Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

“Poor girl. Yes, she had. The last two times I saw her, she wouldn’t speak. She let me hug her, though, the last time I saw her.”
    “Did she know it was the last time she’d see you? Did she know you were leaving?”
    Celia nodded. “Eric, Dr. Bechman, said not to tell her. He said she was in the middle of . . .“ She stopped, looked off to the side, wiped her eyes with her fingertips. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, no nail polish, no wedding ring either, I noticed. “A crisis,” she said. “And that my telling her I was leaving wouldn’t be a good idea. But I disagreed. I didn’t like the idea of just disappearing from the life of a troubled child without any explanation. Little did I know what was coming,” she said. “Poor kid.”
    “So you told her that last time?”
    “No. I told her as soon as it was decided. I told her I’d only see her three more times.”
    “Then Sally was there when you told Madison you were leaving?”
    “She was.” Her face darkened. “That was the last time I saw her. As it turned out, she walked out of Madison’s life before I did.”
    “What about the other kids? Did you say good-bye to them?”
    “No. It didn’t matter one way or another with the other kids. Some were friendly, some not, but none of them . . .“ She raised one hand, trolling for the right word. “None of them related to me the way she did. None of them were affectionate.”
    “She was?”
    “Very. She’d bring me presents and then tell me a story about each one. One was a rock named Gilbert.” A real smile this time.
    Celia got up and walked over to the bookshelves. At first I thought she was going to pick up the picture of JoAnn sitting on a swing, being pushed by her mother. Did that mean her father had taken the photo, that he’d gone out in public with his daughter? Perhaps not. Perhaps it was Uncle Charles who took the picture, JoAnn laughing, too young to know she shouldn’t be as happy as it seemed she was. But it wasn’t the photo Celia picked up. It was a smooth stone, the size of her fist, that had been on the shelf next to the picture of her daughter. She brought it back to where we were sitting, turning it over in her hand.
    “Gilbert?”
    She nodded. “ ‘Gilbert was a very special stone,’ she told me. ‘Why?’ I’d asked her. So she held him up to my ear. ‘Listen,’ she said. And I did. ‘Can you hear it? He’s singing. He always sings when he’s sad.’ Then standing there, leaning on the desk, right next to my chair, she sang a little song she made up, ‘Gilbert’s song.’ None of the other children did that either.”
    “Gave you singing stones?”
    “No. Came around to my side of the desk. It was as if I were the teacher and they were in the classroom, as if they were a little afraid of me.”
    “How odd.”
    Celia shook her head again. “Not really. Have you ever gone to the other side of the receptionist’s desk at a doctor’s office?”
    “I guess not,” I told her, the stone, Gilbert, still cupped in her hand.
    “Do you think she did it?”
    Celia put the stone down on the coffee table and rubbed her palms against her skirt. She scowled, picked up her cup of tea, put it back down, almost tipping it over. “I’ve wondered about it.”
    I nodded. “And?”
    “If she didn’t,” she said, “who did?”
    I stayed where I was, but it took a lot of effort. I wanted to stand, to loom over her, to grab her by the throat and shake her. Was that the way people thought, I wondered, that Madison had committed the crime because they didn’t know who else might have? If that was the way a friend of Madison’s thought, what chance did this kid have with the cops?
    “Just because we don’t know who else may have done it doesn’t mean Madison did,” I said.
    Celia opened her mouth, but I put a hand up, telling her no, telling her I wasn’t finished yet. I reached for the stone, cradling it in one hand, touching the smooth surface with my other hand. Then I lifted Gilbert to my ear and cocked my head as if I were listening.
    “Gilbert has a question,” I told her.
    She leaned forward, expecting something light, perhaps something funny to change the tone, to make things more bearable. But that wasn’t at all what I had in mind.
    “How did he pay for all this without his wife knowing? Is she that much in the dark about his finances?”
    There was a slight gasp, her breath whistling as she inhaled, and that quickly, Celia Daniels