Pieces of Her Read online

  Which meant that her mother had packed this bag before the cancer diagnosis three years ago.

  Andy turned the suitcase over. She unzipped the other side.

  Holy shit.

  Stacks of money. Twenties again, each bundle wrapped with a lavender strap that said $2,000. The bill design looked like the old kind before all the new security features had been added. Andy counted the stacks. Ten across, three wide, four deep.

  Two hundred and forty thousand dollars.

  She zipped up the bag, pulled the vinyl cargo cover over everything, then closed the hatch.

  Andy leaned against the car for a moment, her mind reeling. Was it worth it to wonder where her mother had gotten all of this money? She would be better served wondering how many unicorns were left in the forest.

  The shelves behind the car were empty but for two jugs of bleach, a scrub brush and a folded pile of white cleaning rags. An upside down mop and broom were in the corner. Andy ran her hand along the particleboard shelves. No dust. Her mother, who was not a neat freak, had scrubbed this place top to bottom.

  Why?

  Andy sat down at the desk in the corner. She turned on the lamp. She checked the drawers. A box of pens. Two pencils. A legal pad. A leather folio. The keys to the Plymouth. The file drawer was packed with empty hanging files. Andy pushed them aside. She reached into the back and found a small shoebox with the lid taped on.

  Andy put the box on the desk.

  She opened the leather folio. Two pockets. One held a car registration receipt from the Province of Ontario for a blue 1989 Plymouth Reliant. The owner’s name was listed as Daniela Barbara Cooper. The original registration date was August 20, the day Andy had always thought was her birthday, but two years from her birth, 1989. The annual car tag receipt was clipped to the corner. The printout listed the date it was processed as May 12, 2017.

  Last year.

  There was no calendar to confirm, but the date had to be around Mother’s Day. Andy tried to think back. Had she picked up her mother from the airport before taking her to lunch? Or was that the year before? Laura didn’t often leave Belle Isle, but at least once a year, she attended a professional conference. This had been going on since Andy’s childhood and she’d never bothered to look up the events because why would she?

  What she did know was that the annual pilgrimage was very important to her mother. Even when Laura was sick from the chemo treatments, she had made Andy drive her to the Savannah airport so she could attend a speech pathologist thing in Houston.

  Had she really gone to Houston? Or had she skipped over to Austin to see her old friend Professor Paula Kunde?

  Once Andy dropped her off at the airport, she had no idea where Laura went.

  Andy dug around inside the other folio pocket. Two laminated cards. The first was a light blue Ontario, Canada, enhanced driver’s license.

  The enhanced part meant the license could be used for sea and land US border crossings. So, no taking an airplane to Canada, but a car could get through.

  The photo on the license showed Laura before the cancer had taken some of the roundness from her cheeks. The expiration date was in 2024. Her mother was listed by the same name as the owner of the Reliant, Daniela Barbara Cooper, born December 15, 1964, which was wrong because Laura’s birthdate was April 9, 1963, but what the hell did that matter because her mother, as far as Andy knew, was not currently residing in apartment 20 at 22 Adelaide Street West in Toronto, Ontario.

  D.B. Cooper.

  Andy wondered if the name was some kind of joke, but given where she was sitting, maybe it wasn’t crazy to wonder if Laura was the famous hijacker who’d parachuted out of a plane with millions of dollars and never been heard from again.

  Except Cooper was a man, and in the seventies Laura was still a teenager.

  This was ’77, so I would’ve been fourteen years old, more Rod Stewart than Elvis.

  Andy pulled out the other card. Also from Ontario, also with Daniela Cooper’s name and birthdate. This one said HEALTH • SANTE. Andy had taken Spanish in high school. She had no idea what sante meant, but she wondered why the hell her mother hadn’t used Canada’s national insurance program instead of depleting most of her retirement savings to pay for her cancer treatments in the United States.

  Which brought her to the shoebox. Taped closed, hidden in a desk drawer inside a locked, secret storage facility. The logo on the outside was from Thom McAn. The box was small, definitely not for adult-sized shoes. When Andy was little, Laura always took her to the Charleston mall to buy shoes before school started.

