Stay With Me: A Brenna Spector Novel of Suspense Page 8

  But even as she typed the words, there was something about Maya creating the Snapfish post that didn’t add up. Yes, Maya lived with Brenna for half the week and had access to both the photograph and the police papers. Yes, she’d let crazy DeeDee Walsh and her knife into the apartment on December 21 because DeeDee had claimed to be her long-lost Aunt Clea. But Brenna doubted Maya had been very happy to see her, even before she’d pulled out the knife. Brenna was having another memory now. December 19, two days before DeeDee, Brenna had woken up from a nightmare about her sister to find her daughter in her room . . .

  “Mom?”

  Brenna feels a hand on her shoulder. Clea shifting into focus, into . . .

  “Mom.”

  “Maya.”

  Maya steps back, her face scrunching up, hands grasping each other. “Uh . . . You told me to wake you up at eight.”

  “Right,” Brenna says. She struggles into a sitting position. Maya’s face shifts into focus. “Was I talking in my sleep?”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “Sorry. Weird dream.”

  “About Clea?”

  “Good guess.” Brenna’s eyes feel sandy. She runs a hand over them.

  “Hey, listen, Mom?”

  “Yeah?”

  Maya sits down on the edge of the bed. She does it very lightly; Brenna can barely feel the weight of her daughter. She picks at a fingernail. Brenna watches her. God, sometimes she looks so like a little girl.

  Maya says, “What happens if you do find her?”

  “Lula Belle?”

  “Clea.”

  Maya’s head is bowed and Brenna feels the urge to comfort her. She moves next to her, smoothes her soft blonde hair. “That’s a good question. I’d want to find out if she’s okay, first.”

  “Sure. But then what?”

  Brenna shrugs. “Talk to her, I guess.”

  “What if Grandma is right about Clea, though? What if she’s crazy and destructive and stuff?”

  Brenna puts a hand on her shoulder. “Maya,” she says. “Grandma says a lot of things to make herself feel better.”

  “How would it make her feel better to say her own daughter is a nut job?”

  “Maybe it helps her to stop wondering why Clea ran away and never called.”

  “Okay, I get that . . . But Mom? If you do find Clea . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do I have to talk to her?”

  Brenna touched Clea’s diary—the diary Maya wanted nothing to do with on the day it had arrived in their mailbox in a plain brown envelope. Oh great, Mom, she’d said when Brenna had ripped open the package. Something else to help you live in the past.

  Maya didn’t want to find Clea. She had enough trouble with Brenna’s obsession with her long-lost sister as it was, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that her grandma had fictionalized her into some kind of bogeyman. Why would Maya post a picture of Clea on a missing persons page? Why would she pretend to be Brenna in order to glean more information about her?

  Whoever did post Clea’s photo had to have some degree of obsession—with Brenna, with her search, not to mention an investigative thirst that rivaled Brenna’s own, and a need to take that search into their own hands, to take control of it.

  Brenna knew someone like that—someone whose need to protect sometimes struck her as a need to control. Someone who had been in Brenna’s apartment several times within the last couple of weeks and who had such intimate knowledge of the police papers that he’d known what had happened to Brenna’s father, weeks before she’d read about it herself.

  Her own words echoed in her head. It could be a he. Could be anybody. And a feeling struck her—the same one she often had at the moment she solved a case—as though a thin skin had been peeled off everything—all of it suddenly, unexpectedly clear . . . And so much less pretty.

  Brenna grabbed her phone, clicked on her text messages, scrolled through them until she found that last one from Nick Morasco:

  I’m here if you need me.

  Brenna swallowed hard, clicked reply, and typed, Can you come over? We need to talk.

  6

  Life is like a jigsaw puzzle, Sophia Castillo’s mother used to tell her. One piece goes missing, the whole thing loses its meaning.

  At the time, when she was young and unbowed, Sophia had thought the analogy overblown, especially considering her mother had used it when talking about Sophia’s father—a useless puzzle piece, even during the few short years he’d been around.

  For years, Sophia had believed herself far more resilient than her mother. She had allowed friends and lovers into her life knowing full well they’d eventually leave it, never feeling their loss so fully as her own capacity to survive it.

  But then she’d given birth to Robert. Looking into her baby’s eyes blinking their first blinks in the bright hospital light, feeling the slick weight of him against her chest, Sophia had experienced a love so overwhelming, it changed how she looked at the world. He had reached out to her, her Robert—tiny fingers grasping for her hair. Sophia had held him close, and in his heartbeat, she had found meaning. I’ll do anything for you, she had thought. Anything.

  And then came January 16, 2003—the one date she would always remember. On January 16, 2003, Sophia’s then-husband Christopher had left her, taking Robert with him. Robert had just turned thirteen—tall for his age, as Sophia had always been. He had his father’s big brown eyes and teeth that stuck out and a whole closet full of those ridiculous baggy pants the boys liked to wear back then, baggy shorts that came down past his knees and voluminous Yankees T-shirts. Jeter was his favorite.

