Bleeding Heart (26 page)

“Mara?” I called as I opened the screen door. But she was gone.

M
ara didn’t come back that afternoon, and she didn’t phone in. It was unlike her to leave early without an explanation. I remembered the alarm in her voice when she took the call on her cell right before I was forced to run out to the greenhouse. I wondered again if something had happened to Danny. When she didn’t come into work the next morning I began to really worry. I checked in with a few of our crew members, but none of them had heard from her since the day before either.

“And she was going to let me know about someone else taking over for me next Monday,” Todd Franey said. “I’ve got to go to my cousin’s wedding in New Hampshire with my folks.”

“We’ll work something out,” I told him, jotting down a reminder to myself. Before I hired Mara, I used to handle all these details on my own. I’d grown so used to her dealing with the crew—all the scheduling and new hires—that I realized I hadn’t even met a number of the people who were now listed on our weekly work sheet.

When lunchtime came and went without any word from her, I
decided I had to do something. I knew what a private person she was, but she seemed pretty much alone in the world. She never mentioned family or friends. The only incoming calls I ever overheard were from Danny’s sitter. She’d never even given me her cell phone number. I dug out the personal information form I’d asked her to fill out when she first took the job, but there was no home phone number; the only thing she’d listed on it was an address: 34 East Meadows in neighboring Columbia County. I looked it up online and was able to locate it on Google Maps, but I still couldn’t find a number to call.

I activated the office answering machine and closed up shop. It took me about half an hour to get over to the area where East Meadows should have been, according to Google, but I couldn’t find any sign or street bearing that name. It was one of those badly zoned parts of the county; an adult video outlet stood not twenty feet from an abandoned motel. After driving back and forth along the forlorn stretch of highway a couple of times, I pulled into a run-down gas-station-cum-convenience-store and asked for directions.

“You talking about the trailer park?” demanded the twentysomething girl behind the counter. She had tattoos snaking down both arms and a silver stud in her lower lip. She was clearly put out that I’d interrupted her intense scrutiny of the
Us
magazine that sat open in front of her.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Is that what East Meadows is?”

“Only one I know of,” she said, turning a page. “Down the road about half a mile. Turn right on Guyer’s Lane.” She glanced up, gave me a hard look, and said, “So you buying something or what?”

I grabbed a roll of mints from the candy rack, paid her, and got the hell out. The first stretch of Guyer’s Lane, a dirt road, was occupied by a junkyard specializing in used auto parts. There was a huge mound of tangled mufflers and another of hubcaps, glinting
in the afternoon sun. Remnants of what had once been a working farm rose up the hill behind this jumble: a graying eyebrow Colonial with plastic sheeting in its windows, a derelict barn, and a roofless milking shed.

The road was potholed, following the edge of a field that had long since gone to seed. Goldenrod nodded above a thick carpet of overgrown weeds. Rusted barbed wire clung to the collapsing split rail fence. Over a small rise, the lane gave out abruptly onto a roadway that circled through a trailer park that had obviously been there for some time. Porch extensions, vegetable gardens, and aboveground swimming pools lent most of the small plots a homey, settled-in feeling, though there were a few trailers with rusting exteriors and boarded-up windows. In front of one of these paced a skinny dog, tied to an outdoor utility post, who barked frantically as I passed. I circled slowly, looking for number 34, which Mara had listed as her address, but very few of the house numbers were visible from the road. I was halfway around the circle for the second time when I noticed a white single-wide with a sunflower growing beside the door. I recognized the chipped clay pot, which was now dwarfed by the nearly six-foot plant. This was the sunflower, then just a seedling, that I’d given to Danny so many months ago. Someone—no doubt Mara—had secured it with string to a downspout. There was no driveway as far as I could see, so I parked the car in the grass in front of the trailer.

The yard was a neat, carefully organized, outdoor paradise for a small boy. There was a miniature trampoline, a waist-high plastic pool in which floated three different water guns, a rope swing that seemed designed to deposit its cargo onto a well-padded pile of dry leaves. Wooden slats had been nailed to the maple tree that housed the swing, and halfway up its twenty-foot height sat a rudimentary plywood fort with an oversized umbrella for a roof. I knocked on
the trailer’s aluminum doorframe, though I didn’t expect to get a response. Mara’s car wasn’t there, for one thing. And someone had lowered all the blinds on the inside. I knocked again, and waited, debating about what to do.

“Nobody’s home there!” called a female voice from across the way. I turned around. An overweight blonde was sitting in a lounge chair inside a screened porch tent next to her trailer. “You’re looking for Mara, right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“They pulled out this morning,” she said. “You’re welcome to come over here. I’d get up, but I’ve just done my nails and I don’t want to mess up my handiwork.” I crossed the road to her. “That’s the grand entrance,” she said, nodding at a zippered door. I undid it and let myself into the surprisingly spacious and welcoming outdoor room. A brightly colored fake Oriental rug lay on top of wall-to-wall indoor-outdoor carpet. There were two lounge chairs, a small couch with a lively assortment of throw pillows, a round glass table upon which sat a jug of iced tea, an open box of Milano cookies, and a plastic caddy stacked with nail polishes and all the accoutrements for a mani-pedi.

“I’m Shelly. Sorry, but I’m not going to shake,” she said, holding up both hands, fingers spread. Her nails, at least an inch long, were a vibrant turquoise. “Help yourself to a drink—and a cookie.”

