Forever and Always Read online

  “My parents lied to me?” he said in such shock that at first I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. When he gave me that famous grin I almost smiled back.

  “Next,” he said, his eyes twinkling, proud of himself for having nearly made me smile.

  There was milk money stolen by some kid with a scar over his left eye.

  “I thought he was the one but I could never prove it.”

  A shirt stolen by a fellow actor, a watch that dropped off his wrist while rowboating. It was still at the bottom of a lake.

  The fifth item was serious and I could feel the man waiting for my answer. The paper fairly vibrated in my hand. “This has been destroyed. The…What is it? It’s a folder but it’s more than that. It’s leather with a lock on it. The papers in it and the folder were burned.”

  I looked at him hard because I realized that someone would have killed him to get those papers. In my mind’s eye, I saw him asleep and I saw a thin person dressed in black as he or she opened a safe and took the papers.

  “What was the combination to your safe?”

  He blinked a couple of times that I knew about the safe, but before he could say it out loud, I “heard” it.

  “Your Social Security number. Not very smart using that number, was it?”

  He didn’t answer, just sat there and stared at me. After a moment he picked up the big manila envelope he’d brought with him, but he didn’t hand it to me. “I read that book about you,” he said, “but it never hinted that you could…do things. It said you were more interested in candy bars than in finding Adam Montgomery’s sister.”

  I knew he was opening the way for me to tell him the truth behind what had happened in Connecticut, but I had no inclination to do so. The man was impressed that I could tell him about a ring he’d had when he was a kid. If he knew even ten percent about what I could do, he’d probably run for the door. “You have a child?” I asked him. I was sure that envelope he was clutching had photos and mementos, and I truly hoped I didn’t have to tell him his child was no longer living.

  “Oh yeah, sure,” he said, still staring at me in that way I hate, as though I were a freak.

  He handed me the envelope; I opened it and removed the papers, but I didn’t feel what he wanted me to.

  I could feel that the kid who’d made the photocopies was angry at his girlfriend—but, most of all, I could feel my mother.

  “My mother sent you these papers?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment I closed my eyes. Jerlene Monroe and I didn’t socialize with each other. We never had, not even when I was a child. I’d never been to a movie or the circus or even to an ice cream parlor with her. But, as had been reported, she’d risked her life for me. I knew from the paper I held that she was well and enjoying her fame immensely.

  “No child,” I said. “I don’t feel any child in this.”

  “Look at the clippings in the back.”

  There were two newspaper clippings, but my mother’s touch was so strong on them that I had difficulty feeling anything else. I looked hard at the woman’s photo. The woman was youngish and simple. I couldn’t feel anything complicated in her mind or her life.

  “Simple,” I said. “Uncomplicated. She likes to make people feel good.”

  He was looking at me so eagerly, sitting on the edge of the sofa, that I couldn’t help but be affected. The truth is, when I’d done this before, it had always been with someone I loved present. As a child, anything “weird and strange” I could do, I kept to myself. My husband was the first person I’d openly talked to about my so-called “power.” When my father and Adam’s sister came into my life, I was fairly open with them. My father had spent a lot of time with me, trying to find out what I could do, but he was only interested in the big stuff. After all, he knew I’d used my mind to kill four people, so he wasn’t interested in my picking up a photo and telling about the person.

  But this beautiful actor was. I could feel his excitement, feel that he thought what I was doing was marvelous and magnificent. If he only knew…

  “No children,” I said. “This woman never had a child.”

  At that, he fell back against the sofa. “Yes she did. She had my child.”

  I could tell that he’d lost faith in me. “Maybe that’s why she was killed,” I said.

  He sat upright again. “Killed? As in murdered?”

  “Yes. Someone did something to the brakes. I think you’ll find that this tree is at the bottom of a curve on a steep hill. Her death was well planned.”

  “Why?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know. Someone wanted something from her death but I don’t know what.” I handed the folder full of papers back to him. I’d seen all I could. I wanted him to leave so I could go back to—To what? He and I were alone in the house. Since I’d known he was coming, I’d sent the housekeeper and the two gardeners home. I didn’t want them oohing and aahing over Lincoln Aimes.

  He didn’t take the hint so I started to use what I’d always called my True Persuasion to make him leave. But I stopped before I’d started. Okay, so I knew he was lying to me—or maybe he was just leaving out a lot—but, still, he seemed genuinely upset about this child who didn’t seem to exist.

  Instead of making him leave, I asked him to stay for dinner, only I didn’t use words. I sent the thought to him that he was very hungry and that he wanted to cook something in my kitchen. Heaven knew that I couldn’t cook and I certainly couldn’t leave the house. If those reporters out there saw me with Lincoln Aimes it’d be all over the papers tomorrow.

  When I heard his stomach growl, I allowed myself a little smile. I’m good, I thought, then I started putting it into his head that he wanted to tell me everything about this child from the beginning.

  An hour later, Linc, as he told me to call him, and I were sitting at the marble-topped counter in the kitchen eating huge bowls of spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad. Beside us strawberries and those little round shortcakes were thawing.

  “Every word,” I said as I twirled pasta around my fork. I hadn’t eaten much since Adam disappeared and as a result my spinal column was the biggest thing on my body.

  It took him nearly an hour to tell me all of it. He didn’t know it but I was working on him the whole time to make him tell me more and more.

  I must say that, all in all, it was an interesting story. The problem was that it had huge blanks in it, missing pieces.

  As a starving actor he’d been a sperm donor to a cryo bank and some woman who worked there had seen Lincoln Aimes in a movie so she’d—What? Stolen the sperm and performed a do-it-yourself job?

  Linc didn’t know the details. All he knew was what his agent had found out, that Lisa Henderson had given birth to Lincoln Aimes’s child and they’d spent seven years moving all over the country.

  “And now your agent’s dead?” I asked as I started on my second bowl of pasta. He’d eaten only one. Wimp.

  “And so is Lisa Henderson. I had papers that had lots of information about her and my son, such as which schools he went to, but all the papers were taken.”

  “Out of your safe in the night while you slept. Good thing you didn’t wake up because the thief would have killed you.” From the way he paused with his glass at his lips, I knew I’d shocked him. “Didn’t I tell you that part?”

  “Uh, no, you didn’t.” He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “What else didn’t you tell me?”

  “That your girlfriend—”

  “I do not want to hear that one!”

  I couldn’t help it but I actually smiled—and he smiled back.

  Getting up, he ladled half-frozen strawberries onto the cold little cakes. He wasn’t any better at cooking than I was. “Okay, so now what do I do? Forget about it all? Am I to think this woman did not have my child because now I don’t have any proof that a child lived with her? Besides, if a kid did live with her, I’m not sure it was mine. Or is mine. If he ever existed, that is.”