Chapter 17 – Adrian #3
I can’t say I feel good after I shower, crawl into bed, and drag Cora into my arms. Nothing’s solved. I’m still scared as shit about what’s going on in Cora’s head.
But, yeah, I do feel better.
I stick close to Cora’s side for the next several days as I try to decide what to do. We go ice skating at the local rink and visit the holiday train display at the fire department.
On Sunday, we hang around the house. Cora strings popcorn into a garland while I decorate the trees with the ornaments she’s collected for us.
Pearl doesn’t have the manual dexterity to wield the needle, so she helps by holding the popcorn and lecturing her mom about how popcorn isn’t safe for little kids, but next year, she’ll be big enough to use the needle and eat the popcorn.
And then, on Monday, Logan texts me that he has information about Baltimore. Coincidentally, Cora was about to take the girls to story hour at the library, so I send them along without me. Martinez and Johnson are with them with instructions not to let them out of their sight.
I don’t believe Cora would ever hurt the kids, not even by accident, but I’ll also never be able to erase the sight of her smashing the Scorpion into a concrete column out of my head.
If she wasn’t wearing her seat belt, or if she’d had a little more runway, she could’ve died.
I lost ten years of my life in those few seconds.
I truly don’t know what to do. Whenever I broach what happened, Cora changes the subject.
The last time I brought it up, she sucked my cock.
I didn’t say no, and I reciprocated, but it didn’t sit right, either, knowing she was doing it to distract me.
All to the good, then, that Logan is finally coming through.
I call him from the library. I’m too nervous to sit, so I pace while the phone rings.
“Hey,” he answers sharply.
“Hey. What do you have?”
He doesn’t reply right away, and my stomach sinks. “Are you sitting down?” he asks.
“Tell me.”
He sighs. “Listen, man, I need you to promise me that you’ll think first, okay? Before you do anything, you need to stop, breathe, and take time to really think through what you want to do.”
My sinking stomach slithers into a knot.
I know where he’s coming from. He lost a woman he loved in college because he listened to someone out to break them up, and he’s been searching for her ever since.
I never used to understand how a person could nurse regret like a bottle of booze, but I’ve recently learned it’s not a choice.
“Just spit it out,” I say.
He sighs again. “It’s not a short story.”
“Well, it’s not getting shorter with all this dicking around.”
“All right. Well, you know the six missing months? Before Cora showed up in New York?”
“Yeah. Where was she?”
“Dead.”
I freeze in my tracks. “What the hell?”
“The real Cora Jenkins; no father on record; mother Marie, deceased; grandmother Pam, also deceased—she’s been dead for six years. Cora died in a car accident at age seventeen. Multi-car pile-up on I-95.”
“What are you saying?”
“Your wife is not Cora Jenkins. She’s Cara Perkins.”
I sink onto the sofa. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s wild, and honestly, if my guy wasn’t the best, he wouldn’t have been able to untangle this one. Your wife, Cara, had a guardian angel. She ever mention a woman named Pearl Flowers?”
Pearl? Like our Pearl? “No. Never.”
“Mrs. Flowers was a social worker. Cora and Cara’s social worker. I imagine it was the similarity in names that gave her the idea.”
“What idea?” Foreboding trickles up my spine.
“Cora Jenkins ended up in foster care for a few years after her grandmother passed, but Cara Perkins was in the system much longer, in many more placements. Cara’s mother only died five years ago, by the way. An overdose.”
“I don’t understand. How is this possible?” It’s the information age. People can’t disappear or switch identities at will anymore.
“When the real Cora died, Mrs. Flowers, the social worker, was called to identify the body. She identified her as Cara. We assume Mrs. Flowers passed Cora’s information and at least some documentation to Cara, and Cara was able to get herself a driver’s license in Cora’s name.
Cara Perkins was buried by the state, and the new Cora Jenkins showed up in New York City with a brand-new past.”
“Why? Why did she need a new past?” I’m gripped by the need to set eyes on her. As I listen to Logan, my guts coiling, I open Messenger and ask Martinez to report.
“This is where the story takes a turn. You still sitting?”
“Just spit it out.”
“Your Cora wasn’t the well-behaved C student with the loving grandmother and job flipping burgers.
Your Cora was taken from her mother by Child Protective Services when she was nine.
The stash house where she was staying was raided in the middle of the night.
The mom was nowhere to be found, but several men were arrested. ”
“Dear God.” A quick, cutting ache flares under my ribs.
“Your Cora struggled in school. None of her foster placements lasted long, especially as she got older. She started to have run-ins with the police. Shoplifting and trespassing, mostly. She has arrests for public intoxication and destruction of property, too.”
That I believe, but I can’t square the rest with the Cora I know. She was rough around the edges when we met, but she was so quick to please, so eager to learn. She was never a party girl.
A message pops up on my phone—all clear—with a photo of Cora sitting cross legged on the floor. Winnie is cuddled in her lap and Pearl is next to her, slouching against her mother’s side, all three of them listening intently to a woman sitting on an overturned milk crate reading a picture book.
I just can’t believe it.
“How confident are you in this information?”
“One hundred percent. Rosenswag is one of my best men, and I’ve gone through the receipts with a fine-tooth comb.” Logan hesitates and then asks, “Do you need a break before we go on?”
“Jesus Christ, there’s more?”
