“If I hadn’t opened it, you wouldn’t even know where PJ is,” Gail pointed out.
“I don’t know now. Somewhere between here and Florida?”
“Maybe he knows someone there with a boat.”
“Wait. I know what a sneak you are,” Hanna said. “Is there more to that letter?”
“You interrupted me, remember?”
“Then read the rest of it, if you would be so very kind.”
“‘I don’t think my mom will be too surprised, but I know she’ll be upset,’” Gail read. “‘So just mail the letter and keep quiet about it. If you can, ask one of your friends at school to put it in the mail for you, someone who lives in Towson or Catonsville or somewhere. That way, Mom won’t know you were involved. Thank you for being my friend. PJ.’”
“I would’ve guessed,” Hanna said. “And I am surprised.”
“Is Pierre still in Haiti? Is there any way to get in touch with him?”
“I have not heard from Pierre LeCompte since the morning he put me in a taxi to the Port-au-Prince airport.”
Gail thought back. That was in 1968.
“And the letter addressed to me?” Hanna said.
“You want me to open that one?”
“No, just put a match to what could be the last I’ll ever hear from my beloved only child.”
Gail opened the envelope. “‘Dear Mom,’” she read. “‘Don’t be mad, but I’ve gone to Haiti. If my father isn’t there, then maybe someone will know where he is. When I get there, I’ll call you, I promise. Please don’t worry. I know you will, but please don’t. It could take me a week or more. After that, you can start worrying. Just remember, I’m sixteen now. Love, PJ.’”
“Have Sandy call me. The minute she walks in the door.” And Hanna hung up.
While dribbling Pine-Sol into a bucket, Gail heard someone pounding on the front door. She tiptoed down the hall and could see, through the peephole, that it was Mel. Quickly she stepped aside, hoping he’d think no one was home, but he continued to bang on the door.
“Gail!” he yelled. “It’s Mel.”
He was Hanna’s husband. Their child had run away from home. She let him in.
After surveying first the living room and then the dining room, Mel glanced up the staircase. “I’d like to take Sandy back to Reston with me.”
“Sandy’s not here.” And she was not going to Reston to be interrogated. Not today, not ever.
“I’ll wait,” Mel said.
“I don’t know when Nick and the girls will be home. If Sandy’s willing, then she and Hanna can speak by phone.”
“I’ll wait, if that’s okay. Hanna asked me to come. She wants to leave the phone line open, in case anyone calls about PJ.”
“Then please have a seat.” Gail motioned toward the living room. “I have a few chores to finish.”
But Mel followed her into the kitchen, which reeked of Easy-Off and Pine-Sol. A puddle had formed in front of the defrosting refrigerator.
Having seated himself at the table, Mel picked up a cinnamon roll left over from breakfast. “May I?”
“Of course.” Those rolls were Sandy’s favorite, but this morning she hadn’t eaten a single one.
“You have any coffee made? I’m in bad need of caffeine. We didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Gail reminded him they were tea drinkers and put water on to boil.
“PJ wasn’t there when we got home yesterday.” Mel said this as though he still couldn’t quite believe it. “Hanna called a few of his friends. He didn’t even go to school.”
After pouring Mel a cup of tea, Gail sat down at the table with him. It was their first one-on-one conversation ever.
“This is all my fault.” He loosened his tie. “I haven’t been a good enough father to PJ.”
“It’s not easy, even when the child is your own. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Hanna thinks I should’ve tried harder to connect with him.”
“Her very own father, when she was young, didn’t connect with her at all.”
“Del.” Mel grimaced.
Car doors slammed. Gail stood up, moved the bucket and mop, and opened the back door. “We have company,” she announced to her husband and daughters.
“Sandy scored a goal!” Allison said.
“So, you won?” Gail gave Sandy a thumbs-up.
“We lost, but at least I scored.” At thirteen, Sandy was a head taller than her younger sister. “Do I smell Easy-Cough?” Sandy wrinkled her nose.
