Stranger in the House (2 page)

“Paul,” Anna whispered through her tightened throat. Her frantic glance scanned the perimeter of the fence and then stopped short. She stared for a moment, disbelieving, at the gate, which stood ajar about two feet.

Anna held the fence for support, crushing the cookies between her hands and the slats. “Paul,” she cried. “Paul.”

At first she could not move. Her breath was short. Her limbs felt as if they had been set in cement. She looked out across the backyard, trying to breathe. Then her words came in a shrill rush. “Paul, do you hear me? Answer Mommy!”

The silent, empty yard shimmered in the heat of the July afternoon. Dragonflies whirred across the sun-dappled lawn. Beyond the swing set and the garden shed at the back of their property, the woods rustled, dark and cool. There was no sign of the child. He was nowhere to be seen.

Letting go of the fence, Anna forced herself to walk toward the back of the yard. Her eyes swiveled in every direction, starving for some brief glimpse of him. She searched the grass, the trees for anything. A swatch of his striped T-shirt, a splash of yellow from his Scooby-Doo cap, the glow of shell-pink skin. “Paul,” she cried.

How could he get out? She stopped for a second and glanced back at the latch. One of the screws that held it to the fence was gone. It hung uselessly on the door. It mustn’t have caught securely. I should have looked. Why didn’t I pull on it to be sure? One tug was probably all it took, she thought.

Where was he? Immediately she remembered the cat. He had been fascinated by that kitty. He must have tried to follow it into the woods. He can’t have gone far.

Running now, Anna plunged into the trees, crying out hoarsely for her child. She ran crazily in one direction, then another. A flash of waving brown-gold caught her eye. “Paul,” she cried. A dried-out fern swam before her tear-filled eyes. She continued on, tripping through the mossy, leaf-strewn ground cover, her glance darting behind every tree. She could hear the sound of traffic beyond, on the highway, as she stumbled along. “Please, God,” she whispered. “Please. Let him be all right. Paul, Paul, Mommy needs you.” She could hear the choked bubbling of tears in her voice as she called out to him. The trees were silent in reply.

All at once she saw a sudden movement through the trees. Heart leaping with hope, she whirled to face it. There, beside a tree, sat the fluffy black-and-white cat, staring edgily at her.

Anna’s lips and chin began to tremble violently. She could feel the shaking spread down her arms to her hands, in her knees, all the way to her feet. She was bathed in sweat. She stared at the unblinking cat. Tears began to spill down her cheeks.

“Where is my baby? Paul!” she shrieked. Her anguished cry drowned out the intermittent drone from the highway, the rustle of the trees. It seemed to settle there on the dense, oppressive summer air.

“First thing in the morning,” said Detective Mario “Buddy” Ferraro, neatly smoothing down his dark blue tie and buttoning his gray sports jacket over it. “We’ll be here early, and we’ll keep looking until we find your boy, Mr. Lange. I promise you. We’ll do everything we can. Everything. But it’s late now. We can’t see anything, and these people need to get some sleep.”

“I understand,” Thomas said dully. He stared out the window at the motley group of men and women who were milling about in his backyard, waving flash-lights and talking quietly together. They were policemen, neighbors, people in town who had heard about Paul’s disappearance on the local television station. Even a bunch of teenagers, members of the high school key club, had volunteered to help in the search. Their numbers had swelled since three, when the search had started. Thomas gazed blankly at them, his face ashen above his white shirt. He was still wearing his suit, now rumpled and dirty from crawling in the woods and alongside the highway. His loosened tie hung like a slack noose around his neck.

“They need some rest, and so do you,” advised the handsome olive-skinned detective. “Especially your wife. Did the doctor give her something to help her sleep?” he inquired.

“He was here a few hours ago,” Thomas replied. “He gave her some pills to take. He would have given her a shot, but with the baby…” Thomas’s voice trailed away.

