The One I Left Behind (33 page)

“Well, who’ve you been talking to then?” Bo demanded.

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what I heard.”

“And what’s that?”

“That my mother came back from New York to be with you in the fall of 1970. That you got her an apartment, promised you’d leave your wife, then dumped her. Is it true?”

His face went from pink to red. “I’d like you to leave, Regina. You have no business coming here, talking to me like this.”

“Is it true?”

He ran a hand over his mustache as if he was dusting crumbs out.

“Are you my father?” she asked abruptly. She couldn’t believe she’d said it out loud, but there it was, no going back now. She leaned forward, resting her hands on the edge of his desk, searching his face for some sign of herself.

Bo was now the shade of a beet and moist with perspiration. “Your father . . . ,” he stammered.

“I don’t want anything from you. I just want—”

What
did
she want? An apology? Some kind of explanation that would help her to understand why all the adults in her life had layered the lies, spreading them sweet and thick over the years, like a sickening kind of cake that was supposed to make her feel happy and loved, but was secretly laced with poison.

“Your father could be anyone!” Bo said, the words hitting Reggie square in the chest like an arrow.

“But if my mother was living with you—”

“Your mother’s a whore, Regina.” He spit the words out with tremendous anger. “Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

Reggie stared at him, heart pounding up into her throat. She let go of the desk, staggering backward. The pain in her leg pulsated and blossomed with each heartbeat. She glanced down and saw the blood soaking through her sweatpants, marking her for what she truly was: a bastard girl who cut herself with a whore for a mother.

“She’d let anyone who’d buy her a glass of gin slip it to her.”

Now it was Reggie’s face that began to color. She felt light-headed and weak-kneed. She wished she could just disappear entirely, be gone in a puff of smoke like a girl in a magic show.

“You want the truth, young lady? Here’s the truth: she lived with me when she first came back, but it didn’t last. Not when I learned what she was up to. That she was going out at night with other men. It’s like a sickness she’s got. This want, this
need,
to be loved, to be admired, to have men fight over her like goddamn dogs.” His eyes blazed. “That’s what got her killed.”

Reggie took a step back, swaying a little. “She’s not dead,” Reggie said. “Not yet.”

He squinted at her like she was small and far away, something he had to really focus on. “I pity you, Regina. I really do. Being born from that woman. Having her blood running in your veins. I don’t know who your father is, but it’s not me. She told me so herself.”

“Did she say who it was?”

Bo gave a deep belly laugh, shaking his head. “I doubt she ever even knew. Could be anyone. One of those actors, a truck driver passing through. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that Vera put out for the goddamned devil himself.”

Chapter 35

October 22, 2010

Brighton Falls, Connecticut

“H
OW IS SHE?”
B
O
asked, lower lip trembling slightly. “Your mother?”

Reggie studied the old man before her. He was shrunken, wrinkled, covered in liver spots. It was hard to imagine this was the same hulking, red-faced Bo Berr Reggie had confronted at the dealership twenty-five years ago.

Charlie had told her that his uncle Bo had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and wasn’t expected to last more than six months. Even if this man had been the killer back in 1985, Reggie couldn’t believe he’d have the strength and stamina to start up again now.

It seemed a strange coincidence to Reggie that both her mother and Bo were dying of cancer. Life had taken them each in such separate directions; now here they were, weak and sick, looking so much alike it gave Reggie goose bumps.

“Funny you should ask,” Reggie said. “Because the last time I remember you and I having a conversation about my mother, you didn’t seem all that concerned about her well-being.”

Time did not heal all wounds. Sometimes they just festered.

Bo nodded, looked away. His nose began to run, and he wiped at it with a dirty tissue.

“I’m dying, you know? Did my nephew tell you?”

Reggie gritted her teeth. She refused to pity him.

“I told her, Uncle Bo,” Charlie said. He was seated beside Reggie on the leather couch in Bo’s home office. Charlie was wearing jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt that looked brand-new, like he’d just picked it up at the music store in the mall when he stopped for guitar strings. It was a little tight, accentuating his paunchy belly. On the way over to Bo’s, he’d told Reggie that he’d restrung the old guitar, stayed up late into the night playing. He’d showed her raw-looking blistered fingers.

