“My wife knows everything about me,” Ray said. “She knows what I did.”
“Oh, really? There’s nothing I could tell her that would surprise her? That you beat me? That you broke my arm?” I turned to the woman, who was nodding. She had the decency to look ashamed, as though she’d let him do these things. “That you kept me so tightly under your thumb that I was afraid to breathe? That you threatened my life? That you did, in fact, try to murder me?”
Mamie said nothing, but she was clearly not alarmed.
“I told her everything,” Ray said. “And I told her that I didn’t kill you. She’s the only one to believe me.”
“Well, Mamie,” I said, giving her a wicked smile. “I guess it’s lucky you were right.”
The woman stiffened. “I loved him. And I believed in love.”
“I used to love him, too. Believe me, it was no good place to be.”
“He’s done counseling and anger management, and he’s just really worked on—”
“Oh, God,” I cried and pressed my hands over my ears. “I care so little. I’m glad you can parade up and down Pine Street with your head held high now, really I am. I’m so very happy that you’re fulfilled and counseled and managed. But I didn’t come here for this.”
“So, why did you come?” Mamie said.
I dropped my hands, helpless. If Joshua wasn’t here, then where in the world was he?
I hesitated, looking between the two of them. Mamie had taken Ray’s hand, and Ray was as lost as I’d ever seen him. A little saggy at the corners of his eyes, a little thicker through the waist. And—diminished, I supposed, in his baggy shorts and tennis shoes. He didn’t look so big or so strong. He seemed a little square, actually, the exact kind of guy he would have made fun of back when we were together, and if the guy had any balls and defended himself against Ray’s taunts, the kind of guy Ray would have beaten to a meaty pulp.
The man standing before me now was a mystery. He seemed genuinely happy to see me alive, curious to see why I’d come. I wondered: Is it possible? Can he be this different? I might have doubted my memory, except that Ray and Mamie had confirmed the facts with their grim silence. Can he be different enough? Can he deserve what I was about to give him?
I said, “I have news that should surprise you both.”
Magic sat at my feet and swept the dirt with her tail until I reached out and laid a hand on her black head.
Chapter Thirty-one
Ray raged, silent, at the kitchen table.
Mamie reached for him, but he drew his arm out of her grasp. The house was small, tightly furnished. I was the thing out of place and kept banging my knees on things until we sat down to have tea. Like civilized people. I gazed in wonder at the framed cross-stitch of a basket of fruit on the wall, the ruffle-edged throw pillows on the couch.
Ray had begun to resemble the man I remembered. And then he went pale.
“What?” I pushed away from the table, hard enough to make the ice in my tea clink against the glass.
Ray put his palms on the tabletop and regarded them. “How old is he?”
“Thirteen, honey,” Mamie said. “She’s been gone—”
“But he’s practically—” His mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled out of the lake. “How tall is he?”
Mamie laughed. I managed to turn the corners of my mouth up. I was sure it was charming for his wife to see him so flummoxed—an understandable reaction from a man finding out he’d fathered a son he didn’t know about. But it was not the reaction I had expected, or even hoped for. Already I felt closed in by Ray’s interest, by this place. I’d only come here to find Joshua, and now that he wasn’t here, I wanted to be out the door and down the road. I had phone calls to make and a nine-hour drive to compress as tightly as I could. I hadn’t come all this way to make Ray a father.
“Do you have a picture?”
“In the truck.” When I stood to go get it, Ray’s face slackened around hard eyes. He looked just like Joshua, calling me a liar.
“I’ll bring it back.” Not that the escape plan hadn’t occurred to me.
I dug through two or three of the bags in the back of the truck before I found the framed photo from the apartment. At the door, I hesitated. I really could jump in the truck and be halfway to Oshkosh before anyone noticed. They didn’t know where I lived—and I didn’t even live there anymore. Let them find my ransacked apartment, my old phone bills and full trash bins. Let them talk to Margaret and the sheriff. What would it gain them? I was already free from that place, and the next time I alighted, maybe I’d ask Kent about changing my last name, too.
I looked at the photo in my hand. Except. As long as Joshua was gone, I was stuck being who I was, where I was.
Inside, Ray took the frame with shaking hands. “He has my—”
“Everything,” I said. “He looks just like you.”
Mamie studied Joshua over his shoulder. “I can see a little of you in him, too, Leeanna.”
This was going to be a long night, if I had to start with Leeanna. “Can I use your phone? I’m afraid it’s going to be long distance.”
MAMIE SENT ME to their bedroom for privacy.
Ray had a startlingly normal bedroom. Sky-blue walls, quilt on the bed. It was crammed with a giant four-poster and accompanying suite. Another room furnished with pieces from another, bigger house.
The dispatcher wouldn’t put me through. “Is this an emergency?” the woman asked. I had never met any of the dispatchers and couldn’t picture her. “I can call a unit in to assist you. But the sheriff’s off radio at the moment. He’s entitled to some downtime.”
“He put an alert on my license plate,” I said. “If he’s so interested in where I am, then I think he’ll take my phone call.”
On hold, I took the opportunity to look around. On the dresser sat a framed snapshot of Ray and Mamie standing with their arms around each other. It was recent, candid. They didn’t seem aware of the camera. Some friend had taken it at a social gathering, maybe. Ray had a friend. He went to social gatherings. I waited for the dispatcher or Russ, trying not to tally my life against Ray’s.
When Russ finally answered, he didn’t sound interested at all. “I’m a busy man, Ms. Winger.”
“Spray-painting blazes on all the cars of Parks County? Just in case they, you know, leave the area?”
“I don’t have time for this.” His voice was distant, as though he’d put me on speakerphone. I hated that.
“Do you have time for a check-up on my case? Or does my missing son cut into your downtime?”
“I’m not sure a woman who left the town her son was missing from is so concerned about getting her kid back.”