Puppet (41 page)

“No,” Amanda says quickly. “I don’t want you to leave. Please—don’t go.”

The light from the fire dances across Ben’s face, illuminating his confusion. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I think you do.”

A long pause, then, “You were right,” he admits. “About my setting you up.”

“I know.”

“I honestly didn’t plan it in advance. It just kind of played itself out.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” They take small, tentative steps toward one another.

“I don’t know what I mean,” she tells him. “I just know what I want. I want
you.
And it doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be for revenge, if that makes you feel better.”

“For revenge,” he repeats, leaning over to smooth some stray hairs away from her face.

“Or for old times’ sake.”

“For old times’ sake.”

“Or just something to get out of our systems once and for all,” she says as he bends his head to kiss the side of her mouth.

“Something to get out of our systems,” he says, kissing her full on the lips.

“Once and for all,” she repeats.

And then nobody says anything.

When Amanda wakes up at seven o’clock the next morning, Ben is gone.

“Damn,” she says, wrapping herself in the pink blanket he obviously placed over her before he left, and pushing herself off the floor. “Damn.” She pushes some hair away from her face, recalling the softness of Ben’s touch, the hardness of his body, the effortless way in which their bodies reconnected, as if they’d never been apart. Even now she feels him pounding away between her legs, and she has to grab the side of the sofa to remain upright.

What has she done?

Wasn’t she the one who told him it didn’t have to mean anything, that it could be for revenge, for old times’ sake, something to get out of their systems once and for all? Was she crazy? Dammit, did he always have to take her at her word? “Damn you, Ben,” she whispers, hearing a loud banging on the front door. “Ben?” She runs to the door and throws it open.

Mrs. MacGiver, wearing a green tweed coat and knee-length, red vinyl boots, stands on the other side of the threshold. “I came for my tea,” she says, not seeming to notice that Amanda is wearing nothing but a large pink blanket.

“Mrs. MacGiver …”

“Aren’t you going to invite me inside?”

Amanda steps back to let the old woman enter. Immediately she hears water coming from the upstairs bathroom, realizes the shower is running. “Ben,” she gasps, fighting the urge to throw off her blanket and run up the stairs to join him. He’s here. He didn’t leave. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. MacGiver,” she says, fighting to contain a
smile that is rapidly spreading across her face. “I forgot all about your tea.”

“You forgot it?”

“Yesterday didn’t go exactly as I planned.”

“You forgot my tea,” Mrs. MacGiver repeats incredulously.

The events of the previous day unfold in reverse order across Amanda’s mind, like a videotape being rewound. She sees her mother lying in her hospital bed, the miles of construction along the Gardiner Expressway, the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel, Hayley Mallins standing in front of the window of her hotel suite. No, not Hayley Mallins. Hayley Walsh.

“I saw someone yesterday you might remember,” Amanda tells Mrs. MacGiver, a way of making polite conversation as she tries ushering the old woman out the door. “Hayley Walsh. Mr. Walsh’s daughter. Do you remember him? He lived next door.”

“That miserable bastard,” Mrs. MacGiver says with surprising strength. “Of course I remember him. He was one mean son of a bitch, that one.”

“Yes, my mother wasn’t too fond of him either.”

“Rumor had it he used to beat his wife. And his sons. Until they got big enough to hit him back.”

No wonder his daughter ran away to England, Amanda thinks. Obviously she wanted to get as far away from the man as possible.

“You said you saw his wife?” Mrs. MacGiver asks. “I thought she was dead.”

“I saw his daughter,” Amanda corrects.

“No.” Mrs. MacGiver shakes her head. “Mr. Walsh didn’t have a daughter.”

Upstairs, the shower shudders to a halt.

