Hear No Evil (12 page)

She turned from the window and waited for his knock. When it came, she took a deep breath and swung open the door.

He stood on the small front porch, one hand propped against the door frame. He looked as tired and out of patience as she felt.

“How’s Jessie?” she asked.

“Worried,” he said shortly.

“
She’s
worried?” Eden said. Jessie, lucky Jessie, was tucked into a nice, safe hospital.

He shot her an ice-blue look that told her he was in no mood to argue.

“All right, I’m sorry,” Eden said, though she hardly felt repentent. “How’s she otherwise?”

Owen didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he entered the room without invitation, closing the front door behind him. “You and I have to talk.”

Eden tossed her head. “I’d like to talk to somebody myself. I’ve had a very strange time here. And some strange calls. Including one from Jessie’s friend Constance. It made me—uneasy.”

The expression in his eyes didn’t change, but one dark brow crooked and his jaw muscles grew rigid. Eden realized that he sometimes had a dangerous, almost predatory air.

He looked her up and down. “Where’s Peyton?”

“Changing into a warmer shirt,” Eden said, turning from him and staring out the window. “She’s restless. I told her I’d take her out to play. I’m not letting her go out alone.”

“Good,” he said tonelessly. “I’ll go with you.”

Eden kept her back to him. “You didn’t tell me how Jessie is.”

“As well as can be expected,” he answered.

Mr. Communication
, Eden thought irasicibly.
His hair may be silver, but that tongue’s pure gold
.

She turned when she heard Peyton coming down the hall. The child wore a faded blue sweatshirt that was wrong side out. Her dirty tennis shoes were untied, and she tripped over one dangling lace. She lurched down the hall sideways, trying to yank her twisted sweatshirt straight.

The child’s hair hung in her eyes, and she looked like a ragamuffin. Eden’s heart, reluctant and wanting to be hard, went out to her. “Oh, Peyton,” she said, sighing in resignation, and knelt to help her.

She could feel Owen’s eyes upon her as she tied and double-knotted Peyton’s laces, and the knowledge made her fingers awkward. “Come here,” she said to Peyton. “Your shirt’s on inside out.”

“I
want
it inside out,” Peyton insisted, wriggling away from her. “It’s lucky.”

Eden blinked in surprised recognition. It was one of Jessie’s crazy superstitions. “Did your mother tell you that?”

Peyton looked scared.

Eden was sorry she had alarmed the child, and tried to gloss it over by being matter-of-fact. “If you put it on wrong side out on purpose, it doesn’t count. It has to be by accident. Come here.”

Eden stripped off the little girl’s shirt. Peyton looked resentful. “I want good luck
now
.”

“We’ll look for four-leaf clovers,” Eden said, turning the shirt right side out. “Put up your arms.” She pulled the garment back over Peyton’s head.

“Umph,” grumped Peyton. “Ugh.”

“Behave,” Eden warned. “Or we won’t go out. Go brush your hair.”

“I
did
already.”

“Go do it again.”

As Peyton stalked off to the bathroom, Eden, still kneeling on the carpet, resisted the urge to bow her head and pray for strength. She rose, trying to hide her exasperating sense of inadequacy.

She turned and met Owen’s cold eyes. “I know,” she said. “I’m not very good at any of this. You don’t need to point it out.”

“Good or not,” he said, “you’re all she has.”

“For now,” she said defensively.

“Maybe for good. Jessie says she wants you to promise to take care of her if she can’t.”

Eden recoiled in shock. Her heart began to hammer crazily. She was not cut out for motherhood, even on this temporary basis. “Keep her? Me?”

Peyton strolled back into the room, her hair hardly touched by the brush.

Eden went silent. They could not discuss this subject in front of the child.

“I’ll walk you to the park,” Owen said. “Let her play. We can talk there.” The way he looked at her stirred a shiver within her, deep and cold.

A narrow footpath ran through the woods behind the house and led to the edge of a small state park. Eden remembered the land from years ago when it had only been an overgrown wilderness, not a park.

