“Who paid for his placement?” Stephen asked.
“Mr. Reynolds told me it was part of his insurance and I should just leave him as long as he was happy. I didn’t think he was, though. The whole place didn’t seem happy. It seemed kind of – I don’t know how to explain it – like I was always in some alternate reality.”
“It’s convenient that you got a job there,” Josie noted.
“It was smart,” she answered. “I didn’t have anybody beating my door down wanting to hire me because I was a high school graduate. Dad still had title to the house near town. I thought he might get better if he lived with me. Dad and Emily spent their days together, Mr. Reynolds pretty much just kind of left everyone alone, and dad and I went home at night. Some days felt perfect and some were scary and some were boring. I didn’t have anyone else. Do you understand?”
Josie understood the path Amelia had wandered down all too well. They both lived with their fathers while Emily stood between them. The woman was a placeholder in their lives, a point of reference.
“What a waste,” Josie murmured. “It would have been so easy to bring Emily home.”
Stephen cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable sitting with these ladies as they paddled down the River Styx. They needed to get ashore and find a point to all this.
“Amelia, sweetie, do you know who was responsible for Emily’s commitment or anything specific about her condition? I think we’d be better served by knowing that.”
“I don’t,” Amelia shook her head.
“You don’t seem to know much, do you?” Josie noted.
“Listen, I used everything I had to get my dad to you: all my vacation time and all my money. I think about it now and it was bizarre; all that planning and secrecy just to give you some pathetic stuff. He rolled and unrolled that bag a hundred times. He said he knew they’d be looking for it. Stupid.”
Amelia dropped her chin and let her head swing back and forth. Her voice cracked. Josie thought she looked like some nocturnal animal making its way through the dark looking for a place to hide. But when Amelia looked up that night creature was all teeth and claws, ready just in case she found something to dig into.
“You can’t be all passive aggressive like it was our fault that you and your dad didn’t know about Emily. For all I know your father put her in there. What do you think about that?”
“My dad wasn’t even in the country when she disappeared,” Josie objected.
“Doesn’t matter now. Does it?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Josie countered.
“And I’m not apologizing for anything. My dad is dead and Emily is alive. You should be grateful.”
Amelia grabbed her purse and took out an envelope. From inside the restaurant came the sounds of running water and dishes clattering. When Amelia spoke again, her voice was close to a whisper.
“There are only four people in residence now. Only Emily can still be engaged. There’s me, and another full-time aide, and a caretaker who lives on site. There’s Mr. Reynolds, of course. He lives in a larger house out back.”
“One person on each shift to take care of four sick people?” Josie asked.
“It’s a better ratio than most nursing homes,” Amelia assured her.
“Who owns that place?” Stephen asked. “Reynolds?”
“My paycheck comes from a place called MPS. It’s headquartered in Virginia.”
Amelia slid the envelope into the middle of the table. Stephen picked it up. He took out the pages inside, perused them and handed them off to Josie. She scanned the top sheet and then counted quietly as she flipped through them.
“Twenty-five resident admission forms.” Josie raised her brow and pursed her lips. “So?”
“There are twenty-five forms. Twenty-one of those people are dead. I didn’t think anything of it, but my dad wouldn’t let it go. He was obsessed with their deaths. He kept saying they were disappeared on purpose. He didn’t say these people were killed. He didn’t say they died. He said they were disappeared.”
“But couldn’t that sort of behavior be part of his illness?” Stephen asked.
“That’s what I thought, but then I realized that in all the time I worked there I never saw a visitor. I never took a phone call for a resident. There were no letters. We never got new residents. Half the time Mr. Reynolds was at his house because there wasn’t much to do in the main house.
“One day I was in the office when everyone was sleeping and I was bored out of my skull. I know I shouldn’t have, but I went into the files. I figured if I knew something about the residents I could talk to them, maybe jog their memories. Those forms were all I found.”
