Laticia Williams was twenty-six, with a slim, pretty face, narrow brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a prominent mouth, devoid of lipstick. Long earrings with wooden beads dangled from her earlobes, showing just under chin-length hair colored reddish. With her jeans, she wore an oversized black T-shirt that bore her son’s photo and the caption, R.I.P. LATEEF.
“I appreciate you coming,” Laticia said, setting a mug of coffee in front of Ellen as they sat at her round table. The kitchen was small and neat, the cabinets refaced with dark wood and the Formica counters covered with Pyrex oblongs of cakes, cookie tins, and two pies covered with tinfoil, which Laticia had said were “too ugly” to serve.
“Not at all, I appreciate your talking to me at a time like this,” Ellen said, having already expressed her condolences. “The only thing I hate about my job is barging into people’s houses at the worst time of their lives. Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Laticia sat down with a weary smile, showing the gold rim of her front tooth. “I want it to be in the paper, so everybody know what’s happenin’. So they know kids are gettin’ killed every day. So it’s not just a number, like Powerball.”
“That’s the point. That’s what I’m here to do. Make them see it and understand what it’s like to lose Lateef this way.”
“I cried all I can cry, we all have. But you know what they don’t understand? What they’re never gonna understand?”
“Tell me.”
“That with me, and with Dianne down the block, who lost her child, it’s different. We’re mad, too. Mad as all hell. Sick to death of all this dyin’.” Laticia’s voice rose and fell, with a cadence almost like a prayer. “All the mothers are sick our kids are bein’ shot at, like it’s a damn shootin’ gallery, and it makes no never mind. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change here, and this is America.”
Ellen absorbed her words, and her emotion. She wondered if she could convey all that feeling in the piece.
“It’s like Katrina, we’re livin’ in a different country. We got two sets of rules, two sets of laws, two things you can get outta life, whether you’re white or black, rich or poor. That’s the thing in a nutshell.” Laticia pointed a stiff index finger at Ellen. “You live in America, but I don’t. You live in Philadelphia, but I don’t.”
Ellen didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.
“Where I live, my kid can get shot on the street, and nobody sees nothin’. You wanna blame them, tell people to snitch, I know, but you can’t blame people. I can’t and I don’t. If they snitch, they’re dead. Their family’s dead. Their kids are dead.”
Ellen didn’t want to interrupt Laticia with a question. Nothing could be as valuable as what she was saying and she deserved at least that much.
“So I could sit here and tell you all about Teef and how cute he was, ’cause he was.” Laticia smiled briefly, light returning to her angry eyes, softening them for just an instant. “He was a funny child, a goof-ball. He cracked us up. At the last reunion, he was freestylin’, he tore it up. I miss him every minute.”
Ellen thought of Susan Sulaman, talking about her son. And Carol Braverman, praying for a miracle on her website.
“But even though Teef was mine, what matters is he isn’t the only one killed here.” Laticia put her hand to her chest, resting on the painted photo of her son’s face. “Three other kids were killed in this neighborhood, all of them shot to death. Lemme aks you, that happen where you live?”
“No.”
“And that jus’ this year. You figure in the year before that and the one before that, we got eight kids killed. You can make a big pile outta those bodies.”
Ellen tried to make sense of the number. Everybody counted bodies, to quantify the cost. But whether it cost nine kids or twelve, it was no worse than one. One child was enough. One body was one too many. One was the only number.
“We don’t have kids walkin’ around here, we got ghosts. This neighborhood’s full a ghosts. Pretty soon they’ll be nobody left to kill. Philly’s gonna be a ghost town, like in the wild wild west. A ghost town.”
Ellen heard the bitterness in her words, and she realized that Laticia Williams and Susan Sulaman, two very different women from two very different cities in the same city, had that much in common. Both of them were haunted, and they always would be. She wondered if Carol Braverman felt the same way, and it nagged at her. She thought of the files, waiting for her in the garage. Answers would be inside.
