She slapped my head with a pillow. “Whatever. Anyway, that was last year. I’ve matured. And she’s going to love this—going on an adventure to see her nonnie with Uncle Bubba? If we told her tonight, she’d never have fallen asleep.” She rolled on top of me. “So what’s your immediate plan?”
“Find Amanda.”
“Again.”
“Again. Trade the cross she stole for Sophie. Everyone goes home.”
“Who says Amanda’s going to give it up?”
“Sophie’s her friend.”
“The way I’ve heard it, Sophie’s her Robert Ford.”
“I don’t know if it’s that bad.” I scratched my head. “I don’t know a lot, though. Which is why I’ve gotta find her.”
“How, though?”
“Question of the month.”
She reached across my body and grabbed my laptop bag off the floor. She opened it, pulled out the file marked A. MCCREADY and opened it on the pillow to the right of my head. “These are the shots you took of her room?”
“Yeah. No, not those—those are of Sophie’s room. Keep going. Those there.”
“Looks like a hotel room.”
“Pretty impersonal, yeah.”
“Except for the Sox jersey.”
I nodded. “Know what’s weird? She isn’t a fan. She never talked about the team or went to Fenway or wondered aloud what Theo was thinking when he made the Julio Lugo deal or traded Kason Gabbard for Going Going Gagne.”
“Maybe it’s just Beckett.”
“Huh?”
“Maybe she’s just got a crush on Josh Beckett.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, that’s his jersey, right? Number 19. Why are you whiter than usual suddenly?”
“Ange.”
“What?”
“It’s not the Red Sox she’s obsessed with.”
“No?”
“And she doesn’t have a crush on Josh Beckett.”
“Yeah, he’s not my type either. So why the jersey?”
“Twelve years ago, where’d we find her?”
“At Jack Doyle’s house.”
“And where was that?”
“Some little Podunk town in the Berkshires. What was it, like, fifteen miles from the New York border? Twenty? They didn’t even have a coffee shop.”
“What was the name?”
“Of the town?”
I nodded.
She shrugged. “You tell me.”
“Becket.”
“Give Daddy a hug.”
“No.”
“Sweetie, please.”
“No, I said.”
We were in tantrum mode. Standing in the C Terminal of Logan, Bubba and Gabby with their tickets in hand, a surprisingly light security check-in line awaiting them, and Gabby pissed off at me like only a four-year-old can get pissed off. The arm-folding, the foot-stomping, the whole deal.
I knelt by her and she turned her head. “Sweetie, we talked about this. Throwing a tantrum in the house is what?”
“Our problem,” she said eventually.
“And what’s throwing a tantrum outside our house?”
She shook her head.
“Gabriella,” I said.
“Our embarrassment,” she said.
“Exactly. So give your old man a hug. You can be mad at me, but you still have to give me a hug. That’s our rule. Right?”
She dropped Mr. Lubble and jumped on me. She held on so tight her thumb knuckles dug into my spine and her chin dug into the side of my neck.
“We’ll see you real soon,” I said.
“Tonight?”
I looked at Angie. Christ.
“Not tonight. But real soon.”
“You’re always going away.”
“No suh.”
“Yes suh. You go away at night and you’re gone when I get up in the morning times, too. And you’re taking Mommy away, too.”
“Daddy works.”
“Too much.” She had a catch in her voice that suggested another meltdown was imminent.
I propped her in front of me. She looked in my eyes, a tiny-doll version of her mother. “This is the last time, honey. Okay? Last time I go away. Last time I send you away.”
She stared at me, eyes and lips bubbling. “Swear.”
I held up my right hand. “I swear.”
Angie knelt beside us and kissed our daughter. I stepped back and let them have their own moment, which was even more emotionally fraught than mine.
Bubba stepped in close. “She going to cry on the plane, make a scene, shit like that?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “But if she does and anyone gives you a dirty look, you have my permission to bite them. Or at least growl at them. And if you see any Russians giving her funny looks—”
“Man,” he said, “anyone gives that kid a funny look? Their eyes will end up on the ground looking back up at their head as I cut it off their fucking neck.”
On the other side of security, they looked back at us, Bubba holding Gabby up by his shoulder as he lifted their bags off the conveyor belt. They waved.
We waved back, and then they were gone.
PART III
The Belarus Cross
Chapter Eighteen
The clouds hung low under a pale sky as we exited the Mass Pike and followed the line on the map toward Becket. The town lay twenty-five miles south of the New York border in the heart of the Berkshires. This time of year, the hills were sprinkled with snow and the damp roads were black and slick. Becket had a main road but no Main Street. It had no town center we could find, no one-block strip containing a general store, a hairdresser, a Laundromat, and the local Realtor. Neither, as Angie had noted, did it have a coffee shop. For any of that, you had to go to Stockbridge or Lenox. Becket had houses and hills and trees and more trees. An amoeba-shaped pond the color of cream soda. More trees, the tops of some half-hidden in the low clouds.
We drove around Becket and West Becket all morning—up, down, all four points of the compass, and back again. Most of the roads in the hills dead-ended, so we got several curious or hostile looks as we pulled up to someone’s property and then had to back out the way we’d come, wheels crunching gravel. But none of those curious or hostile faces belonged to Amanda.
After three hours of this, we broke for lunch. We found a diner a few miles away in Chester. I ordered a turkey club, no mayo. Angie ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke. I sipped my bottled water and pretended I didn’t really want her meal. Angie rarely watches what she eats and has the cholesterol issues of a newborn. I eat fish and chicken ninety percent of the time and have the high LDL levels of a retired sumo wrestler. Life, it’s so fair that way. There were eight other patrons in the place. We were the only people not wearing boots. Or plaid. The men all wore ball caps and jeans. A couple of the women wore the kind of sweaters you get at Christmas from elderly aunts. Parka vests were popular.