Thomas Perry: Blood Money

Since then she had devoted herself, just as her mother had, to being the woman she wanted to be. For the past two years, she had refused to allow herself to fall asleep at night without being able to say to herself, “This was a good day. I’m glad I didn’t waste it.” She was not ashamed of her premeditation. When Carey got home, she was going to demonstrate that her mother’s wisdom had not been lost on her. Carey didn’t have to go to the hospital tomorrow until evening rounds, and she had decided she was going to keep him up for most of the night. She went upstairs and began to fill the tub for her bath.

Over the rush of water, she thought she heard something. She turned off the faucet. Was it the phone? Then she identified it: the doorbell. She looked down at the front steps from the upstairs window, and saw the girl. Jane didn’t have time to list all of the reasons why seeing her here caused a sick, breathless sensation in her stomach. As she hurried down the stairs to the front foyer, she let one reason stand for all. This wasn’t something a shy young girl would ever do.

Jane swung the door open and assumed a false smile. “Hello,” she said. “Didn’t I see you at the reservation?”

“I … ” the girl began, but it seemed that she had started wrong. “Can I come in for a minute?”

Jane stepped aside, took a careful look at the street beyond her in both directions, and found it empty. The purpose of the visit wasn’t to get inside and open Jane’s door to men who were here to harm her. Whatever threat the girl was bringing didn’t take that form.

Jane scrutinized her as the two walked into the living room. There were no weapons, and no purse to hold a microphone. There was the skirt that was fitted to hug hips that were too narrow, the halter top that left bare a flat stomach and bony lower ribs but was there to hide almost nothing, the blond hair that had begun to look dirty. Jane said, “I’ll bet you’re thirsty. What can I give you to drink?”

She surprised Jane by saying, “I just didn’t want to stand out there while I asked you.”

“Asked me what?”

The girl took a deep breath, and Jane could hear a quiver in it. “I’m sorry to come like this, but I.… You never seem to be alone. I talked to some of the kids out there, and they said your name used to be Jane Whitefield. Did it?”

Jane concentrated on making her breathing smooth and even. This was the first time since she had married Carey McKinnon that anyone had come to this house looking for Jane Whitefield. If the girl was asking, then she already knew. “Yes,” she said. “And what’s your name?”

“I’m Rita Shelford. If I’ve got the wrong person, I don’t know what I’ll do.” She looked around her at the big living room of the old house, and Jane could see it through her eyes. Jane had to resist a sudden impulse to make excuses for it. The heavy, shining pieces of antique furniture were there because Carey’s ancestors had been accumulating them since the 1790s, probably with as little awareness as he showed about such things. The enormous stone fireplace had been put there not out of pretension, but because that was the way to warm a house in those days.

Jane tried to help the girl, but warily. “I think you’ve got a problem?”

The girl nodded.

“Come on,” said Jane. “Let’s go into the kitchen and we can talk while I make some lemonade or something.” Jane stood and led her by the route down the hall so she wouldn’t be alarmed by the elaborate preparations Jane had made in the dining room. Each step on the wooden floor sounded to Jane’s ears like a hammer.

Jane entered the kitchen, where cooking smells and steaming pots made her feel as though her impersonation of an ordinary doctor’s wife was stronger. She had to be careful. She stood by the sink, where the sunlight streamed in behind her, and studied the girl’s face as she sat at the kitchen table. She had been right that the girl was older close up. Jane turned and cut lemons at the counter, then put them into the squeezer and watched the juice collect in the bottom. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

Jane remained undecided. In certain circumstances, a sixteen-year-old would say she was eighteen. In others, a twenty-two-year-old might. “Who told you to look for me?”

“Celia. She said you would remember her.” She looked hopeful. “Or somebody named Terry.”

“Celia Fulham?” It didn’t seem possible. Maybe Celia had moved north, or maybe Jane had detected the lie easily. “Where did you meet her?”

“Florida.”

Jane was frustrated to hear the right answer because it didn’t settle anything. Celia Fulham was a social worker in northern Florida. Jane had met her seven or eight years ago, when the mess that had been a child’s life came to Celia’s attention. The child’s name had been Terrell James Arbogast, and at the end of that there had been a Roman numeral … had it been IV? It had been bestowed on him with the unintentional irony that always seemed to stick to people like his parents. When Celia had met them, they were being hunted by the sheriff, not for the frauds they had committed in selling bogus cases of Chanel No. 5 in a parking lot, but because they had not paid him his customary fee for fleecing the locals. Taking the boy into the system would not have made him safe but turned him into a hostage.

Celia Fulham had hidden the family in her own house, and begun to track down a rumor she had heard a year earlier at a workshop in Atlanta. The rumor was that in those instances when the system simply had no way of protecting a child or removing him from an environment that was about to kill him, the system wasn’t necessarily his last chance. There was a woman who could make people disappear. “You came all the way up here from Florida,” said Jane. “And Celia told you my address.”

“No,” said the girl. “She told me an address in Deganawida. I went there and rang the bell, but nobody was there. But she said that if you moved or something, they would know at the reservation.”

It was another frustrating answer. Celia Fulham had been part Seminole, and had asked Jane if she had Indian blood. Jane had broken an inflexible rule against letting people know anything about her personal life. Jane measured the water and sugar by eye and tasted the mixture, then added the ice and handed the lemonade to the girl. She had expected to be able to distract the girl with it so she could study her, but the girl took a sip without taking her eyes off Jane. “You don’t believe me,” she announced.

“Sure I do,” said Jane. “There is no way that you could have learned that Celia knew me unless Celia told you.” The girl had really seen Celia, but that didn’t mean Celia was right about her. There had to be some other way, some sensible solution that Celia simply hadn’t thought of. Jane wanted to say, “I’m not Jane Whitefield anymore. People who are about to die don’t come to me anymore and ask me to make them vanish. I can’t leave my husband and take on your problem. I made a promise.” Maybe if she knew more, she could figure out a way to help this child without risking her own chance for a new life. “What made you go to Celia?”

The girl said, “I went to her because she was nice to me once a few years ago, when my mother had a fight with her boyfriend and the police came. Celia said that if I was in trouble I should come back.”

When Jane heard the word “mother,” she felt a half-second of hope—that’s right, she’s a kid, so there’s a mother—but the rest of the sentence dampened it. “Where are your parents now?”

“My father … I don’t know about him. He was just another boyfriend, and he took off when I was a baby. My mother, she had some trouble a couple of years ago and …” The girl shrugged placidly. “You know. She’s a doper.”