And She Was Page 8

  “I think that’s where she keeps her quilting supplies.” Nelson removed the lid. Sure enough, Brenna saw bright scraps of cloth, pincushions, thick needles and thread, scissors with handles shaped like strawberries, and several puffy squares, already sewn . . . She closed the box. “I guess that would have been too easy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that when people have something they want to hide, they usually choose a space that’s theirs and theirs alone. So in other words, the kitchen drawer, the coffee table . . . even that sewing area judging from your familiarity with it . . . none of those would be ideal places. If Carol had something she wanted to keep from you, she would pick a place like her crafts closet. A place that belongs only to her.”

  “She doesn’t,” Nelson said.

  Brenna turned to him. “What?”

  Nelson stared hard at her, his jaw tight. “Carol doesn’t have anything she wants to keep from me.”

  Nelson’s wife didn’t love him. Nelson’s wife kept secrets.

  After Brenna Spector left his home, Nelson sat on his couch for a long time without moving, barely blinking, until he started to remind himself of Anthony Perkins at the end of Psycho, sitting stock-still in the detective’s office with his mother’s voice coursing through him, refusing to move even as a fly crawled across his hand.

  A ball of rage, trapped in a shell. That’s what Norman Bates was, wasn’t it? And that’s what Nelson was turning into. He needed to stop. He needed to kill the rage before it overtook him and melted the shell and burned everything in sight.

  The missing credit card, the crafts closet, and then, finally Nelson’s own computer. Not Carol’s personal space, as Ms. Spector had put it. Not by a long shot. It was her husband’s computer. Yet according to the history check Ms. Spector had done, Carol had been sneaking onto this computer when her husband wasn’t around. She had made several visits to a search engine called Chrysalis.org, yet she never seemed to use the site to search for anything. Another secret.

  Nelson got up, and moved over to the oil painting of Sarasota Beach that hung over the TV. It had belonged to Carol’s grandmother, and more than once—several times, Nelson could now recall—he’d come into the living room to find Carol standing in front of this painting, hands on her hips, a slight dreamy smile on her face . . . “What are you thinking about?” Nelson had asked her one time.

  And Carol—typical Carol, with that brick wall in front of her thoughts, never letting you past: “The painting.”

  “You’re thinking about the painting?”

  “I just like it. That’s all.”

  What had Nelson done to deserve this? For more than twenty years, he’d been good to Carol. He had given her everything she wanted. She never had to work. She’d done the cooking, yes, but only because she liked to cook. He’d never raised his voice, never hit or swore at or even threatened Carol . . . Nelson had been nothing but kind. Nothing like his own father and if Carol could have seen Nelson’s father, full of Glenfiddich with a red face and meaty fists and a voice like a bomb exploding . . .

  Nelson glanced at the clock over the fireplace. Midnight. He probably hadn’t been up this late in twenty years. At least it’s a new day. Quietly, he moved to the crafts closet, to that black trunk, still plunked in the open doorway. When people want to hide things, they choose a space that’s theirs and theirs alone. But wasn’t everything about Carol hers and hers alone? Wasn’t her mind like this black trunk—hidden beneath layers and layers, the lid slammed shut?

  Nelson opened it.

  He saw bright scraps of fabric, spools of thread, a few pairs of scissors. Quilting supplies. He started lifting it all out, putting it on the floor, thinking, That’ll show you. That’ll show you, Carol. I’m in your space. Your private space, and there’s nothing you can do about it . . . He didn’t think that way for long, though, for the phone was ringing. Whose phone rang at midnight? My phone is ringing at midnight.

  Nelson thought, Carol, and he was following the ring, rushing toward it. The nearest phone was in the kitchen. He leaped at the sound and by the time he got there, he was close to completely out of breath and feeling as if his heart might burst and not caring if it did, not caring about anything except getting her on the line . . .

  Caller ID read “Unknown Caller.” Nelson yanked the phone from its stand, pressed it to his ear. “Carol?” he said, on the edge of his breath.

  There was no answer, just thick static, and Nelson thought, Cell phone. Out of range. But he kept talking, as though maybe his voice could bring her back into range and then pull her through the phone. “Carol? Is that you? Where are you?”

