Linwood Barclay - No Time For Goodbye

Kids shuffled past, dodged and weaved around us as we stood in the middle of the hall.

“So,” Lauren said, “what’s she really like?”

“Who?”

“Paula Malloy,” Lauren said. “From Deadline . Is she as nice as she seems on TV? Because she seems very nice.”

“She has wonderful teeth,” I said. I reached up, touched her arm, motioned her toward the wall of lockers so that we weren’t blocking traffic.

“Listen, um, you and Mr. Carruthers, you’re pretty tight, right?” she asked.

“Rolly and I? Yeah, we’ve known each other a long time.”

“This is kind of awkward to ask, but in the staff room the other day, he was there, and, well, I think he might have, what I’m saying is, did he mention seeing me put something in your mailbox and taking it out later?”

“Uh, well, he-”

“Because, okay, I did leave something there, but then I thought about it, and thought maybe it was a bad idea, so I took it back, but then I thought, oh great, Mr. Carruthers, Roland, if he saw me, he’d probably tell you anyway, and then I thought, shit, I might as well have left it there because at least then you’d know what it said instead of wondering what it said-”

“Lauren, don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the note said. I didn’t want any further complications to my life at the moment. And I was certain I didn’t want complications with Lauren Wells, even if the rest of my life was as smooth as glass.

“It was just a note to you and Cynthia, that maybe you’d like to come over sometime. I was thinking of having some friends over, and thought maybe it would be a nice break for the two of you, with all you’ve got to think about. But then I thought, maybe I was being a bit pushy, you know?”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful,” I said. “Maybe sometime.” Thinking to myself, Not a chance .

“Anyway,” Lauren said, her eyebrows bobbing up for a second. “You going to the Post Mall tonight? They’re having some of the stars from the latest Survivor , signing autographs.”

“I had no idea,” I said.

“I’m going,” she said.

“I’ll have to pass. Cynthia and I, we have to go into New Haven. It’s about the TV show. No big deal. Just a follow-up.”

I immediately regretted telling her. She brightened and said, “You’ll have to tell me all about it tomorrow.”

I just smiled, said I had to get to class, and once I was away from her gave my head an invisible shake.

We had dinner early to give us time to drive in to the Fox affiliate in New Haven, and had intended to get a sitter for Grace, but Cynthia said she had called around and been unable to get any of our regulars.

“I could stay home on my own,” Grace said as we were getting ready to go. Grace had never stayed home on her own, and we certainly weren’t going to make this her first night for going solo. Maybe in five or six years.

“No way, pal,” I said. “Bring your Cosmos book or some homework or something else to do while we’re there.”

“Can’t I hear what the lady says?” Grace said.

“No,” Cynthia said, before I could say the same thing.

Cynthia was edgy through dinner. I’d gotten over being pissed off, so it wasn’t my doing. I attributed it to anxiety over what the psychic would have to say. Having someone read your palm, tell your fortune, lay out some Tarot cards on a table before you, it could be entertaining, even when you didn’t believe it. That was under normal circumstances. This was going to be different.

“They want me to bring one of the shoeboxes,” Cynthia said.

“Which one?”

“Any. She says she just needs to hold it, maybe hold some of the things inside, to pick up more vibrations or whatever about the past.”

“Sure,” I said. “And they’re going to be filming all this, I suppose.”

Cynthia said, “I don’t see how we can tell them not to. It was their story that brought this woman forward. They’re going to want to follow it through.”

“Do we even know who she is?” I asked.

“Keisha,” Cynthia said. “Keisha Ceylon.”

“Really.”

“I looked her up on the Internet,” Cynthia said, then added, “She has a webpage.”

“I’ll just bet she does,” I said, and gave her a rueful smile.

“Be nice,” Cynthia said.

We were all in the car, backing out of the drive, when Cynthia said, “Hold it! I can’t believe it. I forgot the shoebox.”

She had taken from the closet one of her boxes of family mementos and left it on the kitchen table so she wouldn’t forget.

“I’ll go get it,” I said, putting the car in park.

But Cynthia already had her keys out of her purse, the car door open. “I’ll just be a second,” she said. I watched her go up the walk, unlock the house, and run inside, the keys left dangling from the lock. She seemed to be in there for a while, longer than it would take to grab the shoebox, but then she reappeared, shoebox tucked under her arm. She locked up, took the keys out of the door, got back in the car.

“What took so long?” I asked.

“I took an Advil,” she said. “My head’s pounding.”

At the station, we were met at reception by the ponytailed producer, who led us into a studio and to a talk-show set with a couch, a couple of chairs, some fake plants, some cheesy background latticework. Paula Malloy was there, and she greeted Cynthia like an old friend, oozing charm like a runny sore. Cynthia was reserved. Standing next to Paula was a black woman, late forties I guessed, dressed impeccably in a navy blue suit. I wondered if she was another producer, maybe a station manager.

“I’d like to introduce you to Keisha Ceylon,” Paula said.

I guess I was expecting someone who looked like a gypsy or something. A flower child, maybe. Someone in a floor-length tie-dyed skirt, not someone who looked like she could be chairing a board meeting.

“Pleased to meet you,” Keisha said, shaking hands with us. She caught something in my look and said, “You were expecting something different.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“And this must be Grace,” she said, bending down to shake hands with our daughter.

“Hi,” Grace said.

“Is there someplace Grace could go?” I asked.

Grace said, “Can I stay?” She looked up at Keisha. “Have you, like, seen Mom’s parents in a vision or something?”

“Maybe, what do you call it, a green room?” I said.

“Why is it green?” Grace asked as she was led away by some assistant to an assistant.

After they’d put some makeup on Cynthia and Keisha, they were seated on the couch with the shoebox between them. Paula got herself into a chair opposite them while a couple of cameras were wheeled noiselessly into position. I retreated back into the darkness of the studio, far enough to be out of the way, but close enough to watch.

Paula did some setup stuff, a recap of the story they’d broadcast a few weeks earlier. They’d be able to edit more into the segment later. Then she told her audience of a startling development in the case. A psychic had stepped forward, a woman who believed she could offer some insights into the disappearance of the Bigge family in 1983.

“I had seen your show,” said Keisha Ceylon, her voice low and comforting. “And of course I found it interesting. But I didn’t think much more about it after that. And then, a couple of weeks later, I was helping a client attempt to communicate with a lost relative, and I was not having the success I normally do, as though there were some kind of interference, like I was on one of those old party lines and someone else is picking up the phone when you’re trying to make a call.”