Face, The (2 page)

Renee

L
ike a determined taxpayer charging city hall, I grip the offensive letter and stride into the rental office. A middle-aged man sits on a stool behind a counter, a potbellied specimen of American male pride in an I’m with Stupid T-shirt, frayed blue jeans, and rubber flip-flops.

“Excuse me, are you Mr. Myers?” I point to the signature on the letter. “If so, you can stop sending these annoying eviction notices.”

The man tears his gaze away from the small television in the corner and gapes at me. “I’m Todd, the assistant manager.”

“Hello, Todd. I hope you can help me. I’m Renee Carey and I’m here to clean out my mother’s unit. I would have come sooner, but I can’t get away from my office during the week.”

The man’s gaze returns to the wrestling match on the TV before he grunts and reluctantly pushes himself off the stool. “Your mother’s name?”

“Vivian Sims. Unit 1402.”

“You got a key?”

“I thought you kept—”

“You lock it, you keep the key. But that’s okay. If you’ve got a letter from Myers, we can get in.”

Todd reaches for a pair of long-handled bolt cutters on the wall, then pushes his way through the swinging gate at the side of the counter. Without so much as a sidelong glance at my letter, he heads toward the entrance. “Come on.”

“Wait.” I unfold the page and point to the date. “According to this, my mother’s contract expired three months ago. I think I owe you some money.”

Todd halts, an uncertain look on his face. “You owe me?”

“Your company. I didn’t know my mother’s contract expired, and I couldn’t get here until today. So I’m overdue. Or my mother is.”

He gives me a lopsided smile. “Then let her pay it.”

“I would, but she died eighteen months ago.”

“Oh.” Todd squinches his face into a question mark. “Um…our bookkeeper doesn’t come in on Saturdays.”

I smooth the letter on the counter and try to be patient. “It wouldn’t be hard to figure out how much I owe you. We take the total amount due per year and divide by twelve, then multiply by three. I’d be happy to write you a—”

“Tell you what, lady—” Todd winks at me “—consider it on the house. So let’s head out—”

“I’d rather not,” I answer, returning his smile in full measure. “And I think your boss would rather I paid the extra rent, don’t you?”

“But the guy who does the billing’s not—”

“Have him call me on Monday.” I pull a business card from my wallet and snap it to the counter. “Now let’s get that unit unlocked.”

I blink as we step into a bright spring day, then I follow Todd to a rectangular building that seems to be composed of little more than beige cinder blocks and tangerine garage doors. He walks at a surprisingly quick pace, probably trying to hurry back to his wrestling match, and pauses outside a roll-up door spray-painted with a stenciled 1402.

He turns to squint at me. “You sure you don’t got a key?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t even know Mom rented this place.”

Todd swings the bolt cutters into position. “Musta signed a two-year contract. Take what you want. Anything left behind will be hauled to the dump by the close of business today. And here…” He pauses to pull a card from his pocket and hands it to me. “Call them if you find anything worth salvaging.”

I glance at the crinkled card: Joseph’s Coat Thrift Shop. Quality Donations Cheerfully Accepted.

I drop the card into my purse as he applies his considerable heft to the bolt cutters. I don’t know what my mother stored in this unit; until I began to receive eviction notices, I didn’t know this place existed behind the National Memorial Park.

With a loud snap, the bolt cutters bite through the steel hasp. Myers knocks the dangling lock with a knuckle, sending the broken mechanism rattling across the concrete floor. “Here ya go,” he says, bending to lift the roll-up door.

He walks away, whistling, as I stand in the opening and stare at the shadowed remains of my mother’s life. The space beyond is not large, nor is the unit crowded. Mom must have intended to use this place to store Christmas decorations or seasonal clothing. After she got sick, she might have forgotten about it. Heaven knows she had more important things to think about.

I spy a light switch on the cinder block wall and flip it. The fluorescent lights flicker and cast a greenish glow over a space that smells of mildew and dead rat. Two cardboard boxes sit next to a black-spotted silk ficus that has seen better days. A sofa rests against the opposite wall, covered by a stained bedsheet, and a maple headboard and footboard lean against the back of the unit. The curve of the headboard is familiar…. No wonder, it’s part of my old bed.

I rake my hand through my hair and wonder if any of this stuff is worth a wasted Saturday and the possibility of a broken nail. Not much here, and certainly nothing of value. So why didn’t Mom toss this junk out?

I step toward the first box and gingerly lift the lid. I expect to find pots and pans, or other useful objects Mother’s frugal nature wouldn’t allow her to throw away, but instead several manila file folders peek out at me.

