Lock & Mori (14 page)

I might have assumed the same, just from the elaborate dye job and the critical mass of product that held the curls in her hair in a perfectly natural wave that most likely wouldn't move in a hurricane. But then she lifted her hands
to examine her nails, and I saw calluses on her thumb and forefinger. There were tiny hair fragments on her pant legs below the knee, and probably most telling, she was shod in the ugliest, most comfortable-looking Mary Janes of all time.

“Shoes,” I said, because I knew it would be the one thing he wouldn't notice. By his immediate glance toward them, I was right. “No one who spends that much time on her hair wears such soulless shoes unless she's on her feet all day.”

He didn't comment, but I watched the corners of his mouth twitch before he gestured behind us with his head. “The gentleman behind us teaches chemistry.”

“Chalky, cracked fingers? Too easy.”

I watched as his gaze flitted from person to person in our car, sizing up and dismissing each in turn until finally he pointed at a girl who was crying in the back corner of our train car. “So, tell me about that one if you crave a challenge.”

“What's so challenging about a girl crying on a train? It could be anything.”

“Exactly. Girls cry over everything.” He obviously didn't see my expression or he'd have stopped talking. “She could've broken a nail for all we know. . . . Or perhaps it is something serious,” he added, only after he glanced at me.

I made sure to enunciate when I spoke. “You are an idiot.”

“And a Neanderthal. But you'll have to take the blame for that. I warned you what would happen if you rewarded me.”

I tried very hard not to smile, but my mind betrayed me by replaying the moments around his warning over and over, until it was inevitable. “Damn.”

“Given up so soon?” He went back to studying our crying girl, his steepled fingers tapping against his lips. I joined in, never expecting to almost instantly discover her secret—a secret I was sure Lock wouldn't have deduced were I to lay out the clues before him and wait until the end of time for him to see it.

I quietly cleared my throat and turned to look out at the passing landscape.

“You have given up,” he accused.

“I haven't.”

“You don't know the answer already.”

“Tell me when you see it,” I said, still staring out the window. Though I could see his brow furrow in my periphery.

He tried valiantly, my Lock, but he never did note the pale hue of her face, the way her bra appeared two sizes too small, or even the way her hand kept resting across her stomach just before a fresh wave of tears fell from her eyes. I never told him either. When he got twitchy and frustrated, I did give him a hint.

“She hasn't broken a nail,” I whispered.

Chapter 17

The first thing I noticed when we stepped out of Brighton station was the smell. Even blocks from the beach, I could smell the ocean and hear the gulls. It was tempting to stay and ignore the chore of travel to a tiny village like Piddinghoe, especially after we realized we'd missed the bus to Newhaven by minutes, which meant another train ride northeast to Lewes, followed by a bus back south to Piddinghoe, and then a walk into the village. I tried to get Lock to stay in Brighton, which seemed the most obvious place to waste a few hours, but he followed me back onto the train, mumbling something about the loneliness of beach towns.

I spent most of our trip talking up the glory of Lewes, not that I knew much about the place. Still, I was able to distract him from following me on to Piddinghoe with a carrot in the form of an Herb Walk flyer that promised a tour around the Railway Land Local Nature Reserve with an herbalist.

“Come with me.” His eyes were bright with all the possibilities, though they immediately shadowed a bit when I shook my head.

“I've an errand to run. I'll call your mobile when I'm back.”

“Back from where?” He was barely restraining his smile over my slipup.

“When I'm
done
.”

“But that's not what you said. You said when you're back, which means you're leaving Lewes.”

I stepped close enough to kiss his cheek but didn't. “You promised.”

“An impossible promise.” He kissed me quickly, then again, just because he could. We stood in an awkward silence for a few moments like imbeciles before finally turning our respective directions. I didn't look back, but his footsteps faltered once, so he could have. I decided to believe he did.

x x x

The bus dropped me off on a narrow road in the middle of nowhere—at least, that's what it looked like. On one side of the road, I could barely make out a pond through a chain fence lined with skinny trees. Tall grass flanked the other side, along with a mishmash of wooden fence panels in a variety of colors and patterns. It must have been Piddinghoe, unless the bus driver was a liar. It was definitely the countryside. I remembered the bus driving past a turnoff just before stopping and managed to walk the right way toward it on my first go. The cross street would take me almost the entire way to the address, if Google Maps was to be trusted in such a remote place.

I made my final turn onto a narrow, bendy road that had no placard to name it, and an odd feeling pricked up my neck.
Not so much déjà vu as familiarity—not that I'd walked this road before, but rather that I should remember it. The closer I came to the address, the more intense the feeling became, until I found myself picturing how the road might have been different sometime in its past—a space that might have once been filled with a shack, a giant tree that might once have been thinner.

