Lost Innocents (14 page)

Doug peered at a broken fingernail on his right hand and seemed lost in thought as Charles listened to the shrill voice of his housekeeper.

“How is she?” Charles asked. “Is she all right?” He listened for a moment and then said, “I’m on my way.” He put down the receiver carefully in the cradle and stood up. “Doug, you’ll have to excuse me. I have to go. Right now.”

Doug stood up awkwardly and extended his hand. “I just want to thank you again, Charles.”

Charles shook his hand briefly and pushed past him toward the door. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said. Doug took the hint and hurriedly preceded him out of the office.

Charles raced for home, dodging the sluggish rush-hour traffic, risking a speeding ticket whenever he found a straightaway. He did not put on the radio or his CD system. His nerves could not stand the extra input. He concentrated on driving the quiet car and tried not to give in to panic. He tried to tell himself that nothing was wrong, but a little niggling voice inside of him knew better.

Last night he’d noticed that the old rusty padlock on the playhouse door was in the trash and had been replaced with a shiny new one. Flakes of paint on the walkway indicated she had been scraping the clapboards in the front. She’d said everything was fine. He knew she wasn’t fine. He’d known it for days.

Charles reached home and pulled the Mercedes behind Ellen’s red Jeep and a black Buick that he didn’t recognize in the drive. He threw open the front door and called for Paulina as he tossed his briefcase on the marquetry-inlaid hall chest. The homey smell of cinnamon and apples baking filled the elegant house.

Paulina emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel and shaking her head. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “Father Rylander’s up there with her right now.”

“Father Rylander? Who’s that?”

Paulina motioned for him to come into the study. He followed her into the darkly formal room. Heavy silk drapes and custom-made bookshelves lined the walls. An arrangement of mums, day lilies, and asters on the library table provided a burst of color against the mullioned windows. “Father Rylander is my priest,” Paulina explained.

“Is she all right?” Charles demanded. “Why is there a priest here?”

“I couldn’t reach you at first. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What happened?”

“I had a heck of a time finding her. I drove all over looking for her. You know, the places she goes. There aren’t too many.”

Charles understood what she meant and nodded. He briefly laid a hand on the housekeeper’s sturdy shoulder. “Thank God for you, Paulina.”

“When I couldn’t find her, I was about to give up and head for home. Then I spotted her car on the River Road. Parked on the shoulder.”

“What was she doing on the River Road?” Charles asked.

Paulina frowned. “She said she was looking for that cat. The one she gave the people the other night. I found her in the woods there, down on her hands and knees. She’s all scraped up.”

“They were in an accident and the cat ran away,” Charles explained.

“She said something about that,” said Paulina.

“What was this you said on the phone about the children’s shop?” he asked.

“When we got back, someone called from the children’s shop and said she left her wallet there this morning,” said Paulina.

Charles shrugged impatiently. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe she had to buy a shower gift or something.”

Paulina shook her head. “The girl at the shop told me that she bought about five outfits.”

“Sometimes she’s extravagant,” he protested, casting about in his mind for someone they knew who might be needing such a gift.

“She told the girl that the clothes were for a baby—named Ken.”

Charles felt as if something icy had been poured down his back.

“I found this in her car,” said Paulina. She held up a shopping bag with “Precious Littles” written on it in florid script and white curling ribbon cascading from the handles. “It was empty. She had it hidden under the seat of the car. When I asked her about it, she got angry and said she didn’t know what I was talking about. Then she went upstairs.”

Charles turned away from the housekeeper and stared through the mullioned windows out at the property behind his house. Ellen’s gardens were dead now. Only the occasional burst of pink or scarlet showed through the brown leaves where a bunch of impatiens persisted or an errant rose still clung to the bare branches of its bush. In the midst of her gardens stood the playhouse, dark and still, with its empty windowboxes, its peaked roof, and its peeling clapboard sides, large enough for a covey of children to play in. Empty, sad, going to ruin. Charles felt his eyes well up as he looked out and saw a briefly shining past darken in front of his eyes.

“Oh, Paulina,” he whispered. “What is happening to her?”

