Brass Ring (12 page)

“She got really pissed off when I told her. How could I say something like that about her dead brother, and I’ve been watching Oprah too much. She actually said that, and I’ve never even watched Oprah once in my life. I found a picture I could show her, but—”

“A picture?”

Jennifer nodded. “My uncle’s old room is still pretty much like it was when he was living in our house, and I remembered about a shoe box in his closet. I went in there and found a picture he’d taken of me and him together.” She squeezed her eyes together, her cheeks flaming. “I nearly got sick when I found it.”

Proof
. Vanessa felt profound relief. It would make everything easier. No one would doubt this girl now, and she could stop doubting herself.

“Where is the picture now?”

“I put it back, though I think I should have burned it. I can’t show it to my mother. She’d blame me for it. I know it. She hardly talks to me. Just shakes her head at me. And my boyfriend’s gone. After he stopped calling, I went sort of numb.” She held up her scabbed arms. “I did this to see if I could still feel anything, and you know what? I couldn’t. It doesn’t matter, though. Nobody believes me anyway.”

“I believe you,” Vanessa said. “And I’ll listen to you. And there are other people who will listen and believe you, other people here who are trained to know how to help people who are going through what you’re going through. And there’s a group here of girls—and some boys, too—who are your age and who’ve had similar experiences, and they’ll believe you. They’ll let you know you’re not alone and you’re not crazy.”

She told Jennifer a little more about the program and used the examining room phone to make an appointment for her with the social worker. She was about to leave the room when the girl said, “I just couldn’t talk to that other doctor.”

Vanessa stopped, her hand on the doorknob. “Well, at least he knew that. We’ll give him a few brownie points for knowing when to come get me, okay?”

“Okay.”

Vanessa stepped back to the table to give the girl a hug, then left the room and walked down the hall to her office. She understood Jennifer’s fears. She no longer identified with every speck of these kids’ pain; it had happened to her so long ago. Still, she understood.

And she had something to offer Jennifer. Before she’d created the AMC program, she couldn’t have offered much. She dreaded returning to that state of professional helplessness.

Walking back to her office, she remembered the phone call she’d been about to make to Walter Patterson. She had spoken to the key members of the network and they’d decided that she would contact Patterson, while the others would begin to pull together case histories and statistics they could use to make their case for funding. Very sympathetic sounding guy, this Patterson. Terri Roos in Sacramento had heard that he particularly liked innovative programs, programs that helped people who weren’t being reached in any other way. That fit their kids, all right.

Once inside her office, she closed the door, took a moment to collect her thoughts, then dialed Patterson’s number on Capitol Hill. She didn’t even hear a ring before someone answered.

“Walter Patterson’s office.” The voice was male, surprising her.

“This is Dr. Vanessa Gray at Lassiter Children’s Hospital in Seattle, Washington,” she said. “I’d like to speak with Senator Patterson, please.”

“What is this regarding?”

Vanessa sat up straighter in her chair. “I’m director of a program for adolescents who were abused as young children, and I understand he’s the person to speak with about generating support for that type of program.”

“Right. Hold on a second.”

Vanessa heard the man ask someone else in the office, “Is Zed in yet?” and her heart froze.

“Excuse me.” She spoke into the phone, but the man must have had the receiver away from his ear. “Excuse me!” She stood up, as if that could give her voice more power.

“Yes?” The voice was back on the line.

“Did I hear you say ‘Zed’?”

“Oh, right. Walter Patterson. He goes by Zed.”

Vanessa said nothing. She couldn’t have spoken if she wanted to.

“He’s in,” the man said. “If you hold a moment, I’ll see if he’s free to pick up now.”

“No,” Vanessa said quickly. “No. I’ll call back.”

She hung up the phone, staring at it as if it were some futuristic contraption that had carried her into the twilight zone.

Zed Patterson.

Could there be more than one man with that name?

VIENNA

IT HAD BEEN A
week since Claire’s meeting with Randy and nearly three weeks since the incident on the bridge, but she was still having trouble keeping thoughts of Margot at bay. Each time she caught herself recalling that night in Harpers Ferry, she tried to substitute some other thought—about work, or Jon, or Susan. But Margot kept creeping in.

