Buch lesen: «Someone Like Her»

CHAPTER ONE

“EVERY TABLE FULL except the reserved one, and it’s a Tuesday.” Carrying two glasses of iced tea, Mabel paused to grin at Lucy Peterson. “Those new soups are a hit.”

She continued into the crowded dining room of the café. Lucy, who had just finished ringing up a customer, looked around with satisfaction. Mabel was right. Business kept getting better and better.

The bell over the door rang. Lucy’s head turned as her guest slipped in, her carriage confident, her gaze shy. The hat lady.

Last time Lucy had seen her, the day before yesterday, she’d carried herself decorously and yet with regal authority. The pillbox hat had said it all. She was often Queen Elizabeth—the second, she always emphasized. She didn’t actually look much like Queen Elizabeth II, being slender rather than matronly in build, with hair that had been blond when she first appeared in Middleton, perhaps ten years ago. Now her hair was primarily white, as wispy and flyaway as the woman whose head it crowned.

But today, she wore a flower-printed dress and a broad-brimmed hat festooned with flowers. Her face was softer, her carriage more youthful, her gaze vaguer.

This was always the awkward moment. Lucy had to pretend she knew who Middleton’s one and only homeless person was. Calling her by the wrong name seemed so insulting.

Talk in the café hadn’t dimmed at all. Everyone knew the hat lady was a project of Lucy’s. Lucy’s Aunt Marian called, “Your majesty,” and resumed her one-sided conversation with Uncle Sidney, who almost never said a word, and failed entirely to notice the hat lady’s astonished stare.

Lucy went to her and said in a gentle voice, “I’m so glad you could come to lunch today. Your table’s right here, by the window. Did you see the crocus are blooming?”

The hat lady smiled at her, her face crinkling with pleasure. “God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.”

Okay. It was a clue. She still had a British accent, which was mostly a given, although not long ago she’d been Elizabeth Taylor, the accent wholly American. She had an astonishing gift for accents; a few months ago, she’d done a splendid Eliza Doolittle, starting with a nearly indecipherable Cockney accent skillfully revised over several weeks until she spoke with a pure, somewhat stilted upper-crust accent worthy of the most carefully tutored student.

Lucy had taken to rereading English literature and watching classic films so she wouldn’t be completely lost every time the hat lady changed personas.

“Please. Sit down.” Lucy gestured her to the tiny table for two in front of the bow window, which she’d reserved especially for the hat lady. Yellow and purple crocuses bloomed in the windowbox outside. Her shopping cart, neatly packed, was parked on the sidewalk where she could see it. That was why Lucy always saved the window seat for her. “Would you care for tea?”

“Please.”

She gazed with seeming delight and no boredom out the window until Lucy returned with a teapot, loose tea steeping inside. One did not offer the hat lady tea improperly made.

From the menu she chose only soup and a scone. Lucy had tried persuading her to have a hearty meal when she was here, but had never succeeded.

“Won’t you join me?” she did ask, with vague surprise as if unaware there was a busy restaurant around them, and that Lucy was in charge.

“I might sit down with you for a moment a little later,” she promised. Her friend had aged noticeably these past few months, Lucy noted with dismay. Her spine was as straight as ever, her pinkie finger extended as she sipped tea, but she must have lost weight. She seemed frail today. If only she could be persuaded to settle into a rented room! Hiding her worry, Lucy asked, “How are you?”

She tilted her face up. Her blue eyes, fading like her hair, seemed unusually perceptive all of a sudden, as if she saw the doubts and unhappiness Lucy scarcely acknowledged even to herself. In a voice too low for anyone at neighboring tables to hear, she said, “I might ask you the same.”

Lucy’s mouth opened and closed.

After a moment, the cornflower-blue eyes softened, looked inward, and she murmured, “Did you know the sorrow comes with the years?”

“I…” Something seemed to clog Lucy’s throat. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

This smile seemed to forgive her. “Grief may be joy misunderstood.”

Oh! That line she’d heard. Somewhere, sometime. It had to have been written, or said, by a Beth, or Liza, Lizbet, or Elizabeth…Yes! Lucy thought in triumph. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Of course. The hat lady was very fond of her poetry. Only, the first couple of things she said had seemed so sensible, if also profound, Lucy hadn’t recognized them as poetry.

