The Winters in Bloom (27 page)

Her son walked away with his shoulders hunched forward, more than a little defeated, though Sandra felt sure that neither he nor Kyra would think he had any right to be hurt. Somehow their generation had gotten past the assumption that wives had to cultivate their husbands’ nurturing instincts. It was a lot better than the old days, when men like Ray expected to be applauded for every single thing they did at home; still, she couldn’t help feeling sorry for David. She remembered when she used to call him Prince Charming. Even as a boy, he’d been the type of person who needed to feel like he could protect the people he loved.

Kyra had already closed the door behind him when Sandra said, “I can call Father Polano for you. But if you really think you know who took Michael, you have to tell the police.”

“I have.” Kyra looked surprised. “I told them I thought it was my sister, Amy.”

Sandra had forgotten Kyra even had a sibling. Her daughter-in-law basically never talked about her family; she’d only mentioned her father once, when she and David were planning a trip to his funeral. It was David who’d told Sandra about an older sister, but a very long time ago. By the time they got married, he was used to Kyra’s estrangement from everyone she grew up with.

Was it possible that Kyra’s sister had really taken Michael? It fit the facts, at least the ones David had shared with Sandra: the kidnapper was a woman; the kidnapper said she loved Michael and felt like she was part of his family. But David hadn’t mentioned anything about the police investigating Kyra’s sister. Maybe he was so sure Courtney had done it that he’d dismissed any other possibility. Or had Kyra only told the police what she suspected when he wasn’t there? If she was trying to keep David from knowing some secret—oh, how Sandra hoped she wasn’t—it would certainly explain why she’d sent him back downstairs.

Sandra looked closely at her daughter-in-law. Her eyes were lined with red and her hands were twisted together like she was praying. All of a sudden Sandra’s stomach lurched into her throat. She could feel her heart pounding painfully in her wrists and her knees, but she waited until she could breathe again, until her voice wouldn’t give her away. “Do you think your sister would hurt Michael?”

“No,” Kyra said. “No, absolutely not. I never thought that, not even then.”

Sandra wasn’t sure what the last sentence meant, but she didn’t care. Her whole body was relaxing again. He would be all right. Of course he was all right; he had to be.

“Amy is trying to punish me,” Kyra continued. “This is why I need to talk to Father Polano. The punishment won’t stop until someone forgives me.”

Her voice was oddly calm, matter of fact even, though what she was saying sounded nutty. Sandra seriously doubted that being punished by a sister played any part in Catholic dogma; nevertheless, she took out her cell phone. She didn’t have Father Polano’s number with her, but she got the number of the church from information. Unfortunately, after a recording giving the times for Mass, an answering machine picked up. She left a brief message, but she told Kyra she really doubted that anyone would listen to it until morning.

“I can’t wait that long.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks. “I need him back.”

Sandra put her arm around her. “God isn’t keeping Michael away to punish you, sweetheart. Haven’t you asked Him to forgive you?”

“A million times.”

“Then I’m sure He already has.”

“You don’t know what I did,” Kyra said miserably. “I don’t know if anyone can forgive this.”

“Well I’ll try my best,” Sandra said. “So you can tell me if you think it will help.”

She meant it; still, she was very surprised when Kyra seized on it as the solution she’d been waiting for. Her daughter-in-law grabbed her hand. “I remember David told me that you’ll forgive anyone. So if I tell you what happened, you can forgive me?”

Sandra promised she would, but she was a little distracted by the part about David. The inflection in Kyra’s voice—forgive
anyone
—made it pretty obvious that her son had meant this as a criticism. She wished this were more of a surprise. Just a few days ago, she’d found herself tearing up when she heard “You Are So Beautiful” on the oldies station, remembering when David was a little boy and he used to sing that to her. She was so sure back then that taking care of a young child would be the hardest part of being a mom.