She’d put the Chopin CD in its case and tucked it into the box of old records in the family-room closet. But just yesterday, while on hold during a phone call to a physician’s office, the nocturne filled her ears. She thought of hanging up on the music but gave into it instead. She could hum along with it now. She knew the subtle shifts in the melody and could anticipate the parts that would make her throat tighten. There was a conspiracy afoot, she thought. Margot didn’t want to let her go.

She didn’t talk about Margot anymore, though, and she tried to be her old self around Jon. He didn’t know that she occasionally woke up in the middle of the night with a start, imagining herself on the edge of the bridge. And she didn’t tell him that once, before she’d gotten out of bed in the morning, she saw again that bizarre image of smooth white porcelain smeared with blood. There was pain accompanying the image this time, a searing pain deep in her gut. She lay very still until the pain passed and the vision faded, and within minutes she had convinced herself that she had dreamt them both.

And then the call came from Randy.

He reached her early in the morning at her office and began by thanking her for giving him the opportunity to talk about Margot. He’d found her very easy to open up to, he said, and meeting with her had helped him in a way he hadn’t known he needed. Now he felt ready to hear about his sister’s last moments on the bridge. Would Claire please have lunch with him?

She felt like screaming,
No! I want to be free of your damn sister
! Yet she had asked him to share so much painful, personal information. She couldn’t possibly turn down his request for her to do the same.

Besides, there was a pull to see him she couldn’t quite deny to herself. Listening to that rich, resonant voice over the phone made her remember the odd comfort she’d felt with him, the sense of knowing him well, when in truth she didn’t know him at all.

She waited until that evening to tell Jon. They were eating pasta at the kitchen table when she finally dared to bring it up. “Randy Donovan called to ask if I’d meet him for lunch.” She poured dressing on her salad, keeping her eyes on the task, but she could feel Jon watching her.

“Lunch?” he asked. “Why?”

“He wants to know what Margot said to me on the bridge. I’d rather not have to talk to him again, but he was so nice to me that I feel an obligation.”

Jon swirled a forkful of linguine in his spoon. “Wouldn’t it be easier to tell him over the phone?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing you dump on someone.” She felt the eggshells beneath her feet. There was tension in the room, and she didn’t know how to diffuse it. Jon was still swirling the pasta, trancelike. “Are you upset about this?” she asked.

He sighed and set down his fork. He reached across the corner of the table to hold her hand, and she folded her fingers around his. “I thought you were getting over this whole Margot thing,” he said. “I’m afraid he’s going to open it up for you all over again.”

“I’m fine, Jon. I can handle it.”

“I hope so.” He squeezed her fingers before drawing his hand away.

Again, the tension fell between them, this time in the form of silence. Claire tried to eat but found it hard to swallow.

Finally, Jon spoke again. “When are you supposed to see him?”

“Tomorrow.”

She and Jon usually spent their lunch breaks with each other, either in his office or hers. Occasionally they went out to a restaurant, sometimes alone, sometimes with colleagues. And every once in a while, she would meet Amelia or another friend for lunch and Jon would go out with Pat. But this was different. She felt as if she were breaking some unspoken covenant between them.

“We have a meeting with Tom Gardner at two tomorrow,” Jon said.

“I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

Silence again. Jon took a sip of water, then said, “How about a vacation?”

She was caught by surprise. “What?”

He started swirling linguine again. “Someplace warm. Hawaii? The Caribbean? We could get away for a week or so.”

She was amazed he would suggest going away when they were in the throes of planning the retreat. But the idea of escape was extremely seductive. Hawaii was thousands of miles from Harpers Ferry and Margot and the bridge.

“God, yes.” She smiled. “I’ll start packing.”

Jon laughed, and the sound was warm and wonderful and all too rare these days. “Okay,” he said. “Think about where you’d like to go and when we can carve out some time, and let’s do it.”

