When We Were Friends (20 page)

“The smaller room’s fine,” I said. “Plus, if the attic’s disgorging junk here, this room doesn’t seem very safe.”

He smiled. “Then why don’t you get yourself all unpacked and
settled? I’m pretty bushed, so I may just call it a night. You need anything else? Anything I can help with?”

“No, I’m great,” I said. “This is all great. I mean really, I don’t know how to thank you, but thanks.”

“Well you’re welcome. I mean that, Leah.” He touched the top of Molly’s head, then rested his hand on my cheek for a moment before striding from the room.

I touched my cheek, watching him turn the corner. My skin warm from the feel of his hand, and my ears ringing with the sound of someone else’s name.

I set Molly in her carrier. She seemed to be taking to the new surroundings reasonably well, resting her bottle meditatively on her belly, sucking only every minute or two when she remembered it was there. I sat on the bed, looking around, staring at the papers on Alex’s desk and the file cabinet drawers. Then sat on my hands. Then pulled them free again and gripped the mattress. “No,” I whispered, “you won’t.”

This was horrible, it wasn’t me. All the times I’d been left alone painting in the homes of fascinating people, military scientists and authors and the Virginia State Senator, and never had the idea of snooping even crossed my mind. But this time I didn’t try especially hard to stop myself. In the end I stood, closed the door quietly, then went to Alex’s desk and started to explore. Because I realized after my seconds of halfhearted resistance that there’d come a point when I wouldn’t be able to help myself, so there was no use pretending I was too ethical to do such a thing. It was inevitable, so why put it off?

“Don’t watch this,” I told Molly, and then I started with the papers on his desk, printed articles, social and political commentary from sites like The New Republic and The New Yorker, as well as pages of literary criticism, some with his name in the byline. Which probably meant Alex wasn’t just smart, he was S-M-A-R-T. Leafing through them, I was instantly and thoroughly intimidated.

I set them back in the pile, then noticed indentations on the blotter. I tried to make out the words, but when I couldn’t, shedding my last scrap of decency, I fished a pen and an old receipt out from my purse, held the receipt over the blotter and shaded the pen over it.

I smiled, running my finger over the words. Was the blotter from Alex’s childhood? If so, I was probably the only person who’d read it for probably three decades, like an archeologist excavating bones. And I was so pleased with myself discovering this fossil from Alex’s childhood that I actually considered showing him. Never mind that taking a rubbing of someone’s blotter was the utmost invasion of privacy, and probably illegal in some states.

There was a thump as Molly’s bottle rolled off her chest. I jumped with a small yelp, then righted it. I watched her sleeping face a moment and then reached to open his desk drawers.

One held secretarial supplies, various-sized envelopes and stamps, Post-its and staples, all arranged into ridiculously neat stacks. The other held tax forms (and yes, I looked at his last year’s income, as well as the amount he’d given to charity), mortgage and bank statements and a small notepad. I pulled out the notepad and sat with it on the bed, staring at the few scrawled lines.

On the following pages were several versions, all saying more or less the same thing in different words, some more strident, others
pleading, and I read through them wondering what it would be like to be the woman these letters were written to, to be loved this much.

Erin
. Was she the woman in the photos downstairs? Well she must be. The woman he “used to know.”

Feeling a sudden wash of homesickness, I stuffed the pad back into the drawer, then reached into my purse for the cell phone Alex had lent me. I knew Star would answer; she had to answer. I wouldn’t let myself consider what it would mean if she didn’t.

I listened to the phone ring, imagining the sound filling the house I’d lived in all my life. The green phone in the kitchen, the cordless in the living room, the white phone in my own room muffled by the canvases on each wall.

I listened until an operator’s voice oh-so-helpfully informed me that no one was answering, and then I hung up and tried again, the rings somehow hollow like they were echoing against empty walls.

Had Star actually gone somewhere? Had she been so terrified of the police’s imminent arrival that she’d somehow mustered the strength to leave? And if she’d gone out, was she now lying unconscious on the sidewalk? I hung up the phone and then tried again. No answer.

Okay, how long should I wait before I did something? It was possible she was taking a shower and couldn’t hear me. Or that she had a stomachache and didn’t want to get out of bed. Or that she was dead.

I paced to the window. I should’ve gotten voice mail and bought her a cell phone so she could reach me if she needed anything. Everybody in the world had voice mail and a cell phone. Never mind that it didn’t make sense to buy them since nobody ever called her and she was always home, I should’ve bought them just for safety’s sake. I should’ve realized that occasions like this could happen.

I stood with my back against the wall. How long had it been since I’d talked to her? Twenty hours? Twenty hours! When Star had never been unreachable even for five minutes. Especially since she’d know it was me on the phone, because who else would it be? And I knew Star. After a full day not talking to me, she’d wade through
sewage not to miss my call. I’d been so caught up in this fantasy life that I hadn’t thought how dangerous it was to leave her, how the panic could seize her like hands around her throat and there she’d be, suffocated and alone. For twenty hours!

I dialed Pamela’s number, and got her machine. “Pamela? It’s Lainey, you there?”
Pause
. “Okay, listen Pamela, my mom’s not answering the phone. It’s been a full day I’ve been trying her, and she won’t pick up, and I’m starting to get really worried. Would you do me a huge favor and drive over there? Call up at her window after you ring the bell so she knows it’s you. And tell her I’m freaking out and to call the number I’m dialing from now, it’s a friend’s cell phone. Okay? Okay. I love you.”

