Forgotten (40 page)

“
I fiddled
with the photo on my computer; you know all that photo-shop shit –
a black leather jacket, matching hood and so on.”

Reardon instantly saw where this was going
and prayed he was wrong.

“
You asked
me if I would ever recognize the person watching Claudia at The
Local the day Alice Polinski was killed. I didn’t think I could
but….”

He handed
Reardon one of the folded papers. It was a colored printout of a
person in the photo-shopped apparel and sunglasses. Reardon
detected something familiar beneath the masquerade. At first, he
couldn’t quite pin it but then it smacked him like an imaginary
ten-ton fist. His throat automatically dried. “Can’t be,” he
scarcely whispered.

“
Sorry,
mate, but it is.” He handed Reardon the original photo.

Reardon held it for a few bare moments,
watched it slip from his shaky hands and flutter onto the shag-pile
rug. A cold, hard face stared back at him, almost in a mocking way
and he thought how truly warped the world could be.

He slugged
the rest of his second drink. It slid down smoothly, comfortably.
His head felt almost vacant, free for a short time. And it felt
bloody good. “This is really fucked.”

“That it is, my friend.” Ethan paused and
then, “I’ve been playing around with a few theories.”

Reardon welcomed the theories, mainly
because he was still too dazed to come up with his own. They were
good, some better than others. But like a dogged spark of
electricity, they eventually generated Reardon’s own idea.

And the more he thought about it, the more
it made sense.

And the more
it made sense,
the more he hated
it.

“Are we still going through with tonight?”
Ethan asked.

“Of course.”

“Does Claudia know of the plans?”

“
Only that
we are leaving Nankari.” Something Reardon hoped wouldn’t eventuate
if all went well.

“
You haven’t
told her?”

It was almost accusatory. He side-glanced
Ethan. “No.”

“Why not?”

“
You
don’
t think she’s been through enough
already?”

“
Everyone
you help has
been through
enough already
but you always keep them
up to date.”

Reardon began rubbing his brow.

“
Saul, even
with how you feel about her, you know deep down you have to tell
her, if for no other reason, for her own safety.”

“
When she’s
with me, she
is
safe.” But whom was Reardon really trying to
convince?

Ethan flapped the photo in his face. “And
this,” he said, in a not too convivial tone. “Are you going to tell
her about this?”

Reardon
visualized Claudia’s sad, crumpled body on the kitchen floor. One
memory had caused it,
one
solitary, bloody memory. How
would she deal with something of
this
magnitude?
“Eventually.”

“
She needs
to know, Saul, like right now. She needs to know who she can and
cannot trust.”

“
Yes, she
does,” he hissed, a little too forcibly. “
But not now
.”

Ethan’s eyes
rolled skyward. “Can’t believe this of you, mate. And I know women;
you’ll be making a huge mistake not telling her.”

“
Then
that’ll be my mistake to make. And what suddenly made you the
all-round expert on women, you who change them more times than your
bloody jocks.”

Had Reardon
just said that? He gritted his teeth and silently cursed. With all
their jovial banter about Ethan’s womanizing, Reardon knew that
once upon a flawless world, Ethan was anything but. All people had
their coping mechanisms after traumatic events.

Ethan’s women were his.

“
I’m sorry,”
Reardon whispered. “I don’t know where that came from.”

“
I know
exactly where it came from. You’re feeling torn
and
not in control. I
just happen to be the poor sod available.” Ethan stood. “One more
piece of Ethan Sloane advice. Don’t become like one of her
over-protective junkie family. As much as you care about her, she
doesn’t need that from
you
.”

And he left Reardon to dwell on his own
thoughts.

***

Reardon ran
at least
three miles non-stop, performed
his
meditation shit
as Ethan called it, and ran the three miles
back. Short in comparison to what he normally did but it brought
fresh blood pumping through his veins. Feeling semi-back in
control, he showered, changed and then searched for
Claudia.

He heard her well before he found her, heard
the rhythmic squeal of the outdoors swinging seat.

The blistering red sky was signaling a
near-end to another day. Reardon wondered where they would be on
its next cycle. Crickets welcomed the cooling evening. A frivolous
gecko scurried along the patio’s timber railing, stopped, stared
and scurried right back off.

Reardon snuggled next to Claudia, the
swinging seat creaking a little louder, longer than normal. “Hey
you,” he murmured.

Claudia smiled. Shit, how he loved that
smile, how her entire face simply smiled along with it. “Hey you
back,” she said.

“Been here the whole time?”

She shrugged. “For the most part. Had lots
to think about. And a good, long chat with Ethan helped. He feels
so bad about Cruikshank.” She was staring towards the roaring,
incoming waves. “It hurt him.”

It hurt me
, he wanted to
say.

“
I told him
that I appreciated his honesty, that I would’ve hated it more if he
hadn’t told me.”

Reardon
rolled his eyes. Ethan’s ego would be intolerable after that.
Couldn’t he, just once, be wrong? Reardon buried his nose into her
thick, windswept hair, inhaled the familiar smells that came with
her and wallowed.

She reminded him of a young injured horse
that his father once had, lost, frightened but highly spirited. All
it wanted to do was run away. Just like her. Until his father
taught the mare irrevocable trust.

As he needed to do with Claudia.

“Baby?” Reardon whispered.

He heard her
soft, seductive
hmmm
tantalize every living, hungry nerve cell he
possessed. He winced and battled, looked forward to the day he
would battle no longer and simply have her. Somewhere special… not
a place soaked in the blood of dead people. “I have something to
tell you.”

Her half-hooded eyes swung up to him.

“
Tonight,
when we leave Nankari….”