TRAFFIC WAS HEAVY AS
she drove to the Chain Bridge Theater at noon the following day. She’d suggested they eat at a restaurant midway between her office and the Fishmonger, but Randy said he’d prefer meeting at the theater. No one used it during the day, he said, and he often took his lunch break there. “After working in a restaurant all day, I’d just as soon spend my time off someplace else,” he said. “Tell you what. If you’ll meet me at the theater, I’ll provide the lunch.”

She stopped at a red light about a mile from the theater and glanced in her sideview mirror to see it completely filled with green. Drawing in a sharp breath, she turned quickly to look out the window. She expected to see someone in a kelly green shirt leaning against her car, but all she could see was the white line in the road, the side of the red sedan stopped behind her, and the pale gray light of the midday sky.

She looked into the mirror again to see the rear end of a car traveling in the opposite direction. The green was gone.
You are losing it, Harte
. She checked her rearview mirror. The woman in the red sedan was applying lipstick.

The light changed, and when she stepped on the accelerator, the muscles in her legs were trembling.

Randy was in the pew where they had first met. The clear glass of the chapel’s very tall, narrow, arched windows let in the only light. The small building seemed far more a church than a theater today, its stage hidden behind heavy, royal blue curtains.

Randy turned as she walked down the aisle. He smiled and stood up. “Thanks for meeting me here,” he said, helping her off with her coat.

She sat down. “You’re welcome.”

He was wearing a sweater that matched the blue of the curtains. “As I was waiting for you, I realized I couldn’t possibly talk about Margot in a restaurant,” he said. “I need the peacefulness of this place. The privacy.”

Again she had that sense of knowing him from somewhere else. She wanted to touch his arm, squeeze it, to let him know she understood, but she locked her hands in her lap, telling herself that the odd warmth and affection she felt for him made no sense in light of their one brief meeting.

“How about lunch?” He lifted a basket from the floor and set it between them on the pew. Claire smelled something smoky that made her mouth water;

“I have wine or club soda.” Randy reached inside the basket. “Wasn’t sure what you’d prefer.”

“Wine,” she said, although she never drank wine at lunch.

He poured them each a glass of wine, then drew two large, elegantly prepared plates from the basket. Each plate was weighted down with big clumps of tuna resting on leaves of romaine and nestled beside red grapes and sourdough rolls.

“Smoked tuna all right?” he asked, handing her one of the plates.

“That sounds wonderful.”

He gave her a fork, along with a cream-colored linen napkin, and Claire pulled the plastic wrap from the plate and took a bite of tuna.

“This is delicious,” she said. She thought guiltily of Jon eating his tuna salad at the desk in his office.

“Thanks.” Randy leaned back against the pew and rested his plate on his knees. “Well, can you eat and talk at the same time?”

She nodded. “What is it you’d like to know?”

He took a sip of his wine. “I want to know exactly what happened that night in Harpers Ferry.”

Claire looked across the theater at the heavy blue curtains, thinking back to the snowstorm on the bridge. She didn’t have to reach too deeply into her memory, despite the energy she had put into blocking that night from her mind. Every movement of Margot’s body, every word she had spoken, was as clear as if it had occurred only minutes before.

She spoke quietly, telling him about her first glimpse of Margot. “Once I realized it was a person I was looking at—a woman who was undoubtedly in some sort of distress—I had to go out to her.”

“Why didn’t your husband go with you?”

“He uses a wheelchair. He wouldn’t have been able to get out of the car with the snow and all.”

“Oh,” Randy said. “I didn’t know.”

Claire described walking across the bridge to reach Margot and not being able to make herself heard until she stepped out onto the platform.

“I still can’t believe you did that.” Randy shook his head. “I don’t know anyone that brave.”

Claire ate a few grapes before responding. “I didn’t think about what I was doing,” she said. “Besides, the platform was fairly wide. I knew that as long as I held on to the railing, I’d be fine.”

“If you say so. Go on. How did she look? How was she dressed?”

Claire described the tattered clothing, the too-short pants, the wet tennis shoes, the coat suited more for spring than winter, and Randy grew agitated next to her, rubbing his hand back and forth across his beard.