by Linda Barnes
I found myself driving faster the closer I got to Paolina’s campsite. Turning up the music, singing along with Les Sampou on “Sweet Perfume,” trying to shut down my thoughts.
Paolina must have been scared or she wouldn’t have called, wouldn’t have begged me to pick her up as quickly as possible. But I’d had Pix in the car, another child clinging to me for help. Roz had answered the phone. Had Paolina willed her voice calm, not to worry me?
Some things can’t be undone. Thea had said it, screamed it as the police continued to search for Garnet’s body.
What if I wasn’t there? Wasn’t there when Carlos Roldan Gonzales came for Paolina?
Some things can’t be undone.
I heard the phrase with every swipe of the windshield wiper across the rain-splattered glass.
I don’t think I took a breath till I saw her, lying on her left side, curled tightly into a sleeping ball. The girls slept six to a cabin, and I had to tiptoe for silence, and bend at the same time to allow for the low ceiling. The counselor on duty had given me permission to wake her, take her home. The counselor had said she’d been fine—active and happy—until last week, until a phone call.
But campers weren’t allowed to receive calls, I’d protested.
“He said it was an emergency.”
An emergency.
Paolina wakes slowly, full of stretches and yawns and small secretive smiles. She squirmed into clothes laid ready at the end of her bed. Ready for what?
She didn’t speak till she was beside me in the car, her tote and backpack in the trunk, her farewell letter written, weighted by a rock to the long kitchen table where her summer friends would find it when they woke.
Paolina talks when she’s ready. Five minutes or five hours. Or not at all.
The rain beat steadily on the roof.
When she spoke her voice was guarded. She could have been talking about archery practice or a soccer game. “My father called,” she said, her face turned away, staring into the darkness outside the passenger window. “My real father.”
Usually she called him Carlos. Since she found out he existed. “Father” had always been the man her mother had married, a Puerto Rican absentee who’d given the family legal-immigrant status and not much else.
“He wanted me to go with him,” she said.
Dear God, I could have lost her. The thought was an alarm clanging in my ears. How had he known where she was?
“He changed his mind,” she said softly. I couldn’t take my eyes off the narrow road, couldn’t tell if she was hiding tears of sorrow or relief.
I waited, but she seemed to have run out of words.
“Did you want to go?” I said, trying so hard for nonchalance I could barely spit out the question.
“I’m … not sure. But he didn’t give me the chance. I’m not sure.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I said.
She fell asleep with her head resting against the window. I reached over to reassure myself that her seat belt was fastened.
When I turned the car into the driveway, she woke again, and helped carry her things up the walkway. We peeled off our damp rain gear in the foyer. The red light flashed on my message machine.
Carlos Roldan Gonzales’s voice, his deep sonorous accented voice, dominated the room.
“Little one,” he said, as if he knew Paolina would be with me, listening, “I am sorry if I disappointed you. I will come when it is safe. It may seem foolish, perhaps, in your country, but I have enemies who may have learned of you, who would not hesitate to use you to get to me. I don’t want you hurt, querida.
“Señorita,” he said, his tone changing to speak to an adult. “Take care of her. She will be safer with you. For now.”
I knelt and held her in my arms till she wriggled her protest.
What would I do if Carlos came for her? What would I do if she chose to go with him?
To lose my brilliant child.
The next day, Wednesday, because I felt rich with Paolina beside me, granted permission by her mother to stay with me till camp’s official Friday end, I hired myself to find a tiny blond girl named Pix.
I put an ad in The Phoenix begging her to call. I signed it “Alonso.” I sent Roz into all the best-known Cambridge and Somerville squats. I went myself, tacked up a hundred posters on bulletin boards and walls, drawn by Roz, copied by Xerox. I offered a generous reward. I tracked her through the Missing Children’s Center, through the prison and probation systems, through the Internet.
I never found her.
perhaps as penance,
i must walk,
barefoot and holy,
through snow-wax camellias
Pix visits my dreams. My penance, perhaps.
Afterword
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Author’s Note
The poetry herein attributed to the fictional Thea Janis was actually written by Nancy Linn Pearl in the summer of 1963. It is used with the consent of the poet. Because I needed a poem as evidence of Thea’s current liveliness, I attempted to capture Nancy’s early style in “berlin, now.”
Acknowledgments
The author thanks her faithful first reader, Richard Barnes, for his kindness, generosity, and unflagging belief. The early readers also deserve great credit for their collective insight, patience, and tolerance; they include James Morrow, Morgan Rose, Chris Smither, and Cinda Van Deursen. To each, a heartfelt thanks.
Gina Maccoby, my agent, did double-duty on this one, joining the reading committee in addition to admirably performing all the other tasks that smooth the path for Carlotta and me.
Officer Daniel J. Daley of the Boston Police, and Thomas G. Gutheil, M.D., answered all my questions—concerning police procedure and memory respectively. Books and articles written by Dr. Lenore Terr and Dr. Elizabeth Loftus also helped illuminate various aspects of memory.
Cynthia Mark-Hummel and John Hummel remain active on the ever-important T-shirt squad.
And at Delacorte, Carole Baron kept the ball rolling while Tracy Devine held my hand.
About the Author
Linda Barnes is the award-winning author of the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries. Her witty private-investigator heroine has been hailed as “a true original” by Sue Grafton. Barnes is also the author of the Michael Spraggue Mysteries and a stand-alone novel, The Perfect Ghost.
A winner of the Anthony Award and a finalist for the Edgar and Shamus Awards, Barnes lives in the Boston area with her husband and son. Visit her at www.lindabarnes.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Linda Appleblatt Barnes
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1448-9
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EARLY BIRD BOOKS
FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY
BE THE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT
FREE AND DISCOUNTED EBOOKS
NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!
THE CARLOTTA CARLYLE MYSTERIES
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its
ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
