Flame Out (18 page)

Hale stopped short. “Your mother? You have a mom?”

I was offended. “A lot of people do, you know.”

Hale laughed. “I had thought you sprang full-grown from your father's knee. You never talked about her, that I remember.”

Explaining my mother was hard, starting from when my parents met, my dad arresting her at a peace rally. There were the homemade granola bars in my lunch bags long before they were fashionable, and the time she attended the policemen's ball wearing an Indian print dress. But those were easy compared to the big things: leaving us and
moving to Florida, and her selfish behavior at Kevin's funeral. The funeral still made me wince, but no way was I talking about it with Hale. Hale and Kevin had been close, but during the time Kevin was ill we hadn't been friends—we'd almost been enemies—and Hale missed the funeral.

“I should go,” I said, pointing at the exit. “Family awaits. Thanks again for putting the FBI at our disposal.”

“Consider it a recruitment trip. All this could be yours if you decide to return.”

“Even the parking space?”

“Well, maybe not everything.”

I
STAKED OUT MY HOUSE. TWO NEWS VANS WERE PARKED END
to end out front, and a reporter fiddling with his phone was talking to a bored cameraman who sat on the back bumper, smoking. It would be easy to get in the side door before they could get any footage. I could rescue my dad and Lucy from my mother, and everyone could sleep in their own bed tonight.

At the hotel, I discovered they didn't needed rescuing. My father was nowhere to be seen, and Lucy was sitting at the dinner table, quiet and still. Usually her silences worried me as they preceded all hell breaking loose, but this was different. She was listening to my mother.

“June had been begging for a treehouse for months,” my mother said. “For her seventh birthday, your granddad and I built one. Up she went, scaling the ladder, poking her head out of the window and waving down at us. But that wasn't high enough for our June.”

“It would be fun to climb to the top of a tree,” Lucy said, and I choked back a protest. As a child, playing in my treehouse was my favorite thing to do. As a parent, it would be a cold day in hell before I let my daughter hang ten feet above the ground on a couple of hammered-together two-by-fours.

“No, not to the top of the tree,” my mom said. “Onto the roof of the playhouse. She was having a grand old time right up 'til she realized she was stuck up there.” Mom made a cartoonish shocked face and Lucy laughed. “Your granddad and I were too big to fit through the hole, and we were almost ready to call a fire truck when your mom's cat decided to join her on the roof.”

“Were they both stuck?” Lucy asked.

“No, and we can thank the cat for that. It guided June down, showing her the safe places to step until she'd shimmied back to the ground. I'm convinced that cat is her spirit animal.”

“Grandma, can we build a treehouse this summer?” Lucy asked before noticing me. “Oh, hey, Mom.” She wore clothes I'd never seen, a striped shirt over a T-shirt, with a polka-dotted skirt and leggings that had the same pinks and oranges as the stripes in the shirt. It almost matched, a first for Lucy.

I reached out my hand to Lucy, who ignored it. “Ready to go home?”

“I like it here,” Lucy said. “I want to live here forever.”

“Because they have a pool?” I asked.

“A pool and Grandma.”

My mother beamed. “We've had a wonderful day, June. Lucy told me all about her best friend Kaylie and starting judo next year, and I told her stories of when you were a little girl.” She waved me over to a chair. “Let me make you a plate. It's mushroom risotto, and there's plenty.”

“That's OK, I'm not hungry.” A statement that was about the farthest you could get from the truth.

“Are you sure? Lucy isn't finished.” My daughter was pushing stuff around the plate rather than eating. My mother hadn't gotten smart to that trick yet.

The food smelled delicious, and I didn't want to leave without my father, so I dropped my bag onto a chair, draped my coat across the back, and took the plate my mother offered.

“Where's Dad?” I said between mouthfuls. It was very good.

“He went to visit Dave,” she said. “Your friend needs a father figure right now, and your Dad is as close as he might get.”

I didn't think any such thing was true, and I wondered if she had just made assumptions about Dave or my dad's emotional state. She liked to do that.

“And Dad's doing OK?”

My mother put down her fork. “No, he's not. We both know that, June.”

It wasn't hard to avoid conversation with Lucy next to me babbling about her day. She showed off her bathing suit and the artwork she and Grandma had done, where half the page was Lucy's abstract versions of houses and a sun, next to my mother's mellow beach scene, all soft blues and greens with a dolphin visible on the ocean. I was happy to let Lucy chatter away if it meant I didn't have to discuss the elephant in the room—or rather, the one that was out trying to keep Dave from hunting down Bernie Lawler and thrashing him.

