With Every Breath Read online

  She drove off without looking at it a second time. She had to go back to that pay phone. She had to figure out how to get in touch with Dolores Carlson.

  Chapter 5

  Joe Gallen took a bite of rare hamburger, perfect with just the right amount of cheese, mayonnaise, and relish. Then, abruptly, he stopped chewing as Maddie Brogan and her son came out of Leslie Mendehlson’s place across the alley.

  She wore the same jeans and blue wool jacket that she’d worn earlier. The sun caught her hair and turned it to spun gold. He glanced down at his watch. She’d been in there the better part of an hour.

  "There she is," Hector said excitedly from the other side of the table. "Didn’t I tell you? She grew up real fine. What do you think she was doing with Leslie? Think she’s trying to remember?"

  "How the hell should I know?" Joe snapped. He did it around his food, realized what he was doing, and forced himself to swallow. He pushed his plate across the table. "Here, finish this."

  Hector’s face split into a wide grin. His wife kept him on a tight budget. He had bought a cup of coffee, but he was drinking it with a sandwich he’d brown-bagged

  from home. The sandwich looked like last night’s meat loaf.

  Joe stood up and dropped a ten-dollar bill onto the table, and Hector grinned even wider. Joe knew he wouldn’t see the change.

  He went outside and crossed the alley. Leslie, opened the door before he could knock.

  "What took you so long?"

  Joe gave her a withering look as he stepped inside. "Is she trying to remember?"

  "Joe, come on. I can’t tell you a thing. You know that." She closed the door.

  He began pacing the waiting room. "What the hell was she doing here if she’s not trying to remember?" Then he winced a little as he figured it out. "It’s her kid, right?" Somehow the rumor had gotten started that the boy wasn’t right. And Joe didn’t remember him saying too much in the real-estate office.

  Leslie didn’t answer.

  "Did she say why she came back here?" Joe went on.

  "That’s privileged, too." Leslie hesitated. "I can tell you that when and if you do find out, you’re going to be one unhappy lawman."

  "Damn it, Leslie—"

  "Coffee, Joe? How’s the knee doing?"

  "Hurts like hell. It’s probably going to rain soon." He followed her to the coffeepot on the other side of the waiting room.

  "Your name came up," she volunteered, pouring for both of them.

  Joe Gallen felt something entirely unwelcome move in the pit of his stomach. It was a shifting, sliding kind of feeling, like rock moving aside to expose something softer and more vulnerable underneath. "In what respect?" he demanded.

  "Actually, I can’t tell you that, either."

  "You enjoy the hell out of this, don’t you?" But he was less angry than disgruntled. Of all the islanders, he liked Leslie more than most. She had her own axes to grind and her own dunghills to protect, as everyone did, but she was honest about it, and her axes were all harmless.

  Leslie sobered. "What I think is that you’re awfully worked up about a case that occurred when you were what—twelve years old?"

  "Beacher and Annabel Brogan are still conspicuously absent from the island," he snapped.

  "So they are. But it occurs to me that no one particularly cared before yesterday." Leslie moved to look through the glass into her office. "Maddie Brogan is strong—in fact, I admire her," she said after a moment. "But she’s got problems, and I don’t think she even knows the half of them yet. My gut instinct is that there’s a brick wall in her head. What troubles me even more is that I think she’s only now beginning to realize that it’s there, and that maybe it’s not entirely normal." She remembered Maddie’s reaction when she’d mentioned Dolores Carlson. She had deliberately put the spin on it that Dolores had been a friend . . . someone, perhaps, that Maddie had gone to school with. And Maddie had then referred to her as Dolores. Not Mrs. C, not Doe or Aunt Doe, as everyone on the island called the woman—just Dolores.

  Leslie Mendehlson would have bet her license that Maddie Brogan did not remember who Dolores Carlson was at all.

  She shook herself, realizing that Joe was watching her closely.

  "That makes no goddamn sense," he pointed out irritably.

