Chapter Twenty-nine
(New folks, if you want to start at the beginning, go here to Chapter 1, and you can follow links to page through all the chapters!)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
With Mark doing a background check on the highly irritating and possibly criminal Lamar Gustafson, I could shift my attention elsewhere, like getting in touch with Weston Roper to update him with what I’d learned about his sister’s death. Which was basically nothing other than the name of the CNA who’d found Rachel. But I at least owed him the call. If it was my brother — I mean, Sean and I hadn’t spoken for a long time, but he was my brother and I still loved him — I’d be coming out of my skin not knowing, thinking someone out there had with malice and intent shot Fentanyl into my sibling’s IV and stuck around to watch them die.
Also, I could ask Weston if there was going to be a funeral or memorial service. I wondered, with a shudder, where Rachel’s body was now. It broke me to think she’d been stored in a drawer in the chilly, echoing halls of the morgue with none but a small circle to even note her death, much less mourn it. Life had dealt her a lousy hand. All the money in the world, which was apparently close to what her family possessed, hadn’t made a bit of difference in protecting her from the narcissistic mother who was happy to trade her fifteen-year-old daughter for pills. I couldn’t imagine the heartbreak and confusion when, drugged, raped, and impregnated by one of her mother’s suppliers, she then had given birth, still a child herself, and then surrendered her baby girl.
And, apparently, kept every last bit of it a secret for years.
“Please find my daughter” she’d pleaded with me, and the fact she’d died didn’t change my determination to do so. Before anything else, though, I burned with fury to find the person who had killed Rachel Roper. The oddly jarring detail about her hair being brushed and having been posed with her hands crossed, made me consider the possibility it was someone she knew, someone who, even in the twisted circumstance of taking her life, acted tenderly and respectfully toward her.
I had to find that CNA. There were a dozen different companies around here that contracted out independent nursing care staff. I’d call every single one until I found her. Cathy Stearnes.
There was plenty of work waiting for me at St. Regis, but I couldn’t make myself go back. The Pastoral Care office now seemed tainted with uncertainty, an imagined shadowy figure sneaking in and out, making off with my notebook, skulking back in with it — okay, maybe that hadn’t happened at all, maybe I just hadn’t looked hard enough and the notebook had been there all the time, tucked at the back of the drawer.
But the mystery of the unlocked door kept plaguing me, along with the feeling of something being way off. I called the office from my cell phone, practicing my most pathetically scratchy voice in case Mavis answered, which she did.
“Pastoral Care, how may I help you,” she said in a way that indicated she really did want to help, but you’d better be quick about getting to the point.
“Hi, Mavis, this is Blainey. I’m heading home. I don’t feel so great.” I added a little cough for effect.
“Okay, see you tomorrow,” she said. I heard her whisper to someone.
A male voice gave a quiet, “Sure.”
Well, that explained why I didn’t get her usual grilling along with the judgey voice. I envisioned the hunky security guard Samuel Thompson standing in front of her desk, winking and making eyes at her. Mavis had no time for me. She was far too busy getting swept off her feet.
“Oh, before you hang up…” I said.
“What.”
“Could you pencil me in for an appointment with Fred the next time he’s in the office?” Time to come clean with my moonlighting.
“That’ll be tomorrow afternoon,” Mavis said.
“How about 2:00?”
“That time is available. I’ll make a note of it,” she said, and hung up.
I padded around my house in a pair of ratty shorts and an old t-shirt, thinking I could definitely get used to working like this, in the comfort of my own home. I scrounged in the fridge and threw together a salad from the remnants of some bagged greens and a few sad looking veggies, then settled in with the phone book and my notebook and a pen.
I took a few minutes to practice in front of the mirror. “Hi,” I started, and offered myself a sympathetic smile. “This is MaryLou Stephens and I’m looking to hire one of your CNAs, Cathy Stearnes? My family would like to engage her very excellent services for our…” stop and sniff and regain my composure, “…Memaw. She’s…” another pause, “…she fell and can’t get out of bed and we need some help with her care.” Heck, it sounded true enough to me. I would say that Cathy had been recommended to us by the director of nursing at Green Hollows, one of the larger care facilities in the Brady area. I was taking a chance she’d worked there, but I couldn’t mention WindDancer. I didn’t want to spook her.
I called four different places and gave my spiel with no luck. The fifth call was to Brady Caregivers. I had to lie a whole lot to Louise, the really nice lady who answered the phone, telling her about my made-up Memaw and how sad she was to have to stay in her bed all day and how we all worked and couldn’t be with her until past dinnertime and also she was too proud and embarrassed to have us help her with the bedpan and sometimes she got mad enough to throw her pills at us when we tried to give her her medication, and I got so worked up that poor Louise had to calm me down.
“It’s such a hard time, dear, I know. I’m so terribly sorry.”
I was headed to hell, I was pretty sure of that. God, why was I so good at this? It momentarily disturbed me, until I remembered Rachel Roper, who was never going to get to meet her daughter.
“Let’s look at Cathy’s schedule, all right?” Louise said. “We’ll get it figured out. Cathy is really very good, people ask for her a lot. When would you need her to start? It sounds like right away, yes?”
“Well,” I hedged a bit. “We’d like to meet her first, if that’s possible.”
Louise hesitated, and her tone changed ever so slightly. “Oh, we don’t normally do that.”
I waited a second before responding. “I understand,” I said, letting my voice waver. “It’s just that…we really love Memaw and…”
I couldn’t go on. No, I mean, really. I was out of lies. They dried up just like that. Maybe it was God’s version of a mini-smiting. I sat silent, listening to Louise breathe at the other end of the phone.
Finally, she spoke. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll pass your information along to Cathy and include your request to meet with your family first. Now, I’ve taken down your phone number, so I’ll let her follow up with you. Does that sound okay?”
“Yes, thank you, Louise,” I said. “You’re very kind. Thank you.”
Straight. To. Hell.
“It’s just…if she could call me as soon as possible?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Louise.
“Thank you. We appreciate this so much.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and hung up, leaving me with the distinct impression I’d used up every last bit of her patience. I couldn’t say I blamed her.
I’d done what I could. I hoped Cathy would call. In the meantime, I needed to clear my head, and the unseasonably pleasant summer day was beckoning me. Before I headed out for a walk, I changed the voicemail recording on my landline from “You’ve reached Blainey Blair” to a standard “Thank you for your call, etc.,” just in case she called looking for MaryLou Stephens. I threw on shorts that were slightly less ratty and headed out the door.
As I paced along I thought about Mark and how a little over a year ago he hadn’t even known he had a kid, and I wondered what that must do to the heart, to get the news and absorb the shock and then maybe followed by elation and then quite possibly grief at all the years missed. Or maybe that was just me projecting, as someone who’d never had any children, thinking that’s how I might react. I’d feel my way into asking him about it sometime.
I thought of Rachel, too, and her sad desperation, not knowing anything about what happened to her baby girl, not knowing if she’d had a good life, whether she’d been loved, if she’d been safe in all the ways Rachel never had been. “Please, please, please, let me find her.” I whispered my prayer out into the air and up into the tall pines and on up to the cloudless blue sky. I walked and walked, breathing that prayer the whole way.
When I got home, there was a voicemail from Will. “Call me, you jerk,” was all he said, and I shouted with relief. Maybe he and I were going to be okay after all.