Puppet Read online

  A gun, Amanda remembers now with a gasp, as she must have gasped then. Small and black, and surprisingly heavy.

  She watches the child Amanda lift the strange object into her hands, sees her turn it over, then lift it to her nose to inhale its cold, metallic scent. And suddenly her mother is in the doorway, crying and yelling and waving her arms like a deranged puppet, wresting the gun from Amanda’s fingers. The child flees the room in terror. Later, when Amanda goes to her mother’s room to try to explain, her mother stares through her as if she doesn’t exist.

  The shoe box wasn’t there the next time Amanda snuck into her mother’s bedroom for a peek in her closet. Nor was its contents ever alluded to again. The question remained unasked throughout the years: What was her mother doing with a gun?

  And now an addendum: Was it the same gun she used to murder John Mallins?

  “Who the hell is John Mallins?” Amanda asks out loud.

  “I’m sorry. Are you talking to me?” The man beside her stares at her with warm brown eyes.

  “What? Oh, no. Sorry. I was just talking to myself. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “No problem. I do it all the time.” His eyes return to his book.

  Amanda finds herself staring at his face in profile. It’s a pleasant face, she decides. Not particularly handsome. Although not unhandsome. Long nose, high cheekbones, full lips, strong jaw. Kind eyes, she thinks, wishing he would focus them on her again. “Is that a good book?”

  “What?”

  “You seem very engrossed in your book.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Just all right?” Why is she badgering the poor man? Clearly he’s not interested in prolonged conversation. He has no need to be distracted and entertained. His mother didn’t shoot a stranger in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel.

  “It’s pretty good so far.” He lays the open book across his lap. “But I’m prepared to be disappointed.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I read a lot of mysteries, and most of them start out okay, but then they kind of fall apart.”

  Amanda nods as if she agrees, although she hasn’t read many mysteries. Life is confusing enough, she thinks. “And how does one prepare to be disappointed?”

  The man smiles, takes several seconds to ponder the question. “One thinks about the past,” he says finally.

  A line of perspiration immediately breaks out along Amanda’s upper lip. She feels her cheeks grow pink and moist, as if she has just leaned over an open fire.

  “Are you all right?” the man asks, brown eyes narrowing with concern.

  “It’s this coat,” she lies. “I’m about ready to scream.”

  “Here,” he offers. “Let me help you.” He tugs the coat from her shoulders, holds it as she extricates her arms from its bulky sleeves, her right hand shooting out to narrowly miss the jaw of the girl beside her.

  “Sorry about that,” Amanda says.

  A loud crack of gum tells Amanda her apology has been accepted.

  “Would you like me to put this up top?” The man motions toward the compartment above their heads.

  “Thank you.”

  “Feeling more comfortable now?”

  Amanda pats the deep V of her white T-shirt, takes a deep breath. “Much. Thank you.”

  His eyes follow the motion of her hands. “Would you like a glass of water? I can ring for the stewardess.”

  “No, that’s fine. Thanks again.”

  He smiles, extends his hand. “Jerrod Sugar.”

  It takes Amanda several seconds to realize this is his name and not some exotic beverage. “Amanda,” she says, shaking his hand. “Amanda Travis.”

  “Heading home, Amanda?” Jerrod Sugar asks.

  “No, actually. Florida’s my home.”

  “Really? I thought I detected a trace of an accent. Aboot,” he says with a chuckle.

  Amanda stiffens. “No. Florida native. What about you?”

  “I’m from Milwaukee, originally. Moved to Abacoa last year.”

  Amanda pictures the small, spanking new city that is being built between Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter. Despite being only partially populated, it already boasts its own stadium, golf course, and full-fledged university. She also pictures a wife and three little Sugar cubes. “Why Abacoa?”

  “I’m a professor,” he says. “Got an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “And what is it you profess exactly?”

  He laughs. Amanda decides she likes the sound. She leans closer, her left breast brushing up against the side of his arm. “Economics,” Jerrod Sugar says, reaching into his pocket to retrieve a business card, careful that his arm doesn’t lose contact with her breast.

  She makes a show of examining the card. “I’m afraid I know absolutely nothing about economics.”

  “I suspect you know a good deal. About a lot of things.”

  It was Amanda’s turn to chuckle. “So why are you going to Toronto?”

  “Convention. You?”

  “Vacation,” she says, the first word that pops into her mind.

  “Vacation? Who vacations in Toronto in February?”

  Amanda shrugs. He’s right after all.

  “Come on, fess up.” This time he’s the one who leans toward her, his eyes falling into the V of her T-shirt.

  Amanda isn’t sure if it’s the obviousness of his gaze or the “fess up” that does it, but she suddenly hears herself say, “Actually, my ex-husband called to tell me my mother’s been arrested for murder. He thought it might be a good idea for me to pay her a visit.”

  A smile cracks Jerrod’s face almost in two. “You’re joking, right?”

  “I’m joking,” Amanda confirms instantly.

  He laughs, but the sound has a nervous consistency that wasn’t there before. He turns away. Moments later, his nose is buried back inside his book.

  Amanda was fourteen when she lost her virginity.

