Gwen pulled two tissues out of the box on the tray by my bed, handed one to her husband and blew her nose with the other.
“Before your folks dated,” Scott said, “your mom went out with Mitch Bellandini one time. Once.” He held up his index finger. “That was all. He proposed to her on that first date, said he knew they were meant to be together.” He spat the words out, his disgust evident. “She tried to be nice and let him down easy, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, wouldn’t leave her alone. Not after she and Michael started dating, not when they got engaged. Not even when they got married.”
“Grandma Davis said Mom invited Mitch to the wedding,” I said. “Is that true?”
“No,” Aunt Gwen said. “He just showed up and made a total scene. He acted out The Graduate, screaming her name in the church.”
I pictured the photo of Mom and Dad at the altar and Mitch crashing through that happy scene, ruining it for everyone.
“He seemed so normal when we first met him,” I said, but I didn’t think that was really true. I’d just wanted him to be. Looking back now, I could see all the red flags I’d chosen to ignore.
“That’s what your mom said,” Scott said. “He was fired from the company where the three of them worked because his behavior became so crazy they couldn’t ignore it anymore. He followed her everywhere. He tampered with your dad’s car—-loosened the lug nuts on his wheels. One tire came off on I--25. He wasn’t hurt, but he knew who’d done it. They went to the cops lots of times, went to court, got a restraining order. He kept breaking it, paying fines, spending time in jail. But he would not stop.”
An orderly came in with a tray of food and set it on the little adjustable table by my bed.
“Thank you,” I said.
He smiled at all of us and then left the room again.
“How am I supposed to eat this?” I said, holding up my bandaged hands.
Gwen clucked and stood, removing the cover to the tray. “I’ll help you,” she said.
I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t want to refuse this motherly attention. She picked up a big plastic mug and turned the straw toward me and held it to my lips. I drank gratefully.
“So Mitch wouldn’t stop,” I said.
Gwen cut up some colorless meat on the plate and held up a forkful. I obediently ate it.
“Right,” she said. “The cops’ advice to your parents was to move away.”
“And then, Bellandini totally lost it when your mom got pregnant with you,” Scott said.
I nodded. Dekker had read about the freak--out in Mitch’s letter to my mom. “Why didn’t they move away?”
“Your dad couldn’t find another job,” Scott said. “He tried. Your folks were so stressed out, but they did their best to keep up a good front for you. They loved you so much.” He began crying again, and Gwen had to stop feeding me to wipe away more of her own tears.
This stoked my loathing of Mitch even further. The things he’d done had affected not just me and my little world, but these -people and my other relatives too. Who knew how wide the ripples went?
“So how old was I when Mom disappeared?” I said. “I read one of the newspaper articles about it.”
“You were two and a half,” Gwen said, gently wiping my lips with a napkin. “Michael came home from work and found you wandering the house alone, naked with wet hair. Marianne had vanished. You kept saying ‘game.’ ”
I gasped.
“You don’t remember any of this, do you?” Scott said, incredulous.
“I actually remember Mitch holding me under the water in the bathtub.”
Scott and Gwen looked at each other.
“Really,” I said. “I think that’s how he got Mom to go with him.”
“I’m sure that’s right,” Gwen said. “The trial was about a year later, and after Bellandini was acquitted, your dad bought all kinds of guns and put bars over the windows and dead bolts on each door, but still he didn’t feel safe.”
Scott rose and walked to the window, looking out into the gray sky. “The last time I saw my brother, he showed me a letter he’d received in the mail with no return address. It said something like, ‘No matter where you try to hide, I will find Anne Marie, and I will take her from you the way you took Marianne from me.’ ” He turned away from the window. “Michael took it to the police, but they couldn’t prove it was from Bellandini.”
“I can’t eat any more,” I said to Gwen. “Thank you.”
She put the cover on the plate then hesitated before reaching out to smooth the hair beside my bandage. Tears clung to her lashes. “Your mom,” she said, “was my best friend.” Her chin quivered and she turned away to fuss over the food tray some more. My mom’s best friend.
Gwen wiped her eyes, and sat down again. Scott came away from the window and sat next to her, holding her hand.
“So the cops started to treat your dad like some kind of conspiracy--theorist crackpot,” she said. “He felt like no one could help him.”