Breaking the Silence (33 page)

T
HEIR FLIGHT ARRIVED LATE IN
W
ASHINGTON AFTER A FEW LONG
delays, and Laura was distressed. It was already five. It would be at least an hour before they got to the lake house, where Dylan promised to watch Emma for her, and another half hour for her to drive to the retirement home.

She had spoken little to Dylan on the plane, consumed with her own thoughts, and he seemed to understand. He held her hand and let her doze against his shoulder without pushing her to tell him what was going through her mind. She wouldn’t have been able to describe her thoughts in a coherent fashion, anyway.

The sky was darkening by the time Laura arrived at the retirement home, and Sarah looked surprised to find her at her door.

“Hi, Sarah,” Laura said. “I know it’s late. But I really need to see you.”

“Isn’t it too dark for a walk?” Sarah asked, looking behind her to check the window.

“Yes, it is. We’ll have to just sit and talk, all right?” She could hear the television blaring. “Am I interrupting a TV program?”

“No,” Sarah said. “That’s all right. You come in and find a seat.”

She watched Sarah sit down on the sofa and fumble with the buttons of the remote control until she found the correct one to turn off the TV.

“Sarah.” Laura sat next to her. “I need you to tell me about Janie. About what happened to her.”

“No.” Sarah shook her head.

“Yes,” Laura said firmly. “I know it’s hard to talk about. I know that. But it’s very important that you tell me.” For an instant, she thought she saw something of herself in Sarah’s face. She looked down at her own fingers, then at Sarah’s where they ran nervously over the buttons of the remote. She and Sarah both had slender hands and white-tipped nails. “Sarah, please tell me.”

Sarah’s lips turned down at the corners. “It’s sad,” she said.

“I know it is,” Laura said, more gently. “But I need to know what happened to her.”

Sarah stared at the blank television screen, then suddenly sighed and sat up taller on the sofa. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

Sarah, 1960

It was late March, and the month was going out like a lion. There was a nip in the air and the wind blew around Sarah’s legs as she walked home from the hospital where she’d been working for the past few months. She was looking forward to getting inside her apartment and heating up the stew she’d made the night before for dinner. Janie was nearly two now, and she loved picking the vegetables out of the stew and popping them into her mouth.

Turning the corner onto her block, Sarah saw a woman walk from the entrance of her apartment building to a car parked in the street. It looked like Mrs. Berenworth, the sitter she’d hired to take care of Janie, but that was impossible. Yet, wasn’t that the kerchief she wore? And wasn’t that her car?

She started to run. “Mrs. Berenworth!” she called. “Wait!”

The woman had the driver’s side door open and was about to get in, but she looked up at the sound of Sarah’s voice.

“Hello, Mrs. Tolley.” She smiled, tucking a strand of her gray, windblown hair into her kerchief.

Sarah slowed, out of breath. “Why are you out here?” she asked. “Where’s Janie?”

“Oh, there’s a surprise for you inside,” Mrs. Berenworth teased.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.”

“No, please tell me.” Sarah wanted to wring her neck. “You’re upsetting me.”

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Berenworth conceded. “No need to trouble yourself. Your brother’s inside with her.”

“My
brother?
”

“Yes. He showed up to visit you as a surprise. He told me I could leave and he’d watch Janie until you got home.” Mrs. Berenworth looked a tad worried herself now. “That’s not a problem, I hope?”

“I don’t have a brother!” Sarah shouted over her shoulder as she ran toward the building. She took the steps to the third floor two at a time and breathlessly flung her apartment door open.

Gilbert sat on Sarah’s sofa, Janie on his lap, and Janie did not look the least bit disturbed at finding herself there.

“There’s your mommy,” Gilbert said.

Sarah ran toward him and grabbed Janie from his arms. “How dare you!” she snapped. “Get out of my home.” Tears burned her eyes. He’d found her again.

“I’m so sorry to have frightened you,” he said, standing up. “But I thought it was very important for you to see how easily
you and Janie can be located. And therefore, how critical it still is for you to remain silent about what you know.”

“I
have
been silent!” she said. “What more do you want from me?”

Janie began crying at the sound of anger in her mother’s voice, and Sarah lowered her into the playpen at the side of the room.

“Hush, dear,” she said. “Everything’s all right.”

“Please sit down and let me talk with you a bit,” Gilbert said.

“I want you to leave.” She tried to speak calmly now, not wanting to upset Janie any more than she already was.

“I’m here to help you, Sarah,” he said. “I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. Peter—Dr. Palmiento—is growing increasingly…paranoid. He doesn’t trust anyone anymore, and he keeps bringing up you and Colleen Price as people who turned against him.”

“How do you expect me to trust you?” she asked. “To believe anything that comes out of your mouth? You’re Palmiento’s right-hand man.”

“I was.” Gilbert nodded. “And I think that he still assumes I am. But I’ve grown very concerned about his tactics, and I’m walking a fine line these days. Doing a real balancing act. I still believe in the importance of the research he’s doing at the hospital, but I’m worried that his paranoia is getting out of hand, and so now I feel a need to warn people. To warn you, for example. Peter’s even bought a gun. I’m telling you, he’s thrown himself off the deep end, headfirst.”

She simply didn’t know if she should believe him or not. Yet, what if he
was
telling her the truth? What if she was in danger from a crazed doctor with a gun?

She felt helpless. She’d left no forwarding address with this last move. She had three locks on both doors of her apartment.
Her phone number was unlisted. She spoke to no one at work about her past.

Unwinding the scarf from her neck, she sat down. “I’ve already moved twice,” she said. “I don’t know what more I can do.”