  "Actually, it does. Refusing to speak is largely a childhood

  defense, a means of retreating. Amnesia—to use a layman’s term in this case—is an adult form of the same thing. I just think that Maddie Brogan is starting to realize that maybe she should remember a little more than she does. And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter, so take that cute backside of yours out of here and let me get to work. I have an appointment in three minutes."

  Joe stared at her a moment longer. He wasn’t going to get any more out of her, and he respected her too much to badger her . . . especially since he really couldn’t have said with any certainty just what it was he was looking for there.

  He crumpled the Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand, hurling it toward the wastebasket, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket as he went outside. He wondered how in the name of God his name had come to be involved in any discussion between Leslie Mendehlson and Maddie Brogan. He felt that shifting sensation in his gut again.

  He wondered what was wrong with Maddie’s son.

  He wondered what she had seen twenty-five years ago to develop such a hellacious barrier that she’d blocked the barrier.

  And then he found himself thinking of the photograph on his wall again. He turned north, deciding suddenly to stop by the library. He thought that if he was going to have any insight whatsoever into the potential fireworks of that woman’s mind, then he ought to start by developing a better understanding of the woman herself.

  Maddie looked up Dolores Carlson’s address in the telephone directory at the post office pay phone, then called her to see if she and Josh could stop by. The woman’s voice did not go far toward filling in the blanks. It was small and

  highly pitched, almost piping, and Maddie didn’t even begin to recognize anything about it.

  There were two kittens left in the litter, Dolores said, and she urged Maddie to come by right away. Candle Island was thankfully easy to negotiate. The four main routes ran north-south, and the east-west side streets were numbered. Dolores Carlson’s house was at number 314 on Twenty-ninth Street.

  Maddie parked in front of Dolores’s big white Dutch Colonial, and she and Josh went up the walkway. She rapped on the door and felt her head swim again at her first sight of the woman who answered.

  Her old friend?

  Dolores Carlson was old enough to be her grandmother. She was big enough to be two grandmothers. She had three chins and sausage arms, and she wore a dark blue polka-dot muumuu that reached almost to her toes.

  Maddie pulled her mouth shut.

  Leslie had been playing with her, she realized. But why? She didn’t know this woman, felt absolutely no kinship, no distant, shifting memory in her heart, nothing.

  Suddenly she was angry.

  "Did I know you?" she demanded. "Before?"

  Dolores met her eyes unabashedly. "Yes," she said simply.

  Maddie raked her hands through her hair, caught herself, and clasped them together in front of her. "How, exactly?"

  "You stayed with me that summer after your parents ..." The woman hesitated. Maddie thought she could understand that.

  "Took wing?" she supplied bitterly, and she thought Dolores Carlson looked surprised.

  "If you like." The woman stepped back from the door. "Come in. Please."

  Maddie moved cautiously into the house, Josh sticking to her like a second skin. It was big, airy, and pleasant. There was a sunroom off to her left, a dining room to the right, and stairs at the back. Maddie moved toward them and looked up at the second floor.

  Oh, God, I don’t remember. She didn’t remember the house at all.

  This couldn’t be normal, she thought fran
tically. No matter how sudden or traumatic her departure had been, no matter how long she had stayed away or how young she’d been when she left, if she had lived there, then it ought to seem familiar in some respect.

  Then again, Dolores had said that she’d stayed there after her parents had taken off. She grasped at that and glanced at Josh. She had been only three years older than her six-year-old son. She must have been devastated, confused, broken.

  "Would you like to see your old room?" Dolores asked quietly.

  "Yes. Please. I need to see it."

  She followed the big woman up the staircase, Josh trailing her closely. It was eight steps up, then an abrupt U-turn at the landing. Six more steps and they were on the second floor. There was a small sitting area there, with a settee against the railing. Two cats dozed upon it. There were two bedrooms to the left, one to the right. Maddie eyed them warily.

  "Hector Marks brought you to me . . . that day," Dolores explained.

