Eyes of a Child

by Richard North Patterson

  There was a splash. For the first time, Chris turned to Terri.

  She was staring past him into the water, at the thief. The man’s hair was soaked; his arms paddled randomly.

  ‘Can he swim?’ Chris inquired.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perfect justice, at last,’ Drained of his anger, Chris sounded weary. ‘Better this than calling the police. Or, for that matter, American Express.’

  Terri took a last look at the thief, who was clambering awkwardly into a motorboat at the foot of the wall, and then she dabbed Chris’s face with a tissue. Looking at her, his eyes were troubled, as if he had returned to himself.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she told him. ‘We never paid the artist.’

  They made their way back through the side street. Stopping at the restaurant, Chris apologized and left some lire for the damage. Then they returned to the Grand Canal. Except to thank him, Terri found little to say.

  When they saw the artist, Terri held her purse aloft. The artist smiled his delight. But as he presented Terri with her drawing, the face she saw was not hers but Chris’s, filled with an anger he had never let her see.

  Chapter 18

  That evening, Chris and Terri walked back to the Danieli from dinner at Harry’s Bar. Other lovers, more carefree, drifted arm in arm beneath the gaslights. Part of Terri wished to join them. But she would have no peace until she spoke to Elena.

  When they reached the hotel, she hurried through the ornate lobby and up the staircase, ahead of Chris. Opening the door, she switched on the lights and began jabbing at the buttons of the telephone.

  Once more, Richie did not answer.

  She put down the phone. From the doorway, Chris watched her. Then he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. In the dim light, Terri looked up at him, silent.

  Chris began pacing the room: since the incident of the thief, Terri had understood that his nerve ends were wired to hers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘Maybe I was crazy to come here.’

  Turning, Chris looked stung. ‘Maybe,’ he answered tersely, ‘you should have left your husband at home.’

  ‘I’m not going to respond to that. Not now.’ Terri looked at him straight on. ‘I’m sorrier about what he’s done than you can ever know. And maybe he’s achieving exactly what he wants – us sitting here quarreling over him, as if he were pulling the strings from seven thousand miles away.’ she paused for emphasis. ‘But right now all that matters, Chris, is that I can’t find my daughter.’

  ‘So here we are,’ Chris snapped back. ‘In Venice, waiting by the telephone for the sound of Richie’s voice.’

  His eyes, clear and cold, seemed to stare into the depth of his loathing for Richie. It came to Terri with bittersweetness that, in light of all they had been through, she and Chris fought very little. ‘Sometimes,’ she said more softly, ‘I worry he’ll just take her.’

  Chris looked at her in surprise. ‘Kidnapping? Two weeks before the hearing? I wish he were that dumb.’

  Terri fell quiet. ‘I’m calling the school in an hour,’ she said at last. ‘Either Elena’s there or she’s not.’

  Chris turned to look out at the night. But his gaze seemed absent, meant only to lend him distance from his own hurt. It gave Terri a sense, once more, of the immensity of his self-control, and of the isolation that was its price.

  ‘Maybe it would be easier,’ she said softly, ‘if you just let yourself blow up.’

  Chris gave a small shake of the head, more to himself than to Terri. ‘I watched my parents get angry,’ he said after a while. ‘They threw vases at each other in boozy rages, said things so wounding that they could never be forgiven. The words, I came to realize, were worse than the crockery – it was the things they said that gutted their marriage.’ He turned to her again. ‘It’s one of the ways that you and I are alike. You believe that anger is sin.’ His voice grew quiet. ‘We’re the same species, you and I. But I’m not sure you know that yet. Or how important it can be.’

  Terri thought of his damaged hand, the purplish hue of his injury, and then of the thief. ‘But have you ever let yourself get angry, Chris? I mean so angry that you stopped wanting to control it?’

  Chris did not answer; it was as if he had not heard her. ‘I can’t make you stay here,’ he said at last. ‘But before you call the school, you should at least find out if Rosa’s seen Elena. One thing you can’t appear, to people like Scatena or Alec Keene, is spiteful or alarmist.’

