The Rumor, page 20
Then I remember my nightmare: Sally McGowan standing at the foot of my bed, hands smeared with blood. How she looked…how she looked just like Karen! I stand up so fast I almost knock my chair over. It scrapes and wobbles on the floor.
“Oh my God, Michael. They’ve got Alfie! We’ve got to get back!”
“Who’s got Alfie?”
“Hayley’s mom, Karen. Karen has just picked our son up from school. I think she’s Sally McGowan’s daughter. She must blame me for spreading the rumor about her.
“Alfie’s in danger, Michael. We have to leave now!”
42
“WE’VE GOT TO GET OUT of here. We’ve got to call the police. And Mom. I need to let her know what’s happened. And the school.” I grab my bag.
Michael stands up and puts both his hands on my shoulders. “Wait a minute. Let’s think logically about this. Even if you’re right and Karen is McGowan’s daughter, why would she harm Alfie?”
“To punish me for spreading the rumor. Oh God! What if McGowan hurts him?”
“Joey, you’re not making any sense.”
“No, you’re not making any sense. Why are you still sitting here when Alfie could be in danger?”
I run out of the bar and into the lobby. Michael races after me. Now I’m out of the glass doors and on the street again. It’s started to rain and someone almost pokes my eye out rushing past with their umbrella. After the quiet of the bar, the noise of the traffic is loud and insistent. Too many people moving too fast. I’m in their way and I don’t know what to do, where to go. I fumble in my bag for my phone. Do I still have the Uber app on there, or did I delete it? Where the hell is my phone? It must be in here somewhere.
Michael grabs me by the arm, starts pulling me back toward the hotel. People are staring at us as if we’re having a screaming argument right here on the street, but I don’t care. I don’t care what they think. All I want is to go home and get Alfie. Hold him in my arms and never let him go.
Michael’s voice is in my ear. “Do you honestly think that, after thirty-six years of freedom, Sally McGowan—or her daughter—is going to do anything to jeopardize her anonymity? They’re not going to hurt a little boy in front of Hayley. Why would they?”
If it weren’t for Michael’s hands on my arm and his eyes locking onto mine, holding them firm, I think I’d collapse in a heap on the sidewalk. I’m shaking now. Crying like a child.
“They wouldn’t risk throwing their lives and contact with Hayley away just to teach you a lesson for spreading a rumor.”
He holds me tight. “They’d disappear if they thought they were in danger. Move and start again somewhere else.”
He’s right. Karen’s mom’s dying. You only have to look at her to see that. She doesn’t even live in Flinstead. She’s just come to stay so Karen can take care of her. Liz has been in Flinstead for years and years. She said as much the first time I met her. If she moved there to be closer to Sally, that means Sally must have been there for years and years, too. Sally can’t possibly be Karen’s mother. I have it all wrong.
But if it’s not Karen, then who is it? Who else could have doctored that photo and left it in the school?
Michael leads me back to the bar and buys me a brandy. He glances toward the lobby. “It’s nearly four o’clock. Liz should be coming out of the convention soon. Let’s sit here so we can keep an eye out for her.”
“Show me those photos again,” I insist when we’ve settled at a different table. I have a horrible feeling that Liz will take one look at us and disappear before we get a chance to speak to her. If he’s right, and McGowan is someone Liz and I both know, then surely I’ll be able to recognize her if I look hard enough. That nose is still bugging me.
Slowly, I scroll through them, study each one carefully. “Where did you say you got these?”
“From a contact of mine in the police. He managed to dig them out from the archives. They were never published, but…well, he owes me a couple of favors.”
I don’t ask why, or whether all this is something that could get him into trouble if it came to light. It’s probably best I don’t know.
“Are you sure they were never published?”
“Yes. A hundred percent sure.”
“That’s weird, because I’ve definitely seen the one of the house before. It must have found its way online at some point.”
“I doubt it. These were never released to the press.”
“But I’ve seen it. I know I have. It’s almost as if…”
“Almost as if what?”
I’m imagining this. I must be. But it’s almost as if I’ve seen this house in real life. As if I’ve stood in the same position as whoever it was who took this picture and seen it with my own eyes. But that’s impossible. A mistaken sense of déjà vu, that’s all. It happens sometimes. I suppose it looks a bit like my grandparents’ house.
“When this picture was taken, she was named Sally Holmes,” Michael says. “She was married to a guy named Benjamin. In Iowa.”
Benny. Benny and Sal.
Benny and Sal? That’s odd. What made me think of that?
“Did he know who she was?”
“That’s what I can’t find out. Benjamin Holmes seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.”
I swallow hard.
“Joey, are you okay?”
Why do I have a sudden memory of playing in that front yard? I’m going crazy. I must be. I’m remembering playing in Nana and Granddad’s yard, that must be it. I think Mom has an old Polaroid of me sitting by a flower bed with my dolls. It’s one of the few photos she has left from that time. Most of them were destroyed in the fire.
The fire.
Something weird happens to my insides. A hollowing-out sensation.
“What was the daughter’s name?”
He checks a notebook in his pocket. “Lucy.”