  "I haven’t met him," Maddie said absently. Her eyes kept skimming, searching, pleading for something to ring a bell. There was nothing. It felt as though she was being told about something that had happened to someone else.

  Dolores chuckled. "Hector isn’t the sort to come right up and say hello. But if you ever feel like somebody’s

  peering at you out of the shadows, don’t be alarmed. It’s probably him."

  Maddie looked at her sharply, coming back to the conversation. "Is he dangerous?"

  Dolores laughed fully. "Oh, no. Do you remember the Wizard of Oz?"

  Maddie flushed. "Of course."

  A kindly look passed over Dolores’s face. "I was just thinking of the lion who went to see the Wizard." Suddenly Maddie understood. "The cowardly one." "That’s right. That’s our Hector. He’s on the police force, can you imagine?"

  "Now that makes me feel safer." She thought of Joe Gallen again. In spite of the anger that seemed to run right beneath the surface of him—or maybe because of it—it did make her feel safe to know that he was standing guard over the island.

  "Well, come along here," Dolores said. "This one was your room."

  She pushed open one of the doors to the left. The bedroom was small and pretty, done in yellow ruffles and gingham. The furniture was white.

  "Did it look like this then?" Maddie asked, because, once again, she felt no recognition.

  "Do you know, I don’t rightly remember how I had it done up then. It was a long time ago."

  Maddie took a deep breath. "Good."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Then it’s not just me."

  Dolores laughed again. "No, I guess not. The kittens are in my room, over here."

  She ushered her out of the yellow-and-white room, to the big bedroom on the other side. The last of the litter were in a small box tucked behind the radiator. Josh made a strangled sound and moved toward them, look-

  ing back at Maddie as though for confirmation that it was okay to touch them.

  Her heart thrummed. He’d made a sound. In that moment, Leslie Mendehlson’s stock went up dramatically in her estimation.

  "That’s why we’re here, honey," she told him, struggling to keep the joy out of her voice and failing. She didn’t want to pressure him with her own heartfelt need for him to be whole again. "You can have one. Pick the one you like."

  "He’s like you were, is that it?" Dolores asked.

  Maddie stiffened. She wondered why she felt such a fierce need to keep people from knowing what was happening to Josh. It was going to come out sooner or later, especially on nosy Candle Island. It was the guilt again, she realized. Because there on Candle, people would remember what had happened to her and blame her for the fact that it was happening to Josh.

  "Poor little thing." Dolores bustled over to him without waiting for an answer. "That one. honey? Yes, he’s friendly, isn’t he?"

  Maddie followed her. Josh had definitely made his selection. It was a tiny black-and-white male, and he was clutching it to his chest.

  "Do you have a name for him?" she asked deliberately.

  Josh stared at her almost accusingly. For a moment, a heartbreaking moment, Maddie thought he was actually going to put the kitten back rather than have to speak a name for him. He’d rather do without the kitten, she realized, than leave his quiet, safe place. But then his arms tightened protectively around the animal.

  Maddie breathed again. "What do I owe you?" she asked Dolores Carlson.

  "A good home, and the promise that you won’t dump him in the marshes when you leave here."

  Maddie’s eyes went wide. "Of course not!"

  Dolores shook her head. "We get a lot of artists here in the summer now. They come to paint and whatnot while the weather is good. You’d be surprised at how many adopt a pet while they're here, then just take off and go home, leaving the poor animal to fend for itself as best it can. That’s how I end up with so many of them."

  Maddie winced. "Well, that won’t happen with us." Dolores smiled. "Cookies, Josh? I’ve got some downstairs."

  They went back to the kitchen. Maddie was shocked when she looked at her watch an hour later and realized how much time had passed. Though she didn’t remember Dolores, she nonetheless learned to appreciate her kindness in a hurry.

  The woman told her about several of the islanders, but she was tight-lipped when it came to Gina and Joe Gallen. She said only that they were a "tragedy." Maddie was marginally annoyed with herself for even asking.