“Try to get her to sleep,” the detective urged. “We’ll be back before she even wakes up. We’ll find your boy, Mr. Lange. We will.” The detective gripped the stricken father’s shoulder for a brief second and then released it. “Let me say good night to your wife, tell her we’re going now.”

The detective nodded in the direction of the dining room. In a fog Thomas led the way.

Anna sat at the dining room table, her head resting on her arms in front of her. Iris Stewart sat beside her friend, her hands clenched together in her lap. Her plain face was distorted by a worried frown as she stared sadly at Anna. Her husband, Edward, dressed in a perfectly tailored pin-striped suit, hovered behind them, a solemn expression on his face. Both the Stewarts looked up anxiously as Thomas and Detective Ferraro entered the dining room. Anna kept her head lowered on her arms.

Thomas answered the question on their faces with a curt shake of his head.

“Mrs. Lange,” the detective said softly. Slowly Anna raised her head. Her face was puffed up; her eyes were red and swollen from crying. She flattened her trembling hands on the table.

Buddy Ferraro’s stomach twisted at the sight of her face. “Mrs. Lange, I’m going to have to call off the search for tonight. Just for tonight. It’s after two. We’ll start again first thing in the morning.”

“It’s so late,” she said. “We have to find him.”

“We’ll find him, Mrs. Lange. Tonight we need to get some rest.”

Anna raised herself up shakily out of her seat. “I have to keep looking,” she said. “You’re giving up.”

“Oh, no, Anna,” Iris protested. “You mustn’t think that.”

The detective cleared his throat. “We are not giving up,” he said. “We are just going to take a break, and we’ll be back at it as soon as there is light.”

An expression of exquisite pain suffused the mother’s face. The tears began to stream silently down her cheeks again.

“Try to get some sleep,” said the detective helplessly. “I’ll let myself out.”

“You two should go, too,” Tom said to his neighbors.

“Let me spend the night here on the couch,” Iris implored him.

Edward said, “Come along, Iris. We’ll only be in the way here.”

“It’s okay,” Thomas assured her. “You go on.”

Iris hesitated and then clasped Anna’s white hand in her own. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” she promised.

“Thanks for everything,” said Tom. Edward shook his hand and then ushered Iris through the dining room doors.

The house was silent for a few moments. Anna moaned and hid her face in her hands. Then, without uncovering her face, she spoke softly. “I was gone for only a few minutes, Tom.”

Thomas sat across the table from his wife, staring at the wall. “I know,” he said in a choked voice. Then he looked over at her. “It’s not your fault, darling. You can’t blame yourself.”

Anna did not reply. They sat in silence. After a few minutes he spoke again. “We’d better get to bed.”

A feeble cry wafted down from upstairs. Anna started at the sound of the tiny wail. For a second she stiffened, and then she slumped over.

“Tracy’s up,” said Thomas. He watched his wife for a reaction, but she didn’t move. “Do you want me to go?” he asked.

Anna avoided her husband’s eyes. “If you don’t mind,” she said. “I want to clean up here.” She waved a hand vaguely over the empty, stained coffee mugs that littered the table, left there by shifts of searchers.

“Don’t bother with that, darling,” Thomas said. “Come upstairs now.”

“No, I want to.” She got up from her chair and began to collect the cups and crumpled napkins with trembling hands.

Thomas opened his mouth to argue and then stopped. He lifted himself wearily from his seat and started to walk through the darkened living room toward the stairs. Suddenly there was a crash.

“Ahhhh…” Anna cried out. Thomas rushed back into the dining room. Anna was bent over double, clutching her stomach, pieces of broken china on the table and at her feet.

“Honey, what’s the matter?” he cried, hurrying to support her in his arms. “What is it?”

All the color had drained from her face. She breathed shallowly, her arms crossed at her waist.

“What is it?” he demanded. “Is it the baby? Should I call the doctor?”

Slowly Anna shook her head. She breathed more deeply. She began to straighten up. “It’s better now. It’s passing.”

