woman. But Faith did not suffer under the light of earnest scrutiny. Her skin and eyes, the way she moved even under the weight of her fears, were just so . . . flawless.
“But Christmas isn’t the problem now, is he?”
“No,” she said.
I waited for more, but it was not forthcoming.
“I see that you were wearing a wedding band not too long ago,” I said.
She covered the light spot on her ring finger with her right hand as the coffee cooled and the ice cream melted.
“Craig,” she said. “He was a navy-trained pharmacist. He worked on an aircraft carrier preparing medicines. I met him and . . . convinced him to donate some pills and drugs for the children I cared for.”
“Where is Craig now?”
There was something wrong with time itself as we sat there. There was something wrong with me. I was that beast smelling a far-off lake. Rilla and I were the pups that once played together heedless of the dangers that we were to face. And Faith was the being that had looked over us. I was hungry for her. I leaned a few inches across the table. The minutes were not passing by but pooling around, waiting for a sign to continue on their mindless way.
“I was offered the chance to bring all of my children back to the States to look for parents to adopt them. Craig had asked me to marry him.” Faith locked her eyes with mine. “He was a weak man, Mr. Rawlins. He wanted everybody to like him and to respect him. He boasted and blustered, but he wasn’t a bad man.”
“So you came back to America and brought your orphans,” I said, “and your new husband. Was his name Morel?”
“No. My married name is Laneer. Morel was my mother’s maiden name,” she said, and then continued with the story she was telling. “We found homes for my kids, and then, and then Craig bought us a big house in Bel- Air.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Weak but rich.”
“He and some other men had made a deal with a warlord in Cambodia. They were smuggling heroin out of Vietnam into Los Angeles and other cities. When I realized that he was selling drugs, I told Craig that I wouldn’t have it. I told him that he had to stop. When he said that he needed time to work it out, I left him.”
She was looking into my face but seeing the images of her husband and her choice.
“I went to stay with a friend in Culver City. I told Craig where I’d be. The next morning I was reading the newspaper and saw a picture of him on page three. It said that he had been tortured and murdered and that I couldn’t be found. I stood up from the table, and the dining-room window shattered. Someone had tried to shoot me.
“I ran out of there and kept on going for two days. I was out of my mind. . . .”
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The article made it seem as if I was to blame. Our neighbors talked about us arguing and, and I was worried because the men who killed him were in the army. I thought I’d be arrested and killed. You know that happened all the time in Saigon.”
I took her hand then. It just seemed like the right thing to do.
“I stayed in a motel for three days,” she continued, “until I thought of Christmas. I had his number in my mind because I called him every other week to say hello and find out how Easter was coming along. She’s such a special child. He came and got me. After that he set me up in an apartment in Venice.”
“I want to believe this,” I said, “but I don’t get the thing about Easter. She saw you in the car with Chris, but she didn’t recognize you.”
“She was a baby when he took her. She doesn’t remember me, and because of the circumstances of her parents’ death we decided not to tell her too much. She wouldn’t have remembered me before I went out to their house in Riverside.”
“Do you know who it was that tried to kill you?” I asked.
“Not exactly. I knew some of the men that Craig was involved with, though. There was a marine lieutenant named Drake Bishop and a guy they called Lodai. And then there was that grinning idiot, Sammy Sansoam.”
“Black guy?” I asked. “About five ten?”
“Yes. Craig told me that they made hundreds of thousands of dollars. I guess they tried to shoot me because I’m the only one who knows anything about them. They killed Craig because I tried to make him quit.”
The guilt in her was so powerful that I felt it. For a while there, her feeling superseded my broken heart.
“It’s them that’s the killers, not you,” I said, taking both of her hands now.
“I know,” she said.
She was gripping my fingers hard enough to cause pain. I was happy to give her the outlet.
“You guys want anything else?” Rilla asked. Neither one of us had seen her coming.
“No,” I said, realizing that my voice was heavy with emotion. “That’s all, Rilla. Thank you.”
Rilla, my long-lost pup sister, looked at me with real empathy. She put the flimsy yellow check on the red