“Miss Browning,” she said, “I’m so glad you could join me today.”

She meant to get back to the hat lady and sit with her, as promised. She did. But the kitchen ran out of spinach, and she had to race to Safeway for more, then Aunt Marian expressed her opinion at some length on the very peculiar soup—which was delicious, but she did miss the split pea Lucy used to offer. And then Samantha, Lucy’s youngest and most compatible sister, who had recently opened a bed-and-breakfast inn, suggested they join together to put on a murder mystery weekend, with the guests staying at Doveport B and B and Lucy catering the meals. Samantha had scarcely left than Lucy’s niece Bridget came in to apply to be a waitress, her air of defiance suggesting to Lucy that Bridget’s mother hadn’t liked the idea of her working. Bridget was resisting the idea of staying close to home after graduation and doing her first two years at the community college in Port Angeles rather than going away. Was she trying to earn enough to pay a significant part of her own expenses? If so, there was no doubt whose side Lucy was on.

Still, she wished every decision she made didn’t have family repercussions. The tiniest stone spread ripples of gossip, hurt feelings, righteous indignation. That was the problem with having such a large family who all lived so close by. Making a face, Lucy thought wistfully, Why can’t one side or the other live in Minneapolis or Houston instead? Anywhere but here?

Dad’s family, by preference. His sister, her Aunt Lynn, was a particular trial. Come to think of it, Lucy didn’t like most of her cousins on Dad’s side, either.

The trouble was, Dad had a sister and a brother, who had kids, all of whom had already started families of their own. Mom had two sisters, and they had kids, and…Aagh! There was a reason Lucy had yearned to leave Middleton for most of her life.

She ran the cash register as the full restaurant gradually emptied, and by the time she thought to look at the small table in the bow window, it was empty. Erin, another employee, was starting to clear it, and Lucy was disappointed to see that the soup bowl was half-full, and Miss Browning hadn’t even finished her scone.

Oh, dear, she thought. If only the hat lady would fill up when she was here. Or take leftovers in a doggie bag. She accepted invitations to dine, but wouldn’t come more than a couple of times a week. Lucy knew that she did get food elsewhere. George, down at Safeway, saw to it that expired canned goods and slightly wilted produce got set outside the back door when the hat lady’s route took her that way. And Winona Carlson, who ran the Pancake Haus out by the highway, fed her breakfast at least another couple of days a week. Still…When Lucy thought about the hat lady—gentle, whimsical, yet somehow sad—she worried.

Today, though, she was too busy to do more than shake her head and feel slightly guilty that she hadn’t made time to sit down, if only for a minute or two. Then she went back to work in the kitchen, prepping for dinner.

Hands busy, she let her mind wander. That one achingly perceptive look from the hat lady set her to analyzing why she’d felt so down lately.

Of course, she knew in part: this wasn’t the life she’d dreamed of having. Like her niece Bridget, she’d been sure she would leave Middleton behind and never be back except for visits. But after college she’d let herself get enveloped again by family. First a job at the café, the chance to be creative in the kitchen and the pleasure of seeing how her food was received. Wan lettuce and all-American comfort foods were gradually replaced by wraps, spinach andromaine salads and her signature soups. When the opportunity to buy the café came up, she’d still told herself this didn’t have to be permanent. She’d improve business and make a profit when she sold the café in turn. Perhaps she could start a restaurant in Seattle or San Francisco, or get a job as an executive chef.

Her hands went still as her chest filled with something very like panic. All of a sudden she had a terrible urge to turn the sign on the door to Closed, scrap preparation for dinner and just…run away.

Lucy grimaced. She was far too responsible to do any such thing. Okay, then; why not put the café up for sale and use the proceeds to travel for a couple of years? Give in to all the yearnings that made her so restless. Spend a year traveling between hostels in…Romania. Or Swaziland. Or…

The hat lady’s face popped into her mind, and a smile curved her mouth. England. How silly of me! Of course it has to be the British Isles. Images of thatched roofs and hedgerows, church spires and castle towers rose before her mind’s eye. Perhaps she would bike between villages, staying as long as she chose in each. She’d have to start over financially when she came home, if she ever came home, but she was young. At least she’d have lived a little before she settled into being a small-town businesswoman.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning would certainly approve.

