To cut her questions short, I said, “Would you mind if I use a tape recorder?”
“No, of course not.”
I removed it from my bag.
I set the recorder on the table, at the same time watching her pour cream from a tiny blue pitcher into her coffee mug. Her fingers were long and slender, the nails painted red. I could feel my real mother’s hands working with my hair, weaving long strands into a braid. But the memory refused to mesh with the reality of the stranger across from me.
With a spark of alarm I realized she was studying my face, her eyes slightly narrowed. I said quickly, “Thanks again for seeing me. It can’t be pleasant to talk about all this.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, dropping her gaze to her cup. A barely visible wisp of steam danced above the coffee. “It’s easier now than it used to be.”
I sipped strong black coffee from my own mug, using the moment to renew my courage. “What were your little girls like?”
Her smile was soft, wistful. “They were great kids. Smart, both of them. Cathy was a real tomboy, but Stephie was turning out to be a little lady. She was very feminine, even at that age.” Barbara stared into space and murmured, “Great kids.”
“It must have been devastating to lose both of them at the same time.” I needed to hear her say how much she’d missed us, how much she still loved us, that we were irreplaceable.
All she said was, “Yes. It was.” She sipped her coffee.
I waited, but she said nothing more. “Detective Steckling told me a little about how it happened—”
“I can just imagine what he told you,” she broke in. She leaned forward and plopped her mug onto the tray. Milky brown liquid slopped out and splashed the side of the coffee pot. “That’s one reason I wanted to talk to you, to set the record straight after you heard the police version.”
“Oh? How do you mean?”
“What happened to my girls happened because the world’s full of loonies, just waiting for the chance to do something crazy. Their father had nothing to do with it, I can tell you that for damn sure.”
She gave her head an angry shake. The shining auburn hair slid against her cheeks.
“I appreciate how hard Jack Steckling worked on this case,” she said. “I know he was just doing his job. But he was wrong, putting so much pressure on my husband. John loved our girls more than anything in the world. We had a happy family.”
A string of angry words popped like gunfire in my memory. He doesn’t want you…Hate you!…Slut…Hate you, hate you, hate you! Then the voices faded and I saw my father smiling down at me. I’d felt safe with my hand in his, walking down a sunny street, escaping briefly from the misery of our home. Barbara Olsson couldn’t possibly believe what she said. She was giving me the version invented for strangers.
Groping among my jumbled emotions and roiling thoughts, I tried to find the right response, the logical next question for an outsider to ask. “Was your husband’s death an accident, or…” I trailed off, leaving the rest for her to fill in.
She gripped the chair arms, her body rigid. “I guess Steckling told you it was suicide. Well, it wasn’t. You can ask the insurance company. They sure as hell wouldn’t have paid out a claim if it was suicide. The police said he felt guilty because he hurt the girls, but that’s just crazy. I don’t believe for one minute he had anything to do with it. But it’s convenient for the police to blame him, so they don’t have to admit they never caught the person that did it.”
I knew I was venturing onto dangerous ground, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Do you have any idea who could have taken them? Maybe somebody with a grudge against you?”
“No. I’m sure it was a stranger.” She drew a deep breath and let it out, then ran both hands up under her heavy hair and lifted it off her collar. “God knows the police investigated everybody that ever came into contact with the girls. Relatives, neighbors, friends. People started hating us for it. But it wasn’t anybody we knew. I never thought it was. Some nut saw two pretty little girls, and he took them. Just took them.”
Memory threatened to overwhelm me, claim my mind and senses. I couldn’t let it. I had to stay in control. “You must have thought a lot about what might have happened to them.”
“Oh, God,” she said, and brought a hand up to her mouth.
With a wrench of guilt I watched tears fill her eyes. I had brought her to the brink of crying, forced her back into the midst of that agony.
“I had nightmares for years,” she said after a moment. “I imagined every horrible thing that could have happened.” She expelled a sharp breath. “It was like poison in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it for a minute. It didn’t get better till I had Caroline. I had to put all my energy into taking care of her.”
So you shut us out of your mind and moved on.
Even as I was thinking this, she said, “You don’t forget two children, though. You don’t ever stop thinking about them.”
I waited through a moment of silence, then made myself ask, “Do you think they’re still alive?”
“Oh, no. No, I don’t. They were probably murdered pretty soon after they were taken. I hope so, anyway. I mean I hope they didn’t suffer long. Steckling thinks their bodies’ll be found someday. Their skeletons. And the police might be able to tell how they died.”