Lucy. No. No, it can’t be. I close my eyes and take myself back to when I was a little girl, shrinking into my pillow, rigid with fear and confusion. A fireman’s arms stretch toward me and he plucks me from my covers with his large gloved hands. His voice is kind in my ear.
“I’m taking you to Mommy and Daddy. Don’t be scared. You’re safe.”
He carries me out of my bedroom and into the hall. I struggle in his arms, start to whimper into his jacket. He smells of smoke.
Now I’m in Mommy and Daddy’s bedroom, but their bed is empty and the window is open. I feel the icy night air on my bare arms and legs. Hear the clank of something hard and metallic. Raised voices in the distance. People shouting.
I start to cry, but the fireman whispers in my ear. “Shh,” he says. “You mustn’t cry, because Mommy and Daddy are waiting for you. You mustn’t be scared.”
And then I’m not cold anymore because something is being wrapped around me. It feels like a big warm towel and it’s over my head, too. I cling to the fireman’s jacket as he climbs out of the window and onto the ladder.
Now he’s running across the yard with me. I hear the latch of the gate and his steps on the path at the back where the garages are, and suddenly I’m in the ambulance with Mommy and Daddy, and Mommy’s arms are tight around me and Daddy’s voice is telling us it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.
I open my eyes. Michael is watching me, a wary expression on his face. I look at the photo of the house again. “Where did you say this was?”
“It’s in Coralville, on the outskirts of Iowa City.”
Something ominous hurtles toward me. Something so dreadful I can hardly bear to form the thought. But I have to. I have to.
I force myself to take a sip of the brandy and almost choke as it rasps against the back of my throat. No sirens. There weren’t any sirens. And why was the ambulance waiting on the access road at the back? Surely it would have been at the front of the house.
It was Mom who suggested I join the book club. Mom who gave me Liz’s number. She said she’d gotten it from the man in the bookstore, but…
Oh my God! I think it’s me Liz is trying to protect. Me and…me and Mom!
I feel like I’m dissolving. One realization gives way to another. A house of cards collapsing in on itself. It’s not just photos of me as a child we don’t have—there are none of her, either. All of them were lost in the fire, along with our personal possessions. But what if they weren’t? What if they were deliberately destroyed?
My throat closes up. If this is true, then my whole life is a lie. My grandparents. Were they even…?
“Joey, what’s the matter? Talk to me.”
Lucy Locket lost her pocket. Kitty Fisher found it.
It was my favorite nursery rhyme. That’s why I named my imaginary friend after her. At least, that’s what Mom’s always told me. But if Mom had to be given another name, I’d have needed one, too. She’d have had to convince me I was called Joanna now.
Joanna, not Lucy.
I want to scream, but I can’t. I can barely breathe.
This is a mistake. It must be. It’s insane. Unthinkable.
How can my own mother be Sally McGowan?
43
I DON’T REMEMBER FINISHING THE brandy, but I must have, because the glass is empty.
“Let me get you another one,” Michael says.
“No. I don’t want another one.” My voice sounds alien. Disembodied.
I try again. “The fire was just a story they told me. To make sense of what happened. To explain why we couldn’t go back.”
Michael holds my hands in his. My breath judders at the back of my throat, and he squeezes my fingers tight.
“Which means my whole life is a story. Everything I’ve ever known is based on a lie.”
Michael speaks at last. “You mean…? Oh my God, Joey.” He lets go of my hands and leans back in his chair. “It wasn’t a fireman at all, was it? It was someone helping your mother, bundling you out of the house.”
I drop my face into my hands, press my fingertips into my eyelids. Maybe if I press hard enough, the image of my mother’s face—Sally McGowan’s face—will disappear. But it doesn’t. It gets sharper and sharper. How could I have missed the resemblance? The narrow bridge of the nose. The shape of her mouth. It seems so obvious now. It’s been staring me in the face. Literally.
“How could she lie to me like that? How could she pretend for all those years?”
Michael takes my hands again and holds them tight. “How could she not?”
“Maybe she lied to Dad, too. Is that why he left us?”
“I don’t know, Joey. Only your mother can answer those questions.”
“Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe he just couldn’t stomach what she’d done.” I pull my hand away and clap it over my mouth as I start to retch. “I’m going to be sick—”
I make it to the ladies’ room just in time. Fold over a toilet bowl and vomit. After the first acrid rush of brandy and Coke, all that’s left is bile. It keeps coming up till there’s nothing left and I’m dry-heaving, my whole torso cold with sweat.
Then I feel a hand between my shoulders. It’s Michael, rubbing my back in circular movements. He helps me to my feet and over to a sink. The face that stares back at me from the mirror is gray, hair plastered to its forehead. It’s like looking at a stranger.
Michael waits with me while I splash cold water onto my face and swill my mouth out. He pulls a wad of paper towels from the machine and hands them to me. A woman comes in and stares at us angrily. Stares at Michael. He leads me out into the carpeted corridor and back into the bar.
Michael asks for some water.
“Have a few sips of that.”
But I can’t. I doubt I could keep it down.