  Glancing at her watch, Terri did not answer. She felt Chris’s hand on her shoulder.

  Reaching for the telephone, she placed a call to Rosa.

  Six rings, then seven. Chris’s hand seemed to tighten. ‘No answer?’ he asked.

  ‘No. And my mother doesn’t have a machine.’

  Chris was silent for a moment. ‘Try her again,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you dialed wrong.’

  I know my own mother’s number, Terri almost snapped. Instead she calmed herself and dialed again. She listened to the telephone ring, her own phone pressed to her ear.

  ‘Hello?’

  The connection was bad; the woman’s voice was so thin that Terri could hardly make it out.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘Terri?’

  ‘Thank God you’re home.’

  A second’s pause, then the echo of delayed transmission. ‘I was in the basement,’ Rosa’s hollow voice answered. ‘Looking for something. How are you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Elena. I’m worried sick about her.’

  Another delay, seemingly infinite. ‘Elena?’

  ‘Yes. I want to know if you’ve talked to her.’

  A longer pause. ‘She’s here, Terri.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘Yes.’ This time the pause was punctuated by static. ‘She’s at school.’

  Terri’s eyes shut. ‘Elena’s with my mother,’ she murmured to Chris, and then, as if in delayed reaction, leaned back against him.

  Her mother said nothing more; it seemed a long time before Terri asked the next question. When she did, it was in a different tone, tentative and tight.

  ‘Where’s Richie?’

  There was more static, and then Rosa answered, ‘He never came.’

  Terri sat up. ‘Have you tried to reach him?’

  She felt Chris stand, walk away. ‘No.’ Rosa’s long-distance voice sounded faintly surprised. ‘Should I?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is Elena upset?’

  ‘Only at first. Actually, she seems quite happy.’

  Terri could imagine that, at least for a time. ‘Just a minute, Mama.’ Covering the telephone, she turned to Chris. He was standing near the window again; Terri could not see his face. ‘Richie never showed,’ she said. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  Chris shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  Terri gave him a questioning look. ‘Devoted fathers aren’t supposed to blow off custody,’ he said. ‘Why remind him.’

  Terri frowned. ‘I was thinking about Elena.’

  ‘So am I. Let him rot awhile.’

  After a moment, Terri spoke to Rosa. ‘Leave him be. He’ll show up whenever he decides to.’

  ‘All right.’ Rosa’s voice sounded clearer now.

  Still gazing at Chris, Terri was silent again. ‘You should have called me, Mama. This has been pretty tough.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Teresa. I had meant to. Later on this morning.’

  Perhaps she imagined it, but Terri heard a faint rebuke beneath Rosa’s measured apology – if Terri had not gone to Italy, she would not have lost touch with Elena. There was no point in prolonging the conversation: she was quite certain that Rosa would never ask about her trip.

  ‘Tell Elena I’ll call her,’ Terri said. ‘And if you hear anything about Richie, please call me.’

  ‘I will.’ Her mother’s tone was gentler. ‘But don’t worry, sweetheart. Everything is fine.’

  When Terri got off, she saw that Chris had drifted to the balcony. He gazed out
at the canal: the sinuous dance of streetlights on black water, the groups and couples passing below, a lone cigarette boat vanishing in the night as it moved toward San Giorgio island.

  ‘I wonder where he is,’ Terri said.

  Chris did not turn. ‘I could care less.’

  Terri walked behind him. ‘He’s never taken off like this, that’s all. I mean, Richie’s not reliable, but he doesn’t just disappear.’

  Chris’s shoulders moved, a half shrug. ‘How long has he been missing?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. Since Sunday, when he didn’t pick Elena up, it’s been two days.’

  ‘Two days.’ Chris turned to her. ‘We know Elena’s safe, all right? If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to waste any more time obsessing over what might have happened to Richie. Frankly, I don’t want to get my hopes up.’

  Terri put her hands on her hips. ‘For us, I feel the way you do. But not for Elena. Like it or not, Richie’s part of her security.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ From the shadows, Chris’s voice had a quiet intensity. ‘I refuse to sentimentalize this weasel as a father, and I refuse to listen to you do it.’