“I think you should move again,” Gilbert said. “Far away this time. Change your name. Go into hiding.” He seemed completely serious.

“That’s too much,” she said. “For all I know,
you’re
the crazy one. Why should I uproot myself and my daughter again? Then you’ll show up on
that
doorstep and tell me to do something else.”

“Whether you believe it’s me or Peter doesn’t really matter at this point.” Gilbert looked down at his hands, and it was a moment before he spoke again. “I didn’t want to tell you this,” he said, “but I don’t know how else to impress upon you that this is serious business.” His dark eyes were somber. “Your friend Colleen’s son is dead.”

Sarah’s heart gave a great thud against her ribs. “Sammy?” She remembered pictures Colleen had shown her of her darling little boy. “Sammy’s dead?”

“He was in an accident.”

“What happened?”

“He was playing in the tree house in his backyard and it collapsed,” Gilbert said. “He broke his neck.”

Colleen had told her about that tree house. Her father-in-law had built it, and surely he’d made it sturdy enough to withstand any mischief a five-year-old boy might dish out. Suddenly, she understood what Gilbert was trying to tell her.

“Are you saying Palmiento had something to do with it?” she asked, horrified.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Gilbert said. “But I am saying that
it’s an interesting coincidence that he threatened her through her child, and now that child is dead.”

She had to call Colleen. She stood up, and Gilbert instantly got to his feet and came toward her. Letting out a small scream, Sarah stepped away from him.

He held his hands in the air. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I—”

Sarah raced across the room to the door and pulled it open. “Go,” she said. “Just get out. Get out of my life.”

“All right.” He spoke quietly. “Please think about what I said, though. For your daughter’s sake.”

Slamming the door after him, she quickly secured all three locks. Moving from room to room, she pulled all the shades. That wouldn’t be enough, though. They knew where she was. They would always know.

She went into her kitchen, still wearing her coat, and called Colleen. Maybe Gilbert had made the whole thing up. She prayed that was the case as she listened to the ringing of Colleen’s phone.

“Hello?” Colleen barely sounded like herself, her voice was so flat and distant.

“Colleen,” Sarah said. “Are you all right?”

“You heard?”

“Heard…” Sarah shut her eyes and sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “You mean, about Sammy?”

There was sudden sobbing on Colleen’s end of the line.

“Colleen, what happened?” Sarah asked.

“He was playing in the tree house, and it just…
fell
.”

“Oh, God, Colleen. I’m so sorry.”

“Palmiento’s behind it.”

“How do you know that?” She desperately wanted Colleen’s reasoning to be fallacious.

“Oh, I know it,” Colleen said. “He’d threatened to do something to me or Sammy often enough.”

“Have the police questioned him?”

“They have. Once. Palmiento claims he doesn’t know a thing about it, and the cops believe him. After all, he’s God, you know.” There was bitterness in her voice. “They said one of the boards on the house wasn’t nailed right, or something. My poor father-in-law’s beside himself with guilt. I told him I’m sure someone tampered with those boards, but he thinks I’m just trying to spare him.”

“Can you try the police again?” Sarah suggested weakly. She couldn’t seem to breathe. In the next room, Janie howled for dinner.

“I’ve even talked to the FBI,” Colleen said. “They look at me like
I’m
the crazy one. Soon they’re going to lock me up and cut out my brain like they did to Joe.”

Sarah winced. Janie’s howling grew more insistent.

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Colleen said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Sarah said. “Gilbert was just here. He told me about Sammy, although he wouldn’t say there was a definite link between his death and Dr. Palmiento. But he warned me to leave. To move again. I just don’t know if I have the strength, Colleen.”

Colleen was quiet for a long time. “It’s pointless,” she said. “Moving is pointless. They have some way of finding us. It’s like a giant conspiracy and we’re completely powerless against it. They are going to get Janie, Sarah. I would strap her to me. I’d quit my job and just strap her to my body and never let her out of my sight. It’s the only way. I should have done that with Sammy. Kept him with me every second of the day and night.”

They are going to get Janie
. The words echoed in Sarah’s ears.

“I can hear Janie crying,” Colleen said, her voice flat. “You’re lucky to still have her, Sarah. You’d better go to her.”

Sarah fed her daughter, unable to eat anything herself. She bathed Janie and put her to bed. She pushed an upholstered chair against the front door and the kitchen table against the fire escape door. She took her sharpest knife from the kitchen drawer and held it in her hand as she sat up all night long next to Janie’s crib, afraid to close her eyes. The wind blew branches and twigs against the windows, and she jumped at every sound.

Janie slept like an angel in the crib, her long, golden brown eyelashes resting against her cheeks. She was a beautiful child, and she was in terrible danger simply by being Sarah’s daughter.

Had Sammy suffered? A broken neck, Gilbert had said. He would have died quickly, then. Would it be any consolation, though, if they killed Janie quickly? She moaned with the thought. She could not allow Janie to suffer that sort of fate. But Colleen spoke the truth: no matter where Sarah moved, they could find her.

By morning, exhausted from lack of sleep and still dressed in her uniform from the day before, Sarah had made a decision. She had to give up her daughter. There was no other way to ensure her safety. As long as she was with Sarah, Janie was in danger. Sarah would have to make her absolutely impossible to find. That meant she could not give her to family or friends, nor could she give her to an adoption agency where the records of her adoption might be traceable.

She called in sick to work, unwilling to let her daughter out of her sight. Keeping the doors locked and the knife close at hand, she came up with a plan by the time she fed Janie lunch.

Thinking about adoption agencies had reminded her of the compassionate social worker, Ann, from the train crash years
earlier. If Sarah could find her, maybe Ann could help her go outside the usual channels to place Janie in a safe and loving home.