Laura Lippman - I'd Know You Anywhere

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Stoddard. Iso’s father and I will make sure she understands the policy, and the consequences of violating it. It is subtle, as you say.”

The principal smiled, her pal again. “She is, at heart, a sweet child. And, however quickly children adjust, she has been through a big change. I wouldn’t wonder if she’s a little homesick for London, her old school. That would go a long way, I think, toward explaining her moods.”

“Her moods?” Eliza had thought that cranky Iso was a family phenomenon. She was sunny and generous with her friends, her teammates.

“She seems a little distracted at times. But, as I said, I’m sure it’s just the dislocation. She’s doing really well in her classes.” The principal looked at her watch. “Speaking of which—there are only forty-five minutes left in the day. Why don’t you take her home? If I send her back to class, it will disrupt the teacher’s lesson.”

Eliza left the principal’s office, her homework tucked under her arm. She had to stop herself from reaching for her daughter’s hand, stroking her hair, fashioned in a perfect ponytail today. “Let’s go,” she said. And then, once out of the building: “We have time to get ice cream, if you like, before we pick up Albie.”

Iso regarded her mother suspiciously. “Ice cream?”

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Iso thought about this. “It wouldn’t be fair to Albie.”

“Not everyone has to get the same things all the time in order for life to be fair.”

Eliza had undermined her own sales pitch, referenced too directly to what was happening at school.

“I have a lot of homework. If we go home now, I could get started and you and Reba could walk up to Albie’s school as usual.”

“How about we all go to pick up Albie, then make a Rita’s run?”

“All the way over to Grandmother’s?” It was funny how Iso and Albie unconsciously referred to the house as Inez’s, never Manny’s, but then—it was Inez’s domain. Eliza’s father would live anywhere, happily, as long as he was with Inez. He cared nothing for his physical surroundings.

“I’m sure there’s one closer. And if not, there’s always Gifford’s or Baskin-Robbins.”

Iso gave a tiny nod, conferring her favors on Eliza. It was a win-win for Iso. She got a treat, but Albie’s presence would ensure that Eliza didn’t press her. She was a shrewd girl, and Eliza couldn’t help admiring that trait, which she had conspicuously lacked at the same age.

Then again, it was Holly—golden, self-assured Holly, not even a year older than Iso was now—who had gotten into Walter Bowman’s truck for the promise of fifteen dollars, while Eliza was the one he had to drag in by the wrists. Frankly, Eliza didn’t give a shit if Iso had hurt some girl’s feelings by denying her a place at a lunch table. Her fear was that this very same confidence could lead Iso into a situation that she wouldn’t be able to control.

BUT LATER, AS THE WATCHEDIso and Albie eat dinner-spoiling double scoops at Baskin-Robbins, she realized that Walter Bowman, held within a cell and his own parentheses, was not the problem. The problem was the other Walters, all the Walters who sprung up from the soil no matter how many times you mashed them flat, like the army of skeletons that grew from dragon’s teeth in the story of the Golden Fleece. The commonwealth of Virginia was going to kill her tormentor—Eliza was startled to consider that word, to see for the first time the hidden mentor inside the sadist—but she couldn’t begin to find and punish all the people who might hurt her children.

And yet, somewhere else in their own town, perhaps at this very moment, there was a mother who was comforting a child who believed Iso was the enemy.

IT WAS NEVER REALLY QUIETon Sussex I. It didn’t matter how many men were here, whether it was close up to full or spindly as it was now, with fifteen men rattling around a unit built for fifty. It was a loud place. The sound was weird, too, hard to pinpoint, whipping around corners and bouncing off walls, almost like a living thing that was stalking them all. Banging someone in, ingrained tradition that it was, was almost painful for Walter, but he wouldn’t deny anyone that honor. After all, he had the distinction of being the only man here who had been welcomed back twice.

Now, lying awake at what he figured to be 1 A.M. or so, he listened to the noises that seemed to prevail at night, roaming the unit like little forest creatures. Pops, whistles, echoes. You would think a person would get used to it, after twenty-plus years, but he still found the night sounds disturbing, and although it was not the noises that wakened him, they made it that much harder to get back to sleep. He thought he might have a condition of sorts, some kind of overly sensitive hearing. His father had hated loud sounds—the television, the radio, all had to be kept at low hums. He said he needed it that way because he spent his days surrounded by clanging and banging. As a young man, Walter had thought his father crotchety. But now that Walter was forty-six, he wondered if it was a change that came with age, if the ears just got plain worn out over time.

Forty-six. His father had been almost that old when Walter was born, his mother a few years younger. He was what they called a change-of-life baby, and he knew the exact moment of his conception: Christmas Eve, or maybe an hour into Christmas Day, after his mother had had some apple brandy. It was, his sister told him once, easy enough to date. It was the only time their parents had sex that year and probably the last time, ever. Of course, his sister could have been teasing. Although she was thirteen years older and should have known better, she had been hard on Walter, jealous of her new sibling. He always thought she resented him for getting the good looks that she could have used. Ugly as a mud fence, as the saying went, and the fact that Walter had never seen a mud fence didn’t get between him and understanding that phrase. His mother said his sister was plain, but Belle—unfortunate name—was ugly, aggressively so, with a lazy eye and a big nose and a witchlike chin. She had been lucky to find a man who wanted to marry her. A decent-looking guy at that, who made a good living. Some men just didn’t respect themselves.

Belle was his only living relative, and she had cut off all contact with him shortly after his parents died, a one-two punch, within six months of each other. Lung cancer had taken his father, and his mother had died from the stew of complications that went with diabetes. They had both been in their seventies, but Belle blamed it all on him, said they had died from the shame of being his parents. Why don’t you die, then? Walter had asked. Belle said she was lucky enough to have her own name and live in a different town, that she had escaped being Walter Bowman’s sister, otherwise she might be dead, too. To which he said: bullshit. He didn’t doubt that his arrest and his trials had been hard on his parents, but—lung cancer, diabetes! The men on Sussex had nothing on God when it came to killing people in painful, prolonged ways. The hardest case here hadn’t taken more than a few hours to kill anyone. God took months, years.

Besides, it wasn’t as if his parents had dropped dead in the immediate aftermath. They had both hung on for seven, eight years. Belle had just been looking for an excuse to cut him off, and once she buried their mother, she had one. She would be almost sixty now, her own children grown and, almost certainly, the source of some heartache for her. And he would be dead short of fifty, if the commonwealth of Virginia had its way. As of this year, he had spent exactly half his life in prison. Walter supposed some would see a neatness to that, a pleasing symmetry.