Mortal Sin (41 page)

“I was a rotten kid.” She slowly twirled the stem of her wineglass between slender fingers. “A real hell-raiser. I drank beer, smoked dope, spread my legs for just about any young buck who’d smile real pretty at me and take me to McDonald’s for a chocolate shake.”

She took a delicate sip of wine and swallowed it. Crossed her legs and stared into the glass. “When I was sixteen,” she said, “I met Sonny Evans. He worked at his daddy’s garage, a couple of towns over. He was five years older than me, a real wild boy. Momma hated him on sight because he wore a leather jacket, he always had grease under his fingernails, and he had a reputation as a hard drinker. She kept telling me he’d never amount to a piss in a windstorm. She couldn’t understand that all the things she hated about him were what made him so irresistible to me.”

She leaned back against the couch. “The more she hated him, the more I believed I was in
Love
, with a capital L. It just about drove her crazy. Of course, underneath it all, that was probably my primary motivation. At that age, you live to torment your parents. One fine day, after a particularly nasty battle, I packed all my stuff and moved in with Sonny. It was a stupid thing to do, but like I said, I was sixteen. At sixteen, you have all the answers. You’re just not smart enough yet to realize they’re all the wrong ones.” She stared into her glass, lifted it and took a long, slow swallow.

Quietly, he said, “What did your mother do?”

“She stopped speaking to me. As far as she was concerned, I’d made my own bed, and now I could lie in it.”

“Tough love.”

“And then some. At first, I didn’t mind. I was all grown up and living my own life, and having one hell of a fine time of it. One party right after another. For a few months, I really thought I was hot shit.” She smiled ruefully. “But after a while, the glitter started to rub off. I got tired of the partying, and Sonny got tired of my nagging. I was cramping his style by daring to suggest that he might occasionally spend an evening home with me, instead of out drinking and chasing skirts with his friends.

“Then I found out I was pregnant. I was young enough, and gullible enough, to believe he’d be happy about the baby. I thought it would save our rapidly deteriorating relationship.” She took another sip of wine.

Softly, he said, “What happened when you told him?”

She looked at him over the rim of her wineglass. “He called me a few choice names and said the baby probably wasn’t even his. Considering how much time I’d been spending at home while he was out sowing his wild oats, I could easily have been… shall we say… entertaining other gentlemen… in his absence. After all, according to him, I was a legend around Bayou Rouillard. There wasn’t a guy in the parish who hadn’t nailed me at some point in time.”

He winced, felt the pain she tried to disguise behind an offhand manner. “Cruel words,” he said.

“I warned you it wasn’t a pretty story. He tossed me out on my rear. I was devastated. I really thought I was in love with the guy. I was so young.” She shook her head, sighed. “So there I was—no man, no roof over my head, no job, no marketable skills. I didn’t even have a high school diploma. All I had was this little baby growing inside of me. I did the only thing I could do. I tucked my tail between my legs and ran home to Momma.”

He let out a hard breath. “And she took you in?”

“What’s that old saying, about home being the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in? I’ll give her credit. She never once said, ‘I told you so.’ But she was mortified. We might have been dirt-poor, but we weren’t dirt. Momma went to church faithfully, every Sunday of her life. She’d always been able to hold her head up in public, and she wasn’t about to give that up. So she took care of everything for me. She sent me here, to stay with Aunt Helen, until the baby was born. I was so young and scared and confused, so grateful she hadn’t turned her back on me, that I let her run the show. I shut my mouth and did whatever she told me, even when she told me that Bobby and Ellie wanted to adopt the baby. They’d been trying for a couple of years, but Ellie couldn’t conceive. Something about a tipped uterus. My brother was so much in love with his wife, he would’ve roped the moon for her if she’d asked. And she wanted a baby so bad she could taste it. So I gave her mine.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” she said. “Because, you see, I fell madly in love with that little girl the instant I laid eyes on her. I hadn’t understood about mother love. I think it’s something you have to experience to really understand. But I did what Momma said was best for everyone concerned. My life was a big zero. I had nothing to offer Kit. Bobby and Ellie could give her a home, with two parents I knew would dote on her. Sure, Bobby had a little growing up to do. But his heart was in the right place, and I knew Ellie would be a good enough mother to more than make up for any of my brother’s inadequacies. You should have seen her face the first time they put that baby in her arms. Like she’d just seen God. And I figured that at least I’d still get to be a part of Kit’s life. I could still see her regularly, play the part of the doting aunt. I was seventeen. What did I know?” A single tear trickled down her cheek. “I thought that would be enough.”

He got up from the chair and crossed the room to where she sat on the couch. Kneeling in front of her, he took her wineglass and set it on the floor, then clasped both her hands in his. “It must have taken tremendous courage,” he told her, “to do what you did.”

“I didn’t have a choice, don’t you see?” She swiped a strand of hair back from her face. “Courage had nothing to do with it! I did what I had to do, what was best for Kit. I handed over my daughter to my brother and his wife, pretending my heart wasn’t all bloody and battered.”

He eased closer, between her parted knees, and drew her trembling body into his arms, trying to absorb her pain, to carry some of the load for her. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

She pressed her damp cheek against his shoulder. “Every day of my life,” she said, “for the last sixteen years, I’ve regretted what I did. Two years ago, when Bobby finally brought her to me, I thought it was the second chance I’d been praying for. I was finally going to get to know my daughter. To influence her life. To be her mother. But the joke was on me, because she’s just like me. Headstrong, careless, and determined to make all the same mistakes I made, plus a few of her own that I was too naive to think up at her age. And I can’t even tell her I’m her mother. That’s the cross I have to bear for my sins. She’s built this whole fantasy around Ellie. I don’t have the right to tear that down.”