  Whatever was inside was lightweight, but felt like a bomb. Or maybe it was more like Pandora’s box, containing all the evils of Laura’s world. Andy knew the rest of the myth, that once you let out the evil, all that was left was hope, but she doubted very seriously that anything inside the box would give her hope.

  Andy picked at the tape. The tacky side had turned to dust. She had no problem slipping off the lid.

  Photographs—not many, some in black and white, some in faded color.

  A bundle of Polaroids was held together by an old rubber band. Andy chose those first because she had never seen her mother look so young.

  The rubber band broke off in her hands.

  Laura must have been in her early twenties when the pictures were taken. The 1980s were on full display, from her blue eyeshadow to her pink lipstick to the blush strafing up her cheeks like a bird’s wings. Her normally dark brown hair was shockingly blonde and over-permed. Giant shoulder pads squared off her short-sleeved white sweater. She could’ve been about to tell everybody who shot J.R. Ewing.

  The only reason Andy wasn’t smiling was that it was clear from the photo that someone had repeatedly punched her mother in the face.

  Laura’s left eye was swollen shut. Her nose was askew. There were deep bruises around her neck. She stared into the camera, expressionless. She was somewhere else, being someone else, while her injuries were documented.

  Andy knew that look.

  She shuffled to the next Polaroid. The white sweater was lifted to show bruises on Laura’s abdomen. The next photo showed a gash on the inside of her thigh.

  Andy had seen the horrible-looking scar during one of her mother’s hospital stays. Three inches long, pink and jagged even after all of this time. Andy had actually gasped at the sight of it.

  “Ice skating,” Laura had said, rolling her eyes like those two words explained everything.

  Andy picked up the next stack of pictures, which were jarring, but only in their differentness. Not Polaroids, but regular printed snapshots of a toddler dressed in pink winter clothing. The date stamped on the back was January 4, 1989. The series captured the little girl rolling around in the snow, throwing snowballs, making angels, then a snowman, then destroying the snowman. Sometimes there was an adult in the photo—a disembodied hand hanging down or a leg sticking out below a heavy wool coat.

  Andy recognized the toddler as herself. She had always had the same distinctive almond shape to her eyes, a feature she had inherited from her mother.

  Going by the date on the back, toddler Andy would’ve been almost two years old when the series of photos was taken. That was the same time period that Andy and Laura had lived at UGA while Laura finished her PhD.

  That kind of snow did not happen in Athens and especially not in Belle Isle. Andy had no recollection from her youth of ever taking a trip up north. Nor had Laura ever told her about one. Actually, when Andy revealed her plans to move to New York City, the first thing Laura had said was, “Oh, darling, you’ve never been that far away from home before.”

  The last two photos in the box were paperclipped together.

  Phil and Laverne Randall, her birth father’s parents, were sitting on a couch. A painting of the beach hung on the wood-paneled wall behind them. There was something very familiar about the expressions on their faces, how they were sitting, even the shadow of a floor lamp that was cast along the back o
f the couch.

  Andy slid away the paperclip to reveal the second photo.

  Same people, same expressions, same postures, same shadows—but this time Andy, maybe six months old, was sitting in the Randalls’ laps, balanced on one knee each.

  She traced her finger along the thick outline of her baby self.

  In school, Andy had learned to use Photoshop to, among other things, superimpose one image onto another. She had forgotten that, before computers, people had to alter images by hand. What you did was take an X-Acto knife and carefully cut someone out of a photo, then you sprayed the back with mounting adhesive, then positioned the cut-out piece onto a different photo.

  Once you were happy with the result, you had to take another photograph of the overlaid images, and even then it didn’t always turn out right. Shadows were wrong. The positioning looked unnatural. The whole process was painstakingly delicate.

  Which made Laura’s skill that much more impressive.

