Читать книгу Making Her Way Home - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

THE DAY WAS INTERMINABLE. BETH began to doubt her ability to hold in all the terrible emotions moving inside her, but she had to. Every time she felt herself slipping, she dug her fingernails into her flesh wherever she could reach and concentrated on the pain. When she hurt, she could empty herself. She hadn’t had to do it in a long time.

I will not feel.

But she did. Today, most of all, most horrifyingly, she felt helpless. Being always and entirely in control was as basic to her as breathing. She planned everything. Everything.

Except she hadn’t foreseen the consequences of her sister’s death. She might have if she hadn’t been so certain Rachel hated her.

Rachel had hated her. Of course she had. In the end, though, she hated their parents more. Beth should have realized that.

From the moment Sicily came home with her, Beth had battled panic. There was a reason she’d never shared her life with anyone else. And a child…she knew nothing about children. She couldn’t even bear messes at home. She knew she was obsessive, but that’s how she survived. How was she supposed to juggle another person’s needs with her already full schedule and her need for order?

The irony was that in the past week she had begun to relax. Her niece was quiet, organized and trying very hard to fit in. Too hard. Beth could see that, and it made her feel guilty because a kid should be confident she could belong without changing herself. But she could also tell that Sicily was skilled at going unnoticed, which meant she’d worked at it. That caused Beth to feel a rare flash of fury—what kind of men did Rachel keep around, that her daughter had to learn to be invisible? Or had Rachel herself been abusive?

But that, of course, led to more guilt, because Beth could have tried harder to have a relationship with Sicily—Rachel might have given in—and she hadn’t.

Still, even with all the turmoil, they were working out a routine and she was finding her ten-year-old niece unexpectedly easy to live with.

Now this.

Swept by a maelstrom of terror and guilt and that overwhelming sense of herself as small and useless and unable to do anything at all to impact the outcome, she drove her fingernails into the inner flesh of her upper arms.

I will not feel.

It didn’t help at all.

Her initial gratitude to that cop—Detective Mike Ryan—slowly changed to resentment and eventually anger and something even more bitter over the course of the afternoon. It was like food left out, spoiling until it would have sickened anyone who took a bite. She kept thinking there wasn’t a single thing left he could ask her, that he’d go away and leave her alone, but he never went for long. The crunch of footsteps on the pebbles would herald his return. Sometimes she refused to look up until he was right in front of her. Other times she couldn’t help but turn her head to watch him stride toward her. It was hope, she tried to tell herself, that made her look at him. He was going to say they’d found Sicily—she’d taken one of the nature trails and sprained her ankle, or gotten lost exploring in the woods, or… Beth couldn’t think of any other explanations that were innocent, that meant Sicily would be returned to her now, today, safe and sound.

Those small, irresistible spurts of hope might have been part of why she couldn’t help but look at the detective, but they were only part. He stirred something in her. Something dangerous.

It wasn’t that he was a gorgeous man. He had a rough-cut face and hair not quite light-colored enough to be called blond. No talent scout would have grabbed him to be a GQ model. He did have nice broad shoulders and an athletic build and the walk of a man able to get where he wanted to go with speed and no deviation from the path. With that body, he probably would have worn beautifully cut suits well—if he didn’t shed the suit coat, roll up the shirtsleeves, tug loose the tie, scuff the shoes and get the whole ensemble wrinkled.

When he’d hunkered down next to her, Beth had found herself staring at the powerful muscles in his thighs outlined by the fabric of his slacks. He likely ran, or something like that, to keep in shape. People in law enforcement were supposed to stay fit, weren’t they? She doubted he did anything like lift weights to increase muscle definition—his haircut looked barbershop instead of salon and his slacks and rumpled shirt did not resemble the ones worn by the businessmen she often dealt with through work. If Detective Ryan cared about his appearance, it didn’t show.

What he was, was pure male. Dominant male. No question he was in charge from the moment he strode onto the beach. Beth wondered if his superiors ever tried to give him orders.