  Seven years had passed since then, but Robert still lived in Sophia’s mind in his baggy pants, that shy, gap-toothed smile, forever thirteen. A missing puzzle piece, Sophia’s whole life collapsing in around it.

  Sometimes, now for instance, on the seventh anniversary of Robert’s disappearance, Sophia would close her eyes and try hard to envision the twenty-year-old man he had become. Did he still love baseball? Had he learned to tolerate raisins, or did he still pick them out of his oatmeal cookies and line them up on his plate? Had he gotten over his Batman obsession, or did he still have that tottering stack of comic books he used to keep in the back of his closet, and if so, had he taken them with him to college? Was he in college?

  Did he ever think about his mother?

  Sophia’s eyes started to well up. She swatted at them with the back of her wrist, hating her memory and her unanswered questions and her whole caved-in life.

  Stop it. Stay focused.

  The building loomed over her—a blocky prewar she’d probably passed a hundred times within the past year, but had never thought about, not until an hour ago, when she’d followed Maya here.

  She grasped the steering wheel and gazed up, wondering which apartment Maya was in and how she could possibly get her to leave it, alone.

  Not that she needed to. It didn’t have to happen tonight, on the actual anniversary. Sophia took very little stock in that type of symbolism, and if Maya left this building tomorrow morning dazed and sleepless after a night with her new friends, if she left alone to walk home, then that would be fine.

  An eye for an eye, an only child for an only child. Harsh words, yes. But life was harsh, and it was unfair, too. And it had no meaning unless you put it there yourself.

  When Robert was very young—five or six maybe—the three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner. Robert had been unusually quiet, and when Sophia turned to look at him, she saw that his eyes were closed. Sophia asked him what he was doing, and he replied, “Imagining.”

  “What are you imagining, honey?”

  “I’m imagining that the kitchen floor is a cloud. And we live on it. And you and me and Daddy are the only people in the world.”

  Sophia let herself rem
ember, but only for a short time. Brenna Spector’s thirteen-year-old daughter was somewhere in that building and so Sophia needed to wake up, leave the past behind. She needed to focus on the here and now. An only child for an only child . . .

  She turned off the ignition. Listened to the car go quiet. Waited.

  “You okay?” said Nick Morasco. He was standing in Brenna’s office area, looking not so much like her friend of three months or her lover of three weeks but like a stranger at a memorial service, paying respects.

  Was Nick Morasco a stranger? He’d barely been in her life for a season, but facing your own mortality can make you cut to the chase relationship-wise—a big mistake for anyone, particularly for someone who won’t ever be able to forget it.

  Since meeting Nick, though, Brenna had faced her own mortality three times—and suffice it to say she’d jump-cut to the chase three weeks ago. First time she’d been with a man since May 8, 2006, and it hadn’t felt like a mistake at all . . . Quite the opposite actually. Until now. Until the missing persons page on Snapfish.

  Waiting for him to show up, Brenna had run so many scenarios through her mind, searching for any reasonable excuse Nick might have had to go into her drawer, pull out her personal photo, and post it on an obscure missing persons Web page, then masquerade as Brenna once he had a reply. The best she could come up with were He wants to help, He doesn’t think I can handle this, and He wants to protect me. She hated all three.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Are you sure? Because . . .” His voice trailed off. Or maybe she just stopped listening.

  Brenna recalled the first time she’d laid eyes on him—September 30 in this very office in those glasses of his and with that messy hair, such a surprise for a cop. Wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches. His dad’s jacket. Brenna hadn’t known at the time that the jacket had been his father’s, but she knew it now and that knowledge not only brought her back into the room with him, it softened her feelings a little—the closet full of his late dad’s clothes, the soft, myopic eyes, the dated references he kept making (a Jimmy Hoffa joke? Really?) the way he sometimes stumbled over words when he got excited, as though his brain was moving faster than his mouth. The chinks in the armor drew Brenna to him still, but the armor itself, the shining armor . . . that was what pushed her away. “Don’t you think I can take care of myself?”

  Brenna hadn’t meant to say that. Not so soon anyway, with his overcoat still on and “Hello” barely out of their mouths.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Let me take your coat.”

  “Brenna . . .”

  “I can’t do this in here.”

  He gave her his coat. Let her lead him into the living room and sit him down on the couch. “I didn’t go searching for those papers,” he said.

  God, he thought she was still angry about the police papers. “I know.”

  “And the only reason why I read them is that Grady Carlson told me what they said. He said he helped your mother cover up your father’s death.”

  “Suicide.”

  “He didn’t say suicide.”

  “It was in the police papers.”

  He looked at her. “I know. But Detective Carlson didn’t say it.”

  Brenna closed her eyes. “Nick,” she said. “Nick.”

  “I’m sorry, Brenna. I really am. I guess your mother thought it would be better for you and your sister not to know the truth. But I don’t understand that logic any better than you do.”

