Caulfield:Building inspector?
Greene:Oh yeah. For the city, I think. Obviously now I doubt that he ever inspected a building in his life, unless maybe if he broke into one. Anyway, she wasn’t some kind of user. And she—she didn’t care about fancy things. Clothes or cars or jewelry or anything.
Hawkins:Okay. That’s helpful.
Durant:::heavy sigh::
Hawkins:::slight cough:: To your knowledge, did your mother ever break the law?
Greene:Not to my knowledge. I mean, sure—speeding, illegal parking, the sort of thing everyone does. ::brief pause:: Wait. Can you take that off the recording?
Hawkins:Yeah. Don’t worry about it.
Greene:If you’re asking whether I’m surprised that she apparently faked an entirely new identity and convinced some rich guy to buy an antique necklace that wasn’t real, my answer to that is yes. I never knew her to do anything like that. Honestly, the fact that she even cut her hair makes me . . .
:: long pause::
Hawkins: Makes you . . . ?
Greene:I don’t know. I don’t know what it makes me. She . . . shereallyloved her hair. I’m sure it sounds stupid to say—
Hawkins:It doesn’t.
Durant:Well, I mean. Maybe let her say it first, and then you can decide.
Caulfield:Jeez.
Durant:All right. Excuse me. I’ll stop. Carry on.
Greene:What I wasgoingto say is, she never changed her hair. She changed a lot of things about herself for guys, but not that, you know? It was maybe the one consistent thing about her. A non-disappearing thing.
Caulfield:Maybe it was a wig.
Greene:That’s true. Maybe it was a wig.
Hawkins:I suppose I wonder—if you’re comfortable answering, I mean—you’ve said your mom wasn’t motivated by money. That she didn’t have a criminal background. But do you think she was capable of this? Running a con?
:: long pause::
Greene:I guess if you would have asked me before I saw that picture, I probably would have said no. Once I realized the man she’d left with was Lynton Baltimore, it’s not as if I thought she ran off with him because she wanted to do crimes. I thought she ran off because she was in love again.
Hawkins:But now you see it differently?
Greene:I suppose I always saw that when my mom was in love with someone, she was capable of doing terrible things. Leaving me. Leaving Tegan.
:: long pause, indistinct shuffling::
Hawkins:Do you want to stop?
Greene:No. I’m fine.
:: glass clinking::
Greene:::clears throat:: I guess after seeing that picture, I think—I think when it comes to being in love with someone, maybe my mom was pretty much capable of anything.
Chapter 24
Jess
