The walls were white.
White canvases in white frames lined the walls, and somehow Fogel was certain if she inspected one closely, she would find those canvases weren’t blank, but painted white with careful strokes. Soft piano music came forth from hidden speakers. She recognized it as “Der Hölle Rache” from Mozart’sThe Magic Flute. One of her mother’s favorites.
“May I help you?”
This came from a reception desk at the back of the lobby, behind a waiting area made up of two white leather couches, four matching white leather chairs, and assorted white tables on a white rug.
The lobby should have felt incredibly bright but the lights were just low enough to compensate.
Fogel approached the desk and took out her ID. “I’m Detective Fogel, with the Pittsburgh Police Department. I’d like to speak to whoever is in charge.”
The receptionist, a woman in her mid-twenties with long blonde hair and green eyes, smiled up at Fogel. She wore a white blazer over a white blouse, and although Fogel couldn’t see under the desk, she was certain the woman had on a matching skirt and shoes as well. “Do you have an appointment?”
“I’m with Homicide. I don’t have an appointment, but I need to speak to someone right away.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Homicide? Has there been a murder?”
“I’m not at liberty to provide details. This is an active investigation.”
“I understand.” She smiled and picked up her phone, dialing a number with slender fingers tipped in white nail polish. Speaking softly into the receiver, she listened for a moment, then hung up. “Please take a seat, Detective Fogel. Someone will be with you shortly. Help yourself to coffee or pastries. The baklava is simply delightful.”
“Thank you.”
Fogel walked over to the waiting area and dropped down into the large, white couch.
Coffee service, donuts, and assorted pastries filled the table at the center of the furniture. There was also a generous supply of flavored creamers, sugars, and artificial sweeteners. She poured herself a cup of coffee, black, then frowned when she realized it was ice cold. The pastries (including the famous baklava) looked like they had been out there a while, too. Mold crept up over the edges of the bagels.
5
There are times in your life when you think you know what comes next. Instances of predicability, sameness. Times when your next step is as known to you as the last, and you take those steps with confidence, knowing nothing horrific waits for you in the shadows ahead. You venture forth as if you read the last page of a book and can go back and read the rest from the beginning, knowing without a doubt where the story would go, while still taking comfort in the journey.
I spent the preceding eighteen years of my life operating with the certainty that my parents were dead. I visited their graves. I spoke to them. I prayed for them. Always gone, always something of the past. I knew their faces only from old photographs and dreams, and the sound of their voices eluded me like the waters of a fast-running creek. I made peace with my parent’s deaths long before I understood what that really meant. When you lose your parents at such an early age, it simplyis. You know and understand nothing else. Auntie Jo always told me I should be grateful I had been so young. Both her parents died when she was an adult, and the vividness of those memories haunted her nightly.
I never told her about my dream, my personal haunting.
A dream I now knew to be not a dream at all, but the chaotic memories of a child.
If I had told her about the dream, would she have confessed my father was still alive?
Would she have broken down in tears and told me that was really why she hated him so much? My mother died, and he lived? She, this aunt who raised me as her own, part of a cover-up all these years?
Would she have called him a coward? Said he ran away? Might as well be dead?
How I wish I could have spoken to her about all of this. I hated her for keeping the truth from me, yet I loved her for protecting me, and both of those things seemed to be one and the same.
The gravel of the driveway crunched under our tires.
Stella held the pamphlet we found back at the welcome center in her hand, and she gripped it in such a way the paper crinkled.
A large, old house appeared on our left, peeking out from around the tall maples and alders, their branches swaying lazily in the early morning breeze. A hand-painted sign on a short post read Guest Parking, with an arrow pointing to the left. On our right stood a woodshed with enough cut logs stacked against the outer walls to last at least three cold winters. Beyond the shed was a garden, fenced high to keep out the deer and other wildlife. There were fruit trees, too. Apples and pears, mostly.
The gravel driveway opened up into a concrete parking pad on the left, then wound deeper into the property, toward another house, newer than the first, this one perched on a slight hill at the edge of the cliff overlooking the waters of Puget Sound and the shipping lanes a hundred feet below.
“This is breathtaking,” Stella said.
A white picket fence ran along the outer edge of the yard. There had to be four, maybe five acres. “How can he afford all this? This can’t be the right place.”
“Park over there.” Stella pointed toward the guest spaces.
