Cold Springs(73)

She pushed the air away, a gesture that reminded Chadwick a little too much of the crazy old woman Ella Montrose, mother of a murdered daughter.

“That night of the auction,” she told him, “I knew you were going to confess something. I thought you were going to tell me about your fling with Ann. But now I'm trying to believe it was something more important—that you were finally going to tell me the truth about my daughter. Maybe bring me into the problem so we could solve it. If that were the case, I could almost forgive you, Chadwick. I could almost forgive you for being too late.”

Her eyes were hungry. She seemed to be asking forgiveness, rather than offering it.

Chadwick wanted to tell her she was right. He wanted to buy her amnesty by agreeing with her, but the words wouldn't come.

Norma sensed his hesitation.

“You think Samuel holds a grudge,” she said. “He loved Katherine and he blames us for Katherine's death. All of us who failed her—you and me, Ann and John. The school, too. But what's bothering you is that he started with John. Why he went after the school's money and left you alone. That's it, isn't it?”

Chadwick didn't reply.

Norma traced her fingers down the wall, following the faint line of grime that marked the place where Babar the Elephant once hung. “What I want to say now—I'm afraid to say.”

“Norma Reyes, afraid to speak?”

“You're going to put it down to spite. When Race came to see me, he said, ‘She ain't going to be satisfied until they're both dead.' She.”

“Mallory? She'd probably complained to him about her parents.”

Norma shook her head. “I've been thinking about why Race would come to me. Why me, why not somebody else? You see it, don't you?”

“Norma . . .”

“Ann needed the money. When I told her about the embezzlement, she wasn't shocked. She was . . . nervous. Calculating. Her biggest concern was buying time. I don't think she meant for anybody to find out until after the auction, when the fund was complete. After that she'd have two weeks over Christmas break to leave town, nobody at school, nobody checking up on her. A head start.”

“Norma, you're talking about Ann—”

“You were f**king her—you don't know her at all. She puts on a brave face, but she's in desperate shape. Her school's sinking. She'd been taking a salary cut every year to mask how bad it is. She's frantic about not having enough money to fight another custody battle, scared she's going to lose her daughter. You don't know what that will do to a mother, Chadwick, the fear of losing your child.”

“Don't I?”

“No.” Norma's tone was as sharp and proprietary as a barbed wire fence. “Being the mother is different, pendejo. You don't know.”

Chadwick studied her face—the familiar wisp of black hair looping over her ear, the half-moon curve of her chin.

“I have a job tonight,” he said. “I need to go.”

“Who you rescuing this time—some drug addict? Some kleptomaniac?”

“I'm stopping by John's house first. Anything you want me to tell him?”

Norma's face reddened. She turned toward the hallway, her face in the sunset. “Don't go there. It won't help.”

“Good seeing you, Norma.”

“I'm serious. I keep thinking about the two people Ann might want dead, like Race said. The two who stood in the way of everything she wanted. You know what she wanted, don't you? She wanted you.”

“Turn off the stereo, will you?”

“Ann is the one who brought you back here. Think about that, Chadwick.”

He was at the bottom of the stairwell when she called him one last time. Against his better judgment, he turned to look up at her, and in that moment he could imagine it was ten years ago, fifteen years ago. She could've been reminding him to get milk at the corner grocery, or tossing him Katherine's jacket and mittens, laughing because he and Katherine had once again forgotten them.

“I'm not bitter, Chadwick. I'm empty. You understand the difference? The difference is you see more clearly when you've got nothing left.”

Chadwick opened the door of the house, stepped out into the growing gloom of the evening. Down the block, he could hear the lowrider cruising, its stereo setting off car alarms all across the neighborhood like a bloodhound flushing quail.

By the time Chadwick returned to John's house in Marin, it was full dark, the fog settling in over the hilltops.

No cars in the driveway. No lights in the windows.

Chadwick thought it unlikely that John would've gone out, given his frazzled demeanor earlier, but there was no response when he rang the bell.

After two more tries, he felt the weight of the silence build on him, the need to do something. He tried the door. Locked.

He went around to the side window—the one that John always used to leave unlatched, even when Ann scolded him for doing so. It was latched, but easily undone with Chadwick's penknife. He jimmied it open and slipped inside.

He moved through the house, sensing that there was no one here, but feeling he should call out, just in case—make a pretense of respecting John's property.

He couldn't make himself call. The silence was too heavy.