Invisible Boy (16 page)

I followed her into the living room, placing the tray on her coffee table alongside a bowl brimming with cellophane-wrapped
hard candy.

Mrs. Underhill turned on the lamps at either end of her camelback sofa, their frilly-tutu shades perched atop ceramic ballerinas.
She sat down slowly on the center cushion, knees creaking a bit.

I didn’t know how to restart the conversation, not wanting to mention what she must have been told by the police this morning.

There was a honey-colored upright piano in the corner with a book of hymns in its music rack and a row of framed photos across
the top. I walked over to look at them, still at a loss for something to say.

I touched the first frame, gold-leaf with clusters of grapes at each corner. It held a wedding portrait: Mrs. Underhill in
a froth of veil and a square-shouldered white satin dress, hair rolled Andrews Sisters–high above her forehead. She was smiling
up at a slender man in uniform, her hand resting gracefully against his left breast pocket, just beneath a row of medal ribbons.

“That’s my Edward,” she said. “One week home from the war.”

“You look wonderful together—so happy.”

“We
were
happy, for all the years we had. I lost him very young.”

“I’m so sorry.”

The next two portraits were of young women in mortarboards and graduation robes, one hairdo sixties Jackie-Camelot, the next
eighties Jheri curl.

Smiling. Full of promise.

“My daughter and granddaughter—Alicia and Angela.”

“Angela is Teddy’s mother?” I wasn’t even sure what tense to use.

“She is. When my Alicia passed, Angela came to live with me.”

The final frame held another color portrait, a chubby little boy grinning as he sat on Santa’s lap.

Teddy, named for Edward.

“Come sit down now,” she said, “before your tea gets cold.”

I perched on the edge of a velvet side chair and reached for my cup.

Mrs. Underhill sat demurely, thin legs crossed at the ankles.

I missed my mother suddenly, knowing she would have brightened the room with pleasing chatter.

Mrs. Underhill lifted her own tea, cup trembling. She took one dainty sip and brought it to rest in her lap again.

I cleared my throat. “Your house is lovely. Have you lived here a long time?”

“Forty years,” she said.

“Did you get to pick out the brick, on the outside?”

“The family before us did. I’ve always liked it, though.”

“I have to admit I like it better than your neighbor’s choice.”

“That
green
! Can you imagine?”

“Minty fresh,” I said, and she smiled at me.

“That was Gladys, all over—she liked things lively. Her two boys live there now.”

“It must be nice, knowing your neighbors.”

“Sometimes they play their music a mite loud,” she said, “but they keep the yard so neat, and always shovel the walk in winter.
They’re fine young men.”

“Did you grow up in Queens?”

“Born and raised. My family has been in New York for a long time.”

“Mine too,” I said.

“Which part of the state?”

“Here on Long Island, a little further out.”

“The way you speak, I wouldn’t have picked you for Queens.”

“I grew up in California, mostly,” I said, “but I was born here. My mother’s family settled in Oyster Bay. My father’s started
out in Brooklyn, I think.”

“Edward’s people were from Brooklyn. Well, of course we were cousins, somehow.
My
grandmother’s maiden name was Underhill, too.”

I looked down into my teacup. “It’s an old name, on Long Island.”

“You’re interested in local history?” she asked.

“My sister and I used to spend part of the summer back here every year. My grandfather loved talking about that kind of thing.”

“So he shared his knowledge with you. That must have been

wonderful.”

Actually, I’d written him off as a snob with a death fetish, fonder of expired relatives than those above ground. But he’d
planted a morbid note in me, all the same, one that ramped up to full Bach-gothic fugue when during high school and college
my history teachers started outlining our ancestors’ specific exploits.

“Is that what brought you to the cemetery?” asked Mrs. Underhill. “An interest in genealogy?”

I nodded, not wanting to burden her with my guilt over familial Indian massacres, slave-holding, and the possibility that
she and I were cousins.

In pondering that, I’d let the conversation coast to a speechless halt again.

“Please, have a cookie,” she said.

I glanced at Teddy’s picture and couldn’t imagine eating anything, but it would’ve been rude to refuse so I picked the smallest
one.

“You’re very kind to have invited me here,” I said. “This can’t be an easy time.”

I took a bite of cookie. It was delicious—brown sugar and butter crumbling on my tongue.

Mrs. Underhill looked down at her tea. “The police called me this morning. With the news.”

“Yes ma’am.” The cookie broke in my hand. “Detective Skwarecki told me. I’m so very sorry.”

“It’s better to know. Hard as it is, it’s better I don’t have to wonder anymore.”

I examined my shards of cookie, wishing I could produce words of comfort.

“You’re married, dear?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Any children of your own?”

“Not yet.”

“It changes you, having a child,” she said. “When I married Edward, it was as though he and I shared the same heart. But when
you have a child…? A little piece of your heart—the most important part—ventures out into the world.”

“That sounds scary,” I said.

“Yes, but at the same time
wonderful
.”

Mrs. Underhill’s assertion was belied by her lingering glance down the piano’s row of photos.

“About what happened,” I said. “Mrs. Underhill, I wanted to ask…”

But I couldn’t finish the question. Those picture frames contained three pieces of heart she’d never get back: her husband,
her daughter, and Teddy. Skwarecki was even now drawing a bead on the fourth piece, the last: Teddy’s mother, the only living
member of Mrs. Underhill’s family.

She looked from the photographs to me. “Yes, dear?”

“I’m sorry.”

I slipped the bits of cookie into my pocket. I didn’t want to offend my hostess, but there was no way I could have swallowed
anything else.

I looked into her haunted eyes and then away, afraid I might start crying.

“Miss Dare,” she said, “Madeline…”

“Yes ma’am?”

