Neeley shook her head. “No, I think you’re the one everyone has been most wrong about.”
Racine stared at the number on his secure cell phone through three rings before he answered it. “Yes?”
Besides the number, there was no mistaking the raspy, metallic voice. “They’re heading to Europe, Mister Racine. France. Does that mean anything to you?”
Racine’s grip on the phone grew tighter. “Neeley spent a lot of time in France as a kid, according to the file you gave me on Gant.”
“Yes. I suppose. But why go now?”
“Recapturing memories?”
“Do not jest with me, Mister Racine.
“I have no idea.”
“I want you to stay clear of them,” Nero said. “I want to see what they’re trying to find.”
“Sure.”
The phone went dead and Racine tossed it on the passenger seat and then gave it the finger. He headed for the airport.
CHAPTER 24
Nine hours after Ray Suggs faxed his copies of their passports to Nero, Hannah and Neeley were packing their gear in the trunk of a rented car in Frankfurt. It was a couple of hours before dawn and though Neeley could sense some jet lag, the flight had been boring enough to be restful. Hannah had spent hours in conversation with a young man wearing a t-shirt announcing I have a liberal arts degree. Will that be for here or to go?
Neeley had decided that Hannah could carry on a conversation with a tree stump. That there might be some jealousy in her observation was not lost on Neeley. She wondered how Hannah did it. With Gant and those who he associated with, conversation had been limited to the essentials. She also was beginning to realize there was a method to everything that Hannah did. She talked to gather in information from people much as she apparently had learned so much from all those books in her house.
It was much cooler in Frankfurt but Neeley knew that the sunrise would take care of a lot of the chill. The big heat tab in the sky, Gant had called the sun until the day he died.
The sky had been overcast and sickly gray that day. Gant had gestured weakly and Neeley had bent low to hear what were almost his last words, surprise and a little fear that he would never see the sun again. He felt the clouds were cheating him. Watching Gant's slow death she wondered how much of his career choice had simply lain in the fact that he had hoped for a fast, though brutal death over the slow calculating dying that most people could look forward to. She’d wept for him as every day he experienced the fear anew.
Hannah and Neeley decided to stop for some breakfast before they got on the autobahn for Strasbourg. Hannah was surprised at the Americanization of Europe as they pulled into the IHOP parking lot.
As they had their breakfast, Neeley thought of the last time she had been in Strasbourg. The floodgate of memories kept her quiet for a while until finally Hannah poured them both more coffee and said: "OK, so tell me about this Jean-Philippe guy."
Neeley played with her coffee cup. "Jean-Philippe. I wonder how I survived knowing him. Some people are so poisonous to the human soul they should have a big warning label on their forehead. But they don't, of course. They are usually wrapped in beautiful packages because beauty and sweetness tend to make us forget about danger. Haven't you ever noticed that's the way with snakes too? The most deadly are so brightly colored?"
Neeley didn't wait for an answer. It was as if she were talking to herself, verbalizing thoughts that had always lurked in her brain. "I was entranced by those bright colors. He was poison and he killed the best part of me. Sometimes I think it's because people like that are so dead themselves they destroy those who are alive out of jealousy. Other times I think they do it because they're mean and it's a sport. All I know for sure is my part, and I know my loving him destroyed something in me. I miss it every day."
Neeley was caught in her narrative and paid no heed to anyone in the bustling restaurant. "You know how you can tell if you are with a poisonous person? You begin to commit acts which are completely, totally foreign to you. Of course you can't see this, but your friends can and your family too, the people who know you're good and special, they recognize when something in you is dying.
"But here’s the weird part. You start to think those friends are the enemy. Instead of seeing them as saviors, you see them as bitter, jealous cynics trying to deprive you of happiness and you get rid of them instead of the real poison.
"It wasn't hard for Jean-Philippe to turn me from a schoolgirl into a conspirator. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't responsible for my part. Today, what I hate so much is that he used all my flaws to destroy my strengths and then what am I left with? You tell me?"
Hannah signaled the waitress for the check and reached her hands across the table for Neeley's cold fists. "Neeley, can't you see that he didn't kill your soul or your spirit? He hurt it, he angered you, he filled you with a rage you've never felt before and therefore didn't know how to handle. He didn't hurt you as much as he made you aware of hurt. Your flaw, and mine, is that we can't deal with that pain so we ignore it. You let Gant cover up that hurt with his attention as surely as I did with a house and reading books."
Neeley smiled mournfully. "Isn't that the worst part? Being so responsible for your own fall? Isn't that a tragedy?"
"It is very tragic of course, but the whole point of tragedy is to rise again from the very qualities that destroy you. It is to seek redemption."
Neeley stared at Hannah, trying to reconcile the person in front of her with the woman she had spied on in St. Louis just a few days ago. "You are so amazing. How can you be so positive about things you don't understand?"
Hannah let go of the other woman's hands. "See you are doing just what you did before. Pushing away the person who knows only the good and strong in you."
"But I said I pushed away the people who tried to pull me away from Jean-Philippe. There is no poisonous person in my life now."
Hannah gathered her things and stood. Looking down at Neeley she said: "But of course there is — Gant's ghost."
Neeley felt a stab of pure pain explode in her chest and squeezed her eyes shut as if that small gesture would soothe the turmoil within her. "Let's go," she said curtly.
The traffic on the autobahn was so thick and treacherous that the breakfast conversation soon receded to a place where both women could ignore it for a while.
CHAPTER 25
Neeley stood with Hannah at the edge of Josephine Park. Neeley’s grandmother had brought her to this park every day as a child during her summers in France and later she had come with Jean-Philippe.
The drive into Strasbourg, on top of the recent conversation she'd had with Hannah, had stretched Neeley's emotions to the limits. The city was on the west side of the Rhine, just over the border from Germany. Getting to the Park had required driving across the Rhine, into the southeast part of the city, through the center, to the northeast suburbs, activating all the attendant memories of the time Neeley had lived there.
The Park was bordered on the north by the Marne-Rhine Canal and spread over numerous acres with paths winding through thickly forested terrain. It, at least, had not changed much from her childhood memories.
She led Hannah to the southeast section of the park and the statue of the Goose Girl. As a child she had been drawn to the fountain.
There were few people about since it was early and the weather was not conducive to hangers-about. Just a few nanny types quickly walking through with their charges braving the chill because of duty and a gray haired man on a bench opposite the fountain.
Neeley walked around the bronze figure. The little girl was pulling her basket away from the attentive goose. As a child, Neeley's mood had dictated whether she saw fear or playfulness on the frozen face. Now she stared at it and felt the chills erupting as bumps on her arms and legs.