“Doesn’t have much choice,” Jerry said.
“I’m glad he found you.”
“That woman, she just fucked those kids up. Distorted every idea they ever had of love and trust. What Ike Tressler did to him was just the cherry on top.”
They stepped outside into a noisy, bright downtown day. People rushed by, bags beating time at their hips. A street prophet stood across the road and yelled, and a homeless woman shook her cup at Amanda as she passed.
On the sidewalk, Jerry shook their hands, saying he would call them if Reggie had any more information. He left them standing in the sun.
Larry looked ill at ease.
“I have something to do,” he told Amanda. “Can you keep yourself occupied for a few hours?”
“Sure. I have an errand close by,” she said.
He turned abruptly and wandered off. Amanda thought she had never seen anyone look more lonely.
Larry stood at the cemetery gates.
Blessed are the pure in heart, read the inscription above him. A statue of the Virgin Mary stood to the side, her hands outstretched. Someone had left a pacifier in her palm.
He held a clutch of flowers he had picked up from a roadside stand. It felt inadequate for what he was about to do. He had walked here across the lawns of the main cemetery, shadowed with trees. This part of the cemetery was very empty, and very quiet.
Taking a deep breath, he walked through the baby cemetery gate. The graves here were impossibly small. Toys had been piled on some, soaked with recent rains. Larry remembered the face of his wife as she looked up from the toilet, blood splashed on her thighs.
Trembling, he found the graves.
Palmer, said the stone. There were four tiny graves, one for each of the children they had lost. None had taken a breath. None had lived. All had been stillborn or lost before.
Once, as the end of her life drew near, Marjorie, blinded from pain, had turned to him and asked if he remembered. To his eternal shame and regret, he had pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about. It had been so long since she’d brought them up. For decades, she had come here alone. His wife, who developed such social anxiety she could barely leave the house, would still come here, her only outing in the final years of her life.
Not once had he come with her. Not once had he honored her request. He had put it off until she stopped asking. Once he had even yelled at her.I don’t want to go there! Will you just let it go?
Larry knelt, putting the paltry flowers on one of the graves. He hadn’t thought to buy four bouquets, and now he wondered if he should divide the flowers, so each lost child could have their own. He was prettysure they didn’t care now. The one who cared, whom he should have shepherded, was in an urn on his mantel back home. She was the one watching, thinking, Too late, Larry Palmer.
You are too late.
While Larry was visiting the dead, Amanda was at the Oregon Historical Society. While what Amanda wanted to know wasn’t specifically about the state, the researchers there had been an invaluable help in locating obscure information about Molly.
“There you are,” one of them said, waving, as Amanda entered. “I got that tooth you ordered.”
He pulled a polar bear tooth in a glass case from beneath his desk. The tooth was yellowed, with scratch marks on the surface.
This was the tooth from Molly’s mother. Amanda had located it in an obscure museum catalog, after Pete had told her about it.
“I wonder why they took it,” the historical society researcher said.
They both leaned over the handsome tooth, gleaming like ivory in its case.
“As a talisman,” she said, glancing up. “A lot of researchers approach their subject like a hunter with a big gun, ready to take a prize. They think if they say it’s for knowledge, it makes it all right.”
“It’s the attitude that counts,” the researcher said, smiling at her. He had wispy blond hair by his large ears, and pale blue drooping eyes.
“Is the tooth on loan?” she asked.
“I don’t think they really care,” he said. “It’s not considered to be of any value. It’s been tampered with, as you can see. Someone took filings, once. Probably trying to figure out her age.”
“That’s good to know,” Amanda said. “Because I’d like to do the same.”