  They were back at the front door, the kitten in a cardboard box that Dolores had rustled out of the garage, before Maddie decided there was one more thing she wanted to know. "Dolores ..."

  "Doe," she said promptly. "Please. Everyone just calls me Aunt Doe."

  Maddie nodded slowly. "Doe, then." She had a problem with the "aunt" bit. She’d always been slow and careful about getting too cozy with people.

  "You said I stayed here with you until Aunt Susan came for me," she prompted.

  Dolores nodded. "That’s exactly right."

  "Where did I live . . . before then? I mean, when I was with my parents? Is that house still around here somewhere? I’d like to see it."

  For the first time Doe Carlson looked visibly upset Her big face flushed. "I thought you knew."

  Maddie’s heart began hammering hard again. "Knew what?"

  "You’re in it, honey. You rented it, or at least that’s what I heard. That nasty Cassie Diehl put you right back there in your old house."

  Joe Gallen roamed the narrow aisles of the library until he found the nonfiction section relegated to art. He thought that the almost-girlfriend in Jonesport had mentioned something about Madeline Brogan having published a book of her work. But maybe she was wrong, he realized, or maybe it hadn’t been widely distributed. There wasn’t anything on the shelves.

  He heard a footstep behind him and turned around. It was Flannery Reed, the librarian.

  She had been another almost-girlfriend in those dark, bitter years right after Gina. Flannery, too, had finally given up all hope of getting him to settle down.

  Now there, Joe thought, is an interesting euphemism. Not so much the settling part, but the bit about settling down . . . sinking, he thought, into some kind of fiery, unbearable hell. Even if you climbed your way out again, there was no way you were going to emerge from such a place without scars.

  He had mentioned that theory to Flannery once. From the look on her face, she still hadn’t forgiven him for it.

  She flicked her long, strawberry blond hair back over her shoulder. "Going scholarly on us, Joe?"

  "No." He looked back at the shelves again.

  "Did you want something in particular?"

  "One of Madeline Brogan’s books."

  Flannery’s face stiffened. She no longer looked pretty when he glanced back at her.

  "They’re all out," she said flatly.

  "Out?" |oe felt a kick of interest. "You mean, somebody checked them all out?"

  "That’s right."


  "How many of them were there?"

  "Three."

  "Who has them?"

  Flannery tossed her hair again and turned her back on him to return to the desk. "We don’t give out that kind of information, Chief."

  "You do now," Joe snapped, annoyed with her. Jesus, he wondered, why did everyone on Candle feel like they had to play games? Were they that unconscionably bored with their lives?

  "It’s police business," he went on, following her, "and I don’t feel like waiting two weeks until somebody gets around to returning them. So tell me who’s got them so I can go track them down."

  Flannery didn’t answer until she was seated. "You know, Joe, it’s probably a real good thing your folks are gone south. Your ma would tan your hide if she could hear how rude you got."

  He watched Flannery with a cold expression and waited. She finally gave a huffy sigh.

  "Your wife’s got one."

  "Ex-wife," he said shortly.

  "And old Angus took one. We’ll probably never see that one again, and if we do, God only knows what condition it’ll be in."

  Actually, that surprised Joe more than Gina’s acquisition of the book. If there was a new female on the island, Gina would be the first to take full stock of the competition—whether it was real or imagined. But Angus?

  "Are there words in them?" he asked. "Or just her pictures?"

  Flannery’s face colored. Joe realized she had never bothered to look at the book herself. She didn’t know.

  "Never mind. Who else?" He sure as hell wasn’t going to seek out Gina, not for this or for anything else. As for Angus, he didn’t relish the thought of trooping on foot to the center of The Wick to try to find him and get his copy.

  "Hector Marks."

  That wasn’t surprising, Joe thought. His wife would be haranguing him to get a copy while he was out and about.

  "You want the waiting list, too?" Flannery asked.

  "Yeah, give it to me."