His eyes were the one part of him she’d call beautiful. They were that rare crystalline blue, untouched by hints of gray or green. It had to be the color that made his every look feel like a scalpel cut. He turned those eyes on her, and she was terrified that he was seeing all the way inside her to the little girl huddled behind the suitcases in the under-the-staircase closet.

She wanted him to go away and never look at her again. After he found Sicily.

She also wanted to stare at him and drink in whatever quality it was that made him seem so strong.

The sun sank behind Whidbey Island. Beth watched it go down as the shadow of dusk crossed the Sound and finally reached her beach. One moment, she could see everything clearly—rocks and dried gray driftwood logs, the peeling red bark of madronas, the weave of the blanket she clutched in tighter and tighter hands. And then, from one blink to the next, the clarity became muffled. Her surroundings were purplish and dim.

She recognized the particular crunch of Detective Ryan’s footsteps.

He crouched beside her, so close she had to look at his face.

“We’re calling off the search for the night.”

“No!” Her voice came out thin and high.

“We’ll resume it tomorrow, although…” His voice was a deep rumble, “I’ll be frank, Ms. Greenway. We’ve covered the park pretty thoroughly. I don’t believe your niece is here.”

“Then where…?” she whispered.

“I don’t know.”

She hated hearing her own words cast back at her. She couldn’t tell on that impassive face whether he’d chosen them deliberately as a slam at her.

He’d kept her updated as the afternoon had waned. Small boats had trawled offshore. They couldn’t be sure Sicily hadn’t gone in the water, but the beach had been crowded enough today he thought someone would have noticed.

Not a single trace of Sicily’s presence had been found. Beth kept telling him that Sicily hadn’t carried anything to drop. She’d worn exactly three items of clothing: panties, red twill shorts and a plain white crew-neck T-shirt. On her feet were a pair of thick-soled flip-flops that Beth had bought her when she first came to stay and it became obvious how inadequate her wardrobe was.

That was it. No towel, no iPod—really? Did people buy cell phones and iPods for ten-year-olds? No sweatshirt tied around her waist, no jewelry of any kind, no cheap camera. Nothing.

They wanted a photo of her, but Beth didn’t have one in her wallet. Rachel had never sent her not-so-beloved sister school photos, even assuming Rachel had wanted or paid for them in the first place. She’d been touched when Sicily offered her a couple of pictures not that long ago.

“I have pictures at home,” she told Detective Ryan rather desperately, “but they aren’t recent ones.” Even she knew they wouldn’t be useful, given how quickly children changed.

“Would her grandparents have something better?”

“I don’t know,” she’d had to say, and hid her wince at the brief expression of disbelief—or was it contempt?—that flashed on the detective’s face before he hid it.

During one of the many stretches where she had nothing to do but wait, she’d tried to think of some other way to say I don’t know.

I’m not aware. Pretentious.

You’d have to ask someone else. He would want to know who, a question to which, of course, she’d have no answer. Or she’d have to say, again, I don’t know.

Not a clue. Inappropriately flippant.

So were her thoughts. But she couldn’t control them, however hard she tried.

“You need to go home,” he told her, with some gentleness this time.

“No,” she said again. “No, I can’t!”

Fingernails. This time she knew she’d drawn blood. I don’t feel. I don’t.

“I’ll drive you,” he said, but already she was shaking her head.

“No, I can drive myself. There’s no need.”

“Then I’ll follow you.”

Staring at his face, she realized he wasn’t offering her an option. He intended to see her home. The grim set of his mouth told her more. He’d want to come in. No, not want; he would come in. He still wasn’t done with her.

And that was when she let herself know what she’d blocked out all day: he doubted everything she’d said. He thought she might have something to do with Sicily’s disappearance.

Nausea rose so swiftly she couldn’t do anything but clap her hand to her mouth and swivel sideways. She retched onto the beach, nothing but bile so acidic it burned her throat and mouth. She couldn’t seem to stop heaving, as though her body was determined to make her give up everything she had.

Not until she finally sagged, spent, did she realize the detective had laid a big hand on her back and was rubbing it in soothing circles. He was murmuring something; she couldn’t make out words. It was more like a croon.

