Moonlight Mile Part 16

"Isn't that what they say about you at Duhamel?"

d.a.m.n. Not bad.

"But I was never a tenth as bad as you were in there."

"A tenth, huh?"

"A tenth."

"So, I'm just supposed to sit back and let an emotionally abusive parent swim in his own self-righteousness?"

"Yes."

"I can't."

"I noticed."

"I mean, is this it?" she said. "Is this the job? Did I forget it's just talking to people who make you want to scour your skin with a Brillo pad?"

"Sometimes." I looked over at her. "All right-most times."

Traffic thinned as we neared the New Hamps.h.i.+re border. I picked up enough speed so that the trees along the highway turned into a brown blur.

"Trying to close out the year with one final speeding ticket?" Angie asked.

As long as my daughter wasn't in the car, I always drove fast. And Angie had long ago accepted it the way I accepted her smoking. Or so I'd thought.

"What," I said, "the f.u.c.k crawled up your a.s.s this morning, babe?"

The silence that followed got thick enough to make me consider rolling down the windows, but then Angie slammed the back of her head against the headrest and slapped the soles of her shoes against the glove compartment, and let loose a long "Arrgggghhh." She followed it with, "I'm sorry. Okay? I truly am. You were right. I was unprofessional."

"Could you repeat that into my tape recorder, please?"

"Seriously."

"I am serious."

She rolled her eyes.

"Okay, okay," I said. "Apology accepted. And greatly appreciated."

"I really did blow it back there."

"No, you didn't. You almost almost did. But I smoothed it over. It's all cool." did. But I smoothed it over. It's all cool."

"It wasn't, though."

"You haven't done this in a while. There's bound to be rust."

"Yeah." She ran her hands back through her hair. "And I'm covered in it."

"You still got those, uh, mad computer skills, though."

She smiled. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Think you could hop on your BlackBerry and Google James Lighter?"

"Who's ... ?"

"Zippo. Let's see if he shows up anywhere."

"Ah." She tapped the keys for a bit and then said, "Oh, he shows up all right. Shows up very dead."

"No s.h.i.+t?"

"No s.h.i.+t. He's positively ID'd as a corpse found in Allston about three weeks ago." She read it aloud to me. The body of James Lighter, 18, had been found in a field behind a liquor store in Allston the weekend after Thanksgiving. He'd been shot twice in the chest. Police had no suspects and no witnesses.

Midway through the article, his predictably s.h.i.+tty back story appeared: when he was six years old, his single mother gave him to a friend to babysit and never came home again. To this day, the whereabouts of Heather Lighter were unknown. Her son, James, grew up in a series of foster homes. His last foster parent, Carol "Weezy" Louise, was quoted as saying she'd always known he'd end up this way, ever since he'd stolen her car when he was fourteen.

"Steal Weezy's car," I said, "and you apparently deserve two in the chest."

"What a waste," Angie said. "A whole life adds up to ..." She searched for the word.

"Zip," I said.

"I'm not going to claim Sophie was some perfect kid until her father came along and destroyed everything." Elaine Murrow sat on a red metal couch without cus.h.i.+ons in the center of the converted barn she used as a studio for her sculpture. We sat on red stools across from her. They were metal, too, and cus.h.i.+onless and about as comfortable as sitting on the mouth of a wine bottle. The barn was warm, but the sculptures kept it from being cozy; they were all metal or chrome and I wasn't sure I could recognize what they were supposed to represent. If I had to guess, I'd say most were supposed to be oversize fuzzy dice. Without the fuzz. And there was a coffee table (I think it was a coffee table) in the shape of a chain saw. Which is to say, I don't understand modern art and I'm fairly certain it doesn't understand me, so we leave it at that and try not to bother each other.

"She was an only child," Elaine said, "so she was a bit bratty and self-centered. Her mother had a flair for the dramatic, so Sophie did, too. But Brian, believe me, never gave a s.h.i.+t about his daughter until her mother left him. And even then, what he cared about most was getting Cheryl to return to him so he wouldn't have to live with what her rejection said about him."

"When did he begin showing serious interest in gaining custody?" I asked.

