Puppet (38 page)

“Mr. Price, yes,” Hayley agrees, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “He was a lovely man.”

“He died eleven years ago.” Amanda struggles to contain the tears that have rushed to her eyes.

“Yes. I read in the paper that your mother was a widow. I’m really very sorry for your loss.”

“Why should you be sorry?”

“Because I liked your father very much. He was always exceptionally kind to me.”

“None of which explains how you met Rodney Tureck,” Amanda says, surprised by the impatience in her voice.

“Does it matter?”

“It definitely matters.”

Hayley nods, takes a moment to compose her thoughts. “I met him when I was coming home from school one afternoon. I was carrying all these books, and I tripped over a crack in the sidewalk in front of your house, and the books went flying off in all directions, and suddenly there he was, on his hands and knees, picking up everything for me.” She stops, as if trying to recall the precise order of the events. “Anyway, he was on his way to see your mother, and I mentioned I often babysat for her, and we chatted a bit, and he cracked some jokes, and I laughed, and I don’t know, we just kind of connected.” She tucks her hair behind her right ear, smiles sheepishly. “I was in my rebellious teenage phase. The idea of an older man—one who listened to me and took my opinions seriously—well, that was very appealing. And he was very charming,” she continues, the same word Gwen Price had used earlier. “I was quite flattered by the attention.”

Amanda thinks of Sean Travis, sympathizes with what Hayley is saying in spite of herself. “You obviously saw him again after that afternoon.”

“He’d call when I was babysitting. At first, he pretended to be phoning to speak to your mother, but after a
while, he admitted he was calling to speak to me. He said he enjoyed our little talks, that I was refreshing and sweet and delightful, all the things I was desperate to hear. We started meeting, secretly of course. He said people wouldn’t understand, and he was right.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“That I was beautiful, that I was wise beyond my years, that I was an old soul who made him feel young, that we were destined to be together. Stuff like that.”

“He convinced you to run away with him?”

“He didn’t have to do much convincing. By that time, I was crazy mad in love with him.” Hayley shakes her head. “It’s funny because he wasn’t much to look at. Not really. But when he looked into your eyes, he made you feel as if you were the most beautiful woman on earth, the only person in the world who mattered.”

“So you ran off to England.”

“Yes. It was terribly romantic. And surprisingly easy.”

“Did he ever say anything about my mother?” Amanda asks.

The question seems to catch the other woman off guard. “Like what?”

“Like what he was doing coming to visit her, why he was calling?”

Hayley takes a deep breath, releases it with deliberate slowness, as if she is blowing smoke from a cigarette. She seems reticent about answering the question. “He said he had business with her.”

“What kind of business?”

“The unfinished kind,” Hayley says after another deep exhalation.

“Meaning?”

“Look, I really don’t think you want to get into this.”

“I think I do.”

“It’s not going to help your mother.”

“What kind of unfinished business?” Amanda repeats.

Hayley rises from the chair, walks to the window, stares into the darkening sky. “He said your mother was a thief, that she’d stolen a great deal of money from him. He asked me to have a look around the house when I was babysitting, see if I could find anything.”

Amanda feels a sharp stab of pain to her chest, realizes she is holding her breath. “Like what?”

“Bank books, safety-deposit-box keys, stuff like that.”

“And did you?”

“No. I didn’t feel right about it. I told him I couldn’t do it.”

“And what was his response?”

“He said it just proved how sweet and lovely a girl I was, and that it made him love me even more.”

“What a guy.” Amanda buries her head in her hands, trying to push away the headache gnawing at her temples.

“What happened after you got to England?” Ben asks.

“Rodney Tureck became John Mallins,” Hayley answers. “We moved around for a few years. Eventually we settled in Sutton.”

“North of Nottingham,” Amanda says quietly, massaging the bridge of her nose.

“He bought a small shop, we got married, started a family.”

“Lived happily ever after,” Amanda says, louder than she’d intended.

“Pretty much,” Hayley says.

Amanda looks over at Ben. He looks back at her. “Why didn’t you tell any of this to the police?” they ask together.