  The static cleared enough for Nelson to hear her breathing. He said Carol’s name again, but when she finally spoke, her voice wasn’t the voice of Carol at all. “It’s my fault,” the voice said, before hanging up. And all Nelson could do was stand there, dead still, until the spell wore off and his tears finally fell. It was the voice of a teenage girl.

  Chapter 8

  Clea stood over Brenna’s bed—a shadow with a seventeen-year-old’s body and a halo of yellow hair. She said nothing, but Brenna knew that Clea was leaving home. Again.

  Brenna was dreaming. She knew she was dreaming. In her memories—those fallible, presyndrome memories—Clea was all different ages and emotions and actions, but in Brenna’s dreams, she was always seventeen and always leaving. “Don’t tell Mom,” Clea said. “I’ll call in a few days—promise.”

  “No you won’t,” Brenna said. “You will get into a car with a man I can’t see. You will lean into the passenger’s side window and tell him you’re ready. He will tell you that you look pretty and call you by a funny name. You will get in the car and the car will drive away and I will never hear your voice again.”

  Clea moved closer. She knelt down beside her, and put her face so close that it was all Brenna could see.

  “Oh my God.”

  Clea’s entire face was wrapped in thick bandages—her eyes and mouth completely hidden, her nose and cheekbones gauze-covered slopes. How can she breathe like that? Brenna reached out to take the bandages off, but Clea slapped her hand away. “Please, Clea,” she said. “Please let me help you.”

  Brenna heard her sister’s voice, vibrating beneath the bandages. “I don’t need to breathe.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Don’t you know yet, Brenna? Shit, man, it’s been twenty-eight years.”

  The section of bandages that covered Clea’s mouth began to tremble. Brenna wondered if she might crumble into bits. Were the bandages the only solid thing about Brenna’s sister? Was Clea the Invisible Man?

  “It’s your fault,” Clea hissed. “You should never have let me go with him. You heard his voice. You heard his deep, devil voice.”

  You look so pretty, Clee-bee . . .

  “Stop,” Brenna whispered.

  “You heard that voice.”

  “No.”

  “You heard it and you did nothing!”

  “No, please!”

  An enormous butterfly wing pushed out of Clea’s bandaged mouth and another emerged from her forehead, and Brenna screamed herself awake.

  “Christ,” she said, once her screaming had subsided and her breathing calmed and she found herself alone in her apartment, hoarse and slick with sweat.

  Brenna got out of bed. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water and gulped it down quickly, listening to the traffic sounds on Thirteenth Street, the dream still rattling in her head. She hated being awake at this hour, hated being alone after a dream like that. She hated being alone, period.

  She thought about turning on some music, but that might make it worse, this feeling of one A.M. in this stretched-out apartment, Brenna the only living thing in it and her bare feet hitting the wood floors too softly as she moved from one end to the other.

  The three days a week Maya was here, Brenna could wake up in the middle of the night and go to her doorw
ay. She’d hear her daughter’s heavy sleep-breathing—that whistling little snore—and it would relax her back to bed.

  She walked back to Maya’s room. Not a good idea now, she knew. Not when there would be no little snore, only the memory of it. Maya was at her friend Larissa’s, after all. Larissa, whose mother had left those two girls alone in the apartment on May 4, 2001—and quite frankly Brenna didn’t give a rat’s ass whether it was just to get her mail or whether it was for three minutes or five minutes or twenty-eight years. You don’t leave little girls alone.

  Maya’s room was dark. No one here to wake, so Brenna flicked the light on, her gaze floating from the manga posters on the walls to the bookshelves, lined with old schoolbooks and adventure stories and graphic novels, the top shelf stacked with filled-up sketch pads—Maya the artist, just like her grandmother, but with Clea’s huge blue eyes that burned right into you, appraising . . . Brenna glanced at the clean white comforter on the bed, the silent bed, everything exactly where her daughter had left it, including the framed photo on the nightstand, the one Brenna never looked at, the photo of Jim and his second wife, Faith.