She chuckled. "When he found out who who Cheryl left him for. He was clueless for a good six months. He thought she was living with a girl friend, not a Cheryl left him for. He was clueless for a good six months. He thought she was living with a girl friend, not a girlfriend girlfriend. I mean, look at me-do I look like I ever lived a straight day in my life?"

She had heavily gelled spiked hair the white of Liquid Paper. She wore a sleeveless plaid work s.h.i.+rt over dark jeans and brown Doc Martens. When it came to Elaine Murrow, if we were operating under the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, no one would need to ask.

"Not to me," I said, "no."

"Thank you. But dips.h.i.+t Brian? He didn't pick up on it at first."

"And once he finally clued in?" Angie asked.

"He'd show up here in a rage and scream at her, 'You can't be a lesbian, Cheryl. I won't accept it.' "

"He wouldn't accept it," Angie said, "so it must not be true." wouldn't accept it," Angie said, "so it must not be true."

"Exactly. Once it finally got through to him that not only was Cheryl not going back to him but that she was, in fact, very much in love with me and this wasn't some ident.i.ty-crisis fling? Well ..." She blew air out of her mouth, her cheeks puffing and unpuffing. "All Brian's rage, all his feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing, which had probably been eating at him since, I dunno, birth-guess what form they took? A moral crusade to rescue the daughter he'd never known from the clutches of an immoral lifestyle. From there on, when he'd come to pick up Sophie, he'd wear T-s.h.i.+rts that said charming things like G.o.d MADE ADAM & EVE, NOT ADAM & STEVE G.o.d MADE ADAM & EVE, NOT ADAM & STEVE, or the word DE-EVOLUTION DE-EVOLUTION over a drawing of a man lying with a woman, followed by a man lying with a man, followed by a man lying with-wanna guess?" over a drawing of a man lying with a woman, followed by a man lying with a man, followed by a man lying with-wanna guess?"

"I'm betting some type of livestock."

She nodded. "A sheep." She wiped the corner of one eye. "He wore that around a child, and then he preached to us about sin."

A large dog-part collie, part who-knew-wandered into the converted barn from a dog door in the back. It ambled between the sculptures and put its chin on Elaine's thigh. She scratched the side of its face and ear.

"In the end," she said, "Brian threw everything at us. Every day was a pitched battle. Every morning, we opened our eyes and our hearts filled with dread. Just ... dread. Would he show up at one of our jobs with a picket sign filled with biblical verse and calling us child abusers? Would he file some ridiculous order with the court based on alleged conversations he'd had with Sophie about our drinking or pot smoking or having s.e.x openly in front of her? All it takes to turn a custody battle into-I dunno, carnage?-is someone with no love for the actual child involved. Brian would make any claim, no matter how outlandish, invent ridiculous lies and put them in Sophie's mouth. She was seven when this started. Seven. The court costs drained us financially, his ridiculous lawsuit, which he'd been told from the start didn't have a chance. I-" She realized she'd been scratching the dog's ear a little too hard. She took her hand back and it was shaking.

"Take your time," Angie said. "It's okay."

Elaine nodded her thanks and closed her eyes for a moment. "When Cheryl first complained about acid reflux, we thought, 'It figures,' given all the stress we'd been under. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I remember standing in that doctor's office and picturing Brian's smug, dumb f.u.c.king face and thinking, 'Wow. The bad guys really do win.' They do."

"Not always," I said, though I wondered if I believed it.

"The night Cheryl died, Sophie and I were with her until the last breath left her body. We finally leave the hospital, and it's three in the morning, it's damp and raw out, and guess who's waiting in the parking lot?"

"Brian."

She nodded. "He had this look on his face-I'll never forget it-his mouth was turned down, his forehead furrowed so he looked looked contrite. But his eyes? Man." contrite. But his eyes? Man."

"They were lit up, huh?"

"Like he'd just won the f.u.c.king Powerball. Two days after the funeral, he showed up here with two state policemen and he took Sophie away."

"Did you stay in contact?"