It was wild no more. It had been “developed,” tamed and domesticated. A network of paved roads and hiking paths had been gouged into the moutainside. Eden looked with distaste at the clearing where trees had been
hacked down to make room for camper hookups and cement picnic tables.

At the far end of the clearing, a children’s playground had been erected. The steel poles and chains of the swings glinted coldly in the afternoon sunshine.

Most jarring to the eye were four plastic animals mounted on thick metal springs, with plastic saddles and plastic handles through their heads. But Peyton seemed to think the animals were wonderful. She climbed onto the back of a bright pink fish and began to bounce cautiously, as if she were not used to having fun.

Eden thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her slacks and looked Owen in the eye. “All right,” she said. “What exactly did Jessie say about keeping Peyton?”

“She said ‘If something happens to Mimi and me, too, Eden’s got to take that child. It’s her duty.’ ”

Eden almost swore in despair. She raised her chin high. “Me? How? I don’t know anything about children. I don’t want to know.”

His voice held no sympathy. “Somebody has to take her. And Jessie’s over seventy. Frankly, she’s got no business taking on a child.”

Eden turned from him, shaking her head. “Neither do I.”

“She’s concerned. She wants you to promise.”

Eden kept her back to him, a stubborn, futile gesture, but she didn’t care. She was overwhelmed—
keep
Peyton? It was impossible.

She was startled to feel his hand on her elbow, more startled when he wheeled her about to face him.

“Lie, if that’s what you have to do,” he said. “Words—that’s all she wants from you at this point. Just words. In the meantime, I’ll try to find Mimi.”

Eden’s breath congealed in her chest. She stared up into his blue eyes. “You? How can you find her?”

“Jessie said she thought the woman who left Peyton wore a T-shirt that said ‘Ness Chevrolet.’ She also thought the car had Missouri plates. When I left the hospital, I went to the local PD, had them run a computer check.”

His hand still rested on her arm, and she was as conscious of it as if it were a burning brand. She could say nothing.

He said, “I got lucky. There’s a Ness Chevrolet dealership in Sedonia, Missouri. I’m going up there, ask some questions.”

“When?” She breathed the question.

“Now,” he said. “I can make it before midnight, start checking things out in the morning. In the meantime, tell Jessie what she wants to hear.”

Eden looked at Peyton, who was now earnestly riding the blue plastic elephant. The child’s eyes met hers, and numbly Eden held her gaze. Gamely, hypocritically, she smiled.

“Give Jessie your promise for now,” Owen said in a low voice. “Break it later. I don’t give a damn what you do down the road. I’m worried about her now.”

Eden felt as if she were slowly plunging into a nightmarish, limitless pit.
You’ve known from the start it would come to this
, she told herself.
Jessie’s too old to be responsible for a child. That leaves me. Oh, God. Me, of all people
.

“She’s an old woman,” he said. “Promise her. That’s all she wants.”

I can’t do this
, she thought, but she looked at his relentless face and found herself saying the words: “All right. I—I promise.”

He bent nearer, spoke in her ear. “Don’t look so lost. If we find Mimi, your problems are over.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and keeping her eyes trained on Peyton. “When it comes to Mimi, problems are never over. Never.”

His hand clamped her elbow more tightly, and he drew her a fraction of an inch closer. “You said the woman named Constance called,” he prompted. “What did she say? Do you think Jessie’s right? Does this woman know Mimi?”

“Yes,” Eden said miserably. “She asked right out if a child had arrived. She knew that Peyton was coming here. And she had such bizarre questions—”

“What sort of questions?” Owen demanded.

“Mysterious questions. Morbid. She asked—let me get things straight in my head—she asked where she should go.”

He frowned. “Where was she calling from?”

“She wouldn’t say. And she asked about death.”

“Death?” His hand tautened against her flesh.

“She asked if people who died suddenly suffered much. She mentioned the people who died in that plane crash.”

“The one in Miami? It wasn’t a crash,” he said, his brow moody. “It was a bomb. I heard it on the news.”