Kyra insisted that they go to her office to talk about whatever it was. Sandra followed, though she was so tired her bones ached. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long, not because she wanted to sleep—she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until the police found Michael and brought him home, safe and sound—but because she didn’t like the idea of being shut up here with Kyra while David was roaming around downstairs by himself. It would be getting dark soon. No parent would want to face the night with a child gone, but for David . . . well, it was hard for Sandra to imagine how her son was going to get through this.

TWENTY-FOUR

E
ach Christmas
for the last twelve years, Kyra had received a greeting card from Terri Barnes. The annual slap in the face always included a holiday letter written in Terri’s small, cramped handwriting as well as a photograph of Zach and Terri and the three girls sitting on a couch: first solid blue, then, a few years later, green with flowers, then, two years ago, black leather. Though the cards never found their way up to the mantel of the Winters’ fireplace and the letters were so cheerily vague as to be useless, each picture was carefully placed in an accordion file that Kyra kept locked in her desk, a file she thought of simply as
Amy.

If Zach had only been her sister’s ex, she would have told David the truth. She could even have told her husband the more important truth that Zach had been her own first love. She imagined David looking quizzically at the latest photograph of Zach, who’d turned into a thick-waisted, balding, incredibly ordinary-looking man. But she knew David wouldn’t laugh and say
that guy?
He never teased Kyra about anything that could conceivably hurt her feelings. Only if he knew she didn’t care would he tease her: about her knowledge of wine, for example. Or her habit of wearing the same ratty robe every morning. Or her insistence that they keep one clock unchanged all year, despite daylight savings time, so they would always know the “real” time and understand why they didn’t feel as awake or as tired as the other clocks said they should.

It was inconceivable that David would make fun of her if he knew the truth about Zach, yet he might do something far worse. He might judge her. He might analyze her complicated motives and decide that the one selfish instinct had hopelessly tainted what she’d done. In other words, he might confirm her worst fear that it was her own fault that she’d lost her sister, that what she’d done to Amy truly was unforgivable.

On some level she knew that telling her mother-in-law what had happened was unlikely to change anything, that this was magical thinking, completely contrary to the logic at the center of all her working life, but she was too far gone to care. All day, she’d felt like the punishment she’d been dreading for years had finally arrived, and though she knew she deserved it, she also knew she could not survive this way much longer. It was almost Michael’s bedtime. He had to come home soon if she was to continue to breathe, and live.

She sat down at her desk, and Sandra took a seat across from her, in the big white rocker, the one Kyra had used to nurse Michael. Neither woman spoke as Kyra opened the locked desk drawer and took out the accordion file. She pushed aside the record of all the fruitless searching for Amy she’d done over the years: from receipts and printouts from “people locator” sites on the Internet to Xerox copies from when she used to go to the library and scour phone books from all over the country for an Amy (or A) Callahan and then call every number she hadn’t already called. The first photo was a little blurry—they must have upgraded the camera before they took the rest—but she handed it over to Sandra, pointing at the five-year-old on the end of the couch. “This is Hannah, my sister’s daughter,” she said. “Hannah,” she repeated, because it was such a relief simply being able to say the child’s name after so many years of only thinking it.

Kyra heard her mother-in-law take a breath. She could tell Sandra was nervous all of a sudden, but it didn’t occur to her that David’s mother could be afraid that the next thing Kyra would say was that this child had died. Kyra assumed Sandra was reacting to the same thing she saw in Hannah at this age. Michael’s age. “She looks like my baby, doesn’t she?”

Sandra nodded. After a pause, Kyra thrust the rest of the photographs into her mother-in-law’s hands—the record of Hannah from five to seventeen. Sandra went through them all slowly. “A pretty girl,” Sandra said, handing the pictures back. “Is she . . . all right?”

“As far as I know. Her parents haven’t let me see her since she was four years old.” Kyra lowered her eyes. “Even then, I only got a half hour. Long enough to give her a few toys.”