Walking around the final bend of the narrow road was almost surreal. I saw a blue house first, and immediately felt like I'd drifted back into the earliest of my memories, heedless of the fact that this couldn't possibly be the home of my imagined grandparents. I must have continued to walk forward, because soon I was standing at the top of a gentle hill of bright-green garden plants, poking up from rich, black earth. Flashes of ripe red strawberries and deep purple aubergines peeked out from between leaves, beckoning me to ­toddle between the plantings on that tiny path, to skirt the bees flying around bright-orange squash blossoms, and to look for ladybugs in the shady places.

It was real, my memory. Which meant I had been there before.

I could almost see a blurred vision of my mother, her arms crossing her chest as she watched me play, her head turning as a woman with bright blond hair emerged from the house—a woman who punched through the vision and continued on a path right for me.

“This is private property,” she shouted. Still lost in memory, I needed a fraction of a second to realize she was talking to
me, even when she followed up her greeting with, “Who are you?”

She had an American accent, which I didn't expect, and she was older than the blue-haired girl in the photo, older than the blonde in my memory, but still the same person. Her bright blond hair had been replaced with a shiny black that changed her coloring a bit, but it was definitely her. The woman from the photo was standing in real life in front of me, and I could say nothing.

Her eyes went squinty and I thought she might charge up the hill toward me, but she managed only one step before turning back to stare at the blue house, like something tethered her to it. “Who are you? What do you want?”

It was awkward, to carry on a conversation from so far away, but I finally managed to speak up. “I think I was here when I was small.”

“That's impossible. My family's owned this farm for generations.”

I nodded and stepped down the hill, slowly, like I was afraid the whole place might disappear if I got too close. Before I'd halved the distance between us, the woman's expression changed completely, and she ran up toward me, until we were barely a step apart.

“It's impossible.” Her hand came up like she would touch me, and I flinched. She looked past me toward the road and then out across the fields, for a reason I was pretty sure I could deduce.

“I'm alone.”

“How are you here? How did you get here?”

“You know who I am?”

The woman smiled the same smile from the photo and raised her hands again. I forced myself to stay still as one hand rested on my shoulder and the other smoothed over my hair. “Anyone who knew her would know who you are. I can't believe . . .”

She grabbed me into a hug, which I tolerated as best I could, and when she finally released me, I managed to step back without being too obvious. “What is your name?”

She laughed. “I've never been good at English manners. I'm Alice. Alice Stokes.”

“Alice,” I echoed. “I need to ask you questions.”

Alice's smile dropped. “Does
he
know you're here?”

I knew whom she meant, but still I asked, “He?”

“Moriarty,” she said, like there was something bitter in her mouth. Though she offered me an apologetic grin just after, perhaps realizing she'd spoken my surname too. And my mother's. Thinking of my mother while standing near this woman made me want to climb inside her brain and search for all the answers only she could provide. I suddenly found I had to know everything. Now. I couldn't seem to wait even another second to know.

“I have questions,” I blurted.

She stared at me just long enough to make me think maybe the makeup wasn't covering all my fading bruises and then turned to walk toward the house. “Come inside,” she called over her shoulder. “We'll talk.”

Alice led me to a French door that took us directly into the kitchen. Despite her self-proclaimed lack of English manners, she went immediately for the kettle when we walked through the door, which probably meant she'd lived in England quite a while. Before the water boiled, she managed to scrape together a board of cheese and grapes, some fresh strawberries and cherry tomatoes that looked more the size of golf balls than cherries. I picked one up and smelled it.

“You really do remember this place? You couldn't have been more than three.”

“I remember a man and a woman. White hair.”

Alice nodded and brought over our mugs. Mine had milk, I noticed. Hers did not.

“My parents.”

“I always wished they were my grandparents. Mine are a little awful.”

“God, you talk like her and everything. I still can't believe you're here.”

I felt a tearing in my chest and furrowed my brow at the sensation. I'd been told of my resemblance to Mum all my life. I half thought it might be the reason why it took Dad so long to come round to hitting me. But this woman said it differently. She made me wish so much that Mum were here sitting with us. I wished it in a way I'd not dared to in six months. I looked down at the scuffed-up table to hide the way my eyes glazed over for a few seconds, then reached in my back pocket and tossed the picture on the table between us to give my voice time to recover as well.

Alice's eyes went wide and she smoothed the photo flat against the table. “Where in the world did you get this?”

“I saw it at a memorial.”