Paulina stood up and briskly wiped her hands on the tea towel. “You’d better go up to her. I thought she might get mad that I’d called the priest, but he’s been up there with her for a while.”

Charles nodded as he went out into the foyer and looked up the staircase. Religion. That was Paulina’s answer to everything. And it seemed to have worked well enough for her and her family. But Ellen had not been to church since the day of Kenny’s funeral. He sighed as he climbed up toward the second floor where their bedroom was.

He accepted his wife’s foibles. He knew better than anyone else how she had suffered. He had suffered, too. But he had gone back out into the world, into the fray, because he had to. They had a house and a life to support, and he had work to do. Ellen had made her life here, around this house, with their son, and so here she had stayed. After a while he had tried to nudge her out, but she’d insisted that she was all right as she was. After a long while it began to seem that she was all right. Not perfectly normal. But who among us is perfectly normal? he said to himself.

As Charles reached their bedroom door, it opened, and Father Rylander emerged.

“Father?”

“Mr. Henson?” said Nick, extending his hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve been talking to Ellen. She sings your praises.”

Charles frowned. “Did she say…did you get any idea of what’s troubling her?”

Nick hesitated. “I’m a stranger to her, of course. We talked a little bit about how God gives and God takes away, and how difficult it all is to understand. I don’t know if it was any help to her.”

“Thank you for coming, Father,” said Charles.

“I was glad to come.” Nick squeezed Charles’s arm encouragingly as he passed him in the hallway. Then he started down the stairs.

Charles hesitated outside the bedroom door. In this room they had lived much of their life together. In the beginning they had laughed and loved, then mourned, and often escaped. Now he was filled with fear. There was no denying the turn she had taken. He could manage everything else, except that…. He didn’t even allow himself to think it. He pushed open the door and looked in.

She was lying on the bed, curled up in a fetal position beneath the satin comforter. He tiptoed in. She turned her head and looked at him. Her eyes looked dark and fearful.

“Sweetheart?” he asked. “Are you okay? I just met Father Rylander in the hall.”

“He was very kind,” she said.

“Yes, he seemed so.”

“I couldn’t find the kitten,” she said.

He came over to the bed and sat on the edge beside her. He reached out and ran his hand gently over her mass of luxuriant, graying curls. He remembered when they were golden. “It’s all right,” he said reassuringly. “It will be all right.”

He knew he had to bring up the children’s shop. He tried to phrase it delicately. “I’ll go pick up your wallet tomorrow at the children’s shop,” he said.

Ellen turned her head away. “They must have found it on the street,” she insisted. “I stopped at a newsstand outside the store. Paulina thought I was in the children’s shop. What would I be doing in a children’s shop?”

What about the bag? he wanted to cry out. Where are the clothes? Why would the salesgirl lie? He kept silent. A relentless interrogator in the courtroom, he sat still on the bed and said nothing. He did not want to eviscerate what was left of his hope by forcing her to answer.

Ellen turned back and gazed at his gray head, his troubled countenance. She grabbed his large, strong hand in her own fragile, weathered one. “I’m sorry, Charles,” she whispered. “It’s just that I’m afraid. I’ve never been so afraid in all my life.”

Charles stroked her hair with his free hand. His own heart shrank from the meaning of her words. “Why are you afraid?”

She hesitated, then decided not to speak. She lay there, shivering under the warm quilt.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he crooned. “Try and rest. Nothing at all.” His voice was calm and soothing. His heart, however, was saying, Please God, not this. Haven’t you taken enough from me? Please, oh, please. Not this, too.

T
he following morning Doug and Maddy stood in their driveway, shivering in the day’s early chill, watching Amy gather up a bouquet of autumn leaves. Doug sighed. “What a long night,” he said.

Maddy sipped from her coffee mug and stared out over the rim at their peaceful neighborhood. Another night of lying awake listening to Sean’s fussing and wailing had left dark circles under her eyes. She and Doug had lain side by side, neither one sleeping nor acknowledging the other’s wakefulness. She knew he blamed her for the miserable night. She didn’t want to discuss it.

“So where are you off to?” she asked.

