Vengeance to the Max (13 page)

Evelyn merely stared, wide-eyed and misty behind the lenses of her glasses.

You need to put me to rest
.

Her stomach plunged at her husband’s words, for the first time wondering if he had an ulterior motive for bringing her here, to this house, this moment. She said the words anyway. “This is sort of a pilgrimage, finding you, then finally being able to put him to rest.”

Tell her you’re doing this because you’re ready to start a new life, then reach for Witt’s hand
.

“No.” The outburst came before she had a chance to think, a chance to stop it. She unthinkingly turned to Witt. He’d cocked his head, almost as if he could hear a faint echo of Cameron’s words.

She couldn’t remember what she’d been saying, could only feel the stark terror. Stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t have brought Witt. He was a complication, ammunition for Cameron.

So ask her about my mother and sister, if you’re too damn scared to show Witt how you feel
. Not an ounce of sympathy squeezed from his tone.

She didn’t bother to tell him she didn’t
know
how she felt about Witt. Cameron knew that, but he was restless. She was taking too long. And she knew Cameron was getting ready to leave her. The knowledge too much to bear, she did what she’d come here to do. “I’d also like to tell his mother myself. And his sister.”

Evelyn sighed, abandoned her coffee and put her hands in her lap. “Poor Madeline.”

Oh God, she’s dead
.

With that pained exclamation ringing in her head, Max knew that despite the lies Cameron might be telling about what he did or didn’t remember, he hadn’t known what happened to his mother.

“Is she alive?” Max asked gently.

“I’m afraid not.”

Cameron was gone then, leaving her with a mournful wail she felt in the center of her bones.

“What happened to her?” He’d ask later. Max needed to be able to give him an answer.

“Alzheimer’s. Five years ago.” Her hands still but clasped in her lap, Evelyn looked out the window to the forest beyond. “She was quite young for it. She was younger than me, you know.”

No, Max didn’t know a thing.

“She was never the same after ...” Evelyn’s gaze lost focus as her voice trailed off.

“After what?” Witt prompted when Max failed to.

Evelyn’s eyes cleared, then shuttered, as if she realized she’d said too much. Her answer gave nothing away. “After she moved to Cincinnati. After Father died, and Cameron went to college.”

Instinctively Max knew that wasn’t all that had happened to change Madeline Starr. “I’d like to find Cameron’s sister then. I know he’d want me to tell her.”

Evelyn Hastings looked at her with a closed face, lined with nothing more than age, but revealing not a scrap of emotion. “Cameron didn’t have a sister.”

With a backward glance, Max looked to Witt, noted his concentration, and found comfort that he took in all the details like a recorder. Later, they’d dissect the scene together.

He would agree that Evelyn Hastings was lying. No, not lying, but telling a distorted truth. Because Max knew Cordelia Starr had existed. It wasn’t Cameron. It wasn’t the yearbook or the dream. It wasn’t that Cordelia had been a cheerleader, an honor student, and loved by her brother.

It was the pain in Evelyn’s eyes, the lips thinned with the need to hide her tears. And a sensation in Max’s gut, a psychic hunch, that Cordelia was closer than any of them suspected.

But
why
did Evelyn Hastings deny Cordelia’s existence? Why hadn’t the girl been mentioned in her grandfather’s obituary?

“Cameron told me he had a sister, Mrs. Hastings.”

“It’s Miss.” With a tightening of her lips, she admitted to spinsterhood without shame. “I can’t imagine why Cameron would tell you such a thing.” Her chin lifted. “He’d know better.”

Hmm, odd way of putting it. Getting nowhere fast, Max tried a different tack. “Cameron didn’t talk much about ... his childhood, about Michigan. What was he like back then?”

Evelyn put a hand to her mouth, and the soft light of fondness returned to her eyes. “How silly of me. I should have told you that right away. And I should have asked what he was like as a man.”

Max tipped her head. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“At Father’s funeral,” Evelyn said with a faraway gaze. “Madeline left for Cincinnati the day after.”

Something had happened. And it wasn’t only the death of Cameron’s grandfather.

“Cameron was seventeen,” Evelyn went on, stopping to put a hand to her mouth. “Or was it eighteen? I can’t quite remember now.” She leaned forward to retrieve her coffee, as if needing something to fill her hands. “He was always such a good boy. Never in any trouble. The best grades.” She looked into Max’s eyes then. “I don’t think I realized until this moment how much I missed him. Him most of all.”

More than her own sister or her father?

“I never had children, you see.”

Of course not, the woman was a spinster. Max understood. Cameron had been the closest thing to a son Evelyn ever had. Max didn’t offer condolences.

“Was he a good man?” the woman asked softly.

Max turned, her back to Witt, aware of the faint rustle of clothing as he shifted. She would give Evelyn what she wanted, but the uncomfortable twinge was for Witt.

“He was a good man. A lawyer, a prosecuting attorney. Some day he’d have run for DA or been a judge.” If he’d lived.

“Do you have children?”

The air in the room stilled. She couldn’t hear Witt breathe. It was a moment before she found the energy to answer. “No.”

A simple answer, said with as little emotion as possible, she didn’t elaborate. Their childless state was entirely her fault. She was barren. Cameron had wanted to adopt. She was terrified of children, of responsibility for another human being. They’d fought about it the night he died.