She had a sudden flash of remembering Maria, the housekeeper who’d left—or been fired—when Beth was five or six. A plump bosom, consoling arms, the songs she sang, all in Spanish. In Beth’s life, no one but Maria had ever given her comfort—and that had been so long ago, Beth had almost forgotten what it felt like.

It was the strangest feeling. She marveled at why he would worry about her distress despite the fact that he clearly suspected her of something horrible. It didn’t make sense.

Beth took long, slow breaths: in through her nose, out through her mouth. Her stomach, entirely empty, gradually became quiescent. She focused enough to realize the detective was holding out a can of soda. He must have taken it from her small cooler, unopened since she and Sicily had arrived. Beth seized it gratefully and after rinsing her mouth, took a long drink.

“Ready?” he asked, rising to his feet.

No, she wasn’t ready to leave without Sicily. To drive home to her empty house. The thought sent a shudder through her, but she nodded and let go of the blanket, stuffed her book into her bag and got up. To her surprise, Detective Ryan grabbed the blanket, shook it out and folded it with quick, effective movements. He picked up her small cooler, too, obviously prepared to carry it.

They walked in silence the short length of beach and up the trail. She was suddenly aware that they were virtually alone. The searchers had already been called off. She stopped at the top for one last look at the beach. The tide had long since come in and was turning to go out again. The light was so murky, she could barely make out the spot where she’d spread her blanket, or see the heaps of driftwood as anything but angular shadows. Again, she shuddered.

The parking lot had emptied, too. Toward the campground she could see flickers of firelight.

“You looked there?” she asked.

“Yes. And talked to all the campers. We asked permission to look in their tents and trailers. Everyone let us without argument.”

She nodded dully and unlocked her car. “You don’t have to follow me.”

“Yes, I do.”

Without a word she got in, started the engine and after letting it warm up for barely a minute, backed out of the slot and drove away. He’d catch up to her, she had no doubt. He knew where she lived anyway.

The lights of a bigger vehicle appeared almost immediately in her rearview mirror. All she could tell was that it was an SUV, big and dark.

The drive took nearly forty-five minutes. She lived in Edmonds, an attractive town built on land sloping down to Puget Sound. There was a ferry terminal there. Once upon a time, she’d enjoyed her view from the dining nook of the water and the arriving and departing green-and-white ferries. Now, every time she saw one, she imagined her sister standing at the railing on the car deck, looking at the churning water and choosing to climb over and cast herself into it.

That was what Beth thought had happened. She didn’t believe Rachel had fallen accidentally. The barbiturate level in her bloodstream wasn’t that high, for one thing. And it wasn’t as if you could fall over the substantial railing. Only at the open front and back of the car deck would it be possible to stumble and tip in, and even then Rachel would have had to step over the chain the ferry workers always fastened in lieu of a railing. And there were usually ferry workers hanging around the front and back of the boat.

No, in her heart she believed her sister had committed suicide. Beth wasn’t sure why she was so certain, given that she didn’t really know Rachel anymore.

Sicily had, only once, asked, “Do you think Mom really fell in by accident?”

Beth had had to swallow a lump in her throat. Now she cringed at the memory of what she’d said. “I don’t know.”

I really don’t know, she thought. I didn’t know my own sister. My niece. She hadn’t wanted to know them. She didn’t even want to know herself, not well enough to recognize the sometimes turbulent undercurrents of emotion she was determined to ignore.

She used the automatic garage-door opener and drove into her garage. She pushed the button again so that the door rolled down behind her, cutting off the SUV that had pulled into the driveway, leaving her momentarily alone.

Not for long. She wondered whether he would go away at all tonight. He’d have to, wouldn’t he? Probably he had a wife and kids waiting at home for him.

Please. Please leave me alone.

* * *

THE HOUSE WASN’T WHAT MIKE HAD expected. As cool as Ms. Beth Greenway was, he’d expected her to live in a stylish town house or condo with white carpet and ultramodern furnishings.

