“I met her that afternoon,” I say.
He nods into his lap. “She went to get a photo album at her hotel. She wanted to show me some old pictures. Baby pictures and stuff. And then on her way back to the house she saw you.”
I think of her arms around my waist, her hair brushing my cheek. “But she introduced herself to me as your mother. Your—as Jane Russell.”
Again he nods.
“You knew this.”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Why would she tell me she was someone she wasn’t?”
Finally he looks at me. “She said she didn’t. She said that you called her by my mom’s name, and she couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. She wasn’t supposed to be there, remember.” He gestures around the room. “She wasn’t supposed to be here.” Pauses, scratching his hand again. “Plus I think she liked pretending she was—you know. My mom.”
A crack of thunder, as though the sky is breaking. We both start.
After a moment I press him. “So what happened next? After she helped me?”
He turns his gaze to his fingers. “She came back to the house and we talked some more. About what I was like as a baby. About what she’d been doing since she gave me up. She showed me photos.”
“And then?”
“She left.”
“She went back to her hotel?”
Another shake of the head, slower.
“Where did she go?”
“Well, I didn’t know then.”
My stomach twinges. “Where did she go?”
Again he lifts his eyes to me. “She went here.”
The tick of the clock.
“What do you mean?”
“She met that guy who lives downstairs. Or used to live.”
I stare. “David?”
Now a nod.
I think of the morning after Halloween, how I’d heard water pushing through the pipes as David and I examined the dead rat. I think of the earring on his bedside table. It belonged to a lady named Katherine. Katie.
“She was in my basement,” I say.
“I didn’t know until after,” he insists.
“How long was she here?”
“Until . . .” His voice shrivels in his throat.
“Until what?”
Now he knots his fingers. “She came back the day after Halloween and we talked a little, and I said I’d tell my parents that I wanted to see her, like, officially. Because I’m almost seventeen and when I’m eighteen I can do whatever I want. So the next day I called my mom and dad and told them.
“My dad blew up,” he continues. “Like, my mom was mad, but my dad was furious. He came straight back and wanted to know where she was, and when I wouldn’t tell him, he . . .” A tear rolls from his eye.
I place a hand on his shoulder. “Did he hit you?” I ask.
He nods soundlessly. We sit in silence.
Ethan pulls a breath from the air, then another. “I knew she was with you,” he says shakily. “I saw you over there”—he looks at the kitchen—“from my room. I finally told him. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He’s crying now.
“Oh . . .” I say, my hand hovering over his back.
“I just had to get him away from me.”
“I understand.”
“I mean . . .” He drags a finger beneath his nose. “I saw that she’d left your house. So I knew he wouldn’t find her. That’s when he came over here.”
“Yes.”
“I was watching you. I was praying he wouldn’t get mad at you.”
“No, he didn’t.” I just wanted to know if you’d had any visitors this evening, he’d explained. And later: I was looking for my son, not my wife. Lies.
“Then right after he got back home, she . . . she showed up again. She didn’t know he was there already. He was supposed to come back the next day. She rang the doorbell and he made me answer it and invite her in. I was so scared.”
I say nothing, just listen.
“We tried to talk to him. Both of us did.”
“In your parlor,” I murmur.
He blinks. “Did you see?”
“I saw.” I remember them there, Ethan and Jane—Katie—on the love seat, Alistair in a chair across from them. Who knows what goes on in a family?
“It didn’t go very well.” His breath is choppy now. He hiccups. “Dad told her that if she ever came back, he would call the police and have her arrested for harassing us.”
I’m still thinking of that tableau in the window: child, father, “mother.” Who knows what goes on . . .
And then I recall something else.
“The next day . . .” I begin.
He nods, stares at the floor. His fingers writhe in his lap. “She came back. And Dad said he would kill her. He grabbed her throat.”
Silence. The words almost echo. He would kill her. He grabbed her throat. I remember Alistair pinning me to the wall, his hand gripping my neck.
“And she screamed.” I sound quiet.
“Yeah.”
“That’s when I called your house.”
He nods again.
“Why didn’t you tell me what was happening?”
“He was there. And I was scared,” he says, his voice rising, his cheeks wet. “I wanted to. I came here after she left.”
“I know. I know you did.”
“I tried.”
“I know.”
“And then my mom came back from Boston the next day.” He sniffles. “And so did she. Katie. That night. I think she thought Mom might be easier to talk to.” He plants his face in his palms, wipes.
“So what happened?”
He says nothing for a moment, merely looks at me out of the corner of his eye, almost suspicious.
“You really didn’t see?”
“No. I only saw your—I only saw her shouting at someone, and then I saw her with . . .” My hand flutters at my chest. “. . . with something in . . .” I trail off. “I didn’t see anyone else there.”
When he speaks again, his voice is lower, steadier. “They went upstairs to talk. My dad and my mom and her. I was in my room, but I could hear everything. My dad wanted to call the police. She—my—she kept saying that I was her son, and that we should be able to see each other, and that my parents shouldn’t stop us. And Mom was screaming at her, saying she’d make sure she never saw me again. And then everything got quiet. And a minute later I went downstairs and she was—”
His face crumples and he splutters, sobs bubbling deep in his chest and bursting at the surface. He looks to the left, fidgets where he sits.
“She was on the floor. She’d stabbed her.” Now Ethan’s the one pointing at his chest. “With a letter opener.”
I nod, then stop. “Wait—who stabbed her?”
He chokes. “My mom.”
I stare.
“She said she didn’t want someone else to take me”—a hiccup—“take me away.” He sags forward, his hands making a visor over his brow. His shoulders jump and shake as he cries.
My mom. I had it wrong. I had it all wrong.
“She said she’d waited so long to have a child, and . . .”
I close my eyes.
“. . . and she said she wouldn’t let her hurt me again.”
I hear him weeping softly.
A minute passes, then another. I think of Jane, the real Jane; I think of that mother-lion instinct, the same impulse that possessed me in the gorge. She’d waited so long to have a child. She didn’t want someone else to take me.
When I open my eyes, his tears have subsided. Ethan is gasping now, as though he’s just sprinted. “She did it for me,” he says. “To protect me.”
Another minute passes.
He clears his throat. “They took her—they took her to our house upstate and buried her there.” He puts his hands in his lap.
“That’s where she is?” I say.
Deep, dense breaths. “Yes.”
“And what happened when the police came the next day to ask about it?”
“That was so scary,” he says. “I was in the kitchen, but I heard them talking in the living room. They said that someone had reported a disturbance the night before. My parents just denied it. And then when they found out it was you, they realized it was your word against theirs. Ours. No one else had seen her.”
“But David saw her. He spent . . .” I riffle through dates in my head. “Four nights with her.”
“We didn’t know that until after. When we went through her phone to see who she might have been talking to. And my dad said that no one was going to listen to a guy who lived in a basement, anyway. So it was them against you. And Dad said that you—” He stops.
“That I what?”