Silent Whisper (24 page)

“Thanks, Ma.” I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. This was so surreal and so magical. And I thought about how I wished that she didn’t have to leave, but I knew I needed to help her. “Tell me who would know where he is, and I promise you, I’ll go to him and let him know what happened.”

“Try and find either Anna Maria or Marco Trevani. I'm betting Anna Maria divorced Dominic as a result of his…troubles. Do you remember who they are from our little trip back to the eighties?”

“Yep.”

“Good, because I feel certain that one or both of them can help, and I know that you won’t be in any danger. My sensory receptors are quite clear on that, the signals are really concise.”

“Your senso—”

“Don’t ask,” she said. “I need to preserve energy, remember?”

“What happens if I can’t get back to you within a week or two?”

“You will, my darling,” she said with a sparkling smile. “Oh, and Parrish? This has to be kept just between us.”

And then she faded, her soft laughter echoing in the wind and her singsong voice drifted back to me.
“Mommy loves you…”

When I returned to the car, I didn’t tell Ryan anything about what had happened. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust him, because I did. It was simply that I had this overwhelming need to keep this private as my mother had requested.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” I said. “Listen Ryan, I know you’re supposed to be somewhere on a shoot. Under the circumstances, maybe I should take Mom up on her offer to convalesce at her house.”

“What happened back there, Parrish?” He was eyeing me suspiciously.

“Nothing,” I lied, hating myself. “It’s just that the great unspoken needs to be addressed. My mother, I mean the one that raised me, has some explaining to do. Spending the next couple of weeks with her will allow me to rest and allow us to talk. I think it’s important, that’s all.”

“Well I don’t disagree,” he said, “But I can always re-schedule, baby. You know that.”

“I know, but I don’t want you to. I think I need this time…with her.”

And so it was decided that I would fly to Richmond instead of back to New York with Ryan. I phoned my mother and let her know about the change of plans. She was thrilled to hear I’d be there the following day. We definitely had some catching up to do.

Leave it to me, Parrish Elizabeth Locke to open mouth, insert foot. It was what I did best, especially where my mother was concerned. I always had, I mean should she expect anything less from me?

Still, I might’ve handled it better than simply asking her point-blank why she had never come clean with me about my birth mother; and about the circumstances surrounding my being led to believe that she and Walter Locke were my parents when in fact, they were not.

“Oh God, Parrish,” she moaned, her face now buried in her hands, as she sank down onto the sofa in the living room of the house where I’d been raised from the age of five until I went off to college. “I’m so sorry, I—I never thought you’d find out.”

“Obviously,” I snapped, and then instantly regretted it. “Why the deception?” I asked, my voice softening a bit.

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “How did you find out?”

“It’s complicated,” I replied, which is all I was at liberty to divulge at the moment, but it wasn’t a lie. “I just want to hear it from you.”

She nodded, pulling a tissue from the pocket of her apron, and dabbing at her eyes. And then she proceeded to tell me everything that I remembered from my episode (that’s what I’d decided to call it rather than ‘possession’ since it was in no way a demonic type situation) as Karlie. The only thing she didn’t include was Walter’s part in it. She truly believed it had been just a horrible accident, and I was convinced that she never knew.

“You have to believe me, sweetheart! I loved Karlie like a sister. And I owed it to her to make sure that you were raised properly and loved the way that she had loved you. I know that if the situation had been reversed, she would’ve done the same thing for me. Do you understand?”

“I understand that part of it but why didn’t you ever tell me the truth?”

“Because I was so scared. You don’t know the type of people your father came from, and I couldn’t risk having him or any of them finding out about you. I wanted to keep you safe at any cost. Walter and I devoted our lives to keeping you safe and protected, Parrish. The fact that your mama allowed our names to be put on your birth certificate certainly proves that she wanted you to be kept safe, and that she trusted us, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. “But Mom, once I became an adult, I had a right to know.”

“When Walter passed away so suddenly, well, I moved away from Roanoke Rapids. He had left us financially comfortable, but I still felt vulnerable and exposed. I didn’t even have Belle anymore.”

“Belle?” I knew who she was talking about, but I wanted to see how much she was going to divulge.

“Belle was a woman that was kinda like a mother figure to Karlie and me. She loved us both like her own. After Karlie died, Belle blamed your father and even me a little bit for her death. We had a horrible argument.”

“Why?”

“Because your mother was on her way to visit your father in some federal detention facility. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have been out driving in the dark on some narrow mountain road and fallen asleep at the wheel,” she sobbed, wiping her eyes again. “And Belle blamed me for letting her go. She was right, I
should’ve
stopped her, tied her down if necessary. I’ve had to live with that guilt all of these years, and deep in my heart I know it was
my
fault.” She was into full-blown wailing now and I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Mama, no,” I said, pulling her into my arms, and rubbing her back. “It wasn’t your fault. Karlie was stubborn like that. She was hell-bent on making that trip. There was nothing you could’ve done to stop her. Please, please stop crying and stop blaming yourself.”

She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes searching mine. “How do you know that?” she asked, sniffling. “How do you know about Karlie?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I figured I had to get it somewhere, right?”

And in that second her face lit up with a smile, and I knew that she was going to be okay. “You are a
lot
like her,” she admitted. “Not so much in looks, because you look like your daddy, but your temperament is all her. Even Walter used to comment that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree,” she said, smiling still. “I really wish you could remember him, honey. He was a fine, fine man.”