Her home was an older rambler, dating from the 1950s or 60s, at a guess. With night having fallen, as he approached the front door he couldn’t even see what color the clapboard siding was painted or how the yard was landscaped.

She didn’t so much as say, “Come in” when she opened the front door to him. Instead, she’d stepped back wordlessly, letting him past.

The interior surprised him. An eclectic collection of richly colored rugs were scattered on hardwood floors. Some of the rugs looked like antiques, the wear obvious; others appeared hand-hooked. He knew because his mother had experimented with the craft before moving on to tatting or God knows what. Her hobbies came and went like Seattle rainfall.

Ms. Greenway had bought or inherited antique furniture. Nice stuff, not real elaborate, not pretentious. Not heavy and dark—they were warm woods finished with sheen. The colors of the walls, upholstered furniture and blinds were all warm, too. Buttery-yellow, peach, touches of deep red and rust.

The house, Mike thought, was a startling contrast to the brittle, unfeeling—or emotionally repressed—woman who owned it. He could speculate all night on the psychology behind her choice to create this haven.

Ms. Greenway asked if he would like coffee.

What he’d really like was a meal. Breakfast was a long-ago memory, since he’d skipped both lunch and dinner. Just as, he realized, she had. What’s more, she’d emptied the meager contents of her stomach.

“Sure,” he said. “Ms. Greenway, you need to have a bite to eat. Why don’t we go in the kitchen and talk while you’re heating some soup. Something that’ll go down easy.”

She looked perplexed. “I’m not hungry.”

“You’re in shock,” he said gently. “Your body needs fuel.”

She gazed at him with the expression of someone translating laboriously from a foreign language. Sounding out each word, pondering it for meaning. At last her teeth closed on her lower lip and she nodded.

He ignored a jolt of lust and followed her through the living room into a kitchen that was open to a dining room. Again, he was struck by the hominess of cabinets painted a soft cream, walls a pale shade caught between peach and rust—maybe the color of clay pots that had aged outside. A glossy red ceramic bowl held fruit on the counter. A copper teakettle was on the stove. In the middle of the table, a cream-colored pitcher was filled with tulips, mostly striped in interesting patterns. A few petals had fallen onto the shining wood surface of the table.

Ms. Greenway had stopped in the middle of the kitchen and was standing there as if she had no memory of her original intentions. After a minute he went to her, gripped her shoulders to turn her around and steered her to one of the chairs around the table. When he pushed, she sat, staring up at him in bewilderment.

“You’re in no shape to be doing anything,” he said, more brusquely than he’d intended. He was mad at himself for letting her drive. She’d been a danger to everyone else on the road. “Stay put. I can heat some soup if you have any.”

Of course she tried to pop right back up. Her knees must not have been any too steady, because she fell back when he applied a little pressure. This time she stayed, not so much obediently, he suspected, as because she’d forgotten why she wanted to be on her feet.

He found cans of Campbell’s soup as well as some boxed macaroni and cheese and the like. The usual kid-friendly foods. He chose tomato, and added milk to make it cream of tomato. The milk was two percent, not skim; maybe because she thought her niece needed it? After a minute he decided to feed himself, too. He assembled and grilled two cheese sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, the way his mom had made them, then brought plates and bowls to the table. Instead of making coffee, he poured them both glasses of milk.

Ms. Greenway stared at what he’d put in front of her as if she didn’t know what to do with it.

“You need to eat,” he told her again, and watched as she finally lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth. “Good.”

He ate hungrily and went back to start coffee in the machine she had on the counter. She was eating way more slowly, but sticking to it with a sort of mechanical efficiency.

It bothered Mike that he couldn’t get a more certain read on her now than when he first set eyes on her. Initially he’d tagged her as a cold bitch. Beautiful, but unlikable. Fully capable of disposing of a kid she didn’t want and lying to cover up her crime. But he’d come to believe her shock was genuine. Unless she was an Oscar-worthy actress, it almost had to be.

But there were people who lied that well. He’d met a few. He couldn’t be sure about her.