“Please come and lie down,” he pleaded.

“I will. As soon as I’m finished here.” Glancing briefly at her husband’s troubled eyes, Anna turned away from him. Tracy wailed out, more insistently now.

“Anna?” he asked.

“I will,” she said. She gestured at the mess around her. “I’ll be right up.”

Reluctantly Thomas released her and started again for the stairs. From the darkness of the living room he looked back at her fearfully. Unaware of his gaze, she sank onto one of the dining room chairs and stared beyond her own lonely reflection in the window into the yawning blackness of the yard.

“What a night.” Buddy Ferraro sighed, opening the door to his car and sliding in.

“What time tomorrow?” asked a patrolman, leaning against the open door of the detective’s car.

“Say seven,” the detective suggested. “I’ll probably be here six or six thirty.”

“I don’t guess half an hour’s gonna make much difference to this kid,” said the patrolman, shaking his head.

The detective glared at him. “It could make a lot of difference,” he snapped.

“Hey, no offense,” said the young man. “I feel the same way you do. I’ll be here early.”

Buddy gave his young colleague a conciliatory wave as he started his car. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

The young cop tapped on the detective’s hood as the car rolled backward down the Langes’ driveway.

Buddy Ferraro wondered if he would get any sleep at all that night. The sight of Anna Lange’s face weighed down his heart. Her anguish had seeped into him, raging within him, giving the search an intensity that he had rarely felt in fourteen years on the force. To lose a child. It was a nightmare. The kid seemed to have just vanished into thin air. He thought of Sandy and of their own two boys, little Buddy and Mark. If anything ever happened to them…

He decided to take the Millgate Parkway home. It was faster than the back roads, even this late at night. He’d get off in two stops and nearly be at his door. He had called Sandy at around ten o’clock, ostensibly to tell her when he’d be home, but as the phone gave its third ring, he’d realized, by the tightening in his chest, that he just wanted to be sure they all were safe.

Following the signs for New York, Buddy crossed the overpass and drove down the curved entrance ramp to the full-stop sign. He braked automatically and sat for a moment, lost in thought. They hadn’t found a trace of the boy, nothing. There had to be something, some lead they had missed. If it were there to be found, they would find it. He was determined not to lose this one. It mattered too much. He realized with a start that he was waiting for no reason. There was no other traffic on the parkway. He pressed his foot on the gas, and the car shot forward into the night.

Unnoticed by him not far from where he had stopped to yield, a child’s baseball cap was wedged in a drainage ditch beneath the lip of the road. The low-hanging boughs of a hearty evergreen helped to hide the little hat from view. There were dark patches of dirt on the bent brim. And something else as well. A grimy Scooby-Doo winked and waved while across his smiling face and the balloon letters of his name, creases began to stiffen as the bloody fabric dried.

E
LEVEN
Y
EARS
L
ATER

“H
ow do you like your tea?” Iris asked.

“It’s great,” said Anna. “Fresh mint. Is it from your garden?”

The two women were sitting at one end of the plant-filled conservatory of the Stewarts’ opulent home. The sun streamed in on them, and a breeze from the open doors riffled the leaves of the plants.

Iris nodded. “Henry brought it in this morning.”

“I always mean to put some in my garden, and then I forget.”

“I’ll tell Henry to dig some up for you,” Iris said eagerly.

“Would you? That would be great.”

Iris and Anna relaxed in their chairs, enjoying the sun and the breeze. Anna leaned over the glass table and picked up a pile of envelopes that were lying beside the bowl, addressed in Iris’s careful hand. “What are you up to here?” Anna asked.

A pained look crossed Iris’s face. “Oh, we’re giving a party. For the Hospital Guild. It’s going to be rather a large affair, to raise money for the new cardiac wing.”

Anna nodded. “I read about it in the paper. I didn’t know the party was going to be here.”

“Well, Edward is the chairman of the fund-raising committee, you know.”