She raised one quivering hand to her throat. “There’s something I want to ask
you
. A favor.”

“Please. Anything.”

“I hoped you might tell me anything you can remember about finding Teddy. Anything at all.”

I was quiet, not sure what exactly she wanted to know.

“If it’s too much for you, talking about it…” she said.

“No ma’am. It’s just that I don’t know if I can tell you anything that would be helpful.”

“I don’t mean about the investigation. I just mean how he
was
, when you found him. I’ve been lying awake so many nights now, worried about him being lost and alone. Scared. Hurt.”

She was sitting up so straight, tears gathering against her lower lashes.

I understood, then, what she wanted.

“He was tucked inside a little thicket,” I said, “resting on a bed of soft leaves, right next to another child’s gravestone.”

She closed her eyes and brought a fist up to her mouth, shoulders hunched forward.

“There was an angel carved into that stone,” I said. “A little cherub with the sweetest face.”

I slipped down out of my chair and moved across the floor toward her, on my knees. “Teddy was at peace, Mrs. Underhill. I
know he was.”

She lifted her head, tears sliding down her cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said.

I sat down at her feet and gave her a napkin from the tea tray before taking her hand lightly in mine.

We stayed like that for a long time. Everything quiet but for the rasp of her breathing, the echoing tick of her front-hall
clock.

“You had a question,” she said at last. “What was it?”

“It wouldn’t be right of me to ask you, not today.”

“Today’s grief will last as long as I do, undiminished. I won’t take it as any unkindness if you speak your mind.”

She wrapped my hand in both of hers.

I dropped my eyes, still trying to find the words.

This woman brought you here. She came to Prospect and found you because she wants this conversation to happen. She
wants
you to ask what she knew, so she can finally tell someone.

“Mrs. Underhill,” I said, “I want to ask about Teddy.”

Her hands tightened around mine.

“You had to know he was being abused.”

“I knew,” she said.

“Did you try to stop it?”

“Yes,” she said, tears coursing down her tiny face. “I tried so hard.”

She closed her eyes and took in a sharp, shallow breath, all the slender volume her lungs could bear. When she exhaled this
wisp of air, her grief shaped it into a threnody of devastation. It was the most pitiable, pain-stricken sound I’d ever heard,
and one I hope never to hear again.

“He was just a
baby
, and he suffered so,” she said.

I wrapped my arms around her fragile torso, feeling her go slack against my chest as she wept.

“God forgive me,” she whispered. “I didn’t try hard
enough
.”

I stroked her hair, pressing her head gently down onto my shoulder.

Eyes closed, I thought of Pagan, and Mom, and the time I’d cradled a drowned pheasant chick in my hands, warming its down
while it died.

*   *   *   

I was standing halfway down Mrs. Underhill’s front three steps, the tin of cookies she’d packed for me tucked under my left
arm, my right hand still cradled gently in both of hers.

“I hope you’ll come back,” she said, giving me a peck on the cheek, our height made even by the step between us.

“I will. And please call me if you need anything. Or to talk.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said, releasing my hand.

She shivered once and pulled the thin cardigan closer around her shoulders, buttoning it down to the hem before turning to
walk back inside.

I listened to all her locks being clicked and slid carefully back into place between us, then turned toward the street.

I let myself out through the little gate in the yard’s hip-high chain-link fence and latched it securely behind me.

Just in case Mrs. Underhill was looking, I waved one more good-bye toward her living-room window.

The spyhole-gap in her neighbor’s lace curtains twitched shut behind glass grown milky with a watcher’s breath.

T
eddy Underhill was already in the system,” said Skwarecki back at Prospect.

“
Which
system?” asked Cate.

“Child Welfare,” said Skwarecki. “There was a report of abuse three months before he was killed.”

“By Mrs. Underhill?” I asked.

She shook her head. “A neighbor.”

A stranger.

I looked down at the brown grass, weary and disappointed.

“Someone out by LaGuardia?” asked Cate.

“Brooklyn,” said Skwarecki. “Angela Underhill and her boyfriend had an apartment in East New York—third-floor walk-up in a
brownstone. They moved in together when Teddy was around six months old.”

“So how did they end up in a welfare motel in Queens?” asked Cate.

“My best guess is they were avoiding Teddy’s caseworker.”

“
And
the neighbor?” I asked.

Skwarecki nodded. “They knew who’d called it in. Ms. Keller.”

“Who?” asked Cate.

“She lived directly below them. Keller called SCR, and SCR called ACS.”

“Which stand for what?” I asked.

“Sorry,” said Skwarecki. “First one’s the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Neglect. They run the hotlines, decide
which reports get handed on to the Administration for Children’s Services. If that happens, ACS sends someone out to the family
within twenty-four hours.”

“So did SCR hand it on?” I asked.

“Keller called the line for mandated reporters, so they took her seriously. She used to be an ER nurse.”

“What’s she doing now?” asked Cate.

“Chemo.”

From Skwarecki’s expression I knew she wasn’t talking about a change in the woman’s medical specialty. “How bad?”

“She had a double mastectomy two years ago. Last fall they found tumors in her lungs. Now it’s her liver.”

“So this is not only a woman who’s professionally up to speed on the signs of abuse,” I said, “but also one spending a great
deal of time in her apartment.”

Skwarecki nodded.

“Have you met with her yet?” asked Cate.

“By phone,” said Skwarecki. “I’m going out to see her tomorrow. You guys remember Louise Bost?”

“The ADA chick with the girly shoes,” said Cate.

“She’ll be coming with me, to take Ms. Keller’s statement.”

“And her statement’s the thing you need before you can consider making an arrest?” I asked.