Chapter 27
“I’m not convinced about this, Zackie.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked to her son on the phone, and never at his instigation.
But Zack, on his own, had called, just as her cab was arriving at the Denver hotel.
She’d watched out the back window all the way into town, looking for she didn’t know what, but no one seemed to be following.
When she heard the phone’s VIP ping and saw “home” on the caller ID, she’d assumed it was Henry.
Then gasped when she heard Zackie’s voice, wondering if her reaction was fear of bad news or that her heart was so full of love for him that it was hard to breathe.
Now, as she wheeled her suitcase into the lobby, she’d happily listened to him prattle with small talk, but then heard his voice change as he got to the point.
“Overnight.” Tessa went on. “At whose house?”
Leaving the airport, Tessa had hurried her suitcase along the concourse, looking both ways, every way, scanning for unusual attention, trying not to feel that she was transporting something alien, or contagious.
If someone wanted to steal her suitcase, they could’ve easily walked away with it.
But to take it out of the luggage compartment, and then put it back, that was a message.
Like— I know where you are. I know where your stuff is.
And I can take it if I want. Or give it back if I want.
Her imagination had taken over as she headed to the cab stand, playing out what might be inside. What if someone had replaced her possessions with wadded-up newspapers. Or drugs. Or stacks of money. Soon she had to open it.
Plus she’d read that Stephen King book, scary as hell, about the kidnapped writer. Tessa’s full name was emblazoned on that suitcase. Even if they— they?— had taken it spontaneously, they would have realized she was on the plane. And would discover her loss instantly.
When the cab driver put the suitcase in the trunk, she almost stopped him. Almost.
And then, as she’d buckled herself into the cab’s back seat—she was always buckling in, it seemed, in every part of her life—she’d decided she was an idiot.
Making a thriller out of an ordinary occurrence.
A mix-up with a suitcase at an airport, where everyone had a suitcase?
It probably happened every minute of every day.
They’d arrived at the hotel, sleek with shiny windows, onyx trim, polished brass. The suitcase was hers again. In a few minutes she would open it. But she’d deal with Zack first.
“You never let me do anything,” Zack was saying now, his dramatic tone just this edge of whine, his words extending into extra syllables.
Tessa pictured the pout on his face, lower lip pooching, eyes like a baby seal.
“Dad says it’s only okay with him if it’s okay with you, and it’s summer, and they only live two houses away, Dad can practically see me there, and I am old enough, I am, nine going on ten, and Tris is so cool, and his mom is so cool, and it’s summer! ”
Zack had expended his entire stash of ammunition in one breath. And Henry, probably listening, had foisted this on her. Dad says it’s okay with him if it’s okay with you . A classic fun-Dad strategy. Which exiled her to the island of mean mothers.
“I hear you, darling, and I agree with everything you say.” Tessa had stopped by a shoulder-high potted rubber plant in the middle of the hotel lobby; calculating how much time she had to register, take a shower, and get dressed.
Calculating what would happen when she opened her suitcase.
Meanwhile, in the happily mundane world of real life, Zack wanted to stay overnight at a new friend’s house.
As normal a request as there could possibly be. What new friend? What cool mom?
“And Mommy, I’m missing you,” Zack said.
The hubbub of the hotel seemed to evaporate, as if she and Zack were the only two in their particular world.
Her little Zack, her little precocious Zack, she had never been away from him for this long.
Here in the middle of another strange hotel, her baby boy was saying he loved her.
Could she remember the last time he’d said so? At least without being forced to?
She had to go home. “I’m missing you too, my darling baby.” She talked faster, remembering Zack’s anathema about being the baby. “I know I seem far away, but I am never far from you, my honey, I am as close as—”
“I know, Mom. I’m fine, I really am, I just want to go to Tristan’s house, they have a pool too.
And a dog .” Zack, now back into full persuasion mode, had apparently recovered from his embarrassing preteen misstep into emotion.
Boys of that age, she knew, were trying to pull away from their moms. Much as the moms try to wrap their arms around them and hold them forever.
But Zack had to fly, and this was the moment.
This was the moment, and like everything else, she was missing it.
She had five minutes. After that, she was behind schedule.
“Tell me more about Tristan.” She pulled her suitcase—Schrodinger’s suitcase, empty and full at the same time—a few inches closer, and sat on the arm of a black vinyl sofa at the edge of the hotel lobby.
“And about his cool mom.” She was trying to keep her voice light and carefree. It was taking some effort.
Henry had never given her cause to worry about cool moms or cool women of any kind, but their lives were different now.
Don’t you trust Henry? Annabelle said . That’s interesting.
Tessa rolled her eyes, as if Annabelle were right there, sitting in the snazzy hotel with her.
Sometimes Annabelle made her laugh, even reassured her, but not this time.
“Well, listen to this, Mom. You won’t believe it. Tristan’s mom’s real first name is Annabelle. Isn’t that crazy? And she knew it was like in your book, but they don’t call her that, they call her Nellie.”
Another Annabelle. “But she didn’t ask you to call her ‘Nellie,’ honey, did she?”
“Mom. No.” Zack’s voice had devolved into full adolescent sarcasm, scornfully elongating the one-syllable words. “Her last name is Delaney. We call her Mrs. Delaney.”
Tessa had a flare of picturing it, this Annabelle aka Nellie Delaney, no doubt the exemplar of Rockport-chic.
White pants only after Memorial Day, sun-streaked hair, probably a sailboat.
Plus, how many people could possibly be named Annabelle in the United States right now?
She actually knew that; she had looked it up when she named Annabelle in the book, and turned out it was the 3,136th most popular name in the US, and there were more than five thousand people named Annabelle. So. One of them could live in Rockport.
And another one in Phoenix, she remembered. Who’d wanted a book signed to “the real Annabelle.” So, 4,998 to go.
“Delaney,” Tessa repeated. “Has your father met her?”
“Yes, a course, what are you thinking ? They live two houses down. We all went to their pool yesterday. And any way Mom, so then they invited me to—”
“You all went to a pool party? Is there a Mr. Delaney?” Zack would assume this was a reasonable and routine question, and it was. Although she probably didn’t need to know the answer this second. Although on the other hand, she did.
“He’s like, away,” Zack said. “Mom. Gimme a break. How do I know?”
“It’s a sch—” It’s a school night, Tessa had started to say, but it wasn’t. And it was summer in Massachusetts, and he was nine, and what could happen on their very own street? Well, she knew what could happen. Precisely what could happen. But Zack wouldn’t be alone. Not exactly.
“Okay. It’s fine,” she acquiesced, her words reluctant and a lie, it wasn’t fine, and she stared across the hotel lobby, through the massive plate glass window, onto the busy crowded street. “If your dad really says it’s okay.”
“You rock, Mom.”
She didn’t rock. Not at all. She was in Denver, freaked out and sitting on a fake leather sofa talking to her son two thousand miles away who was about to spend his first night away from home in the care of a “cool” woman. A stranger. Called Nellie Delaney.
A stranger who’d told Zack her real name was Annabelle.