  During Andy’s early teens, she had often stared longingly at the photo of her Randall grandparents. Usually, she was mad at Laura, or worse, at Gordon. Sometimes, she would search the Randalls’ features, trying to divine why their hatred and bigotry were more important to them than having contact with their dead son’s only child.

  Andy had never really focused on the section of the photo that her baby self was in. Which was too bad. If she’d made even a cursory study, she would have noticed that she was not actually sitting in the Randalls’ lap.

  Hovering would be a better word to describe it.

  The racist Randalls were a difficult subject that Andy did not bring up to her mother, the same way she did not bring up Laura’s own parents, Anne and Bob Mitchell, who had died before Andy was born. Nor did she ask about Jerry Randall, her father, who had been killed in a car accident long before Andy could establish any memories of him. They had never visited his grave in Chicago. They had never visited anyone’s grave.

  “We should meet in Providence,” Andy had told Laura her first year in New York. “You can show me where you grew up.”

  “Oh, darling,” Laura had sighed. “Nobody wants to go to Rhode Island. Besides, it was so long ago I’m sure I can’t remember.”

  There were all kinds of photographs at home—an abundance of photos. From hiking trips and Disney World vacations and beach picnics and first days of schools. Only a handful showed Laura alone because she hated having her picture taken. There was nothing from the time before Andy was born. Laura had just one picture of Jerry Randall, the same photo Andy had found online in the Chicago Sun Times obituary archives.

  Jerome Phillip Randall, 28 yrs old; optometrist and avid Bears fan; survived by a daughter, Andrea, and parents Phillip and Laverne.

  Andy had seen other documents, too: her father’s birth certificate and death certificate, both issued in Cook County, Illinois. Laura’s various diplomas, her birth certificate from Rhode Island, her social security card, her driver’s license. Andrea Eloise Mitchell’s record of live birth dated August 20, 1987. The deed to the Belle Isle house. Immunization records. Marriage license. Divorce decree. Car titles. Insurance cards. Bank statements. Credit card statements.

  Daniela Barbara Cooper’s driver’s license. The Ontario car registration. The HEALTH card. The Plymouth station wagon with a gun in the glove box and supplies and money in the trunk that was waiting in a storage facility in an anonymous town.

  The make-up bag hidden inside the couch in Laura’s office. The padlock key taped behind the framed photo of Andy.

  Everything I’ve ever done is for you, my Andrea Heloise. Everything.

  Andy spread out the Polaroids of her mother on the desk. The gash in her leg. The black eye. The bruised neck. The pummeled abdomen. The broken nose.

  Pieces of a woman she had never known.

  July 26, 1986

  They tried to bury us.

  They didn’t know we were seeds.

  —Mexican Proverb

  7

  Martin Queller’s children were spoiled in that quintessential American way. Too much money. Too much education. Too much travel. Too much too much, so that the abundance of things had left them empty.

  Laura Juneau found the girl in particular painful to watch. Her eyes furtively darting around the room. The nervous way she kept twitching her fingers as if they were floating across invisible keys. Her need to connect was reminiscent of an octopus blindly extending its tendrils in search of nourishment.

  As for the boy—well, he had charm, and a lot could be forgiven of a charming man.

  “Excuse me, madam?” The politi was lean and tall. The rifle hanging from his neck reminded Laura of her youngest son’s favorite toy. “Have you misplaced your conference badge?”

  Laura gave him an apologetic look as she leaned into her walking cane. “I had planned to check in before my panel.”

  “Shall I escort you?”

  She had no choice but to follow. The additional security was neither unexpected nor without cause. Protestors were picketing outside the Oslo conference center—the usual mix of anarchists, anti-fascists, skinheads and trouble-makers alongside some of Norway’s Pakistani immigrants, who were angry about recent immigration policy. The unrest had found its way inside, where there were lingering suspicions around Arne Treholt’s trial the previous year. The former labor party politician was serving a twenty-year term for high treason. There were those who believed the Russians had more spies planted within the Norwegian government. There were still more who feared that the KGB was spreading Hydra-like into the rest of Scandinavia.

