And She Was

by Alison Gaylin

  “Grandma used to tell Clea, don’t sell yourself short. Only be with boys who deserve you, and who will show you respect. And Clea rolled her eyes at her. Just like you’re rolling your eyes at me right now.”

  “I’m not Clea.”

  “No, you’re not. Clea waited till she was fifteen before she started acting up.”

  “That isn’t fair!”

  “Life isn’t fair,” said Brenna. “He was all over that girl last night, Maya. Do you really think that little of yourself?”

  Maya was staring fire at her. Fire and bullets, the arms crossed over the chest, the face bright red, the jaw thrust so far forward, it looked as if it hurt, but that didn’t matter. Feelings didn’t matter. This was life.

  “Do you understand me, Maya, because I swear if this happens again, I’ll take the lock off your door.”

  Maya pivoted away from the table, stormed down the hall.

  “Don’t you walk away from me!” Brenna said, her own mother’s voice coming out of her mouth, Clea’s feet stomping away . . .

  Brenna heard more footsteps, and then Maya was back, an artist’s notebook in her hands. Her whole body trembled, and when she spoke, her voice shook, too. “Miles and I are partners in art class. I didn’t pick him as my partner. The teacher assigned it. We were doing homework.” She slammed the notebook on the table in front of Brenna. “I was telling the truth.”

  On the notebook was a detailed sketch of a bearded young man with a slight, mysterious smile, light glinting off his eyes. Miles. Brenna turned the page. Another detailed rendering. Miles, contemplative, in profile. On the next page was a slightly different angle, the beginnings of a sketch—just the basic lines, but it was the same pose, the same boy, the same background on all three drawings: the headboard of Maya’s bed. Brenna looked up at her.

  “I’m not Clea.”

  “Oh Maya. I’m sorry . . .” She closed her eyes. “It isn’t you. I’m having trouble believing that anyone is telling the truth today. It’s this client of mine. I just found out he lied to me about something very important.”

  Brenna heard the slam of Maya’s bedroom door, and when she opened her eyes, the girl was gone. Brenna looked down at Maya’s sketch—a likeness of the boy she used to love and now hated, of course she hated him. Brenna didn’t need to teach her to hate him . . . A perfect likeness. “You’re very talented,” Brenna said to no one.

  Then she ordered pizza, walked over to her desk, and turned on the computer. She called up her e-mail—a new one from Trent, one titled “Subaru 411.” She was about to open it when an IM from Jim flashed on her screen: You okay?

  Brenna sighed. Sure. Why?

  You were so abrupt last night.

  I was just tired, Brenna typed. For several seconds, she stared at the words without sending them, the previous night swirling through her mind, start to finish. Brenna deleted the sentence. In its place, she typed: I lied.

  About what?

  Being okay.

  Do you want to tell me about it?

  Brenna exhaled hard, her eyes starting to blur. It’s hard. Not being able to move on.

  No answer for three, four, five seconds. Then: From me?

  Yes.

  Jim didn’t type back. He didn’t want to have this conversation, she knew. Even after all these years, he still didn’t want to talk about everything that had happened after she’d done that job for Errol—the stony silences, the useless months of counseling, the late nights he spent at work, the way he’d turn away from her in bed, unable to forgive, unable to trust. He didn’t want to go there now, and who could blame him? He had the luxury of forgetting, of putting the past behind him and creating a new life with another woman while Brenna . . . But that wasn’t Jim’s fault, was it? Being normal?

  She tried: Not just you. Every mistake I’ve ever made.

  Jim still wasn’t typing. Brenna exhaled hard, blinked the blur out of her eyes.

  I’m sorry, she typed, but then the message came back. JRapp68 is offline. She stared at the screen. Jim’s icon was now an X. “Okay, Jim. Thanks for checking in.” A tear spilled down her cheek. Then another. She put her head down on her desk and before long she was sobbing, audibly sobbing, tears hot on her face, her shoulders shaking, her throat raw.

  Brenna felt a tentative hand on her shoulder, and then another. “Mom?”

