The apartment was cool, a window unit rattling in the living room. A little girl sat on the green carpet in front of it, two Barbies in her hands. She looked to be about eight or so, her dark blond hair neatly braided, her pink overalls and clear jelly shoes meticulously clean. The whole apartment was clean, I noticed. Small and shabby, but neat as a pin.
Claire poured me a glass of sweet tea, and we sat down at the kitchen table, studying each other.
“Linda, baby? Go play in your room,” Claire called, and the girl pouted.
“It’s too hot in there.”
“Then go in my room. You can watch TV.”
Magic words, apparently, because Linda happily trotted off toward the small hallway, opening the first of three doors.
After a moment, we heard the muted blare of music, and Claire shook her head. “She’s not supposed to watch MTV, but it’s a special occasion, I guess.”
She turned her head to me. “You have kids?”
“No,” I said, my mouth dry, the tea so sweet it made my teeth ache.
Claire tapped her fingernails on the side of her glass, right over the grinning face of some cartoon character. “I didn’t think I would. Have kids. I was thirty-four when she was born. One of those things, not quite on purpose, not quite an accident.”
She flashed me a smile, and I sucked in a breath, thinking about Andrew’s portrait of me hanging at Ashby House. The smile on Claire’s face was the same as mine. “Her dad ain’t worth shit, but he was good-looking at least. So she’s got that going for her.”
“She’s a very pretty child,” I said, the words prim in my own ears, and Claire smirked, leaning back in her chair.
“When did you figure it out?” she asked, and I didn’t bother pretending to misunderstand.
“I haven’t yet. I’ve always been curious, though. I’d read the stories, and I suppose I––”
“You suppose you started to wonder if my mama wasn’t a liar?” Claire finished, and I wondered how I was already so helplessly on the back foot.
“Something like that.”
She tilted her head, looking at me for a long time before saying, “If it makes you feel better, you were pretty expensive.”
The room had felt too cold earlier, but my skin flushed hot at that, and I took another sip of my tea, my throat so tight that I nearly choked.
“I don’t know how much, exactly. The number changed a lot over the years, but the story stayed the same. Little girl missing, rich family in North Carolina. They saw her picture in the paper, Mama and Daddy, and Mama said it tore her heart up because she looked so much like you. And later she said she wished she’d never said that because if she hadn’t, Daddy might not have ever thought about it.”
She rattled the ice in her glass. “But he did. She never knew how he got in touch with your family, but your daddy sent someone down in a fancy suit to look at you, and then he came himself.”
I pictured Daddy—my daddy, with his big mustache and his Acqua di Parma and his white suits that never got dirty—sitting across a table from Jimmy Darnell, and suddenly I could see that table.
No, I couldn’t just see it. I remembered that table. One leg just a little shorter so that it always wobbled when someone leaned against it.
“His wife was beside herself, he told Daddy. Or that’s what Mama said he told Daddy anyway. Mrs. McTavish blamed herself, I think. She was the one who told Ruby to go find the nanny, to leave her alone for a little while. Said she saw her walk up the hill and out of sight, but thought the nanny was just on the other side. Only the nanny had already started packing things up and carrying them back to the car, and she didn’t know Ruby was headed her way.”
I could picture that, too. The little girl, toddling along the forest path, her eyes searching for a familiar figure, but not seeing any. Her little brain whirring, her legs carrying her deeper into the forest, thinking her nanny—Grace—must be there.
I waited for that image to have the same whiff of memory, but it didn’t. It was just my imagination. And my imagination kept going, carrying the child deeper into the forest, until there were too many trees, until she was confused and scared, sweating and whimpering, looking around for Grace, not seeing the drop ahead …
“He was afraid it was going to eat her up,” Claire continued, and my mind, still fixed on Baby Ruby, conjured up a bear now instead of a steep cliff; a mountain lion, maybe. But then I realized she meant Mama, and her guilt.
No, not my mama. Not if what Claire was saying is true.