No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [34]
I turned back. “He looks like a million other people,” I said.
“I’m going to get a closer look,” Cynthia said.
She was on her feet before I could protest. “Honey,” I said as she walked by me, making a halfhearted attempt to grab her by the arm and failing.
“Where’s Mommy going?”
“To the washroom,” I said.
“I’m going to have to go, too,” Grace said, swinging her legs back and forth so she could catch glimpses of her new shoes.
“She can take you after,” I said.
I watched as Cynthia took the long way around the food court, heading in the opposite direction from where the man sat. She walked past all the fast-food outlets, approaching him from behind and to the side. As she came up alongside him, she walked straight ahead, went to the McDonald’s and joined the line, glancing occasionally, as casually as possible, at the man she felt bore an amazing resemblance to her brother Todd.
When she sat back down, she presented Grace with a small chocolate sundae in a clear plastic cup. Her hand was shaking as she put it on Grace’s tray.
“Wow!” said Grace.
Cynthia showed no reaction to her daughter’s expressions of gratitude. She looked at me and said, “It’s him.”
“Cyn.”
“It’s my brother.”
“Cyn, come on, it’s not Todd.”
“I got a good look at him. It’s him. I’m as sure that’s my brother as I am that that’s Grace sitting there.”
Grace looked up from her ice cream. “Your brother’s here?” She was genuinely curious. “Todd?”
“Just eat your ice cream,” Cynthia said.
“I know what his name is,” Grace said. “And your dad was Clayton, and your mother was Patricia.” She rattled off the names like it was a classroom exercise.
“Grace!” Cynthia snapped.
I felt my heart begin to pound. This could only get worse.
“I’m going to talk to him,” she said.
Bingo.
“You can’t,” I said. “Look, it doesn’t make any sense that it’s Todd. For Christ’s sake, if your brother was just out and about, going to the mall, eating Chinese food in public, you think he wouldn’t have gotten in touch with you? And he’d have spotted you, too. You were practically Inspector Clouseau there, wandering around him as obvious as all hell. It’s just some guy, he’s got some passing resemblance to your brother. You go over to him, start talking to him like he’s Todd, he’s going to freak—”
“He’s leaving,” Cynthia said, a hint of panic in her voice.
I whirled around. The man was on his feet, wiping his mouth one last time with a paper napkin, crumpling it in his hand and dropping it onto the paper plate. He left the tray sitting there, didn’t take it over to the wastebasket, and started walking in the direction of the washrooms.
“Who’s Inspector Cloozoo?” Grace asked.
“You can’t follow him into the can,” I cautioned Cynthia.
She sat there, frozen, watching the man as he wandered down the hall that led to the men’s and ladies’ rooms. He’d have to come back, and she could wait.
“Are you going into the men’s room?” Grace asked her mother.
“Eat your ice cream,” Cynthia said.
The woman in the blue coat at the table next to us was picking at her salad, trying to pretend she wasn’t listening to us.
I felt I only had a few seconds to talk Cynthia out of doing something we’d all regret. “Remember what you said to me, when I first met you, that you were always seeing people you thought might be your family?”
“He’s got to show up again soon. Unless there’s another way out. Is there another way out back there?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s perfectly normal to feel this way. You’ve spent your whole life looking. I remember, years ago, I was watching Larry King, and they had that guy on, the one whose son was killed by O. J., Goldman I think it was, and he told Larry that he’d be out driving, and he’d see someone driving a car like his son used to drive, and he’d chase the car, check the driver, just to be sure it wasn’t his son, even though