No Time for Goodbye Part 6

It appeared to be some guy going to work.

I stood there another moment, watched as Grace was swallowed up by a throng of fellow students, and felt a sadness wash over me. In Cynthia's world, everyone was plotting to take away your loved ones.

Maybe, if I hadn't been thinking that way, I'd have had a bit more of a spring in my step as I walked back in the direction of home. But as I approached our house, I tried to shake off my gloominess, to put myself into a better frame of mind. My wife, after all, was waiting for me, very likely under the covers.

So I sprinted the remainder of the last block home, walked briskly up the driveway, and as I came through the front door I called out, "I'm baaaaaack."

There was no response.

I thought that had to mean Cynthia was already in bed, waiting for me to come upstairs, but as I hit the base of the stairs I heard a voice from the kitchen.

"In here," Cynthia said. Her voice was subdued.

I stood in the doorway. She was sitting at the kitchen table, the phone in front of her. Her face seemed drained of color.

"What?" I asked.

"There was a call," Cynthia said quietly.

"Who from?"

"He didn't say who he was."

"Well, what did he want?"

"All he said was he had a message."

"What kind of message?"

"He said they forgive me."

"What?"

"My family. He said they forgive me for what I did."

7.

I sat down next to Cynthia at the kitchen table. I put one hand over hers and could feel her shaking. "Okay," I said, "just try to remember what he said exactly." Cynthia at the kitchen table. I put one hand over hers and could feel her shaking. "Okay," I said, "just try to remember what he said exactly."

"I told you," she said, clipping her words. She bit into her upper lip, then, "He said-okay, wait a minute." She pulled herself together. "The phone rang and I said h.e.l.lo, and he said, 'Is this Cynthia Bigge?' Which threw me, calling me by that name, but I said it was. And he said, I couldn't believe he said this, he said, 'Your family, they forgive you.'" She paused. "'For what you did.'

"I didn't know what to say. I think I just asked him who he was, what he was talking about."

"Then what did he say?"

"He didn't say anything else. He just hung up." A solitary tear ran down Cynthia's cheek as she looked into my face. "Why would he say something like that? What does he mean, they forgive me?"

"I don't know," I said. "It's probably some nut. Some nut who saw the show."

"But why would a person call and say something like that? What would the point be?"

I pulled the phone over closer to me. It was the only high-tech one we had in the house, with a small caller-ID display screen.

"Why would he say my family forgives me? What does my family think I did? I don't understand. And if they think I did something to them, then how can they even tell me they forgive me? It doesn't make any sense, Terry."

"I know. It's crazy." My eyes were on the phone. "Did you see where the call was coming from?"

"I looked and it didn't say, and then when he hung up I tried to check the number."

I pressed the b.u.t.ton that displayed the call history. There was no record of a call in the last few minutes.

"It's not showing anything," I said.

Cynthia sniffed, wiped the tear from her cheek, and leaned over the phone. "I must have...what did I do? When I went to check where the call came from, I pressed this b.u.t.ton to save it."

"That's how you delete it," I said.

"What?"

"You deleted the last call from the history," I said.

"Oh s.h.i.t," Cynthia said. "I was so fl.u.s.tered, I was upset, I just didn't know what I was doing."

"Sure," I said. "So, this man, what did he sound like?"

Cynthia wasn't listening to my question. She had a vacant look on her face. "I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I deleted the number. But nothing showed up on the screen anyway. You know when it says it's an unknown number?"

"Okay, let's not worry about that anymore. But the man, what did he sound like?"

Cynthia half raised her hands in a gesture of futility. "It was just a man. He was talking kind of low, like maybe he was trying to disguise it, you know. But there wasn't really anything." She paused, then her eyes flashed with an idea. "Maybe we should call the phone company. They might have a record of the call, maybe they'd even have a recording of it."

"They don't keep recordings of everybody's phone calls," I said, "no matter what some people may think. And what are we going to tell them? It was one isolated call, from a nut who probably saw the show. He didn't threaten you, he didn't even use obscene language."

I slipped an arm around Cynthia's shoulder. "Just...don't worry about it. Too many people know about what happened to you. It can make you a target. You know what we should look into?"

"What?"

