The Orchid Tattoo, page 12
I took Lindsay’s hand. “Hey, you want to show me that swing set Grandpa and Colby built for you?”
We walked to the back of the house and out the door. Lindsay scampered down the patio steps and took a seat on the swing, one of those rubber-belt types. Reluctantly, I sat on the other, the seat smushing my rear into an uncomfortable U.
As Lindsay swayed, her sneakered foot dug in the dirt below. Movement in one of the upstairs windows caught my eye, a curtain being pushed aside.
“You having an okay time here?” I asked Lindsay.
She scrunched her tiny shoulders up in a shrug. “Okay.”
I reached over to twirl a strand of Lindsay’s hair around my finger. “Grammy told you about Mommy, right?”
“She’s with the angels in heaven.” She spoke the words like they were a memorized Bible verse.
“That’s right,” I said, though I wasn’t much for believing in heaven or God or anything divine at that point. “She loved you so much, sweetie. Always try to remember that.” She loved both of us with such fierceness. How would we go on without her?
Lindsay’s mouth sagged. Her hand found its way to her lips and her thumb went in like a little plug. She grabbed the chain on my swing, pulling herself so close that her face was inches from mine. She let go of my swing, freeing hers to sway like a pendulum.
“I want to go home.”
“Grammy told me you didn’t sleep well last night.”
She twisted the swing to the side without answering.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
She twirled herself around a few times, the chains coiling together like strands in a rope. When she lifted her feet, the swing spun her around and around, and I fought nausea just watching.
“Do you remember the dream?”
“Mommy said I can’t play with her lipstick,” she blurted out. “It was a accident!”
“You dreamed about Mommy?” I asked, confused.
“It got on the bed.” The tears trickling down her face nearly broke my heart. I reached for the chains of her swing so I could pull her to me. Maybe this had not been a dream but a memory. From the night Peyton disappeared?
“Mommy knew it was an accident. Didn’t she say so?” I lifted her into my lap and pressed my lips into her hair. “Do you remember anything else from that night? You know, when I found you sleeping in the closet?”
Lindsay rested against me without answering.
“Did you go in there by yourself? Or did Mommy tell you to go in there?”
“It’s the safe place, Aunt George. When we have storms and I get scared, that’s the safe place.”
“Were you scared that night?”
“I wasn’t scared. But Mommy acted like she was.”
Peyton scared? Did she have an idea what was about to happen? “Did Mommy say something to you?”
“She said pretend it was a storm. But it wasn’t a storm. But there was a noise and she said that, and I did, I got School Bus and went in the closet, and—” her voice trailed off.
“And what, sweetie?”
“And you came and woke me up.”
A noise. Someone in the house? Someone threatening?
Lindsay burrowed in closer to me as I swayed the swing back and forth. Soon I heard the odd little snores that told me she was asleep. I slowed the swing, burying my nose in her hair. We had lost so much, the two of us.
I wiped my eyes. Somehow, I managed to heave my fanny out of the swing to carry her back to the house and up to her room. Lindsay hardly stirred when I covered her with the yellow Winnie-the-Pooh sheet. “I love you, Munchkin,” I whispered.
When I went downstairs, Marge met me in the hall and walked me to the door. “Pearce and I were talking last night. As awful as this is, at least now we have some closure.”
“Closure?” I shook my head. There was no point in arguing. I needed to get away from the Ribault house and all their pristine white stuff. “Tell Lindsay I’ll see her soon.”
The air in my Honda felt like fever as I twitched the key in the ignition. I thought about Marge wanting closure. The media attention had to be making her batty. And the idea that her precious son David’s life might come under a microscope. Who knew what might surface?
I had just pulled out of their drive when I spotted a silver BMW slowing to turn in. Colby Ribault stopped when he spotted my car, so I lowered my window.
“Georgia. Nice to see you.” His hair was longer than before, when he’d sported a clean, corporate cut, and the threads of silver were new, too. Still those dimples though. “How long has it been?”
“Too long,” I answered. I thought about our one date. How he’d laughed when I asked the question that had weighed on my mind. “What’s it like to be named after a cheese?” How he’d said he wished he’d met me sooner, and I’d felt the same. But then he moved, and married, and divorced. It felt like a lifetime ago, but those dimples were exactly the same.
“I’m so sorry about Peyton,” he said. “I hoped she’d turn up. Damn. She was the heart of this family, you know. I can’t believe—” He shook his head.
Neither of us needed that sentence to be finished.
“You’re going to hear this from a lot of people, but I mean it. If there’s anything you need. Anything I can do, just ask.”
Tears stung my eyes at this kindness. Maybe one person in the Ribault clan wasn’t a complete asshole.
“Thanks, Colby.”
I pulled into the last shaded parking spot beside the Sunrise Community Care Home. Sunrise gets a lot of traffic during afternoon visiting hours. It’s a small, private facility, and Adele Thayer, my mom, likes it here.
Bernice, my mom’s favorite aide, greeted me at the door with a warm hug, and my hands were lost in the mass of black braids hanging down her back. Bernice can handle Adele, even on the bad days, of which there are plenty.
