Watching his wife cringe as she steps out of the grungy shower onto the Kleenex-thin bathmat, Brett shakes his head. Room 103 is even more depressing in the first morning light—especially on a rainy summer day.
As Elsa attempts to wrap herself in a flimsy bath towel that’s more the size of a hand towel, he sighs. “I can’t believe it’s come to this. Hiding out in a cheap motel—”
“Shh…” She reaches past him and pulls the bathroom door shut. Renny is still sound asleep in the next room, and they’re not planning to wake her until they’re ready to get out of here.
“She’s still out cold, Elsa. She’ll never hear us.”
“I know, but still…” Elsa watches him pick up the travel-sized tube of Crest. “Do you think we jumped to conclusions yesterday?”
Holding it poised over his new toothbrush, he looks at her in surprise, wondering if she’s suddenly come to her senses. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was kind of alarmist, going to see Mike. Maybe the whole thing was a huge coincidence…”
“Spider-Man?”
“And the branch, and the footprint…” She frowns. “Wait—what am I talking about? Why am I trying to convince myself it was nothing?”
Because somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re aware that you imagined it in the first place.
No. He can’t say that. He can never let her know he doubts her stability.
“You’re trying,” he says instead, “because you don’t want to believe it. I don’t, either.”
“But you do, don’t you?”
Brett hesitates, then admits, “I don’t know.”
He waits for her to lash out and accuse him of not taking her seriously, but she doesn’t. Wearing a contemplative expression, she says only, “Mike seemed to believe it.”
“I know.”
“He said we shouldn’t go home.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Brett squeezes the toothpaste, and turns on the water to dampen his toothbrush. He raises his voice above the groan of old pipes. “Your mother’s apartment is sitting empty in New York.”
“I thought of that, too.”
“Maybe you and Renny should go stay there for a few days. Through the weekend, at least.”
“That’s what I was thinking. What about you?”
“I’ve got a job to go to, Elsa.”
“It’s Friday. You can just—”
“Lew needs me on the project. You know that.”
“I can’t understand how at a time like this you can be thinking about—”
“If I don’t go to work, I lose my job, and we lose Renny. What don’t you understand about that?”
For a moment, she just looks at him with those big eyes of hers; eyes that now seem enormous, thanks to her smudged makeup.
Paulette Almeida—Renny’s mentally ill birth mother—always had smudged eye makeup, Brett remembers—and hates himself for it.
Elsa says—as if it’s just that simple—“Take some personal days.”
“I’ve used them all up.”
“You have some vacation days coming.”
“I’m taking a week off for Disney. I can’t just decide to use those days now, at the last minute.”
“Not even in an emergency?”
“You want me to tell Lew that I can’t be there because I’m running scared?”
“Why do you have to tell him anything?”
Exasperated, Brett doesn’t bother to respond. She just doesn’t get that he’s accountable to someone other than his family.
He brushes his teeth vigorously and rinses using his hand as a cup, rather than even touch the smudged motel drinking glass beside the sink.
“The drain is clogged,” he observes, turning off the water.
“This place is disgusting.”
“Let’s get out of here. We’ll go home first to pack up some things for you and Renny, and then I’ll drive you to the city.”
“I’ll drive us. You should go to work if you have to,” she adds pointedly. “But…”
“What?”
“We’re not supposed to cross state lines with Renny without getting permission.”
She’s right. Brett forgot all about that rule. “We already have,” he points out. “We’re in Massachusetts, remember?”
“I know. I didn’t even think of it yesterday. But—”
“Look, no one from the agency is ever going to find out she’s here or in New York without permission. It’s not like she’s got on some kind of homing device that goes off if she crosses a border.”
“I know.”
“Anyway, they’re so short staffed over there, they do things in a half-assed way themselves half the time.”
“But that wouldn’t stop them from taking her away from us, and you know it.”
“I do—but out of all the risks involved in this situation, not getting permission to take Renny to New York is the least threatening, don’t you think?”
She nods. “What about you, though?”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“But you can’t stay in the house alone. What if whoever it is comes back?”
“Then I’ll be there. And this will be over.”
“What if something happens to you?”
“It won’t. I promise.”
Oh, but it might. Something terrible might happen to you, Brett Cavalon. Or to your precious family. You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.
