The Empty Desk (12 page)

By the time she reached home again, she half expected to find Aiden already in bed but somehow she wasn't that surprised to find him downstairs squashed on the couch between Jim and Ned. The two men each had a bottle of beer, while Aiden had a mug of milk. He was mimicking the others, raising it to his lips every time one of the others did. It was like watching synchronized drinking. They weren't setting a very good example, but she couldn't help but find it funny.

“Looks like you guys are comfortable,” she suggested. Jim started to make apologies for Aiden not being in bed, for the dishes not having been done, for just about anything she might have cause to complain about. Melinda loved to see him squirm for just a moment, but that was all.

“It's been a long day,” Aiden said, sending them all into fits of laughter. It was amazing how much he picked up when they didn't even think he was listening.

“Come on, you,” Jim said, picking Aiden up in his arms. “We were just waiting until Mommy came home before we headed up.” He turned to Melinda. “Ned has something he wants to talk to you about, so we'll leave you to it.”

He handed Melinda his beer and held Aiden close enough for him to give her a kiss good night, then they made their way upstairs to the sound of giggles. It wasn't going to be easy to settle Aiden down now, but it was a small price to pay for seeing him happy.

“I've got these for you,” Ned said and handed her the envelope. She dropped into the chair and pulled out the sheets of paper.

“These from your friend Terri?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. I'm surprised that there wasn't more, but it was all she could find.”

Melinda read the pages. They told the tragic tale of a child who had gone missing and never been found.

“This was more than thirty years ago,” she said, spotting the dates handwritten at the top of each page. “Much longer ago than we thought. Was she ever found, or did they just stop looking for her?”

Ned shook his head. “That's all Terri gave me, and I haven't been able to find out anything else about her. All the clippings are from the
Chronicle,
but I suspect that if it had been covered by any of the bigger papers, they would have kept a copy of that too. Local interest and all that.”

Most of the clippings included a picture of the missing girl, no doubt to try to remind people of what she looked like, just in case they might have seen her. Melinda would have recognized her from the picture without needing a second glance. One of the pictures showed her with another girl, maybe a couple of years older, who the caption said was her sister. Two little girls who looked so similar, so innocent. So this was who she was looking for.

“We need to find someone who knew them,” she said without looking up from the pictures. Alice looked so much happier in them all.

“Do you think that there's anyone still working at the school who might have been around back then? Could Dana ask around?” Ned asked.

“Maybe,” she said but then thought that that someone would have had to have been a very young teacher at the time to still be plugging away after all those years. “So many people come and go through this town and memories are so short that it's hard to even know who might have been around at the time.”

“Mrs. Connor at the library has been around forever. Even if she can't remember, she might be able to point us toward someone who does.”

Mrs. Connor lived only a few houses away from Melinda and more than once had kept an eye on Aiden when he had gone to some activity at the library. Aiden liked her a lot and was always happy to be left in the old lady's care. Melinda checked her watch and saw that it was almost eight. It was getting late but maybe not too late to give her a call. Ten minutes later she had the number of Mrs. Connor's daughter, who had gone through the school at around that time. The librarian remembered the poor girl going missing, and she was sure that her daughter had been friendly with the older sister.

“Of course, the poor girls' mother still lives in town,” Mrs. Connor said, as if it was of little consequence.

“She does?” Melinda said, unable to hide the surprise in her voice. “We couldn't find anyone by the name of Fallon still living in the town.”

“Oh yes, she's still here. Of course, she went back to her maiden name when she got divorced.”

“And the other daughter?”

“I've no idea, I'm afraid. She doesn't live here anymore though.”

“What's the mother's name now?” Melinda asked, signaling a request for a pen to Ned, who was listening intently. He fumbled in his pocket and handed her one. She turned the envelope that had held the clippings over, ready to write down the name that Mrs. Connor was struggling to remember. They were close to finding the little girl's sister; she could feel it.

“Johnson, Johansson, Jorgansson, something like that. You must know her. She works in the bakery opposite the library.”

“The gray-haired lady?”

“That's the one.”

“I had no idea,” Melinda said. She knew exactly who she meant and spoke to her almost every time she went in to buy bread but had never known her name, let alone her sad history.

“I don't think she's working tomorrow, but I'm sure you'll find her in the book.” She gave her the name of the street she lived on before she asked how Aiden was and how it had been so long since she had last spoken to him. When Melinda hung up she told Ned that she couldn't believe that the answer had been under their noses all the time. A quick check in the phone book confirmed that she did indeed live on the street that Mrs. Connor had directed her toward. Anna Jorgansson.

The house was a small wooden affair on the outskirts of town. A sad-looking place that matched the features of the woman who opened the door the next morning. Melinda had barely slept that night, desperately hoping that she would be able to take another step forward in helping poor little Alice. Melinda had rehearsed their conversation over and over again, but each time it had played out differently. It was never easy to start a conversation like the one she was going to have to have with the woman, but she was surprised by the woman's reaction when she opened the door to her.

“It's Melinda, isn't it?” she said. “You run the antique shop.”

“That's right,” Melinda said, accepting the offer to come inside and have tea. She was not questioned as to why she was there. They sat in a small room that was clean and tidy but had the overwhelming feeling of being threadbare and tired.

“I've never been inside your shop,” the woman said. “But I've looked in through the window a few times. I've seen you in the bakery often enough.”

“My son and my husband are both fond of cake, I'm afraid,” Melinda said, as if she had to explain why she should be in there buying anything other than bread.

“This is about Alice, isn't it,” the woman said eventually, changing the subject suddenly.

“What makes you say that?”

