Aphrodite (4 page)

He grinned, to show her that his question was meant to prove that he didn’t take this all that seriously, but she didn’t return the grin or give an answer, so Harlan told her, still in that uncomfortably gentle tone, to get to the bottom of things. If her facts were wrong, he said, they’d have to print a retraction in next week’s paper. Susanna knew the way the town worked, and she colored a deep red at the idea of admitting in print that Bill had lied about himself. If she had indeed screwed up, she had not immortalized her friend Bill in town lore; she had permanently humiliated him.

She herself had been surprised at one thing when she was researching the story. She had called over to the Home to confirm certain facts, and found one she didn’t know: Bill had had a nephew. A great-nephew to be exact. She was certain Bill had told her, several times, that he had no living relatives. But Fred, who managed the Home, had told her about the nephew—great-nephew—who visited Bill every three months, like clockwork, stayed no more than five or ten minutes, and always paid for the next three months of Bill’s stay. Fred said that he had called the nephew right after he’d found Bill slumped in an easy chair in his room, to give him the sad news. The man had said he’d take care of all funeral arrangements and, in fact, that very night Fred called Susanna at home to say that Bill’s body had been picked up by ambulance and taken away. The nephew—great-nephew—made it clear that the funeral was going to be small and very private.

Everything else in the obit she’d gotten from Bill when he was alive. She’d taken it all on faith because she’d heard it so many times, and she realized now that even if one were a cynic—which she most definitely was not—repetition was a subtle form of brainwashing when it came to the truth. If you heard something often enough, especially from someone you trusted, it became true. Whether it was or not.

She told herself that Bill Miller was not a liar. She told herself that there had to be a misunderstanding. She told herself that what she’d put in the obit had been correct.

Only deep down she didn’t believe it, so she decided to find out for herself.

If there was a mistake, it was her mistake, not the paper’s, so she didn’t want to do this work on the
Journal
’s time. That’s why, at lunchtime, three hours after Harlan told her that she’d screwed up, Susanna walked over to the East End Harbor Public Library.

After conferring with the librarian, Adrienne, a surprisingly snip-pish and impatient woman, Susanna took a seat in front of the computer that was in the lobby to the right of the checkout desk. She pulled out the sheet of yellow legal paper that Harlan had handed her, looked down the list of errors that angry Wally Crabbe had called in. She went on-line, wound up going to the Askjeeves.com Web site, and typed in the question:
How do I find out who was nominated for the 1938 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor?

It didn’t take long. Within seconds she had her answer. She had to admit that she hadn’t heard of any of the nominees. No, wait, Basil Rathbone—he was English, wasn’t he? He played someone famous. Oh yes, Sherlock Holmes, she was pretty sure that was it. And Walter Brennan—he was in some show on Nick at Night; he played a farmer or something like that. And she also had to admit that William Miller wasn’t among them. She tried looking at the nominees for 1939, then 1940, and then going back earlier, year by year, until 1930. She decided to stop searching then. Bill might have gotten the year wrong, at his age, but she doubted he’d miss the entire decade.

She wondered how much further she should pursue this. Decided—out of duty and curiosity—she had to keep going. After several false starts, she got to the site for IMDB.com—Internet movie data-base—and looked up the career of William Miller. It took her over an hour of staring at the screen and reading and scrutinizing photos and double-checking, then triple-checking, on other movie Web sites before she began to accept what she was seeing.

By the time she was done, she had a splitting headache and a steady wave of nausea flowing in the pit of her stomach. She practically fled the library, gasping in warm, fresh air once she made it to the sidewalk outside. Leaning up against a lamppost for support, she flicked open her cell phone, called Harlan’s number at the
Journal
, told him she wasn’t feeling well, wouldn’t be coming in for the rest of the afternoon. He told her to go to the doctor, started to ask if there was anything he could do, but she just clicked the phone off and hugged the lamppost until she had the strength to walk.

