TRUDY DID NOT CONSIDER HERSELF a Luddite. She liked technology. But she also believed machines required several generations before they became attractive. Televisions, for example, and all their accessories-it had taken years before someone had figured out how to design a system that wasn’t a welter of cords and extensions, snaky as Medusa’s hair. Computers, too, were hideous when they first came along, and while laptops were smaller, they were still ugly to her way of thinking. Even those clamshells, especially those clamshells, which one was supposed to carry like a purse. As if Trudy would ever own such a purse. And no matter what computer one used, e-mail itself was ugly, begging the eye to skim, flee. She wanted no part of it.
She prided herself on keeping a stock of rich, creamy monogrammed paper, writing notes as necessary. Or picking up a phone-a phone, not a cell-when she had something to say to someone. Her sons had pleaded with her to get an e-mail account, dangling visions of daily photos of the grandsons, more frequent communication. But e-mail, in Trudy’s view, wasn’t communication. It was a one-sided conversation, zipping back and forth, barely connecting. Terry had an account and she checked it a few times a week, but she never hit the “reply to” button. And, yes, sometimes, there were photos of grandchildren, but they existed only on the screen, she had to sit there if she wanted to look at them, as she didn’t have a proper printer for photos. “We could send them to your phone,” her sons said, but her cell phone was just a phone, with no other capacity, and it spent most of its life in its little cradle of a charger.
But since Terry’s conversation with their Sussex friend, Trudy’s mind had returned again and again to a tantalizing detail: I got you the number. You can put it in a reverse look-up. She hadn’t understood what the woman meant at the time and hadn’t wanted to ask, revealing her presence on the line. But Trudy was an old hand at puzzling through things, and she put it together eventually. All she had to do was plug Elizabeth Lerner’s number into the computer and there it was, her street and zip. She could even call up photographs. O brave new world, she thought.
Trudy had dialed Elizabeth Lerner’s number several times since she obtained it, at first hanging on only to hear it ring over and over, then hanging up on the first or second ring. No voice mail, how odd. And why was no one ever home to answer it? She always called on weekends or around supper, the most likely time to find people at home. Did they ignore the calls, thinking she was a telemarketer? Did they have caller ID, which would out her as T Tackett? Idly she picked up her phone, even as she continued to stare at the photograph of the Benedicts’ white, nothing-special house. She thought longingly of T’n’T, their farm in Virginia, which had managed to be gracious and comfortable, no small feat when someone has three rowdy sons. The name-she didn’t regret it, refused to find belated menace in its pun. The Tacketts hadn’t even chosen it, although they had laughed when a friend had made the joke at a party, then later gave them the painted sign they put at the foot of their long drive. She had considered it arch acknowledgment of their good fortune. Trudy always had known that life could blow up at any moment. But perhaps that was hindsight.
She listened to the phone ring. She knew the photograph was not live-the trees were green and leafy-but she couldn’t help feeling that she was watching the house, that she might see a curtain twitch or a light come on, even hear her own call ringing inside. Answer me. Talk to me.
Not even an hour later, she was standing in front of it. Funny, because the Maryland side of the Beltway always seemed miles, galaxies away, a place she seldom ventured. But the highways had been almost eerily empty. Oh, it was Saturday, she remembered. Terry had gotten up to go play golf, not go into work. She zipped around 495 and across River Road, telling herself that she was bound for Tysons Corner, then the Saks on Wisconsin Avenue.
But she was on Poplar Street. She parked her car and walked around the house. No sign of life. Brazen, uncaring, she let herself in the backyard-the low gate had a latch that she could easily slide open-peered into windows. Children lived here, their detritus was all around. (Really, was it that hard to pick up after children, or get them to clean up after themselves? Trudy had never allowed this kind of disorder.) Elizabeth Lerner had children and, presumably, a husband. This was not the house of a single mother, although that would explain the mess. A dog’s bed, a big one-so they had a dog, too. She found herself trying the door handle, testing it to see if Elizabeth Benedict dared to live in an unlocked house, as the Tacketts once had. They had never locked the doors at T’n’T, not when they were in town, and what if they had? Holly had been taken at the foot of their driveway.
The door was locked.
“Are you looking for the Benedicts?”
She almost jumped a foot into the air, more at the sound of the name than the surprise of the voice. Her interlocutor was a man, in his sixties, neatly dressed for a Saturday morning in suburbia, in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks, real slacks, not khakis.
“Yes,” she said. “I just happened to be passing through and I’m an old friend, someone they haven’t seen for years. I took a chance that they would be here.”
“They went away for the weekend, but they expect to be back Sunday night. They asked me to take in the paper. Shame that you missed them.”
“That’s what I get for not calling first. I’ll leave them a note.”
She had no intention of leaving a note, but she figured that lie might keep him from describing the incident when the family returned. She even went so far as to walk to her car, take a piece of paper from the pad she kept in the glove compartment, and pretend-scrawl a note. Only somewhere along the way, it ceased to be pretending and became real. After struggling over how to begin-she could not bring herself to use the word dear-she wrote:
Elizabeth,
Please call me at your convenience.
Trudy Tackett
After a moment’s thought, she included her cell, not the house number.
She stood at the front door, the piece of paper in hand. Once through the slot, it couldn’t be taken back. But what could be taken back in this world? Nothing, really. Apologies, trials, even executions, didn’t change that. The past could not be undone. Bones healed. Everything else stayed broken forever. She has suffered, too, Terry would say during the trial, glancing at Inez Lerner, but Trudy wasn’t convinced that the lines etched into her face were anything but evidence of a woman who didn’t take care of herself and, by extension, didn’t take care of her daughter, who had failed to take care of Trudy’s daughter. Trudy hated Inez Lerner on sight. The hippieish clothes, the graying hair, the two bangles she wore on her wrist, which once, just once, clacked together in the courtroom, loud as a gunshot, making everyone jump. Why are all your children alive? she wanted to scream. What makes you so special? Inez Lerner had not loved her children more, or watched them with more care. Holly had been at the foot of the driveway, not in a park. Holly had been raising money to buy a wig for that unfortunate girl who had lost her hair during chemo, not wandering around aimlessly, just looking for trouble. Even today, she felt the childish complaint rising in her throat, the hot tears of frustration: It isn’t fair.
Trudy missed Holly every day. Every day. And now she was looking at a shabbier version of the life her daughter might have had. House, husband, children, dog.
She put the letter in the slot, feeling as if she had launched a message in a bottle, something that had no chance of reaching civilization, much less the person who needed to read it. Logically, she knew it was there, waiting for Elizabeth Lerner to come home, that it would strike her as cruel-a bucket of water propped on a door’s upper ledge, a rug over a hole in the floor. Yet to Trudy, her note felt insubstantial and flimsy, capable of disappearing without a trace.
That’s because what she really wanted to do was strike a match and burn the place to the ground.