The Leaving Part 55

Maybe twelve years old?

And felt the world t i l t.

And stood there with an ache that made her knees b u c k l e.

Her mother and Chambers were still talking, but she couldn't process the sounds of their words- they might as well have been speaking -and then she started to cry.

At first, a leak from the eye.

But . . .

. . . the gap in her teeth where she'd lost one, the ribbon in her hair, the picture of Rainbow Dash on her s.h.i.+rt, the color of the ice-cream cone in her hands-her favorite, green chocolate-chip mint.

She couldn't hold back the force of it.

A t s u n a m i o f g r i e f cras.h.i.+ng on her sh.o.r.es.

Her mind set about filling in the edges of the photo . . .

Making it bigger . . .

Remembering?

Or making it up?

Did it matter?

How much of anything anyone remembered was real anyway?

Damaged.

Manipulated.

Dinged this way and that.

"Why would this sicko take pictures at all?" her mother asked.

"I don't know," Chambers said. "He saved a lot of stuff. Drawings the kids made, that kind of thing. He appears to have been a bit of a sentimentalist. Or he was keeping everything because he was afraid if he threw it out it would be found and lead the police to him? I have no idea."

"But what about Anchor Beach?" Scarlett asked as she set down that photo to look at others: Riding a bike with a banana seat and handlebar streamers.

Wearing a pale-pink bodysuit and tutu, arms arched overhead.

"I don't know what to tell you, Scarlett. I guess it's possible you figured out some way to get there? I spoke with the security guard, and he seems legit, but beyond that, I'm not sure what to do. We showed your photos around but didn't get any other hits."

"I swallowed that penny," she said. "It must be important."

"I know you're frustrated," he said. "But look-" He indicated the photos. "This is real."

Scarlett gestured to the brown bag. "You said you had clothes?"

Chambers took a clear plastic bag from the brown one, opened it. He started to unfold a few things, but Scarlett reached to the bottom of the pile, for the jacket.

She nearly gasped.

It was mostly pale gray with sections of aqua and lavender.

Sort of quilted but in large patches so not overly busy.

Not particularly well made-a few stray threads knotted off poorly, and a lot of weird extra st.i.tches-like those rectangles she'd made-on the inside back, but at least you couldn't see all that when you wore it.

Chambers held forward a photograph of her wearing the jacket.

She looked like who she felt like she was in it.

"You recognize it?"

She slid the jacket on and it felt right, too. "Can I keep it?"

"Sorry," Chambers said. "Not yet."

When he left, her mother sat down at the dining room table and started to cry. Comet came out of hiding and hopped up onto the table, then gingerly climbed down to her lap.

"You okay?" Scarlett asked.

Her mother shook her head, moved Comet, got up, and went to the kitchen. She got a gla.s.s out of one cabinet and a bottle of vodka out of another. She put them on the table in front of her and sat down again.

"I don't think-" Scarlett said.

"I never got to play Tooth Fairy. Or teach you how to ride a bike. Or how to jump rope. I never got to take you shopping, like for a fancy dress. Or go to a ballet recital. Or tell you about the birds and the bees. Or have your friends for a sleepover and yell at you all to go to bed. Or tell you you were too young to date."

Scarlett nodded, not sure what to say.

"I used to drink when you were really small because you needed me so badly that I couldn't handle it. Couldn't handle the fear, like of something happening to me or to you." She poured an inch of vodka into the gla.s.s, put the bottle back down. "Now that you're back, these past bunch of days, I feel like drinking because you don't need me anymore."

She put her hand on the gla.s.s, stared at it, but then started to cry.

"And I missed everything in between. Everything in between is supposed to be the good stuff. I just," in between gasps, "I just. I can't believe it's really over."

"Me neither," Scarlett said, looking away as mascara started to fill wrinkles around her mother's eyes.

Realized she meant it a different way than the way it sounded.

She couldn't believe it was over.

Because it wasn't.

Something still wasn't right.

Letting go of the gla.s.s, her mother yanked a tissue from a box, seemed to declare her cry over. "We need to move on." She stood and took the gla.s.s and bottle back to the kitchen. "Steve wants to take us on a vacation. Wouldn't that be fun?"

And dumped all the vodka down the sink, the bottle glugging empty.