I run my finger over the file tabs, reading Mother’s neatly printed labels: Old Checks. Past Bank Statements. Utility Bills. Insurance Payments. Kevin.

I blink at the sight of my brother’s name. Kevin has been gone more than twenty years, and the trunk containing his kindergarten art, catcher’s mitt, and college diploma is moldering in my attic. So what has Mother saved here?

I pull the file from the box and flip it open. Inside I find Kevin’s passport, riddled with red and green stamps, his Social Security card, and his birth certificate. His death certificate, signed by a doctor in Spain. The bulletin from the memorial service where we honored him, his wife, and their stillborn child. Two photographs of the matching urns at the columbarium. A faded
Washington Post
article reporting that a couple from Falls Church had died in Spain. And letters, many of them on official letterhead from the Crescent Chemical Company, the firm where my brother worked. All of them dated July 1986, the month Kevin died.

I walk to the sofa and toss back the sheet. Dust motes pirouette in the light, but the upholstered surface is clean. I settle into the corner of the couch and open the file on my lap. After holding my finger under my nose to resist a sneeze, I flip through the papers again, and this time a distinctive letterhead catches my eye. One letter, dated two days after my brother’s death, is from a doctor working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Why would someone from the CIA write Mom about my brother?

Sarah

“H
ey,” Judson says. “We pulled off a flawless operation. High five.”

He rolls over to me and holds up his large brown hand, which I slap only because I know he likes this little ritual. Dr. Mewton has headed off to her office, leaving us alone in the operations room.

I tuck a hank of hair behind my speech processor to hear him better. “I wouldn’t call it flawless. First our contact went all squirrelly on us, then we lost the image when Hightower went into that passageway. Mewton wasn’t happy about that.”

“Hightower can handle himself. And it’s not like we had any reason to expect an assassin to be lurking outside a stationery shop.”

“Still, I don’t like being in the dark. Anything can happen—” I swallow the rest of my words, remembering that Judson will spend the remainder of his life in darkness. He knows all too well that life can change in a heartbeat. He doesn’t need me to tell him about the dangers of undercover work, any more than I need him to tell me about deafness.

I place my fingers on my keyboard as the bell in the tower begins to toll. Without looking out the window, I know the sun is sinking toward the watery western horizon.

“Maybe this accountant will be the contact that pays off,” Judson says, rolling toward his workstation. “Maybe this time we’ll give the DEA what they need to stop those murderous—”

“Hey,” I interrupt, more than ready to change the subject. “How’s the new voice working for you? Easier to live with than the old one?”

“Oh, yeah, much better.” Judson clicks the keyboard at his station. “I’ve named her Esmeralda.”

“Why?”

“Think about it, kid. The association will come to you.” In one smooth move he turns his wheelchair to face me. “That reminds me—want to check out my Close Connection account?”

I close the uplink to the KH 12 satellite we used to surveil the streets around Hightower’s location. “I don’t know why you waste time with that site. It’s not like you’re ever going to meet one of those women.”

“Hey—don’t deny a crip one of his few joys in life, okay? Log on for me.”

“Don’t you hear the bell? It’s time to go down for dinner.”

“My stomach can wait. My curiosity, however, is desperate to be satisfied.” He edges closer, his smile spreading. “Come on, Sarah, tinkle a little tune on those computer keys and hook me up with someone delicious.”

“Do it yourself.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, my eyes don’t work.”

“Text-to-speech reads e-mail, too.”

“Yeah, but text-to-speech can’t peek at a picture and tell me if a lady’s fine and foxy.”

Mystified by the workings of the male mind, I study my friend. Despite the damage done to his body, Judson Holmes is a skilled agent, as quick with computer code as anyone I’ve ever met. Why would he want anything to do with women who advertise themselves online?

“Why?” The word tumbles off my tongue. “Seriously, Jud, I don’t understand.”

His smile shrivels. “I don’t expect you do.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He hesitates. “Well…you have to admit, Sarah, you’re different.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, you are. You’ve spent way too much time in this place and you hang with me when you’re not working. That a useless cripple should be a young woman’s best friend—that ain’t right.”

“You’re not useless and we’re not talking about me.” I touch his hand so he’ll know I’m not kidding around. “I honestly don’t get it. Why do you reach out to those women when your life is centered here now?”

“Oh, Sarah.” His voice is as heavy as the brass bell tolling outside. “Smart as you are, I don’t know if you can understand.”

“Try me.”

“Writing to those women…makes me feel like a whole man. Hearing from them makes me feel normal, not like some freak shut away from society.”

