Once Upon a Day (39 page)

“Was this what our own dog looked like? I don’t remember the dog myself, but Jimmy has mentioned him.”

“Close. There’s another one over by the corner that’s more like Tigger.”

Dorothea walked over and examined that one for a moment. “I just thought of something I do need to see,” she said, looking out the back window. “The grounds.”

“Good idea. I think you’ll like it. It’s really beautiful.”

They walked around the garden together, with Dorothea stopping to admire the lemon, avocado and fig trees, and touch and sniff nearly every flower she saw. “I love flowers,” she kept saying, and Lucy sensed that wherever she’d been living, they didn’t have a garden. They’d made it all the way out to the guesthouse and back, when Dorothea said, “But where is the pool?”

Lucy swallowed. “You remember that?”

“No, but Jimmy does.”

Lucy pointed to the cypress trees that had grown large over the years. “The pool used to be there. We got rid of it when you were two.”

“May I ask why?”

The expression on Dorothea’s face was so serious. Lucy wondered what she was thinking. “Yes,” Lucy said, “and I’ll tell you, but first, I think we need to go inside and have some tea.”

Lucy made two cups of herbal tea. They sat down at the breakfast table, and Lucy felt herself becoming nervous. But of course she had to tell her daughter about that day. If Charles had never told her the origin of her breathing problems, Lucy would have to. Dorothea deserved to know.

She kept it as short as possible, and she left out all of the gruesome details. She said they were in the pool, the robbers came, and the robbers put Dorothea in her bedroom closet until they were finished.
But it took time, and while Dorothea was in that closet she’d gotten very scared. Afterward, she was afraid of the dark, and her heart started racing. She’d lose consciousness when she couldn’t catch her breath, not often, but sometimes.

“A closet,” Dorothea said. She seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Was this the same room you showed me with the soft carpet?”

“No. You were only two and you were still in the nursery. It was a smaller room, but still nice.”

“In this other room, was the closet next to my dresser?”

Lucy was very surprised, but she forced her voice to stay calm. “No, but the robbers put your dresser in front of the closet door, so you wouldn’t get out.” She paused and sipped her tea. “You don’t remember this, do you?”

“Jimmy said he thought I was inside of a dresser drawer.”

“During the robbery?” Lucy was confused. “So you already knew about it?”

When Dorothea didn’t answer, Lucy told her to take a deep breath. Her daughter’s bright eyes had gone flat, and her mouth had fallen into an expressionless line. “We can stop talking about this now. Why don’t you tell me some of the questions you came to ask me?”

“Jimmy also said you were lying on the floor, cut to pieces.” Dorothea’s voice was hollow. “He said you were dead.”

“But I’m not dead, am I?” Lucy said, as brightly as she could manage. “I did get hurt during the robbery, but I got better.”

“You were hurt very badly though?” Dorothea looked at her. “You were stabbed many times?”

“Okay, I don’t want to lie to you. I did get hurt and I ended up in the hospital for months. I was still hurt for a long time after that. This is why my leg goes out every once in a while. I have a cane for when it gets really bad, but most days I get by just fine.”

“So it really happened. Everything Jimmy has been saying. It’s really true.” Her daughter was talking more to herself than to Lucy,
but she sounded devastated, and Lucy wished she understood what this meant to her.

She motioned at Dorothea’s cup. “Why don’t you drink some of your tea? I could make us some lunch too. You must be getting hungry.”

Dorothea didn’t answer. She was staring at the patio door. After another minute, she said, “Did Father really get angry when you worked?”

“Yes, but he—”

“Jimmy said he even cut your hand to keep you from working.” There were tears standing in Dorothea’s eyes, but she was blinking them back. “Is this also true?”

“No,” Lucy said quickly. “Jimmy’s right that I injured my hand, but your father didn’t do it.” She felt like she had no choice. She had to defend him, for Dorothea’s sake. “He was very upset about it. He was always worried about my safety after the robbery. This was why he didn’t want me to work, because he was afraid something would happen to me.”

“Because he loved you so much?”

Part of Lucy wanted to scream, No, he didn’t love me. Of course he didn’t love me. If he’d loved me, he wouldn’t have taken my children away. He wouldn’t have ruined my life.