Suddenly, there was a bang from inside the restaurant. Three heads turned. Stephen stood up, straddling his little bench. Amelia put her hands on the arms of the chair as if she was ready to launch. Josie collected the papers and put them under the table just as the screen door flew open and the burly cook threw a skinny kid down the stairs. The kid yelled something then scrambled up only to fall again. They all held their breaths, anticipating that he would come their way. When he disappeared round the corner of the building, when the screen door slammed shut again, they relaxed. Josie brought out the papers and spread them in front of her.
“These aren’t even proper admission forms.” She pushed one back at Stephen. “There is no contact information, no social security numbers, no next of kin, no personal information of any kind, even about their medical history. There’s just a name and date, time of admission, and a phone number.”
“Did you ever call the number?” Stephen asked.
“No,” Amelia admitted. “I didn’t know who I would be talking to. It might be someone who would report me to Mr. Reynolds or sue me or worse.”
“But you made copies,” Josie said. “There had to be a reason you did that.”
“At first I was just curious, but then I got spooked. No one was admitted between 1973 and 1987 except Emily. See? January, 1987 and after that no one.”
“She disappeared in August of 1986. Where was she for those six months?” Josie wondered, before addressing Amelia directly. “Do you think she ran away with your dad?”
“No, my mom and dad were just married then,” Amelia said. “And look, there’s no admission form for my dad. There’s no paperwork on him at all and he was living there for a long time,” Amelia countered. “Even if they considered him an employee and took over his care out of gratitude, there should be something.”
“Your dad is more than a little bit of a mystery, isn’t he?” Stephen chuckled even though he was befuddled. “If what you say is true and the dates on these forms are correct, and we’re assuming all these people were adults when they came to live at the house, that means by the late eighties they were all very old. Is it so odd that there would be deaths?”
“But when they passed away they were just gone,” Amelia insisted. “I never heard about a funeral. There isn’t a cemetery on the grounds. I never saw a mortuary car or a hearse. Once I asked where their belongings were in case anyone came looking and Mr. Reynolds said he sent everyone’s things to storage. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“We can’t make a judgment if we don’t know the operating procedures,” Stephen said.
“My father couldn’t bear the idea that Emily would simply disappear one day. That’s what this is all about.” She looked from Stephen to Josie, tired and ready to get on with things. “Look, I totally get that what we did seems nuts. I’ve asked myself a thousand times if I’m insane, too, but then I look at those papers. I didn’t know most of those people but Emily is real, then you were real, so I figure my dad couldn’t have been a total lunatic.”
Once more the screen door opened but this time the cook called out to Amelia that they would be closing. She called back her thanks and told him they wanted nothing. After that, no one at the table spoke and no one contemplated Ian Francis’ insane legacy more solemnly than Josie. She was thinking about Ambrose Patriota’s contention that a portion of the citizenry lived in their own reality, causing harm, creating turmoil, living in shadows, and communing with spooks and ghouls who walked among us.
“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” Josie murmured.
“You owe him something.” Amelia’s words came out on a wistful sigh. “Without him, you never would have known about Emily.”
“Amelia, your dad was a troubled man.” Josie picked up the papers and tapped them on the table until they were neat and even again. She put them in front of Amelia. “I will always be grateful that he led me here. I will always be sad that your dad died without knowing I found Emily. Above all, I understand your dedication to him but you are going to waste your life chasing his demons.”
“The way you wasted yours looking for Emily?” Amelia asked. “I mean, she could have been dead for all you knew. Were you ever going to give up?”
Josie shook her head. “I would have wondered about her until my dying day, but my life had moved on. Yours should, too.”
“So my dad is gone like those other people? Is that okay with you? I mean what if it was Emily?”
“The girl has a point.” Stephen looked at Josie and then gave Amelia a sympathetic smile.
“If something is wrong at Ha Kuna House wouldn’t you want someone to save Emily if they could?” Amelia pressed.
Josie was not immune to her pleas. When she was younger, she had been so sure Emily was just around the corner. The years went on, the corner was never turned. Amelia was in the first throes of her crusade. Josie needed to put her energy into her own family. Emily was right in front of her. She could live without knowing what had happened all those years ago. What she needed was to get her mom home. That would be Josie’s closure. Sadly, Amelia would have to find her own. Still, Josie knew there was something she could do to help. The question was what.
