t know,” she said, then tried to explain further. “Vickie and I were friends because of the kids. We really didn’t talk much. Just phone calls to make sure we knew where everyone was. Whose house they were at. They really kept to themselves. I tried for a while to get them to come over for dinner, but she always made excuses. Finally, I just stopped asking.”
Marie felt herself tensing up. This woman had to know something useful after living three doors down for five years.
“What about the incident with the police? A little while before the accident. Did you know about that?”
Again, there was a distinct hesitation. “Who did you say you were representing?”
Randy looked up from his notes, holding his breath.
“Carson Farrell.”
Marie waited, trying to interpret the silence on the line. She was close to giving up on Andrea Rasman when the voice came through the box.
“I knew. Everyone knew. We had some new neighbors’an older couple who moved in. It’s the house on the right of the Farrells’ old place. We were all used to it. No one liked it, but calling the police? That’s a little over the top. I suppose they didn’t know what was happening, maybe thought someone was in trouble.”
“Was it really that frequent?” Marie asked, pretending that none of this was news to her.
“I’m sure Carson played it down. He’s like that. Very private.”
Marie felt a surge of adrenaline. “How often did they fight?”
Andrea Rasman spoke, and now seemed committed to telling what she knew. “Very often. After Simone was born. To their credit, they kept it away from the kids. There was a lot of anger, from what I could tell. I think the fourth child pushed them over the limit. You could hear her at night’ especially when the weather turned warmer and the windows were open.”
“You said her. You mean the baby?”
“Not the baby. Vickie Farrell. Honestly, Carson had the patience of a saint.”
Marie turned to look at Randy, who was now standing beside her.
“He’s a good man,” Marie said, trying to cover her confusion.
“Yes, he was. Is. I hope he gets to see his kids. That’s really all I know. I’m sure you got all of this from Carson.”
“It’s OK. I’m glad to have an outside source if we wind up in court. You’ve been very helpful.”
“OK.”
“Have a good night,” Marie said, disconnecting the call.
“Damn.” Randy was sitting back down. “What’s going on here?”
Marie felt her heart pounding. This was not what she had expected, and her mind was spinning with the possibilities.
“What do we know about Farrell’s firm? Is there anyone there we can talk to?”
“Marie … ,” Randy started to say. It was one thing to snoop around the neighborhood with people the Farrells would never see again. But the firm was far riskier.
“Just tell me what you know.”
“It’s a small retail operation. They used to have offices in Manhattan, Boston, and Chicago but the market decline left them only in New York. Boston c
losed when the Farrells moved. It’s the reason they moved. Chicago folded last year.”
“Farrell got transferred to New York. What about the rest of the place?”
“Not sure. I can look up the company annual reports and do a cross reference of names.”
“No. I need his secretary. How can we find her?” Marie asked, already thinking of an answer herself.
“We have to go back through everything. Phone records, check registers’maybe he gave her a Christmas bonus. The deposition transcript. I need to find her name without raising any eyebrows. Then I need to find her.”
Randy studied Marie’s face, thinking he could understand where she was going with all of this. “I’ll do it. You go home. The girls are waiting.”
Marie got up from her chair, then sat back down. She reached for the phone and hit the speed dial for Anthony’s office. “No,” she said, waiting for the connection. “They can hang out at Love’s until Anthony gets home. For once, he can put my work first. This is too important.”
THIRTY-NINE
EMPTY ROOMS
“HAVE YOU SEEN PAUL?”
He had stayed in the shadows since that afternoon, the day Gayle could not chase from her thoughts, but today he was literally nowhere.
Celia shook her head, and when she did, Gayle caught something in her expression that was alarming. It was a look of innocence, a quality the young woman did not possess.
He was always back by five. Neatly dressed, clean-shaven, unobtrusively moving through the kitchen to prepare dinner. It was almost six thirty now.
“Did he say anything to you?” she tried once more, though she knew the answer.
“No.” Again, the feigned ignorance sent Gayle into a panic.
“Watch Oliver,” she said.
Rushing out the back entrance to the driveway, Gayle turned her eyes to the apartment above the garage. No lights were on. She kept moving, around to the back, up the narrow staircase to the door. She knocked hard several times, unconcerned with how this would all seem if he came to answer’the worried look on her face, the hurried breath. She knew he was not coming. Cupping her hands at the window, she peered inside to the kitchen. It was just as she thought it would be. Empty.
She turned the knob. It was unlocked. She walked inside, this time taking it slow, delaying the discovery that was now inevitable. So much was as it had been’the chair, the lamp, the easels. The couch where she had sat with him. But there was no sign of Paul. The easels were empty. The sketches, the portfolios’everything was gone. The only personal effects remaining were the books, stacked neatly in the corner.
Standing dead center in the room, Gayle let out the breath she’d been holding. He was gone, and she’d known it before reaching the top of the stairs.
