“Patrick Bannister here,” I said, “and I’ve just realized what a lousy time it is to be calling. You’re probably chasing a deadline.”
“You sound like you’ve got some first-hand knowledge there,” she said, still clicking away.
“Guilty.”
“Reporter?”
“
“Ah,” she said, “nice.”
“If it’s a bad time...”
“Sweetie, it’s never a
“Well…I’m actually in town.”
That made her stop typing. “In Corvine?”
“Yeah.”
“On purpose?”
“Far as I can tell.”
“Can’t be for pleasure, so it has to be business.”
“It is …”
“Yeah, well we don’t have much of that around here, either.”
“I’m working on the Kingsley case.”
“Nathan Kingsley?” A pause. “You know you’re about thirty years too late, unless there’s something new going on there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Hmm.”
“What?”
“Just hmm, is all…”
“Can you expand on that?”
“Oh nothing…just seems a little odd. You being from a national news magazine, calling me out of the blue about a kid who’s been dead for a long time.”
“Is there some rule against doing stories about dead people?”
“Well, no, I just—”
“And you do follow-ups on it yourself from time to time, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m local. I
“Define real world.”
“Anyplace but here.”
I laughed a little. Funny gal, this Norris.
She went on, “And last I checked, you folks in the real world have plenty of missing and murdered kids to chase after. So what gives? Talk to me.”
I thought about how to answer that, searching my mind for a logical response, knowing full well what a horrible liar I am.
She cleared her throat. “Still with me there, Pat?”
“Still here, yeah.”
“So…the Kingsley case. Why him?”
“I’m actually doing a story about missing and exploited kids, and we’re looking at several cases. Kingsley just happens to be one of them.”
“I see,” she said, sounding less suspicious but not completely convinced, either.
“So I was hoping maybe we could meet and you could get me up to speed on the case.”
“I can do that, sure.”
“How about after work? Got some time?”
She paused, and then, “You sure seem in a hurry.”
“Just to get out of here, is all.”
“I’m feeling you there, Pat. I’ve been trying to do that for years. Okay, there’s a bar. The Sports Page, right across the street from our offices. Order me a Tom Collins. I’ll probably need one.”
Chapter Nine
My older brother Benjamin died when I was two. I don’t remember him, but my mother told me he passed away at the age of four from the same kind of heart abnormality as my father.
She never recovered from his death; I expect no parent ever does, but they do usually move on. Not her. She talked about him constantly, and the theme was always the same: Benjamin could do no wrong. Sometimes it felt as though he ruled my life from the grave, since I spent my childhood competing against him for my mother’s affection. It was hard going up against a ghost, so naturally I lost.
I came to realize her grief wasn’t normal, that it wasn’t really even about Benjamin—it was about her. She used him as a tool to draw attention to herself, as a weapon to make me feel less-than. Whenever she became angry or upset with me, what usually followed was, “Your poor brother would turn in his grave if he saw the way you treated me. God rest his soul.”
My poor brother. I don’t know…sometimes I thought he got off easy; after all, he didn’t have to live with her for very long. I was the one who ended up doing hard time.
I started blaming my brother just like my mother blamed me, grew resentful, privately referring to him as Saint Benjamin. Condemnation always rolled downhill in our house, and since Benjamin couldn’t defend himself, he was an easy target.
Then one day, the inevitable happened; I’d always figured it would, I just didn’t know how, or that it would hurt so much.
My mother had a music box that she loved. Her father had given it to her. It was a porcelain figurine of a young girl sitting Indian style, facing a corner, with tears rolling down her cheeks. When my mother wound it up, the music played and the girl would slowly spin around. “There’s my Little Sad Girl,” she would often say. Personally, the thing gave me the creeps. Sometimes I’d walk into the living room and find her holding it lovingly against her cheek, her own tearful eyes closed as the music played softly. She’d look up at me, startled, then try to act unaffected, as if doing so might somehow negate her moment of vulnerability.
I arrived home to an empty house after school one day. Nothing unusual there. Mother always seemed to be running around, although I never understood where. I tossed my books on the counter, then searched the fridge for something to eat. Hardly anything there—also not unusual—just a single apple somewhere on the outer edges of its lifespan and a can of soda. The phone rang as I was pulling them out. I put the soda down so I could answer; it was a call from the dentist, reminding mother of her appointment the next day. After writing the information down, I headed for the living room.
I had just turned on the TV when I realized I’d forgotten my soda in the kitchen, so I tossed the apple onto the side table, then headed back. A few steps later, I heard the smashing noise.
Little Sad Girl was on the floor in pieces.
Then I heard mother pull up in the driveway.
She walked in, took one look, and froze in her tracks.
“It was an accident!” I said, shaking my head, stepping away from the broken pieces as if doing so might somehow separate me from my catastrophic mistake. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!”
“
