Harlan Coben - Just One Look

Being a mother, Grace thought, was a lot like being an artist-you are always insecure, you always feel like a phony, you know that everybody else is better at it than you. The mothers who doted obsessively on their offspring, the ones who performed their numbing tasks with that Stepford-ready smile and supernatural patience-you know, those mothers who always, always, have the right supplies for the ideal after-school craft… Grace suspected that these women were profoundly disturbed.

Cora was waiting in the driveway of her bubble-gum-pink house. Everybody on the block hated the color. For a while, one neighbor, a prissy thing properly named Missy, had started up a petition demanding that Cora repaint it. Grace had seen Prissy Missy passing around the petition at a first-grade soccer game. Grace had asked to see it, ripped it up, and walked away.

The color was hardly to Grace’s taste, but memo to the Missys of the world: Get over yourselves.

Cora teetered toward them in her stiletto heels. She was dressed slightly more demurely-a sweatshirt over the leotard-but it really didn’t matter. Some women oozed sex, even if dressed in a burlap sack. Cora was one of them. When she moved, new curves were formed even as old ones disappeared. Every line from her husky voice, no matter how innocuous, came out as a double entendre. Every tilt of the head was a come-on.

Cora slid in and looked back at Max. “Hey, handsome.”

Max grunted and didn’t look up.

“Just like my ex.” Cora spun back around. “You got that photo?”

“I do.”

“I called Gus. He’ll do it.”

“Did you promise anything in return?”

“Remember what I said about fifth-date syndrome? Well, are you free Saturday night?”

Grace looked at her.

“Kidding.”

“I knew that.”

“Good. Anyway, Gus said to scan the photo and e-mail it to him. He can set up an anonymous e-mail address for you to receive replies. No one will know who you are. We’ll keep the text to a minimum, just say that a journalist is doing a story and needs to know the origin of the photograph. That sound okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

They arrived at the house. Max stomped upstairs and then shouted down, “Can I watch SpongeBob ?”

Grace acquiesced. Like every parent, Grace had strict rules about no TV during the day. Like every parent, she knew that rules were made to be broken. Cora headed straight for the cupboard and made coffee. Grace thought about which photograph to send and decided to use a blowup of the right side, the blonde with the X on her face and the redhead on her left. She left Jack’s image-again, assuming that was Jack-out. She didn’t yet want him involved. She decided that having two people increased chances of getting an identity hit and made the solicitation look less like the work of a crazed stalker.

Cora looked at the original photograph. “May I make an observation?”

“Yes.”

“This is pretty weird.”

“The guy over here”-Grace pointed-“the one with the beard. Who does that look like to you?”

Cora squinted. “I guess it could be Jack.”

“Could be or is?”

“You tell me.”

“Jack’s missing.”

“Come again?”

She told Cora the story. Cora listened, tapping a too-long fingernail painted up in Chanel’s Rouge Noir, a color not unlike blood, on the tabletop. When Grace finished, Cora said, “You know, of course, that I have a low opinion of men.”

“I know.”

“I believe that, for the most part, they are two floors below dog turd.”

“I know that too.”

“So the obvious answer is that, yes, this is a picture of Jack. That, yes, this little blondie, the one gazing up at him like he’s the messiah, is an old flame. That yes, Jack and Mary Magdalene here are having an affair. That someone, maybe her current husband, wanted you to find out about it, so he sent you that picture. That everything came to a head when Jack realized that you were onto him.”

“And that’s why he ran away?”

“Correct.”

“That doesn’t add up, Cora.”

“You have a better theory?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Good,” Cora said, “because I don’t buy it either. I’m just talking. The rule is thus: Men are scum. Jack, however, has always hit me as the exception that proves the rule.”

“I love you, you know.”

Cora nodded. “Everybody does.”

Grace heard a sound and glanced out the window. A stretch limousine of glistening black slid up the driveway with the smoothness of a Motown background singer. The chauffeur, a rat-faced man with the build of a whippet, hurried to open the car’s back door.

Carl Vespa had arrived.

Despite his rumored vocation, Carl Vespa did not dress in Sopranos-style velour or shiny, sealant-coated suits. He preferred khakis, Joseph Abboud sports coats, and loafers sans socks. He was mid-sixties but looked a solid decade younger. His hair was tickling-the-shoulders long, the color a distinguished shade of blond-gone-to-gray. His face was tanned and had the sort of waxy smoothness that suggests Botox. His teeth were aggressively capped, as if the front cuspids had taken growth hormones.

He nodded an order at the whippetlike driver and approached the house on his own. Grace opened the door to greet him. Carl Vespa gave her the toothy dazzler. She smiled back, glad to see him. He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. No words were exchanged. They didn’t need them. He held both her hands and looked at her. She could see his eyes start to well up.

Max moved to his mother’s right. Vespa let go and took a step back.

“Max,” Grace began, “this is Mr. Vespa.”

“Hello, Max.”

“That your car?” Max asked.

“Yes.”

Max looked at the car, then at Vespa. “Got a TV inside?”

“It does.”

“Whoa.”

Cora cleared her throat.

“Oh, and this is my friend, Cora.”

“Charmed,” Vespa said.

Cora looked at the car, then at Vespa. “You single?”

“I am.”

“Whoa.”

Grace repeated the baby-sitting instructions for the sixth time. Cora pretended to listen. Grace gave her twenty dollars to order pizza and that cheesy bread Max had become enamored with of late. A classmate’s mom would bring Emma home in an hour.

Grace and Vespa headed toward the limousine. The rat-faced driver had the door opened and at the ready. Vespa said, “This is Cram,” gesturing to the driver. When Cram shook her hand, Grace had to bite back a scream.

“A pleasure,” Cram said. His smile brought on visions of a Discovery Channel documentary on sea predators. She slid in first and Carl Vespa followed.

There were Waterford glasses and a matching decanter half-filled with a liquid that appeared both caramel and luxurious. There was, as noted, a television set. Above her seat was a DVD player, multiple CD player, climate controls, and enough buttons to confuse an airline pilot. The whole thing-the crystal, the decanter, the electronics-was overstated, but maybe that was what you wanted in a stretch limousine.

“Where are we going?” Grace asked.

“It’s a little hard to explain.” They were sitting next to each other, both facing forward. “I’d rather just show it to you, if that’s okay.”

Carl Vespa had been the first lost parent to loom over her hospital bed. When Grace first came out of the coma, his was the first face she saw. She had no idea who he was, where she was, what day it was. More than a week was gone from her memory banks. Carl Vespa ended up sitting in her hospital room for days on end, sleeping in the chair next to her. He made sure that plenty of flowers surrounded her. He made sure that she had a good view, soothing music, enough pain medication, private nursing. He made sure that once Grace was able to eat, the hospital staff didn’t give her the standard slop.