  ‘He is her father, and she loves him. I can’t pretend she doesn’t, just to please you.’ Terri paused, then resumed, her ‘tone more level: ‘We’re talking about a feeling that just is.’

  ‘And would be less harmful,’ Chris shot back, ‘if Richie never showed. Because if a parent isn’t around, kids simply invest them with imaginary qualities, like God or a movie star. Which is what Elena would do with Richie.’ His voice became sardonic. ‘Assuming that you could stand to let her.’

  Terri watched him. ‘Are we arguing about Richie? Or are you trying to tell me something else?’

  Chris leaned against the balcony, backlit by moonlight. A cool breeze from the canal swept past him and touched Terri’s face. Softly, he said, ‘You really don’t know, do you.’

  Something in his tone, low and quiet, unsettled her. The wind chilled Terri’s skin; she could not see his face. ‘Know what?’

  He turned away. ‘A half dozen times, just in the last few days, I’ve told myself that I should let you go. Sometimes I even want to. But I never can.’ The raw feeling in his voice startled her. But when he spoke again, it was gently. ‘Sometimes I do blame you for Richie.’

  Terri stopped herself from going to him. ‘I understand, Chris. It’s just that I can’t live with it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to. Perhaps with someone else, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘But that isn’t something wrong with us, Chris. It’s something wrong with him. The question is whether there’s any way for us to deal with what he’s done.’

  Chris shook his head slowly. ‘Not if I take Richie out on you. You’re right about that too.’

  He sounded tired. Then he stepped from the shadows, leaning his forehead against hers.

  ‘I’m screwing this up,’ he murmured. ‘Always watching you, never knowing what to do or say.’ He paused again. ‘I was wrong to bring you here. I’m sorry for that, and for talking you into it.’

  Gently, Terri kissed his face. ‘I was wrong,’ she said at last. ‘For the next few days, we should try to live our life.’

  Chapter 19

  The next afternoon, after a leisurely drive through the Tuscan countryside, Chris and Terri entered the most charming place Terri had ever seen.

  Like many towns in Tuscany, Montalcino had been built atop a steep hill, the first defense of the Middle Ages. The cobblestone streets were too narrow to drive: they parked near a gray-stone fortress with three square turrets and a large stone courtyard. Once inside, Terri entered another time and place: she could imagine lookouts gazing from the turrets and the courtyard filled with soldiers and horses. The garden in back, with low stone walls and fruit trees planted in straight lines, commanded a sweeping view of hills and valleys. To Terri, the site felt safe, inviolate.

  The town itself was quaint yet lively. Church bells sounded; children kicked a soccer ball in a town square surrounded by benches and people talking; a bent old couple walked arm in arm in the oddly formal posture of aged Italians, bent but observant, their slow steps seemingly imprinted on the bone and brain, a matter not merely of age but of a life spent in a place that existed outside change or even hurry. Watching them, Terri felt more peaceful, attuned to Chris again.

  ‘Can you imagine us like that?’ Terri asked.

  ‘Sure. Only I’m in a wagon.’

  Smiling, Terri took his arm. They stopped briefly to buy mineral water, and then meandered through the town. As they walked, she realized that at the end of the street Montalcino seemed to drop into space. They went there and found themselves gazing down at the tree-covered grounds of a centuries-old church, which ended abruptly at a precipice and a startling panorama of hills and fields and valleys receding into the distance until they seemed less to end than to vanish.

  Chris and Terri sat on a bench beneath a white flowering tree beside the church, drinking their water from cool green bottles. Before them were fields of tiny wild flowers and, farther off, rows of staked grapes on the hill that sloped down and then up to country homes. The failing sunlight deepened the green of the hills and softened the burnt-orange walls of the villas. The breeze smelled faintly of flowers; the grass was cool beneath their bare feet.

  Chris seemed to contemplate the bell tower of the church. ‘I love making love with you,’ he said.

