When I tell Tilly I’m looking for one of the Fayes—“the Protestants down the street,” she calls them—she really gets revved up.
“The mother, she ran off early. When the girl was, oh, eight or nine. Siobhan was a strange fruit. And that poor Sidonie, she never had much chance at normal. Do you know she used to knock on my door and ask for things like milk? Because her father used to forget to buy it. Imagine, a little girl in the house and you don’t buy milk. And the milkman hadn’t been coming around for fifteen years! The father always offered to shovel my driveway after a big one, before he was taken and they shipped the girl across town. But he went away on business a lot, and anyway, a little girl needs a mother. Or else they don’t learn how to act. I think it must be why all these girls on TV are going to jail and showing around their privates. They show their privates in the streets like parade floats!”
Chad splutters around a sip of seltzer. I have zero percent desire to hear Tilly Donahue’s theories on why motherless girls like me grow up to show around their privates, but she seems to be waiting for my answer. For something to do, I peel the wrapper off a licorice and pop it into my mouth. It tastes like the bottom of a 1950s-style candy man’s pocket. “Huh,” I gargle, tucking the sugary rock into my cheek. “So, do you know what happened to Sidonie when she grew up? My mom . . . Lil . . . she thought her cousin might’ve come back to Fitchburg about five years ago.”
“She did.” Tilly bobs her head on her thin neck, and this seed of excitement sprouts in me. “And that was something. Twenty years, the Faye girl disappears. No one knows where she went, then one day Margie Goldberg says she saw her in the Stop and Shop with Todd Malachai.” She lowers her voice and leans in. “And one week Todd came in and bought ladies’ unmentionables.”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“The Malachais used to live over on River Street. I think Sidonie and Todd were little school friends. And they went to church together. They were Protestants, too, you know.”
The candy is a sharp-edged, sickly sweet disk between my teeth. “So Sidonie’s here now? Staying with Todd?”
“I didn’t say that,” she answers, clearly having a fantastic time. “You know Margie’s son-in-law is a janitor at New Hope, and he says Todd dropped Sidonie off for all her appointments. And Todd was living over by the bowling alley then, so that was all the way across town.”
“What’s New Hope?” Chad asks for me.
“The Thorndyke Center for New Hope is the whole name. There was a vote in the town hall, when they wanted to put it up, and it nearly didn’t pass because no one wanted . . . We were all just worried what kind of people it might attract into town. Do you know I’ve lived here since I was born? Not in this house the whole time; I grew up in the part of town they called Tar Hill. Now they put up New Hope over there, so who knows what’s become of it?” She leans forward again, presses her thin orange-pink lips together. “It’s a place for the mentally unfirm.”
I can’t get the words “troubled waters” out of my head. “It’s a mental hospital?”
“I don’t know what you call it. More like . . .” Her old forehead crinkles in thought. “What are those places, where the drunks meet up to talk about being drunks?”
“Um . . . Alcoholics Anonymous?”
“Yes. But for the unfirm. That’s how they explained it to us at town hall, anyway.”
I don’t really know what any of this means, but Tilly plows right on through.
“Margie—she’s the one of them that works at Stop and Shop ever since she mostly retired—she says Todd used to pick up her prescriptions for her, sometimes. For Sidonie, I mean.” She lets out a hoarse clap of laughter. “That’s really something, isn’t it? Do you know, those two went to their high school prom together?”
So Todd is the tall boy standing behind Mom in his big-shouldered suit. I guess he really was thrilled to be with her. “Do they still live by that bowling alley?”
“Oh, no.” Tilly leans back, working at another candy wrapper. I just want to smack it out of her grip, and maybe Chad senses this, because he squeezes my hand in his. With a little squawk of victory, she fishes out the licorice and pops it in her mouth. “He moved away about two years ago. Hilda Malachai—that’s his great-aunt—says he works at a college in Connecticut now. What’s the big one?”
“UConn?” Chad offers.
“Yes, that’s it, I want to say. Not a teacher, though.” She sniffs. “Something in the office.”
