Fortune's Deadly Descent (8 page)

But Benny said, “Like hybrid tomatoes?”

I laughed. “Exactly. Like hybrid tomatoes.”

He gave away his syrup to the vendors, the ones who always grin and holler “
Grüetzi
” when they see him coming, who ask how his basil cream chicken or chocolate mousse turned out, or whether the trumpet mushrooms worked in place of the chanterelles. Some of them sell their wares at the Christmas market, and last year Benny baked them cinnamon stars, also jam and butter cookies. He’s always seemed more comfortable with adults than with children.

Still,
bloodline
. Where
had
he picked that up?

We cross the border at Basel, and as I drive on toward Saint-Corbenay with Oliver asleep beside me, I have plenty of time to think. I remember how those vendors told me, as people frequently do, how lucky I am to have such a child. Then I’m usually asked (even more often than I’m asked the dreaded writer question,
Where do you get your ideas?
): “So do Benny’s talents come from you or your husband?” I always answer: “Benny is one of a kind.” Benny’s response is always the same too. He takes hold of my hand and smiles, as if to say it doesn’t matter. But there is also an air of concern in that smile, as if he’s trying to protect me from the truth.

I drive the Range Rover as far as Dijon and stop for the night. Oliver staggers through a fog of jet lag into his room next to mine. By the time my head hits the pillow, I understand that something integral is cracking within me. Sorrow and grief and fear are mounding a suffocating weight on me, but it’s not only that—I feel as though a part of my spirit has gone dead, and the rest becoming hard, calculating.

In my sleep, I see Benny sprawled across train tracks, surrounded by strangers. A man draws a blanket over his tiny body. I can’t reach him fast enough, can’t stop his face from being covered.
Move back, move back
, I scream, but no one understands. I fly into a rage—yank hair, bloody noses, knock teeth from lips that say nothing.

I jolt upright and thump my hand across the bed beside me. Benny is gone. So is Benicio. My knuckles throb from where I must’ve whacked them on the carved headboard. I gather the duvet to my throat. It smells of bleach, and this brings with it the memory of comfort and order, of mothering, and of my own mother. Her gentle voice in my head eventually settles my breathing.

All night, in the near distance, cars rush along the Autoroute. A small child could be tucked into any of those backseats. Or rope-bound in the back of any truck or van. He could be in Africa, he could be down the hall. The world is too vast. How I crave just a single nugget of a solid fact.

I swing my feet to the floor, throw open the drapes to a violet-black sky, and stare for all the hours it takes for daylight to come and release me.

We breakfast in the hotel restaurant, a long chamber with windows spanning an entire wall. Outside, a strip of morning fog clings to a hillside, making it difficult to see beyond the grassy grounds. The air around us smells of polished wood, fried onions, French coffee; any other morning, we’d leave this table keen on exploring…

Oliver asks if I slept all right.

“I was dead to the world,” I say without a qualm.

I wash a generous potato galette down with two cafés au lait, the most I’ve eaten at a sitting in nearly a week. I pray it doesn’t all come back up.

Finally, I say, “Oliver, I hope you know what Moreau said last night about me and the man from the train wasn’t true. I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

“Of course I know. But I’ve been wondering about him, Moreau…did he make all that up, or does he really believe it? I mean, are there actually
texts
?”

“Can you fake something like that?”

“I have no idea, but it doesn’t seem impossible.”

I nod.

“How well do you know Isabel?” he asks, then glances down at the copied police notes as if not wanting to see my reaction.

“It depends on what you mean by
how well
.”

“Has Benicio said what she was like before all the Mexico stuff?”

“A little, not much.”

“Tell me the little, then.” He looks up with just his eyes.

“She was,
is
, his little sister and I know he was protective of her. He tried to convince her to stay away from Leon and the business with your father. But she wouldn’t listen.
Obviously
.”

“What about her…as a person?”

What comes to me first is her disdain, how it radiated off her like a toxic aura as she grabbed my hair and stuck the gun barrel to my skull.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Just making conversation,” he answers. A small joke.

And so I give him back a small smile, then he says, “It’s just you’re so sure she was involved, which seems pretty reasonable, considering.”