  It happened at someone’s cottage in Haliburton. The someone was Perry Singleton, whose sister, Claire, was in the same homeroom with Amanda at school, and whose parents invited Amanda to the cottage one weekend in July. The Singletons had obviously hoped the invitation might spark a friendship between their shy, introverted daughter and her more outgoing classmate, but the only thing it sparked was a fire between the legs of Claire’s older brother.

  At sixteen, Perry Singleton was already the guy your mother warned you about—good-looking, cocky, wild. Amanda had seen him swaggering down the halls of Jarvis Collegiate, heard the whispers of his sexual prowess and the rumors he kept a detailed chart of his various conquests, complete with an elaborate ratings system involving a combination of red ink, asterisks, and gold stars, and knew he wasn’t above sharing this information with his friends. She often heard newly discarded girls crying in the washrooms, each having nursed the delusion she was different, the one to change him, to bring him to his senses and his knees.

  Amanda had no such illusions, even at fourteen. She had no expectation of changing the roguish frog that was Perry Singleton into some boring prince, nor did she want to. What she aspired to—all she aspired to, in fact—was to be the highest-rated notch on his well-worn belt. She wanted the red ink, the asterisk, and the gold star.

  And so when he came up behind her at the cottage and put his hand down the back of her shorts, she hadn’t slapped it aside or acted shocked or played hard to get. Instead she’d turned around and placed her own hand firmly on the front of his jeans, then told him she’d sneak into his room after Claire fell asleep, to be ready for her.

  He wasn’t big on foreplay, which suited Amanda fine, since she found his hurried groping more annoying than exciting. She didn’t feel much of anything the first time he entered her. It hurt, but not too much, probably because the whole thing was over within less than a minute. He didn’t seem to notice that it was her first time. Or maybe he noticed, but didn’t care, which was also okay with Amanda. It didn’t take her long to discover w
hat Perry liked, which was almost anything that involved his penis, and she’d seen enough movies to know the proper moves to make, and when to make them. It didn’t matter that she herself received little satisfaction from the act. Personal satisfaction wasn’t going to get her any asterisks or gold stars.

  Suffice it to say, Perry Singleton was devastated when, two months later, she dropped him.

  She quickly moved on to Ronnie Leighton, followed in rapid succession by Fred Coons, Norman McAuliff, Billy Kravitz, and Spenser Watt. All before her sixteenth birthday.

  Ken Urbach, Jeremy Walberg, Ian Fitzhenry, Brian Castleman, Larry Burton, Stuart Magilny, at least half a dozen more, followed before she turned seventeen.

  And then she finally met her match.

  Amanda arches her back, looks past the teenage girl now dozing in the seat beside her, her jaw remaining strangely active, chewing even in her sleep. She sees Ben Myers reflected in the glass of the small window of the plane. His eyes are the color of bitter chocolate and his cheeks are rough with stubble. He is wearing the tightest, scruffiest jeans she has ever seen, and his long, black hair smells of beer and marijuana cigarettes. He wants nothing from no one, he asserts to all who will listen. People are hypocrites; success sucks; stability is for sissies. Except he doesn’t say sissies. He says pussies, and Amanda finds herself thrilled by the sound.

  Is it any wonder they discover one another? That they are pulled toward each other like opposite sides of a magnet? That they crash headlong into each other’s arms?

  “My parents are such losers,” he confides one night. “They have no idea what I’m about.”

  “Mine don’t even know I’m there,” she confides in return, thinking it is preferable to be misunderstood than unnoticed.

  “I’m bad news,” he tells her.

  “I’m worse.”

  The captain comes on the loudspeaker to announce their descent into Toronto. Amanda feels a painful popping in her ears, thinks of asking the girl beside her for a stick of gum, but is afraid the girl might simply reach into her mouth and break off a piece, so she grimaces and says nothing.

  “Something wrong?” Jerrod Sugar asks.

  Amanda points to her ears.

  “Try swallowing.”

  Amanda tries not to hear anything sexual in his advice and swallows several times in quick succession, but she feels only a modicum of relief. Suddenly remembering that the most dangerous times for flying are during takeoff and landing, she grips tightly to the armrests.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a white-knuckler,” Jerrod Sugar says with a smile.

  “I’m just full of surprises.”

  “I’ll just bet you are.” This time he doesn’t look away.

  Amanda senses he is about to suggest that they share a limo or perhaps meet later for a drink, but he says nothing, and this time it is Amanda who looks away. Again she glances toward the window, watches as the surrounding clouds are gradually absorbed by the snow-covered landscape below.

  “It looks like another planet,” she mutters, thinking that’s exactly what it is.

  The teenage girl beside her suddenly spins around in her seat. “I am so excited,” she announces to Amanda, as if the two are long-lost friends. “I haven’t seen my boyfriend in six months. We’re both going to different colleges, and this is the first time we’ll be in the same city at the same time. Do I look all right?” She smooths her hair, stares expectantly at Amanda, her jaw grinding ferociously.

  “Maybe you could lose the gum,” Amanda offers.