"An unlisted number. We could get an unlisted number, then we wouldn't get calls like this."

Cynthia shook her head. "No, we're not doing that."

"I don't think it costs that much more, and besides-"

"No, we're not doing it."

"Why not?"

She swallowed. "Because when they are ready to call, when my family finally decides to get in touch, they have to be able to reach me."

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I had a free period after lunch, so I slipped out of the school, drove across town to Pamela's, and went inside the store with four takeout cups of coffee.

It's not what you'd call a high-end clothing store, and Pamela Forster, who at one time was Cynthia's best friend in high school, was not aiming for a young, hip clientele. The racks were filled with fairly conservative apparel, the kind of clothes, I liked to joke with Cynthia, preferred by women who wear sensible shoes.

"Okay, so it's not exactly Abercrombie & Fitch," Cynthia would concede. "But A&F wouldn't let me work whatever hours I want so I can pick up Grace after school, and Pam will."

There was that.

Cyn was standing at the back of the shop, outside a changing room, talking to a customer through the curtain. "Do you want to try that in a twelve?" she asked.

She hadn't spotted me, but Pam, standing behind the register, had, and she smiled. "Hey." Pam, tall, thin, and small-chested, carried herself well on three-inch heels. Her knee-length turquoise dress was stylish enough to suggest that it had not come from her own stock. Just because she was appealing to a clientele unfamiliar with the pages of Vogue Vogue didn't mean she had to completely tone it down herself. didn't mean she had to completely tone it down herself.

"You're too kind," she said, looking at the four cups of coffee. "But it's just me and Cyn holding down the fort at the moment. Ann's on a break."

"Maybe it'll still be warm by the time she gets back."

Pam pried off the plastic lid, sprinkled in a packet of Splenda. "So how's things?"

"Good."

"Cynthia says still nothing. From the show."

Was this what everyone wanted to talk about? Lauren Wells, my own daughter, now Pamela Forster.

"That's right," I said.

"I told her not to do it," Pam said, shaking her head.

"You did?" This was news to me.

"Long time ago. When they first called about doing it. I told her, honey, let sleeping dogs lie. No sense stirring up that s.h.i.t."

"Yeah, well," I said.

"I said, look, it's been twenty-five years, right? Whatever happened, it happened. If you can't move on with your life after this much water's gone under the bridge, well, where are you going to be in another five years, or ten?"

"She never mentioned this," I said. Cynthia had caught sight of us talking and waved, but didn't move from her post outside the changing-room curtain.

"The lady in there, trying s.h.i.t on she can't hope to fit into?" Pamela whispered. "She's walked out of here before with stuff she didn't pay for, so we keep an eye on her when she's here. Lots of personal service."

"She shoplifted?" I said, and Pamela nodded.

"If she stole, why don't you charge her? Why do you let her back in?"

"Can't prove it. We just have our suspicions. We kind of let her know we know, without saying it, never let her out of our sight."

I started forming an image of the woman behind the curtain. Young, a bit rough looking, kind of c.o.c.ky. The kind of person you'd pick out of a lineup as a shoplifter, maybe a tattoo on her shoulder or- The curtain slid back and a short, stocky woman in her late forties, early fifties maybe, stepped out, handing several outfits to Cynthia. If I had to stereotype her, I would have said librarian. "I just don't see anything today," she said politely, and walked past Pamela and me on her way out.

"Her?" I said to Pamela.

"A regular Catwoman," Pamela said.

Cynthia came over, kissed me on the cheek, and said, "A coffee run? What's the occasion?"

"I had a free period," I said. "Just figured, you know."

Pamela excused herself to the back of the store, taking her coffee with her.

"Because of this morning," Cynthia said.

"You were kind of shook up after the phone call. I wanted to see how you were doing."

"I'm good," she said, with limited conviction, and took a sip of her coffee. "I'm okay."

"Pam said she tried to talk you out of doing Deadline Deadline."

"You weren't all that sold on the idea, either."

"But you never mentioned her talking against the idea."

"You know Pam isn't afraid to offer her opinion on anything. She also thinks you could lose five pounds."

She'd blown the wind out of my sails. "So that lady, the one who was trying on clothes? She's a shoplifter?"

"You just can't tell about people," Cynthia said, taking another sip.

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