Keeper of the Keys

“Old people have a lot of problems that might change their personalities,” Kat said, straining for a reasonable explanation.

“She really did this to you? Really?”

Leigh broke down again. “It’s true.”

“She isn’t old. She isn’t senile or crazy,” Ray said. “My mother knows how to control herself. Oh, she sure does. But hang on. That was true up to a few days ago. But she has been drinking over the past few days, a lot I think, like binge drinking, and it started very suddenly. Was she drunk?”

“She was stone cold sober,” Leigh said.

“Do you think she-is she taking drugs? Methamphetamine? Cocaine? PCP?” Kat said.

“My first thought was, yeah, she’s on something. She ran toward me like a ghastly character in a movie. I could almost hear the music.”

“She hates drugs,” Ray said. “She hates having to use the inhaler sometimes for her asthma. She won’t even take an aspirin.”

Kat bit her lip and looked at him. He was back with them, but the expression on his face was so sad she could hardly stand it.

“Ray,” she said, “your mother must have known about your fight with Leigh. It’s the only explanation for her attack on Leigh, and it’s wild enough.”

“I didn’t call her, Leigh,” Ray said. “I swear to you, I didn’t.”

Kat said, “Could she have been-eavesdropping at your house?”

“But I drove straight to Whittier like a bat out of hell and there she was,” Leigh said. “She couldn’t have beat me.” She looked at the table. “Then why? She must be mentally ill. But-”

“I ate di

Leigh said, “I suppose I should have gone to my dad. But imagine. He would have had your mother arrested. I was so confused. I-I didn’t want to hurt you any more.”

Ray took it in.

She pulled up her shirt and lifted her body a little. “Look.”

Three angry red welts with stitch marks, about four inches long, scored through her pale skin just above the navel.

“Jesus,” Ray said. He touched his wife’s skin and Kat could see any remaining doubt had melted away.

“You poor thing,” Kat told Leigh, staring at it. Then a second wave of feeling overtook her, sadness for Ray.

In finding his wife, had he lost his mother?

Leigh pulled down her shirt, dropping back into her seat. For a few moments nobody spoke.

“We need to talk to her. Let’s go to Whittier,” Ray said.

“Let’s not and say we did,” Kat said. “You’re kidding, right?”

“We should just call the police,” Leigh said imperatively. “I’m not afraid of her, with the two of you with me, and I want to know why she did this to me. But we need to stay safe.”

“She attacked Leigh,” Kat said. “She’s violent.”

“She would never hurt me,” Ray said, so decisively his tone would brook no further disagreement. “Leigh, I want you to go home with Kat. I’ll drop you both in Hermosa and then go talk to her. I’ll pick you up afterwards.”

“It’s more than sixty miles to Hermosa,” Leigh calculated, “and then at least forty-five minutes getting back to Whittier. You’ll be so tired. In no shape to talk to her.”

After a few more minutes of wrangling, they decided to call Rappaport. They got his voicemail and left a message.

“ Whittier ’s on the way,” Ray said. “I’m going.”

“Then we’ll wait in the car for you if that’s the way you want it. I swear we will let you work it out yourself,” Kat promised, thinking, Holy shit, if anyone ever needed backup! They could not let him go there alone.

“Let’s go,” Leigh said.

They went outside to the car and got inside, Ray in the driver’s seat, Leigh beside him, and Kat in the back. Then Kat and Leigh waited and waited. He didn’t start the car. “I need to say something, Leigh. You know, I used to hear about people having breakdowns and it had no meaning for me. Then, this year, it happened. You started talking about children, remember?”

Leigh nodded.

“Well, I got afraid. I never had a father. No role model. And I knew my parents had divorced. Although my mother never talked about him, I understood he was off-limits for a reason, probably something pretty ugly. I suspected that made me a bad bet.”

“Ray, we can talk about this later.”

“No. Because here’s the bad news. It turns out-at least, from what I’ve found out in this kind of compulsive genealogical research I’ve been doing”-he laughed slightly-“I was right. My father was a vicious thug. He stalked my mother for years. He’s the reason we ran like scared bu

“How do you know that, Ray?” Leigh asked.

He told her and Kat about the keys, about the houses, and, finally, about the tapes.

“Why did your mother make recordings like that?” Kat asked, “and then leave them hidden in these houses?”

“I have a theory. She was afraid of this guy catching up with her. If she thought he might hurt or even kill her-or me-she might have wanted those tapes to get the police after him, like some kind of evidence.”

“But they were hidden.”

“If she had been killed, and her home was searched, they could have found them easily.”

Leigh frowned with concern. “So you found out about your father. Nobody has easy parents, Ray. Some are worse than others, but that doesn’t mean-”

“I’ve been thinking so much about how you can cripple yourself,” he went on doggedly, “obsessing on whys and feeling permanently bruised by things that have happened in life that you can’t change. Since you left, I’ve understood love so much better. It’s like”-he struggled for words-“a house with walls that change color, shape, position every day, a place that’s so full of life it never stops changing. I want to tell you-I’m not afraid of that anymore.” For a long moment, they stared at each other, then melted into an embrace, a surrender to each other that made Kat’s breath catch.

When they finally pulled apart and straightened up, Ray started the car and rolled up the road.

30

Esmé, loitering at the cellar door, hung back. She heard her son, the love of her life, down there. She wished he of all people understood.

Opening the door to the cellar, the light off, she began to creep down, her hand finding its way down the rail.

Ray squirmed into the pitch-black. Kat had shoved a small flashlight into his hand. Its aura cast dim shadows on the walls.

At the door, at the top of the stairs, he heard something.

Mom, he thought.

Rather than worry about her, he shone his light around. He noted the cobwebs, the living spiders, the dank wetness of a space that needed, according to his architect-sensibility, a dry atmosphere.

“Mom?” he said, stepping into the space.

Her voice came from very close by, inches away from him, like a scent on the wind. He felt her touch his cheek.

“Right here.”

“Mom?” He heard her step in even closer. He heard his own throbbing heart and thought he heard hers, too.

“So you broke in.”

“You locked me out. Took my key. You weren’t going to open the front door. I need to talk to you, Mom.”

She said, “I hoped Leigh would never come back. I thought, if she doesn’t come back, we’re okay. We can go on as always.”

“I love her, Mom. I want her home.”

“I know you love Leigh. But I’m mad at her.”

“Her friend, Kat, got me going. She had her own reasons for looking for Leigh, nothing to do with you or me, but I’m glad she helped me find her.”

“Same outcome. Leigh’s out there on my doorstep. So’s her friend, Kat. They are up there waiting. Meantime, what should I do? That’s a big question.”

“You hurt Leigh, Mom, stabbed her with a chisel, for God’s sake. You almost-”

“I did my best.” Esmé’s laugh was dry, crackling. She had stepped back into the darkness. “I was hoping she died. But no such luck. I never had any.”