Alice grinned. “And you took it? It really is amazing how like her you are.”

“Are you saying my mother was a thief?”

“Whose memorial?” she asked, as if my question had never been voiced.

I paused, just long enough to study her face when I answered. “Louis Patel.”

She tried to cover her surprise, unsuccessfully.

“His daughter goes to school with me.”

“Louis Patel is dead?”

They're all dead. You're next.
That's what I wanted to tell her, but something stopped me. Instead, I said, “Sorte Juntos.”

Her expression changed again. She was studying me now. “Well, it seems you already have answers.”

“Not enough. What does it mean?”

“It's Portuguese.”

“I know
that
. ‘Lucky together.' What did it mean to—to her?”

“To us.” Alice turned the photo back around so that it faced me, then pointed to the man in the green shirt. “That's Francisco Torres. He's the one who gave us the name, and—”

“He's dead.”

Alice frowned. “How?”

“A sword,” I said slowly. “In Regent's Park.”

“And Patel?”

“A sword. In Regent's Park.”

Fear in her eyes then, and I wondered if I'd messed up. “Both?”

I stared at her, tried to read deeper into her expression, but all I could see was the fear. “No more answers from me. I have to know about my mother. I have to know everything.”

“No. Not everything. No one should ever know everything about her parents.”

“I
need
to know.”

Alice shook her head, her fingers slowly pushing the photo back toward me. I picked it up and turned it toward her.

I pointed to Mr. Patel. “Dead.” To Francisco Torres. “Dead.” To each face in turn, and after each face I said, “Dead.” My finger hovered over my mother's face, and then I looked up into Alice's eyes and exhaled before I said, “Dead.”

She barely breathed. Her expression went blank as what I was telling her sank in.

“They are all dead but you, and you are next. I have to know why. It's the only way I can protect you.”

“You know who is doing this?”

I tried not to react as I ignored her question. “I have to know everything.”

I sat back to let her process what I'd said, afraid to push any harder, afraid perhaps I hadn't pushed hard enough. It took her maybe five minutes to decide to tell me, but I knew she would three minutes in, when she traced my mother's hair with her finger. It didn't lessen the wait, but it kept me from speaking.

“I loved your mother,” she said. “We were babies when we met. Younger than you, even. Fourteen, I think. And from the first moment I met her, I knew she would change me. I counted on it. I was just this American stranger, country bumpkin, lost in the city. Your mom knew London like it was her play yard. At fourteen, she'd already managed to charm every street vendor in a ten-block radius.”

I instantly had hundreds of questions but bit them all back to let her tell her story. I couldn't risk that she'd change her mind and go silent again.

“I followed her everywhere, through school, through university. I even stood by her side when she married
him
.” Again with the sour face.

“You never liked him?”

Alice shook her head. “I never understood it. He was just some cop. And it wasn't like she was the cop's-wife type.”

“And what type is that?”

She refilled our mugs with tea and leaned back in her chair. “Not your mom's type.”

For some reason, Alice's answer made me try to picture my dad out in her garden, but I couldn't see it. He didn't fit here among the safety and peace of this place. Though it occurred to me just then that if he knew about the farm, perhaps it wasn't the safe place I imagined it to be. I tried desperately to keep the emotion from my voice as I asked, “Has my father ever been here?”

Alice shook her head. “No. Your mom used to bring you here when things would go sideways at home. And they were
always going sideways. Those two fought harder and louder than any couple I'd ever seen. There were times I was sure it would come to blows.”

I must have reacted to that, because her expression was suddenly pained and she seemed to be scrutinizing my face. I tipped my head so that my hair hid the cheek that had gotten the worst of it.

“It never did,” Alice said. “Or, at least, she never told me.”

I shook my head and couldn't look at her when I said, “He never hit her.”

She drank half her tea and sighed. “Well, when Freddie was born, a lot of things changed. I saw her less. Once Michael came along, she stopped coming to the farm, and since I couldn't even seem to visit without causing some kind of argument between your mom and him, I stopped coming around.” She stirred the dregs of her tea with the sugar spoon and sat quietly for a long time. “I went back to America for a few years.” More silence. “I don't know.” The pain on Alice's face caused a stabbing sensation in my chest that I couldn't explain. It was like a deep sadness radiated off her in pulses. “I don't know much that's happened since then.”

I waited a few long moments for her expression to dull before saying, “That's not everything.”

She stood up and walked our mugs to the sink, then stared out the window. “Like I said . . .” She drifted off with her words, into her mind, where my answers were still locked away.

“And I said that I can't help you if I don't know it all.”