She felt happy these days, yet there was always an undercurrent of sadness just below the surface. Sometimes she would feel it there and not even know its source. Then she would remember: A dead woman. A kidnapped baby. She couldn’t even list the charges that would be brought against her if she were ever caught. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them now.
“Spend the money on Cory,” Marian said, touching the bills where they rested on the table. “It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s hers now.”
At work that evening, two police officers came into the diner. It wasn’t unusual to see cops there, and Eve’s heart no longer skipped a beat when she spotted a few of them seated among the customers. The first time she saw a policeman walk through the front door, though, she’d dropped the coffeepot she was carrying, sending coffee and shards of glass all over the floor. Nothing like attracting attention. But the officer was only there for coffee and pie, and if he wondered why her hands shook when she served him, he didn’t say anything about it.
This evening, though, the police officers looked like they meant business. Eve watched as they approached an older woman sitting at the counter. She listened in as they arrested her for buying beer for minors, slapping handcuffs on her and hustling her out the door. The woman reminded her a little of Marian, and watching the cops lead her away made her feel fiercely protective of the woman who was doing so much for her by risking her own neck. She would never, ever, do anything to put Marian in harm’s way.
One hot morning in August, Eve was upstairs getting a hat for Cory, so that she and Marian could take the baby and the twin boys to the park. When she walked back into the kitchen, Cory was in the high chair, Marian cleaning the little girl’s hands with a washcloth. Cory saw Eve and pulled her hand from Marian’s to reach toward her.
“Mama!” she said.
Eve caught her breath. For weeks now, Cory had been babbling to herself, saying “mamamamama” among other things, but this was the first time she seemed to equate the two syllables with her.
Marian laughed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to Eve.
She had. Genevieve.
“That’s right, Cory,” she said, moving forward to lift the little girl out of the high chair. “You’re so smart.”
“Mama, Mama, Mama,” Cory repeated as Eve tugged the hat over her red curls.
“Okay, let’s go,” Eve said, and she held Cory’s hands as they walked outside. It wouldn’t be long before she was walking on her own. Eve pulled the stroller from the shed at the side of the house and Cory tried to climb into it herself.
“She’s going to be into everything soon,” Marian said, taking a hand of each of the boys.
“I know,” Eve said. “And I noticed there’s an outlet in the bathroom that isn’t covered with a safety plug.”
“Where?” Marian frowned.
“You know. There’s only one outlet.”
“Above the sink?”
“Uh-huh.”
Marian laughed. “She’s a smart little girl, but I think it’s going to be a couple of years before she can climb up on the bathroom counter.”
“I guess.” Eve laughed at herself. She was growing into an overprotective mother. She saw danger everywhere.
Alison and Vicki, two of the young mothers who frequented the park, were already pushing their toddlers on the swings when Eve and Marian arrived with the children. Alison’s husband was a medical student, and Vicki was working on a teaching degree. Alison had a new baby and she wore the sling Eve had made her as a baby gift.
“The sling is fantastic!” she said as Eve slipped Cory into one of the bucket swings.
“I’m glad you like it.” Eve leaned over to peer at Alison’s infant. “How’s he doing?” She could talk diapers and formula with the best of them now. Alison reported on the baby’s sleeping and eating habits, and Marian joined in the discussion from a nearby bench.
“Did you hear they finally executed that girl?” Vicki asked, during a lull in the conversation.
“Oh, I know,” Alison said. “I saw it in the paper this morning. Good riddance.”
Eve’s muscles went tight. What girl? she wanted to ask but didn’t dare.
“What girl?” Marian did it for her.
“The sister of those guys who kidnapped that governor’s wife last year.”
Eve kept her eyes on Cory’s hair, curling out from beneath the hat, startling red in the summer sun. She pictured Tim counting out the three hundred-dollar bills, licking the envelope sealed. She thought of him getting the news that his sister was dead.
“Why would you say good riddance?” Marian asked, an edge to her voice.
“Marian, you’re such a liberal diehard.” Vicki laughed, and Eve felt like smacking her. These women knew nothing of how Marian had lost her husband.
“She was a murderer,” Alison said.
“A junkie,” Vicki added.
“A junkie?” Eve repeated.
“Uh-huh,” Vicki said. “She broke into this lady’s house and killed her and her daughter, then stole her jewelry to pay for drugs.”
“That’s completely wrong,” Eve said.
The three women looked at her. Marian’s face was the only one that held a warning.
“I mean,” Eve said, “that’s not what I’d heard. I heard she killed a photographer after he raped her.”
Alison frowned. “I don’t know where you got that,” she said. “Maybe you’re thinking of someone else.”
“The woman she killed was a photographer,” Vicki acknowledged.
“That’s true,” Alison said.
“Could you have misunderstood what you read?” Eve couldn’t stop herself. “Could the photographer have been at—”
“No,” Alison interrupted her. “I read it less than an hour ago.”
“I didn’t read it,” Vicki said, “but Charlie read it to me while I was getting dressed and it said she robbed a woman—a photographer—in Chapel Hill.”
