“It’s fine, Kev,” Ambyr answered, straightening up and looking dead at him. “I’ll be down as soon as I’m finished.”
“Okay,” Kevin replied, a bit anxiously. “But if we’re going to drop those three downstairs off and then keep going, we need to move.”
“I know,” Ambyr said. “I won’t be long, I promise.”
Kevin started away from the door, giving me what I took to be a warning look, one that I answered with a small smile and a blasé salute of the two fingers that held my cigarette. After he’d disappeared, I said, “The young man still places great stock in your honesty, it seems. Perhaps I should have a talk with him. I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you, Ambyr, that you’re now doing just what your parents did—running out on everybody you professed to care about.”
“This is different.”
“Is it? Maybe so far as I go it is. But there is, as you say, the matter of Lucas, who’s now on the verge of being thrown away twice. And he knows it.”
“Yeah,” she said, hoping that we were finally getting to her point. “And I need to know—”
“Not quite yet, Ambyr. The exact nature of this operation: I need details.”
Again disappointed to be put off, she replied, “I can’t tell you all the details. You have to go to Donovan for that.”
“I will,” I said. “But, sticking to your part: the few blanks left, like how you got in touch with all those rich New Yorkers. These clothes you’re packing for your desperate getaway tell me that, I think. But two points I have to know, for the sake of my own God damned sanity. The first is Derek—what happened? Why did he have to die?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Actually, you said you had no responsibility for his life, and then that you weren’t told at the time of their plan to kill him. You must have been, since. So why? Just because he was getting so insistent?”
“I don’t know!” she repeated, trying to keep her voice down, this time. “Nobody here knows.”
“So—Donovan again? She seems to take the responsibility for all the evil acts.”
“And she should,” Ambyr answered. “She ordered that Dr. Chang be driven off the road, she was behind Kolmback’s murder, and Latrell’s killing, too. But you need to believe one thing: I loved Derek, I really did. No, I didn’t want to be his damned mother, and yeah, he could get me good and mad, but I did love him, and I tried as best I could—”
“By involving him in a criminal conspiracy?”
“Look, he found out about what we were doing,” Ambyr answered, her determination renewed. “And he wanted in. We had another kid doing it, a kid we finally found a place for—and Derek wanted in. He’d heard Kevin and me talking, and Derek basically blackmailed us into letting him be our next contact with the kids. And he was good at it—being the way he was, it kind of put the kids at ease, made them trust him.”
“Yes,” I said. “The old Judas goat ploy. You must have been very proud.”
Now she was tearing up for real, the drops from her eyes falling on the profits of her enterprise. “And so, even though it made me nervous, we kept going, provided he absolutely never told Lucas anything. And unlike Lucas, Derek knew how to keep a secret.”
“Then why is he dead? We found a note pinned to his chest—”
“I know what it said. Kevin saw him hanging there, on his way to get me; I couldn’t look, though, when we left. But I don’t know what it meant. You and Mike will have to figure that out.”
Studying her, I realized that, insofar as it was possible for her to tell the truth, anymore, she was. “All right,” I said at length. “Let’s say I buy that. What about the others—Kelsey, Kyle, Shelby, Donnie. What happened to them?”
She sighed, then relented. “Yes. They all happened here. Nobody in this place was involved, or anything. It started with Kelsey, and after that, I don’t know, it was like a germ, or something. But each one that came back, they heard about the others, about going to the adoption center, and thought it would be different if they tried it. But it wasn’t. So—copycat, right? It happens with teenagers all the time. Not for these reasons, but…”
“And what were those reasons? I mean, the reasons they came back here?”
“You want every one?”
“I do.”
