“That’s what we’ve done here, with this room.”
Cindy attempted to pull away but Colleen, her arms wrapped around her from behind, would not let her go. “Made it a kind of shrine to a plaster saint.”
“Let me go,” Cindy cried. She didn’t want to heal. She wanted to suffer, to cry, to mourn the daughter she’d lost long ago as if she hadn’t become a cynical, brooding, selfish and sharp-tongued serpent in the bosom of their fragile little family.
Colleen let her go and, together, they sat on Tanny’s bed. Cindy stroked the duvet.
“She’s gone, Mum.”
Cindy tried to say something, but her tears would not allow.
Colleen inhaled deeply, anticipating the storm to come. “She brought it on herself.”
Cindy turned on her with wild eyes. “She did not, Col! Don’t you dare say such a thing! She fell in with the wrong crowd, and they . . .”
“She didn’t fall in with anyone,” said Colleen, seizing her mother’s shoulders. “She joined them because she wanted to. She wanted the money. She wanted to feel important and . . . powerful. She killed those people! Murdered them in cold blood!”
The cudgel of truth struck Cindy down. She deflated on the bed, her arms and legs splayed across it as if to shield the sanctity of her memories of the child who had once slept there. Colleen gently massaged her back. “You’ve got to let her go, Mum. She was a bad apple. Not your fault.”
Cindy said nothing, but her shoulders rose and fell to her sighs.
“I may not be much, Mum, but I’m here. I’ll be good from now on, I promise.” Inwardly she offered a silent prayer that the Lord would approve her declaration by giving her the strength to fulfill it.
For a long time they communed in silence. At last, Cindy rolled over and, taking a tissue from the box on the bedside table, dried her eyes. “You’re right, Col. I know,” she said. “We lost her years ago.” She reached out and took her daughter’s hand. “Yes. They told me that her . . . her parts had been taken. The person we buried was just a shell. Empty.”
“There then,” said Colleen, squeezing her mother’s hand. “Out there in the world somewhere is someone—maybe several people—who have Tan’s parts in ’em. They’re alive because, well . . . See Mum, she’s done some good after all. Just think of those people. Kids, maybe. Who knows?”
Cindy raised her reddened eyes and, for the first time in a long time, really looked at her second daughter. “I’m so sorry, Col.”
Colleen didn’t ask what she might be sorry for. They both knew.
Cindy’s gaze grew intent. “I love you, Col. I really do love you.”
“Me, too, Mum.”
For several minutes they just held each other, speaking volumes in a language transcending words. “I spoke to your dad last night.”
Colleen often thought of herself as the child of a single mother, so seldom had she seen her father, that enigmatic male who appeared now and then, bestowed gifts upon them, then left. “What did he say?”
“He’s been offered a job in Canada. He wants us to move there. To live all together, near my mom and dad. Your grandparents.”
“Canada,” said Colleen. She had often said she was Kiwi through and through, and that she’d never leave New Zealand. Now it was time for her to swallow her words, to sacrifice. “That’ll be fine, Mum. It’ll be good.”
Ricky Smethurst was surprised when a uniformed policeman and Senior Sergeant Hawkes showed up at his door and, in sharp contrast to his expectations, presented him with a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars. “Your reward, Mr. Smethurst,” said Hawkes, “for aiding police in their investigations and supplying information leading to the capture of those involved in the trade in body parts. Thank you for your service.”
For a long time after their departure, Ricky stood in the open doorway, watching them get in their car and drive away. His hand, still damp from Hawkes’ farewell handshake, was still extended as if unsure where it belonged.
For several weeks he’d been wondering what to do with the windfall of a thousand American dollars he’d received in a letter from the United States. Now he had ten times that to worry about. The responsibility was crushing.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you,” said Hester. She and Angela had settled Phuong in the little summer house at the bottom of the back yard that was later to become Albert's home. “You look well.”
And so began a conversation that searched out ever greater, deeper, and more dangerous terrain as it unfolded. In the end, though, Angela had been divested of all her terrible secrets and stood before the judgment of her sister in robes of shame.
Hester looked at her for a long time, absorbing all she had heard, sighing, tearing up, clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her breasts.
Angela’s preconceptions about what would follow her revelations were upset when Hester, at last, said, “What have you learned, Angie?”
Good question, thought Angela and one, she realized, she’d never thought about in so many words. One so obvious. For several minutes she examined herself in relation to the question, and Hester left her to her thoughts. At last she said, “I’ve learned the wold doesn't revolve around me,” she said.
Hester nodded slightly, several times, then she reached across the table and took her sister’s hands in her own. “Good. You’ve paid your debt as far as the law is concerned, and you’ve grown from the experience. Now you can move on. Okay?”
Angela nodded and they wept and, eventually, embraced. “Maybe I’ll write a book about it someday,” she said into her sister’s shoulder.