When she got home, Susanna paced nervously around her living room, picking at her cuticles and tapping the fingers of her right hand against the knuckles of her left. Finally, she looked at the notes she’d jotted down from the conversation with Fred, the manager of the Home, saw the phone number she was looking for, picked up the phone and dialed it. After the fourth ring, she heard a man’s voice on the answering machine, giving a bland outgoing message. After the tone, she took a deep breath—it was suddenly hard to talk—and then she said, “Hi … uh…Edward Marion? This is Susanna Morgan. I was a friend of your uncle’s …uh … great-uncle’s … and, um …well, I wrote his obit for our local paper and I’m very confused about a few things. …I need to …well …know a few more things about Bill. …I know this doesn’t make any sense and I’m probably wrong …I’ve
got
to be wrong … but I really do need to talk to you.” She left her phone number on the tape and then said, “Please call me.” Then she hung up, took three aspirins, and, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon, got into bed and pulled the covers up over her head.

Edward Marion called back around six o’clock that evening. Susanna was still in bed, although she hadn’t slept a wink, and the sudden noise of the phone made her shudder. When she answered it, her voice sounded thick to her, as if she’d been sedated.

“Ms. Morgan?”

“Yes.”

#8220;This is Ed Marion. Bill Miller’s nephew.”

“Great-nephew.”

“What?”

“You’re his great-nephew.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

There was an awkward pause. Now that she had to convey her news to another person, now that she had to say it out loud, Susanna didn’t know how to begin.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m very sorry about your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“I was pretty close to Bill, I used to—”

“I know. He talked about you all the time.”

“I wrote his obituary for our local paper and I used a lot of information that your uncle had told me, you know, over the years.”

“Great-uncle.”

“What?”

“He was my great-uncle.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Ms. Morgan, I’m afraid Bill was a bit of a …how should I say this … fantasist.”

“You mean he made things up?”

“I mean I think he probably believed them when he said them. And the more he said them, the more he believed them, if you know what I mean. I’m sorry if he told you things that weren’t true. I hope it wasn’t anything important. Or embarrassing.”

“The thing is, Mr. Marion …”

“Call me Ed. Please.”

“The thing is, Ed …Somebody called, some movie nut, and he was pretty angry—we don’t get too many angry calls at the
Journal
— and he said that things I’d put in the obit weren’t true. So I did some research.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of research?”

“I went on the Internet and checked out the things Bill told me about his career.”

“You researched my uncle?”

“Yes. And it turns out, this guy, this movie nut, he was right. Well, not about everything. Some of the things Bill told me
were
true. Only they weren’t
really
true. This is going to sound kind of crazy. …”

“Ms. Morgan, may I make a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“Let me meet you for lunch tomorrow. I was going to call you anyway because my uncle left you something in his will.”

“He did?”

“Yes. He was very fond of you. I’ve been wanting to meet you, so this is a good excuse. I can discuss the will with you—I think you’ll be very pleased with what I’ve got to say—and you can tell me whatever it is you need to tell me.”

“Well, yes, it might be better to do this in person. But, listen, I have to tell you, this is pretty disturbing.”

“I can’t imagine anything too disturbing about my uncle. He was such a sweet old guy. But let’s talk about it at lunch.”

“It’s an awfully long drive for you, isn’t it?”

“Three hours. And I don’t mind. From what I’ve heard about you, it’ll be well worth it.”

She told him where to go, that she’d meet him at Sunset restaurant at twelve-thirty. He said he was looking forward to it. She didn’t say anything.

She’d have more than enough to say over lunch, she decided.

Susanna didn’t fall asleep until one o’clock in the morning, which was incredibly late for her, two hours past her normal bedtime. And then she woke up one hour later. Two-oh-five to be exact, according to her new Bose clock radio.

At first she thought she’d awakened because she was hungry. She was so shaken by the experiences of the day she hadn’t been able to eat dinner. She had heated up some soup, toyed with it with her spoon, then poured it right down the drain. She’d tried reading, couldn’t concentrate. Tried watching TV, couldn’t even do that. At nine-thirty she gave up and got into bed, tossing and turning until one. Now she was awake again, her stomach growling.