“I want to go to Florida and visit the dolphins,” Lucy said. I shot a look at my mother, but Lucy had captured her complete attention, babbling on about flamingos, Grandma, swimming pools, and summer before suddenly changing subjects.

“I made dessert,” Lucy announced. She ran for the kitchen and returned with three bowls of strawberry rhubarb crumble topped with vanilla ice cream. It was perfect, if a little early in the season.

“It's always in season at Whole Foods,” my mother said. Normally I would have tried to knock my mother off her high horse, pointing out the gas she burned driving to Colonie to buy organic produce, but Lucy knelt next to me, bobbing up and down on her chair, and asked, “Do you like it, Mom? Grandma said it was your favorite.”

I'm not a dessert person, but the tartness of the rhubarb made it perfect. “I love it! You did a great job.”

“Grandma gave me the recipe so me and you can make it any time we want.”

“That reminds me of the first time I served this to June. June and her little pals took their bikes out . . .” My mother continued telling a story of how my friends and I rode our bikes down a hill as fast as we could, splashing through a mud puddle in the final stretch. My bike got stuck and I tipped over, getting completely coated in a layer of mud.

“Which delighted her,” my mother said. “I had to hose her off outside. I have a picture of her, wet and happy, hanging above my desk at home.”

“And then we ate dinner,” I said, “and you served this to comfort me.”

“It was mostly consolation for your sister, who was devastated that she hadn't fallen in the mud puddle, too. Oh, I forgot, your sister and I talked.” Mom hesitated, and I waited for the message, no doubt a mix of New Age and sentimental. “She offered to come out, support your father.”

I was surprised. Catherine's relationship with my father was about as good as mine with my mother. “Maybe she should hold off.”

It was getting late. I called my father. I'd thought he might pick up—he kept his cell phone for an emergency, and this situation certainly qualified. No answer. I called Dave, but he didn't pick up either. That worried me. He always kept his phone close by, even at night. Finally, I tried Hale.

“You with Dave?” I asked.

“Couldn't raise him. Worried?”

“He's with my father, which could be . . . trouble.”

“Aw, they'll be fine,” he said. “Your dad had a hard day. It's good for him to help out Dave a bit, let your dad get his mind off his own troubles.”

I hung up. Lucy was about twenty minutes away from collapse. I could take her home, but Dad had borrowed Mom's car, and I didn't want to leave her stranded. We were staying, if not for the night, than certainly until my dad returned.

“I'll get changed,” Lucy announced, returning moments later with pajamas with purple sheep frolicking across them.

“How many outfits did you buy her?” I asked my mother.

“A week's worth.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Consider the clothes overdue Christmas gifts.”

Lucy climbed into bed, and my mother pulled out an iPad. Lucy tapped the screen, picking a bedtime story. I nestled next to her, reading, Lucy flipping the pages when I proved inept until finally dropping off to sleep, despite being in a strange place. I crept out to the living room, desperately hoping that Dad had returned. He hadn't.

Feigning sleep seemed like a good option, and my mother was willing to give me an out: “You are welcome to take the bed in Lucy's room tonight if you want.”

Never one to back down from a challenge, I forced myself to sit on the couch next to her. The fluffy cushions looked plush, but that was a lie; the stuffing was packed so tightly it was almost painful to sit on.

“Do you want some tea?” Mom offered. I agreed. She walked the ten feet to the kitchen, but we both remained silent, and she might as well have been in the far wing of a mansion.

I spoke first. “Did you have to buy all the kitchenware?”

“Oh, no. They gave me all the china and most of the cooking equipment. I went out and picked up an aluminum skillet—the nonstick kind they had will chip off and give you cancer.” She paused. “I'm going to gift it to your father when I leave since it sounds like he has embraced cooking.”

I snorted. “If you use that term loosely.” I felt bad for putting my father down, as if I'd betrayed him. “Not that I'm any great shakes. But I suspect he's gotten most of his recipes from the 1972 edition of a Betty Crocker cookbook.”

“He very well might have,” Mom said. “I believe my aunt gave it to us as a wedding gift, noting all her favorite recipes, most of which involved suspending things in Jell-O. It's probably still tucked somewhere in the kitchen.”

