The One I Left Behind (22 page)

“You lied to me, Reggie. If I really mattered to you, you would have told me about your mother.”

“Of course you matter to me! Jesus, Len, how could you say that?” Her heart hammered its way up into her throat, the words
I’m sorry
getting stuck there until she swallowed them back down.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said in a dull voice, backing away slowly, like his legs were extra heavy. He walked out of the house, closing the door behind him gently.

Reggie felt frozen, numb, the sweat on her body giving her cold chills. What the hell had just happened? “Len?” she called after him. “Len, wait!”

His truck started in the driveway, the sound of the engine jolting her to action. She ran across the room, threw open the door, and got outside just in time to see his taillights pulling away.

“Len!” she yelled after him, but he did not slow. “Shit!” she yelped again, hitting her open palm against the door frame. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She hit the wood again and again until her hand was red and aching.

What you need,
she heard a little voice tell her,
is something sharp
.

Inside the house, her phone was ringing.

She hurried back into the kitchen to answer, suddenly worried that it might be Lorraine with news about Vera:
Your mother took a sudden turn for the worse and you weren’t here.
Or maybe, just maybe, it would be Neptune
: I gave her back to you and you ran away like a spineless, heartless little girl.

“Hello?” Reggie said, nearly breathless, her throbbing hand wrapped tight around the phone.

“Regina?”

Reggie felt a lump in her throat. It was Lorraine. Reggie held her breath, waiting, trying to brace herself for the worst.

Lorraine was silent.

“Is Mom okay? Has something happened?” Reggie asked.

Reggie could hear her aunt breathing, panting almost, her breath ragged and desperate-sounding.

“He’s back,” Lorraine said at last. “Neptune. He left another hand on the steps of the police station this morning.”

“What?” It didn’t make sense. It had been twenty-five years.

“It’s Tara,” Lorraine whispered. “He’s got Tara this time.”

Chapter 22

June 20, 1985

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

R
EGGIE HAD ONLY BEEN
inside the police station twice before. Once, shortly after losing her ear to the dog, Lorraine had deposited her on a bench just inside the entryway with a
Josie and the Pussycats
coloring book and a Baggie of broken and wrapper-less crayons. When Lorraine returned, Vera was with her, staggering a little, her makeup smeared.

“Idiot cops,” Vera spat. “I’m going to sue them for police brutality. They had no right to even pull me over. If they think for one goddamn minute—”

Lorraine silenced her with one deadly look.

They all went back to Monique’s Wish, no one saying another word, and Vera was gone the next morning before breakfast.

The last time was on a class trip in second grade, which Reggie had done her best to forget about. But now, smelling the floor wax and hearing the hum of police radios and voices, it came back like a kick in the stomach.

She remembered the officer giving the tour had a sweet face that reminded her of John-Boy Walton. When he’d asked who was brave enough to get locked inside the holding cell while their teacher took the rest of the class to the dispatch room, Reggie’s hand shot up, eager to prove herself. He had locked her and four other classmates behind bars. There was a wooden bench bolted to the wall, a sink, and a metal toilet with no seat. The walls were painted white cinder block. The place smelled so strongly of ammonia that the back of Reggie’s throat burned. Then John-Boy had disappeared, jiggling the keys happily. Several minutes went by. The children called out to the officer, who didn’t return. Reggie had to pee terribly but was unwilling to sit on the seatless toilet in front of the other kids.

At first, it was fun. They rattled the bars, talked about how they’d break out, teased each other about what kind of crimes had been committed by the bad guys who’d been held there. But the mood began to change, and a scared silence had descended upon the five of them. Finally, one of the boys said in a hollow voice, “He’s not coming back. Is he?”

Panic swept through Reggie’s body, clenching every muscle, and her bladder let go, the warmth spreading down the front of her jeans.

The squeals of laughter and disgust from her classmates—“You shoulda worn your diaper!” Becky Shelley cawed—finally brought the officer back. He was smiling cockily as he unlocked the cage.

“Didn’t think I forgot you, did ya?” he asked.

When he saw Reggie’s wet jeans and the puddle on the floor, he’d frowned and shook his head.