“Yes, he did. She used to babysit me when I was little. She called me her puppet.” Amanda’s hands bounce up and down as if manipulating the strings of a marionette. “You remember—’Puppet, puppet, who’s my little puppet?’ ”

Mrs. MacGiver stares at Amanda as if she has taken complete leave of her senses. “That wasn’t Mr. Walsh’s daughter.”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. MacGiver laughs, shakes her finger into Amanda’s face, as if Amanda has been trying to put something over on her. “That was Lucy.”

“Lucy? Who the hell is Lucy?”

Ben suddenly materializes at the top of the stairs, a towel wrapped around his wet torso. “What’s going on?”

“Who are you?” Mrs. MacGiver asks, a sudden twinkle in her eye. “Is that you, Marshall MacGiver?”

“Who is Lucy?” Amanda repeats.

“You know.”

“I don’t know.”

Old Mrs. MacGiver waves at Ben, her fingers fluttering with girlish grace.

“Who. Is. Lucy?” Amanda repeats a third time, each word its own sentence, as Ben slowly makes his way down the stairs to stand behind her.

Mrs. MacGiver sighs coquettishly. “Why, Marshall MacGiver. You know you’re not supposed to be here. What will my parents say if they find out you’ve been sneaking around?”

“Mrs. MacGiver …”

“You’re being very naughty.”

“Who is Lucy, Mrs. MacGiver?”

“Lucy?” Mrs. MacGiver looks confused. Tears threaten her already watery eyes. “You must mean Sally.”

“Mrs. MacGiver …”

“You’re not Sally.” Mrs. MacGiver begins spinning around in awkward circles, like a top winding down, about to fall over on its side. “What have you done with my granddaughter? Where is she?”

“Mrs. MacGiver, if you’d just calm down—”

Mrs. MacGiver vaults toward the doorway. “I want to go home. Now.” Gathering the bottom of her nightgown up around the tops of her red vinyl boots, she throws open the door and hurries across the street. Amanda and Ben, wrapped in a pink blanket and white towel respectively, watch helplessly as the old woman’s front door opens, then slams shut, a clump of snow from an overhead windowsill landing, like an exclamation point, behind her.

“W
HERE
are you going?” Ben asks, trudging through the snow after Amanda.

Amanda marches up the walkway of the house next door, rings the doorbell three times. “There has to be someone on this street who isn’t nuts, and who lived here when I was little. Hopefully they’ll be able to tell us something.”

“What exactly are you hoping to find out?”

“For one thing, if Mr. Walsh had a daughter.”

“And for another?”

Amanda rings the doorbell again. “Who the hell this Lucy is.”

“If
she is,” Ben stresses. “The old woman was obviously confused.”

“Not that confused.”

“She was wearing a nightgown and red vinyl boots,” he points out, as if this clarifies everything.

Amanda rings the doorbell a fifth and final time. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” She cuts across the snow-covered lawn to the house next door and is about to ring the bell when the front door opens.

“Oh,” says a young woman, clearly surprised to find anyone on the other side. She balances a squirming baby awkwardly in her arms, while a toddler sways restlessly at her feet. All three are wearing heavy blue snowsuits and expressions of barely suppressed hysteria. “Who are you?”

“My name is Amanda Travis. I live—”

“I’m sorry,” the woman interrupts, the toddler at her feet pulling on her jacket as the baby in her arms begins stretching toward the ceiling. “Now isn’t a great time. As you can see, we’re just on our way out, and we’re pretty tapped out from Christmas anyway, so it’s probably not the best time to come asking for donations.”

“We’re not looking for donations.”

The woman manages to look confused, harassed, and anxious with one arching of her overly plucked eyebrows.

“I think we have the wrong house,” Amanda allows.

The woman nods gratefully as she lifts her now-squealing toddler into her free arm, then carries both struggling children down the front steps toward the street.

“She obviously wasn’t here twenty-five years ago,” Amanda says, walking toward the house next door.

