The way the light came in from the window, the golden light of afternoon, it caught the highlights of her hair. In the line of her nose and something about her brow, he saw Isabel Raine. It was easy to see they were sisters, though they had opposite coloring. Isabel Raine looked like she’d been dipped in milk. Linda Book was gilded by sunlight. They were both beautiful, but Linda Book was softer, more real somehow. It was the mother factor. There was a look to a certain type of mom, a compassionate knowledge of the human condition that can only come from changing diapers and soothing tantrums, bandaging knees and assuaging fears.
“Where will she go, Ms. Book?”
“Wherever she thinks the answers are,” she said, looking out the window again. He felt a wash of frustration. Stubborn stoicism must run in the family.
“You’re not helping her,” he said. “You’re not protecting her.”
“I’ve never been able to do either of those things, Detective. Never. Not unless she wants me to.” He watched her eyes drift over to her daughter, a tiny dark-haired girl who slumped in an uncomfortable chair, pretending to be asleep. “If I knew where she was going, I’d tell you.”
His phone rang again. He saw it was Jez, so he answered quickly.
“I lost her,” she said, yelling over street noise.
“What? How?” he said sharply, causing both Linda and the girl to look at him.
“I got caught in the crowd pushing out of the train and she snaked in. The doors closed and she was gone.”
“What train?”
“The uptown N/R.”
“Fuck me.”
Linda Book shot him an annoyed look, shook her head. The girl smiled, a small, amused turning up of the corner of her mouth. And in that second she was identical to her aunt. Detective Crowe was really starting to dislike this family of stubborn, too-smart women with bad attitudes.
“What are you going to do?” he asked her, sounding a little petulant even to himself.
“What can I do, Crowe?”
“See if you can catch her at the next station.” He heard her release an exasperated breath.
“Okay.” She said it as if he was an idiot and it would never work but she’d try it anyway. He ended the call. If he’d been alone, he’d have kicked something, issued a string of expletives to blow off steam. But he managed to keep his composure.
“I have an idea.” It was the girl, looking at him as if he might be interested in her thoughts.
“Really,” he said, sarcastic and annoyed. He saw anger, anger rather than intimidation, flash on her small face. He hated to admit it, but it cowed him a bit. He kept his eyes on her. She turned to her mother, as if he no longer deserved to be spoken to.
“Make Daddy go home and check the computer,” she said. “You can use the spyware you installed to see what sites she visited and try to figure out where she went that way.”
“What spyware?” asked Linda, widening her eyes and lifting her brow in a bad imitation of innocence.
“Yeah, right,” said Emily. “Like we don’t know, Mom.”
“Hey, that’s a good idea, kid,” he said, surprised.
Emily Book gave him a nasty smirk. “Duh.”
Five minutes later Erik Book was on his way downtown. Linda Book looked uneasy, rubbed her temples with the spread thumb and index finger of one hand, as though she was wondering if she was helping or hurting her sister.
WHEN THEY WERE girls, before their father died-because after that neither of them were ever girls again-everyone thought of Izzy as the difficult one. If Izzy had been first, Margie famously told everyone, there wouldn’t have been two. She was the one with colic, the bad sleeper, the finicky eater, the one who never napped. It had been said so many times that it became a kind of family legacy.
But Linda knew the truth. Izzy was wild, yes, where Linda was obedient. Izzy was outspoken where Linda was quiet. Izzy was honest where Linda was tactful. All these things added up to make Linda seem like the angel and Izzy the rebel. But as for who was the good girl, and who was the bad, Linda knew the truth.
She watched Emily now and saw the same pure soul she knew existed in her sister. In Trevor she saw the same conviction that good would always triumph over evil, a belief fueled by the mythologies of his comics and the legends of Star Wars, that there was a clear right and wrong in every situation. He sulked over by the doorway, battling his conscience and the nagging feeling she knew he had that following the rules in this case might not have been that right thing. He looked confused. She wanted to tell him that he was only going to get more confused as time went on, that things would never be as clear as they were right now. She’d been like him once, so righteous and sure. Poor Fred could attest to her punishing standards. She wanted to tell her son that it was all just shades of gray. But that was a lesson for another day.
“You did good, Trev,” she said to comfort him. “Izzy needs our help right now, even if she doesn’t know it.”
Her son nodded uncertainly, wrapped his arms tightly around his thin middle. Emily gave Trevor a dirty look.
“Tattletale,” she hissed. “What a baby.”
“Shut up,” he said, his voice rising high and breaking. “It was your idea to check the spyware.”
“Emily, give me a break,” Linda said.
“What?” she said. “He is.”
They started yelling, speaking over each other unintelligibly. They always did this, reacted to stress by fighting with each other. The sound of it was maddening.
“That’s enough,” Linda said, raising her voice. They both stopped and stared at her, mouths in wide, surprised O’s. Emily returned to her seat and flopped herself down dramatically. Trevor went back to his corner to sulk.
“I need some quiet,” she said more softly. “Please. I have to think.”
She wanted to be angry with her sister for bolting again. But she couldn’t, the same way you couldn’t be mad at a cat for scratching furniture or a dog for chewing up your shoes. Isabel was just being Isabel.
There was an experiment Linda had read about, where people were asked to deliver electric shocks to a person seated in another room out of sight. The experiment revealed that most people would keep delivering the shocks, no matter how loud and tortured the screams from the other room became, as long as someone in authority told them to do it. Linda knew that she’d be one of those people. She’d be racked with guilt and self-doubt, but she’d keep pressing that button until someone told her it was time to stop.
Izzy would be the one who stood up and protested, who bucked authority. She’d beat the crap out of the person delivering orders and then race to rescue the injured. And in some circles, this would make her a bad seed, an undesirable.
Until her affair with Ben, Linda had never broken a rule in her life. And she’d been brutally judgmental of people who in her opinion had. She tortured Margie and Fred for years, because to her it seemed that Margie should have kept her vows to her husband, even in death. And, of course, her father had been the ultimate rule breaker. He’d defied the strictest rules of alclass="underline" Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Love me forever, Daddy. And how she’d hated him for it. It took years of therapy for her to come to this realization.
Even in her art she never took risks, followed the rules of convention, the typical ideas about what comprised a beautiful image. And how she’d been praised for it, lauded and paid ridiculous sums for art and journalistic photographs that she secretly believed were common, maudlin-as Ben had reviewed her-or appealing to a base and silly chicken soup sentimentality.