“Judyta, I’ve been worried sick. Please tell me you’re all right.”
The sound of her own name in her mother’s voice—her mother, who came over at fifteen, who worked so hard to drop any trace of an accent, who refused to speak Polish to her children, who despite all of this still bears the weight of strangers clocking her as foreign—suddenly makes Judy want to cry.
“I’m all right, Mama. I’m just tired. Long day today.”
She can hear her father in the background, asking, What time will she be home?
“Ma,” says Judy, “I know Daddy won’t like this. But I have to move out. I can’t live at home anymore. Not with this job.”
Silence. “Where are you now?”
“I’m at a motel. It’s called”—Judy checks the sign above the counter—“the Alcott Family Inn. It’s close to the case I’m working.”
“At a what?” says her mother. “Judyta Luptack, did you just say you’re at a—”
“Don’t tell Dad,” says Judy. “Please.”
In the background: Where is she? At a what?
Her mother sighs lengthily. Then she says: “She’s at a friend’s house, Marty. Someone who lives closer to the case she’s working.”
A pause. What friend of hers lives all the way up there?
“Honey,” says her mother. “Just be safe, all right?”
“I will be, Ma,” says Judy.
• • •
The room is perfectly adequate: flowered bedspread, flowered curtains, framed pictures of flowers on the wall.
She collapses into bed without taking her clothes off.
Judyta
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
She wakes up to the sound of knocking on the door. She wakes slowly, trying to remember where she is. Then she grabs the clock on her nightstand, terrified that she’s overslept.
It’s only six a.m. Judy is relieved—and annoyed.
She stands, still wearing her suit, now rumpled, and goes to the door. Through the peephole, she sees a middle-aged man, his hair combed into a neat side part. He wears a short-sleeved dress shirt, tan, and a brown tie. He holds an umbrella above his head.
She looks past him, into the parking lot beyond the covered walkway outside all the rooms, and sees that it’s pouring. Bad for the search, she thinks, automatically.
She opens the door, keeping the chain lock on.
“Hello,” says the man. “Are you Miss Luptack?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Bob Alcott,” says the man. “Can I trouble you for a second?”
From behind the cracked, chain-locked door, she nods.
He glances over his shoulder, into the downpour soaking the parking lot. “I wonder—you mind if I come in?”
“I do mind.”
He pauses. Explains: he’s the husband of the woman working the desk, he says, and a co-owner of the Alcott Family Inn. He’s also a history teacher at the nearby central school.
“Beatrice said you were a detective,” he says. “And that you’re working a case nearby?”
She nods.
“Is it the Van Laar girl?” he asks her.
She keeps her face still.
“It’s all right,” he says. “You don’t have to answer. But if you are, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“I’m listening,” says Judy.
“It’s about her brother,” says Bob Alcott. “Bear.”
Louise
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day Three
