Prospect Street (12 page)

“How would you know? You lived with a man for fifteen years and didn't know anything about
him!
”

“Well, I've lived with you for fourteen, and I know I won't tolerate your blatant rudeness to other people.”

Remy glared at her. Then she got up and started back down the street toward their house.

Silence fell over the table. Faith realized she hadn't eaten more than a bite or two of her egg sandwich, and now she'd lost her appetite.

“I'm not mad at you, Mom,” Alex said at last.

She squeezed his hand, but she didn't trust herself to speak.

 

Remy passed the row house and kept walking. She was too angry to go home and unpack. A wild animal was loose in her body, and she could feel it clawing and struggling to get out. If it escaped while she was in her room, she wasn't sure what she would do.

She was headed for Georgetown University. Her mother had insisted on a driving tour of the neighborhood, and she had recited facts about the university as if Remy might possibly be interested. She wasn't, of course. It was just one more way her mother was trying to make the move “fun.” As if living near a university could possibly make life more endurable.

If they still lived in the house in McLean, she would probably just be waking up from a sleepover with Megan and her other friends. She supposed she might still be invited to sleep-overs in McLean, but she wasn't going. All those girls knew about her life. About her awful father, and her mother, who thought public school in the District would toughen Remy so she could face the cold, cruel world.

Well, she was tough enough already to face anything. She had even thought about running away, just to show Faith what
was what, but she really didn't know where to go. The only place she wanted to be was back home, and that was out of the question.

She needed a time machine. Maybe Alex, the new light of Faith's life, would invent one so he could send Remy away. He would like that.

She walked several blocks before she started to pay attention to where she was. Prospect Street was one row house after another. All old. All small. All completely different from the house she'd grown up in. She came to a corner and thought about turning downhill toward M Street, but turning required energy, and climbing back up the hill when she got good and ready to come home would require more. So she kept walking toward the university.

Two young men exercising a dog were coming toward her. The dog was huge, the size of the wardrobe boxes she'd used to pack her hanging clothes, a box with black curly fur and a lolling pink tongue. The dog made her think about Guest and the kittens, and she remembered with a pang that she had planned to check on them after breakfast. Faith had promised to buy cat food.

The dog seemed perfectly tame and friendly, but the moment he got close enough to lunge at her, he did. Paws on her shoulders, he shoved her backward until she tumbled to the ground, where he proceeded to lick her face with big, nasty swipes of his tongue.

She screeched, more from surprise than fear, covering her face. “Get this thing off me!”

By now one of the young men was hauling hard on the leash. The other had thrown himself between Remy and the dog and was trying to pry the dog loose.

“Whoa, Bear. Cut it out, stupid!”

Bear sank to his haunches, and Remy scrambled away. “He attacked me!”

“Nah. He's just too friendly for his own good.” The man without the leash offered his hand to help her to her feet, but Remy refused it. She stood on shaking legs.

“If you can't control him, you shouldn't have him on the street.”

“He didn't hurt you, did he?”

She did a quick assessment of body parts. “No…”

“I'm sorry.” The young man grinned. He had blond hair and big brown eyes, and the grin was picture-perfect. “I should have figured he'd do that. He likes pretty girls.”

She was momentarily tongue-tied. She smiled to cover up the lapse.

“I'm taking him home,” the other man said. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and unlike his friend, he wasn't smiling. “I'm tired of hauling him off people. We ought to take him back to the pound.” He turned and started in the opposite direction.

Remy found her voice. “Pound?”

“Yeah. Selim's sister works there. They were going to put Bear down, and she grabbed him before they could. Then she gave him to Selim.”

“That was lucky.” Remy wasn't sure why she'd said that. She wasn't sure it was lucky at all. She was covered with dog slobber in front of the cutest guy she'd ever seen.

Except that if it hadn't been for Bear, she wouldn't even be talking to him.

“You don't have to feed that monster. That's the worst part about him. You at Georgetown?”

Remy was surprised, then absurdly pleased he'd mistaken her for a coed. She considered lying, but she knew if she did, the joke could only last so long. “No, we just moved in.” She hiked her thumb behind her.

“We live a few houses that way.” He hiked his thumb behind him.

She looked over his shoulder and saw Bear and Selim going inside a row house like her own. “You're at Georgetown?”

“I start again in a couple of weeks. Where do you go to school?”

“Nowhere right now.” Which was true enough.

