“Sad. How about you?”
“Terrible.” Meredith tsk-tsked like everybody’s favorite aunt. “You know, they say war is hell, but I’ve been in a war and I’ve been in a newsroom. To me, you pick your poison.”
Ellen smiled, grimly. Meredith had been a nurse in Vietnam, but she rarely mentioned it. “You have nothing to worry about. You’re an institution around here.”
“I hate it when people call me that. Institutions close at three o’clock.” Meredith mock-shuddered.
“They’ll never cut you, ever.”
“Brings me no joy. I feel like you do, that cutting one of us cuts us all. Courtney was a real sweetheart and a helluva reporter.” Meredith shook her head. “I heard how upset you are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sarah said you took it hard.”
Ellen could barely hide her pique, and Meredith leaned over her keyboard, lowering her voice.
“She also mentioned that you blame Arthur. By the way, so do I. It’s corporate greed of the highest order.”
Ellen stiffened. Arthur Jaggisoon and his family owned the newspaper, and it was career suicide to bad-mouth him. In truth, she didn’t blame him for the layoffs at all. “She said that?”
“Yes.” Meredith’s phone rang, and she turned away. “Pardon me, I’ve been waiting for this call.”
“Sure.” Ellen went back to her desk, glancing around the newsroom. Sharon and Joey, on the phone, looked pointedly away, and she wondered if Sarah had been talking to them, too.
Ellen’s face burned as she sat down in her chair. Marcelo’s back was to her, so there were no more eye games, and she wasn’t in the mood anyway. On top of her computer keyboard sat a messy stack of printed notes with Sarah’s name at the top.
Ellen picked up the pages and thumbed through them, and they included a draft, research, and stats. She wanted to confront Sarah, but didn’t know her cell phone number. She reached for her coffee and took a cold sip. Her distracted gaze met Will’s on her screensaver, but his face morphed into Timothy Braverman’s.
She had to get her head back in the game. She rose, grabbed her purse, and got her coat.
Chapter Ten
Ellen sat in a lovely family room that had everything but the family. Susan Sulaman sipped water from a tumbler, curled up in a matching chintz couch opposite her, in jeans, a pink crew neck, and bare feet, a remarkably down-to-earth woman who looked oddly out of place in her own home. An Oriental rug covered a floor of resawn oak, and the couches faced each other in front of a colonial-era fireplace that had authentic cast-iron hooks and a swinging iron bracket inside. A perfect circle of cherrywood table held the latest magazines, a stack of oversized art books, and a tape recorder, running, now that the small talk was over.
“So you’ve heard nothing about the children at all?” Ellen asked.
“Nothing,” Susan answered quietly, raking fingers through thick brown hair that curved softly to her chin. Her pretty eyes were brown, but her crow’s-feet went deeper than they should for her age. Two lines had been etched in her forehead, over the bridge of a perfect nose. Susan Thoma Sulaman had been Miss Allegheny County when she became the trophy wife of her worst nightmare, multimillionaire builder Sam Sulaman.
“What have you done to find them?” Ellen asked.
“What haven’t I done?” Susan smiled weakly, a fleeting glimpse of a dazzling grin. “I hound the police and the FBI. I hired three private investigators. I posted on the missing kids sites on the web.”
“Like the ACMAC site?” Ellen was thinking of the white card.
“Of course, that’s the main one. Nobody’s turned up anything, scam artists, but no leads. I offered a fifty-thousand-dollar reward. Real money.”
“Sure is.” Ellen thought of the Bravermans and the million-dollar reward.
“I’ll never forget the day he took them. It was October, a week before Halloween. Lynnie was going as a fish.” Susan’s smile reappeared. “We glued glitter to a piece of blue oak tag, and she was going to wear it like a sandwich board. It was from The Rainbow Fish.”
“I know the book.”
Susan’s eyes lit up. “Oh, right, you have a son now. How old is he?”
“Three.”
“Goodness, already?”
“I know, right?” Ellen didn’t have to say, time flies, though it was her favorite mommy conversation. Some things never got old.
