Water from Stone - a Novel (18 page)

“Lizzie!” Mar screams from the bathroom and is answered by a frantic bark. Rushing back into the hallway, she sees that the only direction she has failed to look is up. “Dear god, no!” she prays as she bolts up the stairs, rushed along by Picasso’s hysterical barking. “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie, please, please, please.”

Mar hits the third floor at a full run and immediately goes skidding through the darkness, her feet gone from under her when they hit something liquid. She slides across the hardwood floor and slams into her easel, knocking it over and onto her, along with a five-by-six-foot canvas and the gallon can of gesso she had been using earlier to prepare it. She drops into the darkness.

“No,” Mar moans. She is being washed by an incredibly foul smelling cloth.  Mar tries to turn her head away from it but it follows her relentlessly. She pushes it away only to have it begin to whine at her. “Picasso?” she mumbles and comes to as her blood runs cold. “Lizzie?” she cries more forcefully and is rewarded by loud barking from the dog.

Mar pushes the easel off of her and rolls over, her body screaming with the effort. “Where’s Lizzie, Picasso?” she asks into the darkness. “Baby, where are you?” She feels along the floor and finds the cord to the halogen floor lamp she uses when painting at night. Feeling along it, she finds the switch and pushes it on, flooding the studio with light. What she sees brings her world crashing down around her. Lizzie’s small hand peeks out from below a large utility shelf that pins her beneath it, and around it is a growing pool of blood, the blood she herself had slipped in when she had flown up the stairs.

Thirty-Seven

Jack.

“What do you want me to say, Caroline? I’m sorry, I’m incredibly sorry.” Jack stops in front of the large picture window that overlooks the city.  Far below, traffic is speeding along in its maniacal dance. He flinches as one set of headlights barely swerves around another. He hopes he can avoid a similar collision with Caroline. A month ago, she’d turned thirty and Jack had presented her with a box from Tiffany’s. To say her eyes had lit up would have been an understatement. In fact, she had literally screamed with delight. Until she’d opened the box and seen the diamond earrings. At that point, she’d gone pale and had rushed to the bathroom. When she’d returned, she’d opened the box, thanked him quietly for the jewelry and then gone to bed, claiming a migraine.

Now, Caroline is curled up on the sofa behind him, her eyes raw from crying. They’ve been at it for more than an hour and remain in the same place where they’d begun – she wants to get married and he doesn’t. Can’t.

“Sorry? That’s it? What am I supposed to do with sorry? Jack, we’ve been together for more than a year. What am I supposed to do with ‘sorry’? I can’t take sorry to bed at night.”

The lawyer in Jack could have pointed out that, technically, they’d been together only eleven months, though they had known each other more than a year. Thankfully, he knows when to shut the lawyer up. “Caro…”

“No way, Jack. Don’t you dare call me ‘Caro’ when we’re fighting.”

Jack rubs at the tension that has settled so heavily between his eyebrows. “Fine, Caroline,” he enunciates, “I don’t want to fight with you.”

She comes off the sofa so quickly, her long legs flashing and then planting themselves across from him, that Jack instantly regrets his tone. “What the hell is that about? ‘Fine, Caroline,’ like I’m bothering you?”

“Alright, enough, I’m sorry. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“But it’s what you want. How can you say you don’t like it when it’s you who’s creating it?”

“Look, Caroline, dammit, what do you want from me?”

“A commitment. Is that so goddamned difficult to understand? I’m sorry I’m not Lindsey, I’m sorry Mia is still missing, but I don’t understand why that means you can’t get on with your life.”

Jack allows his head to hit the glass. The air-condition-chilled pane cools the hot throbbing of his skin, clears his head. How can he explain something she just doesn’t get? He can’t ‘get on’ with something he doesn’t have. Yes, Lindsey is gone, he has come to terms, if not peace, with that. But his daughter, Mia, she is something he won’t let go of. She is out there somewhere, he knows it, he feels it, feels her and, until he knows where she is, until he’s found her and brought her home, he will not, cannot, even begin to think of starting a ‘new’ family.

Jack turns from the window and looks at her. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, sadness filling him.

Caroline freezes. “That’s it, then?” she whispers. “It’s over?”

The apartment’s intercom buzzes loudly, startling them both. Caroline glares at Jack, daring him to answer it. When he shrugs and begins to more toward the foyer, she swears loudly and stomps off toward the kitchen.