“You got a child?” Laticia asked, abruptly.
“Yes,” Ellen answered. “A boy.”
“That’s good.” Laticia smiled, the gold winking again. “You hold that baby close, you hear? Hold him close. You never know when you gonna lose him.”
Ellen nodded, because for a minute, she couldn’t speak.
Chapter Twenty-one
Ellen surveyed the garage, her breath chalky in the cold. Kids’ bicycles stood propped up in front of metal shelves that held Nerf footballs, a black plastic mountain of Rollerblades and kneepads, and a spare jug of sea-blue antifreeze. There were greasy jars of Turtle Wax and Bug-B-Gone, and an exercise bicycle had been relegated to a corner, wedged behind a workbench. Fluorescent panels overhead cast light on the left well of the garage, where Rick Musko must park, because there were a few grease spots on the concrete floor. In the other well, where Karen Batz’s car would have been, sat cardboard boxes piled like a Rubik’s Cube. An old green tennis ball hung uselessly from the ceiling, resting on the top of the boxes, its string slack.
Dead files.
Ellen fastened her down coat, went over to the boxes, and started moving them aside. They were piled alphabetically, and she searched for the G’s. Ten minutes later, boxes lay all around the garage floor, and she wasn’t cold anymore. She wedged off the lid of a box labeled Ga–Go and looked inside. It held manila folders packed tight, and she took out a batch at the front, allowing them to move freely. Each file had a white label with the client’s name, last name first. Ellen started at the beginning, and predictably, most of them were couples: Galletta, Bill and Kalpanna; Gardner, David, and Melissa McKane; Gentry, Robert and Xinwei; and Gibbs, Michael, and Penny Carbone. Her heart was pounding by the time she got to Gilbert, Dylan and Angela, but the next file wasn’t Gleeson, Ellen. It was Goel, John, and Lucy Redd.
She thumbed past Gold, Howard and Mojdeh; and Gold, Steven and Calina, and even onto Goldberger, Darja. No Gleeson. Not even misfiled. She skipped ahead to Golden, Golen, Gorman, then to Grant and Green. Still no Gleeson. Puzzled, she looked up at the pile of boxes, then eyed the ones she’d left lying around the floor. There had been other G boxes, and Gleeson could be misfiled anywhere. She took a deep breath and got busy. She was finished two hours later, but still hadn’t found her file.
What gives?
She was putting the Rubik’s Cube back together when she heard the loud rumbling of a car engine, and the garage door slid up noisily, leaving her in the blinding glare of the high beams from an SUV. The driver stepped out, walked toward her, and introduced himself as Rick Musko.
“You’re still here?” he asked, stepping into the fluorescent lights. He was tall and bald, in his fifties, older than Karen.
“Sorry, but I can’t find my file. I’m almost finished putting all the boxes back.”
“Wait a minute.” Musko blinked. “I know you. Aren’t you the reporter who did the story on the baby you adopted?”
“Yes, right.” Ellen introduced herself again.
“Your name didn’t register, when we spoke. I was in the middle of something.” Musko extended his hand, and they shook. “I was pretty rude to you, I wish I had known who you were. That story you wrote made Karen so happy.”
“She was a great lawyer. I’m so sorry about your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you know where my file could be?” Ellen picked up a box and heaved it on top of another. “Could it be with the lawyer who bought her practice? I figured I??
?d call him tomorrow morning.”
“No, he won’t have it.” Musko picked up a box. “He went through all of Karen’s files with a fine-tooth comb and took only her active files, mostly divorces and custody fights. Said he didn’t have the space for the dead files. That, I believe.” Musko straightened the tower of boxes and gave them a pat. “These have been sitting here all this time. I’m too cheap to put them in a storage space. I wonder where yours could be.”
“No idea?” Ellen shelved another box, pressing the lid on tight. “It seems strange that it’s missing.”
“It should have been here.” Musko’s tone turned thoughtful as he reached for another box. “I have some of Karen’s personal papers inside, from her desk drawers. Maybe your file is in there.”