Silence seems to have fallen on the other side of the bathroom wall, but it’s probably a good idea to wait a few minutes, just to be sure the Cavalons don’t inadvertently share any other interesting tidbits.
One would think the two of them would be more careful about what they say, and where they say it.
Although to be fair, they have no way of knowing they’ve been tracked to this dumpy motel. Gotta love modern technology. Homing device, indeed.
Then again, there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned surveillance tool, either.
The water glass, so filmy that no one in his right mind would dare drink from it, has done its job well. Back onto the grubby sink shelf it goes, its fluted sanitary—ha!—paper cap once more in place.
Twenty minutes later, the Cavalons exit their room, blissfully unaware that they’re being watched through a crack in the cheap curtains of the room next door to theirs, which was conveniently vacant last night at check-in time.
Conveniently vacant?
The place is just about empty.
Lucky for me. And so, so unlucky for the Cavalons.
The night manager didn’t bat an eye last night at the walk-in request for a specific room number. If he had, the explanation was ready: “I was born at 1:04 on October 4, so 104 is my lucky number.”
Almost a shame not to get to use the clever cover story. But it’s probably best to have as little contact as possible with people who might—should anything go wrong—be questioned later.
Incredible. Even against this dingy backdrop, with yesterday’s smudged makeup around her eyes and her hair pulled back from her face, Elsa Cavalon looks beautiful. She and Renny head toward their car in the parking lot as Brett goes into the office to check out. She keeps a protective hand on her daughter’s shoulder as they walk, and she does seem to glance from side to side, as if making sure the coast is clear.
But she never looks behind her, back at the motel.
She and Renny get into the car. Before long, Brett joins them, and they drive away. A moment later, the GPS tracker vibrates, indicating that they’ve left the vicinity.
As if I didn’t know.
But it was a good idea to set the device last night, just in case they left unexpectedly in the wee hours.
Now, the onscreen locator indicates that they’re heading toward the southbound entrance to I–95.
Too bad I have to go in the opposite direction.
But we’ll meet again before you know it…and next time, believe me, you will know it.
This time, the sleeping pill only worked until about three A.M. Marin has been up for hours, listening to the rain, worrying about the rat in Caroline’s purse and the anonymous texts to her phone, waiting for a decent hour to call the one person who can possibly understand what it’s like to fear for your kids’ safety in the wake of a public ordeal.
That last text was so ominous. And how did someone get her private number?
Come on—these days, you can get hold of anyone’s personal information, if you really want to.
After all, she herself managed to track down both a home and a cell phone number for Elsa Cavalon a while back, when she was thinking she might want to contact her.
Ever since, she’s been toying with the idea of reaching out to Jeremy’s adoptive mother, though she isn’t sure why.
Does she want to grieve with her?
To express gratitude?
To satisfy her own curiosity?
Thinking of the woman to whom she’d given that precious gift—her firstborn—Marin swallows the bitter irony that they’d both lost him, in the end.
She rubs her burning eyes and looks at the bedside clock.
It’s past six. Too late to take another sleeping pill, and too early to call anyone.
Nothing to do but brood.
Story of my life.
After surveying the pile of folded T-shirts on the bed, Mike removes two. Then he adds three pairs of boxer shorts, removes one, puts it back, and adds another.
Four pairs of underwear? Is that enough? Is it overkill?
He sucks at packing.
At a lot of things, really.
At times like this, he desperately misses Byron Gregson.
Not just because Byron was full of great tips—like “always keep a packed suitcase handy by the door”—but because, as an investigative journalist, his old friend had contacts all over the world. With just a few well-placed overseas calls, he probably would have been able to tell Mike that he’s way off base with his suspicion—or that he might be on to something huge.
But Byron did one too many favors for Mike when he agreed to look into Jeremy Cavalon’s birth parentage. He stumbled upon the link to Garvey Quinn, then made the mistake of trying to blackmail him—and now he’s gone forever.
And that’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life.
Without Byron here to guide him toward the right track, he has nothing to go on with this Cavalon case but a hunch. Yeah, terrific. A hunch—coming from a guy who’s so intuitive it only took him a year to figure out that his wife was sleeping around with—no, not his best friend. Hers.
Married to a closeted lesbian, and he never had a clue. Intuitive? Mike Fantoni? What a joke.