Only a pair of tourists sat in front eating pie in the late afternoon when the front door opened so precipitously, the bell rattled and banged against the glass. Startled, Lucy let the dough she’d been kneading drop and peered over the divider between the kitchen and dining room.

It was George who’d rushed in, expression distraught. George, fifty-five and counting the years until retirement, who Lucy had believed had only one speed: measured, deliberate. George, who now let the door slam behind him with a bang.

“Lucy! Did you hear?”

Hands covered with flour, she used her shoulder to push the swinging door open and go into the dining room. She was vaguely aware that both the tourists and gray-haired Mabel, who was wiping down tables, had turned to stare. “Hear? Hear what?”

“The hat lady was hit crossing the highway.” His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked as if he might cry. “She was pushing her shopping cart, and apparently didn’t look. God.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “She’s not dead, but it doesn’t sound good.”

“Did they take her to the hospital?”

He nodded.

“But…she doesn’t have insurance.”

A silly thing to say, since the hat lady also didn’t have a name. Not a real name, one that was her own for sure.

“I didn’t hear anybody quibbling.” So he’d been to the hospital.

Lucy took a deep breath. “I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”

He nodded and left, perhaps to spread the word further.

Lucy called for Mabel to take over the dough, and remembered another line written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose poetry she, too, had loved, back when she was romantic and firmly believed her path would take her far from too familiar Middleton.

Life, struck sharp on death,

Makes awful lightning.

ADRIAN RUTLEDGE was immersed in the notes his associates had made on legal precedents for a complex case that would be coming to trial next month when his phone rang. He glanced at it irritably; he’d asked Carol, his administrative assistant, not to interrupt him until his three o’clock appointment.

He reached for the phone immediately, however. She wouldn’t have bothered him without good reason.

“Yes?”

She cleared her throat. “Mr. Rutledge, there’s a woman here who doesn’t have an appointment.”

His eyebrows rose. People without appointments rarely bothered a partner in a rarified Seattle law firm. If they did, Carol was quite capable of sending them on their way.

“She says it’s about your mother.”

“My mother,” he repeated. He felt as if he were sounding out a word in Farsi or Mandarin, a language utterly foreign to him. Yeah, he knew what a mother was; yeah, he’d had one, but at this moment he couldn’t picture her face.

“Yes, sir.” Carol’s generally crisp tones were hesitant.

“What about my mother?” he asked.

She cleared her throat again. “This woman…ah, Ms. Peterson, says she’s in the hospital and needs you.”

In the hospital? That meant…she was alive? His heart did a peculiar stutter. Adrian had assumed she was dead. Maybe preferred thinking she was.

Oh, hell, he thought in disgust, this was probably some kind of hoax. Still, he didn’t seem to have any choice but to hear her out. “Send her in,” he ordered, and hung up.

The wait seemed long. When the door did open, he saw Carol first, elegant in a sleek black suit and heels that made the most of her legs. He quit noticing his administrative assistant the moment the other woman walked in. Nor was he aware of Carol quietly closing the door behind her. He couldn’t take his eyes from this unexpected visitor.

He guessed her age as late twenties. Lacking the style of an average urban high schooler, she was as out of place as a girl from small-town Iowa wandering into the big city for the first time. Of middle height and slender, she wore a dress, something flowery that came nearly to her knees. Bare legs, flat shoes. Her hair, a soft, mousy brown, was parted in the middle and partially clipped back. He doubted she wore any makeup at all, which was too bad; she might be beautiful after a few hours at a good salon. It was her eyes that he reacted to, despite himself. Huge and blue, they devoured his face as she crossed the room, the intensity enough to make him shift in his seat.

Adrian had never seen her in his life, and couldn’t imagine how she’d found him.

Showing no emotion, he held out a hand. “I’m Adrian Rutledge.”

She shook with utter composure. “My name’s Lucy Peterson.”

“Ms. Peterson.” He gestured at a chair. “Please. Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” She sat, smoothing her skirt over her knees.

She didn’t look like his mother. He realized that had been his first fear; that he had an unknown half sister. Not that children always did look like their parents, he reminded himself. The possibility was still on the table.