Dorothea was staring at her, waiting for the answer.

“I don’t know,” Lucy finally said. “But it was a long time ago, and I—”

“Please tell me what you really think.” Dorothea had regained her composure, but she’d wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were her only comfort. As if, Lucy thought, she was a motherless child, which she’d been, hadn’t she? It was something they had in common. A strange, sad connection between herself and her daughter.

“Please,” Dorothea repeated. “It’s very important.”

“In your father’s own way, I think he did love me.” Lucy inhaled. “But he kept me away from you and Jimmy for all these
years. I don’t know how someone who ever loved me could do that.”

Dorothea sat up even straighter. “Thank you.” Her voice was a whisper. “I appreciate your honesty.”

Her daughter was quiet then, but her confusion and loneliness were so obvious to Lucy that she couldn’t help it, she stood up and went to her. As she leaned down and put her arms around Dorothea, Lucy realized that the part of her fantasy where her daughter understood everything that had happened before was one of the stupidest thoughts she’d ever had. She wished Dorothea didn’t have to know about any of this. She wished she could tell her something so wise it would all make sense to her.

It was the first time she’d hugged Dorothea, and Lucy wanted to cry when the girl didn’t pull away, but instead, leaned her face against Lucy’s neck.

They stayed like that for a minute, maybe more. Finally Dorothea said, “Will you go somewhere with me? It’s very important.”

“Of course,” Lucy said, leaning back, looking at her. “Wherever you want.”

“I think we should leave for St. Louis as soon as possible. I don’t want him to have to wait any longer.”

“We’re going to Missouri?” She was very surprised. “That’s where I grew up.”

“I know. My brother went there to look for your family.”

“Jimmy did that?” Lucy’s heart was in her throat, thinking about her little boy. That she would get to see him too was like a miracle. This day was changing everything.

Dorothea nodded. “I feel as if I’ve betrayed him. I don’t know why I couldn’t listen to what he was so desperate to tell me.”

Lucy thought for a moment. “He’s the reason you’re here though, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“You were trying to help him somehow?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be able to help him now?”

“I hope so.”

“Well, I think what you’ve done for Jimmy required a lot of courage. I think he must know that he’s very important to you.” Lucy waited until she caught Dorothea’s eye, until she was sure her daughter would hear this. “I hope your father is proud of the wonderful girl he raised.”

O
N THAT SAME
Tuesday, while Lucy and Dorothea were preparing to go to St. Louis, Stephen was arriving in Tuma, New Mexico.

He’d started his search for Dorothea at the hospital on Monday afternoon. When he asked Jimmy if he’d seen her, Jimmy told him she’d come by that morning to say she was going home for a while. “She said she’s going to find out as much as she can about what happened to our mother,” Jimmy explained. Then he showed Stephen the California book. “She left this for me, to look at until she returns.” He smiled shyly. “She said if I keep looking at it, I’ll see what she knows I used to be, just a little boy on the beach.”

When Stephen stood up to leave, Jimmy shook his hand and thanked him for everything he’d done for his sister. Stephen felt like a piece of shit, but he said, “You’re welcome.”

He rushed to the Greyhound station, hoping to catch her, but
she was already gone. So he went home, brewed a pot of coffee for his Thermos and hit the road. He still had the address in Tuma from the envelope Dorothea had given him the first day. The town was so small, it wasn’t on his U.S. map, but he knew it was in the northern part of the state. The only obvious way to get there was across Missouri and Kansas and then down to the border. When he arrived in New Mexico, he’d buy a state map.

He drove all night and most of the next day without stopping. Finally, when he got into Tuma, he pulled off to the side of the road and let himself sleep for a few hours. It was four o’clock, and he set the alarm on his watch for 8:00. He didn’t want to get there too late, but he was also afraid of getting there before she did. He wished he’d thought to get a Greyhound schedule. There wasn’t a Greyhound bus station here, and the local bus stop was nothing more than a sign by the side of the road.

He startled awake and realized he had no idea how to get to her house. There were exactly three streets in downtown Tuma, and only one place that was still open: a convenience store/gas station. He went in there, thinking his simple request for directions would get a simple response.

