“Well, I guess she was too old by then to—” He stopped himself. What was the point?
“She went dark again earlier this year.” Joe watched her eyes as she spoke. They narrowed when she described hitting a “dark spot,” or when she couldn’t pinpoint an event, and brightened when she was describing something definitive. Despite the circumstances, his heart swelled. Not since his soft-spoken, fastidious beanpole of an uncle had helped him with college applications had anyone expended so much effort on his behalf. “The church group home was the last place I found information on her. I think she did good things there, though. I think she helped younger women. Um . . . I found one photo.” She looked up at him, her mouth pursed. “Do you want to see it?”
“Sure.”
“I think she looks happy,” Aideen said encouragingly. It struck him as curious, this almost tender side of Aideen he hadn’t seen in a dozen years of friendship and professional association. She was many things, but not much of a comforter. Still, she looked as if she hoped he would find this uplifting. She handed him the webpage printout.
He studied it for a long moment, then whispered the name to himself.
Except this time he said, “Mom.”
It was a newspaper photograph of a living, breathing, healthy-looking Lois DeSantos—she was still using her married name—with a group of women outside a church. A local section of the Sacramento Bee had covered an event that took place at the Tahoe Park Grace Lutheran Church on a Sunday in 2013. A group of women “living and working” at the church had started a community garden and were raising vegetables and herbs for the area’s needy population. In the photo, six women stood around the freshly planted garden on a bright, sunny day. The women were a mix of ages and races. All but one was smiling.
The woman on the left was their minister, Pastor Suzanne Nelson, the caption stated, with a white clerical collar above a long black dress. Second to the end on the right was a pale, tired-looking old woman with a thin mouth, a slightly crooked nose, and flat hair parted neatly in the middle. She was not smiling, but she looked content. Even a little self-satisfied. The names of the women were listed under the photo, which was how Aideen pinpointed the image in the first place.
“I enhanced the photo and compared it to the crime scene and ME photos,” she said. “I won’t be sharing this with the prosecution, but that’s her.”
“She does look content,” he said, “Not happy, exactly, but content.”
“I agree, but I think she also thought she had one very important thing left to do. As far as I can tell, it was soon after this that she decided to come back. I think she hoped to find you, Joe. Maybe Robbie too.”
“Nothing more recent on her, though?” he asked. “Nothing in New York?”
“Just what the police found. She was in and out of a shelter in Coney Island the last few weeks. She might have also gotten services from another women’s shelter in Brooklyn. Most women in her circumstances move around. I couldn’t find anything, though.”
“So she was here,” Joe said, shaking his head. “Maybe I ran into her in Brooklyn someplace. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe she tried to talk to me? Maybe I was . . . mean to her?” He looked at Aideen, tears forming in his eyes. He was shocked at them. It had been decades since he’d cried about her. Decades.
“You wouldn’t have been that way,” she said, her mouth firm. “That’s not you.”
“When I was drinking? I mean, really drinking? I have no idea who I was.”
“I think I do,” she said. “I know a little about alcoholism. You don’t do things drunk that you wouldn’t do sober. You’re not a murderer. Whatever happens, I’ll never believe that.”
“DNA says otherwise.”
“I know, but . . . let me ask you something. This talk you were supposed to have with your uncle—I know it didn’t happen, but did you ever go through his papers after he died? Did you save anything?”
“Almost nothing,” Joe said, picturing the square box of childhood memories that he assumed was now in an evidence locker somewhere with Zochi’s name on it. “I was a kid, just floating in the middle of it all. I signed a few things just before he died. Everything about the cremation and the service was already taken care of. Mike knew he was dying long before I did. He set up a trust for me. It carried me through law school.”
“Right. And Robbie was bitter about it. We know that. What happened to your uncle’s house?”