“Hello, Mel,” Nick said. “I thought that was your Buick. What brings you to Baltimore?”
“There’s been a development. Shall we all go into the living room?” Gail recognized the imperious tone her mother often used, and it scared her.
Nick reacted with a quizzical look. Mel left his cup of tea on the table.
Gail retrieved the two letters, in their respective envelopes, from the telephone table and, once everyone was seated, told the lie she’d been rehearsing. “Sandy, I’m really sorry. When I saw the return address, I thought this was from Hanna, so I opened it. But it’s for you.”
Sandy held out her hand. She studied the envelope.
“It’s from PJ,” Gail said. “He’s on his way to Haiti.”
Sandy nodded.
“So, you knew about this?” Gail said.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Sandy said. “He wouldn’t listen to me.”
Gail gave Mel a meaningful look. To her husband, she explained that PJ hoped to find his father.
“I see,” Nick said. “What a brave thing for him to do.”
“I’m so worried about him.” Sandy burst into tears.
“Tell us what you know,” Mel said.
“He’d been writing to his father for years. Every October, on his birthday, PJ would mail another letter to Haiti, hoping to get a letter back. I think if his father had written to him even once, PJ would’ve been happy with that, just knowing his father was alive and cared enough to get in touch. That’s all he wanted, really.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Mel said. “Even Hanna doesn’t know where Pierre is. How could PJ have had an address for him?”
“He found a box in the basement. Said it was full of letters and stuff from Haiti. He kept writing to the address in Port-au-Prince, putting ‘please forward’ on the envelope.”
“Probably ended up in the dead-letter office,” Gail said. “If Haiti has such a thing.”
“But for his sixteenth birthday, he wanted to try something else. He had this crazy idea.” Sandy took a breath. “Swim from Key West to Cuba and then to Haiti.”
“Swim?” Mel said. “That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I told him.” Sandy wiped at her cheeks. “I know he’s a really good swimmer—he made the swim team and all—but still. He kept saying he could do it, no problem, and I should just believe in him.”
“What you should have done,” Mel said, “was tell someone. Your mother, Hanna, someone who could reason with him.”
“Wait just a minute here,” Gail said. “PJ’s leaving is in no way Sandy’s fault.”
“We can call the police in Key West,” Nick said. “Tell them to be on the lookout for PJ.”
Sandy shook her head. “But then he was talking about hitching a ride on a boat from Miami. So maybe I did convince him not to swim to Haiti.”
“Then we’ll call the police in Miami,” Nick said.
“You don’t understand,” Mel said. “PJ won’t get that far.”
“We don’t understand because we’re white,” Gail said.
“People like you,” Mel said, “they turn a blind eye to these things.”
Sandy removed the letter from its envelope. Read it and looked up. “What about the one to Hanna?”
Gail handed it over. “I called, a few hours ago, and read it to her over the phone.”
“Invasion of privacy times two,” Sandy said.
“I’m tru
ly sorry,” Gail said. “The upside is that Hanna and Mel know sooner rather than later.”
“A lot of good that does us.” Mel turned to Sandy. “Did he tell you how he was planning to get to Florida?”
“Greyhound, maybe.” Sandy shrugged. “He applied for credit cards as soon as he got his learner’s permit.”
“The police can track him,” Allison said, “by what he buys where. Just like on TV.”
“We should contact them,” Nick said. “PJ’s been gone more than twenty-four hours, right?”
“Hanna does not want to involve the police,” Mel said. “It could do more harm than good.”
“I’m confused,” Gail said. “If PJ has credit cards, then why didn’t he just fly to Haiti?”
“No passport,” Sandy said.
“Will you come with me to Reston?” Mel asked Sandy. “Hanna will want to hear all this.”
Do I have to? Sandy’s tearful eyes pleaded with Gail.
“I’ll go,” Gail said. “Sandy’s told us everything she knows. Maybe Hanna and I can come up with a plan.”
“You’ll be the sacrificial lamb?” Nick said.
“Excuse me?” Mel said.
