I was certain Giovanni lacked interest in a room full of stuffed dead animals, but he also seemed aware of the fact that I would seize any opportunity to snoop, so he nodded a reluctant yes.
“And you?” Decklan said, and turned to me.
“I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind.”
Decklan shrugged his shoulders.
“Suit yourself.”
Once they were out of sight, I made my move. Ever since we’d arrived I had my eye on a room down the hall. While we stood in the living room and chatted, I could see the entrance of what appeared to be a boy’s room, and that’s all it took for my curiosity to be piqued. With no one in sight, I booked it down the hall. I passed a bathroom on the left which I made note of; it could serve me well if Giovanni and Decklan decided to hike back up the stairs early, although I was certain Giovanni would keep him at bay. I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to flex his persuasive muscle if needed.
The door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar when I reached it. I nudged it with my arm just enough that I could slide in and out with ease. Once inside, I glanced around. The blue and green plaid twin comforter had been made up to perfection, and it matched the tab-topped curtains that hung over the two oversized windows in the room. There was a single wood dresser that was brown with black metal circular knobs that lined the front, two on each drawer. The walls were sparse with little adornment, but there were holes to indicate things had been hung on them at some point in the past. Some of the holes were spaced apart in a square pattern, the exact size of a poster. It made me curious about what hung there at one time.
On top of the dresser there were several framed photos of a child at various stages of life. In one, he looked to be about four. He held up a giant fish attached to a long rod. A much younger Decklan stood next to him with the proud parent smile plastered across his face. And there had been a third person in the photo, but it had been ripped, and all that remained was a hand from the person on the boy’s arm. His eyes were darted downward and fixed on the fish with an innate fascination, but he didn’t express a smile like his father. His face was stolid and emotionless.
In another photo the boy was older. He posed with a deer of some kind, or maybe it was an elk. I’d never been around anyone that hunted before, and I couldn’t tell the difference. From the look of it, the animal was dead and the boy was covered in blood. But that wasn’t what stood out to me the most. My eyes were drawn to the boy’s hands, his left one in particular. In the photo at four years of age, his hands were perfect. But something happened between the first photo and the second. A few of his fingers were bent over in such a way they appeared to have been mangled, almost like he’d contracted some sort of disease that caused them to degenerate. The only problem with that theory was, his other hand looked just fine.
Behind the photo of the boy and the animal was an album. I grabbed it and flipped through its pages. It was a timeline of photos at every age in school that started with Kindergarten. In the first three his hand was visible and looked fine, but once I got to his second grade picture it was obvious that great effort had been made to conceal it. And there was something else. The boy no longer smiled as he had in the first couple of pictures. He looked solemn and detached. I turned a few more pages and immediately recognized the photo before me. I’d seen it at the art institute earlier that day. Thoughts flooded my mind, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. The girl in the painting hadn’t been a girl at all, it was a boy.
“What are you really doing here?” a voice said from behind me.
The woman who first greeted me at the front door stood in the doorway. She’d been so quiet, I hadn’t heard her approach.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just—”
She shook her head at me and entered the room.
“There’s no need for excuses, dear. But I would like to know the real reason you’re here.”
“What’s your relationship to Decklan?” I said. “I can tell you’re related in some way.”
“I’m his mother. And,” she said and pointed to the album I still clutched in my hand, “I’m that boy’s grandmother.”
CHAPTER 43
“He always could hit every target he aimed at,” the old woman said about the photo of the boy with the dead animal. “Won his first award when he was ten. I’ve never seen anyone who could hit a bull’s eye the way he could.”
“What’s his name?” I said.
“What’s yours?”
“Sloane.”
“And you’re a PI?”
I nodded.
She sat down on the bed and placed one hand behind her to brace herself.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t stand for long periods of time anymore. My back isn’t what it used to be. Let’s sit a minute and have a little chat woman to woman while the boys run around being boys.”
I sat a couple feet away from her on the bed.
“Do you know why I question the real reason you’re here?” she said.
I shook my head.
“No one has ever come looking for Laurel. Not a single person. Since the day she walked out the door, she hasn’t been missed by anyone in this town.”
“What happened?” I said.
“She up and left with another man when the boy was only seven. Now you tell me, what kind of mother does that to her child? Leaves him without so much as a note, a phone call, a visit? I’ll tell you—the trampy kind. That woman was only interested in one thing since the day she set eyes on my son—herself. And she only cared about one thing—money.”
“If that’s true, why’d she leave all this?” I said.
“She found money somewhere else.”
“What about her son?”
“She never wanted that boy from the moment she found out she was pregnant with him. She told Decklan kids weren’t part of their deal, like a child was some sort of business transaction two people make with each other. It sickens me to think about it, even now. I was surprised she lasted seven years.”
I’d never had children, but the notion that a mother could abandon her child seemed callous. I wondered what kind of world we lived in where so many women who were desperate to have babies were denied that right while others who were undeserving pumped them out like balls in a paintball gun, one right after the other. It didn’t seem fair.
“That must have been a difficult time for your grandson,” I said.
“It was hard on them both. My son gave that woman everything her heart desired. He built her that art studio downtown and gave her whatever she asked for. But, it’s like I told him. Women like that are never happy. They wrestle with themselves their whole life, and in the end after all he’d done, I was right, and she still walked out.”
“How did he take it when she left?”
“He didn’t want to talk about it. He just focused on his work.”
“And your grandson?” I said.
“He was never the same after she left. Poor boy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You need to understand, my grandson was a quiet boy to begin with. And when that poor example of a woman up and left, it got worse. He’d lock himself in his room for hours. Turned out he was writing her letters. He’d write her every day and beg her to come back. Decklan told him we had no place to send them, but he wrote the letters anyway. He’d created this fantasy, maybe it was his way to cope so he didn’t have to face reality. When I could get him out of his room, he planted himself on the front porch and waited for her to drive up. He’d convinced himself she would come back, and no one could make him believe any different. It amazed me how much he loved that loony woman. He didn’t seem to notice that she didn’t give a damn about him.”