“But Cameron would have made a good father.” The problem had been that she’d make a shitty mother.

Evelyn pursed her lips, then took a deep breath, as if coming to a decision. Rising, she bent to set her cup on the table. “I’d like you to have something.”

Evelyn headed to the other end of the house, leaving Max alone with Witt and her own fear.

“You didn’t say you’d have made a good mother, Max.”

“She doesn’t want to know about me. She wanted to know about Cameron.”

“But did you want kids?”

She turned the question around on him. “What about you? Doesn’t look to me like you had them. And don’t tell me it was because your ex-wife wanted you to sit while you took a leak.”

“My mother’s been talking.” A heavy sigh. He saw the connection. Ladybird had revealed a bit more of the reasons for his divorce, probably more than Witt wanted revealed.

Max had been waiting for
him
to tell her what happened.

“Debbie did tell me to sit. Thought the toilet thing held more humor. Not as pathetic as what really drove me away.” He was the least pathetic man she knew. “She had an abortion without telling me. It was the lie. And the killing without remorse.” The writing on the wall for a marriage already dead, Max read between the lines.

Max couldn’t bear to look at him. She’d done things in her own time, a bad thing equal to the crime his wife had committed. Max had been lying about her terrible deed since she was thirteen. She could never tell Witt what she’d done. So she was no one to judge Debbie Doodoo, as Witt’s mother called his ex-wife.

Soft feet fell on the hall carpet. Thank God, Evelyn was on her way back. Conversation over.

Evelyn carried a black album, the kind you can add pages to. This one was overstuffed. The woman took her seat once more, the book perched on her knees, a hand flat against the leather cover.

She opened to the first page, and sitting this close to her, Max saw that it was a photo album. Two black and white photos had been pasted to the black pages. Not the present lift and stick kind, this album was older, meant for permanency, the pictures glued in.

“I haven’t looked at it for years.” Evelyn smoothed one of those beautiful, long-fingered hands, so like Cameron’s, across the page. “I suppose I saved it for Cameron, for when he visited, for when he had children to show it to.”

She looked at Max and a thought lay clearly in her eyes. Cameron would never have children now. “I haven’t brought this book out in years, though,” Evelyn continued.

Closing it with a soft whoosh, she placed it in Max’s lap. “You should have it.” She patted Max’s hand.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” the immediate thought tumbled out into words. “It’s your family book.” And it would be full of pain.

“There’s no one left to give it to. They’re all gone. Father, Madeline, Cameron.” She swallowed and her voice dropped with her next words. “Every one of them.”

Max couldn’t say a thing. She wanted it, needed it, but she was afraid of it.

“This might tell you what he was like as a child.”

And it might contain pictures of the sister Evelyn denied. Max knew she had no choice but to take it.

* * * * *

It was on the tip of Max’s tongue to say, “You open it.” But that would have been chickening out. Again. And she wouldn’t dare let Witt know how much of a chicken she was. Even if he already knew it intuitively from her actions over the past few months.

She put a hand over her nose, the tip cold from being outside not much more than the time it took to walk from the car to the restaurant they were seated in, the Copper Penny Cafe. The sign, faded, paint peeling, looked as if it hadn’t been changed in twenty years. The place had probably been there when Cameron was a kid. White Formica tabletops sported burn marks, carved names, and abrasive scratches from too much cleanser. The seats, relatively new by the undamaged state of the vinyl, were a deep chocolate brown that matched the speckles in the linoleum flooring. Some time past the lunch hour rush, most of the tables and booths were empty. Max and Witt sat in relative isolation by a front window.

The whir of overhead fans failed to erase the overpowering odor of grease and vinegar. A teenage boy washed the front window using a spray bottle and newspaper. Pimply-faced and big-eared, he worked harder than anyone she’d ever seen. The squeak-squeak of the paper carried through the uncrowded restaurant, then he stood back to survey, a broad smile on his decimated face. Not a streak showed on the gleaming windows, but the place reeked of the vinegar he cleaned with.

Max’s stomach rumbled. Witt had chosen the place. She worried about his cholesterol level and the hardening of his arteries if this was his usual choice.

“Gonna look at it before your burger comes?”

It
being the album, she knew. “Not on an empty stomach.” Maybe not at all. “I’m starving.”

She’d perused the menu, finally deciding on the
Quarterpound Beefy Delight
and fries. Her mouth watered thinking of the pickle. Perhaps it was the vinegar in the air.

The waitress arrived, heavy white tights hugging her legs for warmth beneath the flimsy blue uniform. She took their order with an honest smile. Her name badge, pinned to the white apron, identified her as Izzie. The lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth suggested she would have been close to Cameron’s age, mid-forties, and that she knew how to laugh a lot. Pulled back in a tangled ponytail of once-dark curls, Izzie’s hair now bore streaks of gray. It was her eyes that still held onto youth, a soft and tender green that reminded Max of new grass and new beginnings. She found herself returning the woman’s sweet smile.

Izzie bent at the waist to look at the leaden sky through the window. Max had never seen so much unrelieved gray, a shade somehow different from California storm clouds. “Looks like it’s going to snow some more.” Izzie shook her head. “We don’t usually get much snow until after Thanksgiving.” Her eyes lit up with childish delight as she looked back at Max. “But that’s okay. Now we’ll have a white Thanksgiving
and
Christmas.”