“No one would believe it.”
“I need to know, Bridges,” Huffy fumed. It was only the second time they’d met face-to-face, and the experience was not pleasant for either of them. The breath that Mrs. Bridges inhaled reeked of professional patience.
“Mr. Huffy,” she said. “As I told you on the phone—a number of times—He was in New Zealand, now I can’t say where he is. He calls me once every other month or so, usually to ask me to give somebody a thousand dollars, or to tell me to pay someone for something. He asks me to make sure Mrs. Gibson is okay, and to tell her he’s okay.”
“But you must be able to tell where he’s calling from!” said Huffy. “You could have the call traced!”
“Very likely,” said Mrs. Bridges, “but wouldn’t that rather go against his wishes? If he wanted me to know where he is, he’d tell me.”
“Wishes be damned!” said Huffy. “I’ve been dancin’ the Third Rail Sashay with booking agents from here to hell and back for almost two years now! They’re going to strike him off altogether!”
“They won’t do that,” said Bridges adding, before he could interrupt, “A few years off the market and they’ll be slavering for his return.”
“That’s just fine for you. Your livelihood doesn’t depend on a percentage!”
“Neither does yours.”
“What? I operate on a percentage . . .”
“You forget you’re talking to the one who signs your checks, Mr. Huffy. You get a base salary plus a percentage. And Albert has increased your base salary—well beyond my recommendations, I might add—to cover your lost percentage.”
“But. . .”
“Now, I feel I would thrive in the atmosphere of your absence,” said Mrs. Bridges. “And if you plan a return visit in the future—for which I see no need—please call and make an appointment. Otherwise, I’ll not be in to you. Capiche?”
“But. . .”
“Good day, Mr. Huffy.”
Huffy did not depart gracefully. He slammed the door behind him and left Albert’s financial manager to the peace and quiet of her office. She swiveled toward the sliding glass door that opened onto the porch and looked out at the ocean. Huffy had come a long way to vent and, truth be told, as a businesswoman, she could understand his frustration. Albert was not an easy client—at least not for him. For her, he was a breeze.
Little cou
ld she have imagined, all those years ago, when he came to the bank for a roll of quarters, that she would end up here, in her own beautiful cottage overlooking Rockport harbor on the Maine coast, working solely for him, administering a minor financial empire of which its owner was only dimly aware and could care less.
She thought back to their meeting in New Zealand twenty-odd months earlier, when she’d finally tracked him down at Angela’s sister’s house in Christchurch. She smiled. Of course she’d had his calls traced. He hadn’t recognized her at first, she’d cut and dyed her hair. Probably that was it.
“You found me,” said Albert.
She settled across the table from him. “It wasn’t easy,” she said.
That was encouraging. If Mrs. Bridges had a difficulty finding him, he was safe from normal humans.
His right hand was resting on the table, and it took overwhelming willpower to keep from covering it with her own. “I’m so sorry, Albert.”
He looked up at her. “?”
“About all you’ve been through. All the . . . the horrors you’ve . . . been through.”
He lowered his eyes, but not his head, and she could resist no longer. Tentatively, with a silent prayer that he wouldn’t pull away, she put her hand on his.
He didn’t pull away. Even more alarming, more heartbreaking, he suddenly burst into tears. She jumped up, rounded the table, dropped to her knees by his side and drew him into her embrace, where he soaked her shirt, and watered her soul, and summoned from her womanly depths the mother’s heart her life choices had stilled.
So profound were his cries, so primordial, so laden with undiluted agony that Hester ran to the back door in alarm. The women caught one anothers eyes, and Mrs. Bridges softly shook her head. Hester retreated from the door, but stayed in the shadows, unable to take her eyes from this naked exposure of a man’s soul. “Christ’s tears,” she said to herself.
THE END
BOOKS BY DAVID CROSSMAN
from
Alibi-Folio
The Albert Mysteries
Requiem for Ashes
Dead in D Minor
Coda
Improvisato
TheWinston Crisp Mysteries
A Show of Hands
The Dead of Winter
Justice Once Removed
Photo Club Mysteries
Dead and Breakfast
Bean and Ab Young Adult Mysteries
The Secret of the Missing Grave
The Mystery of the Black Moriah
The Legend of Burial Island
The Riddle of Misery Light (2020)
Historical Novel
Silence the Dead
Fantasy
Storyteller
Thriller
A Terrible Mercy
www.davidcrossman.com
David A. Crossman is a best-selling novelist, an awardwinning lyricist and composer, writer of short stories, screenplays, teleplays, and children’s books, a television producer/director, a video producer, radio/television talent, computer graphic artist, copywriter, videographer, publisher, music producer, musician, singer, performer and… well, you get the picture. He’s shiftless. He divides his time between the home he shares with his wife Barbara and worlds that don’t exist outside his mind.
Improvisato Page 38