“Jesus,” he muttered and called for the teacher.

A
S
R
EGGIE STOOD AT
the front desk between Tara and Charlie, her face reddened with that old sense of shame. She had wrapped up her ankle in an Ace bandage, dressed in a clean white button-down and tan chinos, thinking that might help the police take her seriously. She made herself stand tall. She was no accident-prone little kid anymore.

Going to the police station had been Tara’s idea. She’d called Charlie, then told Tara’s mother they were going to hang out and do some shopping, and could she give them a ride downtown? Lorraine was nowhere to be found. As soon as Tara’s mom pulled away, they crossed the street and helped Reggie hobble up the steps of the police station. Two uniformed cops were standing guard outside, watching over the stairs. The left side of the granite steps had been closed off by yellow crime scene tape, and Reggie stared, picturing the milk carton with her mother’s hand inside.

They’d had to weave around the knot of reporters and television crews who stood in the front hall, anxiously waiting for an update. Reggie heard one of them say, “It won’t take them long to find who it belongs to. Not many ladies have hands all scarred up like that.”

“We need to see my dad,” Charlie told the desk sergeant once they pushed their way through to the sliding window below a sign: all visitors stop here.

“He’s busy, son,” the desk sergeant said. He was a uniformed cop with a ruddy face, small eyes, and a strange patch of pale skin on his cheek. A burn, Reggie decided. Reggie considered herself a connoisseur of scars.

“It’s important, Sergeant Stokes,” Charlie said, lowering his voice. “We’ve got information about the hand.”

Stokes squinted at Charlie. “What kind of information?”

Charlie gave Reggie a gentle tap on the shoulder. “Go ahead. Tell him.”

Reggie glanced back over her shoulder to make sure there were no reporters listening. They were all still standing in a tight mass by the front doors, being held back by an officer who was promising another press conference soon.

Reggie cleared her throat. “I know who she is. The scars are mostly between the thumb and index finger, right? They’re from a dog bite.”

The desk sergeant studied the three kids a minute, then turned, picked up the phone, and mumbled into it. A minute later, a side door opened and Stu Berr appeared. He’d always been a heavyset man, but Reggie could see he’d put on weight since she’d last seen him. His navy blue suit jacket was buttoned but straining around the middle. His face was ruddy and bloated, his eyes small and bloodshot with dark circles under them. He had a mustache and hair that was starting to go gray.

“Detective Berr!” one of the reporters shouted, pushing past the uniformed cop in the hall and coming their way. “Do you know who the hand belongs to?”

Stu gave him a disgusted look. “If you can’t stay back in the area reserved for the press, I’ll have you escorted from the building.”

“But the hand—the scars—”

“Officer MacMillan,” Stu called to the uniformed cop, “please see that this gentleman is removed from the station.” He watched the reporter leave through the double doors, then turned to face them.

“Hello, Charlie,” he said. He studied Reggie a minute, blinking. “Regina? Good to see you again.” Then his eyes moved to Tara and seemed to narrow. “Hello, Tara,” he said.

Tara stuck out her hand. “Nice to see you again,” she said, voice chipper and bright. He shook her hand with a puzzled and wary look. Tara pumped his hand up and down, her whole body bouncing like she had a giant spring inside her.

“Stokes says you have information?” he said, backing away from Tara.

“The latest victim,” Tara said. “We know who she is. The hand was scarred from an old dog bite.” Her voice was coiled with excitement.

Stu Berr didn’t show any sign of a reaction, just studied Tara for a few seconds before speaking again.

“So who is she? This gal you know with the dog bite.”

Tara nudged Reggie, in a way that was more of a body check than a nudge. “Tell him, Reg. Tell him everything.”

Stu Berr turned his big, jowly face from Tara to Reggie.

Reggie took in a breath and spoke the words. “I think it’s my mother, Vera Dufrane.” Stu Berr looked at Reggie, then scanned the hallway. The reporters were keeping their distance, but Stu wasn’t taking chances. He pulled the kids farther back down the hall toward a bench and had Reggie sit down next to him. It was the same bench Reggie had been left on when she was five and Lorraine came to the station to pick up Vera.