“I’m going to goo over to the garage,” he said, “and see if their car is ready. They said they’d have it this morning.”

Maddy nodded. “They got ours back to us right away. Let’s hope they do the same with theirs.”

“I’m going to stand over them until it’s done,” said Doug grimly. “I can’t take another night of this. I have to start work again tomorrow, Maddy. We need to get them out of here so I can get some rest.”

“I know,” said Maddy.

“Its going to be hard enough walking back into that school. Trying to ignore the stares and the whispers. As if things weren’t bad enough, now they haul me in and grill me about that missing kid and the baby-sitter. You think the whole school’s not going to be talking about that?” Doug shook his head. “I’ll tell you, Maddy, I look forward to bringing that lawsuit against the police. I am sick and tired of being their whipping boy.”

“You were vindicated,” Maddy said tonelessly.

“That doesn’t make any difference to the gossipmongers. You are living in an ivory tower if you think…Oh, forget it. All I know is, I need some sleep before I go back to work.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you need rest. We both do.”

“While I’m gone, you better talk to her and let her know they have got to get out of here today.”

“All right, all right,” said Maddy. She called to Amy, “Come on, honey. Let’s go in and see Sean.”

Amy toddled over and handed her the bouquet. Maddy took it with a distracted smile and kissed her as Doug got in the car and drove off in the direction of the auto repair shop. Maddy opened the front door and Amy went in. Maddy looked around the house in dismay. There seemed to be clutter everywhere she looked. Not that Bonnie was messy. On the contrary, she was punctilious in her habits. But two extra people in the already chaotic conditions of the last two days added up to disorder. Maddy could see that Bonnie and Sean were not downstairs.

She got Amy settled down with a puzzle and began to tidy up. The familiar routine of housework had a soothing effect. As she threw laundry into the washing machine she realized that her guests probably had things that needed washing. If she was going to put them out on the street, a load of laundry seemed like the least she could do.

She climbed the stairs and started down the hall to the guest room. As she approached the door she could hear Sean’s familiar fussy cry. She tapped gently on the door and Bonnie said gruffly, “What do you want?”

Maddy pushed open the door and stepped into the room.

The room was very neat. All of Bonnie’s belongings were clustered close by her suitcase, as if she did not intend to get comfortable here. She was sitting on the bed, reading a book. Maddy glanced at the cover and saw that it was a historical romance novel. Sean was propped up on the floor against a chair, fussing and gnawing on his fingers. Beside him on the floor was Amy’s stuffed Big Bird.

“I was just going to do some laundry,” Maddy said. “I wondered if you had anything you’d like me to throw in.”

Bonnie looked reluctantly at the little pile of clothes by her suitcase.

“Maybe some of Sean’s things?” Maddy asked.

Bonnie swung her legs off the bed and went over to pick up the suitcase. In contrast with his mother’s worn and shabby wardrobe, all of Sean’s clothes had the cheerful freshness of new clothes. Typical, Maddy thought. We always care more about how the kids are dressed than ourselves.

Bonnie weighed a couple of pants and shirts in her hand and then, reluctantly, handed them to Maddy. “I guess if you’re washing…,” she said.

Maddy took the clothes and wadded them up in her hands. She knew she had to tell Bonnie now about leaving. She had told Doug she would, but now that the moment was at hand, the words were difficult to say. She wondered how much of that conversation about the insurance Bonnie had overheard. No one had mentioned it again, but Maddy wondered if Bonnie would bring it up now. Threaten her, even, when Maddy asked them to leave. There was a volatile quality about Bonnie, as if something unpredictable could set her off. Don’t avoid it, Maddy told herself. Go ahead and say it and let her react however she’s going to.

“Umm, Bonnie, there’s something I have to talk to you about.”

Bonnie zippered the little suitcase and looked up warily.

“I know I said you could stay as long as you need to…and I feel bad about this, but…”

“You want us to go,” Bonnie said flatly.

Maddy grimaced apologetically. “Doug’s gone to see about getting your car for you.”

Bonnie replaced the suitcase carefully on the floor as if it were potentially explosive. Maddy could not see the expression on her face.