“You ought to give Georgetown a try.”

“I might.” She didn't point out that even high school was still in her future.

“Heading anywhere interesting?”

Remy shook her head. “Just out looking around.”

He stuck out his hand. “I'm Colin Fitzpatrick.”

His hand was large and warm, wrapping around hers just hard enough to make itself felt.

“Remy Bronson.”

“Would you like to see the campus? I don't have to be anywhere for a while. I could show you around.”

Remy knew exactly how her mother would feel about
that.
Colin was a stranger, and her mother didn't know she wasn't at home.

She smiled her most adult smile. “I just bet you could.”

He laughed. “Would you like to see our house first? Since we're neighbors.”

“Okay.” Remy figured if Faith could invite a complete stranger to their house, she had every right to see Colin's.

“We had a party last night, so don't expect much. It's never very clean, but this morning it's worse than usual.”

They started toward the house. Remy wasn't sure which part of this was better. Being with the most exciting man she'd ever met, or wondering what Faith would say when she realized her daughter wasn't home.

She was just sorry she wouldn't be around to see her mother's face.

L
ydia and Marley arrived before noon, at the same moment the flowers did. When Faith opened the front door, Lydia wasn't sure which surprised her daughter more.

Faith took the flowers, an extravagant fall bouquet in a silver-plated vase, greeted Marley, and finally leaned over to kiss her mother's cheek. Lydia tipped the deliveryman and sent him on his way.

“They're gorgeous.” Faith scanned the card and gave her mother a knowing smile. “Dad has such terrific taste. Almost as good as yours.”

“He hasn't been at his best. I believe the flowers are an apology.” Lydia wasn't sure why she bothered with the charade. Faith knew Joe had never apologized for anything in his life.

“I'm going to put them on the kitchen table. I think there's actually a spot without junk on it.”

Faith left, and Marley wandered the first floor, surveying the damage. Lydia wasn't sure how old her housekeeper was. Nearly fifty, she supposed. Slender and tall, Marley was a woman of boundless energy. Being with her exhausted Lydia even more.

Marley aimed her words at Lydia so Faith wouldn't hear them. “This isn't a house, it's a fifteen-year plan. The floors are nice.” Marley had grown up in Jamaica, and her voice still held an unmistakable lilt. Her real name was Mary Louise, but a lifelong love affair with reggae had earned her the nickname.

“I had them redone. They
are
nice, aren't they?”

“Make everything else look worse.”

“Marley, that's not helpful.”

Marley shrugged. She rarely spoke to Joe, but she said anything she liked to Lydia, knowing full well Lydia wouldn't survive without her.

Faith came back into the room and stood at the bottom of the stairs to call the children. A door opened upstairs, and from the clumping of footsteps, Lydia knew her grandson was on his way down. She wondered what to say to him. Alex always put her at a loss for anything except criticism.

He stopped just shy of the bottom. “Hello, Grandmother.” He caught sight of Marley and gave a big whoop. “Marley. Hi.”

“You getting so big, I don't think I recognize you anymore.” Marley went to stand at the bottom of the steps. “See, you bigger than me now.”

“We've got kittens upstairs.” Alex addressed the revelation to Marley. “Do you want to see?”

“Kittens?”

“Kittens?” Lydia echoed. “Faith, are you out of your mind? You don't have enough to do here?”

“The kittens came with the house, Mother.” Faith joined Marley at the bottom of the steps. “Alex, go get Remy, would you? What's she doing?”

“I don't know. Her door's been closed since we got home.”

“Well, run up and get her, please.” Faith faced her mother. “There's a cat living in the attic, and she has kittens. The kids and I discovered them in the middle of the night.”

“What were you doing in the attic in the middle of the night?”

“Trying to find out what was screeching like a banshee.”

“Oh.” Lydia understood everything Faith hadn't said.
The ghost baby, come back to haunt them all.

Shoes sounded on the stairs again, and Alex appeared. “She's not there. And she's not in the bathroom or up in the attic. She would have come through my room.”

“Maybe she went up there when you came down.” Faith shook her head. “Mother, I'd better check this out. I'll be right back.

Lydia wondered how Faith could lose a child Remy's size, but, wisely, she didn't say so. “Let's get organized,” she told Marley. “Alex, would you like Marley to help you unpack?”

“Sure.”

Faith returned, looking troubled. “She's not there.”

