“Not at all, not like that at all.” She sipped from her water glass. “Just after the New Year, I got a telephone call in the middle of the night. She must have forgotten about the time difference, I'm always forgetting about time—”
The sandwiches arrived, stacked high and speared with colored toothpicks. Joyce Waverly set them down carefully before the two women. “Just let me know, ladies, if I can bring you anything else. Hey, I've heard news about your granddaughter. My cousin has a boy in third grade, and he says that the new girl is a real artist. Oh, what did he say? Better than Spider-Man, he says, better drawing than in the comics, and him loving Spider-Man more than Jesus, so it's quite a compliment. Since you last came in, I was wondering how's come Erica never mentioned a daughter when I talked to her a couple years back? Maybe I'm just not remembering right. Holler if you need anything, ladies.”
They waited until she was out of earshot. “Better'n Jesus. Still the country out here, you ask me.” Diane plucked the toothpicks from her toasted bread, held them like a picador ready to make the kill, and then tossed them to the rim of her plate. “So about Erica. What does she have to say for herself after all these years?”
Her sister finished chewing the corner of the sandwich, then wiped her mouth with the napkin, a dot of mayonnaise lingering on her upper lip. “At first, I didn't believe it was her and not someone else playing a prank. But she told me it really was her and she was in trouble, a different kind of trouble, and didn't know who to call.”
“Didn't she give you some explanation?”
“What, that she's a wanted woman, that she's underground, hiding, that she feared she would be traced? Of course, she's sorry. But when your only child asks for help, you help. No questions. She said she needed someone to look after Norah for her while she got her life back together.”
“Surely the statute of limitations has run out by now. Did you suggest that she might turn herself in and throw herself on the mercy of the court?”
“It wasn't a long discussion, Diane, and I didn't think about limitations, in fact, until you just mentioned it.”
“But you at least told her about Paul, right?”
The waitress arrived to ask if everything was to their satisfaction, and when they nodded, she scratched her belly with the edge of her order pad. “I remembered what I wanted to tell you. There was a man in here the other day, a funny way about him, asking about you and Norah. Said he knew you from way back when. Very handsome and old-fashioned. Dashing, they used to say. Said he was a friend of the family.”
Diane asked, “Did he call himself Jackson?” Margaret swatted the air in front of her.
“Never gave his name,” she said. “Never saw him before or since. Just funny all of a sudden you come in and then someone asking after you. You had some unexpected company lately?”
“Very mysterious,” Diane said. “We're fine, dear, really. Thanks.”
The interruption gave Margaret a chance to think, and she bought more time by taking another bite of her club sandwich, bacon crumbling to the plate, and chewing slowly. Scrunching up her face, she unpeeled the top piece of toast and removed the tomato slices. “Hothouse.”
Between bites, Diane asked again. “So, how did she react when you told her that her father was dead?”
“As you might expect. They never taste right, hothouse tomatoes. I don't think she broke down and cried, if that's what you meant.”
“After all that man put her through, no.”
“He was only trying to protect her. You don't know that it wouldn't have been worse.”
“Couldn't be much worse than her running off with a criminal.”
“It can always be worse. There could have been a real confrontation. Threats were made.”
“By Paul? Harmless old Paul?”
Margaret snipped off another piece of her sandwich. “By the boy. And besides, if it had gone any other way, we might not have Norah, right? This funny-looking creature, stick skinny, and an entire mystery. She needs me, at least for a while.”
“Maybe you can threaten to keep her daughter.” Diane laughed. “That might bring Erica home.”
24
Tracks began at the edge of the bicycle path and cut on the diagonal through the maze of bare trees rolling into the hills, and the children bent to inspect the footprints: four toes and heel pad, the steps ten inches or more apart. Sean fingered the edges, and granules of snow rolled away in a miniature avalanche. Squatting next to him, Norah peered down the trail to the point where it vanished over the horizon.