“Thanks,” I said, pouring myself a glass of iced tea and taking a seat on the couch, which I realized too late was a glider. I slid halfway off it as it shot out from under me, my drink sloshing across the rug.

“Oops!” Shelly said with a laugh. “Sorry! Should have warned you. But most people who drop by know this place like it was their own. We’re a pretty tight little group here. Don’t get too many strangers out this way.”

She couldn’t have been more cordial, but at the same time I heard the question behind what she was saying.

“Mara works with me,” I told her. “Over in Woodhaven. She left early yesterday and didn’t come in this morning. I got worried. I don’t have her cell number. All I have is this address.”

“You’re the gardener?” Shelly asked, looking me over skeptically.

“I own a landscaping business,” I told her. “Mara’s been working with me for almost two years.”

“I know,” Shelly said. “Because I’ve been taking care of Danny for almost two years now. What a great kid! We had such a ball together! Oh, boy, am I going to miss him.”

“You mean they’ve left?” I asked, looking back across the way at Mara’s trailer. “For good?”

“Well, I’ve got a feeling there’s nothing exactly good about it. But, yeah, I don’t think they’re coming back.”

“What happened?”

“Hell if I know,” Shelly said, blowing on her fingernails. “Mara came home in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. She seemed real upset. She asked me to keep my eye on Danny over here while she took care of some stuff. I asked her what was up, but, like always when I asked something she didn’t want to hear, it was like talking to a brick wall. Then I realized that she was cleaning out the trailer. Throwing a lot of stuff away. I couldn’t help myself—I went over there with Danny and asked again what was going on. I don’t know what the deal is with her, but I know she’s got one hell of a chip on her shoulder. The thing is, though, I’ve been taking care of Danny for a long time now. It’s really not about the money. I love that kid, and I know he cares about me. I don’t think I was out of bounds wanting to know was going on, was I?”

“No,” I said, hearing the unhappiness in her voice. “I don’t think you were.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” Shelly said, shaking her head. “Because she told me to keep my damned nose out of her business. Like I was some stranger, snooping around! She grabbed Danny and kept working. She started loading up the car late last night, probably after Danny was asleep. They left real early this morning. I guess she’d hoped none of us would be awake to see them take off. She gave him a Popsicle to distract him as she drove out. I know that’s why she did it. So he wouldn’t see me waving good-bye.”

“What makes you think she’s not coming back?” I asked, looking across the road again. “She left all of Danny’s toys.”

“That’s stuff me and Al donated,” Shelly said. “Stuff I never had the heart to throw away when Luke—that’s our boy—outgrew it. And anyway, she stopped by and told Pete—he’s the owner—that she was going. When he explained to her that he couldn’t give her back the deposit because she hadn’t given him any notice, she told him where he could put it. What a potty mouth! And right in front of her nephew!”

“Nephew?” I asked. “Danny’s her son.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Well . . . ,” I said, trying to remember if Mara had actually ever told me that was the case. If not, she certainly let me assume it was so. I’d referred to Danny as her son more times than I could count, and she’d never corrected me.

“Well, she told
me
he’s her nephew,” Shelly said. “Whatever the hell’s going on with her, I can’t believe she’d lie about something like that.”

“But he calls her Marmy,” I pointed out. “Don’t you think that’s a baby name for Mommy?”

“Nope. He meant Mara,” Shelly said with conviction. “Danny
told me a couple of months ago that he missed his ‘mommy.’ I asked him where she was and he told me she was in bed—and then he burst into tears. I didn’t feel right pushing him for more information. And he never mentioned her again. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to tell me even that. He looked real guilty after he’d said it.”

I tried to make sense of Shelly’s revelations, but nothing seemed to add up. I’d thought of Mara as such a strong, capable, and loving single mother for so long, it was almost impossible for me to suddenly picture her in this changed, more distanced role. And why would Mara want to keep Danny’s real identity a secret from me?

“So it wasn’t you who called Mara on her cell at work yesterday?” I asked.

“Nope.”

“Whoever it was said something that really upset her. I think that’s why she left so fast.” I got up to leave myself, after thanking Shelly for the iced tea and the conversation. She got to her feet, too.

“Listen,” she said, holding open the netted door and then following me out, “I know I came down pretty hard on Mara just now. I’m just real hurt that she took Danny away the way she did. But I’m also real worried about the two of them. They seem so alone in the world. And she seems to be in some kind of trouble. I’d do anything to help them, honestly. If you manage to get in touch with her, would you tell her that for me?”

“Of course,” I said. We were two very different women, leading very different lives, but we felt the same way about Mara and Danny. And that made it seem like we had a lot in common.

It was late afternoon by the time I got back to Green Acres, and the answering machine was blinking. I ran through the messages. Three from crew members checking in about their schedules. Two from clients. One from Ted Finari asking if I wanted to participate
in his “Putting Your Garden to Bed for the Season” annual seminar at the garden center. At first I thought the last message was a wrong number. It had come in just a few minutes before I returned.

“Hi, it’s Sarabeth at the hospital. Sorry to call here, but I can’t seem to get you on your cell. Please give me a call back as soon as you can. It’s—it’s important.” She left a number with a 570 area code.

I was about to delete it, but then something made me listen to it again. It was the little stumble on “it’s important” that gave me pause. Whoever Sarabeth was, she had something to say that was making her nervous. I dialed the number.