Cold Springs(92)

I need you, Chadwick had said.

For years, she had wanted him to say that. If she were honest with herself, the hope of reclaiming him had been part of the reason she'd called for his help with Mallory in the first place. Now her daughter was gone. She had paid too dearly for Chadwick to need her.

She hefted the cardboard box, found it sadly light—a few framed pictures of Mallory; the postcard she'd sent from Cold Springs, a dozen precious words spotted with tears or rain; a potted orchid; a scrapbook of photos the faculty had made for her last Christmas; and the Japanese curtain that had hung on her doorway forever—folded up, smelling of a thousand colognes and perfumes from every parent who had ever walked through it.

David stepped aside for her, held the door to the staircase that led down the side of the building. The playground was deserted—motionless swings, a scatter of milk crates and crumpled juice containers, a clutch of dodge balls in a puddle of rainwater.

David stopped her at the middle landing.

“Um, sorry,” he said. “I'll need the keys.”

Before she could swallow her shame, or even put down the box, the door behind them creaked open and Norma appeared at the top of the stairs.

“He calls me,” Norma said, pointing at David. “Tells me you're packing up. Ann, what the hell's the idea?”

David looked sheepishly at Ann, rubbing his arm as if Norma had punched him. “I just thought Ms. Reyes should know—”

“Shut up,” Norma said. “Thank you for calling. Now get out.”

David's face mottled. “I'm supposed to watch her. The keys—”

“I'll get the keys.”

“But—”

“Take your nose and put it in someone else's ass for a change, pinche weasel. GET OUT!”

Norma raised her purse like a blackjack and poor David fled.

As his car screeched away down Cherry Street, Norma said, “He's poison, you know. The little bastard.”

“You're too hard on him.”

Norma glared at her. “Where is it?”

“Where's what?”

Norma sifted her hand through the cardboard box. Then she reached into Ann's coat pocket and pulled out the airline receipt. “San Antonio,” she read. “Chadwick's idea?”

“I have to. Mallory is missing.”

“And you think running to Chadwick will bring her back?”

“You should be happy I'm leaving.”

Norma blinked. “You think that's what I want?”

“Isn't it?”

Norma reread the receipt, clutching it as if she wanted to rip it in half. Then she carefully refolded it, pinching the creases.

“Oh, Ann . . . I'm not happy.” Her voice was as wilted and defeated as the orchid in Ann's box. “I'm ashamed as hell. When Chadwick was here . . . the Laurel Heights money . . . I told him I thought you'd stolen it.”

Ann stared out at the playground. She tried to remember where the new art room would have been built. The library. The theater. Larger classrooms flooded with sunlight. Ten years of work, convincing skeptics, prodding the school board and pleading for extensions when the money was slow in coming. Ten years carrying a dream uphill.

“You thought I would do that?” she asked Norma. “Steal from the school?”

“That's not what I want to think. I want to think you're a stupid damned optimist. You asked me not to say anything about the money because you really believed you could fix the problem. Just like you admitted Race Montrose to the school. Just like you're going to Texas now because you love Chadwick and you believe he can save your child and you don't see why going to him makes you look guilty as hell.”

“You could stop me. You could call the police.”

Norma closed her eyes. “You didn't do it, did you?”

“What?”

“Race Montrose, his family.” There was an edge of desperation in Norma's voice. “You didn't keep the Montroses in my life to hurt me.”

“Norma . . . of course not.”

Ann longed to put down her moving box, to open her arms to Norma, reassure her friend, but she wasn't sure she had the courage. She wasn't sure she could keep going if she set the box down now.

A foghorn bellowed—a ship passing under the Golden Gate. She had always found it so easy to forget how close the ocean was, how tightly it hemmed them in.

“When Race came to me,” Norma said, “I tried to figure out why. And you know what? He was operating like you. He was apologizing, even though he'd never done anything to me. It was some kind of olive branch—for Katherine. You mentored him, Ann. He's learned to be like you. And the problem is . . . I need that stupid optimism of yours. If you go to Texas, I've got a feeling I'm not going to see you again.”

Ann tried to say something—to tell Norma her fear was ridiculous. But the look in her eyes, the look of a friend betrayed, closed her throat.

Norma dropped the flight receipt in the box. At the bottom of the steps, she picked up a wet dodge ball, threw it across the abandoned playground with such force it rattled the chain link fence on the opposite side, making the ivy shiver.

26

The gateway to the Allbritton ranch was a giant concrete horseshoe, flanked by American flags and wilted cardboard signs that read GOD BLESS AMERICA. A black mare was pushing up one of the signs with her muzzle so she could get at a patch of icy grass outside the metal tube fence.