“Why would it be?”
“Because of the article?” Musko grabbed the last box. “She bought thirty copies.”
Ellen felt touched. It was a secret pleasure of being a reporter. You never knew where your words landed.
“Maybe she saved the file. I haven’t even looked in those boxes yet.”
Ellen felt a twinge of guilt. “I hate to put you to this, if it’s difficult.”
“No, let’s get it done. I’ll set you up in my study. You can look through them there.”
“That would be great,” Ellen said, her hope surging. She grabbed her coat, and Musko parked the car.
Then they turned out the lights and went into the house together.
Chapter Twenty-two
Musko left Ellen in a home office that put hers to shame. His desk was a lustrous walnut, and he had a maroon leather chair with brass bolts around the edges. Built-in bookcases ringed the room, holding technical manuals and bound newsletters about structural engineering. The walls were lined with golf scenes and framed photographs of three tow-headed boys. There were no photos of Karen.
Ellen turned her attention to the three boxes on the desk. She’d been running out of steam but the sight revitalized her, and she took off the first lid, which read Top Drawer. She felt nosy to be going through Karen’s desk, but she wasn’t about to hesitate. She started digging, and inside were a slew of Bic pens, pencils, Post-it pads, a ruler, loose change, a pink leather Filofax, and a stray lipstick. She found a few legal pads with notes and recognized the neat handwriting, with its detached capitals, as Karen’s. She flashed on the lawyer, who had joked that her penmanship was so parochial school.
Odd.
Ellen was a lapsed Catholic, but even she knew that suicide was one of the bigger no-no’s. She wondered fleetingly what would have driven Karen to such an act, and she dug further in the first box. She reached the bottom, but there were no files inside. She closed the lid and moved to the second box, whose lid read Second Drawer. She dug through more legal pads, then checkbooks, piles of bills from Comcast, PECO, a web hosting site, old Filofax sheets with rubber bands, and dues invoices for various bar associations. Still no client files, and Ellen started to worry. She closed the lid and moved to the last box, which reminded her of a joke her father used to tell:
Why is the thing you’re looking for always in the last place you look? Because after you find it, you stop looking.
She opened the box and looked inside. It was a hodgepodge of bills, stray invoices, reminders for continuing legal-education courses, and more legal pads. She started rummaging, then all of a sudden, spotted a letter from Karen to her, notifying her about Will’s adoption hearing.
Bingo!
She felt her heart start to pound and kept searching, shuffling papers aside until she came across a printed email from her to Karen, asking questions about adoption procedures. She rummaged further, spotted some newsprint, and pulled it out excitedly. It was the front page of the Features section, and on the bottom right was Ellen’s piece on Will’s adoption. The headline read, HAPPY ENDING, and on the right was the photo of Will, looking so sick. She dug back into the box, and at the very bottom lay a manila folder. She grabbed it and read the label.
Gleeson, Ellen.
“Yay!” She tore it open, but it was empty, which is when she realized that the contents of her file folder were mixed up with the other papers.
“Did you get lucky?” asked a voice from the door, and she looked up to see Musko in the threshold. His jacket was off, his tie gone, and he’d pushed up his shirtsleeves. He entered the study and sat down tiredly in the leather chair across from his desk.
“Sort of.” Ellen held up the empty folder. “This is my file, but the papers are scattered all over the box.”
“That’s Karen. She wasn’t the most organized person in the world. In fact, she was messy.”
Don’t speak ill. “The files in the garage were neat.”
“That was her secretary’s doing. They were made for each other.” Musko leaned over and plucked Ellen’s article from her hand, eyeing it. “You know, it wasn’t too long after this article appeared that she was dead.”
“When was it that she died, if I can ask?”
“July 13.” Musko’s smile vanished, and his crow’s-feet deepened. He handed the article back. “Her secretary found her at her desk when she came in that morning.”