“I read that. I loved the articles you wrote about his sickness.”
“Thank you. Anyway, you were saying.”
“Yes, well, Sam Junior was going as a turtle. He had this chicken-wire shell we made”—Susan stopped herself—“well, never mind about the costume. My ex picked the kids up, loaded them in the car, and I never saw them again.”
“I’m so sorry.” Ellen lost her bearings, momentarily. Now that she’d become a mother, it was even harder to imagine. Maybe her mind simply refused to go there. “Does it get easier with time?”
“No, it gets harder.”
“How so?”
“I think about all that I’m missing with them. All that time, with each of them. Then I start to think that, even when I get them back, I’ll never be able to catch up.” Susan paused, a stillness coming over her. “I worry they won’t remember me. That I’ll be a stranger to them.”
“Of course they’ll remember you,” Ellen rushed to say, then switched tacks. “Is it easier because at least you know they’re with their father? That they’re not abducted by some stranger, who could be doing them harm?” She was thinking of the Bravermans again.
“Honestly, no.” Susan frowned. “Sam was a terrible father. He lost the custody battle and he didn’t like the settlement, so this is the way he got me back. At the end of the day, they need me. I’m their mother.”
“So you’re hopeful.”
“I am, I have to be. The FBI thinks like you do, that it’s less of a priority because it’s family. Not all victims are alike.” Susan pursed her lips. “Anyway, the theory is that he took them out of the country. His money is all offshore, and they think he told the kids I died.”
“Would he do that?” Ellen asked, aghast.
“Of course, he’s an egomaniac, a narcissist.” Susan sipped her soda, and ice rattled in the tumbler. “I don’t agree with the FBI, and if I tell you what I think, it’ll sound crazy.”
“No, it won’t, and honestly, I don’t even know if this will run. It depends on my editor.”
Susan frowned. “Any press at all could help find them. You never know.”
“I’ll try my best. Please, go on.”
Susan shifted forward on the cushion. “I believe my kids are in the country, nearby even. Maybe not in Philly, but in Jersey or Delaware. Near here. I think it because I feel them, inside. I feel my children, close to me.” Certainty strengthened Susan’s voice. “When they were babies, if someone took them out of my sight, I felt nervous. When we were in the same room, I knew it. I feel them here, still.” Susan put a hand to her heart. “I carried them, they were inside me. I think it’s a mother’s instinct.”
Ellen reddened. Was there such a thing? Could she have it if she had never been pregnant? Evidently, not everything came with the ovaries.
“I’ve posted their photos everywhere. I had somebody design a website and made sure it comes up first if they ever search their own name. I go on the Internet all the time, checking out all the sites where they might go, even the gamers’ sites, because Sammy loved Nintendo.”
Ellen watched Susan, who slumped in the soft couch as she continued.
“I drive around the neighborhoods, the schools. I check out the Gymboree for Lynnie and the T-ball leagues for Sammy. In summer, I troll the beaches in Holgate and Rehoboth. Sooner or later, I’ll spot one of them, I just know it.” Susan needed no encouragement to keep speaking, her words flowing from a pain, deep inside. “There’s not a minivan that goes by that I don’t look in the backseat, not a ball field I don’t look on the ben
ch and the bases. I stop by pet stores because Lynnie liked kittens. If a school bus passes, I look in the windows. I drive around and call the kids’ names at night. Last week I was in Caldwell, in New Jersey, calling them, and a woman asked me what kind of dog Lynnie was.”
Susan stopped talking abruptly, and a sudden silence fell.
And Ellen understood firsthand that after the loss of a child, a mother would be haunted for the rest of her life.
Chapter Eleven
Back in her car, Ellen stopped at a traffic light, dwelling. She’d had a glimpse of Susan Sulaman’s world, and it made her want to drive home and hug Will. Her BlackBerry rang in her purse, and she rooted in her bag until she found it, then hit the green button.
“Elly Belly?” said the familiar voice.