“How could I?”

“How could you not?” Amanda asks.

“Think about it,” Hayley tells her. “What was I supposed to tell them? That twenty-five years ago, when I was still a minor, I ran off with my neighbor’s ex-husband, that we changed our names and spent years hiding from the authorities, that my husband’s real name was Rodney Tureck, and that he was probably wanted by the police? Why would I tell them that?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s the truth?” Amanda asks in return. The truth, she thinks. What a concept.

“When the police first told me that John had been killed, I was too stunned to say anything. John had gone out first thing that morning. The children and I had been waiting for him to come back to the hotel. There was a knock on the door, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s strange, I guess John forgot his key.’ So I asked, ‘Who’s there?’ Because John was a stickler for never opening the door unless you were absolutely sure who was on the other side. And this very deep voice answered, ‘Mrs. Mallins, it’s the police.’ Well, my first thought was that John had been arrested, that they’d discovered his real identity, that they’d come to arrest me too. A million thoughts. But none of them the right one. Have you ever noticed that? That you project ahead a million possibilities, and none of them is ever right? That the reality is always the one thing you haven’t thought of?”

Amanda nods. She knows exactly what Hayley is talking about.

“When the police told me that John was dead, that he’d been gunned down in the hotel lobby, I insisted they’d made a mistake. They asked me a million questions, what we were doing in Toronto, if we knew anyone in the city, if I could think of any reason why someone might have targeted my husband. I just kept repeating what John had told me to say if anyone ever asked why we were here: that we were here on holiday.”

“And when you found out the woman who shot your husband was Gwen Price?”

“I’m not sure what I thought. I guess I assumed she’d tell them the whole story.”

“And when she didn’t?”

Hayley swallows, pushes several lifeless strands of hair away from her face. “Well, it was too late then, really. What was I going to do? Tell the police I’d been lying? That my whole life was a lie? Think about my children,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper, looking toward the closed door of the bedroom. “They’d just lost their father. To learn that he wasn’t the man they thought he was, that the woman who shot him was his ex-wife, a woman I used to babysit for. I was so afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“That the police would take my children away from me.”

“Nobody is going to take your children away from you,” Ben assures her.

“They’re all I’ve got,” Hayley says, wiping away a fresh parade of tears.

“Nobody’s going to take them away from you,” Ben says again.

“After we got married, I got pregnant straightaway,”
Hayley says, speaking more to herself than to either Ben or Amanda. “But then, four months into the pregnancy, I suffered a miscarriage. And then several more in the years that followed. And then there were two stillbirths. That was the worst. To carry a child full term, for it to be so perfectly formed, for it not to be breathing. I can’t begin to describe … I’m so anxious to take my children back to England.”

“Why do you think Gwen Price hasn’t told the police the truth?” Amanda asks, interrupting the other woman’s reverie.

“I don’t know. Maybe
why
she shot him isn’t really very important.”

“And you’re not at all curious?”

Hayley shakes her head. “They shared a past,” she says, as if this is reason enough. For several seconds, the ramifications of that simple sentence ricochet off the walls like tiny stones. “I’d like you to go now,” she says. “Please. My children will be beside themselves with worry.”

“I guess we’ve said enough for one night,” Ben agrees, as slowly, reluctantly, Amanda pushes herself to her feet.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about any of this, are you?” Hayley asks, following them to the door. “I mean, it would just open up a whole can of worms, and it wouldn’t do anybody any good. Clearly your mother feels the same way. Please,” she says, reaching out, her hand closing over Amanda’s as she reaches for the door. “Please, Mandy.”

The name drops from the other woman’s lips onto Amanda’s skin, like acid. It burns through her flesh and into her brain, the accompanying hiss obliterating all
other sounds. Somewhere in the distance, Amanda hears Ben’s voice. “We’ll be in touch,” she thinks she hears him say.

Please, Mandy.

Somewhere far away, a door closes. Another one opens.

Please, Mandy.

“Are you okay?” someone is asking.

