“She kept lying, Alex. She said no, that wasn’t Keon, that was another dog. And this guy was saying, ‘Well, he looked just like this dog on the poster.’ So my mother yells at him and tells him to mind his own business. But, of course, then I knew what had happened. I wasn’t an idiot. After all that time, I finally got her to admit that she had killed the dog. She says to me, ‘I didn’t want to tell you because I knew it would make you sad.’ Like going through this charade for five days was somehow better than just telling me what had happened.”
“That’s pretty bad.”
“How about one more,” she said. “When I told her about what Albert was doing to me, she promised me she’d make him stop. She promised me he’d never touch me again.”
She didn’t look up at me. She picked up a photograph and ran her fingers along the edge.
“My mother promised me, Alex. Never again, she said. Never again, my sweet little daughter. If she had to, she’d take me with her and run away forever.”
I sat there and watched her, not sure what to say. She picked up a few more photographs and sorted through them.
“I grew up with lies,” she finally said. “To this day, I cannot stand for someone to lie to me.”
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I’m not too crazy about lies, either.”
“If you ever lie to me, Alex-”
“Not going to happen. That’s one thing I can promise you.”
“Okay, good.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We call my mother. We take our chances.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s time to find out,” she said, picking up the original photo. Three men, almost thirty years ago. “I want to know what happened to my father.”
She got up and went to the kitchen phone. As she dialed the number, she closed her eyes like someone waiting for a bomb to go off. There was a long wait. Apparently, nobody was answering.
“Hello, mother,” she said, opening her eyes. I could tell she was talking to the answering machine now. “This is Natalie. Um, hope you’re doing okay. Give me a call. I want to ask you about something.”
She paused. She closed her eyes again.
“I saw a nice picture of you today,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later. Goodbye.”
She hung the phone up and let out a long breath.
“She’ll call you back, right?”
“Oh yes. She’ll call me back.”
I felt like holding her just then, but she went back into the kitchen. She returned with a bottle and two glasses.
“I could use a drink,” she said. “How about you?”
She poured a couple of fingers’ worth of Wild Turkey in each glass and handed one to me.
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“Don’t worry, Alex. Just one, okay? It’s been a bitch of a day already.”
She kissed me on the mouth and clinked my glass with hers.
“Cheers?”
“Cheers,” I said.
I watched her take a long swallow. She made a face and put the glass on the table.
“I actually called my mother,” she said. “Without a gun to my head. Can you believe it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“This is the other thing my mother does. She drinks. After my father was gone, she and Albert would hang around all day, seeing who could get drunk first.”
“Natalie, maybe you shouldn’t-”
“My mother always had the advantage, you know? Less body weight, the liquor works faster.”
“Come on,” I said. I tried to take her glass from her. She gave me a little elbow check and took another drink.
“Here’s to mothers, eh?” Half a glass of bourbon and her Canadian accent was already getting stronger. “Which reminds me… If we want to find out more about the past, I’ve got one idea who we can talk to.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’ll see,” she said, putting her glass down. “Follow me.”
The house was next door, she said. Next door meaning the next house down the road, a half mile away. There was a path that led across the field behind the barn, then into the trees. I didn’t like the sound of a half mile hike in knee-deep snow, in the beat-up shape I was still in that day, so we took her Jeep instead.
“I’m sorry about all that,” she said as we pulled down her driveway. “Just talking about my mother, I turn into a twelve-year-old again.”
“I didn’t have a mother when I was twelve.”
“At the time, I wished I didn’t either, believe me.”
“Who’s this woman we’re gonna see?”
“Mrs. DeMarco, Albert’s mother. She’s been here forever, Alex. Practically her whole life.”
“How old is she?”
“If I’m counting right, she’s ninety-six years old now.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “I thought Simon Grant was old.”
“She blew by eighty-two a long time ago.”
“Did she know your family well?”
“Yes, the two families were pretty close. Albert and my father, they spent so much time together-they’d use that trail between the houses to meet up so they could go get in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Just kid stuff. Setting fires, shooting off guns. At least that’s what my mother told me. So God knows if any of it’s true.”
It was a short trip down the road, heading due east. The wind was still blowing, but the bright sun from that morning was long gone. More snow was on the way.
“Later on, when I was growing up,” she said, “I’d come over here a lot myself. I remember that one time, when my mother was trying to move out, I ran over here and hid, so she couldn’t take me with her.”
She pulled into the driveway. It needed a good plowing.
“I always loved Mrs. DeMarco. She was always so glad to see me. I think maybe because she didn’t have any grandchildren of her own.”
“So Albert and your mother…”
“Never had any kids of their own, no. Thank God. I can’t imagine having Albert DeMarco as your natural father.”
“But his mother still lives here in Blind River? All by herself?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was stationed up at Hearst for so long… When I came back, I was surprised to see that she was still here.”
Natalie pulled up to the house. It was another farmhouse, but about half the size of Natalie’s, and in much more need of attention. I could see from fifty feet away that all the wood on the porch was rotten. The shutters didn’t look any better. The one hanging cockeyed from the hinges was the crowning touch.
“I’ve only been here once since I’ve been back,” Natalie said. “I know I should come more often, but God, it’s so hard seeing her like this. Apparently she has this nurse who comes to check on her every afternoon, but I haven’t met her.”
“Shouldn’t she be living somewhere else now?”
“She should be, yes. Most of the time she’s sort of living in the past. I don’t think she even knows what year it is.”
“If that’s true, then is she really going to be able to answer your questions?”
“Who knows?” Natalie said. She pulled the key out of the ignition. “If her mind is really stuck in the past, maybe she’s the best person of all to tell us about it.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I got out of the Jeep with her and walked up to the front steps. It looked like someone had made a halfhearted attempt to shovel the walkway.
“The nurse must have been here,” Natalie said. She knocked on the front door and peeked inside the little window. She pushed it open and stuck her head inside.
“Hello! Mrs. DeMarco?”
I didn’t hear any response, but she pushed the door all the way in anyway and went inside. I was right behind her.
“Mrs. DeMarco?”
I was expecting a shambles, based on the way the place looked from the outside, but it was surprisingly neat and well ordered. We passed a set of stairs with a great polished railing, an antique phone table next to the stairs, a faded Oriental rug over hardwood floors, then another larger rug as the hallway opened into the living room. There was more old furniture in fairly good shape, a sofa that probably would have been called a divan, and a long chair that I’d guess you’d call a settee. Stuff so old even the names had been retired. There were white lace curtains on the windows and a pair of portraits on the walls in oval frames. A man and a woman, taken a hell of a long time ago. The air was warm, and smelled of mothballs and something medicinal like liniment.