But this hunch…it actually makes sense. He’s not going to discuss it with the Cavalons, though—not yet, anyway. If he’s wrong, they’d be devastated all over again. And if he’s right…
They’ll be devastated anyway.
He was up all night going back over the situation, just to make sure he had the details straight.
He did.
Garvey Quinn said his girlfriend had killed the kid—probably on his say-so, but of course he’d never admit it. He said he’d already left the country, with his daughter, when the kid was killed. Claimed he didn’t know what had happened until weeks later, when she told him.
What if she hadn’t obeyed his orders?
No reason to think that she wouldn’t, but…
What if…?
Putting himself into her shoes, Mike could imagine what she’d been thinking.
What if she’d simply abandoned Jeremy there, in Mumbai—or Bombay, as it was called back then? Who would ever know the difference? He’d never find his way back. In fact, he’d probably wind up dead anyway, sooner or later—but at least she wouldn’t have a kid’s blood on her hands.
Somehow, the theory he’d initially considered impossible no longer seems so.
Anything is possible. Anything at all.
Even Jeremy Cavalon being alive.
Yeah. It makes sense.
So what next?
There he is—a seven-year-old kid, abandoned in a foreign country swarming with abandoned kids. Eleven million in Bombay alone that year, according to a conservative UNICEF estimate.
What, most likely, would have become of him?
There’s only one way to find out.
As luck would have it, a direct flight to Mumbai leaves from Logan in just a few hours—and there’s an available coach seat.
Mike dumps the folded clothes into an open duffel bag, adds another pair of boxers for good measure, and heads for the door.
When the phone rings at precisely nine o’clock, Lauren Walsh is standing on a ladder, paintbrush in hand, about to apply the first coat of semigloss onto the primed molding above the kitchen window.
She hesitates, wondering if she should bother to answer. She just hung up with Sam a few minutes ago, and doubts it’s him again. Her two oldest kids, Ryan and Lucy, are both at school this morning in the midst of finals, so it won’t be them, either. And her youngest, Sadie, is in the next room, playing with the dog.
Other than Sam and her children, there really isn’t anyone else whose call Lauren would jump to answer these days. Her parents, her sister Alyssa, her friend Trilby…they all mean well, but every time they call, Lauren feels as though they’re checking up on her, convinced she’s going to snap any second now.
There had been a time, before she met Nick, when she was strong and independent, a career woman in the city. Marriage changed that—but her marriage didn’t last forever. She was already in the process of relearning, last summer after Nick left, how to survive on her own. So she more or less had a head start on widowhood before her soon-to-be-ex-husband entangled himself in Garvey Quinn’s web and paid the ultimate price.
But the fact that she and Nick were on the verge of divorce didn’t change the fact that she’d loved him once, that he’d been brutally murdered, that her children had lost their father, leaving her to raise them single-handedly, without a break from the overwhelming emotional, physical, and financial responsibility.
Thanks to time, therapy, and a healthy new relationship, she’s managed to pick up the pieces, building a new life for herself and her kids.
These days, they’re doing as well as can be expected—perhaps better.
Even little Sadie has gone back to sleeping in her own bed, after months of night terrors. She’s made her first friend: a girl named Lily, whose mother invited Sadie to visit a water park with them today. And after a rough start to the school year, Ryan and Lucy are now fully back into the swing of academics and athletics.
For their sake, Lauren has no choice but to be strong. After all they’ve been through—all they’ve lost—she can only give them strength by example, and love them. She’s not going to let them down.
Yes, Lauren believes in herself—even if her family and Trilby do not.
The phone rings again.
Lauren glances down at the paint-coated bristles, not entirely sure about this russet color for the trim. Why was Autumn Mist so much more appealing on a small strip of paper in the store?
Maybe she should hold off on painting for a few minutes. In fact, maybe she shouldn’t have let Trilby talk her out of plain old white.
But Trilby is convinced Lauren’s fresh start in life calls for a fresh palette—not just in the house, but in her wardrobe, even cosmetics.
It didn’t take long for Lauren to realize she’s just not a red lipstick or slinky gold dress kind of girl. Maybe, she decides, climbing down the ladder to answer the phone, not an Autumn Mist kind of girl, either.
“Hello, Lauren?”
“Marin! How are you?”
“Oh…you know…”
Yeah. Unfortunately, she does know. She isn’t quite in Marin Quinn’s shoes, but close enough.
