“Got no daughter.”
Again the woman moved to close the door, then hesitated, vertical lines creasing the bone-tight flesh on her forehead.
“Who are you?”
I dug a card from my purse and held it to the glass. She read the card then looked up, eyes filled with thoughts that had nothing to do with me.
“Medical examiner?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” Keep it simple.
The aluminum grillwork rattled when she pushed open the door. Cold seeped outward, like air from a recently unlocked tomb.
Wordlessly the woman led me to the kitchen and gestured toward a small table with antique green legs and a simulated wood top. The trailer’s interior smelled of mothballs, pine disinfectant, and old cigarette smoke.
“Coffee?” she asked as I seated myself.
“Yes, please.” The thermostat must have been set at fifty-eight. Goose bumps were forming on my neck and arms.
The woman took two mugs from an overhead cabinet and filled them from a coffeemaker on the counter.
“It is Mrs. Cobb, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Mrs. Cobb set the mugs on the simulated wood. “Milk?”
“No, thank you.”
Sliding a pack of Kools from the top of the refrigerator, Mrs. Cobb took the chair opposite mine. Her skin looked waxy and gray. A growth protruded from a comma below her left eyelid, looking like a barnacle on the side of a pier.
“Got a light?”
I dug matches from my purse, struck one, and held it to her cigarette.
“Can’t ever find the darned things when I need them.”
She inhaled deeply, exhaled, flicked a finger at the matches.
“Put those away. I don’t want to be smoking too many.” She snorted a laugh. “Bad for my health.”
I shoved the matches into my jeans pocket.
“You want to talk about my child.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Cobb fished a Kleenex from a sweater pocket, blew her nose, then took another drag.
“My husband’s dead two years come November.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“He was a good, Christian man. Headstrong, but a good man.”
“I’m sure you miss him.”
“Lord knows I do.”
A cuckoo popped from its clock above the sink and sounded the hour. We both listened. Ten chirps.
“He gave me that clock for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
“It must be very dear to you.”
“Fool thing’s kept working all these years.”
Mrs. Cobb drew on her Kool, eyes fixed on a point midway between us. On a point years past. Then her chin cocked up as a sudden thought struck her.
Her gaze shifted to me.
“You find my child?”
“We might have.”
Smoke curled from her cigarette and floated across her face.
“Dead?”
“It’s a possibility, Mrs. Cobb. The ID is complicated.”
She brought the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, exhaled through her nose. Then she flicked the ash and rotated the burning tip on a small metal saucer until the fire went out.
“I’ll be joining Charlie Senior shortly. I believe it’s time to set a few things right.”
She rose from her chair and shuffled toward the back of the trailer, slippers swishing on the indoor-outdoor carpet. I heard rustling, what sounded like a door.
Minutes cuckooed by. Hours. A decade.