I sit back, smarting from the barb in his words. I don’t think he meant to hurt me, but he did.

The tower bell concludes its ringing, reminding any fisherman within hearing distance to take time for prayer. For those of us who live and work at the Convent of the Lost Lambs, though, the automated bell has more to do with flesh than spirit.

“Hear that?” I stand so abruptly that my chair rolls backward and slams into a filing cabinet. “It’s dinnertime.”

Renee

A
trembling rises from someplace beneath my ribs as I study the letters in my brother’s folder. My mother has filed them in chronological order, and the first is dated the day after Kevin’s death. In it, the president of the Crescent Chemical Company expresses his condolences for Kevin’s untimely passing. “Following so soon after Diane’s tragedy, we are in shock,” the executive wrote. “If we can do anything for you, or if you have any opinion as to how we should dispose of his belongings, please let me know. Otherwise, we will donate the contents of the home to the local parish priest and have our attorney handle the estate….”

A second letter, on the same company letterhead, is from a man who identifies himself as Kevin’s colleague and says he will be sorely missed.
He was good at his job and a true patriot,
John Forehand wrote.
You can be proud of the work he was doing in Valencia.

I look away from the page as confusion clouds my thinking. Why would anyone make a point of telling a grieving mother that her son was a patriot? What had Kevin been
doing
overseas?

Ashamed to admit that I know so little about my brother’s last years, I flip to the page that most interests me—the one from Dr. Glenda Mewton, Deputy Director for Special Projects, Western European Division, Central Intelligence Agency. This letter, unlike the others, is not prefaced with paragraphs about loss and concern. Dr. Glenda Mewton comes directly to the point:

I search through the letters and rattle the pages, but if Dr. Mewton enclosed a photo, my mother did not keep it.

Perhaps she couldn’t bear the reminder.

I lower the letter as my heart leaps into my throat. This has to be a mistake. Kevin and Diane’s baby was stillborn. I know the baby was born dead because that’s what Mother told me, and my mother would sooner pluck out her eyelashes than tell a lie. At the memorial service her pastor talked about what a tragedy it was to lose father, mother,
and
child in the space of three days. The baby was supposed to have been cremated with Diane in Spain, that’s why there were two urns, instead of three.

The buzzing of my cell phone breaks my concentration. I dig through my purse and snap the phone open. Becky, my friend and the receptionist at my practice, wants to know if I need to use her pickup truck.

“No, but—You won’t believe this.” I lift the letter, my senses still reeling. “I think my brother worked for the CIA.”

“You’re kidding.” I can imagine her astonished gape. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“I don’t, not anymore. He died twenty years ago, in Spain.”

“Twenty years—? Good grief, how old was he?”

“Thirty-two. He died when I was fifteen.”

“Wow.” I can almost hear her thoughts leapfrogging from one possibility to another. “Was he a spy? Oh my goodness, was he executed by a foreign government?”

“You’ve seen too many movies. No, Kevin lost his wife and baby, so a couple of days later he drove his car off a bridge…at least, that’s what we were told. But I’ve just found this folder, and now nothing makes sense. If this one letter is to be believed, the little girl—my niece—was born alive and taken to some other hospital because she was in such bad shape.”

Becky exhales into the phone. “What happened to her?”

I flip through the rest of the correspondence, but none of the other writers mention a child. And none of the letters give any clue as to how my mother responded to Dr. Glenda Mewton.

It has to be a mistake. Dr. Mewton must have received bad information. Maybe she wrote Mother about someone else’s baby.

I hold the file by its spine and shake it, but no photograph or power of attorney form flutters out. Only Kevin’s passport and his death certificate, signed by a doctor in Spain.

So maybe there was no baby.

Either that, or Mom returned the power of attorney and destroyed the picture, deepening the deception.

I lower the file to my lap. “I have no idea what happened to the little girl, but I’m thinking she must have belonged to someone else. Otherwise, someone would have followed up with us…right?”

“I don’t think the CIA volunteers a lot of information,” Becky says. “And they were even more closemouthed twenty years ago, weren’t they?”

“I don’t know.” I glance out the door as a pair of young boys whiz through the alley on bicycles, their hair flying. For so long I’ve thought I was the last of my family…What if I’ve been wrong?

I could have a niece.
If she survived whatever Treacher-Collins syndrome is, she’d be twenty years old now.

I know very little about birth defects and even less about the CIA, but I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life wondering if I’ve been sold a lie.

I’m going to learn the truth about what happened to Sarah Jane Sims.