“What makes you think that?” the detective asked in a low voice.

“The scars are between the thumb and index finger, right? A dog attacked me when I was five, she pulled it off, and her hand got all torn up. She could never bend her pointer finger after the accident. The dog . . .” Reggie reached up and touched her new ear, felt the scars behind it.

A light seemed to go on behind Stu Berr’s eyes, making them glitter in the dim hallway.

She wondered if Stu remembered, if he’d ever seen her mother’s hand. She tried to remember a time when Charlie’s dad and her mom were ever together, and couldn’t. She could picture her mom talking with Charlie’s mom a few times at birthday parties and school events, but Charlie’s dad was never around. And Vera usually wore gloves in public to hide her ruined hand. People thought she was being chic in an old-fashioned way.

Stu Berr pulled a small pad from the front pocket of his jacket and scribbled something down.

“When was the last time you saw her?” he asked, still holding pen to paper.

“Yesterday. At the bowling alley. I was supposed to meet her there but my bike got a flat tire. Then I twisted my ankle running, so I didn’t show up in time. She said . . . she said she wanted me to meet some guy. A guy she was gonna marry.”

Tara gasped. “You didn’t tell us that!”

Reggie looked back at Stu Berr. “But I was late. By the time I got to the edge of the parking lot, she was getting into a tan car. I called, but she didn’t hear me.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

“No, I was too far away. He was wearing a hat. A baseball cap. And the left taillight was out.”

Stu Berr scribbled furiously in his little notebook. “So it wasn’t a car you recognized? ”

Reggie shook her head. “No. But a couple weeks ago, she met a man at the bowling alley and ended up leaving with him. He drove a tan car.”

“The same car?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it could have been.”

“Of course it’s the same car!” Tara squealed. “How could it not be?”

Reggie told Stu everything she could remember about the man in the bowling alley.

Stu Berr closed his notebook. “Is there someone at your house now?” he asked Reggie. “Someone to look after you since your mom’s not around?”

Reggie nodded. “My aunt Lorraine. She lives with us.”

Stu Berr nodded. “Thanks for coming in,” he said. He stood up and started to walk away.

“Umm, Detective Berr?” Tara called. “Do you think we could get a ride home? Reggie’s ankle is all messed up. My mom dropped us off here, but she had to get to work.”

“Sure,” he said. “Go wait outside and I’ll send a cruiser around.”

They crossed the cool marble floored entry hall, passing the throng of reporters, and made their way out the thick glass doors into the sticky morning. Reggie’s ankle throbbed and she was limping.

The cop at the top of the steps held the door for them. “You all have a good day, now,” he said, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.

“Can you believe it?” Tara practically squealed. “We get to ride in a cop car! Do you think we can ask them to turn on the lights and siren?”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Tara! What are you, seven?”

Reggie hobbled down the side of the steps that wasn’t taped off, Charlie holding her arm.

They plunked themselves down on a bench at the bottom, and Reggie bit her lip hard, willing herself not to cry.

“It hurts bad, huh?” Charlie asked, nodding toward her ankle.

Reggie nodded, wiped at her eyes, and turned to look at the steps behind them where, just hours ago, her mother’s hand had been left in a milk carton.

At the top of the steps was the arched entryway they’d just come out of. The two cops stood on opposite sides, like gargoyles in uniform.

The words
PROTECT AND SERVE
engraved above the doors seemed, to Reggie, an impossible promise.

Chapter 23

October 20, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“W
HEN WAS THE LAST
time you saw her?” Reggie asked her aunt. They were seated at the kitchen table of Monique’s Wish. It was nearly seven o’clock. Reggie had thrown a bag together quickly, stopping in the kitchen long enough to grab her espresso pot and a bag of ground coffee. She’d driven back to Brighton Falls as fast as she could, hesitating only when she got to the front door of Monique’s Wish. She had stood, hand on the knob, feeling as if the house was alive, breathing and hungry. That it just might gobble her up and spit out the bones. Then she’d touched the hourglass necklace, thought of Tara, and stepped inside.

Now, the coffee bubbled on the stove, filling the kitchen with its familiar rich aroma, comforting Reggie on some deep level.