Closing up the last of her bags and setting it on the floor, she turned and sat on the bed, facing away from me and into the light that was coming through the room’s wafting lace curtains. “Kelsey—she got raped. Pretty obvious, I guess you think, but we’d actually never had it happen before. It was the guy who owned all the horses, the guy who was going to give her a career in that business—that was his price, he told her, and why the hell did she think he’d paid so much money for her, anyway? Dirty fucking pig already had a wife and three grown children, and another young girlfriend on the side. Didn’t matter. So—Kelsey came back, but her folks wouldn’t have anything to do with her. She didn’t much want to go back there, anyway, so I told her she could stay here until we found her a new family. But she tried the legit way, and then…As for Kyle, well—we never were too sure what happened with Kyle. He couldn’t talk about it. Just said the people he’d gone to turned out to be—weird. Maybe there was something sexual—he did mention something about them wanting to give him baths, treat him like he was a five-year-old. But whatever it was, he was awful ashamed of it. He didn’t even last a week, after the state said no…”
Ambyr stood and tried to stretch upward; but she seemed to lack either the strength or the will for the motion, leaning instead on the window frame. “And Shelby, well…You know all about Shelby. Took an awful lot to drive her off—and the one thing it took, her new ‘dad’ managed to try: drugs. Her actual parents being such meth heads, she just wasn’t ever going to go there, everybody knew that. Sex? Hell, yes, she would have screwed anybody to get what she wanted, and did. Screwed the husband, just to get more things out of him. But it got just as out of hand as it had with that stinking PE teacher of ours, Mr. Holloway. Anyway, the husband, her new ‘dad,’ he tried to get her into cocaine, partly because he was, and partly so he’d have a way to control her. But she pitched a fit, the wife found out about the whole thing and—back she came. We told her, just like we told the other two, that we’d find another place, but—I don’t know. Like I say, it was almost like it’d turned into a virus, by then, that they were catching from each other: hopelessness, especially when they couldn’t even become fosters. And then came Donnie. Donnie, he should’ve been fine. Those people, the Augustines, the ones you hate so much because them and their friends have ruined your city, they were actually okay. Really sad, really guilty about what’d happened to their own boy, and how it meant that they’d never be allowed to adopt. And so they took Donnie, and stuck him in a nice prep school up near where they live, and he turned into the star of the basketball team again, but…The kid missed home, and I don’t mean North Briarwood, either. He missed the playground in Fraser. I think, really, that he just missed any playground. Started hanging out in some he found in New York, and before long—well, the Augustines were people who had to worry about appearances, obviously. And Donnie started fooling with drugs, started getting a little out of hand, a little too much street, which is kind of—ironic, or whatever, when you consider how much Mr. Augustine admired the pro players who’d come from places like that. But they started cracking down on him: curfews, no going to playgrounds, no being…”
“No being himself,” I finished for her, the four stories having melted my icy blood in a way that Ambyr had been unable to do. “So he eventually decided to come back to the playgrounds he’d known, and to punish the Augustines on his way out the door.”
“Yeah,” Ambyr said softly, turning to me and sensing the change in my voice. “That’s about right. We told him not to try the state, told him how it had been for the others. But he went. Then we told him he had to stay here, and not go to the basketball c
ourts in Fraser. We knew he’d talk—you know how boys get on those courts. We said we could find him another family, one that would really accept him. But he just couldn’t wait.”
“No. He couldn’t.” I began pacing, taking all these terrible yet somehow utterly believable facts in. “So we were right when we speculated that, after they’d been thrown away, then accepted into worlds they’d only dreamt of—which became their worlds, if only for a time—and were then thrown back, they simply couldn’t live with the memory. Not if there was so little hope of anything to follow, legal or otherwise.”
Ambyr smiled, in that knowing way of hers. “Yes. You were very knowledgeable about that. But then, you’ve lost, in your life. Tell me, Trajan—when you dream, do you still have both your legs?”
The question was so shockingly insightful that it took me an instant to absorb its mournful weight. “Always,” I murmured at length.
“Well—there you go.”
I stubbed out my cigarette on my shoe and pocketed the butt, using the opportunity to dispatch the text message on my phone. “Okay, then—just two more questions: first, the one I was going to ask before: did you always just assume that you could leave Lucas on my doorstep, when trouble came? I mean, even before you met me?”