“Dad. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“What’s the matter?” Ellen could tell he was upset by the way he said he was fine.
“Nothing. I’m about to have lunch. You free? I just got back from the doctor’s.”
“Are you sick?”
“Nah.”
“Then why’d you go to the doctor?”
“A checkup, is all.”
“You had a checkup in September, didn’t you?” Ellen remembered because it was near her birthday.
“This was just a thing, a routine thing.”
Ellen glanced at the car’s clock, then did a quick calculation. Her father lived in West Chester, forty-five minutes from the city. Being closer to her parents was the reason she had come here from the San Jose Mercury. “Are you home today?”
“Yeah, doing email and expenses.”
“Why don’t I drop by? I’m actually in Ardmore.”
“Great. The door’s open. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” Ellen hung up, then slid the phone back in her purse. She cruised to the corner in light traffic, turned around, and headed back down Lancaster Avenue. She felt a pang of guilt, realizing she hadn’t been to visit her father in almost a month. She just hadn’t had the time, between work and Will. Every week, she mentally shifted the hours of her days, as if her life were a handheld puzzle with tiles that slid around to make a picture. The tiles fit differently every week, and no matter how hard she tried, the picture didn’t come together. The lines connected to nothing.
She accelerated.
Chapter Twelve
“Hi, Dad.” Ellen entered her father’s kitchen, which overlooked the golf course at Green Manor, which billed itself as a Community for Active Adults. Her father had moved here after her mother died, which was when he got Active, especially in the Adult Department.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, standing at the counter, absorbed in slicing a tomato onto a plate. His wrinkled forehead knit over his brown eyes, set close together and hooded now, and his nose had a telltale bulb at the tip from the drinking he’d given up, years ago. Even at sixty-eight, her father had enough black in his thinning hair to make people wonder if he colored it, and Ellen was pretty sure he didn’t.
“Dad, are you gonna die?” she asked, only half-joking.
“No, never.” Her father turned with a broad smile that served him well on the back nine and the road, where he drove a thousand miles a week as a sales rep for an auto-parts company.
“Good.” Ellen slid out of her coat and purse, dumped them on a kitchen chair, and kissed him on the cheek, catching a whiff of strong aftershave. None of her perfume lasted as long as her father’s aftershave. She fleetingly considered picking up a bottle of Aramis.
“You look nice, honey. Dressed up.”
“I’m trying not to get fired.”
“Succeeding?” Her father sliced another pink-red tomato. Already on the table sat a plastic tub of Whole Foods tuna fish, a loaf of multigrain bread, and a pitcher of green tea, permanent fixtures in Don Gleeson’s Antioxidant Heaven.
“So far.” Ellen crossed to the counter, plucked a floppy tomato slice from the plate, and plopped it into her mouth. It tasted like nothing, a winter tomato.
“Don’t let the bastards get you down. How’s my grandson?”
“He has a cold.”
“I miss him. When am I gonna see him?”
Ellen felt a guilty twinge. “Soon as I can. So, what’s up with the doctor? You’re scaring me.”
“I waited lunch for you.”
“I see that, thanks. You’re avoiding the question.”
“Sit down like a civilized person.” Her father carried the tomato plate to the table and set it down, then eased into the chair with a theatrical groan. He always moaned for comic effect, though he kept in great shape, fit and trim in his pale yellow polo shirt, Dockers, and loafers.
“Dad, tell me.” Ellen sat next to him, worried. Cancer was the worst sort of coward, sneaking up on people, and her mother had died from lymphoma, having lived only three months after her diagnosis.
“I’m not sick, not at all.” He untwisted the tie on the plastic bag of bread, extracted two slices from the center of the loaf, and set them on his plate, open-faced.
“Then why did you go to the doctor?”
“Make yourself a sandwich, then we’ll talk.”
“Dad, please.”
“Suit yourself, but I’m hungry.” Her father popped the plastic lid of the tuna, then picked up the serving fork, speared himself a small mound, and patted it onto his bread with the tines of the fork, making crosshatches.
