He makes a phone call and then ushers me to the elevator without another word.
When it opens, I’m greeted by another woman in a maid’s uniform, who ushers me into a foyer.
“You have something you’d like to say about my daughter?”
I blink, and like an apparition, a waif of a woman appears. She is nothing like Scarlett. Her face is severe, and she is cold. Too tall and too thin and I’ve left a bitter taste in her mouth already.
She appraises me, in my jeans and faded tee shirt, like a bag of trash was just dropped at her doorstep. And in her hand is a checkbook.
This isn’t right.
None of this is right.
Scarlett in this place. Touching any of these things. Wearing these clothes. Talking to this woman who is nothing like my mammy.
“Well?” she says.
“Can we start over?” I ask. “My name’s Rory Brodick, Mrs. Albright.”
“I don’t care who you are,” she snaps. “What do you want to say about my daughter?”
I give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s a mother who has lost her daughter. I can only imagine what these last twelve years must have been like for her, wondering and waiting for her to come home. I need to believe that this is what turned her so bitter.
“Actually,” I say, “I was hoping that ye might be able to tell me some things about your daughter. I’d like to help.”
She shakes her head.
“You aren’t a reporter,” she says. “Or a New Yorker, for that matter. Where are you from?”
“I live in Boston.”
She sighs and gives me a resigned nod.
“I figured as much.”
She places the checkbook down on the table and scrawls in a dramatic fashion before she pauses to look up at me.
“How much?”
“Pardon me?”
“How much is it going to cost to keep you quiet?” she demands.
“I only want to help,” I tell her. “I’m just looking for some answers.”
“I have none to give you,” she says. “And if you keep poking around in this, you won’t get a cent from me.”
“Do ye not have any desire to know what happened to your daughter?” I ask.
“I know what happened to my daughter,” she says. “She had social deficits from the very beginning. She didn’t want to listen. She was too wrapped up in herself to care about what was important. And now she’s ruined this family, living like trash the way that she is.”
“You must be bloody joking me,” I snarl back at her. “You knew she was alive?”
“Of course I know.” A dry sound puffs from her mouth.
“But the case…”
“The media doesn’t need to know about this,” Mrs. Albright states with finality. “They’re better off thinking she’s dead. And so are we, for that matter. So tell me how much it’s going to cost for you to keep your mouth shut.”