Logan lets out a long breath. “So, when your Cora was fifteen, she was placed with a family in Homewood, which is a very nice part of town. Huge house. Dad is an insurance executive. Mom is on all the committees, belongs to all the clubs. They’re big in their church.
Foster care is their thing. When Cara is placed with them, they’re already caring for two younger girls. ”
Cora’s wistful voice echoes in my head. Big house in the suburbs. A mom, dad, two little sisters, and a dog.
“They enroll Cora in private school, and by all appearances, things turn around for her. Her attendance is great. The school does some testing for reading issues, and she qualifies for services. The delinquency is in the past.”
My lungs are so tight. I can’t sit anymore. I stalk to the French doors, slide them open, and gulp down the frosty December air.
“And then, when she’s been with the family almost a year, she asks to stay home one Sunday when they go to church. Claims she’s not feeling well. Now, this part, Rosenswag got directly from the patrol officer who was first to arrive on the scene.”
I don’t want to hear this. Whatever it is, I don’t.
“Apparently, the family owned an RV. A big one, class C, thirty-three feet. While they’re at church, Cora takes the keys from the hook by the door.
She drives the RV down to the end of the cul-de-sac where they live, flips a u-ey, and floors the gas.
Drives it straight across the front lawn into the living room. ”
The image of my Scorpion crumbling against concrete and the airbag filling the cab flashes in my head.
“The neighbors call 9-1-1. Police arrive on the scene minutes later. When they enter the house, it’s clear that Cora was busy before her dramatic finale.
The patrol officer says she’d basically torn the whole house down to the studs.
She’d taken a sledgehammer to everything.
Mirrors, dishes, electronics, family heirlooms, pipes, cabinets, walls.
He said he’s never seen anything like it, not even in the worst evictions. ”
I message Martinez again. Report.
“At first, they can’t find her. She’s not in the RV.
Then they hear recorded voices coming from upstairs.
They go up, and the second floor is just as bad as the first. The guy says the bedroom doors look like something out of The Shining.
Everything’s a mess except for the room where they find her.
The dad’s office. Nothing’s been touched, and she’s sitting on the floor.
The guy’s laptop is open on his desk, playing a video. ”
My hands curl into fists.
Blood roars in my ears as Logan clears his throat and says, “It was obviously taken from a spy camera in a vent or something. It’s Cora in the shower.
And then the video splices to another feed.
It’s the dad on a ladder, messing with a camera, adjusting the angle—in one of the younger girl’s bedrooms.”
My breakfast crawls up my throat. I step outside into the sharp wind, desperately sucking down air. I never understood Lucian before, but I get it now. I am going to kill that motherfucker.
“Where is the guy?” I ask when I’ve got my stomach under control.
“Jail. The wife, too. Eventually, evidence came out that she knew and did nothing. Apparently, Cora had been, uh, putting up with it until she discovered the camera in the younger girl’s room.”
“What happened to Cora then?” The social worker, Mrs. Flowers, swoops in and saves her, right?
“She didn’t go with the police easily. She ended up committed on a seventy-two-hour hold and then spent the better part of two years inpatient—several months on a locked ward at Bellamy Cross, a state psychiatric hospital, and then over a year at Villa Theresa, a residential treatment facility.
The foster parents fought the charges, and they had money and connections.
It all came out in the end, but for a while, they were able to paint Cora as an unhinged liar.
She wasn’t released from Villa Theresa until she turned eighteen. ”
I met her three years later.
My phone dings with a message. I glance down. It’s from Martinez. All clear. He sends a photo of Cora on her knees. She’s wearing Winnie in the carrier, and Pearl is standing beside her. Their mouths are wide open, singing, as they do something funny with their fingers. Itsy Bitsy Spider.
“I didn’t know,” I rasp.
“Obviously.” Logan coughs. “If you want to dig deeper, we could track down the staff at Bellamy Cross and Villa Theresa. We can’t talk to Mrs. Flowers. She died shortly after Cora left for New York. Cancer.”
I exhale. Do I need to know more? I’m sick enough. “Leave it be.”
“I’m sorry, brother.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” My fingers are frozen. The wind cuts through my sweater. I can’t think, it’s so cold. “I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t rush. Take time to think. Don’t do anything you might regret.”
Too late.
“We’ll talk later.” I hang up, but instead of ducking back into the house, I walk farther out to the low retaining wall separating the patio from the gardens. The trees are mostly bare except for a few brown leaves holding on by pure luck. Ice edges the bank of the river. The sky is slate gray.
I married a stranger.
I knew she was young, and it’s such a cliché, but she was so mature. So serious. We wanted the same things. She was alone with nothing, and I had everything she’d ever need. It was perfect.
She was so eager to learn, so happy to try anything I suggested. Whatever I introduced her to, she embraced.
She was perfect because she had a lifetime of practice making herself appealing in the hopes that someone would keep her. She picked up things so quickly because she’d spent her life adapting to new environments—stash house, foster home, psych ward.
I thought she was a gold digger, and in my head, I forgave her for it because life must’ve been hard for her growing up. I had no idea.
Our whole life together is built on bullshit.
The deception is a burning coal in my guts. Everything I believed is a lie. Every memory is suspect.
She played me. Every day, every night, she was pretending.
She betrayed me.
My blood pounds in my veins, and my head throbs, but not so hard that I can’t feel the irony bite.
I guess she got hers back.
Now I’m the one staring down the loss of everything I thought I had.