Consequence (9 page)

“Then why did you park in the alley behind a
big truck? I suppose we’re using the back entrance, too?”

He smiled. “I told you I’m not worried. I’m
not stupid, either.”

He reached over the seat and plucked his coat
from the back. He stepped out of the car and slid his hat into
place. Bridget opened her door, trying not to bang the side of the
truck, then squeezed out the narrow opening. She rounded the back
of the car, then reached for his outstretched hand and they walked
to the back of Dante’s.

Using the door meant for deliveries, the
couple walked into the restaurant and down the narrow hall parallel
to the kitchen. They heard people talking and laughing as they
cooked, and the “ping” of the bell when a new order was slapped on
the counter bridging the kitchen and the dining room.

As they rounded the corner, they bumped into
Angelina, the owner’s wife. She paused, her eyes widening at the
sight of Boone. He removed his hat and held it behind him. He kept
his free hand on Bridget’s elbow. “Hello Angelina. Do you have an
open table? Something in the back?”

She jerked her chin down and made an abrupt
turn. She plucked two menus from a plastic bin and placed them on a
small table next to the far wall. It was a discreet section,
partitioned from the rest of the dining room by the large bar.
During lunchtime, the only people who sat there were staff who
worked folding napkins, separating cutlery and filling saltshakers
and olive oil cruets.

Angelina waited impatiently, looking towards
the dining room while Boone and Bridget read the menu. “Would you
like something to drink?” she asked in a theatrical whisper.

Bridget snickered and lowered the menu. “I’ll
have an iced tea. I know what I want, also. Can I go ahead and
order?”

Angelina reached into her black apron pocket
and removed a small tablet and a pen. “Ready when you are,” she
said, her voice husky and low.

Bridget pointed to an item. “I’ll take a bowl
of red pepper bisque and an order of fresh tomato bruschetta.”

“Is that to share?” Angelina asked.

“Nope. It’s all for me. What are you having,
Boone?” Bridget asked airily, her voice rising on the final
syllable.

He moved the menu to the side and glared at
her. Angelina peeked over her shoulder in horror, then turned back.
“Nobody heard,” she assured them.

He dropped the menu on the table. “Angelina,
you don’t need to worry. It’s not against the law for us to be
here.”

“For me to be here, maybe,” Bridget taunted.
“You? Not so sure.”

He ignored her jibe. “I’ll have the lasagna,
an order of ‘shrooms and a cannoli.”

Angelina froze, then shook her head. “Not the
lasagna. You don’t want that.”

Boone sighed heavily. “Yes, I do. I really
do.”

She crossed herself then moved to the counter
and smacked the bell. “New order,” she called to the chef.

Bridget leaned back in her chair and studied
Boone. “Why do you always put her in the middle?”

“She didn’t have to marry Dante. Mama had
someone fine lined up, but no, she wouldn’t listen,” he said,
watching his older sister hissing through the window at her
husband.

Although school was out for the holiday, a
cheerful Phyllis Surratt complied with Bridget’s request to meet
her at the elementary school. Bridget pulled into the lot and
parked next to the lone vehicle there, a blue minivan in the
bus-only lane. She exited her car and mounted the concrete steps to
the front of the building. A mint green awning spanned the walkway,
leading up to the double glass doors at the front of the school. A
miniature Liberty Bell cast in iron and painted with a bronze
finish squatted to the left of the doors. She read the inscription,
the state motto: “Virtue, Liberty and Independence,” nearly
invisible after generations of schoolchildren had rubbed it
smooth.

She walked into the quiet building and turned
right towards the principal’s office. She could see Phyllis through
the large windows, standing at a row of file cabinets, her back to
the door. A slim, blonde woman, she appeared to be in her late
forties. Her short hair curled beneath the pink watch cap she wore
on her head. She had tossed her white, knee-length coat onto a
desk, along with a dark pink wool scarf.

She glanced over her shoulder as Bridget
entered. “Well hello. I’m getting close,” she said. “I’m in the
1970s and working my way back.”

Bridget slipped off her faux fur-trimmed coat
and placed it and her matching hat on a second desk. “I do
appreciate your help,” she said. “I apologize for asking you to cut
short your vacation.”

