Something New (12 page)

Suck it up, girl
. Abby blinked away wetness before it could form.
Focus on getting answers.

She forced her hand to her side and swallowed down the betrayal trying to push its way out of her. “Why do you think she was lying?”
Good. Good. Your voice hardly sounded strained at all
. “Can you give me some examples of what made you suspicious?”

It took Lorene a good minute of putting her hand against the top of her mug, to curling it around the side, to biting her lips inward, as if to stifle herself, before she spoke. “It’s difficult to describe, but when two people have been best friends since they were five years old, one can tell when something is wrong with the other. It’s something indefinable but detectable.”

Another moment of silence passed, wherein Lorene’s brows pulled together as she ticked her fingers against the table surface. “Elaine mentioned this concern about your father three or four months before their deaths,” she finally went on, “but I’d seen subtle changes in your mother during that entire last year of her life. Every once in a while she would cancel plans we’d made, when she’d really never done that before without a legitimate reason. These new excuses were not solid reasons, such as your being sick, that I could check. I found Elaine less able to hold eye contact when we had conversations about your father. When I had occasion to sit next to her in church, she would sometimes fidget in a way that made me think the message was hitting home to her in a particular way.

“I didn’t even want to let my mind go to such a place”—Lorene made a tittering, nervous-laugh sound—“but I have to confess, I’d already begun to suspect Elaine might be having an extramarital affair. Or if she wasn’t having one, she was doing something inappropriate that was troubling her enough to alter her behavior in small ways. When she brought up your father out of the blue, and her suspicions of him, I saw it as her attempt to reach out for help. I suspected she wanted to confess her own transgressions but couldn’t bring herself to do it.”

Abby struggled to take everything in. Nothing in Lorene’s mannerisms or voice led Abby to believe the woman was trying to deceive her. Still… “With eighteen years to think about your suspicions, do you still believe your first assessment to be true?”

“Yes,” Lorene answered, no hesitation at all. “I knew your mother so well. Better than a sister. I know something very important was going on in her life that final year. I know it troubled her and that she hid it from me. I can’t speak as confidently about your father. I wasn’t around him nearly as much, but I was around him enough, and I didn’t see behavioral changes in him the way I did with her.”

“Right.” Well, there it was. Abby found herself staring down, watching her hands twiddle her mug in a slow circle and feeling like they didn’t belong to her. “Okay.”

Lorene reached across the table to pat Abby’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

Abby withdrew her hand; she didn’t think she could handle attempts at comfort right now. Particularly from this woman. “It’s all right.” She grabbed for a smile to lighten the moment. “When I remembered she called this person baby, I came to the same conclusion myself.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier to face.”

“I’ll be fine,” Abby insisted. “Thank you for your help.” Uncomfortable with Lorene’s scrutiny, Abby grabbed her coat and got to her feet. “I have to go now, but you’ve given me a new angle to consider when I have one of my nightmares. Maybe it will help some of the confusing images make sense.”

Lorene rose too, following Abby out of the kitchen. “If it helps bring the right murderer to justice, then I will do whatever I can.” She put a gentle hold on Abby’s shoulder; just the slight force of her fingers guided Abby around to face her. “I still think you should take this new insight to the police,” she said, sounding like a parent nudging a kid to do the right thing on his or her own.

Pictures of Braden popped into Abby’s head, as clear as the ones of other people hanging on these hallway walls. Finally, a real smile, a small one she didn’t have to command herself to create, lifted the edges of Abby’s lips. “I have a friend who works in law enforcement. When I get some stuff figured out in my head, I’ll approach him with my suspicions.”

“Good.” Lorene reached out again, this time touching Abby’s jaw. “You’ve become such a beautiful young woman, Abby. Your parents would be very proud of you.”

Abby’s smile, of its own volition, grew bigger. “I hope so. Thank you.”

Lorene grinned for a moment too, but then it stiffened and the blue in her eyes deepened like an oncoming rainstorm. “My deepest shame and regret is that I couldn’t make a home for you.” The confession spilled from Lorene in a rush. “I tried, Abby. I tried so hard.
We
tried so hard. But at a certain point Bill and I had to accept that we didn’t have the skills to take care of you and that any more would destroy our own family.”