“You don’t think she has a right to know the truth? To understand the sacrifice you made for her because you loved her enough to give her up?”

Softly, against his neck, she said. “I don’t know. I truly don’t know.”

“I think you’re underestimating her.”

She toyed with a button on his shirt. “What if I tell her the truth and she ends up hating me? What if she thinks I gave her up because I didn’t want her? We’ve lied to her for her entire life. How the hell do I tell her that her father is really her uncle, and her real father was a coked-up grease monkey who refused to even acknowledge that she was his?”

He stroked her hair with gentle fingers, more determined than ever to bring her daughter back to her in one piece. “You’ll find the words,” he said. “When the time comes, you’ll find the right words.”

“What if she ends up hating us all?”

“It’s a chance you’ll have to take.” He brushed a strand of damp hair away from her cheek and redeposited it behind her ear. “You can’t change the past,” he said. “You can only move ahead. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.” He thought of his own past, and firmed his resolve. “What counts isn’t where we’re coming from, but where we’re headed.”

“I feel like I’m headed nowhere. I’m just spinning my wheels. All these weeks, and we’re no closer to finding her than we ever were.”

He kissed her cheek. “It’ll happen,” he said. “I suspect we’re closer than we think. All we need is the right puzzle piece, and it’ll all fall into place. That one single piece of information that will lead us to her. I think it will come when we least expect it. But I promise you one thing: it
will
come.”

His cell phone rang just as the birds outside the bedroom window were starting to greet the day. He groaned, tugged uselessly at the sheets caught in a hopeless tangle around his lanky legs, and thrust an arm into the early morning shadows to snag the phone. With a soft, incoherent murmur, Sarah pressed closer and wrapped a slender leg around his thigh. He returned to her silken warmth and clumsily pressed the button to silence the ringing phone.

She pressed her face against his back. He slipped his free arm through hers and cleared his throat. “Hello?”

“Father Donovan?”

Still half-asleep, he fumbled for the correct answer to the question. “Yes.”

“It’s Terry.”

In his incoherent and disoriented state, it took him a moment to process the name. “Terry?” he said.

“Terry Jackson. You gave me your card and that flyer a couple months ago in Kenmore Square.”

Ah, yes. Terry. Short black skirt, no coat, needle tracks running up the inside of her arm. Still fumbling, he said, “Terry, it’s—” he squinted to read the bedside clock “—four-thirty in the morning.”

“I would’ve called sooner, but I just remembered where I saw her face before.”

He rubbed his forehead with his free hand and murmured, “Whose face?”

“Kit. The missing girl. The one on the flyer you gave me.”

Full consciousness slammed into him. He smoothly disentangled himself from Sarah’s limbs, twined with exquisite abandon around his, and sat up in bed. “You’ve seen Kit?” he said.

“Yeah,” Terry said. “But like I said, it took me a while to figure out she was the same girl.”

Beside him, Sarah raised herself on one elbow. Their gazes locked. “Where?” he said. “Where did you see her?”

“At a porno shoot about ten days ago, in one of them sleazy no-tell motels out on Route 1 in Peabody. This guy Rio, he got himself a little business shooting home movies for slicked-up rich dudes looking for a little outside action, if you get my drift. Sometimes, he gives me a call when he’s looking for something special. I’m a specialist—” she drew out the word, gave it a few extra syllables “—in pain management.”

“Pain management,” he said blankly.

“Yeah, you know, S&M? He got this regular client who likes to be tied up and abused. He really gets off on it.”

“What does this have to do with Kit?”

“She was there.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“It was her, all right. Rio’s always got some new cookie on his arm. I usually don’t pay no attention. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this now. We both know that I ain’t no good Samaritan, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out why I should care. But that dude is bad news, and it gets old, watching him take advantage of young girls too stupid to figure out what he’s up to. And Kit, she was a real babe in the woods. She didn’t even figure out we were shooting a porn movie until she got a look at Mistress Terry all done up in her dominatrix attire.” Terry let out a short, harsh bark of laughter. “Once upon a time, I was probably as innocent as she is. When I was about eight. A girl like that, Rio’ll chew her up and spit her out. And his girlfriends have this habit of disappearing permanently once he’s done with ‘em.”

“How do I get in touch with Rio?”

“Don’t nobody get in touch with Rio. He gets in touch with you.”

“Somebody must have access to him. Who else was there?”

“Just Nate and me. and—”

“Nate. Who’s Nate?”

“The techie. He sets up the camera and the lights and stuff. He’s been at every shoot I ever did with Rio.”

“I don’t suppose Nate happens to have a last name?”

“I imagine he does, but I ain’t privy to that particular piece of information. Anyway, like I was saying, it was just Nate and me, and the client.”

“The client,” he said. “You don’t happen to know his name?”

Terry went abruptly mute.

He waited out the silence. “Look,” she said, “if Rio ever catches me blabbing the name of one of his high-profile clients, he be wiping my face all over the bricks in City Hall Plaza.”

“So you do know his name?”

“I might,” she said cagily. “What’s it worth to you?”

“A young girl’s life, Terry. You don’t want Kit to disappear permanently, like all those other girls.”

At the other end of the line, there was silence. “You know,” she said finally, “I ain’t nothing but a cheap junkie whore. But you did me a favor once. You took me in off the streets and told me I was worth something. I owe you for that. But this is it, Father. No more favors. We’re even. The slate’s wiped clean. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Just remember I wasn’t the one that told you this. That high-profile client? His name’s Tommy. At least that’s what I call him. But you’d know him better as Tom Adams. Senator Tom Adams.”