“The basement?” Lydia knew there was no place else.

“No reason for her to be down there.”

“Maybe she didn't come home,” Alex said.

Lydia didn't like the expression in Faith's eyes. “Come home from where?”

Faith silenced Alex, who started to explain, then did it herself. “We went out to breakfast, and she got angry. She left before we did, walking in this direction. She has a key. I just assumed…”

Lydia bit her lip. She didn't remind her daughter that they were in a city now, and Remy needed protection. She didn't remind her that thirty-eight years ago another child had disappeared on Prospect Street.

“How long ago?” Lydia glanced at her watch.

“We've been home for two hours or so.”

“And you say she was angry?”

“Remy hasn't adjusted well.”

“Could she be lost? Does she know the streets well enough to find her way back home?”

“She knows our address. Prospect's a short street. All she'd have to do is ask someone if she got turned around.”

“There are three of us who can comb the streets.”

“Four!” Alex jumped off his step to the floor. “What about me?”

Lydia stared at her grandson, aware of him in a way she really hadn't been before. As usual, her first impulse had been to silence him. But the boy staring back at her looked disturbingly adult. For the first time she glimpsed the man Alex was going to be.

She tried to enlist his cooperation. “Alex, somebody has to stay here in case Remy comes back. Frankly, I think she'd rather come home to you than to any of us. If she sees us waiting, she might pass right by. And you can call us on our cell phones to let us know. Will you do that?”

He frowned, aware, she supposed, that he was being cajoled. “I guess.”

Lydia touched his shoulder in thanks. He looked puzzled, as if he hadn't known she had that in her repertoire.

“I'm sure we can count on you.” She turned away and wondered if she'd done anything in her sixty-six years to be proud of.

 

The university tour never transpired. Somehow, after a look at the downstairs of Colin's house and a roughhouse session with Bear, they never got any farther. Selim's father owned an electronics store, and Selim had brought half of the inventory to college, including a big-screen television tuned, at the moment, to a comedy Remy's father had undoubtedly held up as an example of American immorality. At least in the old days.

She was slouched on a beat-up sofa with Colin, watching two college-age men on the screen, who were trying, yet again, to get a woman into bed after a night of drinking and near-miss seductions.

“You haven't seen this?” Colin asked. “It's practically a classic.”

“Don't think so.” Remy was fascinated. She had watched R-rated movies with her friends. She wasn't a complete goody-goody. But this one, which made fun of everything she'd been taught to believe, was in a different league.

And she was watching it with a guy; she was sitting right
next to a guy watching guys in a movie trying to have sex. Colin seemed oblivious to the implications.

“How old are you?” He turned in the middle of a scene in a strip club that had her mouth hanging open.

“Seventeen.” She glanced at him. The lie felt as natural as repeating her name.

“Oh, I thought you were older. You're in high school?”

The next lie was every bit as easy. “Uh-huh.”

“I guess you'll be a senior.”

“Uh-huh.” Someday.

“You want a Coke or something?” When she nodded, Colin got up and stretched, then disappeared into the kitchen. He was cute, really cute. Megan would never believe Remy had captured the attention of a college man. She couldn't wait to tell her. Then she remembered Megan wasn't just down the street anymore.

Colin
was just down the street.

She was distracted by a noise behind her. She shifted and saw a new man coming downstairs. Colin had told her that four of them shared the house. Besides Selim there was another student named Paul, and a fourth man named Enzio, who was a Georgetown dropout. Enzio sold clothes at one of the shops on Wisconsin, and sometimes he got everybody discounts.

The guy coming down was wearing leather pants with more zippers than a Levi's outlet and a tight gray T-shirt. He lit a cigarette on the landing, but he didn't put it between his lips.

“Who are you?”

“Remy.”

“You a friend of somebody's?”

“I live down the street. Colin and I are watching a movie.”

“Yeah.” He stretched and smoke twirled in the air over his head. “Colin will watch anything.”

Remy was fascinated. Colin looked like an older version of the boys she knew. Scrubbed clean, hair cut short, clothes from Abercrombie or Banana Republic. But this guy was a different story. His jet-black hair hung halfway to his shoulders, and she
could see, even at this distance, that one ear was pierced. He hadn't smiled. He probably wasn't any older than Colin, but he looked as if he was already tired of living. She wondered what had happened to make him so cynical. She could relate.

“Are you Enzio?” She could picture this roommate dropping out of school.

