Regarding Anna (41 page)

A Rhetorical Question

My heart was thumping up against my rib cage as I led Essie into my house. This could be it. I felt like running around to every window and door to make sure they were locked and she had no escape route, but I didn’t. Instead, I poured each of us a glass of lemonade as we settled in the living room to talk.

Essie’s eyes explored the room, but the expression on her face told me there was some exploration going on in her heart as well.

“Good memories?” I asked her.

“Wonderful memories.” She teared up and then laughed. “I told myself I wasn’t going to do this. So much for that.” She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “Anna and I had many a talk in this room. And laughs. And tears. It’s funny—she used to sit right where you’re sitting, and I would sit right here. Every time, like they were assigned seats. And sometimes we would pick up where we had left off the time before, as if only minutes had elapsed instead of days.”

“Sounds like an enviable friendship the two of you had.”

“It was.”

I gave her a moment to surrender her memories to the present.

“So, where do I start?”

It was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t respond.

“I met Anna shortly after she bought this place. I used to live a block from here, over on Warner. I was out walking my dog one day when he suddenly became excited and broke away from me. He bolted across the street to this house and disappeared into the backyard.

“I called him several times from the front walk, and when he didn’t come, I walked down the driveway to the backyard. Well, Junior had chased a cat up a tree and was guarding what he now considered to be his territory. Anna came out the back door to see what all the commotion was about. I fetched my dog. We talked, and the next thing I know, we’re friends.”

“For how long?”

“Until she died. But let’s not jump ahead, if that’s okay.”

I nodded in agreement.

“We had been friends for less than a year when—”

I waited several seconds for her to continue. She seemed to be staring at my neck, perhaps lost in a thought. If she was now having a change of heart about telling me everything, I’d scream.

“You have her necklace on,” she said.

“You recognize it after all this time?”

“I gave it to her.”

Now it was my turn to well up. “Well, that makes it even more special.” I was suddenly reminded of Anna’s will. “Wait here a minute,” I told her. “If you move, I’ll—”

She laughed. “I won’t move. I promise.”

I retrieved the Rolex watch and handed it to her.

“This was her good watch,” she said.

“She wanted you to have it.”

“How do you know that?”

“It was in her will.”

“She had a will?”

“I found it in my parents’ safe deposit box, which the court awarded to me just yesterday.”

She smiled. “Looks like my timing was finally right.”

“Do you know what happened to her cat?” I wasn’t sure why that was of interest to me after all these years, but I asked it anyway.

“Tobias? The black cat?”

“According to her will, she had set aside $250 for you to take care of her cat in the event it outlived her.”

“Tobias died before Anna.” She paused. “I used to call him Toby, and she would always correct me. Toby apparently is a dog name, not a cat name, at least according to her.” She handed the watch back to me. “I can’t accept this. You keep it.”

“She wanted you to have it.
I
want you to have it.”

She caressed it for a few seconds. “I always admired this watch. I used to tell her that when she wasn’t looking I was going to steal it from her.”

“Well, now you don’t have to. And I’m sorry I interrupted what you were saying about when you first became friends. Please continue.”

“I started to say that it was less than a year after we met, I think, when she met Al... Obviously you know about the boarders who used to live here.”

“Yes, I do.”

“So Al moves into one of the rooms. It was January 1…I don’t know why I remember that date, but I do. Anyway, at first Anna wasn’t going to take in another boarder. In fact, after she had lived here a short while, she didn’t like the idea of having boarders at all. But there were three of them here when she bought the place, and she didn’t have the heart to kick them out. Anyway, Al must have been pretty convincing back then because she let him have the only vacant room, which was the one above her bedroom.”

“The one with the internal staircase.”

“Yes, and that made Anna nervous, even though there was a door at the top of the stairs that locked from her side.”

“But she let him move in anyway.”

“Anna had a hard time saying ‘no’ to people in need. So he moves in, and it wasn’t long before they became friends. And shortly after that… more than just friends.”

“A romantic relationship?”

“Yes. And it was only after she fell in love with him that...well, he told her he was married.”

“That must have come as quite a blow to her.”

“She definitely didn’t see it coming. She was devastated. We talked about it a lot. Talked about it. Cried about it. He told her his marriage was over and it would just be a matter of time until they would divorce. And she accepted that. But then things got
really
dicey when Anna discovered she was pregnant...with you.”

I could feel the emotion welling up in my entire body.

“I’m sorry. I was sure you knew. I should have broken it to—”

“No, I knew. You just validated it. Sorry. I don’t know why that struck me so. Please go on.”

“Are you sure? We could take a break.”

“No, I’m fine. Go on.”

“So now she’s pregnant, and Al is still married, and he hasn’t talked about getting a divorce since that first time, so Anna’s not sure where she stands with him.”

“So what was his reaction to her pregnancy?”

“He was happy about it. Said he and his wife had tried to have children for years but weren’t successful.”

“I’m beginning to not like this man.”

“I understand your feelings, believe me, I do.”

“So you knew him pretty well.”