“That was about a month after Will’s adoption was final, on June 15. The article ran about two weeks after that.” Ellen paused, puzzled. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear. I paid my final bill, and the office didn’t send me a letter that she was dead. I didn’t even see an obit.”
“I didn’t run one. I kept it quiet, for the kids’ sake. The funeral was just family. The neighbors know from the gossip mill, but I never told them.” Musko gestured down the hall. “I still haven’t told the boys how she really died, just that she got sick.”
“Didn’t they ask questions?” Ellen asked, surprised. She was thinking of Will, the question machine.
“Yes, but I just said she was sick and we didn’t know it, then she died.”
Ellen kept her own counsel. She’d made it a policy always to be honest with Will. She even felt bad lying to him about Santa Claus, but no child should have to live in a world without magic.
“I know, it was probably wrong, but what do you say—hey, guys, Mommy went to work today and put a gun in her mouth?”
Suddenly Ellen wished she could leave. The conversation was turning creepy, and she’d liked Musko better in the garage.
“Didn’t mean to spring that on you.” He laughed, but it sounded bitter. “ ‘How did she do it?’ That’s the thing everybody wants to know. Gas, gun, pills? The cops told me it was unusual for a woman to use a gun. I told them, ‘But this woman is a lawyer.’ ”
Ellen stiffened. “I’m sure it’s hard to deal with.”
“You’re damn right it is. They say suicide is selfish, and for once, they’re right.” Musko jerked a thumb behind him. “I got three kids who pray for her every night. What kind of mother abandons her kids like that? They were babies then. Rory was two.”
“We can never really understand why people do the things they do.” Ellen was trying to say something comforting but knew she sounded like a Hallmark card, or Yoda.
“Oh, I know why she did it. She did it because I caught her having an affair.”
“Really?” Ellen said, shocked.
“He called her at the house one night, and I picked up. Then she went out and didn’t get back until after midnight. She said she was at the gym, but it was the same night they had an electrical fire.” Musko snorted. “She was getting her workout from her boyfriend.”
Ellen didn’t like the cruel twist to Musko’s lips. She rose to go, but it didn’t stop him from continuing.
“I confronted her, and she admitted it. She had to, I knew there was something going on. She’d been acting funny, moody. Anyway, she said she would stop seeing him, but I told her I wanted a divorce, that I’d fight her over the kids, too.” Musko stopped abruptly, as if he’d just heard himself. “The next morning was, you know, when she did it.” He leaned over, resting his head on his elbow, and
began rubbing his eyes. “I quit therapy, but I better get back in, huh?”
“I’m sure it would help.”
“So they say.” Musko looked at her, then rose slowly. “You found the papers you needed?”
“Well, they’re in the box somewhere but I didn’t get a chance to go through and see which papers are mine.”
“Then take the whole box. Take all three, for all I care. Take them with you.”
“What if there’s things in there you want?”
Musko waved her off. “I don’t need anything in those boxes. I should get rid of the ones in the garage, too. I should just burn the damn things.”
Ellen realized then why the dead files were still in the garage. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to spend the money on a storage space. It was that he wanted to keep them and he wanted to burn them, both at once.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll send you back what’s not mine.” She put a lid on the third box, shutting its secrets inside.
At least until she got home.
Chapter Twenty-three
The night was starless and black, and the windows dark mirrors that reflected Ellen at her dining-room table, sifting through the contents of the third box, sitting next to a glass of emergency merlot. Oreo Figaro sat in his spot at the far end of the table, watching with a disapproving eye.
She set aside bills and legal pads, then pulled out the papers that should have been in her file and read each one as she put them in chronological order, oldest to most recent, re-creating Will’s adoption file. There was printed email correspondence to Karen and from the home-study people, who had come to see the house and interview Ellen before the adoption was finalized. She went back to the box, shoved aside pencils and a half pack of gum, and unearthed another typed letter to Karen, this one printed in a larger font, on thin paper. She read it with a start: