Catherine (7 page)

On the slow, creaky elevator ride to the fifth floor, I kept trying to pump Cooper
for information. There was so much I didn’t know, so much I needed to find out. “Does
Hence live above the club? Is he married? Does he have kids?”

Cooper gave me a wary look, as if I were asking for state secrets.

“What kind of name is Hence, anyway? Is it his first name or his last name?”

This, at least, got a response. “It’s his whole name.”

“So he’s only got one name? Like Madonna?”

The elevator creaked to a halt. “Yes,” Cooper said in a tired voice, like I’d worn
him out. “Exactly like Madonna.”

The door opened on a surprisingly cute studio apartment, with lace curtains at the
windows and white bookshelves taking
up most of the walls. A brass double bed sat below the biggest window, and a small
kitchen held a daffodil-yellow table with two chairs. Above a blue love seat hung
a painting of a young blond girl in a windswept dress clutching a bouquet of daisies.
The room could have used a good dusting, but it was homey compared to the industrial
gray and exposed brick of everything else I’d seen so far, and I had the unsettling
feeling this little apartment had been waiting just for me.

“Whose room is this?” I asked Cooper.

Again, no answer. Instead, he plunked my backpack unceremoniously on the floor.

I opened the refrigerator—empty—and the cupboards—full of sky-blue dishes and bowls—and
turned on the small TV in the corner. Still no cable. I snapped it off. Then I ran
over to the bed to peek out the window for another glimpse of the traffic whooshing
past and the trendy cafés and high-fashion boutiques beyond the building’s black iron
fire escape.

“Bathroom’s over there.” Cooper held up the keys he’d used to let us in. “This one
unlocks the apartment door, and this one’s for the front entrance. Don’t lose them.”
He tossed me the ring.

Before he could slip away, I planted myself in his path. “Why does Hence hate me?”

Cooper looked pointedly toward the door. “I guess you have everything you need, then.”
He started to go, but I placed myself in the way again.

“My mother disappeared,” I told him, thinking maybe I could win him over by making
him pity me a little. “I’m trying to find her. If I have a lot of questions, that’s
why.”

An ironic smile flickered across Cooper’s lips. “
If
you have a lot of questions?”

“I don’t have much time. I’ve got to figure out where she is before my dad guesses
where
I
am. Maybe Hence won’t help me….”

“He’s letting you stay here.”

“Maybe he won’t answer my questions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Cooper stood there a moment, hands deep in his pockets, light brown bangs in his eyes.
He seemed to be considering the point. Without warning, he slipped between me and
the door. “He’s my friend,” he said before he disappeared.

Feeling abandoned, I sat down on the edge of the brass bed, then jumped up again.
My encounter with Hence had left me more shaken than I’d realized. Pacing the floor,
I replayed our conversation, remembering his smugness about how well he’d known my
mother and his certainty that she must be dead. How could he be so sure, unless—the
thought chilled me—he’d had something to do with her death? He was so dour, so intense,
the kind of person I could imagine committing a crime of passion.

And here I was in the guy’s home. To say I hadn’t planned things out very well would
be a massive understatement.
You don’t think things through, Chelsea.
Hadn’t my dad said those words a hundred times?

But there had been an investigation, I reminded myself. Wouldn’t the cops have looked
into the return address on my mom’s letters? Apparently Hence had been cleared. Besides,
would my mother’s murderer really invite me to stay under his roof? It didn’t seem
likely, and anyway, I couldn’t afford to be
afraid of Hence. If I left now, how would I ever find out what had happened to my
mother?

I dropped to the bed and switched on my phone, a pay-as-you-go number Dad had bought
to replace the one I’d accidentally left in the pocket of my jeans and washed. There
were three voice messages, all from Dad. By now he knew I was gone. I didn’t need
to listen to his messages to know what they said. Guilt washed over me, followed swiftly
by resentment. If Dad had been honest with me in the first place, I wouldn’t have
to be here, risking my life to find out what had really happened to my mom. Seriously,
shouldn’t this have been
his
job?

Well, it was mine now. I turned my phone off again and fished out my laptop, planning
to dig up some dirt on Hence. The Underground had a WiFi connection, but it was password
protected. I wasn’t about to run downstairs and ask Cooper one more question he would
refuse to answer. Instead, I jumped up and pressed my forehead to the window, trying
to see down to the street below, feeling utterly trapped. Whose room was this, anyway,
with its lacy curtains and its bookshelves? Did Hence have a teenage daughter? So
many of the books were the same as the ones on my own bedroom shelves. There was a
long row of familiar yellow spines—Nancy Drew mysteries. I moved in for a better look
and found others I’d read and loved:
National Velvet. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. Are You There God? It’s Me,
Margaret
. On an impulse, I reached for
Half Magic
, another personal favorite, and opened it to the first page. There, in the upper
right-hand corner, I found my answer in familiar handwriting:
Catherine Marie Eversole
. My heart began to race.

This had been her room.

My mom had loved to read; I knew that much. She and Dad met in a used bookstore near
Harvard Square. He’d ducked into the dusty little store to get out of the rain, but
when he saw the pretty girl behind the register he made up random questions so he
could get to know her better. Dad had told me the story once after he’d had a couple
of glasses of wine with dinner: “I fell in love the minute I laid eyes on her. I couldn’t
help myself.”

“Why? What was it about her?” This was a few years back; I was maybe fourteen or so.
Though he constantly compared me unfavorably with Mom, telling me at every turn how
studious, talented, and focused she was, Dad hardly ever told me stories about her,
and I wanted to make the moment last.

