“His wife left him,” she said. “Did he tell you that?”
“No.”
A satisfied smile. “She couldn’t take the hours he put in. That’s pretty common. We’re getting more and more intra-Bureau marriages now. But he didn’t even stop working then, to sort it out. He just let her go.”
“Kids?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“He told me he served in Vietnam. Do you know anything about that?”
“He doesn’t talk about it. But Bowles told my SWAT commander that he’d seen John’s service record, and that he has a bagful of medals. Bowles thought we ought to try to get John on the SWAT team. My commander approached him, but he wasn’t interested. What do you think about that?”
“It doesn’t surprise me. Men who’ve seen a lot of combat don’t have many illusions about solving problems with weapons.”
Wendy bit her lip and wondered if that was an insult. “You’ve seen it?” she asked. “Combat, I mean? You’ve taken pictures of it and all?”
“Yes.”
“You ever get shot?”
“Yes.”
I instantly went up two notches in her estimation. “Did it hurt?”
“I don’t recommend it. I took a piece of shrapnel in the rear end once, too. That hurt a lot worse than the bullet did. Talk about hot.”
Wendy laughed, I laughed with her, and by the time we finished talking, I knew she was more than half in love with John Kaiser and that, though she liked me, she viewed me as an interloper of the first order.
Now the gin is wearing off, and if I don’t get out of the Mustang immediately, I never will.
I sense Wendy’s relief as I climb out with my gift-wrapped packages and walk up the block to my brother-in-law’s house. House is actually a misnomer. Jane and her husband settled in one of those massive St. Charles Avenue homes that would be called a mansion anywhere else. On this part of St. Charles, the wrought-iron fences cost more than houses in the rest of the city. I mount the porch and swing the brass knocker against the knurled oak door. The resounding bang announces the acres of space that lie behind the door. I expect the knock to be answered by Annabelle, the Lacour family maid, now inherited by the scion, but it’s Marc himself who opens the door.
You’d think people would be blessed with money or looks, not both, but Marc Lacour shatters that assumption. He has sandy blond hair, blue eyes, a chiseled face, and a muscular frame that looks ten years younger than its forty-one years. After the kids were born, he put on twenty pounds, but Jane’s disappearance knocked them back off, as he manically exercised to combat depression. Tonight he’s wearing blue wool trousers, cordovan wing tips, and a Brooks Brothers shirt. He smiles when he sees me, then pulls me to him for a hug, which I return. He smells faintly of cologne.
“Jordan,” he says as I draw back. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He pulls me into the huge central hall, then closes the door and leads me to a formal living room that looks like a layout from Architectural Digest. There’s not a cast-aside toy or empty pizza box in sight. I feel almost guilty setting my presents on the floor, as though I’m disturbing some hidden plan. Jane kept things looser. I suppose the life of the house has begun to revert to the patterns Marc knew in childhood. He has no other map, of course, but the sterility of the environment makes my heart hurt for the kids.
“Are Henry and Lyn upstairs?” I ask, perching on a wing chair that looks like it should have a braided museum rope tied across its arms.
“They’re at my parents’ house.” Marc sits opposite me on a sofa.
“Oh. When will they be back?”
“My folks bought a place down the street. They’ll bring the kids as soon as I call.”
Okay. “What’s going on, Marc?”
“I wanted to talk to you before you see them.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. But there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
He takes a lawyerly pause, then speaks in the deepest voice he can muster. “The kids know Jane is dead, Jordan.”
“What?”
“I had to tell them. I had no choice.”
It’s amazing, really, the degree to which we deceive ourselves. For months I’ve been telling myself that I’ve mourned and buried my sister in my heart. But now, confronted with a concrete act based on that assumption, I want to scream denial. The voice that emerges from my mouth sounds like a stunned four-year-old’s. “But . . . you don’t know she’s dead.”
Marc shakes his head. “How long are you going to wait before you accept it? Your father’s been dead almost thirty years, and you’re still looking for him. I have to raise these kids, and they can’t wait that long.”
“It’s not right, Marc.”
“What is, then? They thought Jane was out there suffering somewhere, at the mercy of some ‘bad person.’ That she couldn’t get away or find her way back home. It was driving them crazy. They couldn’t do their school-work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. All they did was sit at the window, waiting for Jane to come home. I finally told them that God had taken Mama to heaven to be with Him. She wasn’t with any bad person, she was with God and his angels.”
“How did you say she died? They must have asked.”
“I told them she went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
Jesus. “What did they say?”
“Did it hurt?”
I can’t even respond to this.
Marc’s face is resolute. “It’s for the best, Jordan. And I don’t want you saying anything to them about what’s going on now. The paintings, the investigation, none of it. Nothing to give them some crazy hope that she might come back. Because you know she won’t. Those women are dead. Every one of them.”
Maybe it’s that I have no kids of my own. Maybe the daily demands of raising children simply can’t be handled with a giant question mark hanging over everything.
“I want you to be part of their lives,” Marc says. “But you have to understand the ground rules. In this family, Jane has passed away. We had a memorial service for her.”