“To get money for drugs,” Alison piped in.
“Cory said ‘mama’ this morning.” Marian made a lame attempt to hijack the conversation.
“Cory, is that right?” Alison leaned over to speak to Cory when the little girl swung toward them. “Did you say ‘mama,’ sweetie?”
Eve rarely read the paper anymore. The kidnapping had faded from the news, and her psychology books took precedence. Now, though, she wanted to race home and find the story.
“Oh!” Marian suddenly got to her feet. “I just remembered this is the morning I was supposed to wait for the plumber.”
Eve stared at her, perplexed, before she realized that Marian was rescuing her.
“Oh, right,” she said. “I’ll go back with you.”
“You just barely got here,” Alison said.
“The plumber said he’d come between eight and noon,” Marian said, “and you know how it is. If I don’t go back now, it’ll be the one time he comes at eight.” She chuckled. “You don’t need to come with me, Eve.”
“I think I should.” Eve lifted a protesting Cory out of the bucket and set her down in the stroller. “I don’t want Cory to get burned.”
Vicki laughed. “It’s eight in the morning,” she said. “And that hat’s wide enough to protect an elephant.”
Eve barely heard her as she and Marian collected the twins, and they bade goodbye to the women and started home.
“Did you read the paper this morning?” Eve asked Marian, as soon as they were out of earshot.
Marian shook her head.
“Let’s go to the minimart.” Eve turned the corner toward the little market. “I can’t wait two more blocks to read it.”
She bought the paper while Marian remained outside with the children. Back on the street, she found the article at the bottom of the front page.
“Andrea Gleason,” Eve read, “the sister of Timothy and Martin Gleason, who are allegedly responsible for kidnapping North Carolina Governor Irving Rus
sell’s wife last year, was executed yesterday at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. Gleason was convicted in the 1975 murder of photographer Gloria Wilder of Chapel Hill and her thirteen-year-old daughter. She broke into the Wilder home, killed the mother and daughter, then stole fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. Wilder, who was found in her bedroom, had been shot four times; her daughter, shot once in the head, was found in the hallway.”
Eve looked up. “Oh, my God,” she said.
“Go on,” Marian nodded toward the paper. “What else does it say?”
Eve began reading again. “On November 24 last year, Genevieve Russell, the governor’s wife, was kidnapped after teaching a class at UNC. The Gleason brothers negotiated unsuccessfully for their sister’s release. They have not been found, nor has Mrs. Russell, who was pregnant at the time of her kidnapping. Governor Russell had no comment today on Andrea Gleason’s execution, although sources close to the governor’s mansion speculated that he was instrumental in getting Andrea Gleason’s execution moved to an earlier date.”
Eve looked up from the paper. “He lied to me about everything,” she said.
Marian nodded. “It sure looks that way.”
They started walking again, this time in silence, and for the first time, Eve felt real anger building inside her at Tim. She’d been an inexperienced sixteen-year-old, an easy mark. Bets had been in on it, no doubt, the reason for her easy acceptance of CeeCee when she waited on them at the restaurant. Maybe Tim had taken CeeCee there to show Bets how little a threat she was—a young girl still wearing Alice in Wonderland hair down to her butt. She imagined Tim saying to Bets, We’ll get her to babysit the governor’s old lady so you don’t have to get involved. He’d probably kissed her then. She’s dispensable, babe, he would have added. You’re not. Sonofa bitch.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this furious,” Eve said, her hands tight around the handle of the stroller.
She felt Marian’s arm slip around her shoulders. “Good,” Marian said. “It’s about time.”
The fury clawed at her for the rest of the day. She punched the pillows on her bed and stormed around the house as she vacuumed, cursing under her breath and stomping on the floor. By the time she went to bed, though, she felt different. She would no longer be held captive by every white van she saw. She could stop waiting. Stop hoping. A sort of peace came over her as she drifted off to sleep: Tim had finally set her free.
Chapter Twenty-Four
1981
On March seventh, Eve turned twenty-one. It was the fourth time she’d celebrated that date as her birthday, and she’d written it on dozens of forms over the years. It felt like her birthday now, as surely as she felt like Eve Bailey.
Marian took her to dinner and then to a play at the Helms Theater on the grounds.
“I know one of the actors in the play,” Marian said as they pulled into a space in the parking lot. “His name’s Jack Elliott. He’s the nephew of one my oldest friends.”
Eve barely heard a word Marian said. “Maybe I should call Bobbie and Lorraine before the play starts,” she said. They were watching Cory this evening. Cory could be a handful, not because she was a rambunctious or disobedient three-and-a-half-year-old, but because she was always a little afraid when Eve was away. She was fine with Marian, and she knew Lorraine and Bobbie well and adored Shan, who was now eight, but the last time Eve had left Cory with a sitter, the little girl had cried the entire time and wouldn’t eat or go to bed.
“She’ll be fine,” Marian said now. “She needs to know she can survive without you.”
And I need to know I can survive without her, Eve thought.
