The Last of the Stanfields(3)
How in hell did this stranger know so much about my family, down to my sister’s name? This was also rather alarming.
I had just buried my mother the previous spring and was far from finished with the grieving process. I knew my sister would have never played such a cruel joke on me, and it didn’t seem likely that my brother would even be capable of fabricating a story like that. Flipping through my address book, I couldn’t find a single person who would ever dream of doing such a thing.
So . . . think about it. What would you have done in my place? Well, you’d probably have made the same mistake that I was about to.
2
SALLY-ANNE
October 1980, Baltimore
Sally-Anne left the loft and peered down the steep stairwell.
One hundred and twenty steps to the ground floor. It was a harrowing descent, down three dark and dingy levels with exposed light bulbs casting halos of light into the abyss. Those stairs were a death trap. The way down was treacherous, and the way up a grueling climb. Sally-Anne endured both, morning and night. The freight elevator had long since died, its rusty gate swallowed up in the dingy landscape of dust and brick.
As she exited the front door of the building, Sally-Anne was blinded by the bright sunlight reflecting off the wooden docks, like always. Old redbrick warehouses lined the street. Tall cranes loomed at the end of a jetty, battered constantly by sea winds as they stood forever awaiting cargo ships that would never enter the decaying port. The neighborhood was abandoned and untouched, not yet gentrified by canny developers. Only a motley grab bag of young people had chosen to settle there: budding artists, musicians, writers, the destitute, as well as trust-fund babies, whose dreams and creativity were nourished often in illicit ways. The nearest corner store was a ten-minute motorcycle ride up the road.
Sally-Anne’s Triumph Bonneville was a veritable monster: 650 cubic centimeters capable of rocketing forward at more than a hundred miles an hour, should the driver be crazy enough to hazard such speeds. The blue-and-white fuel tank had been banged up a bit, a souvenir of a memorable crash back when Sally-Anne was still learning to tame the beast.
A few days before, Sally-Anne’s parents had told her to leave the city and go see the world. Her mother had scrawled cold, hard numbers onto a check, then had carefully torn it from the checkbook with manicured hands—carefully tearing her daughter from her own home—and handed it to Sally-Anne.
Sally-Anne had considered blowing the money on booze and other debauchery. But she soon became consumed with a thirst for revenge, enraged at being forced into exile for a crime she didn’t commit. She resolved to achieve a level of success that would make her parents rue the day they had ever turned their backs on her. Although it certainly was an ambitious undertaking, she was armed with a brilliant mind, breathtaking beauty, and an address book teeming with useful contacts.
Success in her family was measured by dollars in the bank and possessions that could be put on display. Sally-Anne was never short on cash, but that wasn’t what interested her. What Sally-Anne loved was people. She laughed at how much it appalled her family to see her shun high society and go mingle with those on the other side of the tracks. She may have had her faults, but Sally-Anne had scores of heartfelt friendships.
The azure sky above made it hard to imagine it had rained throughout the night. On a motorcycle like hers, a slick road was a merciless thing. Feeling the warmth of the engine humming beneath her, Sally-Anne reveled in the Triumph’s speed as it swallowed the asphalt in front of it. The wind whipping at her face filled her with a sense of boundless freedom.
She caught sight of the phone booth in the distance, standing alone at an intersection in the middle of no-man’s-land, and pushed back her glove to check the time on her watch. Shifting down a few gears and tightening her grip on the hand brake, Sally-Anne expertly steered the Triumph up onto the sidewalk and lowered the kickstand. She approached the pay phone, eager to confirm that her accomplice was on schedule.
Five rings? It shouldn’t have taken that long. Sally-Anne’s throat tightened, but relaxed when May picked up at last.
“Everything okay?” Sally-Anne asked.
“Yes,” May answered tersely.
“I’m on my way. I just wanted to make sure you’re ready.”
“I’d better be. It’s too late to back out now, isn’t it?”
“And why would we want to do that?” asked Sally-Anne.
A laundry list of reasons leapt to May’s mind. The stakes were too high, and none of it seemed worth the risk. What good was vengeance if it did nothing to change the past, to erase what had happened? And what if their plan went off the rails and the two of them actually got caught? It would be too much to bear. Nonetheless, May would have taken any risk for Sally-Anne, no matter how great. And so, she stayed silent.
“Just don’t be late,” Sally-Anne insisted.
A police car came cruising around the corner and Sally-Anne’s heart froze. She knew she had to keep her fears at bay; otherwise, how in the world would she be able to go through with it? She had done nothing wrong, at least not yet. Her motorcycle was parked legally, and using a pay phone wasn’t a crime. The cruiser carried on past, allowing just enough time for Sally-Anne to catch the officer throwing a sleazy look her way. Give me a break! she thought as she hung up the receiver.
She glanced at her watch once more and did the math in her head. Twenty minutes until she was at the Stanfield estate’s front door. Sixty until she was off the property. Ninety minutes in all until she was safely back home. In the span of a mere ninety minutes, both their lives would change forever. With that thought in mind, Sally-Anne mounted the Triumph, kick-started the engine, and zipped down the road.