  She wanted to tell Maya to go back to her room, because she shouldn’t see her mother like this, should she? Mothers were supposed to be strong, but Brenna wasn’t feeling strong and she didn’t want to cry alone, and so she leaned on her thirteen-year-old daughter, put her arms around her, and the two of them stayed like that for a long time, holding each other, neither one of them, for now, alone.

  The pizza arrived and Brenna and Maya ate it in front of Psycho—tonight’s installment in AMC’s October Halloween Countdown. They’d both seen the movie repeatedly so they knew what was coming, but that didn’t make it any less scary, Maya burying her face in Brenna’s shoulder as soon as Detective Arbogast put the first foot to staircase. They didn’t talk to each other much during the movie, but it was a comfortable silence. Sometimes it was good to just watch something.

  After Maya went to bed, Brenna switched her computer on. Jim was still offline, but she wasn’t going to think about that. Maybe he was out or busy and if he wasn’t, she didn’t want to know. She clicked on her e-mail: Trent’s “Subaru 411,” plus a new one, from Morasco, titled “Memory.”

  She opened Morasco’s:

  Hi,

  So the last time I talked to Lydia Neff, it was right before she left town. She stopped by the station, told me she wanted to thank me for everything. I asked her what her plans were, and she said she was going to visit an old friend first, and then “relocate.” She didn’t say where. I didn’t press her. No one ever heard from her again. But here is what I just remembered: Do you know where the old friend lived? Buffalo.

  Yours,

  N

  P.S. Just FYI, I also do a mean Eisenhower.

  Brenna smiled. She hit reply, and typed:

  Thanks for the Buffalo info. It is “verrrry interrresting,” as Arte Johnson would say.

  Speaking of outdated material, see attached. It’s page 22 of the Iris Neff police report—it was in the file I obtained in ’98, but missing from it now.

  Enjoy,

  B

  She attached the page she’d typed and sent the e-mail, all the while thinking, Buffalo. Just before she disappeared, Lydia had obviously planned to visit Tim O’Malley. As Brenna had learned from the articles she’d read, he’d moved to 811 Mulberry from Albany two and a half years ago, which would have made him a relatively new Buffalo resident when Lydia made her decision to leave Tarry Ridge.

  Her strong shoulder. The man she told about all her problems.

  Brenna made herself remember the library, the news articles about the group home fire . . . She looked up the number of Sisters of Charity Hospital and called and asked for intensive care. When she got a nurse on the line, Brenna said, “Is Tim O’Malley able to speak?”

  “Ma’am, I told you, I can’t release any information about his condition unless—”

  “I’m an investigator.”

  “Buffalo Police? I’m sorry. I talked to a male detective before.”

  Brenna mulled it over for a couple of seconds. “That’s all right,” she said.

  “He’s still critical, still unconscious, Detective . . .”

  “Spector. Thanks.”

  “We’ll let you know as soon as there’s any change.”

  “Appreciate that.” Brenna started to hang up, then stopped. “By the way,” she said. “Why did you say, ‘Ma’am, I told you’? Have you been getting a lot of press calls?”

  “No,” the nurse said. “I just saw the blocked number and I thought you were that lady.”

  “Lady?”

  “Yeah. Asks how Mr. O’Malley is, and I keep telling her she has to be a relative. Ten minutes ago
she called again, tried saying she was his wife and you know as well as I do, he doesn’t have a wife.”

  Brenna’s mouth opened, then closed again. She tried, “You mind my asking the lady’s name?”

  “She calls here all the time. Never gives her name. That’s why I thought you were her. She’s the only one who—”

  “Can you do me a favor?” Brenna said.

  “Ummm.”

  “Next time the lady calls for Mr. O’Malley, can you please tell her to call Brenna Spector? Can you tell her it involves both Mr. O’Malley and Iris and it’s urgent?”

  “Iris?”

  “I know it’s . . . it’s strange,” Brenna said, anxiety building in her voice. “I’m . . . I’m in New York City right now. On business. Let me leave my number.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Brenna waited for the dawning knowledge of You aren’t with the Buffalo Police, waited for the How dare you, for the click of the disconnecting phone. “Sorry,” said the nurse. “Just getting my pen. What’s your number, Detective Spector?”