Anna nodded, noting that Iris was clenching her hands together in her lap. “You’re good at organizing things,” Anna reassured her. “It will be a great success.”

Iris gave a small sigh. “I hope so,” she said. “There’s one for you in there.” Iris pointed to the stack of envelopes.

Anna found the envelope addressed to the Langes and smiled. “Tracy, too?”

“Older children.” Iris shrugged. “That was my idea, I thought they’d pep things up.”

“Great,” said Anna. “When’s the party going to be?”

“A week from tomorrow. The thirtieth. I hope you’re free. I’m a little late with the invitations.”

“The thirtieth,” said Anna softly, staring down into her glass of tea. “That’s Paul’s birthday.” She looked up at Iris. “He’ll be fifteen this year.”

Iris’s eyebrows rose slightly. For a moment she regarded her friend thoughtfully. “Is that so?” she murmured. “Well…that’s good. Where’s Tom today?”

“With Tracy. They’re playing tennis. Is Edward home?”

“Oh, no. He had a business lunch today. He just bought another company. The Wilcox Company, I think it’s called. They have something to do with helicopter parts.”

Anna stirred the ice in her glass and looked up under her eyelashes at Iris. You would never know to look at her, Anna thought, that her husband was a millionaire. Edward, whose company manufactured private aircraft, was always a model of correctness and elegance in his appearance, while Iris dressed simply and seemed to give only the minimum attention to her hair and makeup.

Nonetheless, they seemed to get along together, and Anna had always ascribed it to opposites attracting.

“Well, I’ve got to be getting back.” She placed her empty glass down on the end table and got up.

“Anna, I meant to ask you. How’s Tracy’s job at the vet’s working out?”

Anna frowned, thinking of her daughter. “Oh, she loves being around the animals. She doesn’t get paid for it, but she seems to enjoy it.”

“There, you see! That’s great,” said Iris. “I had a feeling that all she needed was an interest.”

“It’s helped,” said Anna absently, although she felt a twinge of annoyance at Iris’s simplistic solution to the problems she had with Tracy. Her shy, introverted daughter was turning into a moody, difficult teenager who seemed to resent her mother more each day. But Iris always acted as if a little change in the routine would solve everything. And perhaps in Iris’s pampered, childless life, that was all the solution she needed, Anna thought ruefully.

“Why don’t I ask Henry to get you those mint plants right now?” Iris suggested, opening the glass door to hail the gardener in a straw hat, who was crouching in a flowerbed beyond the pool. Anna realized that she had been unconsciously staring at him.

“No, no,” she protested hurriedly. “Don’t bother him.”

“It’s no bother,” Iris insisted.

Anna shook her head but smiled at her friend’s kindness. She felt guilty for her uncharitable thoughts about Iris, remembering how often she had taken comfort in Iris’s confidence in Anna’s ability to make things right. Often, when she had been down, it was a visit from Iris that had forced her up. She gave her friend a brief impulsive hug. “Not today,” she said. “I’d better be getting along.”

“If you have to,” said Iris. “Don’t forget. Put that party on your calendar.”

“I will,” said Anna. She walked out the door and down the steps, then headed down the incline past the pool, greeting Henry, the gardener, as she went by. Her route home through the Stewart estate was long and meandering but it was a walk she always enjoyed. She followed the path through the gardens, skirted the frog pond, and wandered in the grape arbors until she came to the high hedges and the narrow stream that separated their properties.

Anna decided, before she went in the house, to get a few vegetables from her garden for dinner. She was proud of her garden this year. She had culled a few tips from Henry and had raised a bountiful crop of vegetables. Everything had grown vigorously, probably because much of the garden plot had lain fallow for so many years. After harvesting two lustrous inky eggplants, a few tomatoes and a bunch of beans, Anna headed back toward the house. Sometimes, especially when the fall came, and Tracy returned to school, Anna thought about going back to work. She always decided against it, although she never admitted her real reason to Thomas. She wanted to be home, just in case. Just on the unlikely chance that Paul found his way back to them, she wanted to be there. Anna walked past the spot where the children’s play yard had been. She stopped and sank down on the rusty glider, staring dully at the patch of lawn. It was green now and planted over with flowers. I’d better not mention Paul’s birthday, she thought. Tom will only get upset.