It was Sam’s idea to usher in the new year—their first as a couple—with resolutions designed to put the tumultuous past behind them. For Lauren, the first logical step was to get in touch with Marin Quinn. It proved to be a wise decision. Unlike just about everyone else in her life these days, Marin gets it. Gets her.
“What’s going on?” Lauren carefully props the paintbrush on the tray and settles herself on the bottom rung of the stepladder.
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.
Not good.
“Marin?”
“I’m just…for one thing, I’m getting ready to put the house on the market, so I’ve been sorting through piles of old things. It’s brutal.”
“I can imagine.” Lauren’s done everything she can to avoid selling this rambling Victorian, the only home her own kids have ever known. Moving might mean leaving town altogether, considering that real estate in suburban Westchester County has skyrocketed over the past two decades, despite the recession.
Regardless of all that’s happened under this roof, Lauren simply can’t afford to leave.
Unlike Marin, who can’t afford to stay.
“I remember how hard it was when I had to go through all of our stuff last summer,” Lauren tells her, but doesn’t mention that she gave almost everything to a tag sale.
Yes, and look where that led.
“Try to just think of it as a miserable stomach flu,” she advises Marin. “You feel awful now, and the actual purge will probably be even worse, but trust me…you’ll feel a lot better once you’ve done it.”
“Thanks. I knew you’d have some helpful advice.”
“Yeah, well…been there, done that.”
Though a drastically different set of circumstances led Marin to become a fellow single mom—circumstances that make them improbable friends—Lauren can relate to her more than just about anyone else in the world.
She wasn’t looking for a confidante, though, when she first got in touch with Marin. Dogged by the press herself after the kidnapping nightmare and Garvey Quinn’s arrest, Lauren felt a strange sense of kinship whenever she opened a newspaper or turned on a television and spotted Garvey Quinn’s wife looking like a deer in headlights.
Poor Marin.
Poor both of us.
“Do you want me to come down there and help you go through everything?” Lauren offers, and holds her breath, waiting—hoping, really—for Marin to turn her down.
She doesn’t necessarily think she’s overstepping the bound of new friendship—though she might be. But in the six months since she and Marin met, they’ve seen each other only on neutral turf, meeting for lunch and dinner at various restaurants. She’s never been to the Upper East Side apartment where Garvey Quinn presumably plotted the atrocious crimes that destroyed life as Lauren and her kids once knew it. She has no desire to set foot in there.
“Thanks, but I think this is something I have to do myself.” Marin sounds resigned. “I just wish I could run away from home for a little while, you know? I’m so sick of dealing with all of this.”
“Why don’t you come up here today and visit?” Lauren offers spontaneously—then wonders what the heck she’s doing. Why would Marin want to do that?
Then again, why not? They’re friends. Plus, Lauren’s bloodstained kitchen walls and floor have been gutted to the studs and completely refurbished.
Great. No blood. How positively inviting.
To Lauren’s surprise, Marin says, “You know, maybe I will…if you don’t mind.”
Pedestrians scurry past Jeremy at a rate that makes his head spin. They all seem to be lost in thought, headphone music, conversation with each other or on their cell phones. They don’t wait for lights to change at crosswalks, weaving skillfully amid gridlocked cars and cabs and buses filled with more distracted, impatient people.
Where are they all going in such a hurry?
What would it be like to be one of them?
Torture, that’s what it would be. Pure torture.
Homesick, he wonders what he’s doing here. Big cities have always made him nervous.
No surprise there.
Every time he finds himself on an urban street, surrounded by strangers and traffic, he flashes back…
What happened right after the woman with the yellow eyes abandoned him is clouded—mercifully so. But there are bits and pieces. People everywhere. Honking horns and sitar music, thousands of voices speaking, shouting, arguing, all in a strange tongue. Steamy air pungent with curry and elephant dung and unwashed bodies.
He was alone for days, perhaps weeks or even months—and it was worse, far worse, than what had happened to him in the foreign hospital. Without his pain medication, he was in agony, crawling and crying, eating scraps of garbage, begging—but not, like the millions of other slum children, begging for food or money. No, he desperately needed someone to listen to him, to help him find his way home, and for a long time, no one—no one—understood what he was trying to say.
Then, at last, someone did.
In the fading light of another agonizing day, as Jeremy was dreading another terrifying night, someone listened, held out a hand, and said in English—in English, thank God!—“Come with me, little boy. I’ll take you home.”