“Thank you. Apparently, you’re the only one who sees it that way. Everyone else thinks I’m totally unbalanced on the subject
of Isabel.” My face flushes as I remember the scene with Benicio at the door.

Apparently, Oliver remembers too. He glances toward the window. “Do you remember anything else Benicio told you about her? Anything at all, no matter how random?”

“To be honest, she’s a topic we stay away from. I mean, he’s said general stuff, their having to share everything, for instance, even a bike. It was too big for her, but he said she rode it all around town anyway, standing on the pedals.”

“Hmm.”

“Not very illuminating.”

His shrug says,
It’s OK, we’ll figure it out
.

“I know a part of him was destroyed by how things turned out in Mexico. I’m making some assumptions here, obviously, but she’s his only sibling. They were close growing up—after their parents died, he was her father figure.”

I can’t forget the look that passed between the two of them after she’d belted me in the face and he’d leapt to my defense, slamming her to the floor. You could see their shock, as both remembered who they’d been to each other, their entwined histories, then the awareness that the bond had just vanished, irretrievably.

Oliver taps his pen on the table and gazes out the windows.

“What are you thinking?” I ask.

“You have every right to hate her, Mom. But I’m wondering… I mean, do you think she was a good mother to Benny? Before everything happened?”

“Oliver, please.”

“I know this sounds messed up, but don’t you wonder whether what she did back then was for Benny’s sake?”

“She tried to kill me, Oliver.”

He touches my hand. “It’s unforgivable. I’m not excusing anything. I just wonder what her motivation was from the start. Mostly, I guess, I’m wondering how much influence Dad had over her.”

“Well,” I say, my blood beginning to cool. “I suppose you’re right to ask. In fact, it’s why her sentence was shorter than it should’ve been for attempted murder. Her lawyer proved your father had
undue influenc
e over her.”

The mention of his father seems to kill our desire to go on talking. We finish our coffee to the sounds of tableware being cleared away.

Before we get back in the Rover and onto the Autoroute, I withdraw ten thousand euros in cash from my bank’s branch in Dijon. If Interpol or anyone else is following me, I won’t make it easier by leaving a credit card trail.

It’s late morning, and we’re just outside of Saint-Corbenay. The sky expands like the swath of a paintbrush, periwinkle, so deep it sends a purplish hue onto the silvery bark of plane trees. The place seems enchanted, as if a warm sedative were infused into the air.

My phone rings between the seats. Benicio has called repeatedly between last night and this morning. Each time, Oliver eyes the buzzing phone, then me. Again, I ignore it, and again I silently refuse to engage Oliver in conversation about Benicio.

Half a year, I think, Benicio and Emily were texting—or longer if he’s fudging that too. There’s no way they didn’t see each other in LA.

No one is above
anything
if the circumstances are ripe. I know this, of course—I know it but let myself forget. I’m my own best example. I’ve done atrocious things to other human beings when I had to. Likewise, atrocious things have been done to me. I can’t
escape the fact that they happened, in part, because I’d stopped paying attention to my life. I’d been turning a deaf ear to Jonathon’s lies for years by the time all hell broke loose. And now, for all I know, this same complacency was the essential ingredient in Benny’s abduction.

The phone stops ringing. A moment later, it starts again.

Oliver sighs, deep and loud. “What if it’s about Benny?”

“I’ll know,” I tell him. “Trust me.”

Oliver shakes his head, as if to say,
Isn’t that wishful thinking?

Twenty minutes later a light rain has returned and the hypnotic thump of wipers replaces the ringing phone. Outside, vineyards, valleys, hardwoods soaked to the roots. Another castle looking haunted in the rain.

“Have I been a bad mother?” I ask.

“The worst.”

“Oliver—”

“Of course not. Don’t talk like that.”

“I feel like I’ve never been able to give enough attention to either one of you. I never made you my
everything
, the way other mothers seem to do. I’ve always had…other goals, my work—”

“That’s sounding pretty retro,” he says.

“It’s a struggle, believe me. Each part of you wants the upper hand, and you end up feeling like you’re lousy at both. Especially when things go to shit. Pardon my French.”