“Know what I think?” Nick didn’t wait for an answer. “PJ’s simply run away from home, the way teenagers do. He bragged to Sandy that he was going to Haiti, but he’s probably shacked up with some girl in Falls Church.”
“Shacked up?” Allison said.
“Making out,” Sandy explained to her sister. To their father she said, “PJ’s gone to Haiti. That painting over the fireplace? He had me look on the back of it for the name of the artist.”
“But why?” Gail said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Sandy was crying again. “You were wrong to open that letter.”
“I’ll ride back with you, Mel,” Gail said. “I don’t want Hanna to be alone.”
“She won’t be.” Mel stood up. “May I use your phone?”
Gail showed him where it was. “Tell Hanna that Sandy knows nothing.”
“But it’s so very obvious that she does.” Mel picked up the receiver. “She should’ve told us. Weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Sandy wailed from the hallway, and then she ran up the stairs.
Allison followed her sister, stopping halfway up to cry out, “I don’t want PJ to die.”
Gail returned to the living room. Nick was in front of the fireplace, scowling up at the colorful painting he’d threatened, more than once, to take to Goodwill.
“Your daughters need you more than Hanna does,” he said.
Gail reached up, straightened L’Arbre de la Médecine, and stepped back. What she’d once thought was a pinwheel now looked more like the shadow of an airplane. If PJ could somehow get credit cards, then why not a passport, too?
He’d be fine. He’d make it to Haiti or not, find Pierre or not, and live to tell the tale. Hanna should be proud of his ingenuity. Gail had never credited PJ with being so clever.
Thank goodness Sandy hadn’t gone with him. Gail had even saved her from mailing PJ’s letter to Hanna. Sandy was in no way involved. Blameless.
“I’ll show myself out,” Mel called from the front hall. “Hanna will be in touch, and I quote, when she’s ‘good and ready.’”
At two o’clock the next morning, the phone rang, once, and then went silent.
“Wrong number,” Nick mumbled from his side of the bed.
But Gail knew. It was Hanna. She was not good, and she might never, ever be ready.
An hour later, Gail had come up with a plan. Hanna didn’t want to contact the police, but what about a private investigator? In providing Del with an alibi, Gail’s father had used a black man in Memphis. P. I. Jones was his name.
PI P. I. Jones. Pi square. Hanna would get a kick out of that.
Investigation Report
Reston, Virginia, 1985
January 10, 1985
Dear Gail,
Since you were the one who suggested we hire a private investigator, I’m enclosing a copy of his report. Pierre may be dead or alive. Ditto for PJ. This man wanted a huge deposit up front, and now I know why.
Hanna
December 28, 1984
MB Investigative Services
P.O. Box 1492C
Miami, FL 33130
Dear Dr. and Mrs. Pascal:
Enclosed please find my report and a list of fees incurred thus far. A bill for your balance is attached; please remit at your earliest convenience. If you have any questions and/or suggestions for additional avenues to pursue, don’t hesitate to contact me.
I believe I may have provided a possible answer concerning the whereabouts of your son, Peter Jeremy. Knowing that this possibility will be painful for you, I send along my deepest condolences.
Yours truly,
Mauricio Bonneville
Investigation Report
Date: December 28, 1984
On November 30, 1984, Dr. and Mrs. Melvin R. Pascal (“the parents”) designated Mauricio Bonneville (“the investigator”) to investigate the whereabouts of their son, sixteen-year-old Peter Jeremy Pascal, who has not been heard from since he left his home in Reston, Virginia, on October 26, 1984. The parents provided the investigator with a credit card bill dated November 15, 1984, which included the following charges: gasoline purchased at a Texaco station on Jefferson Davis Highway in Richmond, Virginia, on October 29; an airline ticket for a flight on October 31 from Richmond to Miami; and bills from the Hialeah Lodge and various Miami restaurants between November 2 and November 5. In addition, the investigator was given a photocopy of a newspaper article from January, 1984, reporting on stolen goods such as bicycles, mattresses, gasoline, car radios, etc., that were being smuggled from Miami to Haiti on barges and cargo ships; the article provided an address on North River Drive where some of these small freighters were docked. The parents found the article hidden in an overdue library book, Waterway Guide Charts Norfolk to Key West via Intracoastal Waterway, published by Boating Industry magazine in 1982.