“Why else would you come here? I've heard the whispers and I've seen the nudges. People seem to think that you can see ghosts. If you've come to see me, then I guess you must have seen Alice. I was hoping that you would never come and see me. I've always had the hope that she might have been taken by a couple who couldn't have children of their own. At least that way I could pretend that she was having a good life somewhere.”

“I'm sorry,” Melinda said. It was all she could think to say.

“It's hardly your fault, now is it?” There were tears in the woman's eyes, but she brushed them away. “I've been hoping for so long that she was still alive somewhere, imagining her all grown up like her sister. Having a good life.”

“What happened to Alice's sister?”

“Chrissie moved away with her father. They couldn't stand to live here any longer, constantly being reminded that she had lost a sister and he had lost a daughter, but I couldn't leave my baby. I didn't want to forget about her.”

“So you chose to stay?” It came out as an accusation, as if she had turned her back on the living child in favor of the one who was probably dead and let their father walk away.

“I only intended to stay for a while,” she said. “Give them time to get settled in the new home, then I would join them, but time dragged on. I wanted to stay for another week, another month, until time seemed to disappear. I couldn't expect my husband to wait for me forever, but even so it came as a shock when he told me that he wanted a divorce so he could get married again. By then I knew that I couldn't leave. I could never leave. I lost both my daughters.”

“Do you see much of Chrissie?”

The woman shook her head and took a sip of her tea. The thought was clearly painful, and Melinda didn't want to press her too hard.

“I've been out to see her a few times, but we're like strangers now. Barely exchanging more than birthday and Christmas cards. I think she hated me for a while for not wanting to go with them, for letting someone else take my place.”

It seemed so sad. Four lives ruined, not just one. Maybe Chrissie and her dad were happy now with their new lives, but they weren't the ones they would have lived if Alice hadn't disappeared. Everything seemed to have fallen apart for them.

“I'm sorry,” Melinda said again.

The woman gave the smallest of forced smiles. “So was that all you came for? To tell me that Alice was dead? I think that even I had come to terms with that after all this time.”

“Could you let me have a number for Chrissie?” Melinda asked.

The woman nodded. “You'll want to tell her too. I understand that, but I'm not sure that she will want to know. It's almost as if she never thinks of herself as having had a sister anymore. She can't stand it when I mention her name, so we don't really talk about anything any longer. We hardly seem to have anything in common. It might be better if it comes from you rather than me. At least it won't give her something else to hate me for.”

She took the few short steps to cross the room and retrieved an address book from the drawer of a small table which carried the telephone. She flicked through it and found the entry she was looking for. Melinda put the number straight in her cell phone, ready to call her when she had left the poor woman to what remained of her grief.

She said goodbye, leaving the last of her tea going cold in the cup, and made to leave, and for the first time the woman asked the kind of question that Melinda had expected to hear, the kind she dreaded being asked. This time she had no answers.

“Did she suffer?” she asked.

“I don't know,” Melinda answered. “I haven't managed to get to talk to her properly yet.”

The woman nodded, showing her understanding, then led her to the door.

Melinda drove away from the little house before parking again to make the call, but the line was busy. It had been much easier to talk to Alice's mother than she had expected, but somehow she knew that speaking to the little girl's sister could be much more difficult. Stopping to think about it before she made the call was unlikely to make it any easier. She waited for a few minutes before she tried the number again. This time it was answered right away.

“Hello, my name's Melinda,” she began.

“Hello,” Chrissie said. “Mom just called. She told me that she'd given you my number.” The voice was cold, distant.

“Did she tell you what I would be calling about?”

“She did. I'm not sure how I can help. I'm not even sure if I believe you.”

“But you're still talking to me,” Melinda said.

“I have no idea if you can talk to my sister or not, but I want to believe that you can. Would you mind if we had this conversation face to face?”

“You're coming home?” For a moment Melinda thought that she might expect her to drive out to wherever she was living now, and that might take some time to organize.

“I don't think of it as home, at least not anymore. I haven't even been back there since I was a child.”

“How soon will you be coming?”

“I should be able to make it tomorrow. If all goes well, I'll be there by lunchtime. Is that okay?”

“Of course it is. Will you be going to see your mom first?”

“I don't think so,” she said. “I think I'd like to see you before I talk to her. Maybe it's time we tried to heal a few wounds, but I won't be able to do that until I've had the chance to talk to you about Alice.”

“She asked me to find you,” Melinda said. “Not her mother, but her sister. She obviously loved you very much.”

There was a moment of silence at the other end of the call, but Melinda didn't want to force her to talk. If she was prepared to come back after all these years, there was probably something she needed to say to either Melinda or her mother, and she didn't want to make it any harder than it needed to be.

“Where shall I meet you?” Chrissie asked eventually. “I'm not sure that I'll recognize many places.”

“Maybe you could find your way to the school?” Melinda suggested. She decided against mentioning that was where she had seen her sister. She might need to take her there at some point, but she didn't want to say anything that might delay it if the need arose.

“Sounds perfect,” Chrissie said. “I'm sure that my GPS will be able to get me there.”

“Do you have far to come?” Melinda hadn't recognized the area code in the telephone number.

“A couple of hours' drive.”

“Call me when you're almost here. I can get to the school within twenty minutes,” Melinda said.

When they had ended the call, Melinda couldn't help but feel surprised that the woman was prepared to travel a fair distance to complete a journey that she had not been able to make since she had left. Something had kept her away all this time, and yet she was prepared to return at little notice. There was clearly something unresolved that needed to be taken care of once and for all. Melinda wanted to speak to Alice again before her sister arrived to let her know that she had found her and that she should be there soon. She needed to do everything she could to make sure that the ghost would be on hand at the right time.