She’s never going to make it. I trot around behind my car, afraid to get in her way, and wait while she makes another attempt. I hear the grind of her gearshift as she backs into place, see her rear tire bounce against the curb. No wonder there’s a dent in her door. Girl cannot drive.
Smiling, I position my key to open the Jeep’s door and glance up as the driver climbs out into the street. My key never makes it into the lock.
I can’t be sure, but the journalism gods may have answered my prayers. I just wish they would have told me what to say.
“Excuse me?” I figure that’s as good an opener as any.
The girl turns toward me with a polite smile, questioning. She’s twenty-something. Wearing a plain white shirt and a dark cotton skirt tied with a colorful scarf. Bare legs, little navy flats. A bulky brown leather bag, almost bigger than she is, hangs over one shoulder, with a rolled-up newspaper sticking out its un-zippered top. Could be a college student? Coming home from her summer job as a salesclerk? I don’t know. But I do know her brown eyes. I know her cheekbones. I recognize the oval shape of her face and the wave of her almost-russet hair. I have her picture in my cell phone.
“Yes?” she replies. Then she frowns. “Oh, I didn’t hit your car, did I?” She walks closer, eyes fixed on my front bumper.
This is Gaylen. My mind is racing. Of course. This is where she lives. The shelter. This is where she’s hiding. The possibilities in my brain shift, rearrange, and then click nicely into reality. This is how Gaylen gets to see her mother but disappear from the rest of the world.
“Laura?” I ask. I’m low-key. Casual. Unthreatening. She’d never know my heart is beating so fast I can barely breathe. If she bolts, I’m screwed. “Laura Maldonado?”
She stops short, her face registering confusion, then suspicion, as she takes a cautious step backward. Her car keys are still in one hand, a tube of pepper spray and a silver whistle dangling from a metal key ring. I see her glance at them, shift them, as if she’s worried she’ll have to physically defend herself or call for help.
“Do I know you from somewhere?” she asks, her forehead furrowing. She’s still taking tiny steps backward, away from me and toward her car.
I’m taking tiny steps forward. Toward her. And toward some answers. “You’re Laura, right?” I confirm. She nods, only just, but says nothing. “I’m Charlie McNally, Channel 3 News.” I’m almost close enough to reach out and touch her. “And this morning I had a long talk with your mother.”
Laura-Gaylen-whirls around, scrambling for the proper key, one hand reaching for the car door handle. With a step, I plant myself between her and the car, leaning against the still-warm metal, preventing her from opening the door. I’m the tiniest bit anxious about the pepper spray thing, but I’m betting she won’t use it.
I smile at her, attempting to telegraph how much a threat I’m not. “I know who you are,” I say softly. “And I’m so sorry.”
Laura/Gaylen is breathing in little puffs, her chest rising and falling, her eyes darting. She looks like a frightened child-she is a child-caught in a lie, trying to calculate if she can get away with it. Then with one quick motion, leading with a thin shoulder, she darts for the car door. But I’m taller and stronger. And I’m not going to budge.
“Gaylen?” I continue, keeping my voice low and steady, “I understand you don’t want people to know who you are. I respect that. And I can keep a secret.” I pause. “If I need to.”
I scout up and down the quiet street, cars in driveways, the last of the kids inside. The dinnertime lull in a summer night. “Look,” I say. “Walk with me. Once around the block. Just hear me out.”
“You can’t-” she begins. Her eyes narrow warily and suddenly she looks much older. Sadder. Suspicious as a mistreated animal. Then her nose goes in the air, and she looks at me from under her lashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “And if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll call the cops.”
“Want to use my phone?” I ask pleasantly. “I’ll wait with you while they come.” I elaborately adjust the sleeves of the thin sweater tied over my shoulders and tuck a strand of hair behind one ear. I call her bluff. “But of course, when the officers ask your name, if you don’t tell them the truth I will.”
Her shoulders sag. The sneer disappears from her face.
“Once around the block,” I coax, taking advantage of the chink in her armor. I take her elbow gently, and guide her away from the car. “I think your mother may be innocent, Gaylen. Do you?” I feel her stumble and take her arm more protectively as we walk.
“I don’t know,” she whispers. She looks at me with a flash of dread. “If she didn’t kill Ray…
Ray. Not Dad.
…who did?” Her head goes down, eyes on her feet, as we continue along the cracking sidewalk, patches of random grass and yellow-headed dandelions poking their way into existence. “And why did she confess?”
“Well, that’s what I’m wondering, too,” I say. “Wondering if you had any ideas about that.”
We walk in silence for a moment, a cawing flock of starlings settling into the scrawny municipal trees lining the sidewalk. I can’t figure this girl out. If she’s guilty, she would be defensive, somehow. And she’s not. It’s as if she’s really asking me, why? What’s more, this is not the self-centered kill-your-father-and-leave-your-mother-to-rot-in-prison psycho brat I’d imagined. There’s something about her expression, her weary demeanor, the way she stretches her tension-strained neck. She looks so much like her mother that-
“Gaylen,” I say. “It was you in the bar that night. Wasn’t it?”
CHAPTER 20
The story of the whole night spills out. Gaylen describes it almost faster than I can even envision it happening. Yes, she admitted, she had been in the bar, not her mother. Arguing with her bully of a father, bitterly, loudly, because she wanted to move out, into an apartment of her own. And as always, he’d refused, laughing, and told her he’d never allow her to leave. Her father pounded down tequila. She’d had two margaritas. She’d been dizzy, they’d hit her hard. They’d walked home, still arguing. He was aggressively, intimidatingly drunk. She’d stalked off to her bedroom and collapsed, still dressed, on top of her bed.
The next morning, her mother shook her awake and told her Ray was dead.
It had taken her more than once around the block to tell her story, as the evening waned into the breezes of a New England summer night.
Now curled against the back of the worn and anemically once-red booth in the Bizzy Bee coffee shop, Gaylen has her head down, her eyes covered with sunglasses. I’ve yanked my hair back with a clip and put on my reading glasses, hoping my do-it-yourself disguise will fool any Channel 3 viewers. It doesn’t matter. Weary-looking customers in work shirts, nurses’ uniforms, oil-stained jeans silently stir coffee and pick at tired sandwiches, stolidly ignoring the intense conversation of the two unfamiliar women in the corner booth. So far, actually, I’m mostly listening. Bursting with questions and dying to take out a notebook, but I know it’s better to wait. She seems ready to talk. Let her give me all she wants. And then, maybe, I can even get more. Could I be sitting with a murderer?
We both have iced teas, our second refills. The condensation drips down the nubby sides of the tall plastic glasses. Gaylen jabs at a wedge of lemon with her straw.
“Gaylen? Should we talk about what happened that morning?” I put my chin in my hands, leaning toward her, trying to convey my willingness to listen. “You’ve been hiding for a long time now. You’ve given up your life. And your mother-if she’s innocent-has had her life unfairly taken away. I can’t believe that’s how you’d want to spend your life. Or your mother to spend hers. Is it?”