But his eyes got wet with tears. I hadn’t seen my father cry before or since, and
it scared me. I didn’t press the point.

Catherine Marie Eversole
. I brought the book to my chest and inhaled its old-book smell. Had she read it in
the bed I was sitting on, fallen asleep with it open beside her? Below her name she’d
written a date in purple ink. I did the math: My mom had read this very book when
she was ten years old. Holding it in my hands, I felt close to her, as though it could
somehow lead me to her.

I could imagine it so vividly—a door opening and my mother on the other side. She’d
be older, but still beautiful, and she would take one look at me and know who I was.
She’d throw her arms around me and cry with joy. I could stay with her at Christmas
and during the summer, and she would understand me the way Dad never had. Maybe her
sheer wonderfulness would rub off on me and I’d become a star student, a budding writer,
irresistible to every passing guy.

I flipped through the pages, looking for more evidence of her, maybe a dog-eared corner
or some finger-smeared type. But that was it. I made my way around the room, tugging
out a random volume here and there.
Anne of Green Gables. Betsy-Tacy and Tib. All My Pretty Ones. Sonnets from the Portuguese
. Inside each front cover I found her name and a date. The dates got later as I worked
my way along the shelves, so I skipped forward in time and pulled out a thick volume
with a familiar title—
Wuthering Heights
. I pawed through the pages restlessly and then… bingo! On page 139, in blue ink:
This is the truest book I’ve ever read.
Goose bumps rose on my arms. I did the same thing—writing little notes to myself
in the margins of books I owned, registering delight or frustration when a character
did something particularly unbelievable. Talking to myself. Talking to the book.

I leafed through
Wuthering Heights
, more carefully now, and on the last page I found another doodle, a little heart
pierced through with an arrow, and below it, in frilly script:
Weird, weird, weird. I think I’m in love with Hence. I think maybe I have been all
along?

I stared at the words, doubting my own eyes. That was my mother’s handwriting. But
how could she have loved—or even liked—the grouchy man I’d met downstairs? Could there
be another person in this whole city with the bizarre name of Hence? Remembering his
tone when he’d admitted to knowing my mother—a tone that implied much more than their
having just been friends—I flinched and shut the book. But a moment later I was picking
through the next novel on the shelf, and the next.

Strange ideas pinged around in my mind like pinballs. I didn’t
want to think about my mother with Hence, but I couldn’t help it. Had she really been
in love with him? And had he loved her back? I thought of what he’d said—
If she were still alive, I’d know. I, of all people, would know
—and it seemed possible, even likely. Had she run away from me and my dad to go back
to him? The woman my father had always described as practically perfect, the one I
could never hope to live up to—surely she couldn’t have left her husband and daughter
for another man.

I spent the evening paging through book after book, pausing only to run to a nearby
grocery store for Cap’n Crunch and milk. I scanned the pages until my eyes itched.
Mostly what I found were elaborate doodles—of electric guitars, swans, kittens, beautiful
faces with high cheekbones and big dark eyes—funky and graceful enough to be framed
and hung up on a wall. Yet another thing she was great at.

When darkness fell, the building grew oddly silent. Shouldn’t there be a concert or
something? It gave me the creeps to think that Hence was lurking downstairs, but as
much as I disliked the idea, sooner or later I’d have to confront him again. He had
information I needed. I had to talk him into letting me stay in this apartment until
I unlocked all its secrets, or until my dad tracked me down and dragged me home, defeated,
to Massachusetts. But no—I had to find my mother. Leaving wasn’t an option. I had
to figure out a way to make Hence let me stay for as long as it took.

It took something horrible to crack open Hence’s shell and give me a glimpse into
his personality, and I was surprised by what I saw.

The Splendid Weather was playing that night. Dad had been raving about them for weeks,
and he’d given me their new album. He even suggested I sneak down to the club and
check them out live. It wouldn’t be the first time. Though I was underage, and technically
my being there was against the law, Dad had this whole stance about drinking laws
being shortsighted and oppressive. “Just stay out of the way and don’t talk to anyone,”
he’d say.

Dad believed in me; he was wonderful that way. I didn’t have a curfew, like the other
girls at school. I’d always been allowed to come and go as I pleased. Dad said his
own parents were like jailers, and he swore he’d never be like them; he expected us
to have
minds of our own. “My daughter has street smarts,” he’d say proudly. “I know she’ll
make good decisions.”

Dad’s faith in me made me want to prove him right. And I did have enough sense to
look out for myself. I was used to customers hitting on me, and I’d always known how
to tell them no firmly and politely, just as Dad had taught me. The guy who approached
me that night, with his gelled hair, superstrong aftershave, and beer breath, didn’t
seem all that different from the others I’d dealt with. First he asked me to dance,
and I said no. Usually that would be the end of it, but when another song started,
he asked again. I could tell he was drunk—they were usually drunk—so I found the dark
corner I always retreated to when I wanted to hear the music but wasn’t in the mood
to deal with customers. But Mr. Won’t Take No for an Answer followed me. I looked
up, and there he was again, right in my face.

“A pretty girl like you”—he slung an arm around me—“I can’t let you get away without
a dance.”

“Go away.” I shrugged his arm off, no longer interested in being polite. “I said no.”

“But you’re my type, baby. You’re the girl I was looking for tonight,” he wheedled
in that thick-tongued, self-pitying, drunken way that made me sick to my stomach.
“Let me buy you a drink.”

For a second I thought about telling him my dad owned the bar and I could have all
the drinks I wanted, if I drank, which I didn’t. But that seemed like too much trouble.
I wanted to hear the band, and he was distracting me. “No, thank you,” I said. “Would
you mind leaving me alone?”