Annie rushed
in, halting mere feet from them. She was twisting her long, beaded
necklace, gazing directly at Claudia. “It’s your father,” she
mumbled. “He’s… he’s… oh damn it, Claudia, he’s just been rushed to
hospital. They think a heart attack.”

1989

“
I WANT TO
tell you a
story, my Carino.”

He appeared genial, more than he had in some
time and hence the girl, with the trusting innocence that came only
to the young, snuggled beneath the security of her father’s arm.
“Is it a good story, Papa?”

But her only answer came in the swift stillness of his
body. The little girl stilled also and waited. Hoped and waited.
For the waiting to end.

They were in her special place, beneath her watchful
guardian angel. Her own bubble of magic. Here, she would listen to
the sweet, mysterious voices, the ones that soothed her with
comforting words and hopeful promises and the belief that if she
wished hard enough, long enough, and was patient in her waiting,
then in time her wish would come true.

And the girl did believe.

She believed with all her might.

Moonlight shivered across the stone statue, melting its
frozen lips and mutating its cold, grey eyes into something golden
and warm. It was smiling at her. She smiled back. And then she made
her wish, as she had done so many times before.

When her wish making was over and her hope
strengthened by the magic, she asked her Papa to tell his
story.

His body stiffened further. “It is not a
good story. I wish it was.”

The little girl felt heartened that her Papa believed in
wishes too. “If you wish hard enough, long enough and just wait,”
she said, proudly espousing what she believed, what the magic had
taught her, “then the bad story will become a good
story.”

Her Papa cupped her chin and looked at her with sad,
squinting eyes and a lop-sided, downturned mouth. “Then I wish I
didn’t have to tell you. But it is a story that you must know. Do
you understand?”

The girl wasn’t sure if she did but she nodded eagerly. “Of
course, Papa. I’m very smart, remember.”

He smiled a brief, delicate smile and then pulled away.
With his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped firmly together,
he stared into the muted shadows beyond and began his story. “Once
upon a time, there was a young man, a very happy man with a
wonderful future ahead of him. Everybody loved him, his family, his
friends. Oh, he had many friends.” Her father closed his eyes. “But
that was soon to all disappear.”

“
Why, Papa, what happened?”

“
The war happened,” he said, in that unnatural pitch she
knew so well, the one that never failed to make tight, nasty knots
in her tummy. She huddled her knees close to her chest. “A
ludicrous, senseless war.”

The girl didn’t know what ‘ludicrous’ meant, but she wasn’t
about to ask.

“
The man didn’
t know
that. He thought it was a good war, one that he could be proud to
fight in, be brave for his country. And so he willingly and very
foolishly took part, only never to return.”

“
Did he die, Papa?”

“
Oh, yes, Carino, he died all right, but not in the way you
think. His body was alive, it moved, spoke, ate, slept, but the
rest of him, his core, his heart… his soul… was dead.”

“
I don’t understand. How can he be dead
but not dead?”

He glared at her with wild, burning eyes,
“Because, that is what war does. It kills who you are, who you once
were. It annihilates your very essence. And all that returns is an
empty shell.”

The girl, fearful of his worsening mood,
remained silent.

“
A vast empty shell,” he repeated to the
empty space before him. “This man had to do things in that war that
he never imagined. Do you know what some of those things
were?”

The girl didn’t think she wanted to know.

“
He would kill people, sometimes
brutally, not just men, but woman, even children. He would look in
their wet, frightened eyes, hear their continual screams for mercy.
But he gave none. They were the enemy, after all.”

The little girl’s former hope, her strength, the wondrous
magic, was fast diminishing. She trembled. “Papa, I… I don’t like
this story.”

But her Papa simply ignored her. “The delusional man did
many terrible things, things that lodged themselves permanently in
his already sad, pathetic mind. But he accepted it, because he knew
he was doing it for the good of his country.”

His lips curled and he laughed a short, wicked laugh. “For
his country. What a joke… what a cruel, cruel joke. Do you know
what he found out about his country, the country he fought for so
loyally? They didn’t even want him in the war; wouldn’t even
acknowledge or honor him for being there. Everything he had
suffered had been for nothing.” He shook his head. “And all that
remained were the horrific memories of what he had
done.”

He moaned, buried his head into his
trembling hands and fell unusually silent, unusually still.

The girl moistened her small forefinger with
her mouth, slicked back a long, wayward lock as she so often did
when she was anxious. What should she do? Should she say something
to her Papa? Perhaps, give him a hug like Alice did when the girl
felt as sad as her father appeared.

She looked to her guardian angel, listened to her wise
words. “Papa?” she whispered in a quivery voice. “Are you all
right?”

His shoulders began shuddering and he
whimpered, not once but several times. She sensed a swift,
throbbing ache near her heart as she saw tears glistening on his
reddened cheeks.

“
Why are you crying?”

He took a few more moments before tipping his head sideways
and looking at her. “Because,” he rasped, “because that man is your
Papa.”

The girl immediately clutched her chest and inhaled
sharply. Her Papa killing people? Could he do something like that?
She didn’t understand what war was. She didn’t understand much of
what he was saying, but she did understand that he had killed
people… children. She felt scared, scared for herself
and for her Papa.

The girl looked to the left, mapped out the cobblestone
path to Alice’s cottage… to safety. Should she run there? Now? Hide
from her Papa? A nearby owl hooted and she jumped, her eyes wide,
her heart thundering. Something gripped her wrist. It was her
Papa’s large hand. “Please don’t ever be afraid of me,” his voice
now gentler. “I couldn’t bear it if you were. Trust me.”