Hearts in Atlantis(175)

'You remember Ted?'

'I thought I'd never be able to use my arm again and Ted fixed it like magic. Of course I remember him. But Bobby - '

'He knew you'd be here. I thought that as soon as I opened the package, but I don't think I believed it until I saw you.' He reached out to her and with the unselfconsciousness of a child traced the course of the scar on her face. 'You got this in LA, didn't you? What happened? How did you get out?'

She shook her head. 'I don't talk about any of that. I've never talked about what went on in that house. I never will. That was a different life. That was a different girl. That girl died. She was very young, very idealistic, and she was tricked. Do you remember the Monte Man at Savin Rock?'

He nodded, smiling a little. He took her hand and she gripped his own tightly. 'Now they go, now they slow, now they rest, here's the test. His name was McCann or McCausland or something like that.'

'The name doesn't matter. What matters is that he always let you think you knew where the queen was. He always let you think you could win. Right?'

'Right.'

'This girl got involved with a man like that. A man who could always move the cards just a little faster than you thought he could. He was looking for some confused, angry kids, and he found them.'

'Did he have a yellow coat?' Bobby asked. He didn't know if he was joking or not.

She looked at him, frowning a little, and he understood she didn't remember that part. Had he even told her about the low men? He thought so, he thought he had told her just about everything, but she didn't remember. Perhaps what had happened to her in LA had burned a few holes in her memory. Bobby could see how a thing like that might happen. And it wouldn't exactly make her unique, would it? A lot of people their age had worked very hard to forget who they had been and what they had believed during those years between the murder of John Kennedy in Dallas and the murder of John Lennon in New York City.

'Never mind,' he said. 'Go on.'

She shook her head. 'I've said all I'm going to about that part. All I can. Carol Gerber died on Benefit Street in Los Angeles. Denise Schoonover lives in Poughkeepsie. Carol hated math, couldn't even get fractions, but Denise teaches math. How could they be the same person? It's a ridiculous idea. Case closed. I want to know what you mean about Ted. He can't still be alive, Bobby. He'd be over a hundred. Well over.'

'I don't think time means much if you're a Breaker,' Bobby said. Nor did it mean much on WKND, where Jimmy Gilmer was now singing about the Sugar Shack to the tooting accompaniment of what sounded like a sweet potato.

'A Breaker? What's - '

'I don't know and it doesn't matter,' Bobby said. 'This part might, so listen closely. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'I live in Philadelphia. I've got a lovely wife who's a professional photographer, three lovely grown children, a lovely old dog with bad hips and a good disposition, and an old house which is always in desperate need of repairs. My wife says that's because the shoemaker's kids always go barefoot and the carpenter's house always has a leaky roof.'

'Is that what you are? A carpenter?'

He nodded. 'I live in Redmont Hills, and when I remember to get a paper, the Philly Inquirer is the one I buy.'

'A carpenter,' she mused. 'I always thought you'd wind up a writer, or something.'

'I did, too. But I also went through a period when I thought I'd wind up in Connecticut State Prison and that never happened, so I guess things have a way of balancing out.'

'What was in the package you mentioned? And what does it have to do with Ted?'

'The package came FedEx, from a guy named Norman Oliver. A banker. He was Sully-John's executor. This was inside.'

He reached into the gym bag again and brought out a battered old baseball glove. He laid it in the lap of the woman sitting next to him on the bench. She tipped it at once and looked at the name inked on the side.

'My God,' she said. Her voice was flat, shocked.

CHAPTER 30

'I haven't seen this baby since the day I found you over there in those trees with your arm dislocated. I suppose some kid came along, saw it lying on the grass, and just gleeped it. Although it wasn't in very good shape, even then.'

'Willie stole it,' she said, almost inaudibly. 'Willie Shearman. I thought he was nice. You see what a fool I was about people? Even back then.'

He looked at her in silent surprise, but she didn't see his look; she was gazing down at the old Alvin Dark-model glove, plucking at the tangle of rawhide strings somehow still holding the webbing in place. And then she delighted and touched him by doing what he had done as soon as he opened the box and saw what was there: she lifted the baseball glove to her face and smelled the sweet oil-and-leather aroma of the pocket. Only he had slipped it on his hand first, without even thinking about it. It was a baseball-player thing to do, a kid-thing, automatic as breathing. Norman Oliver must have been a kid at some point, but he'd apparently never been a ballplayer, because he hadn't found the piece of paper poked deep into the last finger of the glove - the finger with the deep scratch in the old cowhide. Bobby was the one who found the paper. The nail of his little finger poked against it and made it crackle.

Carol put the glove down again. Gray hair or no gray hair, she looked young again, and fully alive. 'Tell me.'