Bo’s wife, Frances, had let them in, told them Bo was expecting them. Charlie had arranged the meeting by phone, telling Bo that they had some questions.

The Berrs’ house was a sprawling one-story design with a curved glass block wall and a stucco exterior. Reggie remembered thinking how big and fancy it had seemed when they were kids. Now the stucco was crumbly, the glass blocks were chipped and grimy. There was a swimming pool in the back that Reggie could see from the office window—the cement was cracked, and it was half full of dark green, slimy-looking water. To the left of the swimming pool was the garage with the little apartment on the top floor where Rabbit had once stayed.

Bo cleared his throat noisily and hacked something thick into the tissue. Reggie felt her stomach flip-flop.

“What is it you want?” he asked quietly. His desk took up a third of the room and had a large, tinted glass top. It was covered in dirty tissues, cold cups of tea, and a couple of tourist brochures about Mexico.

Reggie launched right into it. “We talked with Rabbit. We know he was staying here when my mother was taken—that you were his NA sponsor and you worked with him through Second Chance. And I know damn well I saw my mother get into a tan car with a broken taillight at the bowling alley that night. Was it you?”

She fought the temptation to lean forward and shake the old man, slap his pale, sickly face over and over like a 1940s movie gangster—
Spill it, you dirty rat
—somehow force the truth out of him. Somewhere Tara was waiting in the dark, knowing that soon Neptune would come for her.

Bo sighed. “My wife, Frances, deserves a medal, you know. Putting up with me all these years. Taking care of me. Of Sidney.”

Reggie cringed when she heard Sid’s name. Was there a day that had gone by that she hadn’t thought of him?

Twenty-five years of guilt mixed with the acid in her stomach, churning, making her twist on the couch, trying to get comfortable. She turned to Charlie. He was stone-faced. How had he done it all these years—lived with what they’d done? Sid was his cousin. And they lived in the same town. Charlie hadn’t run the way she had. He’d found a way to live with what they did—to face it at every family gathering.

She remembered the dream she’d had long ago of finding a bug-size Vera pinned to a box with a collection of roaches. She felt like one of those insects now, trapped and on display.

“But you know what they say,” Bo went on. “You never get over your first love? Maybe that’s true.”

Reggie felt her face flush as she looked down at the ground, not wanting to catch Charlie’s eye. While she no longer felt anything for the man sitting beside her, a part of her still pined for that boy who smelled of fresh-cut grass and gasoline.

Reggie remembered the little Barbie shoe Tara carried around, the one she’d taken from Andrea McFerlin’s house. She thought of Andrea McFerlin’s two little girls, now grown women, and wondered if they’d learned to love properly, to feel safe in the world again.

“I was crazy for Vera,” Bo said. “Just crazy. But whatever I did, whatever I gave her”—his eyes turned steely, and Reggie saw a glimpse of the man he used to be—“it was never enough. Vera went off to New York and I married Frances. We made our choices.”

“But you asked her to come back,” Reggie said. “You said you’d leave your wife. It wasn’t over between you.”

Bo looked down at the top of his desk. “It should have been.”

Had Reggie ever loved anyone that much? There was Charlie, but that was puppy love. The truth was, Len was right: she’d never had the courage to love anyone down to the bones.

“Was it you?” Charlie asked his uncle. “Were you Neptune?”

Bo’s face contorted into a look of disgust. He coughed and hacked for a minute, pulled another tissue from the box. “No. I’m no killer. I’ve been a junkie, I’ve been unfaithful to my wife, hell, I’ve even cheated on my taxes, but I’ve never lifted a finger to hurt a lady.”

“Did you take Rabbit’s car that night?” Reggie asked, leaning forward, holding her breath.

Bo gave a slow nod and looked down. “Vera called me from the bowling alley. Said she’d been stood up and needed a ride. I told her to call a goddamn cab, but she said all she had was eighteen cents. In the end, I went. I didn’t want to take a chance of anyone recognizing me with her, so I left my car at home and took Rabbit’s. He never even knew.”

“So what happened?” Charlie asked. “What did she say? Where did you go?”