Abby pulled away, anxious to leave. “It’s all right. You don’t need to apologize.”

Lorene grabbed Abby’s hand, this time gripping it with an unbreakable hold. “It’s not all right. It had to happen, but that doesn’t make it all right. After your parents died, nobody could get a single word out of you while you were awake. You wouldn’t talk, even to me. You were withdrawn to the point that you had to take special classes half the day at school, remember?”

She squeezed Abby’s fingers, keeping them connected. “Perhaps we could have handled your prolonged silence although we feared you needed special help we were not skilled to give. But it was more than that. It was the nightmares that became too much for us. When you went to bed at night or when you took a nap, the memories of what you witnessed came back to you, and you screamed and screamed and screamed until someone shook you awake. Then it would take hours to calm this frantic racing we could feel in your chest, only to repeat the routine when you fell asleep again.” She let go of Abby and steepled her hands under her chin. “Do you remember Stephen?” As Lorene asked, she looked to her left, at a picture of a blond boy hanging on the wall.

Abby couldn’t help following Lorene’s gaze to the photo and remembering the boy in the picture. Shame filled Abby, much as it had all those years ago. She’d pushed down the memories and her guilt after going into foster care, but seeing Stephen’s picture as the boy he’d been back then rushed it all back hard enough to clog her throat. “Yes.”

“It was already difficult creating an environment for Stephen where he could have more good days than bad. The addition of another child threw him off enough, but add to that his reactions to your nightmares. Every time we had to calm you, we also had to calm Stephen, and it came to a point where Bill and I never slept and could no longer handle our children in addition to you.” Lorene affirmed the very suspicions she had tried to assure Abby weren’t happening all that time ago. Abby’s nightmares—her very presence a lot of the time—
had
exacerbated Stephen’s autism.

Abby felt the burn behind her eyes and couldn’t keep the wobble out of her voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset him.”

Lorene tsk-tsked and drew Abby into her embrace. The woman rubbed Abby’s back, and Abby leaned into her as if Lorene were the one towering over Abby instead of the other way around. “It’s okay. I know you couldn’t help being scared either, sweetheart.”

“Tell me.” This was not what Abby had come to this house for, but the plea—
the need
—poured out of her without going through a censor first. “Tell me the rest.”

Lorene pulled back but kept Abby close with hands cupped on Abby’s face. “We tried keeping you for as long as we could. I do promise you that. We hoped the counseling you were receiving from the state would eventually help you get better, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. They suggested medicating you, but we didn’t believe in that.” Her focus strayed to the photo of her son as she continued, her voice dropping some. “Stephen continued to get worse, and his doctors said the only way to bring him back to the relative calm we’d helped him achieve before was to take the stress out of his environment. We couldn’t give up our own child.” She spoke as if she felt she needed to convince Abby of the rightness of her choice. “I agonized and cried for months, but at a certain point we had to let you go. It was the only way to keep the rest of the family from fracturing more than it already had.”

Abby stepped back and turned away, hating the streaks of tears she swiped away from her cheeks. “By then nobody else in the church wanted me.”

“My fault.” Lorene’s voice cracked, and it seemed Abby had transferred the armor of guilt to her. “I’m afraid the many, many times I unburdened myself with my church family, I didn’t realize I was planting seeds in them about you. By the time we knew we were going to let you go, I’d scared anyone beyond the point of taking a risk on you. They knew of your silence and solitude from your many visits to the church, and at that point they’d heard enough of my stories of your nightmares and screaming fits that none of them felt they could offer you a home that would help you get better. Nobody would step up.”

“I understand.” Taking a moment to make certain her face and eyes were dry, Abby gave herself a mental pep talk and shoved the moment of weakness away. “I’m sure I would have been as terrifying in my foster homes, had I not been put on a drug regimen that allowed me to sleep.”

“May I ask how long was it before you began speaking again?”

