“Well,” the nurse said, “I didn’t say that. I’m just here to tell you it looks like he’s going to be okay—so far.”
I could live with that. I thanked the nurse. Then she turned on her heel and briskly walked away, still clutching the clipboard.
“I’m so relieved,” I said to Beth.
“I know.”
We sat there in silence for a few minutes. Then I said, “I hate to go back to this, but I’m wondering why you feel so guilty about Mom’s death and Gordon. You’re being too hard on yourself.”
She paused. I saw that her hands were clenched, the fingernails digging into the fabric of her chair.
“Gordon found me about a year ago,” she said. “I don’t know how. For all I know he used one of those Internet people finder things. Or else he hired someone to find me. Whatever it was, he found me here in Reston Point. He told me then that he’d been thinking about me a lot and hoped we could reconnect. He gave me a whole line about how sorry he was about the past and everything that happened when he sent me away. He said it was a misunderstanding, that he really didn’t mean for me to never come back. I’m ashamed to say I fell for some of it. I guess I was so desperate to connect with someone from my family—this family that had been taken away from me—that I was willing to believe he might be a changed man.” She looked at me, her face serious. “People do change, Elizabeth. Take it from me—they really do. I know that better than anyone.”
I nodded.
“I asked him about Mom, of course. He told me what he knew—that she had remarried and had two kids. He said he’d been in touch with her and maybe it was a little soon for me to go rushing back into her life. I found out later, from Mom, that he had only gotten back in touch with her because he knew she had some insurance money from your dad and wanted to try to get something out of her. Gordon hadn’t been living in Dover for very long. I still don’t know where he’d been living. Columbus maybe. But the money was all he wanted. She said she hadn’t seen him in ten or fifteen years, and then he showed up again. Hell, I think he probably wanted money from me, but one look at my life and he’d know the cupboard was bare. But he said he’d help smooth the way and prepare Mom for meeting me if I wanted. I went along with that too.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I said before,” Beth said. “I still felt that shame, that fear that the life I had led in the past would be… difficult for Mom to accept. I wanted to be sure I was ready for anything.”
“Did you ever think Mom wanted to send you away?”
Beth paused a long time. “I guess at first I might have. We didn’t get along. She was frustrated with me a lot.” She shook her head. “But she would never do that. I don’t blame her. I never would. And I know she thought I was dead. If she thought there was a chance I was alive somewhere… well, I just know she would have tried to find me.”
“So how did you meet Mom, then?”
“About six months after Gordon found me, I could tell he was starting to stall a little about getting me and Mom back together. I was getting impatient. I was ready. As ready as I was ever going to be, and I thought if I didn’t do it soon I might never do it.” She took a deep breath. “He let something slip once. I knew he was seeing Mom somewhere south of Reston Point. I guessed it was Dover because there really isn’t much else down here. Even with a town the size of Dover, finding one person when you only know their first name is like finding a needle in a haystack. And I was afraid I’d run across someone I used to know. A kid from school or whatever. I assumed some people might remember me, and I didn’t want Mom to find out through someone else that I was around. I wanted to have some control over how it went. Instead, in a roundabout way, it was Ronnie who helped me find her.”
“Ronnie?” I asked. “How?”
“Gordon told me once that Mom had a son with Down syndrome. That’s all I knew. I didn’t even know his name. Or your name. But I did know they had that place in Dover, that center where people with disabilities spend time and get jobs and things like that.”
“The Miller Center.”
“Right. I worked with a woman who had a nephew who used to go there,” Beth said.
“Did she know Mom?”
“No. I just went to that place, the Miller Center, and I asked around. I lied and said my son had Down syndrome, but he had died. And I said there was a woman I met there who had been very kind to me, and I wanted to thank her but I only knew her first name. ‘She has a son with Down syndrome,’ I said. ‘And her name is Leslie.’ The volunteer said it must be Leslie Hampton. I had it then. That’s how I found Mom.”
“Did you just show up at her door?”
“I didn’t know what to do. Finally I called. She thought it was a cruel joke at first, but then I told her things no one else could know. How old I was when I got my first period. The name of my stuffed bunny when I was little. That was all it took. We agreed to meet at her house one night. Ronnie wasn’t there, but as soon as she saw me, she knew it was me. And I knew it was her. It was like something was completed that night—something clicked inside me that hadn’t clicked in a long time.”
The nurse with the clipboard came out again and spoke to the other family in the waiting area, using a low voice. The family nodded happily, and I found myself relieved that they appeared to be receiving good news as well.
I turned back to Beth. “How did that mean you led Gordon to Mom? He obviously knew where she was before you did.”
“I think there was something else going on,” Beth said. “I think Gordon was blackmailing Mom with information about me. He knew where I was, and he knew where she was. And I think he told Mom that if she ever wanted to see me, she’d have to pay up.”
I thought of those bank withdrawals over the past year. All that money leaving Mom’s account.
“Did Mom say anything about it?” I asked.
“At some point she said it would be a relief to have Gordon off her back. She didn’t get specific, but she indicated she’d been helping him out. I didn’t know what she meant, but it sounded like money. I think Gordon was telling her that he’d let her know where I was as long as she kept giving him money. He strung her along as much as he could.”
“It’s hard to believe Mom would put up with that,” I said. “Getting strung along that way.”
“I agree,” Beth said. “Except—”
“She was desperate to see her child again.”
“Exactly. And when I found Mom on my own, Gordon lost his leverage over her.”
“So you think…”
Beth nodded. “I told Mom the whole story about why I went away. I think Gordon tried to get more money out of her, and she told him to get lost—that she knew everything, and not only would there be no money, but she might have even threatened to go to the police. It wouldn’t make sense for him to kill her if she was giving him money, would it? But once she knew me again and what he’d done to me, she took a stand. I think she said, ‘No more.’” Beth took a long pause. “I think that’s when he killed her.”
Chapter Fifty-three
“You think he killed her because she wouldn’t give him money anymore?”
“She didn’t have to,” Beth said. “And what’s more, she also knew it was him who drove me away that night. He probably thought she’d turn him in to the police. Maybe he killed her just to shut her up.”
It all made sense to me. And there were other implications that went with it.
“If he might have killed Mom to shut her up, then—”
“Me,” Beth said. “I know everything too. My guess is that he was working up to it. Maybe he thought if I was in the will, he might be able to get some money out of me. Who knows what he was coming to the house for tonight? Your friend got in the way, or else who knows what would have happened. To both of us.” As she said that, something crossed her face. Some recognition that widened her eyes. “Jesus. Now you’re in it too. You know what I know.”