She knew how much he didn’t like to talk about it. But each year she felt compelled to bring it up, as if it were somehow vital that his parents speak his name aloud, acknowledge his birth. Every year Thomas would turn away from her with a grim look on his face. She didn’t do it to pain him. It just seemed that it was important. Then, last year, when she mentioned it, he had suddenly gotten angry.

“Anna, I can’t stand it when you say that. Every year it’s the same thing. ‘Paul is eleven today. Paul is twelve today. It’s Paul’s thirteenth birthday.’ Why do you always have to mention it?”

“Because it is his birthday,” she insisted. “Because I want to remember it.”

“It’s like some grisly joke. Paul’s birthday. As if he were still alive and about to walk in that door.”

“But, Tom,” she protested, “I do believe that he is alive. Don’t you? I mean, we don’t know any different. We need to have hope, darling.”

But Thomas had turned away from her without another word, and the subject was closed between them once again, as it had been for most of the years since Paul was gone. She could not pinpoint the time when they had stopped discussing it. But the child’s disappearance had been like an amputation on the body of their marriage. Tom wanted to cover it, to hide it and pretend it hadn’t happened. Or so it seemed to Anna, as she restlessly sought help, advice, some reassurance that she would one day reattach what seemed irretrievably lost. As if by agreement, they avoided talking about it. It was the best they could do.

Anna examined the ground from her seat on the glider, to see if any trace remained of the play fence, any faint outline of where it had been. The grass had grown over it. There was not a sign. It was as if it had never existed.

Anna walked up to the back porch and entered the cool, quiet house. She placed the basket on the butcher block beside the sink and turned on the tap, placing a copper colander into the clean porcelain basin. The only sound in the house was the rush of the running water. Normally she liked nothing better than to be busy in her comfortable kitchen, but now a melancholy mood descended on her. She held her wrist under the water, like a mother testing a baby’s formula, and gazed over the plants on her windowsill into the stillness of the sun-dappled backyard.

Suddenly she became aware of a sound like tapping. Turning off the water, she listened again. Someone was knocking at the front door. After wiping her hands off quickly on the soft terry towel next to the sink, she hurried through the house to the foyer and opened the door. At first she saw no one there. Stepping out onto the front porch, she observed the familiar back of a man descending the flagstone steps to the driveway where his car was parked.

“Buddy,” she called out, “come back. I’m here.”

Detective Mario Ferraro started and then turned slowly around to face the woman standing in the doorway. She was smiling in welcome. Over the years he had come to know her well. Long after Paul’s case had been officially abandoned, she’d continued to call him with questions about psychics or other missing children or any case that bore any similarity to her own. He had responded with what he hoped was patience and care to each of her desperate hopes, tracking down any fillip of a lead that came his way. “It’s that poor woman again,” a rookie named Parker told him the last time she had called with news of a child who had turned up in Houston. That poor woman.

He knew that was how the others saw her, but secretly he admired her courage and her tenacity. After losing her son and then the baby, she had pulled herself together and committed herself to the search. Some people thought it was abnormal, but Buddy saw the logic in her efforts. But for the grace of God, he had reminded himself often, he would have had to make such a choice as hers. He had decided to help her. One night Thomas had taken him aside in the kitchen and apologized to him for Anna’s relentless questions and leads. “There’s no getting through to her,” Thomas had said. In a way Thomas’s reaction had bothered him more than Anna’s. But he’d held his tongue. “I don’t mind,” he’d told Thomas. “I can imagine what she’s going through.”

“What’s the matter with you?” Anna asked, squinting at him. “You look kind of sick.”