The story at the next five houses is essentially the same. The residents assume Amanda is either trying to sell them something or exhort money from them, and the reception she gets is as frosty as the outside air. One man, loudly proclaiming that he’s sick and tired of Jehovah’s Witnesses disturbing him when he’s in the bathroom, slams the door in their faces before Amanda has a chance to open her mouth. None of the people they actually talk to has lived on the street for more than ten years. No one looks even vaguely familiar.

“How many houses do you want to try?” Ben asks patiently as they approach a large brick house framed by tall, white pillars.

“A few more on this side,” she tells him. “Maybe a few across the road.”

Ben offers his arm to help her navigate a patch of sidewalk that hasn’t been shoveled. Amanda doesn’t move. “Something wrong?”

Amanda stares at the old house, no less foreboding now than it was when she was a child. She tries picturing the woman who lives inside, but all she can hear is her mother’s harsh assessment—
She’s a real bitch on wheels.

“Amanda?”

Amanda sucks in a breath of fresh resolve and trudges up the unshoveled front walkway. Her mother is hardly the world’s best judge of character. And besides, the house, like most of the others on the street, has probably changed ownership many times in the last several decades. She takes another deep breath as she reaches the front door, then rings the bell.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice calls from inside.

“My name is Amanda Travis,” Amanda calls back. “I live down the street. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

The door opens. A woman, stylishly dressed in black pants and a bright coral sweater, stands in front of her, jeweled fingers resting on slim hips. She is between sixty and seventy, and a wide streak of white cuts through her chin-length ebony hair, like the dividing line on a highway. Or a skunk, Amanda thinks, vaguely recognizing the cool green eyes and thin patrician nose. She glances surreptiously toward the woman’s feet, checking for wheels.

“Mrs. Thompson?” she asks, pulling the name out of the past with surprising ease, then taking an involuntary step backward, feeling Ben at her back.

“Yes? Who are you?”

“Amanda Travis,” Amanda repeats. “This is Ben Myers.” Mrs. Thompson’s eyes flit back and forth between them. “My mother lives down the street.” Amanda waves in the general direction of her mother’s house. “I guess you don’t remember me.”

“Should I?”

“Well, no. I guess not. I haven’t lived with my mother in some time, and I’ve changed considerably.”

“What is it you want?”

Amanda clears her throat. “Just to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

“Maybe we could come inside?”

“What is it you want?” the woman asks again, ignoring the request.

Amanda gulps at the cold air. She smells coffee emanating from inside the house and longs for a cup. “Mrs. Thompson, my mother is Gwen Price.”

Silence. The woman’s eyes blink recognition of the name. Then: “I still don’t understand what you want with me.”

Neither do I, Amanda agrees. Aloud she says, “Do you remember Mr. Walsh, by any chance. He lived in the house next door to my mother.”

“Mr. Walsh? No. I’ve never heard of him.”

“Then you don’t remember if he had a daughter?” Silly question, Amanda thinks, as the woman purses her lips and rolls her eyes.

“If I don’t remember
him
, how would I remember if he had a daughter?” If possible, the woman’s tone is even icier than the sidewalk.

Amanda nods. Her mother was right.

“What about Mrs. MacGiver?” Ben asks. “She lives across the road …”

“That crazy old coot? The one who runs around the street in her nightgown?”

“That’s the one.”

“What about her?”

“She mentioned someone named Lucy,” Amanda continues. “I was wondering if—”

Mrs. Thompson becomes quite agitated. Her shoulders twitch back and forth as if she is about to sprout wings. “What are you trying to pull?” she demands angrily.

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t have time for this.” She tries to shut the door, but Ben’s hand stops her.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “What just happened?”

“Who’s Lucy?” Amanda asks.

“You really don’t know?” Mrs. Thompson mutters in obvious disbelief.

“No.” Amanda feels a sharp poke in the center of her chest and realizes she is holding her breath.

“You’re trying to tell me you don’t know your own sister,” the woman states.

“What?”

The door slams in Amanda’s face.

The white Corvette races along Bloor Street toward the Four Seasons hotel. “What the hell is going on here, Ben?”