Somewhere Out There(57)
Natalie grabbed her purse and got out of her car, heading toward Zora’s porch, which was actually just a couple of crumbling cement steps. The yard, like the ones around hers, was overgrown with weeds and littered with brightly colored but heavily weathered children’s toys. Three full garbage bins sat along the edge of the fence, and one of them had tipped over, littering the grass with paper and other bits of trash. Natalie raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before she could. She looked down to see a dark-haired little boy who looked to be about three years old standing in front of her, wearing only a baggy black T-shirt that hung on his skinny frame like a dress, its hem reaching just above his knobby knees. He had smears of jelly on his cheek, and he looked as though he hadn’t bathed in days.
“Hi,” she said to the boy. “Is your mommy home?” The boy nodded, staying silent but opening the door wide enough for Natalie to step inside. She hesitated, leaning her head in but not crossing the threshold. “Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone here?” She looked to her left, into a tiny living room where a television was playing loudly, set on the Cartoon Network. She saw a rail-thin woman sitting on one end of the couch, her head lolled back, eyes closed, and mouth open.
Worried that Zora was unconscious, Natalie disregarded her uncertainty about entering uninvited and stepped inside. The air held a ripened, moldy scent, like fruit left too long in a warm place, and the coffee table and floor were littered with plates that still had bits of food on them—an apple core, pizza crusts, and half-eaten pieces of toast with jelly. When she saw a clear plastic baggie with a few white capsules in it peeking out from under a tattered trashy magazine, a sinking feeling pulled at Natalie’s stomach.
“Hey!” she said, reaching out to shake Zora’s shoulder.
“What!” Zora said. Her eyes snapped open, and she looked at Natalie, blinking rapidly. “Who the f*ck are you?” she mumbled, shoving off Natalie’s touch. “What the hell are you doing in my house?”
Natalie straightened and took a couple of steps back, away from Zora’s rancid breath. “I’m sorry, but your son opened the door and it looked like you were unconscious. I was just making sure you were okay.”
“I was sleeping, for Christ’s sake!” Zora said. She stood up, and Natalie took in her appearance. Zora wore black leggings and a tight, thin-strapped purple tank top without a bra. Not that she needed one; her chest was nonexistent, and her clavicle looked like a sharp piece of jewelry at the base of her neck. Her dark brown hair was a stringy mess around her pockmarked face, and she reached up to push it back.
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said again. After seeing the baggie full of pills, she was pretty sure that in Zora’s world, “sleeping” was another way to say “passing out after taking some kind of narcotic.” The little boy had climbed up on the couch and grabbed a blanket that had what looked to be coffee stains on it, and then glued his eyes to the cartoons on the television screen. “You are Zora Herzog . . . right?”
“Who wants to know?” Zora demanded.
“I got your name from Miss Dottie at Hillcrest,” Natalie said, and went on to explain her search for Brooke.
“Huh . . . Brooke Walker,” Zora said as she grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the table and shook one out and lit it. She took a long puff and then blew out a white plume of smoke through her nose and tilted her head, peering at Natalie through half-lidded, mascara-smeared eyes. “Yeah, I know her.”
Natalie’s pulse quickened at Zora’s use of the present tense. “Is she still in Seattle? Do you know how I can reach her?”
“Maybe.” Zora took another drag on her cigarette and looked Natalie up and down. “That depends.”
“On what?” Natalie asked. A sense of dread filled her as she waited for what Zora might say next.
“You know how it is. Not everyone wants to give up information for free.” She sucked on her cigarette again, turning her head to the right in order to blow out the smoke.
“Do you actually know where Brooke is?”
“Like I said, that depends.” Zora lifted a single dark eyebrow. “How much cash you got on you?”
She was a liar, Natalie realized. Zora had no idea where Brooke was, she was just an addict trying to work an angle for money. Whatever hopes Natalie had had in coming here vanished. “Sorry to have bothered you,” she said quietly. She turned around and faced the front door, thinking she would report the little boy’s living situation to Child Protective Services as soon as she got home.
“Wait,” Zora said. “You have to have something. Please. My kid is hungry. You can see that. Every bit helps.”
Natalie stopped, and even though she was fairly certain that whatever cash she handed over to Zora would be used for more drugs, on the off chance she was wrong, she reached into her purse, opened her wallet, and handed the other woman a handful of bills. “Please,” she said. “Use it the right way.”
“Yeah, of course,” Zora said, snatching the money from Natalie’s hand. Then she laughed, a dry, barking sound. “You know Brooke was a hooker, right? A total whore. I have no clue where she is now. Probably in a shitty hotel room waiting to suck her next dick.”
Natalie cringed at Zora’s vulgarity, and she raced out of the house with tears in her eyes, wondering if there was any truth to what the other woman had said. Even if Zora was a liar, it was within the realm of possibility that Brooke was a prostitute, or at least had been at one time. Natalie couldn’t imagine bringing her sister into her world—introducing Brooke to her children—if she was, in fact, anything like Zora. Brooke could be a drug addict, a criminal . . . and yes, a prostitute. It might have been callous, but there was no way Natalie would want anything to do with her if she was any of those things.