Imposter (30 page)

The room smelled faintly of lavender. A woman sat in a deep arm chair in front of the window. Full sun shone on her face, yet her eyes were wide open to the light. A white cane stood against the wall. Clare realized Gladys Linney was blind.

“Yes, I’m Gladys. Do I know you?”

Clare entered the room and went to Gladys. “No, you don’t. I’m related to Beth.”

Gladys turned away from the window then, and leaned forward, her thin hand clutched the arm of the chair. “Beth? Do you know my Beth?”

This is the point where Clare hoped the conversation wouldn’t turn ugly. “I’m Clare Marshall, Mrs. Linney. I’m Beth’s sister.”

“Her sister.” Gladys’s lips quivered. “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting you.”

Clare didn’t know what to make of that. “I don’t understand.”

“I always feared one day someone would come about my Beth and take her away. Realize the great treasure they’d given up and want her back.”

Clare closed her eyes briefly at Gladys’s comment, at the love in her voice. She felt relieved of a burden of worry she’d carried for her sister. For years she’d feared that her sister had been raised by a mother like their own.

There were so many questions she wished to ask Gladys about Beth, but first things first.

“Mrs. Linney, I’ve been looking for Beth for a long time. I recently learned that she lived in Farley, but that she’s no longer in town. Do you know where she went?”

Gladys’s eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

Clare felt the weight of disappointment. She took a breath and cast it off. Mrs. Linney may know something more and not realize it. “Does Beth have friends or relatives she might contact?”

“No relatives. Both my late husband, Hank, and me are only children. Hank and me are from Tennessee. We found out that we could apply to get a baby from another state and that’s what we did. When we adopted Beth, we moved here and cut all ties with the people we knew from home. We didn’t want nobody knowing that Beth wasn’t our natural child. People can be awful cruel. Didn’t want anyone to give her a hard time about it. We didn’t want her to know either, and think on it, and question if she belonged with Hank and me.”

That answered why people in Farley didn’t know about Beth’s adoption. And Beth hadn’t known herself. A knot of tension in Clare’s stomach eased. Beth had not chosen to cut herself off from Clare.

Clare addressed Gladys again. “Did Beth mention to you that she was leaving Farley?”

Gladys reached out, and removed a tissue from a box on the window sill. “All the time. Beth was a restless child, a restless woman. Hank and me blamed ourselves for her restlessness. We never took Beth out of Farley since the day we moved here with her. We were afraid as she got older that someone might recognize our little girl as their own and want her back. We heard of cases on television where adoptions were overturned and babies were given back to their natural parents.”

“Was there any place in particular that Beth mentioned she’d like to go?”

Gladys smiled. “Everywhere. Beth wanted to see the world, and wanted the world to see her. She’s so full o’ life, nothin’ going to keep that girl down, Hank used to say.”

Clare was barely listening, focused on one thought: Beth could be anywhere by now.

Gladys stopped smiling. “Don’t know what Hank would have said of our little girl if he’d seen her the last couple years.”

That got Clare’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“My Beth is a good girl.” Gladys’s skin pulled taut over her features. Her expression became fierce. She tilted her head back, jutting out her chin. “I know what the talk is in town, that Beth up and run off with a man, but no matter how much she wanted to see some of this world, she isn’t the kind to just up and run away, and surely not to take up with someone to do that. Since that’s what she did, she had good reason.”

Clare didn’t put much stock in Gladys’s statement. A loving mother, she would be looking for a reason to justify Beth’s leaving. Clare was going to let the comment alone and ask about Beth’s friends as other possible sources of information when Gladys spoke up.

“People don’t pay much attention to blind people. They think because we can’t see, all our other senses don’t work either. Since I lost my sight a few years back I pay a lot more attention to sounds than I used to. I can hear the sound of strain in a person’s voice. I can hear a lie. Beth was doing a lot of lying.”

If Beth was having an affair with the trucker, that could account for the strain Gladys heard in her daughter’s voice and for the lies, Clare thought.

“Her and Dean,” Gladys said. “Things weren’t right between them.”

Clare couldn’t disagree with that. A woman happy in her marriage didn’t leave her husband.

“At first, Beth looked to have settled into married life, then she got quiet and jittery,” Gladys went on. “I know Dean was wanting them to have a baby real bad, and was putting a lot of pressure on her to start a family. He did the same about wanting to get married. Hank and me wasn’t sure Dean was right for our Beth. She’s a free spirit and he’s got a need to have order in his life. But, he swept our girl off her feet, pursuing her something fierce. That kind of attention can turn a girl’s head and it did that with Beth whose got a romantic nature.”

“When was the last time you saw Beth?”

“The day she left.”

“What day was that?”