“We drove around. Vera was edgy, smoking a lot. We went to a drive-through, got some burgers and coffees. I asked her about the guy who’d stood her up, and all she said was that they were pretty serious, that he’d asked her to marry him. She said he was a real gentleman, someone important, with money. She wanted to know if I could picture her married.”

“And what did you say?” Reggie asked.

Bo snorted derisively.

“I told her the truth. She didn’t like that much.”

Reggie remembered the night her mother had curled up beside her in bed.
A nice, normal life. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, love?

“What happened next?” Reggie asked.

“I dropped her off at Runway 36. I wanted to go in with her, buy her a drink, but she sent me off on my way. That was the last time I saw her.”

“And the police never knew? Never figured out that it was you in that car?” Charlie asked.

Bo smiled, revealing yellowish teeth. “You know your dad, Charlie. He was a good cop. Maybe great. But he was loyal to his family. He knew it was me who took Vera from the bowling alley to Runway 36 that night. Hell, it didn’t take him long. He came to ask me about it the very next morning. But he kept it quiet. He knew I wasn’t the killer. Just like he knew you would never hurt anyone on purpose—right, Charlie?”

Charlie looked down at the floor.

There it was. All these years, Reggie had wondered if Bo knew what really happened to Sid that night. Reggie’s mind whirred. Did Stu keep Bo from pressing charges against all of them by hiding the fact that Bo was the driver of the infamous tan car?

“People make mistakes,” Bo said. “Your father understood that. He also understood that some mistakes could ruin lives. And when he could, he did his best to make sure that didn’t happen.”

T
HEY LEFT
B
O IN
his office, saying they could find their own way out. Bo coughed some more, waving them out of the room as Frances came in with a pill bottle and fresh glass of water. They paused in the hall, looking at photos of Bo and Stu, Sidney and Charlie, all of them looking impossibly young and happy, like the life that awaited them was just one big wonderful adventure.

“Do you believe him?” Charlie asked, running a hand through his thinning hair.

“Yeah,” Reggie said. “I do.”

“Me, too,” he said.

“So we’re still no closer to finding our mystery man,” Reggie said.

“If there even is one,” Charlie said. “I mean, maybe it really was random. Maybe Neptune wasn’t the guy she was going to marry, but some stranger who happened to see her that night at the bar.”

“Maybe,” Reggie admitted, feeling like the whole thing was hopeless. If it was truly random, then there was no chance of finding a clue that would lead them to Tara in time.

But that was the kicker wasn’t it: Tara. Why had the killer taken Tara? Why come out of hiding twenty-five years later and take another woman? The only logical explanation Reggie could come up with is that somehow or other, Tara got too close.

And then there was the wedding ring Vera had held on to—
Until death do us part June 20, 1985
. This was the biggest clue they had connecting the man she was going to marry with Neptune.

They continued down the hall, passing by the front room where Sid’s wheelchair was parked in front of the TV. There was a game show on, the contestants spinning a large roulette wheel.

Reggie froze, holding her breath as she studied Sid’s slumped shoulders, the way his hair, still curly and unkempt, fell over the back of his neck.

“I want to go say hello,” Reggie said.

“It won’t do any good. He won’t know you. He doesn’t remember.”

So this was how Charlie managed to live with the guilt, to go to family gatherings and face Sid over the Thanksgiving turkey—he told himself over and over that Sid didn’t remember. As if that made it all disappear somehow.

Reggie went into the room anyway while Charlie hovered in the doorway, hands dug into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Hi, Sid,” Reggie said, squatting down. He opened his eyes and stared at her vaguely. He was hunched over in the chair, held in by a fabric belt around his waist. A catheter tube came out of his sweatpants and into a clear plastic bag fastened to the side of the chair. The bag was nearly full with dark urine.

“Remember me? Reggie Dufrane?”

He blinked twice. A little string of drool dripped down onto his plain white T-shirt.

She reached out, put her hand on his, and gave it a squeeze. His hand was hot and sticky.

“I know you don’t remember, Sid, but I’m sorry. What happened, it was an accident, but—”

“Why’re you here?” he asked. Speaking seemed to be an effort, she could see the muscles of his face and neck tense and twitch as he pushed the words out. His voice was slow and creaky, like a box lid being opened, but she could understand him.