Gaylen’s still staring at her tea. Now, with one hand she twists the glass, around and around, smearing a puddle of water on the speckle-topped plastic table. All I hear is the buzz of background café conversation and the slosh of the ice in her glass. Finally, she looks up from under her lashes.
“What do they say in TV?” she says. “Off the record?”
I’m definitely not having that conversation. “Listen, Gaylen, like I told you,” I say, ignoring her question. “The Constitutional Justice Project, Will Easterly, Oliver Rankin-they think your mother is innocent. My producer and I are researching the story. This train has left the station.”
No answer from Gaylen.
“So let me ask you this,” I begin. “And we’re on the record. Back then, did you mother tell you she killed-” I pause, just briefly, my mind registering my uncertainty that Ray Sweeney was actually Gaylen’s father, another complicated subject “-she killed your father?”
“She confessed,” Gaylen says. She takes a deep breath, a gesture so consuming I see her shoulders rise, then fall, then sag. She looks me in the eye, challenging. And says no more.
“Gaylen? That’s not what I asked you.” I meet her eyes. “Listen. I’m going to lay this out for you. I don’t think your mother is guilty of murder. I think she’s protecting someone. And I think it might be you.”
This is a risky tactic. She might leap out of this booth and try to head for the hills. I reach across the table and put one hand, gently, on her arm. “If your mother is protecting you-it means she loves you very much. But it means she’s going to spend most of her life locked away. Behind bars. Because of you. Is that what you want?”
Gaylen leans against the back of the booth, her eyes assessing, her expression uncertain.
My hand is still on her arm, but I slowly take it away. “You want to visit your mother in prison, just see her once a week, not even be able to touch her? Or hug her?”
Gaylen’s face begins to crumble. I can almost see her will disintegrating. She’s what-twenty-four years old? Twenty-five? She’s gone through hell. And she’s probably still there.
“Have you ever talked to anyone about this?” I persist. “I bet you haven’t. You could have just run away. But you didn’t. I know it’s because you don’t want to lose your mother, Gaylen. That means you truly love her. Do you think this is the best way to show it?”
“I…I…I don’t know,” Gaylen says. “Mother…I…she-confessed.” The word confessed comes out twisted, as if she doesn’t like the taste or sound of it. “She says she remembers what happened that night. I don’t. And she refuses to discuss it. She told me to disappear, Charlie, but I couldn’t do that.” She sighs, a bone-rattling full-body sigh, and briefly puts her face in her hands. “I changed my name and I left Swampscott. But I couldn’t leave her. And if she didn’t kill my father, why would she say she did?”
“Well,” I begin, taking a tentative step onto shaky ground, “because-”
“I know why she would,” Gaylen interrupts. “Because she thinks I killed him.”
And there we have it. I’m still, silent, waiting.
“And what if I did? And I don’t remember? Am I supposed to go to the police and say, ‘Excuse me, Officer, I might be guilty of murder but I don’t know’?” She puts her hands back to her cheeks and speaks through her fingers. “You’re right. I’ve lost my mother. And I’ve lost myself. And I want us back.”
The streetlights click on, illuminating the storefronts of the quiet street outside our window as the two of us sit across from each other, measuring our options, Gaylen’s looking more and more fragile. And I don’t blame her. I push forward another step. “You’re studying domestic violence, right? If Ray Sweeney hurt you, even threatened you, and it was all an accident, you know that-”
The whir of my cell phone, set on vibrate, buzzes insistently and audibly inside the purse tucked beside me. Damn. Who could be-? Mother. What if something’s wrong? I hold up a finger, shake my head in frustration. “I’m so sorry, Gaylen. It might be my…” I pause. “I need to take this.”
I flip open my phone. Franklin’s voice crackles through the receiver. “I’m at Swampscott PD,” he says. “Chief’s office.” His voice is terse, and I can feel the tension even through the annoying hiss of our static-filled connection. “Found Clay Gettings.” Something something. “Detroit.” Something something. “You at the bar?”
I can barely make out his words as the connection weakens. He’s still talking, but it’s becoming more impossible to comprehend. At least this is good news. We knew Claiborne Gettings, the other cop who investigated the Ray Sweeney murder, had moved to Detroit. If Franklin’s found him, he could confirm the lineup photos we saw were not what cops showed the witnesses back then. At least, he could if he’s not in on the cover-up.
I see Gaylen shift in her seat. She’s eyeing the back of the restaurant. If she’s looking for the bathroom, I guess that’s fine. If she’s looking for a back door, that could be disaster. I hold up a hand, stopping her, as I try to get a word through the buzz.
“Franklin?” I say. “Can’t really hear you. You found Claiborne Gettings? That’s great.” I glance at Gaylen, who seems to have settled back into the booth and is digging for something in her tote bag. “Where? Will he talk to us?”
“Dead.” That, I can hear. “Drowned. Behind the Lynn docks.”
A flare of static is not all that makes me wince. This is no coincidence.
“Apparently he came to town last week for some family thing,” Franklin continues. “They found him this morning.”
“An accident?” I ask, although I fear I know the answer.
“No,” Franklin says. “Signs of a struggle, police say. Seems like someone wanted him out of the picture.”
I hear a voice in the background, apparently talking to Franklin. Finally Franklin comes back to the phone. “Gotta go,” he says. “Seems like they might have a suspect. Later.” And he’s gone.
I stare at the dead phone in my hand, trying to process Franklin’s news. Then Gaylen passes a business card across the table. Its edges are splitting and frayed. It’s creased and worn. I can see it once was white. And I see whose name is on it.
“Did you say Clay Gettings? The cop who investigated the murder?” she asks. “I’ve been carrying around his card, all these years. He said if I ever remembered anything, to call him. I just couldn’t let go of it, somehow.” She tucks it back into her wallet, a physical reminder of another time. “Did you say accident?”
“Ah, Gaylen, I don’t know, really. That was my producer, Franklin Parrish, who’s at the Swampscott Police Department. Apparently there’s been an incident.” Things are moving too fast, and I feel as if the china plates on sticks I’m attempting to juggle are about to come crashing down. I was just connecting with her, I could sense her opening up and I don’t want to lose her. “Go back, Gaylen, to what we were talking about. That’s the most important thing. Are you willing to face your past? And your future? Can you help us find out what really happened?”
Gaylen bites her lower lip. I can see tears welling in her frightened eyes. She’s forlorn and forgotten, a non-person trying to carry an impossible secret. Trying to make an impossible decision.
“Do you think I killed my father?” she asks. “Or do you think my mother did?”
And now she’s asked an impossible question.