She smiled at the memory of how happy Hannah was with everything Kyra brought, but especially the stuffed turtle. The little girl had kissed the turtle’s shell and eyes and mouth and then clutched it to her chest as though she was afraid someone would take it. The turtle was still in her arms when Kyra reluctantly hugged her good-bye. Zach had agreed to let her visit only because it had been almost a year and she’d broken him down with her begs and pleas and promises not to ask in the future. Of course she ended up breaking that promise many times, but he never relented again, not on any of Hannah’s birthdays nor any of the holidays, not even when Kyra was about to leave for the East Coast, and her new job, when Hannah was seven. After that, she stopped asking.

“Aunts have no legal rights to visitation,” she said flatly. “It’s completely up to the parents. They can say no for any reason whatsoever.” Sandra probably knew this already, but back then, Kyra hadn’t. Kyra had been young and impulsive and desperate. She’d had to learn the hard way, when Zach had her arrested for taking three-year-old Hannah to the filthy house where Amy was living, hoping if Amy just saw her daughter, she would start visiting the little girl again, and stop destroying herself.

“I’m sure you’ve missed her,” her mother-in-law said gently. “Do you know why your sister didn’t want you to see her daughter?”

The question was eminently reasonable, given that Kyra hadn’t mentioned that by Hannah’s parents, she meant Zach and his second wife. Not Amy. It was reasonable, and yet it hit Kyra hard. She felt like she could hear her sister thanking her for agreeing to help with Hannah while her band was on the road, thanking her for taking Hannah to the pediatrician for a checkup, thanking her for everything she did for the baby after she moved out. And Amy talking to little Hannah: “You’re going to have such fun with Auntie, my sweet. Your auntie loves you so much, and I adore your auntie!”

After a moment she recovered enough to mutter that she wasn’t talking about her sister. “Amy had left town by then.” Kyra felt her eyes burn as she remembered the last time she saw her. She was wearing black stretch pants and a torn-up jacket advertising something or other. Her skin was gray and her eyes were so dull. As she spoke, Kyra could see spittle in the corner of her lips.
You’ll never see me again.

Her mother-in-law had to be confused, but she didn’t push for an explanation. She lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, then folded her hands back in her lap. Kyra knew she had to get on with it; she had to tell Sandra everything, but it was as if her rational mind had deserted her, as if she’d kept the past to herself for so long, she’d lost the ability to make sense of it.

“I don’t know how to do this,” she finally admitted.

Sandra suggested she simply start talking. “Tell me about a day here and a night there, an argument or little snippet of talk, some song that was on the radio. You can just tell me whatever is in your head, honey.”

The first thing she thought of was the night Amy went back to work, when Hannah was two and a half months old. Her sister’s absence from the local clubs had been noticed and an agent had tracked her down; an agent had actually called her, begging her to be the singer for one of his biggest bands. The money was three times what it had been with Peanut’s band, and the agent felt sure he could get Amy a record deal. She would only have to travel occasionally. It would help their little family financially, which was very important now that they had to supply Hannah with diapers and formula and clothes and so on.

Amy was nervous about leaving Hannah, and she’d asked Kyra to come over that night. The baby was asleep when Kyra arrived, so she and Zach decided to study. She was taking hard classes for her senior year, and he was taking two science courses and working full-time. After about an hour, Zach stood up and said he was starving. “I’m going to heat up the ravioli from last night,” he said. “Want some?”

“Sure.” She stood up. “I’ll help.” There wasn’t much to do. While Zach watched the ravioli spinning in the microwave, Kyra put two placemats, forks, and paper towels folded into napkins on the kitchen card table. She poured them each a glass of iced tea. Then she sat at the wobbly table and waited until Zach brought in the steaming bowls of ravioli.

“I think I’m losing weight,” he said. “Not as fast as Amy, but look at this.” He pulled on the waistband of his jeans and it was true: there was at least three inches between his jeans and his (unfortunately still beautiful) stomach. He sat down and picked up his fork. “Note to self: remember to eat more often.”