“What can I do for you?”

“I assume you know nothing of your mother’s whereabouts.”

Dark anger rose in him at this blunt beginning. Who the hell was she to sit in judgment on him? And she was, he could tell, despite her careful tone.

“And you know this because…?”

“I live over on the peninsula. Your mother has been homeless in my town for the past ten years. I’m reasonably certain no family has visited her or offered any support.”

What in hell?

Adrian sat back in his leather desk chair. After a moment, he said, “You’re correct in thinking I have no contact with my mother. But tell me just why it is that you believe some homeless woman is my mother? Did she give you my name?”

This Lucy Peterson shook her head. “No. After she was in the accident, I searched her things. It wasn’t easy.” She seemed to assume he’d care. “She had a shopping cart, but she also had several stashes around town. She liked clothes. And hats. Especially hats. We called her the hat lady.” She paused, as if embarrassed.

Between one blink and the next, Adrian saw a park, maybe—lots of lawn, flowering trees in the background. His mother barefoot and twirling, a cotton skirt swirling bell-like, her arms flung out in exuberance. She was laughing; he could almost hear the laugh, openly joyous. And see the hat, broad-brimmed and encircled with flowers. The image seemed skewed, as if he’d been dizzy, and he suspected he might have been twirling, too.

He stamped down on the memory. Unclenching his jaw, he asked hoarsely, “What did you find?”

In answer, she bent to open the purse she’d set at her feet and removed a white envelope. “A very old driver’s license,” she said, and handed it to him.

In shock, he stared at his mother’s face. She was so pretty. He’d forgotten. Department of Motor Vehicles photos were usually god-awful, the equivalent of mug shots, but hers was the exception. A soft smile curved her mouth, although her eyes looked sad. Honey-blond, wavy hair was cut, flapper style, at chin length. She’d had beautiful cheekbones, a small, straight nose and that mouth, a cupid’s bow.

He forced himself to read the information: Elizabeth H. Rutledge, the expiration date—one year after she disappeared from his life—and the basic stats, hair blond, height five foot five, weight 118, eyes blue.

Not as blue as Lucy Peterson’s, he thought involuntarily, looking up.

He had no idea what his face showed, but those eyes were filled with compassion as she handed him something else. As he accepted it involuntarily he looked down, and experienced a spasm of agony. The photograph had faded and cracked, but he remembered the moment. They had dressed for church, and his grandmother had snapped it. His father was tall and stern, but his arm wrapped his wife protectively. She wore a pretty, navy-blue dress with a wide red belt, and on her head was a hat, this one a small red cloche with only a feather decorating it. And he…he stood beside her, his arm about her waist, her hand resting on his shoulder. He remembered feeling proud and mature and yet filled with some anxiety, as though there had been a family quarrel earlier. He might have been seven or eight, his dark hair slicked firmly into place, the suit and white shirt and tie a near match to his father’s. He could just make out the house behind them, the one in Edmonds where they’d lived, painted sunny yellow with white trim, the yard brimming with flowers.

He was speechless. His mother had left him, and never once in all the intervening years made contact, yet she’d kept and treasured this photo?

Not just the photo—Lucy was handing over yet one more memento, this one made of red construction paper. On the front was a drawing, the next best thing to stick figures, an adult and a child seemingly holding hands. A woman, because she wore a skirt. His mother, because she also wore a hat festooned with…God. Those had to be flowers. And beneath, in big, uneven letters that suggested he might have been in kindergarten or first grade, it said “Mom and me.”

As if through a time warp, he heard his own voice say, “Mom and me are going to the park.” And don’t try to stop us, the defiance in the words suggested. As if he had an eye pressed to a kaleidoscope that spun dizzily, he saw scene after scene, all accompanied by his voice, younger, older, in between, saying, “Mom and me are gonna…” She was his playmate, his best friend, his charge. He stayed close to her. He took care of her.

Until she disappeared, the summer he wasn’t home to take care of her.

“God,” he whispered, and let the card fall to the desk. He bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Lucy Peterson sat silent, letting him process all of this.