I hung up and dialed home again. When she didn’t answer I hung up and dialed again, my eyes shut.
Answer the phone, dammit, just answer!

Okay. Enough was enough. I disconnected, then took a deep breath and dialed information. When the operator answered, I steeled my shoulders. “I want to talk to the Newport News police,” I said.

It didn’t even cross my mind not to tell the police who I was. I was in a panic, and in that moment all I could think about was getting them to our house with life support. If I was caught then so be it, I’d find some other way to protect Molly. All that mattered now was finding Star.

I told them about her agoraphobia, that she hadn’t been left alone in years and that she’d once attempted suicide. I also told them I hadn’t talked to her in a week, trying to heighten the sense of urgency.

It took over an hour for them to call back, an hour of pacing with the cell phone clutched in my hand, dialing the cell from Alex’s land line to make sure it still worked and then pacing again. I imagined all kinds of awful scenarios, a side effect, I guess, of being Star’s daughter. Choking on a hot dog, armed robbery, stroke, anaphylactic shock from a previously unrecognized food allergy; so many things could happen to a person home alone. So when the phone rang, with their first words,
This is the Newport News PD
, I had that awful sensation you must get when a cop knocks on your door, and you just know that the person you love best is dead.

“No,” I whispered.

“Lainey Carson?”

“No …”

“We just been to see your mother. Looks like she’s not doing so great.”

“Oh God, no.”

“Looks like she hasn’t been out of bed for a while now. Didn’t come to the door when we knocked.”

I sank onto the bed. She was alive. At least she was alive.

“We had to break through the door to get to her, and then she started screaming, locked up her bedroom so we had to break through that door too.”

I imagined Star there in bed, the covers pulled up over her head with the doors, her only protection from the outside world, lying in splinters on the floor. “She needs new doors!” was all I could think to say.

“The doors’ll be fine, we just pried the locks. But what she needs is supervision. You got any other family?”

I thought I could hear blame in his voice. Like, how could you leave your own mother? “Should I come home? You think I should go home?”

“I won’t tell you what to do. If I was gonna tell you what to do, I’d say I think she should be in a place where she could be helped, you know what I mean.”

I closed my eyes and imagined myself slapping him, the quick and satisfying heat of his fleshy cheek against my palm. “Well thanks for the advice,” I said. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

Amazingly, he did not notice the sarcasm. “Hell,” he said, “I have a mother too, you know.”

It was only after hanging up that it occurred to me he hadn’t recognized my name, didn’t associate me or my mother with the kidnapping. What did that mean? Had Sydney not turned me in after all? The paper had said an arrest was imminent, but whose? I cupped my hands over my face and said a quick prayer of thanks, holding them there until my heart rate and breathing slowed. And then I picked up the phone again and dialed home.

The phone rang, kept ringing. I should’ve told the cops to check if the phones had gotten themselves unplugged, or the ringers
switched off. But no, I knew Star was lying there listening, maybe still buried under the covers. Maybe knowing it was me and wanting to answer, but too scared to pull out her head.

I let the phone ring, my way of telling her I was there, connected by satellites and wires. After ten rings I hung up, curled on the bed, and dialed again. And then again, dialing through the night, my knees curled to my chest and my eyes closed, listening to the wordless conversation between us.

“Leah?”

I opened my eyes to find the sun streaming through the window. My eyes felt shredded from the contacts I’d forgotten to remove, and my teeth and tongue felt like they’d been coated in refried beans.

“Leah?” Alex called again from behind the closed door.

I rolled over and grabbed for Alex’s cell phone, saw that it showed four messages. And that Molly wasn’t in her carrier. I jumped to my feet. “Molly!”

“She’s right here with me. Can I come in? You decent?”

I smoothed my tangled hair behind my ears and looked down at my rumpled clothes. “Not really,” I said, “but yeah, you can come in.”

The door opened and Molly scrambled into the room naked, dragging a clean diaper between her legs. Alex entered behind her, his face pink with suppressed laughter. It was like I’d been beamed away into someone else’s life.

“I thought I could figure out the diaper thing on my own.” Alex lifted Molly to swing her in a circle.

I surreptitiously checked my eyes for sleep-sand, then held out my arms. “Here, I’ll show you.”

He laid Molly on the bed and watched as I fastened the diaper around her. “Velcro, it’s ingenious.”

I felt a jolt of pleasure, as if he’d paid me a compliment. “Isn’t it though?”

Molly raised her arms, palms facing me, jazz hands position, and I gave her my index fingers to grip. “So I’ve got breakfast,” Alex said. “Back in a sec.”

He turned back to the hall, and I quickly pulled my fingers from Molly’s fists and checked for missed calls. There’d been three from Pamela, two last night and one this morning, and one call late last night from my home number. I brought Molly’s hands to my mouth so I could kiss her chubby knuckles.
Thank God
.

Alex bumped the door open with his backside and set a tray on the desk. It was holding a plate heaped with scrambled eggs, bacon and toast slathered with butter, two mugs and a dark carafe. Leaning against the carafe was a small stuffed bunny that he handed to Molly. “A little memento of where we first met,” he said. Molly snatched the bunny from him, studied it, then shoved its nose into her mouth.

“Wow,” I said. “Am I dreaming? Where’d this all come from?”

“I went shopping. I was in desperate need of a toothbrush, since all my stuff’s back in my room at the inn.”

“You left all your stuff?”

“Well you didn’t exactly give me time to pack. Or pay, either. I’ll have to mail Muriel a check.”

“Crap, Alex …” What was I getting him into? If the cops found out I was here, would they consider that aiding and abetting?