Sometimes you want to know everything when evil or tragedy comes so close.
Olivia looked at the time. Once again, the Internet had sucked away another hour. It was almost 2:00 A.M. She powered down and went back upstairs.
Whatever she was looking to find wasn’t there.
He could feel the covers move and the mattress give way as Olivia crawled back into bed. He looked at the clock. She’d been downstairs for more than an hour. He pretended to sleep as she settled herself back down.
What had she been doing?
Chapter Fifty-four
It felt like a small betrayal, but Olivia Barton had good reason for it. As the highway to Acton unrolled in front of her in a seemingly endless belt of blacktop and skid marks, she told herself that Michael would see that she loved him—if he ever found out what she had done. She planned to be careful, of course, so that they’d never have that conversation.
She couldn’t come up with any other way to ferret out her troubled husband’s past. State records for juveniles were sealed. She’d tried the “I’m a family member desperate to find my brother” ploy on a records clerk who snapped gum and told her that “they’re sealed for a reason and the reason is they don’t want anyone in those records.” She tried talking to Michael about his past, but he was evasive. Sometimes even dismissive, as if there was nothing there to really tell. He’d told her time and again that he’d moved on. She knew that to find out about his past, the time to do so was when they were first together.
Only in the beginning of a relationship, she thought, can a woman make a stand and rummage around, gently of course, in the past of the man she loves.
When you marry him, you unwittingly shut the book and you accept him for all that he is. All that comes with him. His past. His family.
Two days before the drive from Garden Grove, she found Gwen Trexler’s phone number on an online phone directory. She took a deep breath and made the call.
“Ms. Trexler?”
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
“Did you used to be a reporter for the Sea Breeze?”
There was a short silence. Olivia could hear Etta James wailing “At Last” in the background.
“Yes, I was.”
“I’m calling about my husband, Michael Barton.”
“Come again? Barton? The name doesn’t ring a bell. I haven’t been down in Orange County for years. Finally wised up and got into PR.”
“He was the little boy you wrote about. They found him at Disneyland with his sister.”
Another short silence came from Gwen Trexler’s side of the line, but this one had more to do with instant recognition of the sad story of the two little kids, dumped by their mother.
“I’ve thought of those children forever. I wish I could have done more for them. Especially the boy, he was so messed up. I wish I could have helped more.”
Olivia wondered what the former reporter meant by that, but she let it slide. Over the phone wasn’t the venue for what she was after.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to talk to me?” Olivia asked. “You might be able to help now. I think he’s having problems. It might be related to what happened to him back then.”
“All right. I’m up in Acton. Got a pencil? I’ll give you an address.”
Olivia looked at the computer screen. “You still on Antelope Way?”
“Yes, I am. Nice work. You should be a reporter. That is if you want to give up your life for meetings, breathe in everyone’s smoke, have no money, get no respect…don’t I sound bitter?”
Olivia laughed. It was a break in the tension of making the call that she needed.
“Just realistic, I guess. Thanks, Ms. Trexler. See you tomorrow afternoon.”
The conversation played in her head after she dropped off the kids with her mother and headed north. Olivia told her mom she was going to have lunch with friends and spend the day on Melrose, then the Beverly Center. She couldn’t explain why her husband wouldn’t talk about his past. She loved him so much, but there was a stinging hurt over being with a man who had no connection to anyone from a past longer than a couple of years.
If there had been an easier way, one that hadn’t required deception, she would have gladly gone that route. But the Sea Breeze had been purchased by a major newspaper chain in the late 1980s. The archives were summarily dumped by the new owners. So much for history. The only saving grace was that Gwen Trexler was still alive and very much willing to help.
Now almost seventy, Gwen Trexler was living in a duplex in Acton, her PR firm having given up the ghost. It was a spotless place, with a manicured flowerbed that in a month or so would be the envy of any garden magazine. The duplex was painted a bronze tone with orange trim that while strange, somehow worked. It was clear coming up to the front door that Mrs. Trexler likely lived alone—everything was in perfect order. Next door was another matter. A swing set and a debris field of toys indicated that a family with kids had taken up residence on the other side. It was order vs. chaos. Family vs. alone.
Gwen Trexler was a tall woman, at almost six feet, with a slim and muscular build. Her features were angular, almost Cubist. She wore a cotton blouse and a denim skirt that almost touched the floor. Her eyes matched the jade on the pendant that swung around her neck.
She opened the screen door and ushered Olivia inside.
“I made some mango smoothies,” she said. “No sugar. I use honey and whey powder to give me a little pick-me-up in the afternoons.”
Olivia thought it sounded awful, but her mother taught her to take a sip and “pretend to enjoy because that makes the host happy.”
It was a rule she lived by.
“Sounds delicious,” she said, taking a glass.
The living room was surprisingly large, facing out to a valley view that held several hundred head of cattle. There were so many that it was hard to see where one animal ended and another began.
“Seems like a stockyard, I know,” Gwen said, regarding the sea of black and brown undulating less than a mile away. “The wind’s in my favor today. Thank God.” She set down a pale yellow smoothie, complete with a straw.
“Delicious,” Olivia said, only half-lying. She’d tasted worse.
“I know you want to know more about your husband, so why don’t you just ask him?”
Olivia sipped on the drink, buying time and trying not to feel embarrassed because she’d been shut out of Michael’s life.
“He won’t talk to me. It really is that simple, Ms. Trexler. He has nothing to say.”
She brushed away several strands of white hair from her eyes. “Have you ever heard of letting sleeping dogs lie?”
Olivia had. Her own mother was a major purveyor of homespun advice like that. “Believe me, I’ve thought of that. Maybe there’s something so deep, so dark, that he just can’t go there and get it. I understand that. But…”
“But there’s something that’s propelled you here today.” Gwen Trexler glanced out the window, noticing Olivia’s car. “I see from the fingerprints on your windows that you have kids. Is that it?”
“A boy and a girl. And, no, that’s not it. He’s just been so distant lately and he’s lied a couple of times about small things.”
“Like what?”
“Where he was, nothing big.”
“This isn’t about an affair?”
Olivia shook her head emphatically. The idea of an affair was ludicrous. “No. Not at all. Just lately, he’s been crying in his sleep.”