  The politi turned to ensure Laura was following. The cane was a hindrance, but she was forty-three, not ninety-three. Still, he cut a channel for her through the crowd of stodgy old men in boxy suits, all wearing badges that identified them by name, nationality, and field of expertise. There were the expected scions from top universities—MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Cal Tech, Stanford—alongside the usual suspects: Exxon, Tenneco, Eastman Kodak, Raytheon, DuPont and, in a nod to keynote speaker Lee Iacocca, a healthy smattering of senior executives from the Chrysler Motor Company.

  The check-in table was beneath a large banner reading WELCOME TO G-FAB. As with everything else at the Global Finance and Business Consortium, the words were written in English, French, German and, in deference to the conference hosts, Norwegian.

  “Thank you,” Laura told the officer, but the man would not be dismissed. She smiled at the woman sitting behind the table, and delivered the well-practiced lie: “I’m Dr. Alex Maplecroft with the University of California at Berkeley.”

  The woman thumbed through a card catalog and pulled the appropriate credentials. Laura had a moment of relief when she thought that the woman would simply hand over the badge, but she said, “Your identification, please, madam.”

  Laura rested her cane against the table. She unzipped her purse. She reached for her wallet. She willed the tremble out of her fingers.

  She had practiced for this, too; not formally, but in her mind, Laura had walked herself through the steps of approaching the check-in table, pulling out her wallet and showing the fake ID that identified her as Alexandra Maplecroft, Professor of Economics.

  I’m very sorry but could you hurry? My panel starts in a few minutes.

  “Madam.” The woman behind the table looked not at Laura’s eyes, but at her hair. “Could you kindly remove your identification from your wallet?”

  Another layer of scrutiny Laura had not anticipated. She again found her hands trembling as she tried to work the card from beneath the plastic sleeve. According to the forger in Toronto, the ID was perfect, but then the man’s vocation was deception. What if the girl behind the table found a flaw? What if a photo of the real Alex Maplecroft had somehow been scrounged? Would the politi drag Laura away in handcuffs? Would the last six months of careful planning fall apart for want of a simple plastic card?

  “Dr. Maplecroft!”

  They all turned to locate the sour
ce of the yelling.

  “Andrew, come meet Dr. Maplecroft!”

  Laura had always known Nicholas Harp to be breathtakingly handsome. In fact, the woman behind the table inhaled sharply as he approached.

  “Dr. Maplecroft, how lovely to see you again.” Nick shook her hand with both of his. The wink he offered was clearly meant to reassure her, but Laura would find no reassurance from this point forward. He said, “I was in your econ 401 at Berkeley. Racial and Gender Disparities in Western Economies. I can’t believe I finally remembered.”

  “Yes.” Laura was always taken aback by the ease with which Nick lied. “How lovely to see you again, Mister—”

  “Harp. Nicholas Harp. Andrew!” He waved over another young man, handsome but less so, similarly dressed in chinos and a button-down, light blue polo. Future captains of industry, these young men. Their sun-bleached hair just so. Skin tanned a healthy bronze. Stiff collars upturned. No socks. Pennies stuck into the slots on the top of their loafers.

  Nick said, “Andy, be quick. Dr. Maplecroft doesn’t have all day.”

  Andrew Queller seemed flustered. Laura could understand why. The plan had dictated that they all stay anonymous and separate from one another. Andrew glanced at the girl behind the table, and in that moment, seemed to understand why Nick had risked breaking cover. “Dr. Maplecroft, you’re on Father’s two p.m. panel, I believe? ‘Socio-Political Ramifications of the Queller Correction.’”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Laura tried to force some naturalness into her tone. “You’re Andrew, Martin’s middle child?”

  “Guilty.” Andrew smiled at the girl. “Is there a problem, miss?”

  His sense of entitlement was communicable. The woman handed Laura the badge for Dr. Alex Maplecroft, and like that, Laura was legitimized.

  “Thank you,” Nick told the girl, who beamed under his attention.

  “Yes, thank you.” Laura’s hands were considerably more steady as she pinned the badge to the breast of her navy-blue blazer.