The noise was eidetic, like the pain that he felt, and like the pain, it wouldn’t go away. So that was real.
But Sidwell? Had he gone to Sidwell—or just to the reunion? Because he’d certainly been to the reunion—he could hear the polite hellos, see Adam Bowman peering at his name tag. He’d remembered the school, but had the school remembered him? Not really.
“I used every, single paper towel,” Adrienne told him as she sat down, hair wet, but free from gore.
“You ought to see a doctor,” Duran told her. “You took a bad knock.”
She shook her head. “I’m okay. I just need a scarf.”
At Hickman Realtors—this was another of Adrienne’s ideas—they asked about a house called Beach Haven, owned by a family named Duran. The agent, Trish, said she’d grown up in Bethany, and thought she knew everyone—but she didn’t remember the Durans, and she was certain there wasn’t a house called Beach Haven.
“I don’t think so,” she told them. “But I’m not infallible.” She offered to look in the computer. “Even if Connor or one of the other firms handled the place, it’ll be in here,” she said, tapping the keys.
But it wasn’t.
“What about another place?” she asked. “Pretty good pickings this time of year. Low rates. Get you a deal!?”
Duran began to stand up, when Adrienne surprised him. “Sure,” she said, tossing a glance at Duran. “Nothing too big or expensive—so long as it’s got a working phone.”
Trish tapped the keyboard, manipulated the mouse, and studied the possibilities. “I can put you a block from the beach… two bedrooms with cable.”
“How much?” Adrienne asked.
“Three-fifty a week.”
Duran sat in his chair, barely listening, as Adrienne finalized the arrangements. Though his face was impassive, and his body still, he might as well have been hanging from a cliff. It seemed to him that the more he found out about himself, the less he knew. The more he looked, the less there was. And now, seated in a real estate office in the imaginary playground of his fictional childhood, it seemed to him as if his whole perspective—his stance toward the world and himself—was sliding toward a vanishing point from which there was no return, or no return that he could imagine.
I’m disappearing, he thought. Whoever I am…
Chapter 23
SeaSpray was a powder-blue Cape Cod on 4th Street, just around the corner from the beach.
Sparsely decorated, and slightly forlorn, it was a beach cottage with mismatched furniture and amateur seascapes on the walls. A faint, but pervasive smell of mildew hung in the air as Duran lay down on the rattan couch in the living room, and gazed at the ceiling in a funk.
In the kitchen, Adrienne sat down to make a list.
1. Slough—she wrote, then sat back with a sigh. She had to call in. She should have called in—long ago—from the real estate office or a pay phone on the road. It was 10:30 already, which made her more than late: she was missing in action. So she really had to call in, only… what could she say? What could she possibly say without sounding like a lunatic?
She imagined the scene at work. When you counted the paralegals, the interns, and the court reporter, at least a dozen people would have assembled for the McEligot deposition. First, there would have been a grace period. Maybe fifteen minutes of chitchat, ending in a certain amount of frowning. Nervous glances at the clock, followed by expressions of bewilderment and concern. Where could Adrienne be? I hope she’s all right! People would begin to make calls, go out for coffee, read the paper, look over their notes. Half an hour later (if that), counsel for the plaintiff would put away her notes and get to her feet—even as Bette placed calls to Adrienne at home, and to Slough in San Diego. What? What do you mean she’s not there?
She heard Duran get up and turn on the television. Canned laughter floated toward her through the doorway to the kitchen.
2. Call Bill Fellowes—name/phone of memory witness
3. Insurance co.—re Duran’s tapes of Nikki
4. Shopping: food, clothes, hairbrush
5.
There wasn’t any 5. And, truth to tell, there wasn’t any point in adding to her list until she’d crossed off the first entry. Everything else was stalling. So she gritted her teeth, gave herself a Nike pep talk—Just do it!—and dialed Bette’s number at Slough, Hawley. Then she listened as it rang—or almost rang—and hung up.
It wasn’t so much that she was afraid. She just didn’t know what to say. Curtis Slough was not what you’d call a stand-up guy. On the contrary, his reaction to the news that she’d grown up an orphan had been a kind of embarrassed alarm—as if she’d confessed to having an unpleasant, and possibly contagious, disease. How, then, might he react to the news that she was sharing a beach cottage with a maniac, while running from a killer who’d murdered two people—including one of the firm’s own investigators? And if to that she added the information that all this had something to do with her sister’s recent electrocution, itself brought on by false memories of Satanic abuse…
Slough, Hawley was an old and respected Washington firm. Most of its lawyers were graduates of Ivy League schools, William & Mary and Stanford. They were ambitious and tightly-wrapped people who were bright, bland, and dependable. They did not stay in Comfort Inns. They were not orphans. And they never, ever “went on the run.” So…
This isn’t going to get any easier, Adrienne told herself, and began dialing.
Bette answered on the first ring. “Bette. It’s me—Adrienne.”
“Oh my God! Scout! What happened to you?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
A nervous laugh. “It better be hard to explain. D’you realize what a meltdown we have here? We are talking fifteen people, including two partners just… standing there… looking at one another for almost an hour and—the Old Man’s ballistic. Tell me you were hit by a car! Tell me you were killed! Were you?” This last, hopefully.
“No.”
“Then—what?”
“There was a… an emergency.”
“What kind of ‘emergency’?”
“A sudden emergency.” Before Bette could question her any further, Adrienne hurried on, explaining where to find the file on the McEligot depo. “It’s not the final draft,” she said. “I was going to work on it at the motel—”
“What motel?”
Ignoring the question, Adrienne plowed on. “It’s in the asphalt folder on my computer. I think I called it—”
“Wait a second—you mean you’re not coming back? What am I gonna tell Curtis?”
“I’ll call him.”
“And tell him what? That you had ‘an emergency’?”
To Adrienne’s ear, her friend sounded more excited than worried. “Exactly.”
“But he’ll want to know what kind of emergency—other than ‘sudden.’ ‘Sudden’ won’t cut it.”
“Then I’ll tell him it was ‘a female emergency.’”
“A what?”
“You heard me.”
“But I don’t even know what that is,” Bette protested. “I mean, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know—but I do know Slough and, trust me, he won’t ask.”
As soon as she hung up, she gritted her teeth and called Slough in San Diego—where, to her delight, she found he wasn’t in. So she left a message: