Linwood Barclay: Never Look Away

None of this made me feel any better.

“She did it for Ethan,” I said. “And for me.”

“She did what?” Duckworth said.

“She pulled it together long enough to kill that man so I’d be there for Ethan.”

“I guess she did,” Duckworth said.

“She said she didn’t expect my forgiveness,” I said.

“Maybe, if she could ask you now…”

I said nothing and looked down at the table.

Mom and Dad arrived shortly after that. There was hugging and crying, and as I had done with Duckworth, I tried to tell them what I knew about the events of the last three days.

And the last six years. And even before that.

“Where could Ethan be?” Mom asked. “Where would he go?”

While Duckworth went off to help oversee the crime scene, the three of us sat at the table, not knowing what to do.

We were tired, depressed, traumatized.

Part of me was grieving.

Sometime around midnight, the phone rang. I picked up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Mr. Harwood?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve done a terrible thing.”

I was there by 3 a.m.

Detective Duckworth put up some objections at first. First, he didn’t want me leaving the crime scene. Second, if I knew who had taken my son, if he’d been kidnapped, Duckworth had to send in the police.

“I don’t know that it’s exactly a kidnapping,” I said. “At least not now. It’s kind of complicated. Just let me go and get my boy. I know where he is. Let me bring him home.”

He mulled it over a moment, then finally said, “Go.” He said he’d try to pave the way for me with the New York Thruway authorities, maybe save me the trouble of getting pulled over for speeding.

When I pulled up in front of the Richlers’ house on Lincoln Avenue in Rochester, the living room lights were on. I didn’t have to knock. Gretchen Richler was standing at the door waiting for me, and had it open as I came up the porch steps.

“Let me see him,” I said.

She nodded. She led me upstairs and pushed open the door to what I presumed to be the bedroom she shared with her husband, who was not around. Ethan was under the covers, his head on the pillow, sound asleep.

“I’ll let him sleep for a bit more,” I said.

“I’ve put on some coffee,” Gretchen said. “Would you like some?”

“Yes,” I said, following her back downstairs. “Is your husband…”

“Still in the hospital,” she said. “They have him in the psychiatric ward, I guess they call it. They’ve got him under observation.”

“How do they think he’s going to be?”

“It’s a kind of wait-and-see situation,” she said. “With any luck, he could be home in a few days, although I… I don’t know how he’ll fend on his own.”

She filled two mugs with coffee and set them on the kitchen table. “Would you like some cookies?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Coffee’s fine.”

Gretchen Richler took a seat across from me. “I know what I did was wrong,” she said.

I blew on the coffee, took a sip. “Tell me what happened.”

“Well, first of all, we were looking at that picture you left with us, the one of your wife. It was the necklace she was wearing. The cupcake.”

“Yes?”

“It had been our daughter’s. She’d lost it just before she died. She’d accused Constance of stealing it. When I saw it on your wife, it all came together. I knew.”

“It was the only time I remember seeing her wear it,” I said. “She had it in her jewelry box but never put it on. But just before that trip, Ethan found it. He loves cupcakes and begged her to wear it.”

“That last time you called, just after Horace tried to take his own life, when you said you thought your wife was still alive, that you thought maybe you were going to find her, I went… I went a little crazy.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I was so angry. Here’s this woman, she’d taken my daughter’s life not once but twice. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, what she’d done to us. I wanted her to know how it felt.”

I nodded, had another sip of the hot coffee.

“I just, I just thought that she deserved it. That if she could take a child from us, if she could take her from us, and then take her identity, something bad had to happen so she’d understand. So, with Horace in the hospital, I drove to Promise Falls. I found your parents’ house and I saw your son playing in the backyard. I told him I was his aunt Gretchen, and that it was finally time for him to come home.”

“And he went with you.”

“That’s right. He was so excited about going home, he never questioned me for a minute.”

“He didn’t think it was odd that he had an aunt he’d never heard of before?”

Gretchen shook her head. “He never questioned it.”

“So he got in the car with you,” I said.

She nodded. “I’d stopped around the corner, before I got to your place, and bought some treats to keep him happy. Then I started driving back here, and he was telling me I was going the wrong way. I had to explain to him that before I could take him home, he was going to stay with me for a little while.”

“How’d he take that?”

Gretchen choked up and a tear formed at the corner of her eye. “He started to cry. I told him not to, that everything was going to be okay. That he wouldn’t have to stay with me all that long.”

“What were you planning to do?” I asked.

Gretchen looked into my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“You must have some idea.”

“On the way to Promise Falls, I’d made up my mind. I was going to… I was going to…”

“You wouldn’t have hurt him.”

She couldn’t look at me. “I hope not. It’s like, for a while there, I was possessed or something. I wasn’t myself. I was going to get even, make things right. But when I saw him, once I had him in the car…”

“You couldn’t do it,” I said.

“He’s a lovely boy,” she said, looking at me again. “He really is. You must be so proud of him.”

“I am,” I said.

“But once I’d taken him, I didn’t know what to do.”

“So you just came back to Rochester.”

She nodded sadly. “I’m very ashamed of myself. I am.”

“You have no idea what you’ve put us through,” I said.

“I know.”

“My mother, I don’t know that she can ever forgive herself for letting Ethan out of her sight.”

“I’ll tell her I’m sorry. I will. Don’t you get a chance to make some sort of statement when they sentence you? Don’t you get to say something to the family?”

I felt so tired.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said.

Gretchen was confused. “I don’t understand. I kidnapped your son. I have to be punished for that.”

I reached across the table and put a hand on hers. “I think you’ve been punished enough. You and your husband.” I paused. “By my wife.”

“Even if you don’t want me arrested, she might,” Gretchen said.

“No,” I said. “She won’t. She’s dead.”

Gretchen gasped. “What? When?”

“About four hours ago,” I said. “Her past-one of them-caught up with her. So there’s no one to get even with anymore. She’s gone. And the truth is, you may have saved Ethan by taking him away when you did.”

“That doesn’t excuse me,” she said.

All that matters to me, at this moment, is that my son is okay, and that he’s not in any danger. I’ll do what I can to persuade the police not to charge you. I won’t cooperate if they want me to testify.”

“I made him a late dinner,” Gretchen said, not hearing me. “He settled down after a while, and I made him some macaroni and cheese.”

“He likes that.”