Griff tapped on the door frame and Mrs. Truscott jumped and then turned in her chair. She didn’t look any less alarmed when she saw who her visitor was.
“I need to talk to you,” Griff said.
“I don’t think...” She didn’t finish it. Unconsciously her dark gaze slid to the framed photo on the window ledge above the desk.
Even from that distance Griff recognized the photo. Or at least half the photo. The other half, the half with a much younger and happier-looking Mrs. Truscott, had been cut out of the photograph Griff knew. What remained was the only picture he had of his mother.
Here was the last piece of the puzzle. Literally the last piece.
Griff stepped forward, eyes on the framed image. Mrs. Truscott watched him almost fearfully.
“My mother,” he said.
“No.”
He stared at her. She looked stricken, but she shook her head. “No.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t...”
“I’m sorry.”
Sorry?
“But why? Why didn’t you...” He wasn’t even sure what he was asking. Where did he start? He felt winded, as though he didn’t have breath for all the questions it would take to make sense of this.
“I was afraid the minute I saw you,” she said. “All these years I tried to convince myself. But the minute I saw you, I knew in my heart it was true.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself it couldn’t be true. You didn’t seem to know, so how could it be true?”
Was that supposed to be an explanation? Because every word she spoke confused him more.
“Your sister. The one who supposedly died in a state institution. She didn’t die, did she? Not in any institution.”
Mrs. Truscott’s face softened, her tone took on an almost pleading note. “Her little boy passed when she was in the hospital the last time. She had trouble—she didn’t always—”
“No. You can’t stop. You have to tell me,” Griff said when she lurched to that painful halt.
“I know. I’m trying.” Mrs. Truscott put her face in her hands, and in that moment she looked so much like his mother, he almost put his arms around her.
But she wasn’t his mother. Even his mother had not really been his mother. And in a minute he was going to have another anxiety attack. At least this time it was understandable.
Mrs. Truscott said from behind her hands, “She could be fine for months, even years. She would come and go, I wouldn’t hear from her and then I would. And she’d be perfectly fine. But other times she wasn’t herself. She’d have to go away. She was better after she had her boy. Gareth, she called him. But then she had one of her breakdowns and she had to go into the hospital again. And while she was there, Gareth...died. He was living with our mother at the time, and he died of appendicitis.”
Griff’s chest still felt tight, he couldn’t get enough air to speak, but that was okay because he didn’t need to speak. He needed to be quiet and calm and listen. None of this could hurt him. It was all over now. It was all in the past.
Mrs. Truscott raised her head to meet his eyes. “When she got out, she blamed our mother. It wasn’t our mother’s fault. It wasn’t. But they had never been close. So it wasn’t such a surprise when she didn’t get in touch.”
He said harshly, “That’s not the part I care about.”
“No.” Mrs. Truscott looked down at her work-roughened hands. “She used to come here sometimes and help out. When she was well, I mean.”
“And she was helping out that night? The night of the party?”
“No. No, but I always wondered, because the Mather children thought they saw me in the nursery when I couldn’t have been there. She knew her way around the house. And...”
“And what?”
Mrs. Truscott seemed to struggle with herself. “She tried it once before.”
“What?”
“Not here! I’m not saying that. But once before, a long time before, I was with her when she started to walk off with a baby carriage. The baby wasn’t in it, and at the time I didn’t think anything of it. But later...later I wondered.”
“But then you must have made the connection after Brian—” Griff stopped. He felt like his head was going to explode. He was still referring to Brian—himself—as though he were another person. He was still thinking of Brian in the third person.
Mrs. Truscott was running on. She sounded almost eager now, rushing to convince him, to make him believe. “When I tried to contact Amy, my mother said she had left a few days earlier, that she’d got a job and was moving out to New Mexico. She used to do that. She used to take off without any notice. I believed it.”
“You believed it? You were right here in the middle of a kidnapping and you never made any connection?”
“You’re forgetting that the ransom note came the next day. I knew that wasn’t Amy. Never. Never in a million years. Everyone believed Odell took Brian. I believed it too.”
“You didn’t believe it. When I asked you, you said you weren’t sure about Johnson’s guilt.”
“But I didn’t believe it was Amy.”
“You didn’t want to believe it was Amy.” It was so weird to say his mother’s name in this context. So weird to think this was his life, his past.
“Of course I didn’t want to believe it! But...” she stopped again.
“Why me? Why this family?”
“I don’t know. You were a friendly little thing. You liked her. You liked everyone. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the opportunity presented itself.” She met his eyes, her own miserable with guilt and grief. “I’m sorry.”
Her face. So like his mother’s. How had he not instantly recognized the truth the moment she opened the door to him?
“Sorry. Wow. I don’t know what to say to that. For twenty years...” His voice gave out and he realized how close he was to breaking down. To breaking apart.
Why? He was all right. His mother—no, Amy Truscott—had loved him, taken care of him the best she could. He was whole and healthy and all that was in the past now anyway.
And if he didn’t get out of this room, this house, he was going to be sobbing like the lost little kid he had once been.
“Is she dead?” Mrs. Truscott asked.
He nodded. She began to cry, and he felt for the door, stepped through the blur into the hall.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, and the fear was back in her voice.
He couldn’t answer. He had no idea what the answer was. He kept walking.
She called something after him, but he didn’t hear it.
* * *
He had to talk to someone, needed desperately to talk to someone. Strangely, the only person he could think of was Pierce. And that really was strange given how furious he had been with Pierce. But that was a million years ago.
He walked through the kitchen, out the back door, and started down the path to the guest cottage. Clouds were gathering overhead. It was going to rain again. He could see Nels Newland in one of the distant sunken garden rooms, digging a hole for a new rose bush. Was there something he was supposed to ask Newland?
He turned off and took the steps down to the cool green and flowering rooms because he wanted to be alone, and because in a strange way it felt like this garden was where the story had begun on a long ago night of fairy lights flickering through the trees, and old jazz songs drifting up to the stars.
He dropped down on one of the marble benches, abruptly more tired than he had ever been in his life. A thousand miles from Wisconsin to Long Island couldn’t touch the distance he had traveled that morning. Numbly he watched the yellow butterflies flitting from flower to flower.
He didn’t remember dialing Pierce’s number, but suddenly Pierce spoke against his ear.
“Mather.” Pierce sounded brisk and distant and yet at the same time immediate and familiar. As though they’d known each other all their lives. But then he had known Pierce all his life. Or at least at the beginning of his life.