“Only through Anna. I never spent more than five minutes at a time with Al, just long enough to exchange pleasantries before and after Anna and I did whatever it was we were going to do together.” She paused. “One thing I should clarify is that Anna never said a harsh word against him. She said he was everything she could ask for in a man. He was attentive. He bought her things. He was sensitive to her needs.”

“Apparently not all her needs,” I chimed in.

“No, but other than that—and, for sure, it was a big
that
—he was great, according to her.”

“You would think once Anna became pregnant, he would do the right thing.”

“I think he liked their arrangement just fine. I don’t think he had any intentions of divorcing his wife.”

“And Anna went along with it.”

“Anna was in love—what more can I say.”

“Then I’m born.”

“Then you’re born, and their life goes on.”

The phone rang, and I ran into the kitchen to answer it. It was Tymon saying he was aware Essie was there and asking if I needed anything. Tymon didn’t miss much. I told him I’d call him later.

I brought the pitcher of lemonade to the living room on my way back and refreshed our drinks.

“You realize Tymon is the reason I didn’t stay here to wait for you to come home that day.”

“We figured that. But why?”

“Can you imagine my surprise when I saw him? Here, it took me I can’t tell you how long to get up enough nerve to talk to you, and then I see Anna’s old handyman at your house. I think I was in shock.”

“When you’re finished, remind me to tell you how we met.”

“All right. So they have this rather peculiar living arrangement until you were about six or seven months old.” She hesitated. “Before I go on, how much of what I’ve said so far did you already know?”

“I suspected pretty much all of it. I just had no proof.”

“This is where it’s going to get messy. I highly suspect you don’t know this part.”

I may have appeared calm on the outside, but inside my body there was a firestorm going on.

“I hadn’t talked to Anna for several days when she called me...hysterical. She asked me if I could come over, but not to her house. She gave me an address in the Austin neighborhood. I dropped everything and drove there.

“When I arrived, Anna met me at the door, and she looked like hell. Excuse my French, but I don’t know how else to put it. It looked like she had aged ten years since the last time I’d seen her. I could tell she’d been crying. Her hair was a mess. Her clothes were scruffy, and she had a black eye. My first thought was Al had beaten her up. Anyway, we went into the living room, and she told me the most horrific story I had ever heard or even read in a novel.

“Three days earlier, when Al was at work, his wife had paid Anna a visit. Anna had let her in the house and the conversation started out okay, but the more they talked the more bizarre the woman’s behavior became. And when the baby—when
you
—began to cry, the woman went berserk and got physical with her.”

“How do you mean, physical?”

“Like his wife got up and started pounding on her. Anna was sitting in a chair when this happened, but she managed to get out from underneath her and ran into the baby’s—um, your—room, grabbed you and headed for the back door. But the wife ran after her. Anna said she tried to escape out the back door, but it was locked, and while she was fumbling with the lock, the wife came at her with a butcher knife that she’d picked up from the counter. Anna ran back to your bedroom, put you in your crib, closed the door, and turned around to face her. The two women scuffled and before long ended up back in the living room. The woman kept trying to stab Anna, and then…somehow… Anna got the knife away from her and stabbed her right in her chest.”

I was so confused.

“You mean the other way around, don’t you?” As soon as I said it, I knew it was a dumb question—how could Anna be telling Essie this story if she had been the one who had been killed?

Essie stared at me for several seconds and then looked like she was going to cry.

“Essie?”

“Listen to me carefully.” Her voice was shaky, and I wondered if she was going to be able to get the words out. “Anna killed Al’s wife.” She paused, but not long enough for me to get it. “Grace, the man who moved into the room above Anna’s was your father.”

“I know. You told me that.”

“Your father...Adam Lindroth.”

FORTY-ONE

Regarding Anna

I couldn’t say how long it took Essie to tell me that the man who had raised me, the man I had thought was my father for the first seventeen years of my life, the man I had then doubted was my real father for the past five years—Adam Lindroth—was, in fact, my real father. Time must have shut down for me in the stunned silence that followed her telling me this.

“Do you need time for that to sink in?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I’ll be right back. I need to use the restroom.”

My brain must not have been working properly because all kinds of ridiculous scenarios were running through it. I felt the sweat building up on my forehead and dripping through my cleavage. I wished Tymon was there. I needed someone to hold me and make me feel safe. He could have done that.

Essie returned. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m so confused.”

“I know you are. But hold on tight, Grace, the story’s not over.”

I closed my eyes for a brief moment and tried to control my breathing, which was coming in short gasps.

“Okay. Go on.”

“Adam’s wife...was Rosa Lindroth.”

“I, of all people know that, Essie.”

“It was his wife who died that day—Rosa Lindroth.”

“Essie, my mother died with my father when I was seventeen. In their house. Carbon monoxide poisoning. I was there.”

“
Anna
died when you were seventeen, hon.”

I stared at her for several seconds. I didn’t believe her. She had the whole thing confused.

“No, she was murdered when I was just a baby. I have the newspaper articles.”