Puppet (43 page)

Ben stares out the side window.

“No, thanks. That’s everything,” Amanda tells the waiter. “I’m sorry,” she says to Ben.

“Don’t worry. I have a few other connections. At nine o’clock, I’ll start calling around.”

“I meant about Jennifer.”

He shrugs. The shrug says, I’m sorry too.

“You didn’t have to tell her you were with me.”

“Yeah, I did.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Besides, she had it pretty much figured out for herself.”

“I’m sorry,” Amanda says again.

The air around them grows heavy with the silence of regret. “You’re still planning on leaving, aren’t you?” he says, a leading question. Like any good attorney, he already knows the answer.

What have I done? Amanda wonders. She satisfied an itch, and now everybody’s bleeding. “As soon as this is over.” Is that all she can think of to say? “I think it’s for the best.”

He nods, glances back out the window. “And last night?”

“Last night was—”

“—something to get out of our systems once and for all,” he says.

More like temporary insanity, Amanda thinks. “She loves you, Ben,” she says, thinking of Jennifer. “You’ll call her in a couple of days, explain the circumstances …”

As if on cue, Ben’s cell phone rings. “Hello?”

“Okay, don’t ask me why I’m doing this,” she hears Jennifer say.

So maybe he won’t even have to wait a couple of days, Amanda thinks, watching as Ben listens, his eyes narrowing in concentration. “Okay, thanks. I’ll call you later.… Okay, yeah. Bye.”

“Okay, yeah, what?”

“Apparently we freaked Hayley out yesterday. She got permission from the police to return to England.”

“Oh, no.”

“It’s all right. We got lucky. She couldn’t get a flight back to England until tonight.”

“She’s still here?”

“At the Airport Hilton.”

“Let’s go.”

T
HE
Airport Hilton can be summed up in two words: Hilton and airport. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the hotel, Amanda thinks as she and Ben cut across the lobby to the elevators at the back. Functionally attractive in shades of beige and green, it is situated a short distance from the airport, in the middle of a strip of such hotels that cater predominantly to businesspeople with neither the time nor inclination for sightseeing, or to travelers connecting with early-morning flights. The lobby is rife with women in smartly tailored suits and men toting heavy briefcases, everyone looking terribly purposeful, Amanda thinks, stepping aside to allow a newly arrived elevator to disgorge its passengers.

“What if she’s not here?” Amanda asks as Ben presses the button for the third floor.

“She’s here.”

The elevator bumps to an unexpected stop on the second floor, and the doors open to reveal a couple locked in a lovers’ embrace, and surrounded by suitcases. So tightly are the two people welded together that Amanda
can almost see the young man’s tongue jammed down his companion’s throat. She turns discreetly aside, trying not to remember the feel of Ben’s tongue as it played gently with the corners of her mouth only hours earlier. She brings her fingers to her lips, feels Ben lingering, but she can’t bring herself to wipe him away. Only a few hours ago he was inside her. Now he stands a careful distance away, the hands that caressed her limp at his sides.

Which is exactly as it should be.

Did he really expect anything different?

Did she?

Amanda coughs into her hand, and the couple breaks apart, the young woman’s mouth and chin red with the imprint of the man’s pronounced morning stubble.

“Just married,” the young man says, grinning sheepishly, as he carries the assorted bags inside the elevator. His face is the shape of an inverted triangle, and black, curly hair falls across his flat, wide forehead.

“We’re going to the Bahamas.” The girl giggles, leans into her husband’s side. Her long, honey blond hair falls around a heart-shaped face that is dominated by huge brown eyes.

She looks barely out of her teens, Amanda thinks. Barely older than I was when Ben and I eloped. Of course she and Ben hadn’t been able to afford a honeymoon in the Bahamas, or anywhere else for that matter, and they’d spent their wedding night on a mattress in the middle of the floor of Ben’s tiny, one-room apartment. Even now she can recall the joy of waking up in the morning to find him beside her. This is it, she remembers thinking. I’ve come home. I’m never leaving.

And yet, that’s exactly what she did.

That’s what she’s still doing.

The new groom presses the button for the lobby. “Oh,” Amanda tells him apologetically. “I’m sorry. We’re going up.”

