The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [120]
“It was the requiem, right? Is that what these people wanted to see? He was going to trade the requiem for my surgery.”
“Where are you getting these ideas?”
“From Marlena Falcone.”
Elizabeth blinked. She was definitely confused by that. “The doctor who performed your operation.”
“Yes.”
“The doctor who was recently murdered.”
“Yes.”
“The doctor who was murdered with the same gun that killed your father.”
Nada held her breath. “What?”
“You didn’t know that? It’s been in all the papers, although since this horrible blackout happened, they’ve hardly covered anything but ComEd.”
“I didn’t—Why wouldn’t Jameson tell me that?”
“I don’t know. But when exactly did you speak to her? When did she tell you all this craziness?”
“I didn’t speak to her, Mom. I read her notes. Some e-mails. Medical records. Receipts. I pieced it together.”
“Where did you see these papers?”
“At her house. This afternoon.”
“Why were you at her house?”
“Burning Patrick sent me there.”
Elizabeth drew in a long breath that added two inches at the top of her head and two inches at her shoulders. “I’m going to ask this again, but I’m not expecting an answer. Who is Burning Patrick?”
“He’s an artist. After Dad’s operation—and I guess mine—Marlena felt she’d discovered an effective treatment for ADHD. She faked a bunch of records, same as she faked mine and Dad’s, claiming the devices were really for some nonexistent condition that had FDA approval. Burning Patrick got one. Wes Woodward got one. But they and some of the others went crazy. Woodward and another guy killed themselves. Marlena had to recall the device, and her medical license was revoked. She might have gone to jail, except none of the families of the victims wanted to press charges. None of them sued.”
“I wanted her to take yours out, too.”
“You weren’t even there when they put it in.”
“I wanted nothing to do with it. It was all your father’s idea.”
“He was in jail until two weeks before. You could have stopped it.”
“If you think that, you don’t remember your father very well.” She trembled. “But you’re right and I regret it. I never, never, never should have let him go through with it. I knew it was the wrong thing to do and I just sat on my hands.”
“It wasn’t the wrong thing to do, Mom. The spider saved my life.”
“Stop calling it that. Ugh. It’s awful enough.” She rubbed her lip with her teeth. “I haven’t seen you in years. Then you come in here and I’m so happy to see you and you only want to talk about this horrible nonsense.”
Nada continued to reshuffle the pieces in her head, the way she had with Marlena’s notes and Blackburn’s tiles on Marlena’s bedroom floor. “I find it hard to believe you don’t know any of this, Mom. About Dad. About Marlena. About the requiem. About these people Marlena called acusmatici.”
“Your father and I had different lives. Different interests.”
Nada stepped toward her mother, ten feet and two stools and a kitchen counter between them. “Your initials were in Marlena’s notes, too.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“‘EG,’ several times.”
“What did these notes say my initials did?”
“It’s not clear. But EG knew Marlena better than you say you did.”
“Is EG one of these ah-kooz-mah-tee-chee?” She drawled the word mockingly.
“I don’t think so.”
Elizabeth Gold’s posture became dismissive, shoulders slumped, hands high in the air. “EG could stand for a lot of things.”
“I’ll agree with that,” Nada said.
Elizabeth looked over at the big oven she rarely used. They stood there for a long time, not talking, the same way they hadn’t talked for years, for Nada’s whole life, the weight of two decades of spoken lies and unspoken truths pressing on them both.
The phone rang. Nada took a step toward her, blanket trailing on the carpet behind her like a cape. Elizabeth mumbled quietly into the receiver and hung up.
“Who was that?” Nada asked, more from paranoia than familiarity.
“Reggie Vallentine.” She pushed the plate across the breakfast bar. “I left a message for him while you were on your way up because I was afraid you might