I’d Know You Anywhere

“What, Albie?”

“Aren’t you going to come in?”

“I didn’t bring a suit.”

“Then I’ll come out.”

“That’s okay, darling, I’m having fun watching you.”

Albie swam-walked back to his father and spent the next half hour squealing happily as Peter flung him away with great force. Peter would move toward the children like a lumbering gorilla, grunting the song about the man on the flying trapeze. Even Iso, presumably too big for such nonsense, begged for a turn, shrieking with laughter. They did this over and over again, never tiring.

Change the sound track and the setting, and it might look terrifying, Eliza thought. But did that work the other way around? Were there terrible things that could appear lovely if framed differently? She remembered a moment in a Piggly Wiggly, when she had been difficult and obdurate, arguing for a snack that Walter had arbitrarily decided was off-limits. This was toward the end, perhaps a day or so before they happened upon Holly on the road. Walter put his hand on the back of her neck, viselike.

“How nice,” the checker had said, “to see a brother and sister who are affectionate with one another.”

Three days later, he took her to di

An hour later, he raped her.

Eliza watched as Albie, then Iso, flew through the air with the greatest of ease, screaming with laughter.

34

TRUDY DID NOT CONSIDER HERSELF a Luddite. She liked technology. But she also believed machines required several generations before they became attractive. Televisions, for example, and all their accessories-it had taken years before someone had figured out how to design a system that wasn’t a welter of cords and extensions, snaky as Medusa’s hair. Computers, too, were hideous when they first came along, and while laptops were smaller, they were still ugly to her way of thinking. Even those clamshells, especially those clamshells, which one was supposed to carry like a purse. As if Trudy would ever own such a purse. And no matter what computer one used, e-mail itself was ugly, begging the eye to skim, flee. She wanted no part of it.

She prided herself on keeping a stock of rich, creamy monogrammed paper, writing notes as necessary. Or picking up a phone-a phone, not a cell-when she had something to say to someone. Her sons had pleaded with her to get an e-mail account, dangling visions of daily photos of the grandsons, more frequent communication. But e-mail, in Trudy’s view, wasn’t communication. It was a one-sided conversation, zipping back and forth, barely co

But since Terry’s conversation with their Sussex friend, Trudy’s mind had returned again and again to a tantalizing detail: I got you the number. You can put it in a reverse look-up. She hadn’t understood what the woman meant at the time and hadn’t wanted to ask, revealing her presence on the line. But Trudy was an old hand at puzzling through things, and she put it together eventually. All she had to do was plug Elizabeth Lerner’s number into the computer and there it was, her street and zip. She could even call up photographs. O brave new world, she thought.

Trudy had dialed Elizabeth Lerner’s number several times since she obtained it, at first hanging on only to hear it ring over and over, then hanging up on the first or second ring. No voice mail, how odd. And why was no one ever home to answer it? She always called on weekends or around supper, the most likely time to find people at home. Did they ignore the calls, thinking she was a telemarketer? Did they have caller ID, which would out her as T Tackett? Idly she picked up her phone, even as she continued to stare at the photograph of the Benedicts’ white, nothing-special house. She thought longingly of T’n’T, their farm in Virginia, which had managed to be gracious and comfortable, no small feat when someone has three rowdy sons. The name-she didn’t regret it, refused to find belated menace in its pun. The Tacketts hadn’t even chosen it, although they had laughed when a friend had made the joke at a party, then later gave them the painted sign they put at the foot of their long drive. She had considered it arch acknowledgment of their good fortune. Trudy always had known that life could blow up at any moment. But perhaps that was hindsight.

She listened to the phone ring. She knew the photograph was not live-the trees were green and leafy-but she couldn’t help feeling that she was watching the house, that she might see a curtain twitch or a light come on, even hear her own call ringing inside. Answer me. Talk to me.

Not even an hour later, she was standing in front of it. Fu

But she was on Poplar Street. She parked her car and walked around the house. No sign of life. Brazen, uncaring, she let herself in the backyard-the low gate had a latch that she could easily slide open-peered into windows. Children lived here, their detritus was all around. (Really, was it that hard to pick up after children, or get them to clean up after themselves? Trudy had never allowed this kind of disorder.) Elizabeth Lerner had children and, presumably, a husband. This was not the house of a single mother, although that would explain the mess. A dog’s bed, a big one-so they had a dog, too. She found herself trying the door handle, testing it to see if Elizabeth Benedict dared to live in an unlocked house, as the Tacketts once had. They had never locked the doors at T’n’T, not when they were in town, and what if they had? Holly had been taken at the foot of their driveway.

The door was locked.

“Are you looking for the Benedicts?”

She almost jumped a foot into the air, more at the sound of the name than the surprise of the voice. Her interlocutor was a man, in his sixties, neatly dressed for a Saturday morning in suburbia, in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, real slacks, not khakis.

“Yes,” she said. “I just happened to be passing through and I’m an old friend, someone they haven’t seen for years. I took a chance that they would be here.”

“They went away for the weekend, but they expect to be back Sunday night. They asked me to take in the paper. Shame that you missed them.”

“That’s what I get for not calling first. I’ll leave them a note.”

She had no intention of leaving a note, but she figured that lie might keep him from describing the incident when the family returned. She even went so far as to walk to her car, take a piece of paper from the pad she kept in the glove compartment, and pretend-scrawl a note. Only somewhere along the way, it ceased to be pretending and became real. After struggling over how to begin-she could not bring herself to use the word dear-she wrote:

Elizabeth,

Please call me at your convenience.

Trudy Tackett

After a moment’s thought, she included her cell, not the house number.