“Did my mom’s cousin . . . Did she go with him when he left town?”
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t guess so. Might be Hilda could tell you, though I don’t think she’ll be much help. She’s not altogether firm herself. Touch of the dementia, poor thing. Mostly we see each other over at the church. She’s there an awful lot. Her home aide brings her over. I go every Sunday, myself. Who sins enough to go every day?”
“Do you know how we can get in touch with her?” I ask. A lead is a lead.
“I don’t think I should give her number out. You never know what people can do with that information, everything you hear on the news about identity theft.”
Chad and I exchange side eyes; do I seem likely to steal the identity of a senile, serial church-goer? “Oh, that’s too bad. I’d really love to talk to your friend.”
“I suppose I can call her up.” Tilly’s smile sharpens, thrilled to play a part in the little drama unfolding before her.
When Hilda answers, Tilly catches her up (at top volume and with much repetition) about me and my mission to find my “aunt.” Then she hands me the receiver of her clunky corded phone, keeping a finger curled in the wire. I speak to Hilda on a short leash.
“Hi, Mrs. Malachai. I really appreciate your taking the time to—”
“Hello?”
“Um, hi?”
Across from me, Chad winces. We’re off to a rocky start.
“Tilly said you have questions for me,” Hilda’s sandpaper voice rasps across the receiver, “about one of Todd’s old girlfriends?”
“Sidonie Faye. Yes, your friend says she used to live with Todd? Above the bowling alley?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That’s asking a lot of me.”
Her head cocked toward the receiver to hear, Tilly nods, looking a little victorious to be proven right.
“He’s very handsome, like his grandfather Jacob,” Hilda continues. “My brother had so many sweethearts when he was young. So did Todd. He always had another little girlfriend to bring around the holidays.”
“This one would’ve been just two or three years ago. Um, she had brown hair and hazel eyes. She was small. And . . . I guess she might’ve been a little sick at the time. Or just . . . troubled?”
It’s not much, as vital statistics go, but Hilda surprises me by answering, “There was one girl he went around with. She was trouble. Made his father so upset, it broke his heart. She was a pretty little white girl, but she was crazier than a sack of raccoons, would borrow money from Todd because she didn’t work. Crashed this truck he had at the time. All kinds of problems. But I thought that was a while back. My nephew passed when that second Bush was still president. Or was that my cousin’s son? Oh, there’s too many of them to keep track.”
So Hilda’s not the most reliable source. But I don’t want her sketchy memory for details to distract me from the big picture. “Do you think it’s possible Todd kept in touch with her?”
“Well, I don’t know why he would. His mother says he’s married now, to a lovely woman in New York. But who knows? He doesn’t come home much. Doesn’t report in to me. I don’t even have his number.”
“You mean Connecticut?”
“What’s that?”
“He’s in Connecticut, not New York. Right? I thought he worked at UConn.”
“Sure, maybe he does.”
“All right, that’s . . . helpful. Thanks.”
Having heard the whole conversation, Tilly sips her seltzer primly and says when I’ve hun
g up, “You know, ever since Siobhan went off the rails, I knew her little girl was headed for a hard time.”
We can’t get out of there fast enough.
We head back to Sugarbrook as the sky really opens up and icy raindrops the size of pebbles pelt the car roof. We drive in silence, deafened. But I’m not sulking. We’re closing in on Sidonie Faye. When Dad and I find her, it won’t matter that she quit a few jobs and crashed her ex-boyfriend’s truck and went a little off the rails. She’ll have her family to help her out. Besides, I knew she was troubled waters from the start. This was never going to be easy.
Without thinking, I smile over at Chad. “Want to help us track down Todd Malachai?”
“That’s the spirit!” he says, and shakes me gently by the neck the way he does when we play video games. His hand is big and dry and warm.
When we’re almost home we drive ahead of the weather, and the clouds turn white all at once and the last bit of sun streaks through. I think there must be a rainbow somewhere, with the road still glittering. While we’re stopped at a light I crane my neck around to search the gray block of sky behind me, but there’s nothing there.