Tears of joy rolled down Jeremy’s filthy cheeks as his prayers were answered.
Then the sun went down, and the nightmare began in earnest.
“Caroline?”
She groans and opens her eyes to see her mother standing over her bed. Closing them again, she murmurs, “I’m sleeping.”
“I know. I just wanted to tell you I have some things to do today. I’ll be gone for a few hours. I need you to keep an eye on Annie, and try to get along with her, please. And if Realtors call about the apartment, take down a number and tell them I’ll call them back. Okay?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“Caroline, are you hearing me?”
She forces her eyes open again and yawns. “Yes. I’m hearing you.” Then, taking a closer look at her mother, she asks, “Where are you going?”
For the first time in ages, Mom’s blond hair is long and loose, tucked behind her ears—and she’s actually wearing earrings. And a sleeveless black top and white slacks. And, Caroline notes with surprise, eye makeup. It doesn’t cover the dark circles or worry lines, but it helps.
She’d forgotten that Mom really can look pretty when she wants to.
So…why does she suddenly want to?
“I’m going to take a drive up to Westchester to see a friend.”
“Who? Kathy?” Her mother’s former college roommate lives in Rye, and if that’s where Mom’s headed, Caroline is definitely going, too. There are some great places to shop around there.
“No, not Kathy.”
“Well, if you’re going to Rye—”
“Not Rye.” Mom leans over and kisses her on the forehead. “I’ll be back by three or four. And I’ll call to check in. Be good.”
“You too.” Caroline watches her go out the door, pulling it closed behind her.
She rolls over to go back to sleep, but suddenly, she’s wide awake.
Where the heck is Mom going? She hardly ever leaves the building lately. Now, all of a sudden, she’s rocking the wardrobe and the makeup…and driving, besides? She never takes the car out. She never did, even when Dad was around. He didn’t drive much, either, relying on cabs, Town Cars, and limos to get around.
“A friend,” Mom said.
Clearly, it’s someone she doesn’t want Caroline to know about, otherwise, she would have told her who it was…
Caroline sits up abruptly.
Can it be a man?
Did Mom forget that she happens to be married? It’s not like Dad is dead, or they’re divorced. Does she think she can go around dating while Dad is rotting away in jail?
I have to stop her.
Caroline jumps out of bed and hurries out into the hall. “Mom? Mom!”
Annie appears in the kitchen doorway, holding a rubber spatula. “She’s gone.”
“Where did she go?”
“To see her friend in Westchester. I thought she told you.”
“Which friend?”
“She didn’t say. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Are you?”
“You don’t have to be nasty.”
Yeah, Caroline thinks, I do.
“For your information,” Annie goes on, “Mom said we have to get along today.”
“Guess that means one of us has to leave, then. I hope you have plans.”
“I do. Making brownies.”
Annie used to be such a cute kid, blond and super-skinny. Now her face is getting rounder by the second, and so is the rest of her.
Caroline asks pointedly, “Do you really think that’s a good idea? Brownies?”
“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?”
Because you’re turning into a real tub o’lard.
Maybe it’s mean, but someone really needs to tell Annie these things for her own good, and God knows Mom hasn’t stepped up.
“Maybe you should, like, go for a run instead.”
“I don’t run.”
“Why not?”
“I have asthma.”
“So? Plenty of people who have asthma are runners,” Caroline tells her, not certain that’s really the case.
“Well, I’m not.”
“Maybe you should be.”
“Why?”
Caroline opens her mouth, but Annie cuts her off. “Know what? Forget it. I don’t want to hear it.”
That’s because she knows what I was going to say.
Annie returns to the kitchen. A moment later, the electric mixer whirs to life.
Caroline shakes her head. It was so much easier to deal with her sister when Daddy was around. She always had the feeling that Annie got on his nerves, too—especially when her asthma would kick in and she’d get that constant, annoying, wheezy cough.
Then Mom would hover with the nebulizer, and Daddy would take Caroline out someplace, just the two of them. They’d go for frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, or to a movie, or take a walk through the Central Park Zoo.
Yes, Daddy and Caroline were like a team, and Mom and Annie were a team. Now Caroline’s stuck alone here with her mother and sister—and today, she’s just stuck with Annie, which is even worse.