I let that slide because there was no way I could ever tell her differently. She had been my mother for twenty-seven years, and she would always be my mother. She loved me unconditionally, and I her. I only hoped she wouldn’t have a stroke, when I told her what I was preparing to do.

“I need to find my father,” I said point-blank. “He needs to know about me. I need to do it now.”

It was a four-hour drive from Richmond, Virginia to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. We were already three hours into it and Mom had barely spoken a word as I drove her car pushing well past the speed limit on I-95 North.

“Watch your speed, Parrish,” she warned for the fifth time.

“Okay,” I replied for the fifth time, letting the mph drop down a couple of notches. “And I appreciate your insisting on coming along, Mom. It always makes a trip go faster when you have someone to talk to in order to pass the time.”

“Very funny,” she deadpanned. “There’s no way in hell I was going to let you go by yourself. I’m not mad, if that’s what you’re thinking. I guess I even understand why you want to find him, I mean after all, it’s not like I’m
blood
or anything.”

I looked over and gave her an eye roll. “Mom, stop it. You will always be my mother, no matter what. I told you that yesterday. I love you.”

“Parrish, there are things in my past—in your mother’s past that neither one of us ever wanted you to know. But the thing is we made the concerted effort to change all of that. Your father? Well, he was a different story altogether.”

“I know, Mom. I read all the newspaper clippings you saved. But I’m not sure why you did that.”

“Because I needed to make sure our paths never crossed I guess. And maybe because I felt that someday I would tell you the truth. I just wasn’t sure when. Something happened while you were unconscious, didn’t it. I kind of figured out that’s how you found out everything.”

I didn’t say anything; I mean, what could I say?

“You had one of those near-death experiences, didn’t you Parrish? I’ve read up on those. There’s even a show on one of those cable networks about it, they interview people that have experienced it. That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“That’s what I figured,” she said with a sigh.

“Mom, how did you find out that Anna Maria still lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey?”

“The newspaper article about Dominic going into the Witness Protection Program mentioned that she filed for divorce instead of going underground with him. I guess she felt safe what with his brothers and his old man getting life in prison, that nobody else had a bone to pick with her, so she divorced him. I just checked with the county recorder’s office on line for that county. House is still in her name so I’m counting on the fact she still lives there.”

“But she’s his ex-wife; she won’t be privy to where he is now.”

“True, but I figure her divorce attorney had to have had some contact with the federal marshal’s office at the time this happened. I mean he had to sign any papers involved in the divorce with the division of property, titles, deeds that sort of thing. It’s all we have at the moment.”

“Do you think that he ever went looking for my moth—Karlie?” I corrected. I mean after he got his new identity and all?”

“Doubtful,” she said. “Where would he look? Belle’s place conveniently burned down a few months after Karlie died, and she passed away before the trials were even concluded. He wouldn’t have had anywhere else to look. He didn’t even know that Karlie and I were friends.”

Once we reached the outskirts, Mom gave me directions from the MapQuest route she’d printed out before we left.

“Looks like it was ritzy enough in its time,” she commented.

I totally got what she was saying. The houses were huge and sprawling, but time hadn’t kept them in pristine condition for some reason. The yards weren’t immaculately kept like they probably had been in the past, and the one that I pulled up to that had Anna Maria’s address on it looked as if the trim could use a couple of coats of paint. It was a sprawling two-story brick colonial mansion with a circular driveway. The hedges were in dire need of trimming, and the concrete steps leading up to the pillared porch had chips and cracks along them.

I’d convinced Mom to wait in the car. I knew that this was incredibly difficult for her, and there was no need to make it worse in case Anna Maria wanted to be nasty about it. I rang the bell, clasping my hands together in the cold December chill hoping someone was home. From inside I could hear the barking of a dog, a smaller one by the sound of it.

A woman answered; she looked to be in her late fifties, dressed casually, reddish-brown hair pulled up on top of her head, holding a wriggling, snorting Chinese pug in her arms. She didn’t look familiar, but then again during my ‘episode’ she’d been nearly twenty-eight years younger.

“Hi,” I said, “Are you Anna Maria?”

She studied me as if she recognized me but how could that be?

“No, I’m Christina,” she replied, “Is Anna expecting you?”

I felt my face flush momentarily. “Well, no, you see I wasn’t even sure if this was the right house,” I said. “And I didn’t have a phone number or anything. My name is Parrish Locke, but that won’t mean anything to her.”

“It’s fine,” she said, smiling, and pushing open the storm door to allow me entrance. “Come on in, I’ll call her.”

I stepped inside the entry hall, getting a totally weird vibe thinking that this was the house my father had lived in at one time. The ceilings were high; the wooden floor of the entry hall was polished to perfection, and a thick octagon shaped Oriental rug was placed in the center.

“You can have a seat in there,” she nodded towards the living room that was off of the main entryway. “I’ll go get her.”

The Chinese pug was growling and whining, wanting to get out of her grip and likely check out my scent.

“Pugsley,” she admonished. “Behave yourself.”

I took a seat on a rather worn looking settee, and within a few moments, a woman I presumed was Anna crossed over the threshold, her dark brown eyes taking me in and a sardonic grin followed. She was dressed in jeans and a turtleneck sweater, and looked to be the same age as Christina. She was taller, and more striking in appearance.