“Yes?” Jack asks the doorman.

“DeJon is here to see you, sir.”

“DeJon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send him up, please.”

“Will do, sir. You have a good evening.”

“You, too, Harry.”

DeJon? That doesn’t bode well. He’s stayed over with Jack on numerous occasions but has never shown up unexpectedly before. Jack moves out to the landing to wait for him.

When the elevator opens, DeJon steps out, his usual swagger missing. “Hey there, DJ, what’s going on?”

“Uh, Jack, hey there.”

Jack takes in the scuffed duffel bag that looks ready to burst and the basketball that DeJon cradles under one of arms. “Are you OK?”

DeJon nods, his eyes sliding off to the side, refusing to meet Jack’s.

“Come on, then. Let’s talk inside.”

DeJon sets his bag on the floor of the foyer and balances his ball on top of it, careful not to let them touch the wall. That care, while Jack appreciates the consideration, only underscores the fact that even after all these years, DeJon is not fully comfortable in Jack’s home. It makes him feel like a double failure. He mutters a curse and leads DeJon into the living room. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

DeJon shakes his head.

“DJ? Hey, look at me.” Jack lifts the boy’s chin and catches his eye, catches the fear and sadness that have moved in and taken up residence there. “Shit. What’s wrong?”

“She’s gone, man.” DeJon’s eyes fill with tears and he wipes at them angrily.

“Your mom? She’s gone?”

“Yeah, the bitch cut out last week. Took up with some new dude and cut out.”

“She’s been gone a week? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought she’d be coming back. She’s never been gone for more’n a day or two before.”

“Well, what the hell have you been doing? Where have you been staying?”

“At home.”

“Alone?”

Finally, DeJon rolls his eyes. “I’m thirteen. In my part of the world, that makes me a man.”

“You’re a kid. Don’t give me that street-life crap. Now tell me what happened.”

“It’s like I told you. She met this guy awhile back, he’d give her some of his shit now ‘n then, ‘n when he told her he was taking off, I guess she decided to go with him.”

“And leave you? Goddammit!” DeJon’s mother is no prize, but the kid is loyal and won’t let Jack even talk about helping him get out. How DeJon has turned out smart and clean, Jack has no idea. He suspects it has a lot to do with Father Mac and the Big-Brother-Little-Brother relationship that he and DeJon share. He hopes so.

“I’m OK. I can take care of myself.”

“Dammit, DeJon,” Jack swears again, “why didn’t you call me?”

“You’ve been busy with that big case ‘n’all.”

“I’m never too busy for you. You know that.” But the year he’d hidden away from the world, including from DeJon, stands between them and Jack’s words don’t ring true. “OK, fine, so why did you finally decide to come here?”

“They kicked me out,” DeJon mumbles, his eyes once again on the floor.

“What? Who kicked you out?”

“The landlord. Big, ugly white dude, carries a bat.”

“The landlord kicked you out?”

“Rent’s past due.”

“When? When did he kick you out?”

“Coupla days ago.”

“A couple of days ago? Where’ve you been staying?”

“Around,” comes the mumbled reply.

Jack grits his teeth. He’d like to find the ugly white dude with the bat and show him a new use for it. He takes a slow breath and heads toward the kitchen. “Come on,” he orders, the anger coursing through him, “let’s get you something to eat and then you can put your things away.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Jack turns on him. “Listen,” he says, “let’s get something straight here. I am incredibly pissed right now, but not at you. Never at you. OK, wait, I take that back. I’m a little pissed at you right now for not coming to me sooner. But, other than that, we’re cool. Right now, though, I want to get you some food and let you get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, we’ll figure out the rest of it. Understand this, though,” he finishes, “this is your home. For as long as you want it to be. Now, come on.”

The kitchen is empty when they get there and Jack wonders what has happened to Caroline. He’ll have to go find her, try to set things right with her. Shit. But first, he wants to get some food in the kid. From the way his eyes follow Jack to the refrigerator and pantry, Jack knows he has to be starving.

As Jack sets the sandwich and milk in front of DeJon, the kitchen door swings open. “So, who was…? Oh.” Caroline stops in the doorway and glares at Jack.

“Something came up and DeJon’s staying here for awhile,” Jack tells her.

