reason but on a demented impulse of the heart. He had known, had
Stupidly, he said, “You…I thought…standing there…”
“Yes?” the woman said, puzzled and wary.
“Don’t…don’t let her go,” he told the mother, surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice. “Don’t let her go, out of your sight, on her own, they vanish, they’re gone, unless you keep them close.”
Alarm flickered across the woman’s face.
With the innocent honesty of a four-year-old, piping up in a concerned and helpful tone, the little girl said, “Mister, you need to buy some soap. You sure smell. The soap’s over that way, I’ll show you.”
The mother quickly took her daughter’s hand, pulled her close.
Joe realized that he must, indeed, smell. He had been on the beach in the sun for a couple of hours, and later in the cemetery, and more than once he’d broken into a sweat of fear. He’d had nothing to eat during the day, so his breath must be sour with the beer that he had drunk at the shore.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he said. “You’re right. I smell. I better get some soap.”
Behind him, someone said, “Everything all right?”
Joe turned and saw the Korean proprietor. The man’s previously placid face was now carved by worry.
“I thought they were people I knew,” Joe explained. “People I knew…once.”
He realized that he had left the apartment this morning without shaving. Stubbled, greasy with stale sweat, rumpled, breath sour and beery, eyes wild with blasted hope, he must be a daunting sight. Now he better understood the attitude of the people at the bank.
“Everything all right?” the proprietor asked the woman.
She was uncertain. “I guess so.”
“I’m going,” Joe said. He felt as if his internal organs were slip-sliding into new positions, his stomach rising and his heart dropping down into the pit of him. “It’s okay, okay, just a mistake, I’m going.”
He stepped past the owner and went quickly to the front of the store.
As he headed past the cashier’s counter toward the door, the Korean woman worriedly said, “Everything all right?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Joe said, and he hurried outside into the sedimentary heat of the settling day.
When he got into the Honda, he saw the manila envelope on the passenger’s seat. He had left twenty thousand dollars unattended in an unlocked car. Although there had been no miracle in the convenience store, it was a miracle that the money was still here.
Tortured by severe stomach cramps, with a tightness in his chest that restricted his breathing, Joe wasn’t confident of his ability to drive with adequate attention to traffic. But he didn’t want the woman to think that he was waiting for her, stalking her. He started the Honda and left the shopping center.
Switching on the air conditioning, tilting the vents toward his face, he struggled for breath, as if his lungs had collapsed and he was striving to reinflate them with sheer willpower. What air he was able to inhale was heavy inside him, like a scalding liquid.
This was something else that he had learned from Compassionate Friends meetings: For most of those who lost children, not just for him, the pain was at times physical, stunning.
Wounded, he drove half hunched over the steering wheel, wheezing like an asthmatic.
He thought of the angry vow that he had made to destroy those who might be to blame for the fate of Flight 353, and he laughed briefly, sourly, at his foolishness, at the unlikely image of himself as an unstoppable engine of vengeance. He was walking wreckage. Dangerous to no one.
If he learned what had really happened to that 747, if treachery was indeed involved, and if he discovered who was responsible, the perpetrators would kill him before he could lift a hand against them. They were powerful, with apparently vast resources. He had no chance of bringing them to justice.
Nevertheless, he’d keep trying. The choice to turn away from the hunt was not his to make. Compulsion drove him. Searching behavior.
At a Kmart, Joe purchased an electric razor and a bottle of aftershave. He bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and toiletries.
The glare of the fluorescent lights cut at his eyes. One wheel on his shopping cart wobbled noisily, louder in his imagination than in reality, exacerbating his headache.
Shopping quickly, he bought a suitcase, two pairs of blue jeans, a gray sports jacket — corduroy, because the fall lines were already on display in August — underwear, T-shirts, athletic socks, and a new pair of Nikes. He went strictly by the stated size, trying on nothing.
After leaving Kmart, he found a modest, clean motel in Malibu, on the ocean, where later he might be able to sleep to the rumble of the surf. He shaved, showered, and changed into clean clothes.
By seven-thirty, with an hour of sunlight left, he drove east to Culver City, where Thomas Lee Vadance’s widow lived. Thomas had been listed on the passenger manifest for Flight 353, and his wife, Nora, had been quoted by the
At a McDonald’s, Joe bought two cheeseburgers and a cola. In the steel-tethered book at the restaurant’s public phone, he found a number and an address for Nora Vadance.
From his previous life as a reporter, he had a
While he drove, he ate both of the burgers and washed them down with the cola. He was surprised by his own sudden hunger.
The single-story house had a cedar-shingle roof, shingled walls, white trim, and white shutters. It was an odd mix of California ranch house and New England coastal cottage, but with its flagstone walkway and neatly tended beds of impatiens and agapanthus, it was charming.
The day was still warm. Heat shimmered off the flagstones.
With an orange-pink glow growing in the western sky and purple twilight just sliding into view in the east, Joe climbed two steps onto the porch and rang the bell.
The woman who answered the door was about thirty years old and pretty in a fresh-faced way. Although she was a brunette, she had the fair complexion of a redhead, with freckles and green eyes. She was in khaki shorts and a man’s threadbare white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was in disarray and damp with sweat, and on her left cheek was a smudge of dirt.
She looked as if she had been doing housework. And crying.
“Mrs. Vadance?” Joe asked.
“Yes.”
Although he had always been smooth about ingratiating himself with an interviewee when he had been a reporter, he was awkward now. He felt too casually dressed for the serious questions that he had come to ask. His jeans were loose, the waistband gathered and cinched with a belt, and because the air was hot, he’d left the sports jacket in the Honda. He wished he’d bought a shirt instead of just T-shirts.
“Mrs. Vadance, I was wondering if I could speak with you—”
“I’m very busy right now—”
“My name’s Joe Carpenter. My wife died on the plane. And my two little girls.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Then: “One year ago.”
“Yes. Tonight.”
She stepped back from the door. “Come in.”
He followed her into a cheery, predominantly white and yellow living room with chintz drapes and pillows. A dozen Lladro porcelains stood in a lighted corner display case.
She asked Joe to have a seat. As he settled in an armchair, she went to a doorway and called, “Bob? Bob, we have a visitor.”
“I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday night,” Joe said.
Returning from the doorway and perching on the sofa, the woman said, “Not at all. But I’m afraid I’m not the Mrs. Vadance you came to see. I’m not Nora. My name’s Clarise. It was my mother-in-law who lost her husband in the…in the accident.”
From the back of the house, a man entered the living room, and Clarise introduced him as her husband. He