She heads back toward her room, hating the new emptiness along the hallway walls, formerly a gallery of family photos. On the last day of school, she came home to find that they were gone. Her dismayed cry woke her mother, who shouldn’t have been sleeping in the middle of the day anyway.
“What did you do?” Caroline screamed at her as she stood there looking groggy and bewildered. “Did you throw them away? Did you burn them or something?”
“Burn what? What are you talking about?”
“Our family pictures!”
“Of course not! I just packed them away until—”
“Put them back!”
“Not until after the move.”
The move. When Mom so brilliantly decided to uproot them, Caroline was appalled. Somehow, she managed to convince herself that it would never happen. Now it looks like it might. Poor Daddy isn’t going to like it one bit when he’s released from jail and has to come home to a brand-new apartment.
If, she thinks now, Mom lets him come home at all.
Caroline pauses at the master bedroom once shared by her parents.
Where, she wonders again, is Mom going today? Does she have a boyfriend in Westchester?
Maybe there’s some indication, somewhere behind the closed bedroom door, of a secret romance.
Shuddering to imagine what that might be, she slips into the room. Everything is picture-perfect, ready for potential buyers to traipse through the apartment. Not a personal item in sight, other than a cluster of perfume bottles on Mom’s bureau and a couple of generic-looking paintings on the walls.
Now that all the personal stuff is gone, no one crossing the threshold would ever guess that the notorious Quinns live here.
For that matter, no one looking around Mom’s bedroom would ever find evidence that she’s involved with some guy.
Caroline figures the only place she might be able to find incriminating information is on Mom’s phone, and of course she’s taken that with her.
She slouches back down the hall to her own room—also devoid of her favorite photos and mementos and reminders of Daddy that were on prominent display, until Mom made her remove them. The room looks so generic now, like it could belong to anyone. The less time she spends hanging out here, the better.
Now what? The whole day stretches emptily ahead. Too bad none of her friends is around, and there’s absolutely nothing to do.
You could always go back to Starbucks.
Ha. As if.
Then again…what about Jake?
She never had a chance to say good-bye to him, never gave him her number. The rat incident happened right after he asked her about meeting her at Starbucks this afternoon.
He doesn’t even know her last name, so he’d have no way of finding her if he wanted to. And she doesn’t know his last name, either. There are dozens of Jakes and Jacobs at Billington alone; there are probably hundreds of them at Columbia.
Looks like she’s never going to see him again, unless…
What if he shows up at Starbucks today, hoping she’ll be there?
He never mentioned a time, but he did say afternoon. That’s a five-hour window…but what else has she got to do?
Sitting around a rat-infested—or not—coffeehouse hoping to run into some guy is pretty pathetic…but then what about Caroline’s life these days isn’t?
The rainy drive back from Massachusetts has left Elsa with a queasy stomach, courtesy of too much gas station coffee, or sheer exhaustion, or nerves—probably all three. All morning, she’s been dreading the quick stop at home to pack up some things for herself and Renny, certain that once she crosses the threshold, she won’t want to leave again—and knowing that it’s necessary.
But now that she’s here…
I can’t wait to get out.
The house just doesn’t feel right.
It’s nothing she can put her finger on, really. She walks quickly from room to room. Everything appears just as she left it yesterday: rainy day bin in the kitchen, a couple of finished jigsaw puzzles on the coffee table, The Little Mermaid DVD case beside them.
Still, she feels violated. Someone could have been here in their absence, snooping around.
From Renny’s room, she can see Brett beneath the rain-spattered window, looking for the footprints and the broken branch.
In the master bedroom, she goes straight to the nightstand, where she keeps the tiny key, dangling from a strip of blue satin ribbon. If anyone was rummaging through the drawer and found it, he wouldn’t have to look far to figure out what it’s for.
She kneels in front of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, fits the key into the lock, turns it, lifts the lid.
The contents, at a glance, are undisturbed. The linens are neatly folded.
Beneath her own things lie the items she rarely looks at: her wedding veil in its protective wrap, lace doilies handmade by Brett’s grandmother, a preserved baby dress that had been presented to Maman by the great Coco Chanel herself when Elsa was born…
And then there are the little-boy clothes, the ones she can barely see because her eyes are flooded: Jeremy’s worn dungarees, his T-shirts, the red sweater he’d worn that last Christmas…
Elsa braces herself as she digs her way to the bottom of the chest. If it isn’t there…
But it is.
