Chapter 26

I wrap my mother tight in her scarf. She is balanced between Maggie and me, pointing to the mansions on the cliff, trying to make her mind remember what it was like in those days with the man she loved. It’s cold. Winds are blowing off the ocean, and the weather lady says it will snow in the inlands beyond Newport. We came to visit my father’s grave. My mother still insists she sees him, walking down the street, a face in the window, a man on church steps. Maggie and I put her in the car and drove up from Boston this morning. I haven’t been here in years, and like my mother, I think I see him, punching the air, running in the mist. No. They are memories, and memories are ghosts. The ocean hits the rocks, and the spray rises toward a gray sky.

“Let’s go swimming,” my mother says.

“I think it’s too cold.”

“No. It’s summer.”

“It’s not summer, Mom. You have a coat on.”

“Someone put this thing on me. It’s summer. Where’s my bathing suit? He’s down there on the beach. He’s waiting for me. We have picnics.”

“He’s not there.”

“I think he is.”

“Let’s turn around,” says Maggie. “It looks like rain.”

“It rains in summer,” says my mother. She looks at Maggie and lowers her voice. “Do you think this man with us will take us down to the beach?”

“That’s Sam, your son. He lives in Los Angeles.”

She looks at me. Steps closer. Puts a gloved hand on my face.

“Is it summer there?” she says.

The rain comes hard. We drive back to Boston. My mother sleeps the whole way. Maggie and I talk and listen to Simon and Garfunkel and Aretha Franklin. Maggie thinks it’s funny that I like the same music as she. “You always were an old soul,” she says, singing “Scarborough Fair” and wiping fog from the windshield. We eat sandwiches and soup for dinner in Maggie’s kitchen. The radio plays low. We walk my mother upstairs to her bedroom. She sits by the window; her reflection floats in the night. She stands and presses her face against the glass.

“Maybe he’ll come tomorrow.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” says Maggie.

My mother slides like a small curled bird beneath the covers. I kiss her on the forehead and remember the scent of lemons. When I was a child, she would cut them in half and rub them over her face. She said it made her skin soft and cleaned better than soap. Our house was full of lemons, and my father used to joke that we lived in a garden. My mother looks at me, and for a second, I think she knows me. It passes, and she turns toward the window and the rooftops beyond.

“We’re losing her, aren’t we, Maggie?”

“Yes. It’s good you took some time off and came back.”

“She doesn’t know who I am.”

“She might remember. I show her your picture every day and tell her.”

Maggie slides two glasses across the table, pulls two beers from the fridge.

“I like your kitchen,” I say.

“It’s getting a little shabby, but it has a character. It’s my room, you know that.”

We sip our beers and listen to the wind and the rain falling in the alley.

“Where do you suppose she vanished to, Sam?”

“Mom?”

“No. Dylan Cross.”

“I don’t know. No trace.”

“She’s smart.”

“Very.”

Maggie fidgets with a bottle cap.

“I know I shouldn’t say this, and don’t get mad, but I’m glad she got away.”

She looks at me. I pour the last of my bottle into the glass. I sip and say nothing.

“Why do you think she let Jensen live?”

“He wasn’t like the other two,” I say. “He was weaker. That night destroyed a lot of him. She saw that. When we went down into the basement, he was sitting chained to the wall. Unshaven, dirty. He looked like a prisoner in an old Communist country. The knife she killed Jamieson with was lying just beyond his reach. He said she came at him with it. She flashed it in his face. He said he closed his eyes. He thought he was going to die. He felt the blade on his neck. He didn’t fight or strain. He said he waited. For a long while, it was there. He could hear her breathing. He thought she whispered something, but couldn’t make out what it was. He felt the blade lift away, and he opened his eyes. She was standing over him. She dropped the knife and stepped back. He said she stood there in her mask for what seemed an hour. Motionless. Staring at him. He told me, ‘She didn’t want me to forget. But I never did. I see that mask every day.’ He said he wanted to be arrested for that night. He looked right at me and said, ‘Detective, I want some record of guilt beyond my own.’”

“You didn’t arrest him.”

