No Witness But the Moon(81)

“Okay,” said Vega slowly. “I get why he might want to disappear if his family was very traditional. But—why resurface now?”

“That’s the part we don’t know yet,” said Dolan. “Fernandez has an ex-partner in Atlanta who told us that he left for New York about three weeks ago to reunite with his brother. But his ex didn’t know any more than that.”

“So who was Fernandez staying with in New York? Not Hector and his family, I’m assuming. A gay lover? It seems like somebody in the Bronx would know.”

Dolan’s cell phone dinged with a new text. “Stay out of this, Jimmy. You’re sounding a bit too interested for my taste.”

Dolan checked his text and began tapping out a reply. Vega’s mind drifted. Twenty years. The brothers had been apart for twenty years. So what sparked their reunion? Some criminal enterprise? Vega the cop suspected as much. But Vega the man wondered if the motive could be something much simpler. Whatever else family was, it was shared recollection.

Vega could understand the hunger for such a thing. He’d felt it himself since his mother’s death. He had no brothers or sisters to soften the pain of her passing with stories of their life together, no presence of a father to color in the faint outlines of early childhood. All the rituals of his youth were sealed away inside of him. He was a soda can with a broken pop top. Even Martha, his mother’s best friend, couldn’t reminisce with him now. Vega wondered if maybe that’s why Fernandez and Ponce reconnected. There was too much shared memory not to.

“I’ve gotta go, Jimmy.” Dolan leaned across the empty seat as Vega stepped out of the car. “Hey, when this thing’s behind us, come over and have a couple of beers at my house, okay?” He wasn’t looking for a response. He was looking for an escape. “In the meantime, try to stay at least twenty feet back from every one of your good intentions.”

Vega watched Dolan drive away. He had the day to himself—and he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. He couldn’t handle being with friends. He wasn’t allowed to attend anything public. Adele wasn’t speaking to him—and in all likelihood, in a few hours she was going to be speaking about him.

Vega felt a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach that he could only describe as homesickness. He wanted to sit at his mother’s kitchen table while she fussed over him, piling too much fried food on his plate, straightening his shoulders, mussing his hair, and complaining that it needed a cut. He wanted to talk in shorthand about people and experiences long in the past. He wanted comfort without expectation and chatter that required no rejoinders.

In short, he wanted to feel like a child again.

He thought about what Ellen Cantor had said about visiting Martha Torres. She was not his mother. She was not even really Martha anymore. But she was the one person who had known him almost as well as his mother. If Vega wanted to start healing himself, he had to go back to a place before the pain began.

He was long overdue.





Chapter 30


The lobby of Sunnycrest Manor had the look and feel of a preschool. There were snowmen cutouts on the windows and glittery handmade stars on the tile walls. The staff wore overly bright smiles and big name tags. But as soon as Vega left the lobby, there was no mistaking it was a nursing home. In the hallways and dayrooms, old people sat about in wheelchairs—some aware of their surroundings and some not. The air was overheated and smelled of canned soup, overcooked vegetables, and the faint but unmistakable odor of urine.

Vega asked at the front desk and again at the nurse’s station until he found his way to a double room on the top floor with Martha Torres’s name on the door. He hadn’t seen Martha since his mother’s funeral almost two years ago. She seemed shell-shocked and barely coherent even back then. In the four years before Vega’s mother’s murder, she’d lost her husband, been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, and buried her youngest child, Donna. Vega’s mother’s death must have seemed like the last blow.

He had no idea what he’d find on his visit today.

Martha was sitting alone in a wheelchair by the window. She was wearing baggy bright pink sweatpants and a matching hooded jacket. She’d never been a big woman, but the disease seemed to have compacted her even further. She inhabited her clothes the way a turtle might a shell—sinking deep into the folds and crevices. Vega inched into the room.

“Do?a Martha?” He used the respectful greeting, then added, “It’s me, Jimmy. Luisa’s son?” He wanted to bend down and kiss her but he didn’t know if she’d recognize him anymore and he didn’t want to frighten her.

The blue skies of the morning had given way to clouds and a gray light washed across her face. Vega had expected to see fear or confusion but there was a blank sweetness to her features. No raisin ridges on her forehead. No commas by her lips, and only the softest crosshatch of crow’s feet by her eyes. It was as if the struggles of the world had slid from her shoulders and left her with only a vague but simple gratitude for the moment. Like Donna. That’s how Vega would always remember Freddy’s disabled sister.

Martha slowly turned her face from the window. She smiled broadly and spread her arms like a child awaiting a hug. “You came. I knew you would come.”

Vega hesitated. He had no idea he’d made such an impression on her all these years or that she’d been anticipating this visit. His mother and Martha were very close, of course. Even after Vega left the neighborhood, he was often dragged back for visits. But still, it surprised him that a woman who couldn’t recall what she’d done yesterday could reach across the chasm of years and remember him so fondly.