A diamond, as it turned out, that wasn’t nearly as large as the first. It was a diamond Laurel purchased for herself, so no one would hassle her. Unwed mothers were still a stigma, pretty girls forever hit on, particularly when traveling alone.
“After I heard this,” Gus said. “And saw for myself, from afar, I found I was spent. I couldn’t go through it again.”
“You refused to see her,” Annie said to Gus. Then to her mother: “And you went back to Boston. For a second time.”
Laurel nodded, her lips pressed tightly together. She tried to blink away the tears forming on her lashes.
“So when did Charlie die?” Annie asked. “How?”
“Can’t we just…” her mom said. “Can’t we just say he died? That there was an accident and leave it at that?”
“Tell her,” Gus said, his voice like gravel. “Now. She deserves to know the truth.”
“I know. God, I know.” Laurel pushed her hands against her eyes and let out a small, strangled breath. “It’s so damned hard.”
She looked at the ceiling, for a minute, and then to Annie.
“If I’d stayed in Banbury,” Laurel said. “If I’d stayed in Paris. If I hadn’t stayed with Charlie. If I never went back to Boston. If I’d never met Edith Gray at all. What would’ve prevented that?” She pointed toward the door. “What would’ve ensured this?”
She pointed to Annie, and then to Gus.
“That’s a lot of ifs,” Annie said. “And they explain nothing. What happened?”
Laurel paused and opened her mouth. With this gesture she also opened every last part of her that had previously been closed. To Annie, to others, and even to herself.
Finally, Laurel began to speak. This time she wouldn’t hold anything back.
Eighty-six
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
JANUARY 1980
Laurel and baby Annie returned to Boston. Win refused to see her so Laurel gave up on him for good.
They took a cab from Logan, but two blocks from Laurel’s building the roads were closed, as if a movie were being filmed, or a politician were caravanning through town. The street and sidewalks were littered with people, hundreds of people. Police. Reporters. News vans. Spectators socked together in packs.
Laurel didn’t think much of it, at first. She lived in Boston, along with the well-known and well-to-do but not always well behaved. Scandals happened with some frequency, as did less posh crimes—shootings, larcenies. It was a city. Mostly Laurel was irritated that she’d have to walk the extra distance in the sleet with a newborn baby cocooned beneath her coat.
“Not sure I can get much closer, ma’am,” the driver said. “Is that your building? Number fifty-five?”
“Yes,” Laurel replied, peering through the glass and thinking the melee seemed greater than was typical for a dishonored politician or bad-acting ballplayer. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“It’s the Kellogg boy.”
“The Kellogg boy?”
Laurel’s heart thundered. His last name was Haley but Charlie was foremost a Kellogg boy.
There were lots of them though, she told herself. It was a big family, expanding by the day. Hell, Charlie had four siblings, two of them male, as well as buckets of cousins. There were plenty of Kellogg boys to go around.
“Yeah,” the driver said. “You know. The one who … you been under a rock or something?”
“Out of the country,” she whispered, her mouth dry.
Annie’s eyes flickered open. She started to squirm.
“Right.” He tapped his forehead. “The airport. International arrivals. Well, anyway, you know the Kellogg family?”
She nodded, her mind whirling.
“It was the tall kid. Good-looking, but lost a leg in Nam? You know who I’m talking about?”
This time Laurel couldn’t even muster a nod. It was all she could do to keep breathing.
“Apparently his wife left him,” the driver said. “She lived in your building. Had a baby, same as you. Well, he got some maid to let him into the apartment.”
“He was in the apartment?”
“Yup. Shot the maid—”
“Blanka!” she cried.
The driver looked at her, confused. Blanka’s name was probably nowhere in the story. She was merely the help.
“The boy shot the maid,” the man went on, “then hung himself in the bathroom.”
“Oh my God…”
Annie was full-on writhing now, struggling to break free of her mother’s hold. Laurel squeezed her tighter into her chest.
“Oh my God,” Laurel said again. “Is the maid okay? Is he?”
“Hell no. Gruesome scene between the shooting and the hanging.” The driver shook his head. “Someone found him two days later. Crazy thing is, they don’t know where the wife and baby are. I hope like hell that they’re alive. Count yourself lucky, ma’am, that you’ve been out of town. Some people. You just never know, do ya? You never flippin’ know.”
Eighty-seven
?LE SAINT-LOUIS
PARIS
NOVEMBER 2001