“Yeah.”

The training of a lifetime kicked in. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Don't kid yourself.”

She could feel her cheeks growing warm. She felt thoroughly fourteen. He made his way down the steps and lowered himself to the sofa beside her, taking a drag from the cigarette as he did. Then he offered it to her.

She shook her head. Her cheeks were on fire now. The offer to put her lips where his had been seemed unbelievably intimate.

“You a student?” Enzio looked around for an ashtray and settled on a dirty plate that was probably left over from last night's party.

“High school.”

“Jailbait, huh?”

“I'm seventeen.” She wished.

“How'd you meet Colin?”

“Bear knocked me down on the sidewalk.”

“That's original.” Enzio picked up the remote and started channel surfing just as Colin came back in the room.

“Hey, we're watching something.” Colin handed a can of Coke to Remy and swiped the remote from Enzio. “Move it, Castellano.”

“How come?”

Colin smiled at Remy. “I saw her first.”

Enzio got to his feet and reached for his cigarette. “Anything to eat in this dump?”

“Cold pizza.” Colin took his place beside Remy.

Enzio started toward the front door instead of the kitchen, and Remy turned to watch him go. Centered in the middle of the window, looking over the street, was her grandmother.
Lydia was peering from one side of the street to the other, as if she was searching for something.

Or someone.

Enzio disappeared out the door, and it banged shut behind him. Upstairs, Bear marked his passing with thunderous barks. Slouched down on the sofa, Remy continued to watch out the window as unobtrusively as she could. After Lydia had been gone long enough, she got to her feet.

She forced herself to sound nonchalant. “You know, I hate to do it, but I'd better get home. My mom will wonder what happened to me.”

“You can call her. The phone's here someplace.”

“I'm supposed to unpack today. I'd better get to it.”

“I never showed you around the university.”

“I'm right up the street. I'll see you around.”

Colin's gaze flicked back to the screen. One of the guys in the movie had finally gotten lucky. “Yeah, okay. Want me to walk you home?”

That was a no-brainer. Besides, as long as Colin didn't know which house was hers, he wouldn't come knocking at her door. “No. Finish the movie.”

“Next time we have a party, come on down.”

“Yeah. Sure.” She got to the door and peered outside. Lydia was a couple of blocks away. The other direction looked clear for the moment. She knew she was going to be in trouble no matter what she did, but she was absolutely certain that if anyone saw her coming out of this house, trouble would be too mild a word.

She slipped outside and started down the sidewalk toward her house. She had just been out for a walk. If she was going to have to live in this place, she deserved to know what the neighborhood was like. She hadn't done anything wrong. She wasn't a baby.

She practiced her responses, knowing she would be called on to use them. And as she did, she wondered when she would see Colin Fitzpatrick and Enzio Castellano again.

 

Remy had been gone for more than two hours. Faith told herself there was no reason to be concerned. Remy would find her
way home when she got good and ready. She was angry, trying to prove she could hurt Faith the way she'd been hurt.

And all the time Faith was telling herself this, a louder voice insisted that Remy was alone in Georgetown without an ounce of street smarts. Too upset to pay attention to her surroundings, Remy was easy pickings for any pervert.

Faith stopped near M Street and 33rd, and pulled out her cell phone. Alex had promised to call when Remy got home, but she didn't want to wait. She leaned against a display window so she would be out of the way of pedestrian traffic and dialed their new number.

“Any news?” she asked when Alex picked up.

“No. Marley came back. She says Remy'll come home when she gets hungry.”

Faith wanted to believe her. “Just call me as soon as you hear something, okay?”

“Sure. I will.”

Faith considered what to do next. She'd already called Sally, Megan's mother, in case Remy had asked them to pick her up and take her back to McLean. Sally said they hadn't heard anything but she would be sure to call if they did. Faith had tried two other friends of Remy's with no luck.

She hadn't tried David.

Remy would not call her father for help. Faith was certain of that. No matter how much she disliked her mother right now, Remy clearly disliked David more. But David was Remy's father, and, as such, he deserved to know she was missing. What if something really had happened to her?

Now Faith debated calling him. She had the number of Ham's apartment. David no longer had a cell phone; in fact, she was holding what had been his phone—a lemon in the competitive world of cellular technology—in her hand. But she could call him at Ham's, and even if he wasn't there, she could leave a message. She knew it was the right thing to do.