“What? You never called me.”
“You were in Asia, no one knew where.”
“My agency could have found me.”
“I thought it would be less confusing if their mother’s mirror image didn’t suddenly fly in from parts unknown to be at her funeral.”
“I can’t believe this.” Suddenly a decision I made months ago seems like a bad one. “There’s something I never told you, Marc. I got a phone call eight months ago, from Thailand. There was a lot of static, and I could have been mistaken, but I thought it might be Jane.”
“What?”
“She said she needed help, but that Daddy couldn’t help her. Then a man came on the phone and said something in French. Then in English he said, ‘It’s just a dream,’ and hung up the phone.”
“And you thought that was Jane? Calling from Thailand ?”
“I wasn’t sure. Not at the time. But now that I’ve found these paintings in Hong Kong . . . I mean, don’t you think that puts it in a new light?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this call before?”
“I didn’t want to upset you.”
“When did the call come? Daytime? Or the middle of the night?”
“Why?”
“Because eight months ago was when you couldn’t get out of bed, wasn’t it? Your little prescription vacation?”
My anger flares, but I press it down. “Yes, but I had the FBI check with the phone company. I really did get a call from Thailand in the middle of the night. From a train station.”
Marc looks at me a bit longer, then turns to a portrait of his parents on the wall. They look wealthy and distant. “You do what you have to, Jordan. That’s what we all do. But I don’t want to know about it. Not unless you get positive evidence that Jane or one of the other women is alive. Anything short of that is all pain, no gain.”
; “Spoken like a true lawyer.”
His cheeks color. “You think I don’t miss her? I’ve suffered more—” He stops, takes a cell phone from his pocket, and hits a speed-dial number. “It’s me. . . . I’ll meet you at the door.” He hangs up and stands from the sofa.
“I’m surprised you’re letting me see them at all.”
“I told you, I want you to be part of this family. That’s why I asked you to stay with us. You’re a great person. And you’re a terrific role model for Lyn.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Look, let’s forget the other stuff and concentrate on the kids.”
The “other stuff” being his missing wife. “I’ll wait in here.”
Marc sighs and leaves the room.
The truth is, I really don’t know much about Jane and Marc’s relationship. Jane liked to project an image of perfection. They married young, but Marc wanted to postpone having children until he’d put in the years of hundred-hour weeks required for making partner. That worried Jane, who wanted kids almost immediately, more to cement the relationship, I feared at the time, than for the children themselves. But when she finally got them, she proved a wonderful mother, creating the warm, secure environment that she and I had never known.
The sound of the front door opening reaches me, then subdued voices. A society matron’s cigarette-parched drawl rises above the others. “I just don’t think it’s the proper thing to do. They’ve been through too much already.” The muted drone of Marc’s lawyer voice assures his mother that he knows exactly what he’s doing. Then, God help me, comes the patter of small shoes on the hardwood floor, followed by the percussive clack of Marc’s wing tips. I feel more acute anxiety than I have waiting to meet heads of state. The steps grow louder, then stop, but the doorway remains empty.
“Go ahead,” says Marc from somewhere in the hall. “It’s okay.”
Nothing happens.
“She brought pres-ents,” he says in a singsong voice.
A small face appears from behind the door post. Lyn’s face. A physical echo of my own. With her large dark eyes, she looks like a fawn peeking from behind a tree. As her mouth falls open, Henry’s blond hair and blue eyes appear above her. Henry blinks, then disappears. I smile as broadly as I can and hold out my arms. Lyn looks behind her—presumably at her father—then steps into the open and runs to me.
It takes a supreme effort to keep from crying as her little arms wrap around my neck like a drowning child’s and she says, “Mama, Mama,” in my ear.
I gently pull her back and look into her wet eyes. “I’m Jordan, sweetie. I’m—”
“She knows,” says Marc, ushering Henry toward me with his hands on the boy’s shoulders.
“She said ‘Mama.’ ”
“Lyn, do you know who this lady is?”
She nods solemnly at me. “You’re Aunt Jordan. I’ve seen your pictures in books.”
“But you said ‘Mama.’ ”
“You remind me of my mom. She’s gone to heaven to be with God.”
I put my hand over my mouth to hold my composure, and Marc helps out by pushing Henry forward. “This big guy here is Henry, Aunt Jordan.”
“I know that. Hello, Henry.”
“I got a first-place trophy in soccer,” he announces.
“You did?”
“You want to see it?”
“Of course I do. But I brought you a present. Would you like to see that first?”
He looks back at his father for permission.
“Let’s see it,” Marc says.
I point to the wrapped package by the door. “Are you big enough to open that, Henry?”
“YEAH!”
He practically attacks the package, and in seconds exposes a hardcover book-sized box that says “Panasonic.” “It’s a DVD player, Dad! Look! One for the car!”
“A little extravagant, isn’t it?” says Marc, arching an eyebrow at me.
“That’s a maiden aunt’s privilege.”
“Looks that way.”
Lyn is standing quietly at my knee, watching me. She doesn’t even ask if I got her anything.
