'At first I figured it was some weird rite-of-passage kind of thing. Maybe your dad's friends or something.' A mournful pause. 'No, I didn't ask.'
Every now and then I'd catch glimpses of her old self-the perfect line of teeth, a nuanced movement of her hand, a cord rising in her neck-but they'd vanish almost instantly. It reminded me of those magic childhood stickers that changed images when you tilted them. Now it's Superman, now it's Clark Kent again.
'How'd you know I'd go to Bob's Big Boy that night?' I asked.
'I didn't know anything. They knew you went there every weekend. So they helped get me a job there. You came in my first shift.'
'Who's 'they'?'
'I don't know.' She was still shaking. Her nails went back to that patch of dry skin and worked it in a circular motion. White dust fell like dandruff to the carpet. 'I never saw the guy who hired me. He found me through my cousin. My cousin knows people who know people. Everyone has a cousin like that, right? The guy wanted a sexy woman. Experienced, but not a pro. I was. Sexy. Then.'
'You were,' I said, before realizing what a backhanded compliment that was. 'How'd you guys talk?'
'It was all cloak and dagger. I drove to a fire road on Runyon Canyon-'
'At night,' I said. 'You were told to park, turn off the car, the lights, angle the mirrors away, and keep the doors unlocked. He was late. He slid into the backseat. He told you what to do. Where to find me, what I looked like, how to handle me, where to take me. You never saw his face.'
'Yes,' she said, bewildered. 'I guess you've heard the story before.'
'That part.'
'I've been waiting. Seventeen years I've been waiting. For someone to knock on that door. You. Him. And I don't even know who he is.'
'You never learned?'
'Do you have any idea what that's like? Never settling in. Keeping an ear to the ground. Waiting for God knows who. Do you have any idea what that does to a person?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I do.'
Her fingers fussed at her shiny scalp, her hair, trembling. She squeezed them hard with her other hand, lowered them into her lap. She spoke again, with a quiet sort of horror. 'I will never forgive myself.'
'For what you did to me? To Frank Durant?'
'That was the least of it.' Her voice was hoarse. 'The least of it.'
'What else?'
'There were two others. Hired thugs. Tall and dark. Eastern European accents, like bad guys in a movie. Didn't talk much. A week or so after I saw you, they came and said they were sent by him. I was shaken. I saw the thing in the paper about the Secret Service man, and your name. Your mom's. We were just a few years apart, me and your mom.' She leaned forward. 'I swear to God had I known-'
I wanted to keep her on course. 'The hired thugs.'
'They said I had to find someone to take care of my daughter for a few days. They said they'd be back that night, that I'd be paid a lot of money. They said if I wasn't there, they'd find me. I didn't have a choice. I had a little girl to raise.'
Her body continued to shake, almost violently now, as if it were coming apart. But she kept talking. 'They brought me to a house somewhere. I didn't know where I was. Empty, no furniture. The floors were still just poured concrete. There was a woman there, with a newborn. She was still healing. They kept her in a back room, on a bare mattress. I took care of her. Fed her. Washed her. Helped her to the bathroom. She wouldn't let me touch the baby.'
'Grace,' I said. 'Grade Everett.'
'Right. Grade.' Her eyes were instantly moist again. A dreadful calm came over her, and she stopped trembling, and when she spoke again, her voice was even. 'I slept there in the room with them. And early the next morning, the men came in and took the baby. The woman screamed and screamed. Hormones on fire. You can't imagine how that is. I thought she'd never stop. She screamed for four hours. I was sobbing, pleading with her. Anything for her to stop. Just to stop.'
Her breathing was shallow, and it made her words breathy. 'They brought the baby back- Grade. They brought Gracie back. And Jane held her and rocked her and said she'd never let them take her away again. Her voice was screamed out. But the men got more and more agitated. I heard them talking on the phone when I came back from getting groceries. They'd taken the baby for another DNA test. I guess there was an earlier one, but they wanted to be sure. They were hyperparanoid. I guess one of the copies of the first test went missing before. It was a big deal. Something with the Secret Service.'
'How do you know that?'
'I heard one of them say they'd dealt with a leak inside the Service. At first I thought military. But then I remembered the Secret Service guy-sorry, your stepfather-got killed the night I took you out. So you didn't have to be Einstein to do the math.'
I struggled to keep up with it. Frank was the leak. To whom? Or did they mean he was a threat to go public? I wanted to keep her talking. 'And then what happened?'
Tris hugged her stomach and rocked herself a little on the couch. She let out a low wail, which sounded weird since she was no longer crying or shaking.
I wanted to loathe her, but I couldn't. She'd signed on for her own fate, sure, but she'd been crushed by the machinery of this thing as much as I had been, one compromised choice at a time.
I said softly, 'What happened next?'
Her voice was quiet, preternaturally calm. 'Those guys were on edge waiting for the DNA results. They took the baby away from her. Kept her in the other room. Jane was too weak to get up, but I tried to plead with them. One of the guys even hit me. They thought she'd be more… docile without her baby.' She whispered roughly, her face glazed. 'They kept the baby away from her. Two days. I had to go in and feed her, Gracie, hold her when they got tired of her crying. But I couldn't get her to stop. The pressure to get her to stop, it was awful. Then they kept her alone in a crib. I spent most of my time with Jane, listening to her weep. Just weeping. We could hear the baby crying through the walls. That baby was crying and crying, and Jane's breasts were leaking milk through her shirt. It went on and on. There was nothing I could do. She pleaded with me, but there was nothing I could do. Her breasts got engorged, and they were leaking, and they were crying in different rooms, both of them, all the time. It was the most horrible thing I've ever experienced.'
Her eyes grew glassy, and she stopped rocking herself.
I was surprised at how weak my voice sounded. 'Go on. Please.'
Tris held herself perfectly still. When she blinked, more tears fell down her cheeks. 'One night the men came in. The DNA test. Whatever it was, it came back bad news. They took Jane. And they helped her up-she was so weak-and they helped her to the door, then outside. I looked through the curtains. I saw them put her in a dark car. They talked to someone, but I couldn't see who because the windows were tinted. The baby was crying in the other room. Then they came back in, and I sat across the room, like I hadn't been watching. They went into the other room. And then the baby stopped crying. They went back outside, and I saw them put something in the trunk of the dark car, and the dark car drove off. I ran into the other room, and the crib was empty. It was empty. I sat down on the floor. I heard them come in behind me. I thought they were going to kill me. But they told me to go home and not to tell anyone. That someone would be in contact with me. And sure enough, my cousin called me the next day. And it was the same meeting, up Runyon Canyon. I was so scared, but I went because they knew who I was and I had a little girl to raise. And that man got in the back of my car, and I thought he was going to shoot me, but instead he said I had to tell the story to the press, about the bodies being dumped. And if I did, and if I stuck to that story with the cops and the press, that nothing would happen to me or my little girl. And I did. I never told anyone otherwise. Until right now.'
'They're coming after you,' I said. 'As we speak.'
Her look held the same comprehensive defeat I saw in Homer's face once he was a few drinks in. But also a glimmer of something else. Relief, maybe. 'Let 'em catch me. I don't care anymore.'
'How about your daughter?'
'My daughter hasn't talked to me in seven years. Last I heard, she was in Costa Rica.'
'Did they pay you?'