“Fine. That’ll be nice,” Caroline’s smile is all ice. “At least you’ll have company.” She turns and stomps out of the room.

“Man, I’m sorry,” DeJon begins.

“Cut it. It’s got nothing to do with you. Eat up. I’ll be right back.”

Jack catches up with her at the door, where she is struggling with two over-stuffed bags. “Caroline…”

“Back off, Jack.”

“Look, can’t we talk about this?”

“No, Jack, we can’t. Don’t you see how awful this is? Don’t you understand what all this, this shit, has done to me? I used to be this strong, independent person, and I just begged you to marry me! That is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m sorry...”

“I don’t care, Jack,” she cuts him off. “Can’t you see that I don’t care that you’re sorry? You’re like this walking wounded man who’s so caught up in feeling sorry for himself that he can’t see how fantastic the world really is.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It is, dammit, and I am such a jerk, I fell for it, did the Florence Nightingale thing, thinking I could save you. But, no, you’re having too much fun drowning. Go drown, Jack.”

Jack doesn’t stop the door from slamming behind her. He doesn’t go after her and beg her to stay. But the minute she is gone, he kicks the shit out of DeJon’s basketball and smiles grimly when it knocks a hole in the plaster wall.

Thirty-Eight

Jack.

Jack pours himself a glass of Scotch while DeJon makes himself another sandwich. “She’ll be back, man. Just give her a chance to cool off.”

“No, she won’t. And, I don’t want her to.”

That stops him. The kid actually pauses with the sandwich halfway to his lips. He sets it down carefully. “You don’t want her to? Now why you sayin’ that?”

Jack thinks about brushing him off, treating him like a kid, but he can see there is real curiosity in DeJon’s eyes. He’s grown up without a father and the men his mother brings home won’t have taught him anything good about relationships between men and women. It is probably way past time he gets some answers to the questions that have to be brewing inside his adolescent head. “Look,” he says sitting at the table and indicating the chair across from him, “I love her, she’s special, but I can’t give her what she wants.”

“She wants to marry you.”

“Right, and I’ve been incredibly selfish about it. I stayed with her all this time even when I knew I’d never marry her.”

“Yeah, but she coulda gotten out.”

“She could have,” Jack agrees. “I told her a long time ago I didn’t ever want to marry again, but she didn’t believe it. I guess she thought that if she loved me enough, I’d eventually change my mind.”

“But you love her, though, don’t you?”

“I do. She’s great. It’s just, look, it’s me. I’ve always believed that when you marry someone, you give everything you’ve got, and then some. I’d be lying if I said I have that much left to give to her.”

“But maybe she’d be good for you,” the newly-minted love counselor says around a bite of his sandwich.

“She probably would,” Jack smiles sadly, “but I wouldn’t be very good for her.”

***

A short time later, while DeJon is drying his dishes and Jack is working on his second Scotch, the phone rings. DeJon, who is closer to it, looks a question at Jack who nods.

“’Lo?” DeJon asks. “This’s Jack’s.”

Jack has to smile, how could he not? When Lindsey had first introduced him to Father Mac and The Farm, DeJon had been a sad, quiet little kid of six. His mother, in one of her more sober moments, had arranged for him to hang out at The Farm in the afternoons. Jack, growing up in rural America, had seen poverty, had known the depression in people’s eyes when the banks foreclosed on their farm loans. He’d seen kids go hungry and seen his parents take more than one family in crisis in, help them sort things out. But this, the filthy, angry desperation on the streets of New York’s slums, had depressed the hell out of him. DeJon had been that rare jewel in the mix. A smart, funny kid once you got past the barriers, he’d stolen Jack’s heart right from the start.

Now DeJon holds out the phone. “It’s for you,” he says.

Jack chuckles, “What? You were expecting calls already?”

“Naw,” DJ starts before he realizes Jack is kidding him. He smiles sheepishly and hands over the phone. “Some white dude.”

“Hello?” Jack sets aside the disappointment that it isn’t Caroline and answers.

“Jack? Jack Westfield?”

“Yes? How can I help you?”

“Mr. Westfield, this is Special Agent Mike Shaheen. We met several years ago, when your daughter disappeared.”

Jack’s grip tightens on the phone. “Did you find her?” he finally forces out. “Is she OK?”

“Um, I’m sorry, sir. I should have sent someone to see you…”