  Okay . . . Brenna thought, after she hung up. Okay . . . It was now officially beyond her control. The only thing Brenna could do now as far as O’Malley’s caller was concerned was possibly her least favorite activity: waiting for a phone call.

  Brenna closed Morasco’s e-mail, opened Trent’s.

  Hola Spectorita,

  Attached: all registration records for Subaru Vivio Bistros in Westchester County—1996, 1997, 1998—minus dead people. As you’ll see, I organized the list with men first, then women. Good thing the Bistro is (was?) a jank ass ride—so the list isn’t too long.

  Later,

  TNT

  P.S. List of phone numbers similar to Will Garvey’s TK first thing manana. I’ve got a computer program working on it.

  P.P.S. Elizabeth Stoller’s picture e-mailed to all hospitals and businesses w/in a thirty-mile radius of the Walter P. Klein Assisted Living Facility.

  P.P.P.S. I know. I rock out loud. You’re welcome.

  Brenna downloaded and opened the attachment. A list to go over. This was good. It would keep her from looking at the phone, from waiting for the woman who’d been repeatedly phoning Sisters of Charity to call her, from believing that the woman would almost certainly be Lydia Neff, because who else would be calling about Tim O’Malley’s condition without leaving a name? Who else would claim to be his wife?

  Amazing, Brenna thought. Wentz had fired her six hours ago and lied to her repeatedly and yet here she was, eye-deep in his case, so painfully close to answers and wanting those answers, so badly . . .

  Calm down. Look at these names.

  Trent was right—there weren’t that many Bistro owners on the list. Just a dozen counting the women. She went into Google images and began typing in names, plus towns. The first Bistro owner, Russell Chesney, was a radiologist from White Plains with a Facebook page. She couldn’t get into the page, of course, but his profile pic showed her she didn’t need to—a man and a woman and a dog, none of whom looked remotely like the pretty-faced, supposed cop Brenna had seen. Next up was Percy Bridges—a smiling bald accountant from New Rochelle with his own Web site. Then there was certified yoga instructor Samson Moore—a sculpted, heavily tattooed black man who offered classes five days a week at the Equinox Gym on Eighty-fifth and Lex.

  It was incredible how easy it was to find people on the Web now. Really find people—their faces, their professions, their life stories . . . If Brenna had been looking for, say, the next man on the list, Martin Wickham, all she’d need to do was Google the name and look at his online résumé to learn that he was now the chief financial officer of Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital, having moved from his home in Scarsdale six years ago. Just yesterday, Martin’s daughter Phoebe had won a short film competition at USC. Martin was very proud. Brenna knew because he’d tweeted about it, posting a link to the film on YouTube . . .

  It was a basic human desire, wasn’t it? To be seen and heard? And now there were so many opportunities for that—a giant, pulsing, electronic memory out there, created so that anyone at any time could show his face, share his life, send up a flare, get known. It made Brenna’s job easier. But it also made it so upsetting when, in spite of all that opportunity, a person insisted on remaining invisible . . .

  Call me, Lydia.

  For the hell of it, Brenna typed Lydia Neff’s name into the search bar. Very little came up—a few CNN transcripts from eleven years ago, plus an item from a missing children’s Web site. The story was too old for there to have been that much Web coverage, and it seemed that Iris’s disappearance was all Lydia Neff was known for—all she wanted to be known for, anyway. Except . . . Brenna typed in “Lydia Neff” plus “Life Coach” and got Lydia’s old Web site—Lydia’s sad, heavy face with the words, “Free yourself!” underneath it in flowery cursive script, like some kind of sick joke. Scrolling across the bottom of the page were three words:

  Relearn

  Renew

  Reinvent

  Followed by a number for appointments, which Brenna called, again for the hell of it. Disconnected. Of course it was.

  She went back to the list of Bistro owners with that last word wedged in her head. Reinvent. She thought of the old Lydia—those sharp cheekbones, that shining black hair, those lively eyes. The type of woman who turned heads, stopped traffic. The type who could find her way into a man’s mind and stay there, haunting him.