While Josie considered her options, Amelia took the papers and put them back in the envelope. When she was done, she looked up and Josie was reminded of the old woman in that Washington alley: homeless, alone, shocked to find herself sleeping in a heap of trash, stunned to find herself a piece of trash. That’s when Josie made her decision.
“I think you should get back to Washington, claim your dad’s body, and bury him. I’ll pay for it all.” She reached into her purse, took out a card and wrote her private number on it. “You can reach me here. I don’t want you staying at The Robert Lee Hotel again. Send me the receipts for the trip, the mortuary, whatever you need. It’s the least I can do, but that’s all I can do.”
Josie pushed back her chair. Stephen took his cue and stood up. Amelia still sat where she was, defeated, too tired to beg any longer. Josie put her hand on Amelia’s shoulder, bent down, balanced on the balls of her feet, and looked Amelia in the eye.
“I’m going to be taking my mom home with me. No one will be able to hurt her.”
“She’ll always think I’m her daughter. That will never change,” Amelia muttered.
“I will make it change.”
Amelia blinked. She looked as if she could barely hold herself upright. Josie’s hand dropped from Amelia’s shoulder to her hand. Her fingers were cold and shaking.
“You need some rest. You need to put this in perspective,” Josie offered.
“We’re both daughters. I don’t know that there’s much more to say than that.”
Josie took a deep breath and withdrew her hand. Amelia still clutched the envelope and Josie let her eyes rest on it. Twenty-five people. Twenty-one of them were dead. What was she supposed to do with that? Her plate was full: Hannah, Archer, her practice, and now Emily miraculously in the mix. Amelia was pushing it all aside and demanding space for her and her father. That this girl may be part and parcel of his insanity made it all the sadder.
“Go away from here, Amelia,” Josie said as she stood up.
Stephen gave Amelia a kiss atop her head and then they both walked away leaving the girl to ponder her future at a rusted table in the middle of a patch of dirt surrounded by paradise. When they were almost at the car, Stephen asked:
“And what are you going to do, my girl?”
Josie took a few more steps, yanked open the car door and just before she got in and slammed it shut she said:
“I’m going to court. Want to come?”
***
“This is unacceptable, Eugene. This is really unacceptable.” Ambrose paced in front of Eugene Weller who, for the first time in his career, did not allow his gaze to follow the senator’s every move. He sat on the couch like a dunce, mortified by his teacher’s ridicule. He was sick to his stomach but the senator didn’t let up. “This is nothing, Eugene, and you know that. You panicked because of a list of documents released to the archives.”
“There are standing requests by the public for anything referring to those programs, Senator–” Eugene began but Ambrose silenced him.
“It is a small public, Eugene. Miniscule. The general public has far more to worry about than things that happened three decades ago.”
“But the phone–” Eugene started once more only to stop as Ambrose threw up his hands.
“A dead man’s cell phone that, I might point out, is in your possession. Put it in a drawer. Throw it away. Never think about it again. I don’t know why you are fixated on this, but I promise you, if you keep this up, your concern will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Eugene twitched. He colored a less-than-pleasing shade of burgundy. Ambrose Patriota’s exasperation made no sense. Eugene had meticulously created a timeline and presented multiple scenarios of the impact on Senator Patriota should this information find its way into the public domain, but the senator refused to even look at it.
“The phone was purchased in Hawaii. On Molokai. The woman who answered is Ian Francis’s daughter. His daughter, sir.”
“And my children have cellphones, Ambrose countered. “You cannot read any implied action into the fact that she answered it or that she called you back. You are the one poking at a hornet’s nest, not her. She might be wondering why someone had her father’s phone, called her, and did not speak. And, if she is in Hawaii, then she has already chosen not to pursue the matter of her father’s death. That means she does not want to call attention to it anymore than we do. That also means that she probably has no idea what her father was up to. Perhaps now she’s rethinking everything because of you.”