“Some people. Not me,” said Peggy. “I know it’s ridiculous. It’s just crazy.”
When I thought of Donnie now, I thought first of the tall, athletic fellow with a trim beard in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, a radio on his hip, the day my mother disappeared. He was a volunteer firefighter, too, and some sort of money manager by day. He had a couple of boys, one in the elementary school and one in Paige’s class in the middle school. He traveled a bit, I believed, but he worked mostly from his home. My mother liked him; she liked his wife, Erin, too. The three of them were on the same schedule at the gym. She had designed the aqua solarium addition to their home: a dome big enough to house three chaise lounges, a glass table, and a heated saltwater pool a dozen feet in diameter.
“They were just friends,” I said.
“Of course they were. And she was just friends with Justin Bryce. But there are rumors about him, too.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know.”
“His wife, Marilyn, was one of my mom’s best friends,” I reminded her. I didn’t add that I couldn’t imagine my mother with a balding foodie who thought French fries in a blue cheese sauce was haute cuisine.
“I remember.”
“My mom was a sleepwalker,” I said, hoping I sounded definitive. I regretted coming here; I regretted what I had begun. This had been a mistake. “The parasomnia occurred when she was alone—when my dad was away. My dad was gone that night in August and she went sleepwalking. We both know that’s what happened. That’s all that happened.”
“I agree, Lianna. I agree. But you asked me. People like to talk. I probably shouldn’t have said anything,” she said, and she stared down at the ingredients on the cutting board in front of her.
“Do the police know about these rumors?”
“I guess so.”
“Did you tell them?”
She looked up and met my eyes. “They never asked me,” she said, and she sounded disappointed.
When I got home, I took the three wraps she had made for me and threw them away. It would be a long time before I would be able to bring myself to return to the store.
“I’m too old to go trick-or-treating,” Paige said to me as we drove home from the pool Monday evening. She had been trying to stuff her wet towel into her swim bag, and had just given up and tossed it into the backseat.
“You’re twelve,” I reminded her, though I understood that seventh grade was about the last year that kids in our community took the night seriously. I had been suggesting costumes. I recalled how two years ago our mother had worked with Paige to transform the girl into a tombstone angel. I had been at college, but our mother had taken lots of photos. The costume demanded what must have been vats of gray acrylic paint, because it had to smother an ankle-length white dress—gathered to look like a robe—an iconic drama mask (tragedy), toy store wings, and a wig. Annalee Ahlberg had loved Halloween, and I recalled fondly all the years my mother had taken me trick-or-treating, and all the costumes she had designed. I had been an octopus one year and a spider the next, the great papier-maché legs recycled from the previous year’s sea creature. When I had been Artemis, my mother had sewn the costume herself and found me a spectacular bow and arrow from a client in an archery club. One year, when I was in first grade, the two of us went out together on Halloween night as mother-and-daughter devils. I was six, and it was only from the photos I would study later that it dawned on me that my mother had been having fun with the idea of a hot mom: the mama devil costume was skin tight and sexy as hell.
“I just don’t feel like it,” Paige grumbled.
“Well, it’s not even October first. You might in a few weeks.”
“Nope.”
“Is it that I’m not Mom?”
“No.”
“Because I can help you come up with something awesome. I mean, obviously I’m not Mom. Halloween was kind of her thing. But I’m not a moron.”
“You’ll just put me in a belly shirt like a harem girl.”
“God, you sound like—” I stopped myself midsentence.
“I sound like who?”
“I wasn’t going to say anyone in particular. I was going to say you sounded cranky. That’s all.” I kept my eyes on the meandering two-lane road up the hill into Bartlett, the asphalt paralleling the Gale River, but I felt Paige staring at me. My sister didn’t believe me. “How much homework do you have tonight?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Not much. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How come you haven’t been smoking marijuana the last couple of days? Did you get super high in Montreal? Is that why you didn’t come home? Or have you stopped?”
“I didn’t get high in Montreal, but I wouldn’t say I’ve stopped. I just haven’t the last few days. No big reason.”
“I haven’t smelled any on you.”
“I would think that would make you happy.”
“Is it me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”