“Jeez, Mom, I thought you gave that up.”
Mother exhaled a steady stream of smoke, which was snatched away by the wind. “I did.”
“Then why…?”
“Ask your father.”
I sat down on the opposite bench, facing her. In spite of the cold, Mom wore no gloves or hat, and the wind lifted her peach-pale hair and tossed it about carelessly. “Where is he?” I asked. “Nobody answered the door.”
“Gone for a walk along the beach, I suppose. It’s been a rough morning.” A column of smoke drifted into her eyes, and she kneaded them with her fingers.
“So Daddy told you about Georgina?”
She nodded and took a drag on her cigarette. “If that therapist weren’t already dead, I’d kill her myself.”
“You’d be at the head of a very long line.”
“When did you find out about it, Hannah?” She fixed her eyes on mine with such intensity that I looked away to hide my embarrassment.
I didn’t want to tell Mother exactly when I knew; I didn’t want her to discover that I’d heard about Georgina’s accusations against my father long before she did. “Scott told me,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mother flipped the filter of her cigarette with her thumbnail and watched the ash particles spiral to the ground. “You’re not the first. The police were here most of the morning.”
I gasped. “Again? What did they want this time?”
“They had a search warrant.” She pointed the end of her cigarette, glowing hotly in the wind, toward the house. “Made a mess.”
“What were they looking for?”
She shrugged and dropped the remains of her cigarette through the slot in the top of the Diet Coke, where it sizzled out.
“Did they find anything?”
“As far as I know, they went away empty-handed.”
That was something, anyway. I squirmed uncomfortably on the bench. The wind was leaking between the seams of my tweed jacket, and I shivered. “Hey, Mom, it’s cold out here. Let’s go inside.”
“In a minute.” She reached for a pack of Salems that lay on the table in front of her. I wanted to snatch it out of her hand and send it flying over the neighbor’s fence. Mother had given up smoking three years ago. It broke my heart to see her resuming what had once been a two-pack-a-day habit.
She tapped another cigarette out of the pack and, by cupping her hands around it, got it lit on the third match. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke,” I told her.
She studied me with tired eyes. “I wish I wouldn’t, either, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.” She took another drag, held it in her lungs for a long time, then exhaled slowly. “I suppose you want to know what I think.”
I laid a hand on her arm. “Mom, I don’t believe a word of what Georgina says.”
She slipped the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes, toyed with it briefly, then crumpled it into a ball. “That’s a relief. Because it isn’t true, you know.” She tucked the Salems into a pocket of her parka and zipped it shut. With the cigarettes out of sight, she seemed to notice me for the first time. “My God, you’re not dressed for this kind of weather, Hannah. Go on inside. I’ll just be a minute.”
“No, I’ll wait.” I sat and watched in silence as my mother smoked her cigarette down to the filter, then ground it into the grass with the toe of her tennis shoe. I noticed that her ankles were badly swollen and worried that she had been spending far too much time on her feet lately. I stood when she did, and when she came around to my side of the table, we linked arms and walked through the back door together.
I didn’t know what I would see when I entered the house-drawers and closets yawning open, clothes and papers strewn about willy-nilly-but it wasn’t what I expected. The kitchen seemed untouched, but in the rest of the house, boxes which had been neatly stacked in corners or against the walls had had their packing tape ripped off and had been moved and carelessly stacked in the opposite side of the room. Thankfully my parents had just moved in, so there hadn’t been much in the closets and drawers for the cops to paw through. Mother followed me to the office off the front hall, still wearing her parka.
“It’s not as bad as I thought,” I commented. I took in the open boxes around me and the piles of papers on my father’s desk. “Was Daddy here when they came?”
Mother nodded. She backed into an overstuffed chair next to the window and sat down, her hands pressed between her knees. “One officer sat with us in the kitchen while two others rummaged through our things.” She rested her head on the back of the chair and closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening to us.”
I lowered myself into my father’s desk chair and stared at the computer monitor, busily crawling with a hungry caterpillar screensaver. “They looked there, too.”
I turned to face my mother. “Where?”
“Your father’s computer. One of the officer’s diddled around with it for an hour or so, then copied some files onto a Zip disk and took it away with him.”
“What kind of files?” I asked, although I could guess. Kiddie porn. That’s what they were looking for on my father’s computer. I felt ill.
When mother simply shrugged, I added, “Well, there couldn’t have been much to find; the computer just came out of the box. Unless some software manufacturer with more money than God is up to some funny business.”
My fingers clamped down on the arms of the chair, as if by tightening my grip I could keep the world from spinning out of control. First the police. Then my sister’s deteriorating mental condition. My mother’s smoking. Daddy’s drinking. Not to mention my own precarious health. What next? Even a merry-go-round designed by Satan has to grind to a halt sometime. Or so I hoped.
Mother eased herself out of her chair and onto her knees, then rummaged listlessly through a box of videotapes and computer manuals that I was certain had been packed much more neatly before the police had gotten their grubby mitts on them. She held up a videotape for my inspection. “Emily’s Graduation, Bryn Mawr” was printed neatly on the label in black Magic Marker. I smiled, remembering how proud we had been of our daughter on that day. Mother and Dad had flown in from Seattle. Paul and I had driven up with Connie.
Connie. Long before Dennis. Now I wondered why Dennis had never returned my call.
I fished around in my purse for my address book, then picked up the phone.
Mother heard me punching buttons and looked up. “Who are you calling?”
“Dennis Rutherford.”
She pressed a hand flat against her chest. “Can’t we keep this in the family? I just don’t know what your father will do if word of this leaks out.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mother! Dennis is practically family. I’m thinking he might be able to find out what’s really going on with the police up in Baltimore.”
She continued to stare at me without moving.
Dennis’s phone rang four times before the answering machine kicked in. I left another message, then called Connie.
Connie didn’t have much use for modern contraptions like VCRs and answering machines, so I let it ring and ring. I was just about to hang up when she picked up, sounding out of breath. “Hello?”
“Connie, it’s me. Hannah.”
“Oh, hi! Just a sec. I’ve got an armload of old newspapers I need to do something with.” The phone tapped against a table and I heard a door slam. In a minute, Connie was back on the line. “Whew! If I just took them out to the barn every day instead of once every twenty-five years, it wouldn’t be so much of a hassle.”
I got right to the point. “Connie, do you know where Dennis is?”
“That’s a slap in the face. Haven’t talked to you in ages and practically the first words out of your mouth are ‘Where’s Dennis?’ ”
“We’ve got a crisis on our hands. I really need his help.”
“Crisis? My God, is everybody all right?”