“I’m so sorry about your sister.”
“Thanks. Where’s Mom?”
“The garden. Pretty lucid this morning.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I wanted Mom lucid when I told her about Peyton. Lucid meant she wouldn’t be spared the shock or the jolting waves of grief. When I started for the garden, Bernice stopped me.
“I’m so sorry, Georgia. She knows. Saw the news before I could switch the channel.”
I exhaled in relief. “How’d she handle it?”
Bernice slipped a lighter in my hand. “We had a pastor here from the AME church and he did some praying with her. I think that helped. Miss Adele likes her prayer time.”
“I’m sure it did. Thanks.”
I found Mom standing among the begonias, impatiens, and vinca she’d planted last April. She’s a tiny thing, inches shorter than she used to be. Her straw garden hat sat cockeyed on her head, wide enough to shade her whole body and then some. Potting soil coated the fingers of her gardening gloves. She frowned at her handiwork.
“Flowers look great, Mom.”
“This heat’s about to parch them. I watered them this morning, but the impatiens are wilting.”
“You always called them the most melodramatic flower.” When I hugged her, she felt as delicate as a baby bird. She pulled away like she always did on those lucid days.
“Can you take a break?” I asked.
She reached in her pocket for a cigarette. I produced the lighter and flicked it. Long ago, Peyton and I decided it wasn’t worth the battle; Adele was going to smoke, and she’d make life hell for everyone if we tried to stop her.
She took a long draw, winking against the rising smoke.
“So, you know about Peyton,” I prompted.
The cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth. I waited, wondering if her emotions would escalate into a firestorm. Fury had always been her first line of defense. Or would more tears come, the grief bubbling up through the mire of her illness?
But she surprised me. It was one of her better days. “Wish Lindsay had a brother or a sister. Gonna be hard on her, being alone now. At least you and Peyton had each other, no matter what I put you through.” She took another puff and flicked ashes into her potting soil mix.
“When did you last see her?” I asked.
She bent to pinch wilting blossoms from a geranium. “Deadheading,” she called it.
“A couple of weeks ago. One evening, but it was still so damn hot. Lindsay sat in my lap. A little heat generator, that one.” She slid off the gardening gloves. “The news acted like Peyton probably killed herself.”
I nodded, wondering where this would lead.
Adele dropped the cigarette and stomped it out. “They’re wrong. She didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know her. She had too much life in her. Last time she was here, she gave me that big sunshine smile, like her whole body was smiling. Looked like that on her wedding day. And when Lindsay came, she said she was doing something important. Something she was proud of.”
Her research into human trafficking? “What else did she say?”
“She hoped to save some people. She said you did that in your work. That your work was important, and she was finally doing something that mattered, too.” She reached into her pocket for another cigarette. Normally, I limited her to one, but nothing about today was normal so I helped her light it. Mom squinted at me. “Who could do such a thing to her? Who would hate our Peyton that much?”
I had no answers for her. And the police weren’t even asking those questions.
She gave me a long, pinning stare. “You need to take care of this, Georgia. You’re her big sister. It’s your job to look after her.”
I nodded as her words sunk in. She was an impossible woman to defy, always had been.
Mom put her gloves back on and stooped to inspect her marigolds. “Need us a good soaking rain,” she said. “The drought’s about to kill my garden. You plant anything this year?”
I had, during my last visit we’d discussed my garden for over an hour. Hard to know what would stick when you talked with her. “Just the usual. I don’t have your green thumb, though.”
She looked down at her gloves. “Pink today. I’ll wear the green ones tomorrow.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lillian sipped her coffee in the living room after her morning walk. She liked the Estate best at this time of day, before the girls were up. Jefe had been away for a few days, but due back at any moment. She didn’t know where he went or why but had learned not to question him. Sometimes she imagined what other life he had. A wife? Kids? Do they think he’s a businessman traveling all over the world? Do they have any clue he’d built an empire in the backwoods of South Carolina?
She winced at the climbing sun. The day promised to be a scorcher. Sometimes, her skin almost sizzled in Carolina’s suffocating heat, her very flesh holding the memory of a day so hot it nearly killed her.
She had been only sixteen, scraping out a life on the streets. Temps climbed to 108 degrees. She’d fallen asleep on a park bench and awakened to a searing burn across her nose, arms, and legs. She shouldn’t have been so stupid.
Her desperate search for a spot of shade found her in an alley behind a store, but it brought little relief. The cloth of her shirt punished her skin. She wanted to strip naked and lie in a fountain but knew the water was too warm to cool her. It seemed nothing would. Fired burned inside too. A fever?
She staggered into the library, desperate to breathe something that didn’t scorch her lungs. The cool air almost hurt, and sent chill bumps across her skin, but she savored it. When she found a water fountain, she guzzled so much that she almost threw up. She wanted to lie in the stacks and sleep, but a guard followed her as though worried she’d steal all the books.
