I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [3]
Alvirah dismissed any passing thought that that guy might have wanted to ask Fr. Aiden to hear his confession. He wanted to get a good look at Father, she thought, as she watched the man pull his glasses back over his eyes and turn up the collar of his coat. She had taken off her glasses so he was too far away for her to see him clearly, but from the distance she judged him to be about six feet tall. His face was in the shadows but she could see he was on the thin side. Her impression, when she had passed him at the statue, was that he had no gray in his full head of black hair. He had been covering his face with his hands.
Who knows what makes people tick, Alvirah asked herself as she watched the stranger, now moving quickly, exit by the door nearest him. But I’ll tell you this much, she thought. As soon as Fr. Aiden left the Reconciliation Room, whatever that guy had to say to St. Anthony, he wound it up fast.
2
It is March 22. If he is still alive, my Matthew is five years old today, Zan Moreland thought as she opened her eyes and lay still for long minutes, brushing back the tears that often dampened her face and pillow during the night. She glanced at the clock on the dresser. It was 7:15 A.M. She had slept almost eight hours. The reason, of course, was that when she went to bed, she had taken a sleeping pill, a luxury she almost never permitted herself. But the awareness of his birthday had left her almost sleepless for the last week.
Fragments of her recurring dream of searching for Matthew came back to her. This time she had been in Central Park again, searching and searching for him, calling his name, begging him to answer. His favorite game had been hide-and-seek. In the dream she was telling herself that he wasn’t really missing. He was just hiding.
But he was missing.
If only I had canceled my appointment that day, Zan thought for the millionth time. Tiffany Shields, the babysitter, had admitted that while Matthew was sleeping she had positioned his stroller so that the sun would not be in his face and had spread a blanket on the grass and fallen asleep herself. She had not realized he wasn’t in the stroller until she woke up.
An elderly witness had phoned the police after she read the headlines about the missing toddler. She reported that she and her hus band had been walking their dog in the park and noticed the stroller was empty nearly half an hour before the babysitter had told the police she had looked into it. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” the witness said, sounding upset and angry. “I just thought that someone, the mother maybe, had taken the child over to the playground. It never occurred to me that young woman could possibly be watching anyone. She was out like a light.”
Tiffany had also finally admitted that because Matthew was asleep when they left the apartment, she did not bother to strap him in.
Did he climb out by himself and then someone noticed he was alone and took his hand? Zan asked herself, the question dull with repetition. There are predators who hang around. Please, God, don’t let it be that.
Matthew’s picture had been in newspapers all over the country and on the Internet. I prayed that some lonely person might have taken him and then was afraid to admit it, but finally would come forward or leave him in a safe place where he’d be found, Zan thought. But after almost two years, there was not a single hint of where he might be. By now he’s probably forgotten me.
She sat up slowly and twisted her long auburn hair back on her shoulders. Even though she exercised regularly, her slender body felt stiff and achy. Tension, the doctor had told her. You’re living with it, 24/7. She slid her feet to the floor, stretched, and stood up, then walked over to the window and began to close it as she absorbed the early-morning view of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor.
It had been that view that had made her decide to sublet this apartment six months after Matthew disappeared.