Choking back a sob, she picks up the Spider-Man figurine she’d found lying in the grass the day Jeremy disappeared.
“Mommy?”
Renny is in the doorway.
Keeping her back to her, Elsa drops the toy back into the bottom of the chest and hurriedly wipes her eyes.
“I’m going to go pick out the clothes I want to bring to Mémé’s house,” Renny tells her. “How many dresses do you think I need?”
“Wait, first you need to put away the puzzles and other toys you played with yesterday,” Elsa tells her, conscious that Brett is right under her bedroom window. “Oh, and you can choose some things to bring with us while we’re away. Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”
“Okay.” Renny skips down the hall. Elsa hurriedly puts the chest back together and locks it. As she returns the key to the bedside drawer, she reminds herself that she needs to pack the keys to Maman’s apartment, before she forgets.
In the kitchen, Renny is putting her toys back into the rainy day bin. She’s excited about the impromptu weekend in New York—even though Elsa and Brett explained to her that her grandmother won’t be at home.
Renny is full of sightseeing ideas—and some of them, to Elsa’s dismay, sound like New York, Sylvie Durand style. Pretty impressive, considering they haven’t seen Maman since her Mother’s Day visit last month—when, fresh from a few days in Manhattan, she regaled them with tales from the city.
Now Renny wants to see Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s, Tiffany’s…
“Tiffany’s?” Elsa asked incredulously.
“For breakfast. Mémé told me about it.”
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Of course. It was Sylvie Durand’s favorite movie, and back then, she traveled in the same circles as its leading lady. When Elsa was growing up, Maman’s highest—and most frequently paid—compliment was that Elsa looked just like Audrey Hepburn. Later, when she was modeling, the resemblance wasn’t lost on her booking agents, who cultivated her chic, sleek, gamine style.
She might as well wait until they get to New York before she straightens out Renny’s misguided impressions. She has a lot to do before they leave, and she definitely needs to grab a quick shower—a real shower, as opposed to the earlier one that left her eyes still rimmed with old makeup and her hair limp from cheap shampoo.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s such a minor detail, but maybe it’ll help her to feel more normal.
As if anything could possibly feel normal right now.
Her eyes go to the hook beside the door, where she always keeps Renny’s tote bag to grab when they’re on their way out.
The thought of someone touching it, desecrating it…
Spider-Man. Who would have known? Who would want to remind them of something so painful?
Turning away, Elsa opens the top drawer of the kitchen desk. As she pulls out the set of keys to her mother’s apartment, she remembers how she’d laughed when Brett, Mr. Organization, had fastened an identifying tag to the ring.
“It’s a Louis Vuitton keychain, Brett. Do you actually think we’re going to forget whose keys they are?”
“You never know,” he told her, but even he had to grin.
Elsa tucks the keys into her purse. Then, remembering that she left wet laundry yesterday, she heads toward the utility room off the kitchen. The washing machine is on its last legs, but at least this time it completed the spin cycle.
As she opens the dryer to transfer the load of clothes, she hears the door open and Brett calling her name.
“I’ll be right there! I just have to—”
“Elsa—right now. C’mere.”
Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good. Abandoning the laundry, she returns to the kitchen. Seeing the look on her husband’s face, she turns immediately to her daughter.
“Renny, why don’t you go into your room and pack your clothes?”
“You said put the puzzles away first.”
“That can wait. Go ahead.”
As Renny disappears down the hall, Elsa whispers, “Did you see the footprint?”
“No, it must have washed away.”
She was afraid of that. “What about the—”
“The branch. I saw it. But Elsa…”
She realizes, then, that he’s holding something: a manila envelope. “What is that?”
“It just came in the mail. You need to see this.”
Marin could tell Lauren was surprised when she took her up on the invitation to visit her in Glenhaven Park today. She herself was perhaps even more surprised.
But after spending yesterday mired in emotion, between packing away—and throwing away—all those mementos, and dealing with the girls’ endless arguing, topped off by the rat experience…it was as if Lauren had thrown her a rescue ring, and she’d instinctively grabbed it.
Once she’d said yes, she felt as though she were standing at the base of an enormous mountain with no idea how she was going to climb it.
The only thing to do, she realized, was stop thinking about it and start moving. As quickly as possible, for that matter, hoping she’d gain enough momentum to keep on going.