  Yet in the last few years, she’d let it all go, the cheekbones swallowed up in that doughy face, the silken hair faded to gray fuzz, with only the eyes remaining, sparkling out from folds of unfamiliar flesh. Party crashers, those eyes—and such a sad, dull party . . .

  She is. And then she was. Just like that.

  Brenna closed her eyes, Lydia’s old face and new face blending in her mind. Reinvent. Was that what Lydia had been doing? Not letting herself go, not “eating her grief,” but freeing herself? It could have been all conscious—Lydia wrapping herself in layers of fat, like a cocoon, and then . . . The greatest achievement is selflessness.

  Leaving her old self behind. Walking away from this town plain and unmissed. A quick visit to Buffalo to see her “strong shoulder” one last time, and then she was a new person free to start a new life—away from the ghost of her missing child, away from the man in the Vivio Bistro.

  She went back to the list: Roger Wright Industries (company car).

  Brenna froze. She closed her eyes, revisiting her conversation with Nelson this morning, the hard chair beneath her, the Scotch on his breath, the story . . . Nelson and Lydia, taking the train every day . . . There was a period, probably a dozen years ago, when she was working on a major event—the opening of the Rose Building on Fifty-seventh.

  Brenna Googled the Rose Building. She scanned through dozens of listings until she got the bright idea of adding “opening,” “new,” and “launch.” She skipped to the last page of listings, and that’s when she hit pay dirt. The original press release. She read it quickly. There were quotes in the release from the building’s architect, from the decorator, and from the developer—Roger Wright. “The building’s name, Rose, is in honor of my wonderful mother-in-law, Lily Teasdale. Lily is far too humble to want her name on a building, but I do feel that both the building and the name are a fitting tribute to the grace, beauty, and elegance of both Lily and her daughter, my lovely wife, Rachel.”

  The press release had been written by Lydia Neff.

  Brenna stood up, backed away from the computer. She walked down the hall to calm herself and then she stood in the doorway of Maya’s room, listening to her sleep . . . Company car. For several seconds, Brenna was back behind the wheel of the rental car on October 21, 1998, that pretty-faced supposed cop at her window. You need to leave, with the bulky uniform at his side—the uniform she now knew as Chief Lane Hutchins.

  She could hear Morasco’s voice in her head: I’ve got to hand it to him, though. He knew how to make the
right people happy. And was that ever true. The pretty-faced, supposed cop, the man in the blue car, the man who had been haunting Lydia Neff’s house before Iris disappeared, the man outside Nelson Wentz’s house this morning, staring at Brenna as if she were prey, the man who no doubt was Santa Claus . . . He wasn’t a cop. Never had been one, supposed or otherwise. He worked for Roger Wright Industries. And so did Lydia.

  Brenna leaned against the wall, thinking, And so, apparently, does the current chief of police. Okay, that might have been a stretch. Standing next to someone doesn’t mean you’re employed by them. But still . . . What was Lane Hutchins doing eleven years ago, standing next to a Wright employee, acting as if kicking me off Lydia Neff’s street was official business? Brenna’s head hurt. She felt a slight ringing in her ears, as if too much information were flooding her mind, too much at the same time, and if she didn’t rest it might even explode.

  Brenna headed back to her work area. It was well after 11 P.M., after all. She would turn off her computer, get some sleep, approach all this information fresh in the morning, when she could really think.

  But as Brenna neared her desk, the ringing in her ears grew louder. And she realized it wasn’t in her ears at all, but her cell phone, turned down low.

  Chapter 25

  Brenna picked the phone up fast, checked the caller ID. An unfamiliar number, but with the same area code as Sisters of Charity Hospital. Buffalo. She cleared her throat, thinking, Calm. Professional. “Brenna Spector.”

  “The ICU nurse. She said you wanted to talk to me.” The voice was small, frail. Nothing like the voice Brenna remembered from the fountain at the Waterside Condominiums, but then everything else of Lydia Neff’s had changed since then. Why not her voice, too?

  Brenna took a breath. “Listen, you’ve been anonymous for two years,” she said. “That won’t change. No one will know where you are, but I need to ask you a few questions about a man you used to know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anonymous?”