He felt as if he’d just been in a car accident. No warning; another vehicle running a red light, maybe, slamming into his. This was the moment of silence afterward, when he sat stunned, trying to decide if he was injured, knowing he’d start hurting any minute.

He lifted his head and said fiercely, “And you know this…homeless person is her? Elizabeth Rutledge.”

Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “I had no idea, until I found the driver’s license. I guessed her name was Elizabeth. She always went by some variant of it. But that’s all any of us knew.”

“She didn’t tell you her name?”

“She…took on different names. All famous people, or fictional ones. I think she believed she was them, for a while. I never saw the moment of transition. One day she’d be Elizabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice, you know, and then Queen Elizabeth. Not the first,” she added hastily. “She said Queen Bess was bloodthirsty. Elizabeth the second.”

“I’m surprised she wasn’t the Queen Mother,” he said involuntarily.

“Because of the hats? But she wasn’t an Elizabeth, and your mother didn’t take on any persona that wasn’t.”

Abruptly he heard the verb tense she was using. Took on. She believed. Not takes on, or believes.

“I thought you said she was in the hospital.”

She looked startled. “I did.”

“You’re talking about her as if she’s dead.”

“Oh.” Once again she worried the lip, as if she often did. “I’m sorry. It’s just…the prognosis isn’t very good, I’m afraid. She’s in a coma.”

When he asked, she told him what had happened. That she’d been pushing her shopping cart across the highway, probably on her way to the Safeway store on the other side. The car that hit her had been going too fast, the police had determined, but she had likely been in her own world and hadn’t looked before starting across, either.

“She was sent flying twenty feet. The cart…” She swallowed. “It was flattened. Her things strewn everywhere. That was over a week ago. She hasn’t stirred since. There was swelling in her brain at first, of course, but they drilled into her skull to relieve it. Which sounds gruesome, but…”

He nodded jerkily. “I understand.”

“The thing is, until now it never occurred to any of us to try to find her family. I’m ashamed that it didn’t. We tried to take care of her, as much as she’d let us, but…She was just a fixture. You know? Now I wonder, if I’d pushed her—”

“If she didn’t know who she was, how could she tell you?”

“But she must have remembered something, or she wouldn’t have held on to those. Oh, and these rings.” She took them from the envelope and dropped them into his outstretched hand.

A delicate gold wedding band, and an engagement ring with a sizeable diamond. Undoubtedly his father’s choice. Adrian remembered it digging into his palm when he grabbed at his mother’s hand.

He wanted to feel numb. “She could have sold these.”

“It wasn’t just the rings she was holding on to,” Lucy said softly, her gaze on them. “She was holding on to who she was. On to you.”

“I haven’t heard from her in twenty-three years.” He felt sick and angry, and the words were harsh.

“Do you think she didn’t love you?”

He hated seeing the pity in her eyes. Jaw tightening, he said, “Let’s get back to facts. Where is she?”

“Middleton Community Hospital. Middleton’s not far off Highway 101, over the Hood Canal Bridge.”

He nodded, already calculating what he had to cancel. Of course, he’d want to transfer her to a Seattle hospital rather than leave her in the hands of a small-town doctor, but first he had to get over there and assess the situation.

“I was hoping you might come,” Lucy said.

Glancing at the clock, he said, “I’ll be there by evening. I have to clear my schedule and pack a few things.”

He saw the relief on her face, and knew she hadn’t been sure how he’d react. He might not be willing to drop everything and come running, had his mother walked out on her family for another man, say, or for mercenary reasons. As it was, he might never know why she’d gone, but it was clear she was mentally ill. His childish self had known she wasn’t quite like other mothers. Even then, she’d battled depression and a tendency to hear voices and see people no one else saw.

Schizophrenia, he’d guessed coldly as an adult, and still guessed. Her reasons for whatever she’d done were unlikely to make sense to anyone but her. There might be nothing he could do for her now, but she was his obligation and no one else’s.

He rose to his feet. “You can tell her doctor to expect me.”

She nodded, thanked him rather gravely, and left, apparently satisfied by the success of her errand.

He called Carol and told her to cancel everything on his book for the rest of the week. Then, with practiced efficiency, he began to pack his briefcase. Hospital visiting hours would be limited. Once he’d seen the doctor, he could get plenty done in his hotel room.