“Don’t mention it,” Phyllis said. “My in-laws
are in town for the holidays and you got me out of yet another
boring afternoon spent around the television. I swear, why do some
people travel hundreds of miles to visit and then just sit in front
of a boob tube?”

She muttered the last part as she withdrew a
manila folder from the drawer and squinted at the label. “Getting
closer,” she said, shoving the file back.

Bridget wasn’t sure what to do, other than
stand aside and let her search. The large room hadn’t changed much
since her days in grade school. She peeked down the hallway to the
principal’s office and glimpsed a large oak desk. As a seven year
old, she had sat in front of the monolith, squirming in a plastic
chair while she waited for her mother. She couldn’t recall the
incident that had her sent in shame to see the principal, a
gimlet-eyed man with slicked-back dark hair. She recalled her
father once said Mr. Bryan had a Napoleon complex and wondered why
he would compare him to her favorite ice cream. It was years later
before she learned chocolate, vanilla and strawberry were
“Neapolitan,” and longer still before reading “Napoleon complex”
applied to short men with feelings of inferiority.

She shuddered. The man would always be an
evil giant in her mind’s eye.

She heard the metal drawer shut and turned to
see Phyllis wave a file. “Here we go.” Bridget met her at the
counter and waited while she flipped though papers.

Phyllis read the folder’s contents. “I
suppose the best way to track her is to separate the boys from the
girls. You say she lived in Chance?”

“Yes, in an old cabin on Weeping Woman
Mountain.”

“Hmmm. I suppose that would be a rural route
address then,” Phyllis said. She ran her finger down a list of
names typed on onionskin paper. The edges had begun to curl but the
words were crisp and dark, pounded into the fragile paper by a
heavy, manual typewriter. “Cherry, right?”

“Mmm hmmm.” Bridget leaned closer, focusing
on the names.

“Here we go. Cherry Jefferson. Let’s look for
her file now,” Phyllis said, turning back to the bank of cabinets.
She opened the “J” drawer and flipped through the tabs until she
reached the file she wanted. She pulled it out and a small
black-and-white photo fell to the floor. Bridget bent to pick it
up, holding the photograph by its edges and studied the thin face
of Cherry Jefferson. The small girl’s expression was pensive, head
bowed, eyes dark and frightened. Her black hair was caught into
short pigtails, their ends twisted and clamped with barrettes.

She handed the photo to Phyllis and they
walked back to the counter to spread the file’s contents. There
were notes from teachers, notes from nurses, immunization records,
a report card and a half-filled war stamp album.

“Are all files this complete?” Bridget
asked.

“No, this is unusual. It looks like the
student never returned to school. Many of these items normally go
home with them at the end of the year.” Phyllis thumbed through the
report card. “This stops after the second term, so she must have
left school sometime between March and June 1961. Her teacher was
Mrs. Talbot.”

“I wonder if there are attendance sheets,”
Bridget said. “It would help us narrow the date.”

Phyllis shook her head. “No. Teachers
generally kept attendance in their grade books back then. Mrs.
Talbot died in the early 1980s, and I doubt her family would have
kept those items.”

Bridget looked around the office until she
spotted the copy machine in the corner. “Would I be able to make
copies?”

“Sure; I hope you find something
helpful.”

Bridget separated the picture of Cherry
Jefferson from the other objects. While Phyllis turned on the copy
machine, Bridget used her mobile phone to photograph the snapshot.
She studied the little girl’s sad dark eyes again and murmured,
“Where are you?”

CHAPTER NINE

Hundreds of miles to the northeast of Eaton,
Cerise Larouche drove through the Massachusetts gloom. An arctic
blast buffeted the small car as she circled the lot, looking for a
space close to the nursing home entrance.

She parked in the third row, and then walked
briskly through the entrance, her head bowed against the frigid
wind. She smiled in greeting at the man behind the counter. A
telephone tucked under his double chin, the clerk winked and with a
wave of a chubby hand, motioned for Cerise to carry on.

She continued down the hallway to the large
arched entrance of the cafeteria and scanned the crowd. Her eyes
danced from one group to the next, taking in the assorted
wheelchairs tucked under tables and walkers at the ready. Many of
the residents of the assisted living facility were busy playing
bingo, while others played board games or cards. There wasn’t much
else to do on a Massachusetts winter afternoon.