Oliver gives me this beautifully adult smile, and says, “Mom, listen to me. Benny knows how much you love him. He
knows
. It’s just not an issue.”

A sudden convulsion of tears grips me. I cup my mouth, and the feeling disappears surprisingly quickly.

“You’re a
great
mother,” Oliver says, touching my arm. “And I’m not just saying that. You should hear the stories I’ve heard
from friends about
their
mothers. No, you shouldn’t. It’s depressing. Seriously. Don’t be hard on yourself. I know what you’re thinking. Benny’s disappearance isn’t your fault.”

If only this were true.

Oliver scratches his two-day stubble. “Benny’s a great kid. And I’m not so bad myself. Well, these days. And we didn’t get this way by accident.”

I pat his knee. “Thank you.”

Part of me believes him—out of a fierce need for it to be true. But the spritz of relief I feel wears off in moments, as I face the possibility that I’ve been a bad partner to Benicio. How can I not have seen there was trouble in our marriage? Why would Benicio see Emily behind my back unless she was meeting a need of his I somehow wasn’t?

Diverting to such thoughts when my concentration should be zeroed in on Benny is just more proof of my failure as a mother. But, even worse, every time I get sidetracked, if only momentarily, the reality of Benny’s situation swings back and smacks me anew. It’s as if he’s being taken from me hundreds of times a day.

“I mean it, Mom.”

“All right,” I say. “Thank you.”

“
Nichts zu Danken
,” he says.

The GPS directs us to the train stop at the edge of town. And, suddenly, there’s the concrete platform, the Saint-Corbenay sign. I’ve tried to prep myself, but my stomach clenches at the sight regardless.

I rise from the Rover and suck in a breath. A faint, misty rain glazes my face and hair. I cinch the belt of my raincoat. My steely resolve remains in place.

Oliver covers his head with his hood.

“Do you have some kind of hat?” I ask.

“No. Why?”

“You look too American. Here. Share my umbrella. I don’t want us to stand out.”

Oliver tosses his hood back and ducks beneath the umbrella. He pulls up a map of Saint-Corbenay on his phone and tugs the image around with his finger. I repeatedly poke him in the head with the umbrella as we set off down a street whose cobalt sign nailed to a stone house reads “Rue de Saint-Corbenay.”

“And speak German to me,” I say.

“
Klar doch
,” he says.

At first, we see no one. Hear no one. The village appears as abandoned as it did last week. The narrow walkways between houses and shops are murky, the cool cobbles slick with age, steaming from warm rain. I’ve lived in Europe seven years and I’m used to the old world appearance of things, but the handmade lace curtains in the windows, the absence of cars, the silence, leave me feeling as if I’ve journeyed back centuries.

But then, we hear a soft warble of voices, then the clang of a bicycle bell, then a church bell chiming eleven times. We turn a corner and the rumble of a hundred conversations billows toward us. Oliver locates us on the map, says, “Ah, the town square is a block this way.”

We round a corner and come face-to-face with an open-air market, the gurgling fountain in the center of the square. A woman hails shoppers to her jars of mustard. People mill about beneath yellow-and-white-striped awnings between rows of produce—greens, white cabbage, bundled carrots, shallots, a vibrant, autumn-colored display of jams. The rich, fermented smell of cheese reaches my nose, and then I see the stall filled with balls of white and yellow, foamy squares, triangles of marbled blue. Next to that, tables with wicker baskets full of cured meats, sausages
the shape and size of yams. And then, arrays of spices, basket after basket.

I could never have imagined this scene when I leaned my head out of the train last week—Saint-Corbenay had seemed so somber and humorless, but of course, I wouldn’t have seen it as anything other than forbidding as I searched for Benny.

Now I can’t help thinking that this market would be heaven for him. He’d want to dip his nose into every last thing, sniff and fondle, beg for vegetables and bulk spices. His version of a candy shop. My throat tightens at the thought.

I take another long, damp breath, and look around. “I don’t see a lot of children,” I say.

Oliver clicks pictures with his phone, slowly, in a circle, recording the panorama. “Most kids aren’t like Benny,” he says. “They don’t get excited about going to the market with
Maman
.” He lowers the phone and throws me a tight-lipped smile.