Hearing a car pull up, Gayle moved to the window. It was Troy, and it was too early for him. She backed away, out of sight, then waited for him to pull the car in and make his way to the house. Paul was gone. Her husband was home. And the thought that had been submerged for days began to rise, inching out the heartache that was beginning to take hold. With cautious movement, she left the room, the apartment, and closed the door behind her. She walked down the steps, then around the formal side of the house, the part that would be empty. Like a criminal, she stayed close to the walls and ducked under the windows until she was at the front door. She pushed it open, slowly, then went inside. She could hear the voices in the other room, Troy trying to roughhouse with his son. Oliver’s strained laughter. Quietly, she walked up the front staircase, then down the hallway to her room. She closed the door, went to the bathroom, then closed that door as well, locking it shut.
She opened the vanity drawer and searched for the Xanax. She removed two, then swallowed them with some water. She walked to her chair and sat down, looking at herself in the mirror. She thought of the sketch she had seen so briefly, the ageless, beautiful portrayal Paul had made of her. Looking at that same face now with indifference, it occurred to her that for the first time in her life, she had been able to see that beauty, as though the image Paul created had been transposed onto her flesh. And she had begun to believe that he saw her that way as well. How ridiculous she had been, thinking about Paul like this. As a friend, a confidant. And, if she were truthful, as more than that. Still, she had thought those things and they had made her happy. Even as thoughts and little more, they had filled her with a lightness that she had not fully appreciated until just now’now that they were gone.
She waited until the light buzz rang in her ears. Then a calm started to trickle in. She walked downstairs where Celia was making dinner for her son. At the stove, stirring pasta, the young woman was laughing at some banal comment made by her husband’something said to Oliver that had left him unamused. Sitting at the island on a bar stool, Troy put his arm around his son, jostling him hard.
“That’s my kid for you. Can’t take a joke.”
Gayle said nothing, but lifted Oliver into her arms.
“Paul left today,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I know. Weil find someone else,” Troy answered. Then he shot a look at Celia, who looked back with questioning eyes.
Through the haze of the medication, and with her vision partially blocked by Oliver who was draped around her like a rag doll, Gayle could still see it. The sequence of events rolled out before her. Her visit to Paul’s apartment. Celia watching her as she left, asking why she was late to pick up her son. Paul’s interruption that horrible day in the kitchen. Now Paul was gone and Troy was not asking questions’not bitching about the unreliability of the underclass. Instead, he was exchanging guilty looks with the nanny.
She would have found it comical, the two puerile creatures standing before her in her own kitchen, in the room that Paul once occupied. But instead, she imagined what was said to that kind man, the berating, chastising statements that her husband undoubtedly spewed forth along with his order of dismissal. That was why there had been no good-bye, not even a note explaining his departure. Compromising her further was the last thing Paul would do.
“Mommy, I’m tired,” Oliver said in her ear. She squeezed him hard, then set him down. Taking his hand, she led him out of the room.
“We’re going to read a book. Call when dinner’s ready.” Her voice was dismissive, and it caught the others by surprise. Still, she imagined they were relieved that she was going, providing them with a chance to get their stories straight.
FORTY
THE POWWOW
THEY MET ON THE Passetis’ porch, the two generals in charge of Love’s illness. Yvonne, who had called the powwow, settled the four older children in front of a video and rocked Baby Will to sleep in his stroller, leaving Bill with no excuses.
He gave his kids one last check before joining his mother-in-law, who had already made herself comfortable on a wicker chair.
“I only have a minute,” he said. “What’s this all about?”
Yvonne squinted her eyes at him and shook her head. “Oh, sit down already. The kids are fine.”
She waited then for Bill to pull a chair over from the other side of the porch’his every movement exaggerated as though she were making him dig trenches in cement.
“OK. All set?”
Bill nodded, then leaned back in the chair. “I suppose so.”
“Good. Now I want to talk to you about Love.”
“Really?” Bill said sarcastically.
Yvonne ignored him. “I’ve heard you out’all your talk about these viruses with no name that can hurt people. I’ve helped her out the door for the tests. I’ve filled the prescriptions for the painkillers, the antibiotics, antiinflammatories, and all the other pills. I’ve told her to take them even though they knock her out and kill her appetite. All I ask now is that you hear me’start to finish.”
With his blood pressure rising, Bill drew a long breath and pretended he owed her this. Hadn’t he let her subject Love to that pseudo-shrink? It was days later and there was no sign of improvem
ent.
“OK. I’m listening.”
“Are you, really?”
“Yes. I’m really listening.”
Yvonne’s face relaxed then, relieved to have his attention. Still, she spoke carefully, knowing this could be her last chance.
“Can you also assume for this conversation that there might be some possible connection between Love’s emotional state and what has happened to her, even if it’s simply to consider that her emotions put her under stress that made her body vulnerable’to the fall, the virus, whatever?”
Bill nodded, again breathing deeply to control his growing impatience.
“Good,” Yvonne said, nodding with satisfaction. “Now, has she told you about the’”
“Letter? Yes, I know about the letter. The one you found in her papers. She told me the night you dug it out.” His tone was judgmental, and Yvonne let it slide. She probably deserved it, and she didn’t care.
“And do you understand what her father’s book could mean for her?”
Now his impatience was pulling ahead. “Yvonne, she’s my wife. Do you remember how we met?”
“Yes. Of course you know about her troubled teen years, the suicide attempt, the estrangement from her father …” She paused then, almost afraid to go on. But she did.