She’d actually said private dick, making Eve think of old movies and men’s genitals secreted in their shorts, and she’d grinned.
“Not funny, young lady,” Mrs. Knapp had said sharply. “Not funny at all. Private dicks charge by the hour. How many hours do you think it’ll take to find a man after twenty-five years?”
Then Eve had gotten the idea to test herself and gone upstairs to Mrs. Knapp’s apartment in the west wing.
The door was unlocked. She slipped inside and looked around the little sitting room for something that might have belonged to the long absent George Knapp. There were framed photos on the mantel of Mrs. Knapp’s Billy and Margie, at all ages. But one, half hidden behind the others, showed a young Mrs. Knapp and a good-looking man about the same age. He was shorter than Mrs. Knapp and very thin, with arms like sticks coming out of his wide shirtsleeves and elbows like knots in a tree branch. He was smiling proudly at the kids.
Eve slid the back off the frame and saw June 1965 stamped on the back of the print. He must’ve seen this photo, maybe touched it, and it was his likeness.
Eve ran her finger over the glossy surface, then held the print against her chest and waited for the faint free-fall sensation that came with the visions, like standing up too quickly or missing a step.
She never got hot or cold, her flesh didn’t creep or her hair stand on end—nothing so dramatic. Sometimes her ears felt stuffed as if she’d gotten water in them or were coming down with a cold.
She had waited for the feeling for ten minutes in Mrs. Knapp’s sitting room holding George Knapp’s likeness and nothing happened. Then she put the photo back, slid the backing into place, and on impulse kissed the picture and wiped away the faint smear her lips left on the glass.
Now she had to take another test. If it was gone, there was nothing to be afraid of; the scarf was just colored wool knitted in stripes. She reached for it. Her heart pounded so hard she was a little light-headed, and sweat beaded her upper lip. Her hand wavered. “Go on, Evie,” Meg said in that seductive voice. “Go on. If it’s really over, then that’s just cashmere and lamb’s wool. Nothing else. Go on, Eve.”
She sank her fingers into the coil of wool. It was a little oily, probably from Tim’s neck and a winter’s worth of Hartford grime. Her fingers sank deeper into it; her heart thumped wildly but she didn’t get that falling sensation, her ears didn’t stuff up. Stupid, small-time symptoms, she thought. They should be grander; her eyes should change from brown to green, her face turn white and scraped-looking. Maybe there should be thunder and lightning or a wind that rattled windows and made tree branches creak.
Nothing happened.
She dug her fingers deeper into the scarf and felt the tabletop through the wool. Nothing. She picked the scarf up and wound it around her neck, tucking the soft wool under her jaw, and got a whiff of bay rum and a bready smell that must’ve come from Tim’s skin. Nothing else.
Her heart slowed down; the sweat stopped running down her face. She unwound the scarf and put it on the table. “Nothing,” she said to Meg, trying not to sound elated. “Absolutely nothing.”
Then she leaned across the table and kissed Meg’s cheek. “It’s gone, Meggie. It’s really gone.”
“What the fuck are you so happy about?” Margaret Carpenter said bitterly. “For a while you were a woman with a power. Now you’re just a helpless asshole like the rest of us.”
On her way out, Eve stopped in the rest room alcove of the little roadhouse to use the phone. She tried the 518 number for Sam in case she’d dialed wrong before and got the same recording. Then she called Sam’s mother, Greta, and asked if she could stop by.
Greta Klein was short and plump with smooth, pink skin, even at seventy.
“Come into the kitchen,” she told Eve. “I’m baking cookies for the bridge club tonight.”
Eve followed her and sat at the table while Greta worked. She was wearing a white wraparound apron with bright red and yellow posies printed on it, and the kitchen smelled of butter and toasted nuts. She pulled a baking sheet out of the oven with light brown crescents with nuts sticking up in them like little quills, slid another sheet in, then set the timer and poured Eve a cup of coffee.
“Have a cookie?”
“No thanks.” Eve sipped the coffee cautiously, afraid it would cause a resurgence of nausea.
“Drink, drink,” Greta said, sitting across from her. “It’s decaf.”
“I haven’t been feeling well,” Eve said.
“Oh? That’s why you’re here?”
“In a way. I called the number Sam left me. It’s disconnected.”
“I know. He moved, doesn’t have a phone in the new place yet. But it doesn’t matter,” Greta said gently. “He’s not going to come back because you don’t feel well, honey. I don’t know what’ll bring him back. Don’t know why he left in the first place.” She looked brightly at Eve. “He’s crazy about you, you know. Was even when he left, which makes it even nutsier, doesn’t it?”
Eve nodded.
“Crazy mad about you, probably from the first second he saw you. You’re pretty, you know. Not drop-dead gorgeous, but I guess you know that too. But pretty, and after a while of looking at you, maybe better than pretty. And there must’ve been something else about you that made my boy fall for you. It worried me at first, because I was afraid if he couldn’t have you he wouldn’t ever want anyone else. But I didn’t have to worry, because you fell for him too, didn’t you?”
Eve nodded.
“So what happened?” Greta demanded softly. “How could you just walk away from each other—” She stopped herself, then amended, “How could he walk away from you and you let him go? How?”
“Something happened.”
“Your mother died. Did that make you crazy or something?”
“Or something,” Eve said very softly.
“That’s not a reason. You don’t leave the woman you love ’cause her mother dies. Parents are supposed to die and kids live on as parents, then they die too. You’re not making any sense.”
Eve didn’t say anything. Greta fetched a huge sigh.
“Now you want to find him.”
Eve nodded.
“He got a job in a bank in another upstate town and moved closer to it. Same kind of job he had here.”
He’d been Trust VP at Bridgeton Trust; that was how Eve had met him.
Greta said, “He told me he doesn’t want to be found by you unless it’s desperate. And then—in the manner of men—he left it to me to decide what’s ‘desperate.’ So now I gotta ask you, honey: Is it desperate?”
Eve nodded.
“You gotta be more specific. I think he’s acting like a nebbish... need a translation?”
“No.”
“But he’s my son and I will respect his wishes. So you gotta be specific or I can’t tell you.”
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Greta made a sound between a gasp and a chortle of delight and looked at her with glowing eyes.
“Do you feel sick? You look sick,” she cried.
Eve nodded.
“Take one of the cookies. I swear to God it’ll help. And I got some 7-Up in the refrigerator. Best thing for a stomach upset, 7-Up.”
“That’s what my Aunt Frances says.”
“Your Aunt Frances always made me feel like a fart in a ballroom, but I never thought she was dumb.”
Greta shoved a plate of fresh-baked cookies at Eve, then took a 7-Up out of her large, harvest-gold refrigerator. She popped the can top, poured the fizzing liquid out into a striped glass, set it next to the plate of cookies, and beamed at Eve. “Don’t move, honey. I’ll get the address and be right back.”