The Wrong Family(35)

On to the last item in the box—it was rolled and wrapped with rubber bands like a fat joint. It took Juno a good three minutes to get them off, and it only occurred to her after that she wouldn’t be able to replicate the complicated wrapping system. “Is there method to this madness, Winnie?” she asked the room.

It was too late now...two envelopes unfolded in her hands, the paper crackling from age. It was like one of those Russian nesting dolls, she thought; things inside of things. That told her a little bit more about Winnie. She set the rubber bands aside and stared. Instead of licking the strip, Winnie had tucked the flap inside and then rolled the envelope up, binding it over and over. Juno had the feeling that she’d open it and there’d be nothing in the interior. Wouldn’t that be hilarious, she thought. But it wouldn’t be. Juno was already on edge, digging around where she shouldn’t be. And what did she care, anyway? Why was she digging around—these people were not her problem. Juno had come here to retire, to die. She told herself it was curiosity, crumbs left behind from her former trade, as she tented the opening of the envelope. It was empty aside from another rolled piece of paper, this one thin enough that at first Juno thought it was a hand-rolled cigarette. She had to use her fingernails to unroll it, being careful not to rip the paper. She spread it out on her knee and saw that there were two printouts, the writing so faded and grainy she could barely make out what they said without glasses. They looked to Juno like police reports. She’d seen a few in her line of work. The words were a series of blurred black lines. Sometimes she used Nigel’s reading glasses, which he kept in the side table next to his bed. Juno stood, padding lightly over to Nigel’s nightstand, and slid the drawer open. They were there next to a bottle half-full of cough syrup. She slipped the glasses on and reached for the syrup, screwing off the lid even as she eyed the abandoned papers where they lay on Winnie’s coverlet. She eyed them long and hard as she took a generous swig, the tomato red of the syrup coating the inside of her mouth like cool cherry blood. Licking her lips, she put the bottle back in the drawer and moved to Winnie’s side of the bed. The words on the papers were easier to see now. Juno held one of them in front of her face. Her tongue made a strange clicking sound as she read, the words becoming increasingly more disturbing. Juno realized she was clicking her tongue at Winnie. Finally, folding the papers neatly, she tucked them into her pocket. She stared once more into the envelope.

There, at the bottom corner was something... Something, Juno thought—but probably nothing. She turned the envelope, shook it a little, and into her hand floated the strangest thing.

A tiny piece of paper towel...no—cloth. It was old and scrunched up. It looked to Juno like there was embossing on it, like on a hankie her grandfather had kept in his breast pocket. She lifted it closer to her face, rolling it a little between her fingers. The yellow color, she realized, was blood, very faded old blood.

Juno dropped the scrap in disgust. Why would Winnie keep this tiny rag? And whose blood was it? She lowered herself very slowly to her knees to retrieve the square, bending all the way down to the rug to pluck it up. For a moment Juno wasn’t sure if she’d be able to get back up; her back seized at the same time her knees locked like two defunct wheels, Nigel’s syrup not yet coating her pain. She pushed through it, stumbling to her feet. Breathing like a winded rhino, she returned the scrap to the envelope. It could be anything, she supposed, depending on how weird Winnie truly was. Juno had once had a patient who collected his fingernail clippings in a mason jar. There was one more envelope, and this one felt heavier. Bracing herself, Juno wrinkled her nose as she tented it, hoping to see something else, but when she looked inside the second, there were not one, but six bloody pieces of cloth.

She’d never wanted to be rid of anything quite as badly. What exactly had Winnie’s mother been smoking when she was baking the twins? Hands moving quickly, she started to roll the envelopes back into the wad. Her knuckles locked painfully, but for once, she was too preoccupied to notice. Shaking her left hand to loosen some of the stiffness, she lifted her right hand—the one holding the envelopes—up to her face. Juno’s old eyes worked hard, probably so hard she’d have a headache later. But there it was: two envelopes and six bloody scraps. After she put the box back, she walked stiffly to the bathroom where she held her hands under scorching water.

Juno knew from a lifetime of training that she had to get inside the head of the person, burrow deep until she knew not only how they worked, but why they worked. Once she had that vital piece of information, the circuit board to that person’s brain opened up, allowing Juno to press the right buttons. Two envelopes: six bloody little scraps. Were they trophies? No, Winnie considered herself the trophy; she would never keep something dirty and soiled as a souvenir. They were keepsakes, like a lock of hair or a love letter. And judging by the way they were wrapped up, painful ones. And then the thought came, dragging out of Juno, snagging along the way. What if no one knew Sam’s mother had even been pregnant? What if Winnie was the only one who knew? Juno had been looking for a stolen baby, but perhaps the real truth lay in finding the mother. This thought settled over her like a mist, and she felt cold to her very bones.





      16


WINNIE

At ten o’ clock the following morning Winnie was sitting at her desk at work, checking emails and making a grocery list. Her kid was eating them out of house and home. She missed the days when he was little and they shared meals at his little Paw Patrol table; with the way their schedules were now, they hardly ate dinner together anymore. She was only required to be in the office three days a week, and she used that time to catch up on paperwork. The other two days she spent in the field, mostly in psychiatric wards to place patients in home care. She preferred this job to the one she’d had at Illuminations. She didn’t have to work with the patients herself, for one thing, not after the initial placement; after that, they belonged to their case workers. It was more of an overseer’s position and that suited her well, she thought. She got much too involved with her patients. That’s why Nigel had wanted her to find something different after Illuminations. Winnie reached for her coffee and found it cold. She was working to get a patient placement in one of the more coveted adult homes, but her mind kept drifting to the name of the little girl, Lisa Sharpe. Why had Nigel searched for missing children on the internet and then written their names down? It felt like the deepest betrayal, the cruelest thing he could do after...and yet hadn’t she done the same thing? Scouring the news for stories of missing children? If she were to be honest with herself, she would admit that it was the parents she was most interested in. She wanted to see their hurt, to experience their pain alongside them like she had some part in it. She got off on the hurting. She got up from her desk, abruptly leaving her office to look for fresh coffee. That’s what she needed; she hadn’t had enough today and her mind was fritzing. She laughed a little as she made her way down the hall and back toward the kitchen. It was the type of laugh a woman made when she was uncomfortable with something, and Winnie was uncomfortable with her thoughts. She’d never say any of it out loud, no way. She was pouring coffee into one of the company mugs when her next thought derailed her so thoroughly she forgot to add her usual cream and sugar. She stared down at her mug of black coffee once she was back in her office and thought, I can’t do this. I can’t pretend nothing is wrong when it is. She needed to talk to Nigel, face-to-face. Tell him that she knew that he’d been looking at...things on the internet. She grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair, relieved at her own decisiveness. But she always had been the confrontational one; she just had to work her way up to it. Nigel, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with the battle; he wanted to win like everyone else, but he had other ways of doing it. Winnie didn’t want that type of fight in her marriage. What she really wanted was to turn back time, go back to the night she’d made the worst mistake of her life, take it all back like it never happened. If she could take that one moment back...her marriage, her son...everything would be healthy as it should be.