“You’re stalling, Dad. It’s tuna fish, not rocket science.”
“Okay, here it is. I’m getting married.”
“What?” Ellen was dumbfounded. “To who?” She had no idea. He was dating four women here. He was Romeo, with an enlarged prostate.
“Barbara Levin.”
Ellen didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know the woman. Her parents had been married forty-five years, and her mother had passed a little over two years ago. Somehow this meant her mother was really gone. As if someone had put a period on the sentence that was her life.
“El? I’m not dying, I’m getting married.”
“Why, is she pregnant?”
“Ha!” Her father laughed, then stabbed the tuna with the serving fork. “I’ll tell her you said that.”
Ellen hid her ambivalence. “This is kind of a surprise.”
“A good one, right?”
“Well, yes. Sure.” Ellen tried to get a grip, but a hard knot in her chest told her she wasn’t doing such a great job. “I guess I just wasn’t sure who the lucky lady was.”
“Barbara’s the one that matters.” He picked up a tomato slice with the serving fork. “You gonna congratulate me?”
“Congratulations.”
“I needed a cholesterol check. That’s why I went to the doctor’s.”
“Oh. Thank God you’re not sick.”
“You got that right.” Her father placed his tomato on top of the tuna, added a piece of bread, then lined up the two pieces, leaning over as if he were sizing up a putt. He pressed his sandwich closed, lowering his hand, then eyed her. “You don’t look happy, El.”
“I am.” Ellen managed a smile. She loved her father, but he had spent her childhood on the road. The truth was, everybody had a go-to parent, and with him away from home so much, Ellen’s had become her mother.
“El, I’m entitled to be happy.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“You’re acting it.”
“Dad, please.”
“I don’t like to be alone and I’m not getting any younger.”
Silence fell between them, and Ellen made no move to fill it. The ugliest of thoughts popped into her head—the wrong one had died. She felt ashamed of the very notion, and confused. She loved her father.
“I guess I knew you’d get upset. You and your mother were two of a kind. Peas in a pod.”
Ellen couldn’t speak for a moment. Her mother had been her best friend in the world. That said it all.
“Life goes on.”
E
llen felt the knot again, then flipped her thinking. “So when’s the wedding? I need to get a dress and all.”
“Uh, it’s in Italy.”
“Italy? Why?”
“Barbara likes it there, near Positano.” Her father cut his sandwich and took a bite, leaving Ellen to fill in the blanks.
“Am I going? Is Will?”
“Sorry, but no.” Her father looked back at her over his sandwich. “It’s not a big deal, not at our age. We’re just doing it, no muss, no fuss. We’re getting on a plane end of the week.”
“Wow, that soon?”
“I told her you’d be fine with it. Her kid’s fine with it.”
“I understand.” Ellen tried to shrug it off. “I’m officially fine with it.”
“She has a daughter, too. Year older than you. Abigail.”
“I thought she had a boy in the Peace Corps.”
“That was Janet.”
“Oh.” Ellen smiled. It was kind of funny. “Well, good. I always wanted a sister. Can I have a pony, too?”
At that, he smiled, chewing.
“What does she do, my new sister?”
“Lawyer in D.C.”
“I always wanted a lawyer, too.” Ellen laughed, and so did he, setting down his sandwich.
“Ha! That’s enough, wise guy.”
“I think it’s good, I really do.” Ellen felt better saying it, and her chest knot loosened just a bit. “Be happy, Dad.”
“I love you, kitten.”
“I love you, too.” Ellen managed a smile.
“You gonna eat or what?”
“No, I’m waiting for the wedding cake.”
He rolled his eyes.
“So tell me what she looks like.”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Her father leaned over, slid a brown wallet from his back pocket, and opened it up. He flipped past the second plastic envelope, which had an old photo of Will, and the third, he turned sideways and set down on the table. “That’s Barbara.”
Ellen eyed the woman, who was attractive, with her hair in a short, classy cut. “Mommy!”
“Gimme that.” Her father smiled and took the wallet back.
“She looks nice. Is she nice?”