Out of the Cold (18 page)

“Hi Ben!” someone called. It was a girl, our age. She was dressed in casual but expensive-looking clothes. The moment she spotted Ben, she hurried over to greet him, calling back over her shoulder, “Mom, Ben's here.”

“Jess, hi,” Ben said. Jess threw her arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks. Ben didn't look the least bit embarrassed. When Jess finally released him, he introduced me. Jess tossed me a “Hi” but didn't take her eyes off Ben for a second. “Jess is the head of student council at St. Mildred's,” Ben said. “She's in charge of the toy drive.”

A woman came over to us. She was as sleek as Jess but more elegantly dressed.

“Ben, right on time,” she said warmly. “We're just finishing up.” Once again Ben introduced me. The older woman greeted me politely but coolly and then turned to her daughter. “Let's start taking the boxes out to Ben's van.”

“Come on, Ben,” Jess said. She looped one of her arms through one of his and smiled up at him.

“I'll be right back,” Ben said to me. “This won't take long.”

I offered to help and followed Ben and Jess over to a table that was piled high with boxes. Another woman greeted Ben warmly.

“I heard you were here yesterday, Ben. I was sorry I missed you,” this woman said. She began rooting around in an enormous handbag. Finally, she produced a small bundle of what looked like brochures. “We're raising money for a new computer lab,” she said. “We've recruited one of our alums to be honorary chair of our fundraising committee. I was thinking that your father might be interested in this project. After all, your mother was a St. Mildred's graduate, wasn't she?” Ben nodded, but he no longer looked cheerful. “Would you would mind giving this to your father?” she said. “It's about the fundraising appeal. Tell him I'd be happy to discuss it with him after the holidays.”

Ben accepted a brochure but stuffed it into his pocket without glancing at it. He seemed relieved when Jess's mother clapped her hands to get everyone's attention.

“All right, everyone,” she announced. “Let's load up and get out of here.”

The women pulled on coats and boots, and we each grabbed a box of toys. Pete joined us. The students and alumni at St. Mildred's and Ashdale had collected so many toys that it took three trips to load everything into Ben's van. Jess stuck close to Ben the whole time, her brown eyes sparkling as she chatted with him about her plans for Christmas and New Year's. He responded affably. When we had loaded the last of the boxes into the van and Jess's mother had climbed into her luxury SUV, Jess went up on tiptoes and kissed Ben again, on one cheek this time.

“See you at Stephanie's,” she said.

Ben's face turned red.

“It's not what you think,” he said, turning to me as the SUV pulled out of the parking lot.

“I wasn't thinking anything,” I said, which wasn't entirely true.

“Jess and I are just friends,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound like it didn't matter to me one way or the other. “Now come on. We're here for a reason, remember?”

We went back into the library, and Ben led me to a shelf that was filled with identically bound books—the collection of St. Mildred's yearbooks.

“You really know your way around this place,” I said. I wondered just how much time he had spent in St. Mildred's library—and with whom.

“I come here every now and again,” he said.

“To hang out with Jess and Stephanie?”

“To look at yearbooks. That's why I should have thought of this.”

“Uh, do you mind if I ask why you'd come here to look at yearbooks?” I said.

He studied me for a moment, as if he were trying to decide if he even wanted to answer.

“My mother walked out on us when I was eight years old,” he said at last. “She just packed a suitcase and left. She was sick.”

“Sick?”

“Like Pete.”

I couldn't imagine how it must have felt to lose someone—his mother—like that.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Ben just shrugged. “After she left, my dad threw out all of her stuff. Everything she had left behind. Her clothes, her books, pictures, her old school stuff. It was like he blamed her for being sick, you know? Then one day, a couple of years ago, I happened to be here.”

“For one of those famous Ashdale–St. Mildred's social events?” I said.

“Not exactly.” He hesitated. “I—I used to hang out with Jess. But it was nothing serious, and it was a long time ago. Now we're just friends.” He looked anxiously at me. “Anyway, we were in here and I saw all those yearbooks and I was curious. So I took a look to see if there were any pictures of my mom.”

“Do you know where she is now?” I asked.

Ben's eyes clouded over. “She died.”

“I'm sorry.”

“She died when I was ten.”

“Are there any pictures?” I said.

He nodded.

“Can I see?”

He hesitated for a moment. Then he pulled a yearbook from the stacks, thumbed through the pages, and held it out to me.

“That one,” he said, pointing at a photograph of a young woman in a formal dress. She was wearing a tiara on her head and standing arm-in-arm with a young man wearing a crown. “She was Queen of the Prom,” Ben said. His voice was soft and warm.

“She's beautiful,” I said. “Actually, you look a lot like her.” He shrugged modestly. “Who's the guy she's with?”

“My dad.” His voice had turned cold. He closed the book and slipped it back onto the shelf. “Mr. Duffy was between about sixty and sixty-five. He might even have been a little younger—life on the street ages a person fast. So ...” He ran his hand backward along the shelf of yearbooks. “What do you say we start here, just to be on the safe side?” He carried a pile of yearbooks to the nearest library table. He pulled out a chair for me and then sat down beside me as I leafed through the books. Every time I set one aside, he seemed to slouch a little lower in his chair.

It didn't take long to get through each book. Most of the pictures were of girls, so I skipped those. I slowed down only when I got to the pages of photos that documented the school's co-ed activities—debate competitions, volunteer activities, fundraising events, and school dances. A lot of the pictures on those pages included boys—impossibly cleancut, with slicked-back hair and the kind of suits that you see in old movies. I scanned each boy's face but didn't recognize any of them.