The clerk was an older woman. She was shaking her head before he even finished talking. “You can’t go to Charles O’Brien’s place. He’s a recluse, know what that is?”

“Yes, but—”

“We never tell anybody how to get there. He asked us not to, so we don’t.”

Stephen suspected she meant
pays us not to.
“Look, I’m a friend of the family. I really need to get there tonight.”

“Nah you ain’t. That family got no friends.” “I know both of his children.”

“You do, do you?” She sat down the box of candy bars she’d been unpacking. “How?”

“I’m his son’s doctor. I’ve been treating him in St. Louis.”

She looked him up and down, but her demeanor changed as he
hoped it would. This was what was left of his medical practice: using it to impress people in convenience stores.

After he showed her his AMA member card, she finally gave him directions. Good thing he hadn’t thrown it away.

It was twenty miles outside of town, and most of the road wasn’t paved. The Checker was designed to take abuse, but neither Stephen nor his cab were used to anything like this. On both sides of the road were steep cliffs. He could hear coyotes howling, and all around, he saw the blinking of what seemed like animal eyes: deer, owls, maybe even mountain lions. He’d never seen a clearer sky. The stars were so bright they looked three times their usual size.

The path to Dorothea’s house was even trickier. This was probably intentional, to keep away everyone that the convenience clerk didn’t stop first. He felt like he was driving through a war zone because there was a crater-size hole in the path every ten feet or so. But what would O’Brien do if someone got stuck? Unleash a cage full of wild dogs, and then push the car off the cliff?

As he bumped along, he wondered what Dorothea had told her father about why she’d come back. Nothing, he felt sure, but that didn’t keep him from hoping he didn’t have to deal with O’Brien.

He finally reached the top of the winding path and there was the house. It was even bigger than he’d predicted, but he’d forgotten to factor in that a millionaire out here could afford a lot more house than a millionaire in a city. It was two stories, shaped like an L, with a giant front porch made of stone with a roof supported by wooden beams as thick as tree trunks. There were fourteen windows across the downstairs floor and as many on the second floor. There was one light on in the middle of the upstairs, but the rest of the place was completely dark. He wondered if the light was in Dorothea’s room.

The entire time he was driving, he kept thinking that what he’d done to her was really unforgivable. It killed him to imagine how she must have felt, not just Sunday night, but the next morning, quietly packing her clothes (probably into grocery bags, since she
didn’t have a suitcase and she hadn’t taken his), wrapping up her toothbrush, brushing her hair alone. Writing him that letter. Figuring out how to get to the hospital, and then the bus station. Leaving the city that he knew she was starting to love to come back to this place, which seemed as desolate as the surface of the moon.

It was unforgivable, but he had to ask for her forgiveness anyway. He got out of the cab.

There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the heavy wood door. And then he pounded. And pounded again. The side of his hand was hurting when he finally accepted that no one was going to answer.

Shit. If he turned the knob and the door was unlocked, he could just go in, but he wasn’t desperate enough yet to risk being shot as a trespasser. He decided to walk around and see if there was another door he could pound on. Maybe they were in the back, and they couldn’t hear him. It was possible in a house this size.

He found the back entrance—after walking right into a shrub—but pounding there yielded nothing either. He was just heading back to the front, to think about what to do, when he saw a small building in the middle of a field. He might have thought it was just a storage shed, except he saw a light on. Maybe it was a maid’s quarters or the gardener’s house.

If it was the maid, she could take him back to the main house and let him in to see Dorothea. If she was reluctant, he’d offer to pay her. It seemed to work well for O’Brien.

He was at the door of the building, an adobe with one or two rooms, tops. When he knocked this time and nobody answered, he decided to see if he could just walk in. The maid wasn’t likely to shoot him, and maybe she was asleep.

The adobe was unlocked. “Hello?” he said loudly, as he pushed the door open. He didn’t want to startle anybody.

As he walked into the room, he saw a gray-haired man lying on a brown leather couch, covered in several blankets. The man had his
back to Stephen, but Stephen could tell he was asleep by the regular sound of his breathing.