  Immediately, the girl spits the mangled pink wad into her hand. “I forgot I had it in my mouth.” She giggles. “Yuck. It’s pretty stale.” She drops it inside the airsickness bag. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  “Thanks. I’m so nervous. I think I have to pee.” She unfastens her seat belt, struggles to stand up.

  “I think you’re supposed to stay in your seat while we’re making our descent.” Amanda points to the Fasten Seat Belt sign overhead.

  “Shoot,” the girl says, sitting back down.

  Immediately Amanda thinks of her mother.

  As soon as they land, Jerrod Sugar retrieves Amanda’s overnight bag from the overhead bin, then helps her on with her coat, his hands lingering a second longer than necessary on her shoulders.

  “I’ll be at the Metro Convention Center until Thursday,” he tells her. “If you have any free time, why don’t you give me a call.”

  SEVEN

  THE walk from the plane to Canadian customs is endless. Amanda proceeds slowly down the long corridor, the strap of her bulky, black leather overnight bag weighing heavily on her right shoulder, thinking that she should have bought one of those clever suitcases with wheels she sees everyone else pulling easily behind them. Except what would be the point? Wheels mean speed, and speed means getting to her destination quicker, when what she really wants is not to get there at all.

  She steps onto a long escalator, begins yet another descent. At the bottom, she joins hundreds of other people waiting in at least a dozen long lines to clear Canadian customs. She hears a woman complain that two jumbo jets have landed at the same time, disgorging their passengers simultaneously, which means it will likely take an hour to get to the front of the line. Amanda shrugs, probably the only person in the crowded area who welcomes this bit of unpleasant news. She looks around for Jerrod Sugar, thinks she sees him several rows away, talking to an attractive woman closer to his own age, but when she looks the other way, she sees him again, this time talking animatedly into his cell phone. It occurs to Amanda, as she moves several baby steps forward in line, that Jerrod Sugar has one of those faces that always look familiar. It also occurs to her that despite sitting next to the man for much of the afternoon, and actively flirting with him through part of it, she really has no idea what he looks like at all, and that she probably won’t recognize him should she decide to take him up on his offer and call him at his hotel.

  Despite the volume of people and the dire predictions, the process moves along at a relatively brisk pace, and within half an hour Amanda finds herself near the front of the line. “Purpose of your visit?” she hears the customs officer bark at the couple in front of her.

  “Business,” says the husband.

  “Pleasure,” says his wife.

  Well, which is it? Amanda wants to ask, glancing at the customs form in her hand, scoffing out loud when she sees she’s checked off Pleasure. There should be a box for Duty, she thinks. Or Guilted into It. How about one for Mother Is a Murderer?

  “Miss?” a voice is saying from somewhere beside her.

  She feels a tap on her shoulder. “You’re up,” the man behind her says, motioning ahead.

  Amanda nods, her heart racing as if she were an illegal immigrant trying to sneak into the country as she hands her passport and declaration form to the waiting official.

  “Where are you from?” he asks, although he has all the information in front of him.

  “Florida.” She wonders if the data on his computer is telling him otherwise, that she was, in fact, born right here in Toronto, and that as a consequence of her hedging the truth, she will be handcuffed and put on a return flight to the U.S. immediately.

  “And what brings you to Toronto at this time of year?” the man asks pleasantly.

  Amanda notes that the customs official is young and anemically attractive, his skin pale, and his light brown hair already thinning, although his voice is surprisingly deep. “I’m here to see my mother,” she says, almost choking on the last word.

  Surely he has sensed her hesitation. Surely he will press her for details. Who is your mother? he will demand. How long has it been since you’ve seen her? Why the long estrangement? Why the need to see her now? Who are you? Who are you really?

  “How long will you be staying?” he asks instead.

  “Just a few days.”

  “Are you bringing any gifts?”

  Amanda almost laughs. When wa
s the last time she and her mother exchanged gifts? Had they ever? “No. No gifts.”

  “Any cigarettes or alcohol?”

  She feels last night’s wine claw at her throat. “No.”

  “Enjoy your visit.” The officer stamps her declaration form, returns it to her along with her passport, and signals for the next person in line.

  “Thank you.” Reluctantly, Amanda leaves his side and follows the flow of traffic into the baggage claim area. Luckily, she has no baggage to claim, and so she proceeds to the exit, where yet another official is waiting to check her declaration form.

  “Fine,” he tells her, taking the form from her hand and sparing her the indignity of some stranger rifling through her bag, although all such a search would reveal is her makeup kit, black pants, and a matching turtleneck sweater, and several unexciting changes of cotton underwear. Amanda pushes her feet toward the exit, as if she were slogging through thick globs of freshly poured concrete, her eyes passing over the eager faces of those waiting to greet their loved ones. All around her are the happy sounds of people being reunited—Hi, sweetheart. Did you have a good flight?; Look at you! You’re so big, I almost didn’t recognize you!; Welcome home, Daddy! She catches sight of her teenage seatmate as the girl flings herself into her boyfriend’s open arms with joyous abandon and feels a slight rip in the vicinity of her heart. When was the last time she literally flew into someone’s arms? When was the last time someone was waiting to catch her?