The parents believe their son left home to search for his biological father, Pierre LeCompte, thought to be residing in Haiti. One of the son’s friends had told them, the day after he disappeared, that Peter Jeremy at first planned to attempt to swim to Haiti but, quite sensibly, decided instead to make the trip by boat.
The investigator, who is familiar with the Haitian community in Miami and with the illicit traffic along the Miami River, interviewed several boat captains and crew members. While a few of these men seemed to recognize a photo of the subject, no one would admit to having spoken to him. The investigator also visited the Hialeah Lodge, where the subject’s photo went unrecognized. This was also the case at several Hialeah casinos.
Although it is impossible to establish that Peter Jeremy Pascal found passage on a freighter to Haiti, there is clear evidence that he was in the Miami area on November 5, 1984. Therefore, the following circumstantial information may provide a possible resolution to this investigation.
On Tuesday night, November 6, 1984, between Baracoa, Cuba, and the island of Great Inaugua in the Bahamas, a small cargo ship exploded. A cruise ship bound for Puerto Rico saw the explosion and radioed for help, but by the time a rescue ship arrived, the freighter had already sunk. A two-day-long search for survivors was unsuccessful.
This information is contained in the (attached) news item from the Miami Herald, dated November 10, 1984. Unfortunately, there is no way to know whether the sunken cargo ship was bound for Haiti or who was actually aboard.
Noting that the news item did not provide the name of the ship, the investigator undertook to ascertain this information on his own. One source claimed that a small freighter named the Bon Soir left a dock on the Miami River in early November and has not, as yet, returned.
The investigator has also, on a weekly basis, been checking with hospitals and jails in the Miami area. There is no evidence that the subject has been ei
ther a patient or a prisoner.
I am truly sorry to give you seemingly bad news. Still, I hope having a possible resolution to this matter will provide a measure of solace. Peter Jeremy sounds like an intelligent and enterprising young man. You can be very proud of him.
I would also like to mention that my sources in Haiti have told me that Pierre LeCompte no longer lives there. One person said Mr. LeCompte died, suspiciously, in 1982. Another claimed Mr. LeCompte left Haiti in 1983 and now lives in either Niger or Nigeria—he wasn’t sure which. Therefore, if Peter Jeremy had actually made it to Haiti, he would have been disappointed.
If you can think of additional ways in which I might expand the search for your son, I will be more than happy to oblige.
Mauricio Bonneville, Private Investigator
Lettergate
Baltimore, Maryland, 1985
BESSIE DIDN’T ALWAYS FEEL welcome in her daughter’s house, but she did feel strangely at home. With dark green shutters, a large front porch enclosed by wooden balustrades, and a flagstone walk leading down to the mailbox, Gail’s white clapboard in Baltimore was eerily reminiscent of Bessie’s childhood home in Hartford. There was even an ancient sycamore in the side yard.
She closed the screen door softly behind her and, on this lovely Saturday morning in June, carried a mug of coffee (a small victory in this household of tea drinkers) to a porch chair with a view of the sycamore. Sandy, her older granddaughter, hadn’t yet come downstairs. No one else was home.
Bessie often wondered what her life would have been like if she’d she stayed in New England. She could have been a better daughter to her aging parents, for one thing. And Gail would have had grandparents living nearby.
Charles, though, would not have been happy. For him, Tennessee was home. And when his parents died and left him the house he’d grown up in, he asked her to give Knoxville a try. If, after five years, she didn’t like it there, well, then he’d try to pass the bar somewhere else.
She’d finished her coursework, he argued; she could write her dissertation anywhere. Knoxville wasn’t the Deep South, he insisted. East Tennessee was too mountainous for crops like cotton and rice and sugarcane.
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