"Yes," Scarlett said. "We should do all that."

The doorbell rang and Scarlett a.s.sumed it would be Chambers, having forgotten something?

Opened the door and was surprised, instead, to see Kristen.

"Hey," Scarlett said.

"Can we talk?" Kristen said, then looked at Tammy, who said, "Nice to see you, too, Kristen," and left the room.

"Sorry, did I interrupt a moment?"

"It's okay." Scarlett stepped out, and they sat on the bottom steps together. "What's going on?"

Kristen leaned back on two elbows. "I remembered something else under hypnosis this morning."

"About your journal?" Scarlett asked greedily.

"No, not that. Well, actually yes, I remembered more about the owl. It was carved in wood or something. But that's not why I'm here. It's, well, you're really not going to like it."

Scarlett took a deep breath, exhaled it.

It was a collage art day. Ridiculously blue sky. Cotton-ball clouds. A sailboat in construction-paper colors on the horizon.

It seemed a shame to ruin it with . . . whatever it was.

And yet . . . "Tell me."

Kristen smiled some. "You're really not going to like it."

"Just tell me!" Nearly shouting.

Kristen pushed up off her elbows, then wiped sand off them. "I remembered seeing you kissing someone," she said, now brus.h.i.+ng sand off her hands, "but it wasn't Lucas."

Lucas

The map of Opus 6 on the kitchen wall was hand drawn on graph paper with black ink; clearly showed six main paths leading to the center. Lucas thought his own capital Os, when he wrote, had the same angle, and he admired his father's weird small cap/script hybrid where he'd labeled the lower reflecting pool and upper pond.

The urn with his father's ashes sat on a high shelf in the next room.

Miranda was in the shower, water running like rain.

"Let's finish it," Lucas said to Ryan, who was attempting to cook spaghetti, reading the box. "Let's finish Opus 6. Let's put a stone there."

"That thing has to weigh like four hundred pounds."

"Wait," Lucas said. "He has the stone?"

Ryan put the box down, set a timer on the stove. "It's out behind the RV."

Lucas had never gone around the back, through overgrown shrubs. "How was he going to move it?"

"I don't know." Ryan stirred the water.

"So let's figure it out." Lucas went for the door. "Maybe it's on a dolly or cart or something?"

"Now?" Water dripped from the wooden spoon in Ryan's hand.

"Why not now?"

"Because I'm cooking." Stirred the pot again. "And it's going to rain any second now. And you're not even convinced they caught the right guy."

It was true that the sky was bruised and menacing, true that he didn't buy the John Norton theory. But right now it didn't feel like it mattered. "Maybe I'm wrong. And why should Dad have to wait? We'll just have to be quick before the storm. Let's go."

"Lucas," Ryan said. "Just calm down, okay?"

"Uh." Miranda came into the kitchen, hair in wet pigtails, wearing a Smurfette s.h.i.+rt. "Are you okay? 'Cause you sound like you're losing it."

"Already lost it." Lucas felt it to be true; the sight of Smurfette-the thought of Avery-might surely send him over the edge. "But it's time to move forward with my life, right?"

"I don't understand why you won't believe they found the guy." Miranda peered into the pot to see what was there.

Lucas removed the tacks holding the map up and put it on the kitchen table to better study it. "Maybe he was the guy. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, it makes no sense that one person could do this. I must have gotten sick at least once in my entire childhood. So what doctor did I go to? What about the other four . . . or five? We're supposed to believe that one guy pulled all this off ? Raised five kids and no one else helped? But whatever, I guess. Everyone else seems satisfied."

"Well, maybe they'll figure it out now." Ryan dumped the contents of a jar of tomato sauce into a pot. "Put together more pieces now that they know who he is. Maybe people will start coming forward. Maybe they'll find who he was working with."

Miranda picked at the polish on her fingernails. "Have you considered the possibility that you maybe had better childhoods than the ones you were going to have?"

"We're not living in a science-fiction novel," Lucas said, and had a pang of guilt about not having gone back to see Orlean again. And useless Chambers had, of course, turned up nothing related to that at all. And now he had a body, so why should he?

"What if you were?" Miranda pushed. "Would it make you feel better? Would you be able to move on then?"

"I don't know, Miranda. And I really don't feel like I have to explain myself to you."