She’s made it out onto the rainy street and is all but running toward the parking garage a block away when it happens.
“Hey, look, it’s that lady!” she hears someone say. “The one whose husband—”
Suddenly, a camera flashes in front of her.
Blinking, she hesitates for a split second, wondering whether to keep going, or turn around and head back home.
Home sounds better—but she’s closer to the parking garage.
And anyway, is she really going to let a couple of shameless, camera-wielding strangers ruin her plans? That would be pathetic.
No. No way.
Holding her head high, Marin picks up her pace once again, heading for the parking garage.
Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Mike hears a cheerful, familiar “Hey, Mike-ey!”
“How’s it going, Joe?”
The Sicilian butcher, in his usual smoking spot—leaning against a globed lamppost in front of the shop—shrugs. “Aches and pains. I’m getting old.”
“Yeah, who isn’t?” Mike figures Joe is about a decade older than he is, probably in his mid-fifties. He likes to complain good-naturedly about his mother, his wife, his kids, his grandkids, all of them sending him to an early grave, he claims. But Mike doesn’t buy a word of it. What he wouldn’t give to have a family. His own parents are both gone, and so is his brother. None of them lived to see Mike get married—or divorced.
“You going somewhere, Mikey?” Joe asks, waving his cigarette like a pointer to indicate the duffel bag over Mike’s shoulder.
“Yeah. The airport.”
“Where you headed? Long weekend? Or a vacation?”
Mumbai. Some vacation.
“Yeah,” he tells Joe again. “Just for a coupla days.”
Joe pushes himself off the lamppost, grinds out the cigarette with his heel. “You take care of yourself.”
“I always do, Joe.” Mike gives him a wave and steps off the curb.
Suddenly, the sound of a revving engine explodes in his ears. Startled, he looks up, and is stunned to see a car roaring toward him. For a split second, the driver is visible through the windshield—looking right at him, Mike realizes in horror. Aiming right at him.
The last thing he hears before it hits is Joe’s horrified “Miiikkee-eeeyyy!”
Elsa stares in horror at the contents of the envelope, spread before her and Brett on the kitchen counter.
Photographs.
Of Renny.
They appear to have been taken with a long-angle lens, and recently.
Renny in the supermarket. Renny at the beach. Renny licking an ice cream cone in their own backyard, the photo snapped through the trees with their house in the background.
Her embroidered tote bag is over her shoulder in most of the shots.
“Whoever took these pictures,” Brett tells Elsa in a low voice, “knew that Renny hardly ever leaves home without that bag. He knew it wouldn’t be long before we stumbled across Spider-Man.”
Elsa nods, unable to speak. She’d been wondering why the toy would have been hidden away in the tote rather than left right out in the open for them to discover more readily.
Now she knows.
Placing the toy in Renny’s bag sends a far more ominous message.
And those pictures…
Someone is watching…again.
She finds her voice at last. “Brett…we have to go to the police.”
“We’ll lose her if we do.”
“I’m afraid that if we don’t…” She swallows hard, forces herself to say it, “We’ll lose her anyway.”
Hurting Mike Fantoni was never part of the plan—not even after it became clear that people would have to die. But it was absolutely necessary. There’s no telling what he knows—and what he might do with the information.
It’s pretty obvious the Cavalons met with the detective last night. Why else would they have driven to Boston and left their car parked for several hours in the North End, just a few blocks from Fantoni’s address?
The moment the GPS registered that the car had stopped in that particular location, it made perfect sense.
Of course, in their time of need, they’d turn to the private detective who’d devoted all those years to their case, and ultimately led them to Jeremy.
Well…not really. Mike Fantoni had led the Cavalons to Jeremy’s trail—a dead end, in the most literal sense.
Or so they believe.
But if anyone could have dug up the truth, it was Mike.
Such a shame to think of him lying in the middle of Hanover Street in a pool of his own blood.
Really, of everyone who’s ever been involved—he’s one of the good guys. And if anyone could have saved Jeremy…
But then he didn’t, did he?
No one saved Jeremy. Not even Mike.
That’s all right. He doesn’t need any of them. Now he knows that there’s only one person in the world he can count on, someone who will never let him down like the others have, one by one, over the years.
Now it’s their turn. One by one, they’re going to pay. All of them.