“Friday, last. She’s been gone one week today.” Gladys stopped speaking, unable to continue, then swallowed a few times and began again. “She came by real early in the morning, like always. I wasn’t expecting her, ’cause she’d been by the day before and she usually visited every other day. I asked her what I’d done to get two visits in two days.” Gladys’s voice trailed off. “I thought she come to tell me something. I asked about her and Dean but she wouldn’t say anything. I can’t say that surprised me. She was afraid of him.”

Clare frowned. “Afraid of him? Why do you say that?”

“Her breathing got real fast when she talked about him and I’d be holding her hand, and her hand would go all cold.”

Not exactly proof.

“I want to see my girl again, Clare, with all my heart. But if she’s gone on account of Dean, I’m thinking maybe it’s for the best that she stays gone.”

Clare didn’t know what to say to that. She certainly couldn’t tell Gladys that she was going to end her search.

“Does Beth have any friends in town?” Clare asked. “Someone she might have confided in?”

Gladys dabbed the tissue to her cheeks. “She was a popular girl in school. Had lots of friends. Patty Burby was her best friend.” Gladys smiled. “Couldn’t separate those two with a team of wild horses.”

Patty Burby. Clare committed the name to memory.

Clare wanted to ask Gladys about Beth’s childhood, about her likes and dislikes. She wanted to hear stories of Beth that only a mother would know. Gladys was the one person in the world, other than Beth herself, with whom Clare could speak of her sister without inhibition. She wanted to know everything about her sister, but it would have to wait. She had other places to go.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Linney,” Clare said.

“Clare . . . if you find my Beth, will you come back and tell me she’s all right?”

Clare nodded. “I will.”

She let herself out of Gladys’s room and made her way down the hall. A small woman pushed a mop across the floor. The sharp tang of disinfectant wafted on the air. Clare was glad to note that the pastor had been wrong about Gladys’s feelings toward Beth. Her love for Beth was apparent.

Clare wondered what time the grocery store closed for the day. She wanted to go there and find out what she could about the trucker Beth left town with. She also planned to speak with Patty Burby.

Clare pushed through the glass door into bright sunlight. She shielded her eyes with the back of one hand and with the other, reached into her purse dangling from her shoulder, digging for sunglasses. A man was walking across the parking lot toward her. A trick of the light, he looked like . . .

“Jake.”

She hadn’t realized she’d spoken his name aloud until she heard it.

He was close enough to have heard as well, though he didn’t speak. His eyes, narrowed against the sun, fixed on her with an intensity she remembered all too well.

Too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him. It wasn’t too late to walk away, though. She wanted to walk away, really wanted to, and because she did forced herself to stay put and meet his gaze.

Jake now stood in front of her, blocking the sunlight. Clare lowered her hand. His chin was at her eye level. He hadn’t shaved. Black beard shadowed his jaw, made his tanned skin look darker.

The last time she’d seen him, from the other side of her bed, he’d looked a little pale. Tired from working too hard. Tired from going another ten rounds with her.

That was three years ago. He didn’t look to be suffering from sleepless nights anymore. He looked rested and fit. The blue T-shirt he wore over jeans showed his hard, tough body. Was he still with the Bureau? If so, by his casual attire, he wasn’t working today.

“I could say the obvious ‘small world,’” Jake said.

It had been big enough for her until a moment ago. But in response, she said only, “Must be.”

In the awkward silence, a group of women in hospital uniforms dashed by, causing a slight breeze that smelled strongly of spicy perfume.

Jake cleared his throat. “Don’t tell me the Bureau’s sent you to make sure I’m not lazing my days away fishing?”

He said it with a smile, an obvious attempt at lightness. Clare didn’t return the smile.

“You’re assigned to the Columbia office?”she said.

“Resident office in Farley, actually.”

That surprised her. After they’d stopped seeing each other, Jake had put in for a transfer out of the New York office. They’d been members of the same squad for a time and had been paired off. Working together after things ended had strained them both. Jake was very good at what he did and had earned the commendations to prove it. He could have aimed a lot higher than Farley. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t.

She didn’t know where he’d gone—didn’t want to know—but she would never have imagined him choosing Farley. He was a city boy. She wouldn’t have figured he would come here voluntarily. He must have been desperate to create distance between them for him to accept this post.

“Just me, one other agent, and an admin assistant,” Jake went on. “How about you? What brings you to our fair town?”

When she’d known him, she’d never mentioned Katie. On the nights he’d stayed at her apartment, she’d stored her cork board and files on her sister in a closet. She had no reason not to tell him about Katie at this time. Her being in Farley and the reason for it was likely climbing the town grapevine at lightning speed. But there was no reason to bring Katie up to him now, when she hadn’t before.

“Vacation,” she said simply.

He heard the lie. The humor in Jake’s gaze vanished and in an instant his gaze grew razor sharp.

“I recall you had a preference for sand and surf,” he said.

No doubt he was referring to the one brief getaway they’d taken together—a spur-of-the-moment jaunt following a particularly grueling assignment. They’d both been wound tight. He’d asked her where she’d like to go.