“I still can’t believe it. None of it makes any sense. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
Michael leans toward me and strokes my cheek with his finger. “You’re still the same person, Joey. You’re still you. That hasn’t changed.”
“But it has! Don’t you see? I’m not Joanna Critchley. I’m not even Lucy Holmes. I don’t know who I am.”
Tears burn my eyeballs. I don’t want to cry in the middle of this anonymous hotel bar that’s fast filling up, but I can’t help myself. My eyes can no longer hold the tears.
“My mother killed a child.” Even though I’m whispering, the impact is the same as if I’d screamed the words out loud. I feel as though everyone has heard.
Somebody approaches our table. All I see is a pair of navy shoes with a Cuban heel at the bottom of green-trousered legs. The trousers are wide and silky and swish against her ankles. I can’t bring myself to raise my head because I know whose legs they are and I don’t want to see her face. This woman who’s known all along. My mother’s protector. Her lover, for Christ’s sake!
She slides into the chair next to me. I see the skinny shape of her thighs, the bony mounds of her knees pressing up through the fabric of her trousers. She rests her left hand on my shoulder. It’s the lightest of touches, but still I flinch. Some form of nonverbal communication flows between Michael and her—I sense its energy. Tap into its sad waves.
“Your mother loves you very much, Jo,” Liz says.
“Not enough to tell me the truth.” My voice is jagged. A shard of broken glass scraping on concrete.
“She wanted to. She knew she should, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to lose you.”
“Well, she’s lost me now.”
“No. You’re in shock. You just need time to adjust. You won’t think like that forever. I promise you.”
I lift my head to look at her. The weight of it is almost unbearable. The muscles in my neck are as brittle as glass. They could snap at any second.
Liz’s mouth is moving. She’s forming words with her lips and tongue, but I can’t hear them. There’s a whistling in my ears and my back is slick with sweat. I’m going to faint.
Now Michael is pushing my head between my knees, telling me to breathe. I want to stay like this forever, hanging over my feet, blood pooling into the top of my head. I focus on my ankle boots. The scuff mark on the left toe. The tiny piece of dried leaf stuck to the side of the heel. Right now these boots of mine are the only thing grounding me to the earth. Everything else has crumbled away. I’m frightened that, if I sit up, I’ll crumble away, too. Disintegrate into powdery dust. As if I never existed.
A murmuring swells in my ears. I’m aware of bodies clustering around our table. Other people’s shoes. Concerned voices.
Then Michael’s. “It’s okay. Thank you. She’ll be fine. She’s okay. We’ve got this.”
If it weren’t for his hands on my shoulders, guiding me back up to a sitting position, I’d still be down there. Just me and my boots. Blocking out this strange new world.
I lift the glass of water to my lips and drink. I’m so thirsty all of a sudden I’m downing it too fast and it sloshes over the rim and down my chin. I set the glass down, so clumsily it almost topples and spills. I wipe my mouth with my hand. Liz digs into her bag and produces some tissues, hands one to me, and wipes the table with another one. Dries the bottom of my glass. There’s a concentrated look on her face and her eyes are unnaturally wide, as if she’s trying not to blink.
“There’s so much I could tell you, Jo,” she says. “So much I want to tell you. But it isn’t my story. It’s your mother’s. You need to hear it from her, not me.”
A tear slides from the corner of her eye. For a second or two it clings to her cheek like molten glass, then breaks free and rolls down.
“Forgive me,” she says. “For the tweets.” Her voice falters. “I didn’t want to scare you, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
44
WE’RE IN MICHAEL’S CAR. I don’t remember how we got here. I have vague memories of walking—or rather being led, guided, piloted to an underground parking garage. Propelled along wet sidewalks. My body little more than a flimsy structure, supported only by the ballast of Michael’s stronger, sturdier frame.
Liz isn’t with us. I don’t ask where she is. Don’t want to know.
Michael drives through the darkening streets. Stops and starts in the endless flow of traffic. If I lean to the right, I can see myself in the side mirror. Dark hollows where my eyes used to be. Nothing is in the right place anymore. Even my internal organs seem to have shifted out of kilter.
We don’t speak. There is nothing to say.
There is too much to say.
Alfie. He arrives in my mind like a thunderbolt. The shock of the last hour has erased him till now. Guilt slams into me so hard that, for a second, I think we’ve hit something.
Michael’s hand shoots out to my thigh. “What is it?”
“I have to call Karen. Tell her we’ll be late.”
“Do you want me to pull over and speak to her?”
“No. Just drive. I’ll do it.”
I scrabble around for my bag. My phone. Stare at the locked screen in confusion. I’ve forgotten what to do. How to make it work. The cry takes us both by surprise. Curdles the air in the car. It’s coming from me, spiraling up from deep in my belly. A tornado of anguish.
The turn signal ticks, but the stream of traffic on our right won’t let up.
“Don’t pull over. I can do it.” My brain is working again. Telling my fingers what to do. Scrolling through my contacts till I come to the name KAREN.
“Karen, it’s Jo.” I gasp for breath. This is important. I have to pull myself together. Talk normally. Let her know we’re on our way.
