“I know you don’t believe that. Why would you have me talk to Paul about fire?”
She unhooked one hand from the bars and rubbed her forehead, as if erasing a headache.
I said, “There’s something wrong. You need to let me help.”
“Why do you think you, of all people, can solve it?”
I felt myself redden, as if I were a fifteen-year-old being dressed down by the principal for skipping classes. “I won’t know until you tell me the problem.”
Agitated, she started to pace, then seemed to think better of it. “Why would I want to be helped by someone who has shown so little interest in me over the past fifteen years that she couldn’t even bother to remember my birthday? Who hasn’t come home to see me once, even though she’s been in town to see her friends?”
She must have seen something on my face. “Oh, yes. You thought I didn’t know? This is a small town. Everybody talks, and the people who don’t like me talk the loudest. Just leave. Go back to Spain and that cyclist husband of yours, and try to make it work.”
“How did you—”
She waved her hand in disdain. “Don’t kid yourself. So he wants to ride bicycles. So what? You said ‘for better or for worse,’ and this is the ‘for worse’ part—and it’s nothing, as far as ‘for worses’ go. I don’t need you here, and your being here is only making things more complicated.”
Good to know the same woman who could bite my heart from my chest and spit it out in pieces was still there. I tried to calm myself by concentrating on my breathing, like the Berne therapist had taught me. Mother went to the cell door and rattled it. “Guard!”
He ambled over. “You need something, Mrs. Montague?”
“My daughter’s done here. You can let her out.”
“No, ma’am. Chief DuPont says she’s in for the night.”
“For the night!” I stood. “You’re kidding. He can’t hold me overnight. There aren’t any charges.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” He strolled away before we could protest further, his boots thumping down the concrete hallway.
I looked around the cell. No doubt Mother’s was identical. Decorators would call this gray on gray: gray walls, gray floors, gray blankets on gray bunks. No reading material, no make-up, no clean underwear, nothing to do but stare at the walls or talk. Maybe the latter was what the chief had in mind, but he didn’t know Mother. She had practiced the great shut-out for all thirty-four years of my life, and that’s what she did now. I waited until I could hear her gentle snores from across the corridor before I let myself cry.
In the morning, Chief DuPont himself unlocked the cell, Bailey trailing behind like a slug on a leaf. Have you out in a couple of hours. Yeah, right.
I’m not at my best in the morning.
I’d had a mostly sleepless night. Falling asleep too deeply meant I might dream and cry out in my sleep, so this morning, everything seemed unfocused and hard to understand. Noises were too loud, and colors, even the gray, too bright.
The chief grabbed my arm and steered me down the hall toward the door. Bailey stayed to talk to Mother. He said, “Be grateful there are no charges pending, Ms. Montague. And go home, lock your doors and stay there. Do not leave, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Are we clear?”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Did she tell you anything about Hugh or what happened that night?”
“She never tells me anything. I don’t know what you thought you could accomplish with that little stunt, but getting her to talk to me isn’t possible.”
“I was actually hoping it would be the other way around, that she’d talk some sense into you. Leave the investigation to the professionals. I’ll say this slowly so you get it. It is a felony to suppress, by an act of concealment, alteration or destruction, any physical evidence which might aid in the discovery or apprehension of a criminal. Got it?”
After a night of Mother scraping at me like a vegetable peeler, I had no stamina left. I’ll tolerate that tone of voice from Mother, but I didn’t have to take it from anyone else. I turned around and walked out.
I drove home fuming. Everyone seemed to think they knew what was best for me: Lock myself in tight to avoid the bogeyman; stop asking questions; don’t read the file that could provide me with answers; go back to Spain and patch it up with my husband. No one seemed to think I had a brain or valid reasons for my choices. The only person on my side was Richard; when I finally got my phone back, he’d left five messages. I left a reply on his voicemail.
I walked upstairs to my mother’s bedroom, her sanctuary. The bed was draped with lush, heavy silks; gold and cream pillows banked the wall, and a heavy hand-woven cotton blanket adorned the foot. Ornate Georgian armoires on the bisque-colored carpet held her sweaters and lingerie while dark-paneled closet doors hid acres of beautiful clothes and shoes. A reading chair in crushed red velvet looked out the long window. A small table by its side held a stack of my mother’s books. I scanned the titles: Instead of the mysteries she’d read when I was a child, the headings now ran to things like: Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experience; and Silencing the Self: Women and Depression. They barely registered. I was so tired from not sleeping all night.
I sat on the bed, took off my shoes, and pulled the covers over me. I sank into the pillows and closed my eyes. The monsters of darkness rose up to greet me. I was running through the field, that endless green field with the black, roiling cloud at my back, running for Mother. Only she wasn’t there, and the
