Never Look Away (15 page)

EIGHTEEN

"So you better get off my porch and hit the fucking road," Horace Richler said to me.

"I ... I don't understand," I said, standing at the open front door, looking into the faces of Horace and his wife, Gretchen.

"Too goddamn bad," he said, and started putting his weight behind the door to close it.

"Wait!" I said. "Please! This doesn't make any sense."

"No kidding," Horace said. "You wake us up in the middle of the night asking for our dead daughter, you're damn right it makes no sense."

He nearly had the door closed when Gretchen said, "Horace."

"Huh?"

"Hang on a minute." The door didn't open any farther, but it didn't close, either. Gretchen said to me, "Who did you say you are again?"

"David Harwood," I said. "I live in Promise Falls."

"And your wife's name is Jan?"

Horace interrupted. "Christ's sake, Gretchen, the guy's a lunatic. Don't encourage him."

I said, "That's right. Jan, or, you know, Janice. She's Janice Harwood now, but before we got married she was Jan Richler."

"There must be lots of Jan Richlers in the world," Gretchen said. "You've come to the wrong house."

I had the palm of my hand on the door, hoping it wouldn't close farther.

"But her birth certificate says that her parents are Horace and Gretchen, that she was born here in Rochester."

The two of them stared at me, not quite sure what to believe.

It was, surprisingly, Horace who asked, "What's her birthday?" There was a defiant tone in his voice, like he wasn't expecting me to know the answer.

I said, "August 14, 1975."

It was as if the air had been let out of both of them. Horace acted as though he had taken a blow to the chest. He folded in on himself and his head drooped. He let go of the door, turned away, and took a step back into the house.

Gretchen's face had fallen, but she held her spot at the door.

"I'm sorry," I said. "This is as much a shock to me as it is to you."

Gretchen shook her head sadly. "This is very hard on him."

"I don't know how to explain this," I said. My knees felt weak, and I realized that I was trembling slightly. "My wife has been missing since early today--since Saturday, around the middle of the day. She just vanished. I've been trying to think of anyone she might have gotten in touch with, and that's why I came here to see you."

"Why would your wife have our daughter's birth certificate?" Gretchen asked. "How is that possible?"

Before I could even attempt to come up with an explanation, I said, "Would it be all right if I came in?"

Gretchen turned toward her husband, who'd been listening without actually looking at us. "Horace?" she said. All he did was raise a hand dismissively, an act of surrender, suggesting it was up to his wife whether I'd be allowed inside.

"Come in, then," she said, opening the door wider.

She led me into a living room filled with furniture that I was guessing had been handed down to them from their own parents. Only the drab couch looked less than twenty years old. What splashes of color there were came from pillows smothered in crocheted covers crudely resembling flowers. Scattered across the couch and chairs, they were like stamps on old manila envelopes. Cheap landscapes hung so high on the wall they nearly lined up with the ceiling.

I took a seat first in one of the chairs. Gretchen sat down on the couch, pulling her robe tightly around her. "Horace, come on, lovey, sit down."

There were some framed family photos in the room, most of them featuring one or both of the Richlers, often with a boy. If the pictures could have been arranged in chronological order, I'd be able to see this boy's progression from age three to a man in his early twenties. There was one picture of him--as an adult--in uniform.

Gretchen caught me looking. "That's Bradley," she said.

I nodded. I might normally have offered up a comment, that he was good-looking, a handsome fellow, which was true. But I was feeling too shell-shocked for pleasantries.

Reluctantly, Horace Richler came over to the couch and sat down next to his wife. Gretchen rested her hand on his pajama-clad knee.

"He's dead," Horace said, seeing that I'd been looking at the picture of the young man.

"Afghanistan," Gretchen said. "One of those I.E.D.s."

"I'm so sorry."

"He was killed along with two Canadians," she said. "Almost two years ago now. Just outside Kabul."

The room was quiet for several seconds.

"So that's both our children," Gretchen said.

Hesitantly, I said, "I don't see any pictures of your daughter." I was desperate to see what she had looked like, even as a five-year-old. If it was Jan, I was sure I'd know it.

"We ... don't have any out," Gretchen said.

I said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

"It's ... hard," she said. "Even after all these years. To be reminded."

Another uncomfortable silence ensued, until Horace, whose lips had already been going in and out in preparation, blurted, "I killed her."

I said, barely able to find my voice, "What?"

He was looking down into his lap, seemingly ashamed. Gretchen gripped his knee harder and put her other hand to his shoulder. "Horace, don't do this."

"It's true," he said. "It's been enough years that there's no sense beating around the bush."

Gretchen said to me, "It was a terrible, terrible thing. It wasn't Horace's fault." Her face screwed up, like she was fighting back tears. "I lost a daughter and a husband that day. My husband's never been the man he was once, not in thirty years. And he's a good man. Don't let anyone tell you any different."

I asked, "What happened?"

Gretchen started to speak but Horace cut her off. "I can tell it," he said, as though this was part of his penance, to confess. "I've lost a daughter and I've lost a son. What the hell difference does it make anymore?"

He reached inside himself for the strength to continue.

"It was the third of September, 1980. It was after I'd come home from work, after Gretchen had made dinner. Jan and one of her little friends, Constance, were playing in the front yard."

"Arguing more than playing," Gretchen interjected, and I looked at her. "I'd been watching them through the window. You know how little girls can be."