"Not at first. I'd lost my wife and then I lost the child I'd come to think of as my daughter. Brian forbade her to call me. I had no legal rights with regard to her, so after the second time I drove to Boston to visit her at her school during recess, he filed a restraining order."

"I changed my mind," Angie said. "I wish I'd been more judgmental on this a.s.shole. I wish I'd kicked in his larynx."

Elaine's face cracked around a smile. "You can always make a second trip."

Angie reached out and patted her hand and Elaine squeezed my wife's fingers and nodded several times as tears fell to her jeans.

"Sophie began contacting me again when she was fourteen or so. By that point she was so confused and filled with rage and loss, it was like talking to somebody else. She lived with an a.s.shole faux father, a trophy wife faux mother, and a spoiled p.r.i.c.k of a half brother who hates her. So, in the logic of human nature, I I was one of her favorite targets-Why'd I let her go? Why hadn't I done enough to save her mother? Why hadn't we moved to a state where Cheryl and I could have legally married, so I could have adopted her? Why were we f.u.c.king d.y.k.es in the first place?" She sucked a clogged breath in and let a clogged breath out. "It was brutal. All the scabs got torn off. After a while, I stopped answering her calls because I couldn't stomach the rage and recrimination for crimes I hadn't even committed." was one of her favorite targets-Why'd I let her go? Why hadn't I done enough to save her mother? Why hadn't we moved to a state where Cheryl and I could have legally married, so I could have adopted her? Why were we f.u.c.king d.y.k.es in the first place?" She sucked a clogged breath in and let a clogged breath out. "It was brutal. All the scabs got torn off. After a while, I stopped answering her calls because I couldn't stomach the rage and recrimination for crimes I hadn't even committed."

"Don't blame yourself on that one," I said.

"Easy to say," she said. "Hard to live."

"So you haven't heard from her in a while?" Angie asked.

Elaine patted Angie's hand one last time before letting it go. "A couple times in the last year. She was always high."

"High?"

She looked at me. "High. I've been in recovery ten years. I know when I'm talking to somebody who's f.u.c.ked up."

"On what?"

She shrugged. "I'd guess a hard upper. She'd get that edgy motormouth vibe c.o.keheads get. I'm not saying it was c.o.ke, but it was something that jacks you up."

"She ever mention Zippo?"

"Boyfriend, yeah. Sounded like a beaut. She was very proud of his connections to some Russians."

"As in the Russian mob?" Angie asked.

"That was my inference."

"Joy," I said. "How about Amanda McCready? She ever mention her?"

Elaine whistled. "The G.o.ddess? The idol? Everything Sophie wanted to be? Never met her, but she sounds ... formidable for a sixteen-year-old."

"That's the impression we get. Sophie the type of girl who looks for a leader?"

"Most people do," Elaine said. "They wait their entire lives for someone to tell them what to do and who to be. It's all they want. Whether it's a politician they're waiting for or a spouse or a religious leader, all they really want in life is an alpha."

"And Sophie," Angie said, "found her alpha?"

"Yup." She stood from her chair. "She sure did. She hasn't called me in ... Since July, maybe? I hope I was some help."

We a.s.sured her she was.

"Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for talking to us."

We shook her hand and followed her and the dog out of the barn and down the dirt path to our car. Dusk was settling into the bare treetops and the air smelled of pine and damp, decaying leaves.

"When you find Sophie, what will you do?"

I said, "I was hired to find Amanda."

"So you won't feel obligated to bring Sophie home."

I shook my head. "She's seventeen now. I couldn't do anything if I wanted to."

"But you don't want to."

Angie and I spoke at the same time. "No."

"Would you do me a favor if if you do find her?" you do find her?"

"You bet."

"Tell her she has a place to stay. Any hour of the day. High or not. Angry or not. I don't care about my feelings anymore. I only want to know she's safe."

She and Angie hugged then in that unforced way women can pull off that eludes even those men in the world who are at ease with the bro clench. Sometimes, I give Angie s.h.i.+t about it. I call it the Lifetime Hug or the Oprah, but there was no easy sentiment powering this one, just a recognition, I guess, or an affirmation.