she said. “To Benny Pellway. He’s doing twenty to life in the state pen for armed robbery.”
I didn’t need to take notes. The Damn Fool’s Guide to a Photographic Memory. “He’s Gillian’s biological father?” I asked.
Helen lifted her ponytail off her neck and fixed it to the top of her head with a pink squeeze-clip. “Yes,” she said.
“Are there any other children in the family?”
Helen shook her head, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “No,” she replied. “Vince and I were talking about having a baby, though.”
“Where does Vince work?” I was miles behind the police, I knew, but I could still ask his fellow employees what kind of man he was. And it was always possible that Tucker and the others might have missed something.
“He was between jobs,” Helen said. Her chin jutted out a little way, as though she expected me to denounce Vince Erland as a bum, and she was prepared to defend him.
“How far between?” I asked.
“He worked for a furniture company, delivering couches and stuff, until about six months ago,” she said. “Then he got downsized.”
“Do you have any family pictures or albums or anything?” Except for Jesus and the disciples, the paneled walls were bare.
Helen sniffled, got up out of the chair and opened the cabinet under the TV. Brought out several framed school photos of Gillian, along with a couple of thick albums.
“I had to put them away,” she said, referring to the shots of a smiling Gillian, posing against a plain blue background.
“I understand,” I told her.
Gillian began to rock slowly in her little chair.
“It’s the oddest thing, the way that chair moves on its own sometimes,” Helen said.
“Probably a draft,” I answered, unable to look at her.
“Probably,” Helen agreed with a sigh.
I turned to the albums. There weren’t a lot of pictures, and most of them were old. In one, a couple in sixties garb stood beaming in front of what looked like the same double-wide we were sitting in.
“My mom and dad,” Helen explained, her face softening. “This was their place. It was new back then.”
I swallowed, thinking of my own dead parents. “They’re both gone?”
“Both gone,” Helen confirmed.
I flipped more pages. Helen, growing up. Helen, on horseback, then dressed for a dance, then graduating from high school. Helen, standing with a smarmy-looking guy in a wife-beater shirt and cutoff jeans, holding a baby in her arms.
Benny Pellway looked like the kind of guy who ought to be doing twenty to life in the state pen. I decided to make sure he hadn’t escaped. Shortcut: ask Tucker. The police would have checked that first thing.
After that, the snapshots were mostly of Gillian, usually sitting alone on a blanket, clutching a ragged stuffed dog.
“She always wanted a pet,” Helen said with painful regret. She’d been leaning in her recliner so she could see the pictures, too.
Gillian signed a word, and I was pretty sure it was dog.
My throat squeezed shut again. “She’s here,” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying that—it just came out of my mouth.
“What?” Helen asked, blinking.
I figured she was about to throw me out, but it was too late to backtrack. “I can see Gillian,” I said. “She’s sitting in the little rocking chair by the fireplace.”
Helen turned in that direction. Signed something.
Gillian duplicated the sign eagerly.
I love you.
I hadn’t gotten very far in my studies, but I knew that one.
My heart sort of caved in on itself.
Helen got up, walked toward the chair.
Gillian instantly vanished.
What did that mean? I wondered.
I knew Gillian wasn’t afraid of Helen Erland. She obviously liked to be with her, wanted very much to get her attention somehow. Maybe just to say goodbye.
“Is she still here?” Helen wondered softly.
“No,” I said.
Helen, standing in the middle of the living room now, turned to study me narrowly. “Are you some kind of psychic or something?”
“No.”
“But you saw my Gillian?”
I nodded. Looked up at the electric Jesus picture and had a sudden, strange urge to plug it in. “Yes.”
“Can you talk to her?”
“She doesn’t speak, but she reads my lips sometimes. And she wrote ‘Mom’ in the dust on the dashboard of my car yesterday. That’s why I came into the store. Because she wanted to see you.”
Helen’s legs buckled, and she dropped heavily to the floor, landing on her knees.
I knew she hadn’t fainted, so I stayed where I was. Waited.
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