  The quiet started to roar in Brenna’s ears, so she shut the light off. She walked back to the living room, to Trent’s desk. Even in his absence, her assistant always seemed to be around. It was the cologne. His leather chair, with all those beads and lacy garters draped across the back, tended to trap the scent and hold it, so that even on those rare occasions he took a few vacation days in a row, Brenna couldn’t walk by his desk without feeling a migraine coming on. She didn’t mind it so much now though. Pathetic as it sounded, the cologne smell felt sort of like company.

  She noticed a new babe, pictured at the center of Trent’s bulletin board—a platinum blonde with huge pillowy lips and the type of body that would stand out anywhere, except for maybe an inflatable doll factory. She had to be a porn star, or perhaps a really high-end bachelor party stripper—some kind of professional at any rate, because in the picture a shirtless Trent (nipple rings gleaming) was clutching her chin and licking the side of her face as if it were a giant Creamsicle. Yet the blonde was smiling, her eyes half closed . . . almost seeming to enjoy it. Brenna shook her head. That woman deserves an Academy Award.

  Okay, so maybe the cologne was getting to her a little. Brenna made for the linen closet in the hall. She kept a twenty-pack of Ivory Soap in there, and she grabbed one fast and unwrapped it. She held it up to her face, feeling as if she were on a foreign planet whose atmosphere was made of Trent’s cologne, and the soap was her only chance of survival.

  Oh, that’s much better . . . Brenna closed her eyes and inhaled, and without warning, she was back in her car in front of the Neff house, Nick Morasco leaning into her open window . . .

  “I’m telling you, because it helps to know what you’re up against.”

  He leans in and closes her door, his hand brushing hers, and for a half second, it registers that Nick Morasco smells of Ivory Soap, and that every man should smell of Ivory Soap. The skin warms at Brenna’s neck, down the length of her back. Her gaze flicks onto his shoulders, across the opening of the white cotton shirt, and she’s thinking, While we’re on the subject of up against . . .

  “Cut it out!” Brenna spat out the words, dissipating the memory though her skin still felt warmish from it . . . Unbelievable. That really had passed through her mind tonight, hadn’t it? Brenna’s memory wasn’t capable of playing tricks on her, and so there was no question.

  A tweed-wearing cop who thinks I’m something out of Oliver Sacks. How hard-up can I possibly be?

  Brenna headed over to her own desk and switched on her computer. She picked up the pearl-handled letter opener she kept on her desk—the only thing of her father’s she owned—and twirled it in her hands, waiting.

  Brenna wanted to believe she was at her computer by happenstance. That she had no idea what had brought her into this chair, but as long as she was here and awake, well, maybe she’d get some work done: Look into Carol Wentz, check out some of her interests, that search engine she’d visited, Google her again . . . But Brenna did know why she was on her computer. She’d known that she would be on it as soon as she’d woken up from the dream. Brenna knew the reason as well as she knew her own self, and Carol Wentz had nothing to do with it.

  She heard a group of drunken girls passing by her apartment, their laughter drifting up to her open window, one shouting, “Stop, I can’t breathe!” which reminded her of the dream again, of those bandages pressing against Clea’s face . . .

  Brenna hated her computer for taking so long to boot up, hated herself for being so impatient. She clutched the letter opener. Put it down. Picked it up again . . . But finally, she was able to get online, to go to her e-mail, and do what she’d wanted to do so badly, ever since she’d woken up.

  According to her instant messenger, Jim was online. Of course he was. Jim had always been a night owl. He used to stay up till two, three in the morning writing his articles for the Trumpet, and then wake up at seven for his job. Brenna had thought maybe he’d get to bed earlier now that he was an editor and didn’t have articles due—especially since Faith was a morning show host who left for work at 6 A.M. But as it turned out, Jim still burned the midnight oil. Or so Brenna had learned.

  She’d been instant messaging with her ex-husband, after his new wife went to sleep, nearly every night for the past ten months. Brenna didn’t know if that was healthy or not, but to be honest she didn’t care. Seeing Jim Rappaport in person brought on memories so vivid, she had to turn away from him, couldn’t look him in the eye or hear the timbre of his voice for fear of reliving a fight, or worse yet something tender and wonderful and still real under her skin. It was always Faith who brought Maya to her apartment, Faith she spoke to on the phone, all at Brenna’s request—and as a result, she’d gotten to missing Jim terribly.