She just shrugged and nodded in resignation. “Yeah. I did.”
Hard words to hear; but I had to push on: “Thank you for that bit of honesty. Which leaves only the final issue: why involve me at all? There had to be other places you could have used as an emergency drop for Lucas—your cousin and your uncle, for instance. Why send the kid up the hollow to become part of our team? And why, having done so, was it necessary for you to seduce me so completely?”
“Is that what you think I did? I’m sorry if you really do. I know what ‘seduce’ means—I looked it up in the dictionary, once. It means convincing someone to do something you know is wrong. That wasn’t what I was trying to do. At all.”
“We can get to that,” I said, with a wave of my hand. “But why Lucas? Why get your own brother involved in our work?”
Ambyr let out yet another sigh, rubbing her face for a moment with both hands. “That—is something I really do have to apologize to you for. I lied about it, when we first met.”
“I’m assuming that,” I answered, my voice hardening. “But why?”
“Because…Because, like I said then, I knew how good you were. You and Mike. I’d read about you, see; and I knew that our partners in law enforcement would do what they did: try to make up a series of teenage murders. To protect themselves, to protect the image of the state and this fucking asshole governor, all in an election year. And I thought that if you guys came in, you’d definitely figure out the truth, or as much of the truth as you needed to know to finally get the stories of the throwaways out and public. Once you figured out they were suicides, I figured, you wouldn’t stop, you’d just keep pushing until you had enough to make them all believe it. Make the world believe it.”
I was stunned into silence for very long seconds, eventually saying, as confidently and directly as I could (which was tough): “And we did. We will.”
“Yep.” And then Ambyr’s voice attained a newfound passion that bordered on pride: “Because people need to know about it. But that’s not all. What we’ve been doing here, it has to go on. Yeah, I’m going to be on the run for a while, who knows for how long, but wherever I am, I’m not going to stop. That’s the most important thing of all. All these kids who wake up one morning to find out that their families have just disappeared without a trace—somebody has got to help them. And who’s going to? The state? We’ve seen that answer. No kid in his right mind wants anything to do with the foster system, the way it’s run—but they’ve managed to fix things so that kids can’t go out on their own, either.” Her words were becoming chillingly reminiscent of Frankie Arquilla’s. “Child labor laws, parental consent for school, all of these things that were set up to protect them, they’re all working backwards, now. The throwaways can’t help themselves, and the people who are supposed to help them just put them into shitty situations. Have you ever even been to any foster homes, Trajan?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding ruefully. “And I know what they are, most of them. Monthly check farms: ways to pull in state money without doing much if anything for the kids themselves.”
“Exactly.” Ambyr reached back, undid her barrette, and let that wonderful sandy hair, the scent of which I imagined I could make out, fall down her back. “So it’s not really so complicated—if I can help, I figure I have to. And if I can make a living, not off the state, but off the families we place the kids with, well…I figure that’s okay, too. You’re completely focused on the four who died, Trajan, but do you know how many we’ve placed that’re happy, now?”
“No. Obviously. How many?”
“Well—” She checked herself. “I’m not gonna tell you that, just in case. But it’s a lot. A lot. And I’m not stopping, and neither is anybody else involved—which, by the way, doesn’t include my uncle Bass or any of those beer-drinking motorheads you met on the way in. Though they let us use this place, and will let someone after me do it, if I get caught.”
She had laid a lot out; but as I considered it all, I couldn’t escape one truth: “A noble series of rationalizations, Ambyr,” I said. “But against all your manipulations and lies? Tough to see them as very much more…” I took a deep breath. “And finally, Lucas? What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Well,” she said, trying to brighten a little. “You said yourself he’s helped you, and that he’s got real talent for the kind of work you do. So it won’t be so bad if he stays with you, will it? I mean, until I can send for him, someday when it’s safe?”