“Either way, it was a strange thing to ask. And she was tense about it. I could hear it in her voice. And it’s a strange voice, damaged. Like something’s happened to her larynx. But there’s another thing. I—I—”

“You’re shaking,” he said quietly. His tone was neither kind nor unkind.

“I am not,” she replied.

“Yes, you are,” he said. “I can feel it. What’s wrong?”

“I had this crazy feeling,” Eden said, “that maybe she didn’t just know Mimi. That maybe she
was
Mimi.”

He stared at her, his face expressionless. “Wouldn’t Jessie have known?”

She said, “Jessie’s hearing isn’t what it used to be. And like I said, the voice is damaged. Even the speech rhythm’s different from Mimi’s. But there’s something familiar about it. I don’t know. Maybe I only imagined—”

“You’re shaking,” he repeated. He led her to a cement bench, made her sit, then sat beside her. He took his hand from her arm, and she was surprised that she wished he hadn’t. His body was strong and surprisingly comforting.

He said, “Do you really think it could be Mimi?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t.”

“If it’s her, and she keeps calling, we’ll find her.”

Eden shook her head. “But what if she doesn’t want Peyton? Or can’t keep her?”

“Then maybe we can find the kid’s father.”

“Mimi doesn’t know the father.”

“That’s what it says on the birth certificate. But what if there is a father somewhere? And a raft of other relatives—grandparents, aunts, uncles? There may be people out there who miss her, worry about her—want her.”

Eden didn’t answer. His argument offered a tempting new possibility of escape.

“Don’t tell me it never occurred to you,” Owen said, “that this kid could have other family besides you and Jessie.”

“No, it didn’t occur to me,” Eden said tightly. “There’s been no time. And I’m so used to thinking of all of us as loners—”

She paused, not wanting to finish the sentence.

“All of us?” he asked.

“Yes. Jessie. Mimi. Me—loners,” she said unhappily. “I don’t think in terms of—of families.”

He gave her a fraction of a smile with no mirth. “Mimi didn’t produce this child by Immaculate Conception. There had to be a man somewhere.”

“Knowing Mimi, it was the wrong man.”

“He could still love his daughter.”

Eden said nothing. Peyton’s father might not know she existed. He might not want to know. He might not care.

And maybe, she thought tiredly, the caller wasn’t even Mimi at all. The whole situation had become surreal to her.

“Jessie hasn’t got caller ID on that phone,” Owen said. “I’ll get it. And put a recording device on it. In the hope that Mimi—if it’s her—calls again. I’ve already called about a security system.”

“I don’t need your help,” she countered. “I can take care of myself—I always have.”

“I promised your grandmother,” he repeated.

Then he startled her by reaching out and gently straightening the collar of her blouse, his fingers lingering as if he were reluctant to do such a thing, and even more reluctant not to.

Eden’s breath stopped, seemingly stuck in her throat, and warning rippled through her nerves. But she did not tell him not to touch her, and she did not move away from him.

She gazed up into his unwavering blue eyes and realized,
Damn, he wants me. And I want him. This is a complication I don’t need. Damn. Damn. Damn
.

E
DEN SAT ON A PLAYGROUND SWING, LETTING IT SWAY
gently. Since the unexpectedly charged moment between her and Owen, neither of them had spoken.

Peyton played on the jungle gym, but not as tirelessly as before. At last she climbed to its top and sat, staring off into the distance, a small, lonely figure.

Eden forced herself not to look at her niece. Instead she gazed down at the four-leafed clover Peyton had given her. She twirled it between her thumb and forefinger.

I understand how she feels
, she thought.
I know what it’s like to have a mother you cant depend on, who goes off and leaves you. I know what it’s like to be trundled off to relatives you’ve never seen before
.

Owen stood leaning against one of the swing’s metal
supports, arms crossed, watching the little girl atop the jungle gym. Without turning to Eden, he said, “She seems to be wearing down. Are you ready to go back?”