The young man shrugs. “Guess we are too.”

“What time’s your flight?” Amanda asks in an effort to still the voices in her head.

The bride grabs her new husband’s wrist, checks his watch, and groans audibly. “Not for another couple of hours. We have
so
much time.”

“I just think it’s smarter to be a little early than to rush around at the last minute getting all uptight,” the young man says defensively.

It’s clear to Amanda that they’ve already had this discussion several times since the wedding, and that they will probably be having variations of this argument throughout their married lives. She wonders whose patience will be the first to run out, who will be the first one to bolt for the door. “Good luck,” she wishes them as the elevator doors open onto the third floor.

“You too,” the newlyweds say together.

Amanda looks back before the doors are fully closed, catches a brief glimpse of two forms swaying toward one another, their hands reaching for each other, their fingers almost clawing at the air, as if it’s physically painful for their bodies to be apart. It
is
painful, she decides, feeling an ache growing in the pit of her stomach, then metastasizing like a particularly virulent cancer and spreading throughout her body. She fights the urge to shout after Ben as he walks down the hall, to yell at him to stop, slow down, turn around, come back to her. This can wait, she wants to tell him. Everything can wait.

Except it can’t.

And she doesn’t.

And he doesn’t.

“What room?” she says instead, catching up to him.

“Right here.” He stops in front of Room 312, knocks with quiet authority on the door. “Hotel manager,” he announces before the occupants of the room have time to ask who it is.

The voice from inside is tentative. “Is something wrong?” Hayley Mallins opens the door a tiny crack, her eyes widening in alarm when she sees who’s on the other side. She tries to shut the door, but Ben has grown used to people slamming doors in his face, and his foot is already wedged inside, acting as a doorstop. “No,” Hayley hisses, slamming her shoulder against the door. “Go away. Go away.”

“Please,” Amanda urges the woman. “Just let us talk to you.”

“Spenser, call downstairs,” comes the immediate response. “Tell them to send security.”

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Ben advises, pushing so hard against the door that Hayley has no choice but to step aside and let them enter.

The room is clean and nondescript, taken up almost entirely by two queen-size beds. Ben moves quickly toward Spenser, who is standing at the small desk in front of the third-floor window, cradling the phone and fighting back tears. The boy, still in his faded blue pajamas, drops the receiver as Ben draws near and runs to his mother’s side.

“It’s okay, Spenser,” Ben tells him. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

“What do you want with us?” another voice asks, and both Ben and Amanda turn toward the sound.

Hope is sitting in the middle of the second bed, also in her pajamas. She stares at Ben and Amanda with cold defiance.

“Go away,” the young boy shouts at the intruders, emboldened by his mother’s protective arms. “Go away and leave us alone.”

“We can’t do that,” Amanda says.

“I don’t have to talk to you, you know,” Hayley tells them. “The police said I’m under no obligation to talk to you.”

“Then suppose you just listen.”

“And if I’m not interested in anything you have to say?”

“You’ll listen anyway.”

“Please,” Hayley pleads. “You’ll only make things worse.”

“Your husband is dead and my mother is in jail,” Amanda tells her. “How can things possibly get any worse?”

“Because they can,” Hayley replies simply, sinking to the foot of the nearest bed, Spenser seemingly glued to her side. She is wearing the same moss green sweater she had on the day before, and her hair is pinned away from her face by two large bobby pins. She wears no makeup at all, and her skin is ashen, verging on outright gray. She nods, giving in. “I don’t want my children to be present,” she says softly.

“Why don’t I take them downstairs for something to eat?” Ben offers.

“No,” Spenser wails, clinging tightly to his mother’s waist.

“We’re not leaving you,” Hope says.

“Breakfast sounds like a very good idea,” Hayley says calmly. “You were just saying how hungry you are, Spenser. That you fancied a big plate of blueberry pancakes.”

“I want you to come too,” the boy cries.

“And I want you and your sister to get dressed and go with Mr. Myers.”

“Ben,” Ben says.