“I—suppose it wouldn’t,” I said, swallowing at least part of my pride and giving in. “But on that day—are you going to send for me, too? Or will Kevin object?”
She smiled indulgently at my jealousy. “How many times have I got to tell you, Trajan? Kevin’s not my boyfriend, however he feels about me. I’m not quite as good a liar as you think I am.”
“You might want to tell him that. I don’t think he got the memo.”
“Oh, he got it. More than a few times.” She leaned over, at that point, and lifted the cat carrier containing Tommy, which I had not even noticed during my brief rush to try to shake sense into her, from behind the bed. Setting the big, happy feline on the lace spread, she continued: “And I don’t know if he secretly hopes that something’ll happen, someday, now that we’re going to be on the run, or whatever. But it isn’t. It just isn’t there, for me, with Kevin, and like I say, I’ve told him that more times than I can count. The rest is his problem. As for you and me…I know what I wish could happen. But wishes don’t mean anything, in this world. So I don’t know.”
The time, then, had come to tell her: “You’re right, Ambyr: wishes don’t mean anything. So you’d better move—I alerted Mitch McCarron a couple of minutes ago. He’ll be here very soon.”
I suppose I expected an outburst; or perhaps I simply wanted one, as a sign that our time together had meant something; but she simply moved to the window again and leaned out of it, calling, “Kev! I’m coming down with Tommy and one bag—soon as I do, you can get the rest, okay?”
“Got it!” I heard Kevin call from below; and with the deepest pang of dread I’d yet felt, I realized that our moment together—in this room, during that summer, perhaps in this life—was over.
As Ambyr shuffled toward the door carrying one of the leather tote bags and the cat carrier, I stepped in front of her, rather desperately taking hold of her arm. “Ambyr—I can’t—”
Suddenly, she shocked me by letting her head fall against my chest. “I never lied about you and me, Trajan. It was always the truth.”
“It…just isn’t anymore,” I whispered.
“No, it’s not like that,” she said, still holding her own against her emotions. “But things have changed so much, in so little ti
me. But maybe. Someday.” She sniffed back tears as I released her. “Someday…And now I’ve got to get out of here. Because the man I love has ratted me out.” She smiled that sly little curl of her lips. “So fucking smart,” she whispered. “If only you weren’t so fucking—dedicated, too…” She finally lost the last of her tears, shaking her head to try and clear it.
“Just—tell me this,” I whispered. “It was real, then, wasn’t it? Us?”
“I told you, Trajan,” she answered. “But I’ll tell you again: it was real…”
I stood back another step, almost ready to collapse and suddenly aware that my left hip was throbbing like a bastard. “Okay—then go. For God’s sake, go now, Ambyr…”
She simply nodded a last time, then moved out the door, Tommy the cat meowing once or twice as his big case bumped into the doorframe. I didn’t watch her go, couldn’t watch her go: I had that much of a sense of self-preservation, at least. But as I heard her thumping down the stairs, I looked into one corner of her bedroom—and saw her white cane. Maybe she meant to come back for it, or perhaps Kevin was meant to bring it along with him; on the other hand—
I decided to satisfy this final suspicion: going to the top of the stairs as she reached the bottom of them, I called down to her, “Ambyr? One more thing—and it will be quick, I promise you.”
She turned up to me, to exactly where I was standing, and said, “Okay. If it’s quick.”
I was almost afraid to put the question; but the investigator in me was taking precedence again, enabling me to ask: “Were you in fact, during the time that I knew you, still blind?”
She gave me that same roguish smile and replied, “You’re the doctor—what do you think?”
“I think,” I answered, returning her smile and glad, at least, that if we had to part enemies, it would not be hateful, “that most cases of blindness caused by anorexic hypoglycemic coma resolve within months. Sometimes sooner. A few are permanent, however.”
“Well, then,” Ambyr answered, moving toward the front door, enigmatic to the end. “I guess you’ve got your answer, baby…”