They had excellent seats in the theater. The play was See How They Run, and the actor Marian knew, Jack Elliott, played Clive, a soldier who disguised himself as a priest. He was tall and reedy, with a slightly awkward handsomeness that reminded Eve of a young Cary Grant. The play was hilarious, and Eve laughed harder than she had in a very long time.
“Let’s go backstage,” Marian said when the play was over. “I want to say hello to Jack.”
Eve looked at her watch. It was only ten. “Okay,” she said.
Marian had obviously done this before. She knew the way to the area backstage where some of the actors were gathered. Jack Elliott was standing on a chair, makeup still outlining his eyes and sharpening his cheekbones. He was reciting lines from Hamlet, hamming it up for an audience of two young guys and a girl. They were laughing.
“Do I have to stand on a chair when I do it?” the guy asked.
Jack spotted Marian and stopped speaking midsentence.
“Auntie Marian!” He hopped from the chair and swept across the room to wrap Marian in a hug. He was not as tall as he’d appeared on stage, but he was even better looking. “Excuse my chair-standing,” he said to Marian. “I was coaching a friend who’s going to play Hamlet. Did you like the play?”
“We loved it,” Marian said. “You were hysterical. Has your mother been able to see you in it?”
“Next weekend,” he said. “She’ll call you when she gets here, I’m sure. And who’s this?” Jack turned his attention to Eve, curiosity in his brown-eyed gaze. Guys at school never treated her as a potential date: she was too serious, too involved in her studies, and far too vocal about her daughter. This man, though, looked at her with clear interest.
“This is my housemate, Eve Bailey,” Marian said. “Eve, this is Jack.”
Eve shook the hand he offered. “You really were good,” she said. “Excellent timing,” she added, as though she knew something about drama.
He didn’t take his hand away. “Oh, Eve, are you taken? Will you go out with me?”
Eve laughed at his brazenness, unsure if he was serious.
“Lord, Jack, you haven’t changed a bit,” Marian said. “Jack has always been a little, shall we say, ‘out there,’” she said to Eve. “You never have to guess what he’s thinking. One time when he was little, his mother and I were in a restaurant and he said to the waitress, ‘You’ve got the longest nose I’ve ever seen.’”
Jack groaned. “Ignore her, Eve. Are you taken?”
“Only by a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” she said.
“A bonus?” His face lit up, but she reminded herself that he was an actor. “As long as her father isn’t the type to come after me with a gun, I’d still like to take you out. What do you say?”
“Sure,” she said, surprising herself. She hadn’t gone out with anyone since Tim. Her social life consisted of meeting Lorraine for coffee on the grounds, where her old friend was now working on a graduate degree in telecommunications, and participating in a playgroup with some other mothers and kids in the neighborhood. She didn’t have time for anything else. But it was as though Jack had slipped a noose around the “yes” in her throat and pulled it out into the air. “I’m very busy, but—”
“But she’ll make time,” Marian said.
“I’ll call you at Marian’s,” he said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off hers, and she didn’t mind the steady gaze. There was no threat in it. She returned his gaze with a confidence she hadn’t known she possessed. She was not the girl who had been smitten and seduced by Tim Gleason. She was a woman who could take or leave the attention of a man, and right now, she chose to take it.
As she and Marian returned to the lobby, though, she grew quiet and pensive. It wasn’t until they reached Marian’s car that she spoke.
“Can I trust him?” she asked.
“Like the sunrise,” Marian replied.
He called her the next day. Marian answered the phone and covered the receiver with her hand as she turned it over to Eve.
“I’ll babysit, no matter when it is,” she whispered, clearly enjoying her role as matchmaker.
“Hi,” Eve said.
“I’ve nabbed two tickets to the Springsteen concert tomorrow night,” he said. “Want to join me?”
“Let me check with the babysitter,”
she said, turning to Marian. “Tomorrow night?”
Marian nodded.
“I’d love to,” she said into the phone.
He told her what time he’d pick her up and that was that. Less than two minutes from start to finish. She hung up the phone, looked at Marian and bit her lip.
“What did I just do?” she asked.
“Something a normal, healthy, twenty-one-year-old woman has every right to do,” Marian said. “You accepted a date.”
“I don’t want him to meet Cory when he comes to pick me up, though,” she said.
“Heavens, no!” Marian’s tone mocked her overprotectiveness. “Don’t worry. Cory and I will hide out upstairs.”
She was sitting in the living room the following evening, watching through the window for Jack’s arrival, when a car pulled up to the curb in front of the house. It was a sedan, painted Kelly-green with yellow doors and a blue roof.
“Oh, no,” she said to herself, but couldn’t help laughing.
Jack got out of the car, dressed in khakis, sandals and a short-sleeved blue shirt over a white T-shirt. She liked the way he walked, the way he tossed his car keys into the air and caught them, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
She expected to feel shy when she got into his car, but he started talking the minute she sat down, and she felt the tension slip from her muscles.
“I was hoping I could meet your little girl,” he said.
“Marian’s reading her a story upstairs.”
“Marian read me stories when I was a kid,” he said. “She’d act out the parts. You know, change her voice for each of them.”