She filled him in on Mark’s reaction to Rachel’s confession and his subsequent diatribe to Trixie about “disloyalty.”
So that was why Mark wasn’t returning his calls. Devin scowled, a look Trixie interpreted correctly, because she said, “He’ll get over it. It’s not as if Rachel blamed you or me…he just-”
“Feels like he hasn’t got a friend in the world.” What a goddamn mess.
“Don’t say that. Look, let’s call him at home right now.” Through directory assistance, Trixie got Mark’s parents’ number in Cambridge, then phoned and asked for him. Her kohl-darkened eyes widened. “Okay,” she said, “well, thanks anyway. Yes, I’d appreciate the number.”
Devin started to get a bad feeling. “He’s not there?” he said when she hung up.
“No, and they didn’t even seem to be expecting him because they told me to call him in Auckland. He canceled their visit tomorrow, too. Said he had to study for a test?”
“He’s probably holed up in his apartment to study,” he reassured her. There was no test. “Is that the phone number?” He rang it and got the answering machine, which gave Mark’s cousin’s cell phone number. She answered from Dubai and told him she hadn’t been home for a week. Devin kept his voice casual as he asked, “What’s the street address?”
When he hung up, Trixie said anxiously, “You don’t think he’d-”
“No Goth overreactions,” Devin interrupted, hiding his own increasing uneasiness. “My classes are finished for the day. I’ll call in on the way home.”
Her forehead creased in a frown. “I wish I could come, but with Rachel away we’re already short- staffed.”
“I’ll give him your love.”
That won him a smile. “Don’t you dare. But phone me, won’t you?” She scribbled down her number.
As soon as he was out of sight, Devin dropped the laconic stroll and whistled for a cab. Fifteen minutes later he was at the modest apartment block, hammering on Mark’s ground floor door and telling himself he was every kind of idiot for worrying. No one answered. A neighbor at the next apartment poked her head out her door, pulling it back like a turtle when she caught sight of Devin.
“Ma’am,” he called, “can you help me? I’m looking for Mark White. Have you seen him over the past couple days?”
Her head slowly reappeared and she scanned him from top to toe with her rheumy eyes. “Are you a drug dealer or an undercover cop?”
The right answer came instinctively. “A friend of his mother’s.”
“Hmm.” She came out, leaning on a cane. “I don’t normally see him much but I haven’t heard him for a few days…he plays the sound system loud when his cousin’s not there.”
Shading his eyes against the daylight, Devin peered through a chink in the curtains, and saw a light on in the lounge. “Is there any way of getting in here short of breaking the door down?”
“I have a key. Suzy, his cousin, gets me to water the plants when she’s away. Mark has good intentions but he’s liable to forget.”
Five minutes later, when she turned the key in the lock, he stopped her from reaching for the handle. “Let me go in first.”
“You’re expecting something bad, son?”
“I hope not.” Devin opened the door and stepped inside.
The place smelled shut up. Flies buzzed on the remains of cereal in an empty bowl. The milk had gone sour. Devin started to sweat. This isn’t the same, he told himself. Get a grip.
When he was twenty, he’d lost his best friend, the band’s drummer. Devin had found Jeff sprawled across his bed, the TV blaring, the paraphernalia of heroin beside him. He’d been dead for two days.
Forcing himself to walk, Devin moved from room to room until he’d checked through the whole apartment. Empty. His relief was so great he had to sit down. But it was short-lived. Where the hell was Mark?
“YOU DIDN’T PHONE on Sunday.” There was accusation in her mother’s voice.
She immediately felt guilty, even though there’d been nothing to stop Maureen ringing her. “I’m calling now,” she said.
“Four days later.”
“Mom, please…” Rachel massaged her temple. Why had she thought she might find comfort here? “This is obviously a bad time. I’ll phone again when-”
“He came to see me.” There was a strange satisfaction in her mother’s voice.
Rachel tried to remember what they’d been talking about last week, but the world had spun on its axis too many times since then. “I’m sorry, I don’t recall-”
“Your boy…Mark.”
Rachel’s grip tightened on the phone. “No.”
“He wanted to know why he was adopted.”
She went rigid. “Mom, what did you tell him?”
“The truth, of course. That your father and I wanted to keep him, but that you rejected-”
Rachel cut the connection and punched in Mark’s cell phone number with trembling fingers. Trixie had told her he wasn’t answering calls, but at least she could leave a message. “Mark, it’s Rachel. I know you’ve been to see my mother. There are two sides to every story. Please call me.”
She hung up. Briefly, she considered calling his parents’ home, but dismissed the idea. Whether he’d told them about her or not, this was a private matter between her and Mark. And Rachel wouldn’t force her way into his life without an invitation. Her son had to have some place of refuge.
Desperate to do something, she sat down at the dining room table and started writing a letter. If she posted it today, he’d get it tomorrow.
She’d only written three lines when the phone rang. Caller ID showed it was her mother. Rachel didn’t trust herself to pick up. Even if she could rip through Maureen’s fantasy that their life with Gerard Robinson had been normal-and right now she was angry enough to try-it would serve no purpose.
Her mother would never love her, and Rachel would only be stripping an old lady of a defense mechanism that had probably kept her sane.
“He sets high standards, darling, and gets so disappointed when we don’t follow them.”
“Getting drunk occasionally doesn’t make your father an alcoholic. He works hard and needs to vent.”
“Oh, I always bruise easily. Goodness, I’m so clumsy.”
And when the injuries were too obvious to laugh off: “Darling, I’m not feeling well, I’m staying in bed for a couple of days. You look after your father.”
Her father. The town councilor, the church elder, the treasurer of the Rotary Club, the manager of a bank…the great bloke. And in public, he always was.
The answering machine picked up.
“Rachel, I’m disappointed in you, but not surprised,” said her mother. “If you’d listened to Gerard and me none of this would be necessary.” She hung up with a disapproving click.
Almost immediately, the phone rang again, the library’s number. Trixie had promised to ring if she heard from Mark. Rachel snatched up the phone. But the news only ratcheted her tension.
“What’s the address?”
“Yeah, that’s why I phoned…” As soon as the call ended, Rachel ran to get her car keys. To hell with a hands-off policy.
The front door of her son’s apartment was open. Without giving herself time for second thoughts she tapped on it. “Mark?” Stepping inside, Rachel stalled.
Devin was checking through discarded papers on the dining room table. Instinctively, she took a couple of steps toward him.
“Trixie said you were coming.” He didn’t glance up from what he was doing. “Mark’s not here, Rachel. He hasn’t been here for a few days.”
Pressure tightened like a vise around her lungs, making it difficult to breathe. “Not here…then where?”