And the one didn’t preclude the other. She could have killed the kid. Perhaps in a burst of rage or only irritation—planned the cover-up, and now was suffering a physical reaction to what she’d done. Or she could be frightened, after discovering that everyone didn’t totally buy into her story.

He wished he wasn’t attracted to her. That made him second-guess everything he did and said. Was he being nice because that was a good way to lower her guard, or because she was getting to him? Should he have gotten aggressive, in her face, hours ago?

Mike poured their coffee, put one of the mugs in front of her and took a sip of his own. Then he said, “I’d like to look at Sicily’s bedroom, but first I need to see any photos you have of her.”

Ms. Greenway carefully set down what remained of her sandwich. Her expression was momentarily stricken. She gave a stiff nod and stood. Mike let her go, managing only a few more swallows of coffee before she returned with a framed five-by-seven photograph.

“This is the most recent,” she said. “It was her fourth-grade school picture.”

So, over a year old. Kids changed a whole lot in a year.

He took it, both wanting to see her face and reluctant because now she’d become real to him. An individual.

There she was, a solemn-faced little girl who had apparently refused to smile when the photographer said, “Cheese!”

Sicily had a thin face and blond hair with straight bangs across her forehead, the rest equally bluntly cut above her shoulders. Her eyes were, he thought, hazel. She had her aunt’s cheekbones, which made her almost homely now, before she’d grown into them. No one would call her pretty. Her grave expression was unsettling, probably only because of what he knew about her family, but he couldn’t say she looked sad or turned inward. More as if she were trying to penetrate the photographer’s secrets. This was a child who tried hard to see beneath the surface.

After a moment he nodded. “May I borrow this?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay. Her room?”

She didn’t ask why he wanted to see it, which meant she’d guessed that he was suspicious.

“This way,” she said, voice polite but remote.

He was able to glance in rooms to each side as he followed her down the short hallway. The house was a three-bedroom two-bath, although none of the rooms were large. The first seemed to be a home office. Across the hall from it was a bathroom, tiled in white up to waist level and wallpapered above that. Beyond it had to be her bedroom and through it a doorway leading into a second bath. Next to the home office was Sicily’s room.

Ms. Greenway stood aside and let him go in. He was worried more than relieved to see signs of a young girl’s occupancy. He’d have been pissed if this whole thing was a hoax and Sicily Marks didn’t exist at all, but at least he wouldn’t have had to worry about her being dead in a shallow grave, either.

He wondered what this room had been used for before Sicily came to stay. Maybe nothing. The walls were white. The only furniture was a twin bed and a dresser. No curtains to soften the white blinds. No artwork. Only one throw rug, right beside the bed, and it was one of those hooked ones that might have been moved from elsewhere in the house. One of the sliding closet doors stood open, letting him see a few pairs of kid-size shoes in a neat row and exactly one dress hanging on a hanger beside a pink denim jacket. He crossed the room and opened each drawer on the dresser in turn. The contents were startlingly skimpy.

“She didn’t come with much.” The words were soft. Ashamed? “Mostly she’d outgrown what she did have.”

Sicily Marks still didn’t have much, he couldn’t help thinking.

“I didn’t use this room.” Ms. Greenway still hovered in the doorway. She was looking around. “We’re going to paint or wallpaper or something, but she hasn’t decided yet….” She didn’t finish.

That was believable, he supposed. “She into pink and purple? All that girly stuff?”

“I’m…not sure.” At least she hadn’t said “I don’t know.” “She seems to like red. But she did pick out a pink jacket. And some pink flats.”

Flats? His gaze fell to the shoes and he saw a pair of pink leather slip-ons.

“I think—” and she sounded sad “—Sicily hasn’t ever been able to buy new or really pick out what she liked. The whole idea that she can is taking her some getting used to. I wanted to buy her a whole new wardrobe in one outing, but she had to think so long about every single thing we bought, we haven’t gotten that far.”

She was talking about her niece in the present tense, which was good. People sometimes slipped up that way, when they were talking about someone they knew was dead.