  His head had not turned; the observation was delivered casually, like a comment on the architecture. ‘What brought that to mind?’ Terri asked. ‘The bell tower?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I think about it all the time – in court, at baseball games, whatever. So I suppose it could have been anything.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Last night, even.’

  Terri slid down in her chair, the sun on her face, remembering the feel of their lovemaking. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she conceded. ‘You’re pretty well-adjusted about sex. I could probably do worse.’ She smiled. ‘In fact, I used to do worse.’

  ‘Oh.’ He turned to her with polite interest. ‘When was that?’

  ‘All the time.’

  Chris’s grin, white and sudden, made him look impossibly young; only the faint lines at the corners of his eyes suggested someone much older than thirty.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘are deeply appealing to me.’

  What was it, Terri wondered, that still reached her after all they had been through? Part of it was that she felt a liking for Chris so deep that she wanted him as close as he could get; part, more mystical to Terri, was the way he turned his head; the way he moved through a room, tensile and alert; the way his eyes changed when he reached for her. After they made love, she would lie next to him, looking into his face, not needing or wanting to speak. As she had last night.

  It was as if, Terri thought now, she could stop their time from running out.

  Chris put down his mineral water. ‘Know when I first decided you were truly sexy?’

  ‘I have no clue.’

  ‘When I saw you cross-examine a witness.’

  Terri looked at him. ‘God, Chris, I think you’re serious.’

  He smiled again. ‘I am, sort of. As I often tell Carlo, sexual attraction can be complicated.’

  The reference to Carlo was a reflex, Terri saw. His smile vanished; for a painful moment, Terri thought about Richie.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Chris said softly.

  ‘I was thinking about my dream,’ Terri answered after a time; only then did she realize that this memory had followed her image of Richie. She rested her hand on Chris’s shoulder. ‘It makes me feel like Mrs Rochester,’ she said finally. ‘In Jane Eyre. Except that I’m not crazy.’

  Chris seemed to consider this. ‘Of course,’ he ventured, ‘you’d be the last to know.’

  Terri moved closer to him. ‘You really are a help.’

  ‘When the dream is over, what kind of feeling are you left with?’


  It was hard to answer. ‘It’s like guilt,’ Terri said finally. ‘Only worse, because I don’t know why. Like I’ve done something too terrible to remember.’

  Chris turned his face to hers. ‘Until we came here, Terri, when did you last have it?’

  That she remembered so precisely bothered her. ‘Six years ago,’ she said at last. ‘The night before I married Richie.’

  Chris fell into silence. Terri stood, walking toward the church.

  The outside was simple: white stone, a triangular roof, the bell tower beside it. As she looked up, the bell sounded – one deep chime, then another – drawing her inside.

  Terri hesitated at the entrance, feeling like a trespasser. Then she pushed open the heavy wooden door.

  The church was hushed and empty. The inside was exquisite: walls of blue and pink marble, a ceiling with bright seraphim painted on its three domes; rich frescoes; intricate marble statuary, lovingly preserved. But it was intimate, human scale, a place not for processions but for prayer.

  The benches were close to the altar. Terri sat, remembering for a moment the chapel of Mission Dolores on the morning of her father’s funeral mass. In the quiet of the half-lit church, she seemed to lose herself between then and now.

  When at last she rose, Terri knelt before the altar and crossed herself. Only then did she understand why she had come.

  Bowing her head, Terri asked forgiveness for her sins. It was some time before she stepped into the sunlight.

  Chris was gazing out at the hills and valleys, drinking from his bottle of mineral water. His swollen hand, she noticed, had almost healed.

  He looked up at her, curious. The church, Terri realized, had left her with a feeling of lightness. ‘Somehow it felt familiar,’ she told him. ‘Maybe, in another life, I was married here. To someone other than Richie, of course.’

  Chris smiled at that. Sitting next to him, Terri left the dream behind her. ‘Did you ever go to a shrink?’ she asked.

  He smiled a little, as if tracing her thoughts. ‘Uh-huh. For a couple of years, after I became a parent, I decided to give my own parents some thought.’

  Terri turned to him, curious; Chris seldom spoke of his family. ‘What were they like?’ she asked.