Chương 12
“Try again.”
He stood and walked to the window. Below them, reporters waited near the hotel entrance.
“What if she destroys evidence?” he asked.
“Rebecca has copies.”
“What if someone follows you?”
“I’ll use the service exit.”
“What if—”
“Daniel.”
He turned.
“I need one relationship in my life that is not negotiated through attorneys.”
His anger faded.
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded once.
Then, with visible effort, he moved the chair away from the door.
Helen had not left the Lancaster house since the story broke.
Her church pastor had called. So had three reporters, two strangers, and Peter’s older sister, who left a voicemail saying she had always known Helen was “too secretive.”
Someone painted THIEF across the garage.
Helen tried to scrub it off before Mara arrived. Pink water ran down the driveway.
Mara parked across the street and watched for a moment.
Helen wore rubber gloves and one of Peter’s old flannel shirts. Her bad knee made her lean to one side as she worked.
The sight did not restore trust.
It did not erase love either.
Mara crossed the street.
Helen turned at the sound of her steps. The brush fell from her hand.
“You came.”
Mara looked at the garage. “You need paint thinner.”
“I was going to buy some.”
“You shouldn’t drive if people are following you.”
Helen removed the gloves. Her hands were wrinkled from cold water.
Inside, the television was unplugged. Newspapers remained folded on the porch. Helen had covered the front windows with blankets because the curtains were too thin.
Mara sat at the dining table where the confession had begun.
Helen brought coffee without asking how she took it.
One teaspoon of sugar. No cream.
Love preserved details even while truth decayed.
“I need to ask you things,” Mara said.
Helen sat opposite her.
“Did Raymond ever tell you the name Caroline?”
“No.”
“Did Peter recognize the Harrow case?”
“Years later.”
“When?”
“When you were nine.”
Mara’s stomach tightened. “How?”
“A magazine article in a doctor’s office. It was about unsolved disappearances. There was a picture of what Caroline might look like at that age.”
“And?”
“He brought the magazine home.”
“Did you think it looked like me?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
Helen looked toward the kitchen.
“We argued.”
“That’s all?”
“For weeks. Peter wanted to contact someone anonymously.”
“And you stopped him.”
“I said anonymous calls could be traced.”
“Why were you so afraid of being caught if you believed Raymond had rescued me?”
“By then, I didn’t believe that anymore.”
Mara sat back.
Helen’s eyes filled, but she did not cry.
“I knew,” she said. “By then, I knew we had done wrong.”
“Yet you kept doing it.”
“Yes.”
“Did Dad try again?”
“He wrote a letter.”
“To Evelyn?”
“To the private investigator named in the article.”
“What happened?”
“I burned it.”
Mara looked at her mother.
Helen did not defend herself.
The clock clicked above the mantel.
Outside, someone rolled a trash bin down the alley.
Mara asked, “Why?”
“Because you had finally stopped waking from nightmares.”
“What nightmares?”
“You used to cry for someone named Evie.”
Mara’s throat tightened.
“I thought it was an imaginary friend,” Helen said. “Then I read the article. Evelyn. Evie.”
“Did I remember her?”
“You remembered something.”
Mara stared at the table.
There was no sudden recovered scene. No face emerging whole from childhood. Only fragments she had always carried without context: the smell of orange-blossom lotion, a silver hairbrush, a woman singing badly and laughing at herself.
Mara had assigned those fragments to dreams.
“What else did I say?”
“Not much. You called stars ‘mine.’ You became hysterical once when Peter removed the necklace for a bath.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Raymond took it?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said the woman wanted it back.”
“Celeste?”
“He never named her.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“No.”
“Did Peter?”
Helen hesitated.
Mara felt the answer before hearing it.
“Once.”
“When?”
“About six months after you came to us.”
Mara gripped the table. “Celeste came here?”
“Not to the house. Peter met her at a diner near Harrisburg.”
“Why?”
“Raymond arranged it.”
“What did she want?”
“To see you.”
“Did she?”
“No. Peter refused.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“Why?”
“He said she was unstable. Frightened. She had bruises on her face. She told him people were watching her.”
“She was trying to come back for me.”
Helen nodded.
“And he stopped her.”
“He believed she might put you in danger.”
“Or he was afraid she would take me.”
“That too.”
“What happened to her?”
“Peter said she left.”
“Did Raymond ever mention her again?”
“Only once. He said she had gone south.”
Celeste died twelve years later in Arizona under her own name. Rebecca had confirmed that. She had worked in motel offices and medical billing, never married, and left no children. Her belongings were disposed of by a county contractor after no relative claimed them.
A woman who altered Mara’s entire life had died with no one to collect her boxes.
Helen placed something on the table.
A small key.
“I found this in Peter’s toolbox after you left.”
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know. The tag says W-318.”
Mara picked it up. The key was brass, worn dark near the teeth.
“Why give it to me now?”
“Because keeping things has done enough.”
They sat without speaking.
Mara traced the stamped number with her thumb.
Helen said, “Will you ever forgive me?”
The question was too large and too early.
“I don’t know.”
Helen nodded, though the answer hurt her.
“I need you to tell the police everything,” Mara said.
Fear moved across Helen’s face.
“You said you wanted this outside lawyers.”
“I said I wanted our relationship outside lawyers. What you did still has consequences.”
“I could go to prison.”
“Yes.”
Helen looked toward Peter’s shoes beneath the coat rack.
“I’m sixty-four.”
May you like
“I know.”
“My knee barely works. I take four medications.”