The kettle whistled, and she poured two cups of a spicy sweet tea, a scent I connected with my childhood.

“Sweet, the way you like it,” she said, handing me my mug. I hadn't added sugar to my drinks since I got out of high school. Not that Mom knew.

We sipped our drinks quietly, but by the way she frowned, I could tell she was thinking. I was seconds away from having a heart-to-heart about my Dad, or worse, discussing our mother/daughter relationship. I needed to take the offensive.

“What can you tell me about Luisa Lawler?” I asked.

My plan worked. “Well,” she said, “if she did what they say she did, she must have hated her husband.”

“But . . . but why wouldn't she get a divorce?” I pulled a leg onto the couch, a barrier between me and my mother. “It
was
done. She could have moved to Florida, like you. The two of you could have formed a commune.”

“That would have been a very seventies thing to do, and we were modern women of the eighties.” My mother quirked a smile. I'd never seen her make a joke at her own expense.

“But June,” she said, “for a lot of women, the awful ones are the hardest to leave. The men hunt you down and they hurt you, and if they have a powerful family—like Bernie did—it was practically impossible.”

“Did he hit her?”

“I wouldn't have stood for physical abuse.” She reached forward and grabbed her mug. “Luisa was always watched, though, first by her mother and then by her husband and his family, handed from babysitter to babysitter. I knew her from the Hopewell Falls Hope Committee. You would think a group dedicated to running bake sales and hanging bunting on streetlights at Christmas would be above reproach, but sometimes Jake Medved would stop by claiming to be interested in our work.” She raised an eyebrow. “Do you really
think an ex-con bartender had any interest in how many Arbor Day sponsors his sister-in-law secured?”

“So she missed a lot of meetings?” I asked.

My mother tilted her head. “Not too many, now that I think about it, but she had to push hard to attend. Luisa wanted nothing more than to dye hundreds of Easter eggs or stick American flags on cupcakes, and I would have been happy to leave her to it.”

I had a memory of my mother sitting up late at the dining room table gluing yarn hair onto clothespins for a fall carnival game, muttering, “I don't need this bullshit.” She still made the most clothespin people. I could get why some people might not enjoy it—I certainly wouldn't—but it wasn't like Mom was chained to the chair and forced to continue.

“Mom, I was alive and reasonably aware during this time. Luisa had options.”

“Not many. When your father and I divorced, he could have chosen to make my life miserable—cutting me off from you and your sister, ruining me financially. But when you were under someone's thumb, like Luisa—back then it was almost impossible to pull off. In those days no fault divorces didn't exist.”

“But if he was as bad as you say he was, surely someone—Dad, the courts, someone—would have helped her get free.”

“Bernie didn't beat her. He controlled her and treated her like a child, but law enforcement and the courts would never intervene in that. To get away from that type of situation, Luisa would have had to be aggressive, and Luisa? She'd do anything to avoid people getting mad at her.” My mother pulled her legs up so she was sitting Indian style. “Sounds like hell to me, June.”

I had to agree. In my work I'd learned the importance of silence, both to keep secrets and to let criminals have time to run their mouths, but having to keep my mouth shut in every area of my life would drive me crazy.

“So you found out how emotionally abusive Bernie was at the trial? The way Dave's Aunt Natalya described it in court, Luisa barely left the house.”

My mother leaned forward. “Luisa confided in me. We were paired up stuffing scarecrows for the hayride, and she mentioned how she wished she could come to more meetings, but Bernie wouldn't let her. After she disappeared, it came out that she'd gone to a lot of people, telling them how much of a tyrant her husband was.” She paused. “Although now that I think about it . . . if she set him up, she might have been planting the information.” Her eyes got wide. “Everybody seemed to know . . . because she told them.”

Mom was absolutely right. What I still didn't get was why Luisa had resorted to such extreme measures.

“There are two odd things about this situation, June, details that make me believe someone else came up with the plot.” My mother took a sip of her tea. “First of all, as I said, Luisa avoided confrontation.”

“Ah,” I said, “but this was about as far as you could get from direct confrontation. I don't have all the details, but it was more a sideswipe, a sneak attack against her husband. The perfect option for someone who wanted to get out without having a confrontation.”

“However, my dear Watson”—Mom held up her finger—“there was the blood.”

“We now think the blood in the basement came from Vera,” I said. I didn't mention the blood we'd found in the bathroom of the Lawler house. That was law enforcement's secret until Annie got DNA results.