It was a public place so he couldn’t drag her out, but he could make her time there uncomfortable. She kept moving from one floor to another, feigning interest in a collection of local writers and a fashion magazine. Fever made reading—even thinking—impossible.
A librarian approached her. “We’re closing in ten.”
Lillian stumbled to the door, every step feeling odd, as though her brain had disconnected from her body. Outside, the sun hung lower in the sky, but the concrete held the relentless heat. Where could she go? Her thoughts had fuzzy edges.
She held the rail by the steps and slid down, no longer strong enough to keep moving. I’ll rest here, just for a while. Just—she closed her eyes.
“Hey? Hey! Are you okay?”
She sucked in a hot breath and blinked open her eyes at a woman staring down at her. “You don’t look so good,” the woman said.
Lillian tried to speak but no words would come. The woman opened a leather knapsack and pulled out a bottle of water. “Here. Try this.”
She drank, her tongue thick and dry, letting the water slosh down her chin. The woman squinted into her eyes. “Can you tell me your name?”
No words came. She just wanted to lie down, and close her eyes, hoping sleep would save her from the fire inside and outside her skin.
“Okay, okay. We need to get you checked out. Can I call your parents?”
She shook her head and tried to stand, to run away, but the woman stopped her. “Hey, it’s okay. Just sit here for a second.”
Sitting was a wonderful idea. She’d close her eyes, just for a few minutes. Just until—
She awakened in a room with stark fluorescent lights. Tile walls. Something pinching her arm.
“There you are!” It was the woman again, wearing a different top, and with a badge dangling from a lanyard around her neck. “You gave us a bit of a scare but you’re much better now.”
Hospital. She was in a hospital room. The pain in her arm was from an IV. “What happened?”
“What do you remember?”
“Sunburn. Brutal sunburn.”
“Definitely. Try sun poisoning.”
“I was so hot. Having to leave the library and you were there and—”
“And you passed out. EMTs brought you here. Your core temperature was dangerously high. We used cooling blankets and medication to bring it down.” She touched the white sheet covering Lillian. A nurse? A doctor?
“Water?”
“Of course.” She positioned a Styrofoam cup with an elbow straw so that Lillian could sip the delicious, wondrous water.
“That’s good. We’ll try more in a few minutes. What do we call you?”
“Lily.” This was the name she’d given herself.
“That’s lovely. What’s your last name?”
Her gaze searched the room. The door. The machines. The tile walls. “Wallace,” she decided.
The woman smiled. “Okay, Lily Wallace. My name is Georgia Thayer. I’m a social worker here at the hospital. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” The lies came easier as she let them out.
“Eighteen,” the woman repeated, brows arched like she didn’t believe it. “Is there someone I can call for you? Your parents?”
She shook her head. There was nobody. Nobody who cared if she was well or safe. Nobody.
The woman’s eyebrows rose again. “How long have you been living on the streets?”
She shrugged. She wasn’t exactly sure. Time had a different meaning now.
Georgia nodded, as though understanding something she hadn’t said aloud. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I don’t think you’re eighteen, but we’ll go with that for now. When medical staff figures it out, though, they’ll insist I call social services. And I’ll have to. That’s my job. But maybe we have a little time before that happens. For now, let’s just work on getting you well.”
Lillian felt an unfamiliar surge of gratitude for this stranger. She nodded, closing her eyes, and letting herself fall back into the delicious oblivion of sleep.
It was soon after Lillian checked herself out of the hospital that Gunner came into her life and imprisoned her in his. She never tried to run away. Why would she? She knew what was out there for her. She’d stay with Gunner as long as he’d have her, and treat him well, and stay fed and dry.
For a month, she lived with him. She taught herself to cook a few meals and tried to keep the small apartment tidy. She did what she needed to please him, because she wanted to stay there as long as she could. He had other plans, though. “Put this on,” he said that fateful afternoon, handing her a short red dress. She complied.
He surveyed her in the new clothes and commanded, “Fix your hair.” She gathered the top layer in a barrette, freeing a few strands to frame her face. Gunner had bought her some makeup—cheap stuff that didn’t quite match her skin tone—but she did her best with the blush, mascara, and lipstick. She wasn’t unattractive. She knew this about herself. The auburn hair and green eyes, the gentle lift of her small nose, the full lips—she had something to work with, so when she returned to the small living area, she knew she looked damn good.
“Nice,” he said. “Come with me.”
That was the first time she came into this very room. The day that she met Jefe.
She could recall every detail about that meeting. Driving up to his gorgeous mansion in the middle of nowhere. The bright blue pool surrounded by palm trees. The tile roof, the double doors with leaded glass at the entrance, the four chimes that echoed when they rang the bell.
The cook answered the door and led them to this paneled room with a Pueblo rug and heavy leather furniture. “Wait here,” Gunner commanded.
A few minutes later, he returned with the owner of the house. Shorter than Gunner, with dark hair, fair skin, and a lapis bolo tie. He was broad-shouldered with a narrow waist and moved efficiently and with purpose. “This is her?” he commented, his brown eyes measuring her from scalp to toes.
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?” A bit of a Southern lilt to his voice.