“You go with Ben, and I’ll be there as quickly as I can. I promise.” Hayley smiles, although the smile is forced and wobbly. “Please, sweetheart. There’s nothing to worry about. I promise you. Obviously this lady has something very important she wants to say, and she isn’t going to go away until she says it. So let’s just get this over with, shall we?” She appeals to Hope with her eyes. “Please, love. Go get dressed.”

With great reluctance Hope climbs out of bed. She grabs her clothes from the closet and disappears inside the bathroom.

“Get your things together, Pup—Spenser,” his mother directs.

“I don’t know what to wear.”

“Wear what you wore yesterday.”

“Don’t want to.”

“How about your new brown sweater? You look so handsome in it.”

Spenser slides off the bed and retrieves his sweater from a drawer, pulling it over his head, and only then removing his pajama top. He pushes his arms into the sweater and smooths down his hair, staring at Amanda with a look that tells her exactly what he’s thinking. Which is that he wishes she were dead.

Amanda looks toward Ben. “Thank you,” she mouths, as reluctant to let him leave as Hayley’s children are to leave their mother.

After several minutes, Hope emerges from the bathroom, neatly dressed in jeans and a pale pink sweater, her long, dark hair swept into a high ponytail.

“You look lovely,” Amanda tells the young girl sincerely, reminded that pink was always her mother’s favorite color. Hope ignores the compliment as she assumes Spenser’s former position on the bed beside her mother. Hayley takes her daughter in her arms and kisses her forehead. They all have variations of the same face, Amanda thinks as Spenser brushes past her into the bathroom. The same high cheekbones, the same full lower lip, the same piercingly sad eyes.

“I’m not very hungry,” Hope tells her mother when Spenser reemerges.

“You’ll eat what you can,” Hayley says.

“I hear they have a great buffet table,” Ben says.

“Go on now,” their mother cajoles. “I’ll join you straightaway.”

“If you’re not down in twenty minutes,” Spenser warns, “I’ll scream for the police.”

“Twenty minutes then,” Hayley says, looking to Amanda for confirmation.

“Twenty minutes it is,” Amanda agrees.

Ben opens the door and watches as Spenser and Hope walk through, Hope stopping in the doorway, turning back just as he is about to close the door. “See you in twenty minutes,” she repeats, the intensity of her gaze remaining even after she is gone.

“They’re lovely children,” Amanda says.

Hayley’s eyes fill with tears. “How did you find us?”

“Does it really matter?”

“I suppose not. What is it you want?”

“I think you know.”

“I think you should stop beating around the bush and get to the bloody point,” Hayley snaps, losing her temper for the first time, and slapping her hands against her sides in frustration.

“I know you’re not Mr. Walsh’s daughter,” Amanda tells her. “Mr. Walsh didn’t have a daughter.”

“Is that what your mother told you?”

“My mother hasn’t told me anything. She’s in the hospital.”

“The hospital?”

“She tried to kill herself.”

“What?” Hayley looks stricken. “Oh, God. Is she all right?”

“She will be,” Amanda says, startled by the other woman’s unexpected concern. “Why would she do something like that, Hayley? What secret would she be willing to protect with her life?”

“How would I know?”

“I don’t know, but you do.”

Hayley becomes agitated, starts pacing back and forth in front of the bed. “You have to leave. Now. Before more people get hurt.”

“Tell me who you are.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not leaving till you do.”

Tears fill Hayley’s eyes. “You don’t know? You really don’t know?” The same question Mrs. Thompson asked earlier.

“I know your name isn’t Hayley.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“I know your real name is Lucy.”

“No, please. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you’re my sister,” Amanda ventures, bracing herself for more of the woman’s vehement denials.

There are none.

“Oh, God,” the woman moans, clutching her stomach. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“You’re my sister,” Amanda repeats incredulously as the other woman bolts past her into the bathroom. Seconds later, the room fills with the sounds of violent retching. Amanda wills herself to be calm, to think nothing at all until Hayley returns. She assures herself this is all a mistake, that Hayley is playing with her head. Payback for all the trouble she’s caused. “I don’t understand,” Amanda says when Hayley reenters the room, perspiration dotting her forehead, a washcloth at her mouth. “How is that possible?”

Hayley sinks to the bed, stares toward the window. “You still haven’t figured it out,” she marvels.