Yeah, but he’d already concluded Beth Greenway could be one hell of a liar.

“Does she have a school bag?” he asked. “A binder where she might have written down her thoughts? Or does she keep a diary?”

“A diary?” She sounded slightly uncertain. “Not as far as I know. I’m sure she didn’t bring anything like that. Everything she owned was in one small suitcase that had lost a wheel. Her book bag is probably in my office. She usually does her homework there or at the dining-room table. We’re going to get her a desk for in here eventually….” Again her voice trailed off. She backed into the hall and turned toward the office.

Sicily was in fifth grade, she told him. Flipping through the girl’s binder, he learned that she was organized, had careful handwriting with generous loops but no flourishes, and was getting top-notch grades. Excellent! the teacher had scrawled on returned assignments. 99%. 100%. Fine work.

Behind him, Ms. Greenway said, “She’s been in eight schools so far. Rachel kept moving. Mostly around here, but she went to L.A. for a little while, then San Francisco. Somehow Sicily managed to do well in school everywhere she went.”

He caught the note of sadness in her voice. Something else, too. Guilt? Or was it grief, because she knew damn well Sicily wasn’t going to have a chance to do well in school ever again?

What he didn’t find was anything personal. No diary, no notes that might have been passed to or from another girl. Nothing helpful.

“Does she have friends?” he asked.

“I…” Ms. Greenway stopped and he saw that she’d closed her eyes. “I don’t think so. She says she has other kids to sit with for lunch, and another girl asked her to partner in badminton during gym class, but as far as I know no one has invited her over to play or anything like that.”

“You said she didn’t know how to play.”

“No.” Brown eyes that were both bleak and dazed met his. “She’s determined to help me. She wants to clean house and cook dinner. I feel like…like…”

“She’s trying to make you want to keep her?”

“Maybe.” She heaved a sigh. “Mostly, I think that’s what she’s used to doing. Taking care of her mom.”

He nodded. Mike had seen plenty of that kind of role reversal in families with a parent who was mentally ill, a drug addict or a drunk. Their kids grew up too fast. They learned quick that if there was going to be food on the table, they had to put it there. They also learned excellent cover-up skills; most kids were afraid of losing whatever family they did have. It was up to them to make sure school counselors, neighbors and social workers didn’t notice how dysfunctional their home situation really was.

He wondered what Sicily Marks had made of this house.

“All right,” he said abruptly. “I’ll need your parents’ phone number.”

She looked almost numb. With a nod, she turned and walked away down the hall. Turned out she had to get her smart phone, which she’d had on the table right beside her as she ate, so she could look up her own parents’ phone number.

He remembered already having jotted down their names. Laurence and Rowena Greenway. After adding the phone number, he remarked, “Your father’s name is familiar.”

“He’s in the financial news regularly,” she said with an astonishing lack of expression. “He was a big contributor to Governor Conley’s campaign.”

“Your parents have money, and your sister and her kid lived without?”

“I doubt they ever offered help, or that she would have taken it if they had.”

“Did they help you get started in your business?”

“No.” Flat. Final.

“Put you through college?”

She hesitated. “They did do that.” Then her eyes met his. “My relationship with them is hardly the point, is it?”

“Not if this turns out to be a stranger abduction.” Her flinch made him feel brutal. “More kids are snatched by members of their own families than by strangers, Ms. Greenway. I need to keep that in mind.”

Her lashes fluttered a couple of times. “I see,” she said, ducking her head.

He needed to talk to Sicily’s grandparents, start a search for her father. Find out more about her mother’s death. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to get away from this woman. But seeing how utterly alone she looked, he frowned.

“Is there someone you can call to be with you tonight?”

Her chin lifted. “That’s not necessary.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m always…” She stopped. He couldn’t help noticing that her hands were fisted so tight her knuckles showed white. “I’m comfortable by myself, Detective. Please don’t concern yourself.”

He’d been dismissed. Mike gave a brusque nod, said, “I’ll call in the morning, Ms. Greenway,” and left.