“Take your time,” Angie said. “It’s okay.”
Elaine nodded her thanks and closed her eyes for a moment. “When Cheryl first complained about acid reflux, we thought, ‘It figures,’ given all the stress we’d been under. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, I remember standing in that doctor’s office and picturing Brian’s smug, dumb fucking face and thinking, ‘Wow. The bad guys really do win.’ They do.”
“Not always,” I said, though I wondered if I believed it.
“The night Cheryl died, Sophie and I were with her until the last breath left her body. We finally leave the hospital, and it’s three in the morning, it’s damp and raw out, and guess who’s waiting in the parking lot?”
“Brian.”
She nodded. “He had this look on his face-I’ll never forget it-his mouth was turned down, his forehead furrowed so he looked contrite. But his eyes? Man.”
“They were lit up, huh?”
“Like he’d just won the fucking Powerball. Two days after the funeral, he showed up here with two state policemen and he took Sophie away.”
“Did you stay in contact?”
“Not at first. I’d lost my wife and then I lost the child I’d come to think of as my daughter. Brian forbade her to call me. I had no legal rights with regard to her, so after the second time I drove to Boston to visit her at her school during recess, he filed a restraining order.”
“I changed my mind,” Angie said. “I wish I’d been more judgmental on this asshole. I wish I’d kicked in his larynx.”
Elaine’s face cracked around a smile. “You can always make a second trip.”
Angie reached out and patted her hand and Elaine squeezed my wife’s fingers and nodded several times as tears fell to her jeans.
“Sophie began contacting me again when she was fourteen or so. By that point she was so confused and filled with rage and loss, it was like talking to somebody else. She lived with an asshole faux father, a trophy wife faux mother, and a spoiled prick of a half brother who hates her. So, in the logic of human nature, I was one of her favorite targets-Why’d I let her go? Why hadn’t I done enough to save her mother? Why hadn’t we moved to a state where Cheryl and I could have legally married, so I could have adopted her? Why were we fucking dykes in the first place?” She sucked a clogged breath in and let a clogged breath out. “It was brutal. All the scabs got torn off. After a while, I stopped answering her calls because I couldn’t stomach the rage and recrimination for crimes I hadn’t even committed.”
“Don’t blame yourself on that one,” I said.
“Easy to say,” she said. “Hard to live.”
“So you haven’t heard from her in a while?” Angie asked.
Elaine patted Angie’s hand one last time before letting it go. “A couple times in the last year. She was always high.”
“High?”
She looked at me. “High. I’ve been in recovery ten years. I know when I’m talking to somebody who’s fucked up.”
“On what?”
She shrugged. “I’d guess a hard upper. She’d get that edgy motormouth vibe cokeheads get. I’m not saying it was coke, but it was something that jacks you up.”
“She ever mention Zippo?”
“Boyfriend, yeah. Sounded like a beaut. She was very proud of his connections to some Russians.”
“As in the Russian mob?” Angie asked.
“That was my inference.”
“Joy,” I said. “How about Amanda McCready? She ever mention her?”
Elaine whistled. “The goddess? The idol? Everything Sophie wanted to be? Never met her, but she sounds… formidable for a sixteen-year-old.”
“That’s the impression we get. Sophie the type of girl who looks for a leader?”
“Most people do,” Elaine said. “They wait their entire lives for someone to tell them what to do and who to be. It’s all they want. Whether it’s a politician they’re waiting for or a spouse or a religious leader, all they really want in life is an alpha.”
“And Sophie,” Angie said, “found her alpha?”
“Yup.” She stood from her chair. “She sure did. She hasn’t called me in… Since July, maybe? I hope I was some help.”
We assured her she was.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for talking to us.”
We shook her hand and followed her and the dog out of the barn and down the dirt path to our car. Dusk was settling into the bare treetops and the air smelled of pine and damp, decaying leaves.
“When you find Sophie, what will you do?”
I said, “I was hired to find Amanda.”
“So you won’t feel obligated to bring Sophie home.”
I shook my head. “She’s seventeen now. I couldn’t do anything if I wanted to.”
“But you don’t want to.”
Angie and I spoke at the same time. “No.”
“Would you do me a favor if you do find her?”
“You bet.”
“Tell her she has a place to stay. Any hour of the day. High or not. Angry or not. I don’t care about my feelings anymore. I only want to know she’s safe.”
She and Angie hugged then in that unforced way women can pull off that eludes even those men in the world who are at ease with the bro clench. Sometimes, I give Angie shit about it. I call it the Lifetime Hug or the Oprah, but there was no easy sentiment powering this one, just a recognition, I guess, or an affirmation.
“She deserved you,” Angie said.
Elaine wept silently into her shoulder and Angie held the back of her head and rocked her a bit the way she so often does with our daughter.
“She deserved you.”
Chapter Thirteen
We met Andre Stiles out front of the DCF offices on Farnsworth Street and the three of us walked down along the Seaport in a light flurry to a tavern on Sleeper Street.
Once we were settled in our seats and the waitress had taken our orders, I said, “Thanks again for seeing us on such short notice, Mr. Stiles.”
“Please,” he said, “don’t call me ‘Mister.’ Just call me Dre.”
“Dre it is.”
He was about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, brown hair cut short, the gray just finding its way along the temples and along the edges of his goatee. Well-dressed for a social worker-black cotton crewneck and dark blue jeans far nicer than anything you’d find at The Gap, black cashmere overcoat with red lining.
“So,” he said, “Sophie.”
“Sophie.”
“You met her father.”
“Yup,” Angie said.
“What’d you think?”
The waitress brought our drinks. He plucked the lemon wedge out of his vodka tonic, stirred the drink, and then placed the stirrer beside the lemon wedge. His fingers moved with the confident delicacy of a pianist.
“The father,” I said. “Piece of work, isn’t he?”
“If by piece of work you mean douche bag, yeah, he’s that.”
Angie laughed and drank some wine.
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Dre.”
“Please, don’t,” Angie said.
He took a sip of his drink, chewed a chip of ice. “So many of the kids I deal with, the problem’s not the kid. It’s that the kid drew an asshole in the parental lottery. Or two assholes. I could sit here and be all PC about it, but I do that enough at work all day.”
“Last thing we want is PC,” I said. “Anything you can tell us would be greatly appreciated.”
“How long you two been private investigators?”
“I’ve been on a five-year sabbatical,” Angie said.
“Until when?”
“This morning,” she said.