“We might later. We have no victim. Three men on a tape, and an unknown woman.”

“It was a rape. You know who the woman is.”

“We don’t have her. We have no case.”

“Did you believe what Jensen told you, about wanting to be arrested?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t absolve him, Sam.”

“No, it doesn’t. But it would free him. I’ve seen it with others. They end up not being able to live with it. Remember the case I told you about years ago. The guy who killed his family. We knew he did it, but we couldn’t prove it. Couldn’t get enough evidence. He went on with his life. Lived alone, went to work, bought new furniture, started dating. Then one day, I’m sitting at a coffee shop downtown and he comes in, sits beside me, and confesses. Just like that.”

“I’d like to know Dylan Cross’ mind. I went online and saw that church she designed in the desert. It’s so elegant and simple. If you were passing, you’d have to stop and look inside. Maybe she’s somewhere in the desert, Sam, thinking of another building.”

“You should be a detective, Maggie.”

She laughs.

“I might have liked that in another life.”

She gets up and puts two more beers on the table.

“I thought you stopped at one,” I say.

“It’s a special night.”

The lamp glows. The rain is still falling. The kitchen is clean but old. It holds parts of my childhood: the pantry, the curved silver faucet, the crucifix above the sink.

“Tell me one thing, Sam. When you talk about her, she’s different from anyone else. It’s in your voice.”

“She got away. She’s unsolved.”

“Yes, but something more. I hear it in you.”

“I’ll find her.”

“What will you say to her?”

We drink our beers. A long quiet passes.

“Okay, Sam, I won’t talk about it anymore.”

“I’ll catch her.”

“I hope so, but then I hope not.”

Maggie looks into her glass.

“She’s beautiful,” she says.

“Yes, she is.”

Maggie gets up and goes to a drawer. She holds up a Baggie and smiles.

“Let’s get high.”

“I’ll arrest you.”

“Out of your jurisdiction, Detective.”

“I thought you quit.”

“Some things from the old days stay with you.”

She opens the back door to the small porch facing the alley. We step out. Rain is falling, but not as hard as before. Maggie lights up. We pass the joint back and forth. We laugh. I tell her about Ortiz, how jumpy and frenetic he is. His endless phone calls and texts and worries about the mayor. I show her a text: “What the fuck, Sam? Vacation? We gotta find her. Can’t have some broad with a mask running around loose killing architects.” Followed by, “No. Stay on vacay. You need a break. But if we get a tip on her, your ass is on the next flight back.” Maggie likes stories about Ortiz. She believes he’s a good man and that he understands me. Maggie never liked my father, but she has a favorite story about him.

Late one night, after he won a fight, she thinks it was in Providence, he and my mother—it was before I was born—came up this same alley while Maggie was sitting on the porch. It was summer, getting close to autumn, and the air was cool. She heard them laughing, and when they got to the porch, she saw that my father was carrying a crate of Chinese takeout. “We ordered the whole goddamn menu, Maggie,” he said. “We didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for.” They came inside and unloaded the crate on the table—boxes and boxes of food, like a banquet. Maggie thought it was frivolous and wonderful, and she looked at my father, who was excited and drinking a beer. She studied his bruises, cut eyes, and swollen hands, and she believed, for a moment, that he was magnificent.

Maggie goes quiet. Me too. When the joint’s done, she tamps it out, squeezes my hand, and kisses me on the cheek. “Good night, Sam.” She opens the door and disappears into the house.

I sit alone on the porch, listening to the rain and not minding the cold. After an hour or so, I go inside and lock up, shut the lights off, and walk upstairs. I peek into my mother’s room, trace her outlines in the dark, and think of her as Maggie saw her on that night with the Chinese food and the fighter she loved. What must it all have seemed to my mother then? The rough man and his hidden tenderness and the way his voice echoed down the alley. His strength and unpredictability. The way he bled. I close her door and go down the hall to my room. It’s almost dawn. I climb into bed and see Dylan Cross, like Maggie said, sitting in her church in the high desert, candles all around, her mask beside her on the pew, a man singing hymns.