Women Who Stay, 31

Chapter 1 ... Chapter 30

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When I completed my indexing and still hadn't heard from Gordon, it was time to bait my trap. I texted him.

I hope you're feeling better! I'm sorting through Janie's pictures, but I can't tell when some were taken. Can we meet and look through them together?

His reply was immediate. Still at shore. Come to me?

Rolling my eyes, I acquiesced. A week later I found myself back in a Zipcar, pulling up to a humble bungalow in Ocean Gate. Gordon lounged in an Adirondack chair on its front porch, doing an excellent impersonation of Tom Ripley in a breezy linen suit. There was a sweating pitcher of iced tea and two glasses on a table beside him. Despite the idyllic tableau, he looked ill at ease.

"Did you bring the pictures?" he asked before I reached him. I pulled a binder out of my purse, which I'd filled almost at random -- I didn't really need his help dating pictures. I just needed to get him talking.

We spent an hour on the porch flipping through the binder while I took notes. Unlike his siblings, Gordon adored Janie. By his reports, she doted on him through his childhood, put him through college at Rutgers, and rented him an apartment near her condo once he graduated. She kept him close, and he never implied he'd wanted it any other way. He still called her 'Mommy.' When we came across a photo of Janie standing at a Second Story register in the late 1980's, he smiled.

"She was always happiest there," he said. "It broke her heart to close."

"Yeah, I've been wondering about that," I said, casually. As if it weren't one of my overarching remaining questions. "I've been looking through her records, and it seems like her stores were doing just fine. Your father's were a mess, of course, but it seems to me like she could have stayed open long past '99."

He laughed bitterly. "After everyone in town was finished saying their sorries for her loss, the well of sympathy dried up. She started getting threats. Nasty letters. Windows broken. She tried to rebrand, but it didn't work out. Everyone knew she still owned the company. She decided to sell while she was ahead, rather than watch it all crumble and be left with nothing. But she never really stopped. Just moved online, sold on eBay instead." He trailed off, stroking the picture. "It wasn't the same, though. She needed to be around people to be happy. To show herself off."

"I didn't see any police reports. Did she tell anyone what was happening?"

"No, she didn't want to get them involved. Didn't like how they handled the whole thing with Antonio."

"You call him Antonio?" Startled, he looked up quickly. As if caught in a lie.

"Well, I never really knew him. Mommy called him Antonio. I grew up doing the same."

"Do you remember him at all?" He flipped to a new page in the binder, where I'd stuck a portrait of Antonio. He twisted his face in concentration.

"Sometimes, I think I do. I'll see a picture and his face will spark something in me. A smell of aftershave, a hand pushing me on a swing set. But then it's gone again. Like it was never there to begin with."

"Did your mother ever talk about him?"

"All the time."

"What about when he died? What did you grow up knowing?"

"Well, there is... one memory I have. Very early." He shook his head. "But it's fuzzy. It doesn't make much sense. "

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Read on to Chapter 32