“Fine,” someone answers back.

“You’re sure?” The voice is louder, closer.

“What?”

Please, Mandy.

“I asked if you’re okay,” Ben says.

Amanda snaps back into the present, as if propelled there by an elastic band. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” she says, stepping inside a newly arrived elevator and pushing the button for the lobby. “Just because I find out that the one nice memory I have of my mother isn’t about my mother at all? That it’s about the babysitter! The fucking girl next door. Except that this girl next door was fucking my mother’s ex-husband.”

“You’re not okay,” Ben says.

“I’m fine.”

“Fucking fine or just fine?”

She smiles. “I’m fine, Ben. Or I will be once I get something to eat.”

“Okay. Why don’t we go grab some dinner? Try to figure out our next move.”

“You think we have any?”

He shrugs, his cell phone ringing inside his jacket.

“They share a past,” Amanda repeats wondrously as he answers it. “I guess that’s as good a motive for murder as any.”

“Hi,” Ben says into the phone, angling his body slightly away from her, so that she knows it’s Jennifer on the other end even before she hears echoes of the other woman’s voice. “What? When was this?”

“What is it?” Amanda asks, alarmed by the change in his voice.

“Is she all right?”

“Is who all right?”

“Okay.… Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it.… Of course. I’ll call you later.”

“What was that about?” Amanda asks as Ben returns the phone to the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

“Your mother tried to kill herself,” he says quietly, without further adornment.

“What? How?”

“Apparently she swallowed a bunch of pills.”

“Pills? Where would she get pills?”

“I don’t know. They’ve taken her to Etobicoke General.”

“Can we see her?”

The elevator doors open and Ben leads Amanda through the lobby. “We can try.”

B
Y
now the drive to the west end of the city is getting so familiar, Amanda thinks she could do it in her sleep, although she doubts she’ll ever sleep again. Her head feels like a glass jar full of old coins—cumbersome and heavy, in danger of cracking, of dubious value. Thoughts, like pennies, rattle through her brain, roll across her line of vision: her mother is crazy/her mother is dying; her mother shot a total stranger/she shot her ex-husband; Hayley Mallins is the proverbial girl next door/the girl next door has been lying to everyone since day one.

So what makes Amanda think she’s telling the truth now?

Amanda keeps her eyes peeled out the window, staring through the darkness, and concentrating all her energy on the host of new condominiums sprouting up like mushrooms along the lakeshore. So much has happened to the city in the last eight years, she thinks, in a concerted effort not to think anything else. If she lets her guard down, allows anything other than the dark sky, the bright lights, the traffic, the seemingly endless construction, into her thoughts for even one minute, her head will surely implode.

Her mother swallowed a bunch of pills. Why? Where did she get them? What made her do it?

“Lots of new buildings,” she says, her voice unnaturally loud, as if trying to scare away unwanted musings.

“The city just keeps growing,” Ben says in the same booming tones, as if his head is similarly afflicted.

Do you think my mother will be all right?
“Do you think all this growth is a good thing?”
Do you think there’s a chance my mother might die?

“I guess you can’t stop progress,” Ben says.

It was the babysitter, and not her mother, who dangled her like a puppet from her arms.

“I was never a big fan of suburbs,” Amanda says.

“Which is funny, don’t you think?” Ben says, half-statement, half-question.

Did her mother even know that her former husband had run off with the babysitter? Would she have cared?

“What’s funny?”

“Well, isn’t Florida pretty much one suburb after another?”

Amanda pictures the southeastern coast of the aptly named Sunshine State, sees one small oceanside community melding effortlessly into the next: Hobe Sound, Jupiter, Juno Beach, Palm Beach Gardens, Palm Beach proper, Hypoluxo, Manalapan, Delray … “I guess.”

Puppet, puppet. Who’s my little puppet?

Not her mother.

The babysitter.

Amanda grabs her head, presses the sides of her temples. Talk about false memories.

“Headache?”

“A doozy.”

“You have anything for it in your purse?”

Amanda shakes her head. A mistake. It shakes back.