Horace continued, "I was going to meet my friends after dinner. Bowling. I was in a league back then. The thing is, I'd got home late, ate my dinner fast as I could, because I was supposed to be meeting up with everyone at six, and it was already ten past when I finished dinner. So I ran out to the car and jumped in and backed out of the driveway like a bat out of hell."

I waited, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"It wasn't his fault," Gretchen said again. "Jan ... was pushed."

"What?" I said.

"If I hadn't been going so fast," Horace said, "it wouldn't have mattered. You can't go blaming this on that other little girl."

"But it is what happened," Gretchen said. "The girls were having a fight, standing by the driveway, and Constance pushed Jan into the path of the car just as Horace started backing up."

"Oh my God," I said.

Horace said, "I knew right away I'd hit something. I slammed on the brakes and got out, but ..."

He stopped, made his hands into tight fists, as though that could keep the tears from welling up in his eyes. It worked for him, but not for Gretchen.

I tried to swallow.

"The other little girl started to scream," Gretchen said. "It was her fault, but can you really blame a child? Kids, they don't know the consequences of their actions. They can't anticipate."

"She wasn't driving the car," Horace said. "I was the one behind the wheel. I should have been watching. I was the one who should have been anticipating. And I wasn't. I was too worried about getting to a fucking bowling alley on time." He shook his head. "And the hell of it is, they never did a damn thing to me. Said it wasn't my fault, it was an accident, just one of those horrible things. I wish they'd done something to me, but maybe it wouldn't have made any difference. Anything they might have done, short of killing me, wouldn't have stopped me from wanting to punish myself even more."

"Horace tried to take his life," Gretchen said. "A couple of times."

He looked away, embarrassed by that revelation more than the one he'd made himself. When he didn't say anything further, it was clear this was the end of the story.

"That child who pushed Jan, her life was ruined that day, too. I know she deserves some pity," Gretchen said. "But I never had any for her, or her parents. Not surprising, they moved away after that. Sometimes, I think we should have done the same thing."

"There's not a single time I get in the car I don't think about what I did," Horace said. "Not a single time, not in all these years."

This was the saddest room I'd ever been in.

I was definitely a mess. Listening to Horace Richler tell how he ran over his own daughter with his car would have been devastating enough. But the implications of his story were overwhelming me.

He was talking about Jan. The Jan on my wife's birth certificate.

But Horace's Jan had been dead for decades. And my Jan was, at least up until today, alive.

My wife had Horace and Gretchen Richler's child's name. She had her birth certificate.

But it was glaringly obvious that they could not be the same person.

I was dumbstruck. I was so numbed by what I'd been told that I didn't even know what to ask next.

"Mr. Harwood?" Gretchen said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry. I ..."

"You don't look well. You've got bags under your eyes and don't look like you've had any sleep in a long time."

"I don't ... I don't know what to make of this."

"Well," said Horace, trying to put some bluster back into his voice, "we don't exactly know what the hell to make of you, either."

I tried to focus. I said, "A picture. Could I please see a picture of Jan?"

Gretchen exchanged glances with her husband before deciding my request was reasonable. She got up and crossed the room to an old-fashioned rolltop desk and chair in the corner. She sat down, opened the door, and reached in.

She must have stolen a look at the picture every once in a while, because it took her no time at all to put her hands on it. I could understand, from Horace's point of view, why the picture was not on display. Did you want your daughter, the one you'd killed, looking at you every day?

It was a black-and-white portrait shot, the kind that might have been taken at Sears, about three by five inches. Slightly faded, one of the corners bent.

She handed it to me. "This was taken about two months ... before," she said.

Jan Richler had been a beautiful child. An angelic face, dimples, bright eyes, curly blonde hair.

I searched the photo for any hints of my wife. Maybe something in the eyes, the way the mouth turned up at the corner. The line of her nose.

I tried to imagine this picture on a table covered with photos of other children. I looked for anything in the shot that would make me pick it up and say, "That's her, that's the girl I married."

There was nothing.

I handed the picture back to Gretchen Richler. "Thank you," I said quietly.

"Well?" she said.

"I know it seems ridiculously obvious to say that's not my wife," I said, "but that's not my wife."

Horace made some kind of grunting noise.

"May I show you a picture?" I said, reaching into my jacket. It was one of the copies I'd printed out of the snapshot I'd emailed to Detective Duckworth, taken in Chicago.

Horace took the picture first, gave it nothing more than a glance, then handed it to Gretchen.

She gave the picture the attention I thought it warranted, considering this was a woman with her daughter's name and all. She studied it at arm's length at first, then brought it up close, giving it a kind of microscopic examination, before putting it down on the table.

"Anything?" I said.

"I was just ... noticing how beautiful your wife is," she said, almost dreamily. "I like to think that if our Jan had lived, she would have been as pretty as your wife here." She picked it up to hand it to me, then reconsidered. "If this woman, your wife, is using our daughter's name, maybe she has some ties to this area. In case I saw her, should I hang on to this?"

I had other printed copies. I supposed it was possible Jan might yet show up here, although I now couldn't imagine why, and it would be good for her image to be fresh in the Richlers' minds. "Sure," I said.

She took the picture and put it in the drawer with her daughter's, and stood there with her back to us.

Horace said, "And that woman, she says we're her parents?"

"She's never talked about you by name," I said. "I figured it out from her birth certificate."