FIFTEEN
“You’re spending quite a lot of time with them.” Lindy works to free the zipper where it’s caught on the black plastic. “I don’t want you getting in their hair . . . Oh, Immy!” She gasps. Red fabric tumbles out of the bag. “You’re going to look so beautiful! Did you try it on? Do you love it?”
Is it my imagination, or are my stepmother’s cool blue eyes a little dewy? “I guess. It’s no big deal or anything.”
“It is a big deal,” she corrects me. “I just can’t believe how mature you are. You’re almost a grown-up.”
I don’t like the “almost” part—I’m the grown-up who’s hot on my dad’s trail. Not Lindy, not Officer Griffin, not anybody older or supposedly more mature than me. But it doesn’t help my case to argue the compliment. “Thanks, Lindy.”
Running her fingers over the skirt of the dress, the slightly plunging neckline, and the thick red halter straps, she sighs. “I want you to know how proud I am of you, Immy. Of how you’re handling yourself in all of this. And I know your dad . . .” She covers her mouth with a shaking hand and coughs out an ugly half sob.
It’s totally horrifying. I have no idea what to do, what to say. I get awkward around tears, embarrassed; for the crier or for myself as the cried-upon, I don’t know. Probably both. I almost always knew how to handle Dad in his bad times. I could lead him to bed when he’d drunk too much on a very not-great night, make myself breakfast the next morning, get myself to the school bus and leave a list of things for him to do that day, because sometimes he needed a reason to climb out of bed. I’m well-equipped for that. But crying? Usually I would fall back on a bad joke: Hey, Dad, two cows were standing in a field. The first said, ‘What do you think about this mad cow disease?’ The second said, ‘Doesn’t bother me, I’m a duck.’ Get it? Because he’s crazy? Come on, Dad, that’s funny.
I can’t think of a joke to tell Lindy, and the moment drags on. And on.
“I’m sorry, Immy.” She thumbs a tear from the corner of her eye. “Don’t pay attention to me. I’m just . . . This is a beautiful dress. Maybe we can find an updo to match—something old-fashioned and romantic?”
“Yeah.” I smile for her. “Maybe.”
“I’ll hang this up in the hall closet, okay? I don’t think there’s much space in yours, and I don’t want it to wrinkle.”
When she whisks the garment bag out of the room, I seize my chance and back toward the front door. My hand on the knob, I call, “Lindy, I’ll be back after dinner, okay? Not too late! And then maybe we can talk about . . . prom shoes!” Then I’m out and away and free and gulping big, grateful breaths of freezing air, like a fish thrown back into the sea after finding itself caught in a net.
Though I was only making an excuse to investigate Todd Malachai with Jessa and Chad, it turns out the Prices really are making dinner when they let me in out of the rain. They invite me to eat with them, so I can’t exactly refuse. On a normal day I love eating with Jessa’s family, which is thoroughly normal and one I admit I’ve sometimes pretended was my own. Tonight, it’s all I can do to joke with them in the kitchen when I’ve got my freshest lead yet, waiting to be chased. For a minute I consider begging off, going back home, locking myself in my bedroom to try to find Todd myself. But I’ve gotten used to having partners these past few days. It didn’t even occur to me to look him up alone, and how weird is that?
“Up high, Immy.” Mr. Price holds his hand in prime high-five position, and though Jessa rolls her eyes, I slap his palm. He has the same white-blond hair as Chad, though he doesn’t have his son’s tan or sweet green eyes or flat stomach or awesome sense of humor. He’s just spectacularly, typically father-like. I can smell his familiar cologne over the tuna sizzling on their stovetop grill.
“How was your business trip?” I ask.
He scratches his neat beard. “France was enriching, as always.”
“It’s France.” Jessa cuts between us to dump a stack of modern-looking square bowls on the table. “It smells like old cheese.”
Swiveling on a barstool at the kitchen island, Chad snorts. “Really? That’s all you got out of France?”
“Yes, Chadwick. And the memory of the seagull that shit on you under the Arc de Triomphe. That was, like, such a Kodak moment.”