  “My father . . . That isn’t what I want to talk about.”

  “It isn’t?”

  Brenna sat down next to him. She slipped off his glasses and got close enough to him so he could see her without them. She could read him this way. She’d done it before—on December 29—and the knowledge that she was repeating the same behavior made her feel more comfortable.

  “I know about the Snapfish page,” Brenna said. “I’m not going to ask you why you did it because I think I know. I think you’ve got caring about me confused with taking care of me. I think you’ve had so much loss in your life that’s been beyond your control that you have the urge to take control of other people’s lives, solve their problems for them. It’s why you’re a cop. It’s why you open doors for me and you come running even when you’re not asked to come and you tell me I should call you for backup in situations I’m perfectly capable of handling on my own.”

  “Brenna . . .”

  “I understand all that. I get why you posted Clea’s picture. I get why you didn’t tell me about it—you probably assumed no one would reply, and you didn’t want to get my hopes up. All that feels like trying to help. But you crossed the line with Alan Dufresne.”

  She stared into his eyes, searching.

  “What?” he said.

  “Why did you pretend to be me, Nick? What were you trying to do?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Brenna moved closer still. On December 29, she’d watched him like this after he’d drifted off on her and she’d noticed it again—that look that would spring into his eyes every so often.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing.”

  She slips off his glasses and moves closer, so close she can feel his breath on her face. He starts to kiss her, but she holds him off.

  “I’ve seen this look in your eyes before.”

  “When?”

  “November 20, 10 P.M.; December 19, 8 P.M.; December 23 . . .”

  “Ask a stupid question.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Are you interrogating me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Do you have to look at me like that?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks down and sighs and Brenna feels it—a softening, a surrender. He looks back up at her. “What do you want to know?”

  Nick had told her then about his son, Matthew, who was always on his mind but about whom he never spoke. Matthew, who’d died of SIDS at just seven months old and whose death had broken up Nick’s marriage and then stayed with him always, the ghost of his own failure to act, to see, to help . . .

  He’d given her that. He’d shown her what hurt him most. He’d said, I trust you.

  “Nick . . .”

  “I swear to God, Brenna. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said now. “Who is Alan Dufresne? What Snapfish page?”

  She looked for that glint, but she couldn’t find it. There was no softening in his eyes. No surrender. She ran a hand through his hair, confusion barreling through her. She wasn’t entirely sure whether she believed him. But she did know that she wanted to believe him, very badly. For now that was enough.

  “I believe you.”

  “Good. Now can you explain?”

  She did. She explained everything. And then she showed him the Snapfish posting.

  “Why?”

  “I guess someone else wants to find Clea,” she said.

  He shook his head. “And thinks they’ll have more credibility if they use your name?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who would do something like that?”

  “Someone else with access to that picture . . . which is in my dresser drawer, so . . .”

  “No other copies?”

  “None that I know of.”

  A look passed over his face, a deepening concern. “Well . . . That narrows it down, I guess.”

  “My point.”

  He cleared his throat. “I can subpoena Snapfish for you. Find the IP address it was posted from.”

  “That takes weeks, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded. “No way around it.”

  “Thanks. Go ahead.” Trent was
, of course, a “way around it,” but Brenna didn’t say that. The way Trent got information for her wasn’t always entirely legal and usually involved hacking, and, as far as Nick Morasco went, she’d learned that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was the best approach when discussing the activities of her assistant.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “All of this. The past few days.”

  She shook her head. “I’m just trying to figure out who else would know that about my father.” She gave him a long look.

  He met it without flinching. “Your mother?”

  Brenna’s heart sped up, but just for an instant. “My mother wouldn’t be able to post something on a Web site,” she said. “She doesn’t even know how to use e-mail.”

  “How do you know that?” he said. “How do you know anything about anyone—other than what they want you to know?”

  She gazed at him for several moments, her reserve softening still. Would he say something like that if he had anything to hide? “You want to order in some dinner?” she said.

  Then her phone rang. She recognized the number and answered fast. “Alan?”

  “I just thought you might like to know, I got another e-mail from BrennaNSpector.”

  Brenna kept her eyes on Morasco. “What did it say?”

  “She’ll be out of touch for a little while.” He sighed out the words. “She hopes she can drop a line eventually about where to send the bag, but for now, just hang on to it. And don’t tell anyone. This is so confusing, by the way. Should I be referring to her as she? Or they? Or you?”

  “Out of touch?” Brenna said. “Why?”

  “You’re gonna love this one.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. Just for sheer absurdity.”

  Outside Brenna’s apartment, the sky opened up, rain smashing against the windows. From the way it had felt outside, Brenna would have figured on snow.

  “Wow,” Alan said. “You hear that rain?”

  Brenna nodded. “Weird weather. And speaking of weird . . .”

  “Right,” Alan said. “BrennaNSpector.”