As I listened to her I almost believed it was possible, that our childhood bodies were in fact buried in some remote spot, waiting to be discovered.
“I’ve accepted that they’re dead,” she went on, “but you know, every now and then I’ll see a pretty girl who’s about the right age, and I’ll think, That could be Stephanie, or That could be Cathy.” With a fingertip she wiped a single tear from under her right eye. Then she gave a choked little laugh. “I even thought that when I saw you. My Cathy could’ve grown up to look a little like you.”
Her eyes met mine for a moment before I averted my gaze. From the street I heard the shouts of children, free from school on a Saturday morning.
Tell her. She has a right to know. Tell her now. I pushed myself to the verge of spilling it out, but pulled back when she spoke again.
“I really hope their bodies aren’t ever found. I don’t want to know how they died. I want to remember them the way they were. Happy and laughing all the time. I just want to remember all the good times our little family had together.”
She believed what she was saying. No, I wanted to protest. It wasn’t like that. We’d been sad and scared, we’d lived in a house of cutting words and anguished silences. I knew the truth. I remembered.
I pushed the question out of my mouth. “Do you feel guilty about what happened?”
“Guilty?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Oh, plenty of people tried to make me feel like it was all my fault. And I did feel guilty for a while. It’s only natural. But the only person that’s guilty is the one that took my daughters.” Her expression hardened with hatred. “I’d like to find the monster that did it and make them suffer. There’s no punishment bad enough.”
I saw Mother lying in her own blood on the bathroom floor, my hand over the gash in her throat, blood spurting through my fingers. Hadn’t that been punishment enough?
A telephone rang in another room. Barbara started. “Oh. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
I nodded, the image of Judith Goddard’s last moments still in my mind. Yes, her crime was monstrous, indefensible. Why then did I want to defend her, to deny that she was wholly to blame? Barbara Dawson and Michael Goddard’s infidelity had destroyed Judith’s world and John Dawson’s world. And it was Barbara, careless and selfish, who’d left my sister and me alone on that playground to be stolen and who now seemed unable to acknowledge any responsibility.
My gaze traveled along the row of photos on the mantel. What would happen to all of us if the whole wretched story came out? Once Barbara and her family knew, it couldn’t be kept secret. Sooner or later it would be big news, a morbidly fascinating human drama tha
t would capture the imaginations of strangers. People Magazine and Vanity Fair reporters would show up at our doors. Someone would write a true crime book about us. Our lives, even Mark’s and Caroline’s, would be exposed and picked over.
Judith would be painted as a madwoman, and if Michelle and I insisted that in many ways she had given us a good life, we’d be pitied as warped, brainwashed, too damaged by trauma to know what we were saying.
And what would become of my sister? Michelle, Stephanie. She was only starting the journey that I’d begun months before. She would have no desire to see Barbara Olsson, I was sure of that, and she wasn’t strong enough yet to face the truth about her role at the center of this tragedy.
The fragrance of perfume wafted into the room. “That was my husband,” Barbara said as she sat down. “Calling from the fishing lodge. He always gets worried when he knows I’m going to be talking about Cathy and Stephie.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, he hates the publicity, he thinks it’s bad for our kids. And he’s right. They hate it too, it really upsets them. I promised them I wouldn’t do any more interviews, but you’re not the press, this isn’t going to be public.” She sighed. “I think this’ll be the last time I talk about it, though. It’s time to let it be.”
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Olsson.” I switched off the recorder and stuffed it into my bag. “I really have to leave if I’m going to catch my flight. “
She rose with me. “I hope I’ve been some help with your paper.”
“Oh, you have. More than I can tell you.”
“Well, then. It was nice meeting you. Have a good flight.”
With a quick smile I left her, strode briskly down the driveway and across the street. When I was in the car, she waved at me from the steps. I waved back, then sat watching as she disappeared inside and the door closed.
It was over. I thought of little Kristin Coleman as I’d seen her months before on that rainy day, crying because her dog was hurt and her mother had vanished. It seemed pointless now to wonder what our lives would have been like if that child’s tears hadn’t brought a buried memory to the surface. It had happened. Mother was dead, and I’d found the truth I was searching for. It would end here.
Judith had lived behind a fragile mask, dependent on my damaged memory to keep her secret. Now my knowledge would act as guardian.
I turned the key in the ignition. I would drive to the airport, get on the next available flight, and go home to Luke and to a shattered sister who needed me.
I wasn’t Cathy Dawson anymore, and never would be again.
I was Rachel.
Judith Goddard’s daughter.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
More from this Author
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The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 27