“Don’t know for sure.” With her hands tucked in her pockets, Abby hunched her shoulders and shrugged. “Maybe another year or just under.”

“The woman from DCF told me it would be better if I didn’t have contact with you for a while. She said your seeing me would only make you wish and believe I was going to bring you home with me again.” Lorene glanced away, and her face burned with red. “In truth, I let her convince me. I loved you so much I probably would have convinced myself that things hadn’t been as bad as they were and taken you back, only to start the cycle all over again.”

“And then you forgot about me.” A slip of rancor gave edge to Abby’s tone.

“No. I never forgot.” Lorene looked back to Abby in a flash, shaking her head so hard her silver hair swished around her throat. “I did let my guilt keep me away, though. Seeing you would have reminded me over and over that I’d failed to do right by you. There wasn’t a will, but I knew you mother wanted me to take care of you if anything ever happened to her and Richard. I know in heaven that’s all she would have been praying for”—tears filled Lorene’s eyes again—“and I couldn’t do it.”

Abby willed herself not to succumb to the band constricting her chest. “The past is done. There’s no sense in crying about it anymore.”

A sigh escaped Lorene. “I fear your life has made you hard.”

“Practical,” Abby corrected. “A survivor.”

“Perhaps a visit to the church could help you find new peace with the things you’ve learned about your mother today.” Color still suffused Lorene’s cheeks. “Plus the other stuff.”

“Thank you, but I don’t believe in organized religion.”

“Oh.”

Extreme discomfort well beyond the public display of tears suddenly shrouded Abby. “Listen, I have to get going.” She made a beeline the twenty feet to the front door. “Thank you for speaking to me. I appreciate your openness about my mother.”

“Abby,” Lorene called from behind. “I don’t judge you by your lack of faith in the church. Circumstances have given you little reason to believe in its spiritual, guiding hand.”

Abby’s fingers gripped the doorknob with a ruthless hold. “My issues with church go well beyond my own circumstances. I don’t think that’s something we really want to get into right now.” Without looking back, she pulled open the door. “I have to go. Bye.” She stepped out onto the porch.

She felt Lorene rush to join her. “Will you come back?” Lorene asked. “Bill would love to see you. Stephen still lives with us, and the others come over for dinner every Sunday evening.”

The strain in Lorene’s voice tugged at Abby, and she gave in to one more look. “I’ll think about it.” So much new information spun in Abby’s brain that she could not give Lorene more than that right now.

Lorene dipped her head and even backed up to her open doorway. “May I at least tell Bill that you visited? And about your suspicions of Rusty Cormack’s innocence?”

A wiry, geeky blond-haired man with a penchant for practical jokes and a comforting, infectious laugh filled Abby’s mind. “You can. I’d ask that you keep our conversation between just the two of you, though. I don’t want anyone at the church getting wind of what we talked about.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you again. You didn’t have to answer the door.” Overcome, Abby reached out and curled her hand around Lorene’s. “You didn’t have to tell me everything you did.”

“Yes, I did,” Lorene replied, pulling Abby in and embracing her again. “You have a good night, dear. It truly is a blessing to see you again.”

Abby let herself be hugged for a moment. Felt strange. Odd.

Good.

That wisp of panic sliced through her again, and without another glance, Abby withdrew and did a speed walk to her car.

As she drove away, she thought about how this reunion should have been weird. It should have been uncomfortable. There should have been the itch of anger, resentment, and lingering hurt.

And that had occurred.

Abby sure as hell did experience elements of each of those emotions while talking with Lorene Jones.

What Abby hadn’t expected was the internal tug toward Lorene and what she represented.

Family. Unity. A sense of belonging.

And faith.

* * *

Where in the hell is she?

The setting sun reflected against the car pulling into the back parking lot of Abby’s Attic. Rodrigo pushed away from the side of his truck for a better look and swore under his breath as Braden pulled in alongside him.

Not Abby.

Rodrigo rounded Braden’s vehicle and didn’t even wait for the man to fully get out before pouncing. “Have you talked to her today?”