After several seconds, she gave up the search
and moved toward the aide’s desk where Mildred, the recreation
director for the elder home, shook her head.

Cerise turned on her heel and headed back
along the corridor, turning twice in the large complex before
stopping in front of the half-closed door. She knocked softly, then
entered. There, tucked in a rocking chair in the corner of the
room, sat a tiny woman. Needles click-clacked as her slight,
arthritic fingers bent around them, knitting yarn into a navy blue
scarf. A small television sat on a bureau across the room, the
popular daytime talk show muted.

“Mama! Why aren’t you in the rec room with
everyone else?” Cerise asked, gliding into the room.

Ethel Fontenelle peered over her spectacles,
through eyes blue with old age. She dropped her knitting into her
lap and reached out to her daughter. “Baby! It’s so good to see you
today,” she said. “Sit and visit for awhile.”

Cerise slipped off her black cashmere coat
and hung it on a padded hanger kept on a hook on the back of the
door. She unwound her scarf and draped it over the hook, also.

She walked around to the side of the bed and
sat on the floral comforter, kicking her shoes off and crossing her
ankles. She settled in for a long visit.

“What are you making?” she asked, reaching
out to touch the soft angora in Ethel’s lap.

“It’s a scarf for Diara. I’ve already made a
beret and mittens. I wanted to have them finished for Christmas,
but with these hands ...” Ethel trailed off apologetically, holding
her gnarled fingers in front of her. “I expect they’ll be finished
in time for her birthday.”

Ethel reached into a wicker basket next to
her rocking chair and held out the hat and gloves for Cerise to
examine.

“These are beautiful, Mama! She’ll love
them.”

“Well, she can never have too many clothes, I
suppose. I know how fashion conscious she is, so I thought I’d
impress her with my own label,” Ethel said, chuckling. She pointed
out the small tag embroidered in the corner of the scarf.

“Yes, she is a bit of snob when it comes to
clothes and shoes,” Cerise agreed. “But, what else is she going to
do with all the money she makes? If I had known then, what MBAs
earn, I wouldn’t have become a social worker.”

Ethel grunted and dropped the scarf into the
basket. Her daughter had never been a social worker in the true
sense: she attended Harvard and then Berkley on academic
scholarships and earned a doctorate degree in sociology. A
professor and scholar, she instructed those who became social
workers and published journal articles and books on the topic.

Diara also attended Harvard, although her
grades were not exemplary. After graduation, Diara moved to New
York City, where she worked for a Fortune 500 company. Within six
years, she became its chief financial officer. Diara Larouche was
ambitious, known for her intellect, her exotic beauty and sense of
fashion. She’d grown up in a middle-class home with loving parents,
and a beloved grandmother. She scarcely remembered her grandfather,
Paul-Henri Fontenelle, who died of a stroke before her ninth
birthday. An only child, she had been spoiled by her numerous
step-aunts and step-uncles, and stood out like a bright star among
her many cousins. Although they weren’t related by blood, the
extended family accepted and loved her and her family.

Her father, Guillaume Larouche, was a
successful novelist, writing mysteries and thrillers.

The Diara valued capitalism and the finer
things in life sometimes confused her parents, but it was a
constant source of amusement for her grandmother who joked that
Diara helped maintain the social order by contributing great
portions of her earned wealth into the economy.

Cerise agreed. “You’re right. I’m thankful
she has never known any of the hardships you endured.”

“What we both endured, Cerise. But that’s in
the past. A secret that died with your dear father. God bless
Paul-Henri.”

* * *

Bridget spread the paperwork on her desktop
and studied the photograph of Cherry Jefferson. The photocopy
wasn’t sharp after she increased the magnification ten times. The
girl’s face filled the eight-by-ten sheet of paper. Sad, half-moon
eyes dominated the small oval face. Wisps of black hair escaped
from the twisted braids, creating an impish effect. A starched,
Peter Pan-style collar lay flat on the front of the girl’s dress
and a row of three dark buttons intersected with dark piping. Small
sleeves puckered above thin arms.