“And this is for you,” I tell her, handing her the smaller box from the foot of the chair.
“What is it?”
“Look inside.”
She carefully removes the bow and sets it aside, and by this simple act breaks my heart again. She learned that frugal habit from Jane, as Jane learned it from our mother. My sister lives on in ways large and small. At last the box becomes visible, and Lyn studies it intently.
“What is it?”
“Let’s see if you can figure it out. Can you read the box?”
“Nick on? Nikon? Coolpix. Nine-nine-zero.”
“Perfect! Let me get it out for you.” I open the box, remove the foam from the odd-shaped plastic housing, and hand it to her. “What do you think it is?”
She studies the two-piece body, then focuses on the small lens.
“Is it a camera?”
“Yes.”
Her lips pucker in an unreadable expression. “Is it a kid’s camera, or a grown-up camera?”
“It’s a grown-up camera. A very good one. You have to be careful while you learn to use it. Wear the strap so you don’t drop it. But don’t be too careful. It’s only a tool. What’s important is your eyes, and what you see in your head. The camera just helps you show other people what you see. Do you understand?”
She nods slowly, her eyes bright.
“Dad!” cries Henry. “There’s two DVDs in here! Iron Giant and El Dorado!”
“Are you really spending the night with us tonight?” asks Lyn.
“I am.”
“Will you teach me how to use this?”
“I sure will. The pictures from this camera go into a computer before they go onto paper. I’ll bet you have a computer.”
“My dad has one.”
“We’ll just borrow his until he gets you your own. Right, Dad?”
Marc shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Right. Okay, who’s ready for supper?”
“Did you actually cook?”
“Are you kidding? Annabelle!”
After thirty seconds or so, the clicking of heels comes up the hallway, followed by an elderly black woman’s voice. “What you hollerin’ about, Mr. Lacour?”
“How’s supper coming?”
“Almost ready.”
Annabelle appears in the doorway, not heavy and slow like I pictured her, but thin and tall and efficient. She has a warm smile on her face until her eyes settle on me. It fades instantly, replaced by a mix of wonder and fear.
“Annabelle, this is Jordan,” says Marc.
“Lord, I see that,” she says softly. “Child, you the spittin’ image of . . .” She glances at the kids and trails off. As though impelled against her will, Annabelle advances across the room until she’s standing over me. I reach up and take her hand, and she squeezes mine with remarkable strength. “God bless you,” she says. Then she goes to Henry and Lyn, bends nearly double, gives each a hug, and walks back to the door.
“You can go on when supper’s done,” Marc says. “Have a good night.”
“Soon as I get the biscuits out the oven,” she says in a faraway voice, “I’ll be gone home.”
When she disappears, I say, “I didn’t think they still made them like that.”
“You’ve been out of the South too long,” Marc replies. “Annabelle’s the best. This family couldn’t function without her. I think you gave her a shock, though.”
By the time we reach the dining room, the table is laden with food. A pork loin with what smells like honey-and-brown-sugar glaze, cheese grits, cat-head biscuits, and a token salad. After months of Asian food, these smells from childhood nearly overwhelm my senses. Jane is everywhere around me. She and I were raised knowing nothing of fine china, so naturally she spent months deciding on the fine old Royal Doulton pattern that sits before me now. Same with the Waterford crystal and R
eed & Barton silver.
“It looks terrific, doesn’t it?” I tell Henry. “Here, come sit by me. Lyn, you sit on this side.”
“But your setting’s at the end of the table,” she says, pointing.
“I’d rather sit by you.”
Lyn’s smile could split the world. She and Henry take the chairs on either side of mine, and we all dig in. It’s surprising how quickly we fall into a natural rhythm of conversation, and the only awkward moments come in the silences. The children look at me as though they’ve lost all sense of time, and I know they are reliving hours spent at this table with their mother. Once, even Marc’s eyes seem to glaze over, as he slips into the same dimension the kids visit so much more easily. I can’t blame them. Thirteen months ago a divine hand reached into the Norman Rockwell painting of their life together and rubbed out the mother figure, leaving a painful, puzzling space. Now, magically, that space has been filled again, by a woman who looks exactly like the one who was erased.
“It’s getting close to bedtime,” Marc says.
“No!” the children cry in unison.
“How about cutting them a little slack this first night?”
Marc looks like he’s getting tired of my interference, but he agrees. We retire to the living room, and I give Lyn an introductory lesson on the digital Nikon while Henry loads El Dorado into his portable DVD player. Lyn is deft with her hands, and a proprietary glow of pride takes me by surprise. After she shoots a few test shots, I load them into Marc’s notebook computer. The results are good, and Lyn practically bursts with pleasure. Marc tries again to get the kids to bed, but they refuse, crawling into my lap for me to argue their case. I oblige, and before long Henry is zonked out and both my legs are asleep. Marc sits in a chair across the room, his legs draped over an ottoman as he half-watches a stock market report on CNBC, so he doesn’t notice when I look down and see Lyn staring up at me, her chin quivering.