11
Alone in his bed the next morning, Mack tried to parse his motive for what had happened next. Or more accurately, what hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t making love with her have been an act toward reconciliation? Maybe he wasn’t as serious as he thought about rebuilding their marriage.
He’d rebuttoned her shirt, snap by snap, and seen her relief that he hadn’t taken up the offer. She must have realized immediately the impulse was wrong for the moment.
After the tiramisu, after they’d worked together to clean up the kitchen, he felt a flash of regret. Maybe he’d missed a moment. Or maybe he wasn’t so sure he was ready to forgive her.
They’d hugged in the doorway for a long time and her goodnight kiss lingered, warm as the night. Before he could say anything, though, she’d squeezed past him, walked down the stairs and out to the road, where she turned left and started walking uphill. He wondered where she’d parked the Bug.
After his morning coffee, there was nothing left to do but interview Candy Jardin. The dinner with Karin made it more important he wrap this up, refocus on how and when they would reconcile. On the strength of a faint memory, he dialed the number of the Westford Cove Care Center.
“Pudge?” he said, when someone picked up.
She would be plugged into the network of Karin’s volleyball players and thus, into the high school.
“Mr. Macklin?”
“Was Candy Jardin on the volleyball team?”
She sounded relieved, as if she’d thought he was calling about something else.
“No. I didn’t know her at all.”
“The family?”
“Her sister graduated last year—we played together. But she moved to California, right after graduation.” Pudge sounded envious.
“Parents?”
“Candy’s? Her dad was long gone, even when Daisy was in school. I think her Mom’s over in Windham.”
Women’s Correctional Center.
Her voice lowered. “Drugs.”
It startled him, though it shouldn’t have. That kind of addiction was not strictly an urban thing.
“Candy’s how old? Fourteen?”
A sharp voice in the background demanded to know who Pudge was talking to.
“That newspaper guy got it wrong,” she said.
The voice snapped again.
“I have to go,” she whispered. “She emancipated herself, the second time her mother went away.”
“Wait,” he said. “Someone must be paying her bills.”
“Sorry, Mr. M. Gotta go.”