I reached for another book.

“Still nothing?” Ben said. “Are you sure you remember the picture?”

“Pretty sure,” I said, paging through yet another volume.

“Talk about a long shot,” Ben said. “I mean, it's not like every girl at St. Mildred's went out with a guy from St. Mark's. There wouldn't be a photo of every couple anyway. For all we know, Duffy found that ring somewhere ...”

I heard him talking, but I wasn't really paying attention. I was too busy staring at a particular photograph—one of half a dozen on the page. It was similar to the one Ben had just showed me of his mother and father, except that the clothes worn by the young man and young woman looked even more oldfashioned. I tapped the young man's face.

“That's him,” I said.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

“A

re you sure?” Ben said.

“Positive.” I hadn't had the picture of Duffy for long, but I had studied it and studied it, trying to see his face in it. The face in that old photograph had branded itself into my brain, and I was certain I was looking at it again. The young man in this yearbook was the same young man in the small photo Aisha had given me. In the yearbook picture he was standing beside an exceptionally pretty young woman. She had eyes that held the camera, that demanded you focus on her. There was no caption under the photograph. In fact, there were no captions under any of the photos on the page.

“So close, and yet so far,” Ben said.

“If she was at the prom, then she was a student here,” I said. “We can find out her name, even if we can't find his.”

I flipped back through the yearbook until I came to individual pictures of that year's St. Mildred's students.

“There she is,” I said, pointing triumphantly. “Frances Pfeiffer.”

“That's great!” Ben said with far less enthusiasm. “But what good does it do? This yearbook is—” He flipped back to the cover. “It's forty-five years old, Robyn.”

“Which means that... Frances Pfeiffer is sixtythree or sixtyfour. She's probably still alive.” I stared at the youthful photo and tried to imagine what she might look like in the present.

“If she is, I'll bet you anything that she got married at some point and changed her name. That's what women did then. How are we going to find her?”

I thought about it while Ben made photocopies of both pictures—the one of Frances Pfeiffer alone and the one of her with the mystery boy. But it wasn't until we had replaced all the yearbooks and headed out of the library that I came up with a plan.

“That woman who gave you the brochure,” I said. “What's her name?”

“Mrs. Macklin,” Ben said. “Why?”

“She might be able to help us,” I said.

Ben looked doubtful. “Frances Pfeiffer must have graduated at least ten years before Mrs. Macklin,” he said. “They've probably never met.”

“But when she was talking about raising money for the new computer lab, it sounded like she knew how to get in touch with alums,” I said. “If she doesn't have an address or phone number for Frances Pfeiffer, she might know how to get one.”

Ben hunted down a phone book and called Macklin. He ended up leaving a message on her voice mail.

“If she calls me back, I'll let you know,” he told me. He did not sound hopeful.

  .    .    .

My cell phone rang later that night.

“You were right,” Ben said. He sounded slightly breathless. “You're so smart, Robyn.”

“You mean Mrs. Macklin thinks she can find out where Frances Pfeiffer is?”

“Better. Frances Pfeiffer lives right here in town—she moved back from out west a couple of months ago. Her name is Frances Braithwaite now. Mrs. Macklin gave me her address and phone number. We can contact her tomorrow.”

“Let's do it in person,” I said. We arranged a time and place to meet.

  .    .    .

The next morning Ben and I drove to an uptown neighborhood where all the houses were enormous. Ben rang the doorbell and was greeted by a voice that came through a speaker beside the door.

“Yes?” it said.

“We'd like to speak to Mrs. Braithwaite,” Ben said.

“Is she expecting you?”

“No,” Ben said. “But—”

The front door suddenly opened and a woman, dressed in a coat and boots, stepped out. Her car keys were dangling from one hand.

“I'm Mrs. Braithwaite,” she said. She looked to be in her mid-sixties, but her eyes were still as arresting as they had been when she was a student at St. Mildred's. A startling pale blue. “But I'm on my way out, so—”

“My name is Ben Logan,” Ben said. “We got your address from Mrs. Macklin at St. Mildred's.” Braithwaite nodded and smiled politely, but she looked distracted. “My mother went to St. Mildred's,” Ben continued. “This is my friend Robyn Hunter.”

“I'm sorry,” Braithwaite said, “but I really have to go.”

“This will only take a minute,” I said. I pulled one of the photocopied pictures from my bag, smoothed it out, and handed it to her. “Is this you?”

She fished in her handbag for a pair of reading glasses and put them on. Her pale blue eyes widened as she studied the photo.

“Where did you get this?” she said.

“From your high-school yearbook.”

“Yes, I can see that. What I mean is, why? What are you doing with this picture?”

“I was hoping you could tell me who the boy is.”

She looked at the picture again and her face softened. “His name was Maxwell Templeton.”

“
Was?
” Ben said.

“He died a long time ago.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Quite sure. He's been dead for twentytwo—no, twentythree—years. Why are you—” A cell phone rang. Mrs. Braithwaite pulled one from her coat pocket. “Yes, I know,” she said after a moment. “I'm on my way. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.” She ended her call. “I really must go,” she said. “My daughter is getting married next month and with that and Christmas... I'm sorry.” She handed the photocopy back to me. For a moment I thought she was going to say something else, but she bustled out to the car that was parked in the driveway and drove off.

I looked down at the picture in my hand. Slowly I crumpled it into a ball and jammed it into my coat pocket.

“You did everything you could,” Ben said. “More than most people would have. I guess some things just aren't meant to be.”