The Winter Sister(47)
She took out some money and looked around the room. “Where is that waitress with the bill?” she asked. “Terrible service here, huh?”
Mom used to draw flowers on people’s checks before dropping them at their tables. No matter the season or weather, she’d sketch a rose or a daisy right beside the amount they owed. Persephone said she was manipulating the customers, buttering them up so they’d give her a larger tip.
“You can go, I’ll wait for the check,” I told Falley. “Just one more thing, though. I’m not trying to make you feel worse about this than you already do, but I have to ask: That’s it, then? No one will ever pay for what they did to my sister? Ben will go on being a nurse? Tommy will go on living in his trailer, unless he hurts someone else? I just—” I shook my head and bit my lip. “I mean, what about Persephone’s necklace? The gold starfish. The one I told you guys about after she died. Did you ever even check to see if Tommy or anyone else had it?”
Falley flattened her money out on the table, placed the saltshaker over it, and then put her wallet back in her purse. When she looked at me again, I could have sworn her eyes were glistening.
“When we were trying to build a case against Tommy,” she said, “we got a warrant to search his house. He seemed fine with it, not nervous or anything like people usually are. But he watched us the entire time, following us from room to room, and he had this smile on his face that I’ll never forget.” She blinked and the sheen on her eyes went dry. “We never found anything.”
I nodded, my fingers reaching for the place mat. I was tearing at one of the clean, untouched corners when Falley placed her hand gently over mine. The warmth was like a soothing balm to my chapped knuckles; it made my throat tighten, my eyes sting. Then she leaned forward, her body arching halfway across the table.
“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, though,” she said.
16
Even though I hadn’t left her a message, Aunt Jill called me back. I woke up on Thursday morning to the phone shouting in my ear, and when I rolled over to silence it, it took me several shrill seconds to find it under my pillow. I’d been up late doing research in bed—scrolling through web results of “Thomas Dent, Spring Hill, Connecticut,” or “Thomas Dent, Connecticut, sexual assault”—and I must have passed out in the middle of it all. Now, I fumbled to get ahold of the phone, my fingers stiff and clumsy.
“Hi, Jill.”
It was the second time in a week that I’d been sleeping when she called. I tried to sound steady and focused when I answered, as if I’d been up for hours and had even made Mom breakfast, but my throat betrayed me, filtering out my voice in thick, scratchy waves.
“Hi yourself,” Jill said. “What do you think you’re doing, calling me and not leaving a message? I was going to call you back last night, but I didn’t notice the little notification thingy until after ten o’clock, and Missy told me you would have left a message if it were important. But you can’t do that to me, okay? Not with your mom the way she is. If you call, you leave a message, got it?”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. How’s Missy doing?”
“Good, good, her due date is today, you know.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. “So it could be any minute, then, huh?”
Jill chuckled. “Only if you listen to Missy. She’s sure it’s going to be today, but I keep telling her that first babies always come late. I wouldn’t be surprised if, a week from now, we’re still waiting for the little lady to arrive.”
I heard Missy groan from somewhere behind Aunt Jill. “Oh my God, don’t say that.” Then, louder, as if leaning closer to the phone, she added, “I’m the hugest woman who’s ever lived, Sylvie!”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jill said. “Surely the circus has huger women.”
When Missy responded with a squeaky, indignant “Mo-om!” I tried to laugh, but the sound came out of me in a whisper. I wanted so badly to be with them, helping to prepare the nursery, listening to Aunt Jill and Missy go back and forth.
“Anyway,” Jill said. “What did you call about yesterday? Did everything go okay with Annie’s session?”
Still lying in bed, I fidgeted with my blankets, picking at lint that wasn’t there. If I closed my eyes, I could see the picture of Mom and Will that Ben had showed me in the hospital the day before. She’d tilted her face toward his like a flower toward the sun, and she’d clung to his body like ivy on a brick wall. Once again, questions bubbled up inside me, ready to come frothing out.
“Um,” I started. “No, yeah, everything went fine yesterday.”
“Okay. Good,” Jill said. “And that’s why you called? To tell me things went well?”
“Well . . . not exactly. No.” I set my eyes on the thin space between my closed door and the floor. “It’s just . . . I have a question.”
“Uh-huh,” Jill prompted. “Go on.”
I listened for the TV, or a faucet turning on, or a creak in the floor, anything that would tell me where Mom was at that moment.
“Well, it’s about”—I lowered my voice—“Mom. And Will Emory. I don’t know if you remember who that is, but he’s the mayor. And Ben Emory’s father.”