  But as words on a screen, Jim worked. They could be friends this way. They could talk, and talking with Jim soothed Brenna, the same way Maya’s breathing soothed her. It was proof he was alive, and it was something more than that.

  Don’t you ever sleep???? she typed.

  His response was immediate: Takes one to know one.

  Yeah, well. I had a bad dream.

  Tell me about it.

  You had a bad dream, too?

  No. E-mail is a pain in the ass—no inflection. I meant: Tell me about YOUR dream.

  Brenna smiled. For the dozenth time, it occurred to her that if they’d forgotten about marriage counseling and tried IMing instead, she and Jim might still be together. That was a pipe dream of course. Jim was better off with Faith, and Brenna was better off with Lee the GPS.

  He wrote: You there? Instant messenger says you stopped typing.

  Yeah, just a sec.

  She wrote out the dream and sent it. After about thirty seconds, Jim started to type.

  The words appeared: Could mean a new beginning.

  Huh?

  The butterfly. Out of the cocoon. You know? A new life where Clea is concerned.

  Possible, I guess, she typed. But I didn’t feel that way.

  How did you feel?

  Brenna thought for a long time. Finally, she tried: Suffocated. Scared. Confused. Like most people who had been through a lot of analysis, Brenna knew all about dreams. The subconscious, as it turned out, was a terrible punster. For instance, the night after Brenna signed her first big-paying client—a Wall Street trader who wanted to track down his slacker younger brother—she’d dreamed that Mr. Howell from Gilligan’s Island was chasing her around a haunted house.

  When she’d told her then-shrink Sheila Shiner about it, Sheila had said, matter-of-factly, “Mr. Howell in a haunted house. You’re afraid of wealth.”

  It was the same thing with this dream of Clea. Somewhere in that surreal scene lurked a bad pun, waiting to be groaned at. A missing woman in bandages, wrapped up in bandages . . .

  Brenna recalled Nelson Wentz last night, sitting in
his office with his face in his hands. “I was so wrapped up in my own life,” he says, his voice muffled by thick palms. “I was so wrapped up I didn’t pay enough attention.” The room smells of Purell, and Brenna thinks, Wrapped up in what? This? She is not watching Nelson, though. She’s looking at the computer screen, at Carol Wentz’s search history. She is staring at the name of the search engine Carol had visited twelve times in the past week, but had never used for a search. The name of the search engine is Chrysalis.org.

  Butterfly wings. Brenna had been dreaming about the Chrysalis search engine.

  Jim’s words appeared on-screen: Do you have a new client? Could the confusion have something to do with work?

  Brenna smiled. How is it in my head? Comfortable in there? Can I get you a drink?

  Great minds . . .

  Brenna typed: Any reason why you would visit a search engine if you weren’t going to search for anything?

  Your missing person visited Chrysalis?

  Yep. How’d you guess?

  If she’d visited Yahoo, you’d have dreamed of cowboys.

  Brenna had checked out Chrysalis.org on Nelson’s computer, and again on her own computer as soon as she’d gotten home, and she’d used it herself once. June 7, 2002. Google had been down for a few hours that day.

  Really, she hadn’t seen anything special about it—a simple homepage that consisted mainly of the search box and a swirly logo that was a little too unicorns-walk-among-us for Brenna’s taste, but nothing to think about for more than a few seconds. To the left of the page, there had been a list of other services, all with “Chrys” as a prefix—ChrysNews, ChrysWeather, ChrysMovies . . .

  Brenna went to Chrysalis, stared at the screen. It looked exactly the way she’d remembered it—of course it did. She told Jim, I’m looking at it now. I still don’t get it.

  Jim typed: Go to the other services, and click on the bottom icon.

  It was simply a plus sign—Brenna hadn’t even noticed it before—and when she clicked on it, ChrysBlogs, ChrysForSingles, and ChrysChats popped up. Brenna typed: Interesting . . .