I’d Know You Anywhere

“Okay, kind of placid, then. Her husband has the big personality, and she seems to be used to letting him run things.”

“You mean, he’s bossy? Domineering?”

“No, just very much in charge, the fighter in the family. She doesn’t seem to have much appetite for conflict.”

Oh, I know that. I’m counting on that.

He didn’t press Jeff further on the subject of Elizabeth, feeling that was too risky, might tip his hand. Now, lying on his bunk and staring at the ceiling, the sounds of Sussex I sharp and harsh around him, he allowed himself to remember the affection he had felt for her, almost in spite of himself. Was it love? He wasn’t sure it could be called love. But they had something, all those years ago. There was a bond. He could make her do anything. Wasn’t that proof of something between them? He had granted her life. If you thought about it, he was kind of a god. And it was time to call that marker in.

36

“WHO’S TRUDY TACKETT? ISO ASKED.”

“How do you know that name?”

They had just crossed the threshold in a cranky heap, tired and worn-out from the trip, in which they had been stuck in a terrible backup on I-66. The precipitating accident was apparently quite bad, according to WTOP, which Peter had switched off after hearing that two people had been killed in the collision. By the time their car inched past the accident site, the ambulances and helicopters had long departed, leaving behind two cars so mangled that it was impossible to imagine anyone surviving the crash. If they had left Monticello earlier, as Iso had urged repeatedly, they might have been here when it happened, their car could be another one in the pileup.

Eliza couldn’t help saying that out loud, without the Iso part, hoping her daughter would make that co

“At least that would have been interesting,” Iso said. “Unlike the rest of the day.”

Monticello had been a bit of a bust. Iso had attempted to wear her iPod headphones the entire time, and when Peter remonstrated, she had stalked through the tour with a boredom so palpable it felt like a weapon, aimed at them all. Albie, sensitive to his sister’s moods, had found it hard to take in the old house, and his confusion about Thomas Jefferson hadn’t helped. (Midway through the tour, it became obvious that he thought they were going through George Washington’s house. Eliza and Peter really needed to help him with his American history. He could rattle off the Tudor monarchs but couldn’t even name the first three presidents.) At any rate, Eliza’s nerves were already raw when Iso casually tossed out a name that always made her flinch.

“Trudy Tackett,” Iso repeated. “She signed this note that was with the mail, although it’s not in an envelope. See? Says she wants you to call her.”

Eliza glanced at Peter, knowing the name would not necessarily resonate with him, but hoping he would step up and say something, which she could not imagine doing just now. She felt as if a piece of clay was lodged around her larynx, slowly hardening. Trudy Tackett. As Jefferson Blanding had told her a mere two days ago, she wasn’t that hard to find.

“She went to school with your mom,” Peter said. “At least, I think that’s how you know her. Right, Eliza?”

She nodded, then managed to croak: “Her daughter. It was her daughter I knew.”

“Why would she leave you a note?”

“She was probably in the neighborhood.” Again, it was Peter who spoke.

Iso had expended about as much curiosity as she could on her mother’s behalf. She went into the family room and turned on the television, and Albie joined her at the opposite end of the sofa. He would spend the next hour stealthily closing the distance between them, patiently taking territory one inch at a time. Eventually, he would get too close and Iso would scold: “Get away from me. You smell” or “You breathe too loudly. You make fu

She and Peter rushed upstairs, as if unpacking their small overnight bag was an urgent, complicated matter, requiring them both. And it felt good, Eliza discovered, to have something to do with her hands, to sort the dirty clothes into piles, to get a wash going.

“I have to admit,” Peter said, “I didn’t remember who Trudy Tackett was. She’s one of the relatives, right.”

“Holly,” Eliza said. “Holly’s mother.”

“Oh.” Peter knew Holly’s significance. Or thought he did. “It could be a coincidence. She doesn’t necessarily know that Walter has been in touch with you.”

“What did Blanding say? It’s an office, like any other. People gossip. Someone at the prison could have told her.”

“About the calls. Not about the visit, because it hasn’t been arranged.”

“For all we know, they listen in on his phone calls.”

Bereft of chores, she sat on the bed.

“I would think she wouldn’t care, one way or another. Her daughter’s murder at least ended in a trial, with a death sentence. What more can she want?”

Eliza shrugged, as if in agreement. But she was thinking: So much more. She wants so much more. She wants me to be dead, and her daughter to be alive.

They had spoken only once. It was the second day of Eliza’s testimony, and she had eaten something that disagreed with her. It wasn’t nerves; her father was felled by the same waves of nausea, this odd feeling of wanting to throw up but not producing anything. About midway through the afternoon, they broke for a recess and Eliza had rushed to the nearest bathroom. She still couldn’t get anything to come up, no matter how much she retched.

When she came out of the stall, Trudy Tackett was standing there. She was a pretty woman. Of course, she seemed ancient to Eliza at the time. Fu

“I’m Holly’s mother,” she said.

Eliza nodded. She was under strict instructions not to speak to any of the spectators, and she assumed that Holly’s mother knew the rules. She didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want to do anything wrong. That could lead to a mistrial, the last thing she wanted.

“She was younger than you,” her mother said. “A month away from her fourteenth birthday, in fact. We were going to have a lovely party.”

Eliza widened her eyes to signify that she thought this a nice idea, a lovely party. She wanted to leave, but Mrs. Tackett stood squarely in her path, and Eliza couldn’t see how to go around her without being rude.

“I mean, I know Holly looked like she was sixteen or eighteen. Don’t you think we knew that? Her father and her brothers spent most of their lives with their fists balled up, ready to hit men just for looking at her. But she was playing with dolls as recently as two years ago. She wasn’t in a hurry to grow up, like some girls. She certainly didn’t worship Mado

That was one of those stray details that had become something so much larger than it was-the hair ribbon, the gloves and boots Eliza was wearing when she was kidnapped. Now she was defined by those things, and she could barely remember them.

“I didn’t worship her,” she said, feeling misunderstood. “I…liked her. I liked her style.”

Her current role models were Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy, high-necked blouses and big skirts, brooches and pearls.

“You should have taken care of her,” Mrs. Tackett said. “You were older. You knew what was going on.”