Buddy Ferraro smiled with one corner of his mouth. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I was out in the garden. I didn’t hear your car come in. I hope you haven’t been standing here for long.”

The detective shook his head. Buddy climbed the steps haltingly. When he reached the porch where Anna stood, he looked at her and frowned, pressing his lips together. Anna linked her arm through his and led him into the house. “My garden,” she said, “is really terrific this year. I’ve got something for you to take to Sandra. Eggplants and tomatoes. You get that wife of yours to make you eggplant Parmesan. No excuses. I’ll give you a big bagful to take home.”

“Anna…” he began.

Arm in arm they had passed through the foyer and into the bright L-shaped living room, which was filled with flowers, baskets of magazines, and needlepoint pillows on the furniture. Anna released the detective’s arm and gestured toward a chair next to the fireplace at the end of the room. “Please sit down,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time now. I’m glad you came by. I was just in there starting to feel sorry for myself.” She moved her knitting bag off the chair matching his and sat down opposite him.

Buddy perched on the edge of the seat and leaned forward.

“Can I get you something to drink? Club soda or a beer?”

The policeman shook his head. “It’s good to see you,” he said quietly. “But this isn’t just a friendly visit. I have some news for you.”

Anna gasped as if he had slapped her. Over the years she had been like a disappointed lover, waiting for a missive that never came. In time she had grown to expect the postman, not the letter. Now, suddenly, the detective was turning it all around. She stared into his eyes, trying to read what the message might be.

“Is Thomas home?” he asked quietly. “I think he should be here.”

“He’s not…he’s out,” she whispered, her eyes riveted to the detective’s face.

Buddy Ferraro frowned. “Maybe we should…”

“It’s Paul,” she said. She clasped her hands together and pressed them to her lips. “Tell me,” she whispered.

Buddy nodded and cleared his throat. “Anna,” he said, “I don’t know how to say this. It’s going to be a shock.”

Anna began to shake her head as she stared at him.

Buddy hesitated. “Paul’s been found. He’s alive.”

Anna crushed her trembling fists to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. His words hung in the air before her, waiting for her to comprehend them. But a tingling fear suffused her, paralyzing her. She felt that if she tried to grasp what he said, take hold of it, it would somehow be snatched away from her. All hope, everything she had prayed for and clung to for all these years would vanish instantly and forever. “Don’t lie to me, Buddy,” she warned him in a shaking, nearly inaudible voice.

“I wouldn’t, Anna. You know that. It’s true. You can believe it. He’s alive.” Buddy was surprised by the tears that sprang to his own eyes. He pressed his lips into a crooked smile.

Anna sat frozen in her chair for a moment. Then, slowly, as if in a trance, she slid from the seat to her knees on the floor, clutching her arms around her chest. Her head was bowed; her eyes were shut.

Buddy sprang forward from his seat, prepared to grab her, thinking at first that she had fainted. Then, understanding, he exhaled and sat back in his chair. Bowing his head, he crossed himself quickly.

When Anna raised her head, her face was like a flower opening, turning out fragile petals one by one.

Buddy offered her his hand. Anna reached for it and kneaded it between her icy fingers. “Tell me everything,” she whispered in a choked voice. “Where is he? Is he all right? Is he safe?”

“He’s fine,” Buddy assured her and reached into his pocket, removing his handkerchief and handing it to her. “Here.”

While Anna wiped her eyes, the detective began to explain. “It happened this morning. We got a call from the sheriff of Hawley, West Virginia. He had been contacted by a minister in town who had evidence that Paul has been living all these years in that town as the son of a couple named Albert and Dorothy Lee Rambo. It seems that the woman was dying of cancer, and last week she contacted this minister, one Reverend Orestes Foster, and gave him a letter. Told him to open it at the time of her death, which occurred day before yesterday. The letter amounted to a confession that she and her husband had abducted Paul and raised him as their own son, and it also revealed Paul’s identity, which apparently they were aware of all along.”