Dr. Van Tassel, looking spa-fresh, raps her spatula on the stove twice as a warning, but Chad slow-claps. “Oh, wow, Jenessa. Your worldly expertise is so wasted in Sugarbrook. You should go someplace where they’ll truly appreciate your international experience. Some kind of house of pancakes, maybe?”
Jessa starts to give him the finger, but sheathes it when Dr. Van Tassel barks, “Knock it off, or eat in the driveway!”
Mr. Price washes a lettuce head at the sink, unconcerned. And me, I stay out of the way in the corner, steal glances at their reflections in the stainless-steel counters and fridge and toasting/microwaving/can-opening/bottle-opening/popcorn-popping appliances, all polished into mirrors. From every angle, they look perfect. I watch them and try to imagine Dad and me and Sidonie Faye . . . and Lindy . . . crammed into our kitchen at 42 Cedar Lane, with its dark, dull cabinets, its banana magnets, our flour and sugar begrudgingly spilled into canisters. But I can’t picture my mom at the kitchen table, folding a napkin in her lap, buttering a roll. It’s too . . . normal.
I’m too anxious to eat much, but I sit with them for dinner: grilled tuna, garlic biscuits from Jeanne’s Cakes and Bakes (the only decent bakery in town since Jamison’s closed), and bowls of cold edamame. We teethe the beans from their pods and chuck the deflated green skins in our little square bowls. Chad and Jessa fight happily over the third-to-last and then second-to-last and then the last biscuit on the platter. Dr. Van Tassel continues to be super-size-nice, which means she knows that Dad continues to be absent, but it doesn’t bother me the way it once did. Mr. Price talks about the challenges of selling lighting equipment to other companies, which is the business he’s in, coincidentally.
When I’ve nervously ground my tuna into pink confetti and the food is mostly gone, we excuse ourselves from the table. Chad stays behind to throw everything into the dishwasher, flicking detergent water at his sister. He pauses to brush away a stray sud that catches in my hair before Jessa and I retreat up the stairs. “So you and Chadwick seem friendly, no? Had a good time in Fitchburg, did you?” she says.
I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face. “Friendly in the sense of friends, or friendly in the sense of prom dates?”
“Wait, what?” she shrieks, and wraps her fingers around my wrist and drags me into the bathroom of Bloody Mary to talk in secret, which seems unnecessary, since there’s ten feet of hallway between us and her bedroom at most. “How did this happen? When did this happen? You’re going to be my prom sister-in-law!”
“Okay, calm down.” I bite back
another smile.
“Ugh,” Jessa groans. “Can you not humor me and girl out for, like, one single second?”
“Maybe after the call,” I lie. Though a big part of me wants to squeal like a six-year-old girl at a birthday party, I’ve had a very successful run of not letting Jessa get too worked up. Dad has highs and lows, so I like to keep to an even-keeled middle. The same principle helps me to tether Jessa.
But it’s hard not to get excited when finally, something comes easy. Jessa has the White Pages app on her iPhone, and there’s only one Todd Malachai in eastern Connecticut, in a town called Windham. I write all of the info in his listing on my palm with Jessa’s gold glitter Sharpie so I can enter it in my phone when I finally get around to charging it. I’ll put in Lil’s as well, and maybe Tilly’s (though probably not Tilly’s), which will bring my contacts up to a whopping fifteen or so.
Chad joins us as I’m rehearsing my now-familiar script about the school project. Because Jessa’s texting—probably Jeremy—Chad generously donates his phone to the cause.
I tell myself not to get carried away. According to Hilda Malachai, my mom spun out pretty hard. Why Todd would keep in touch with the girl he drove to therapy and bought unmentionables for, only to have her leech his money and crash his truck, I don’t know. Especially if he’s married now. But maybe he can give me the clue that leads me to the clue that takes me to my parents. Anything is possible. And there’s still New Hope. If this turns out to be a dead end, I can try them afterward. They might have records left from when my mom was there, and since it was only a few years ago, I might not even have to go digging through some dusty basement to find them.
The Mystery of Hollow Places Page 14