And then she realized that she wasn’t awake because she was hungry.

She was awake because there was a noise at her front door.

A noise like someone fiddling with a lock.

And then there was a noise like someone turning a doorknob. And opening a door.

And coming inside.

There was somebody in her house.

All of a sudden, Susanna was having trouble swallowing. She felt her throat constricting at the same time a rush of bile shot up from her stomach, choking her. She closed her eyes and ordered herself to be calm. Willed herself to keep her eyes closed an extra second until her throat relaxed. She took a deep breath, it helped to clear her head, but right in the middle of that was when she heard the creak of a floorboard in her living room and Susanna jumped out of bed, flailing at the covers, stumbling for just a moment as her foot was still wrapped in the sheet, and she lunged for the door to her bedroom, threw her shoulder against it, and slammed it shut and locked it.

She stood still, one hand on the door, in total silence except for her own heavy, rhythmic breathing. After a few seconds, she began to feel silly. Maybe she’d been dreaming. Maybe everything that had happened that day was just ganging up on her to make her edgy and paranoid and—

And there was a scratching noise on the other side of the door.

There was no mistaking this one.

He was picking the lock.

She was in her nightgown and bare feet and she was pretty much frozen with terror, and her heart was pounding so loud she thought she might actually be having a heart attack and six inches away someone was picking the lock to her bedroom door.

Was about to come in and do God knows what.

The air-conditioning was on full blast, but she was sweating through her nightgown. Beads of salty water dripped down her forehead, into her eyes, stinging them into a series of erratic blinks. Susanna looked around the room, searching for something,
anything
that could help her, but there wasn’t a damn thing. No cell phone even. She’d left it in the living room, where she kept the cradle for the charger. She thought about racing to the regular phone, it was just by the bed, but something told her she wouldn’t have time to call, something told her it was a matter of seconds now. …

She took her hand off the door and turned, told herself not to look back, no matter what, and sprinted toward her bedroom window, the window that led to the back of her building, to the back of Main Street.

The window that, because she lived in the middle of the town’s one-street-long business district, had a fire escape right outside.

She threw the window open, forgetting it was locked, wrenching her back because she’d yanked so hard, then she fumbled with the latch—
Stay calm, stay calm, don’t panic
—and then it was open and she jumped through, made it onto the landing just as her bedroom door burst open. She didn’t want to look but she had to—it was instinct— and she saw a blond man barrel in, look up, and then charge the window. Instead of going down, she went up; it was easier to elude his grasp that way. Even so, he managed to grab hold of her foot. It sent a terrible shock through her entire body. The physical contact terrified her way beyond any level she had ever experienced. It made everything all too real and too close. And it brought her imagination into play, turning danger into something she hadn’t let herself think of: pain. She was phobic about pain. The thought of what might be done to her made her freeze for a moment, paralyzed her. She felt herself go limp but then her anger took over.
No panic
, she told herself again.
You cannot panic!
She felt the man’s grip tighten and her hysteria disappeared, replaced by fury. So she kicked as hard as she could, shook her leg and kicked again, and his fingers let go and she scurried up the fire escape, climbing away from him as fast as she could.

She got to the flat roof and even before she hoisted herself over the top, she knew she’d won. She’d been up here many times. She kept a beach chair here, used to come up and sunbathe and read on weekends when the beaches were too crowded. She knew this roof and knew that all she had to do was hop over to the next building, maybe a one-foot jump, no big deal, and there was another fire escape there, at the back. All she had to do was get there and climb down and then it was over. He couldn’t possibly get there as fast as she could. Couldn’t even know which direction she’d go.

It was easy now.

She was safe.

So before she pulled herself onto the roof she looked down. Saw that he wasn’t even trying to follow her. He was just looking up at her. She stared straight into his eyes, studied his face so she could remember to tell the police exactly what he looked like, was startled because he was smiling. Looking up at her and smiling.