Where Are You Now?

67

A s I expected, the sanitarium where Mom was staying was about as luxurious inside and out as I would have imagined any place that Elliott would choose for her would be. Thick carpets, soft lights, fine paintings on the walls. I got there around 4:30, and the receptionist had clearly been briefed that I was on my way.

“Your mother is expecting you,” she said in one of those professionally melodious voices that seemed to me to fit in with the surroundings. “Her suite is on the fourth floor, with a beautiful view of the grounds.” She got up and led me to the elevator, an ornately handsome object with an operator and a velvet seating bench inside.

My escort murmured, “Ms. Olivia’s suite, please, Mason,” and I remembered hearing that in some of these expensive psychiatric residences last names are not shared. Just as well, I thought. The other guests don’t need to know that Mrs. Charles MacKenzie Sr. is in their midst.

At the fourth floor, we got out and walked down the hall to the corner suite. After tapping on the door, my escort opened it. “Ms. Olivia,” she called, her voice slightly elevated but still finishing-school modulated.

I walked behind her into an exquisite sitting room. I have seen photos of the suites in the Plaza Athénée in Paris, and I felt as though I was walking into one of them. Then Mom appeared in the doorway from the bedroom. Without another word, the escort was gone and Mom and I looked at each other.

All the conflicting emotions, the roller coaster of emotions that I had been experiencing this last week when Mom took refuge in Elliott’s apartment rushed through me as I looked at her. Guilt. Anger. Bitterness. Then they all washed away and the only thing I felt was love. Her beautiful eyes were filled with grief. She was looking at me uncertainly as though she didn’t know what to expect of me.

I went over to her and put my arms around her. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so terribly sorry. I guess that no matter how many times I say to myself, ‘If only I hadn’t tried to find Mack,’ I can only tell you I’d give my life to undo that but I can’t.”

Then her hands began running through my hair the way they did when I was a small child and upset about something. They were loving and comforting, and I knew that she had come to peace with what I had done.

“Carolyn, we’ll see it through,” she said. “No matter what it turns out to be. If Mack has done everything they say he has done, there is one thing I can be sure of. He is not in his right mind.”

“How much have they told you?” I asked her.

“I guess everything. Yesterday I told Dr. Abrams, my psychiatrist, that I didn’t want to be protected anymore. I can sign myself out of here anytime, but I’d rather absorb everything that I have to know while I can talk it through with him.”

This was the mother I thought I had lost, the one who kept Dad sane when Mack disappeared, the one whose first thought was for me when she knew Dad was lost on 9/11. I had been a junior in Columbia then and had by chance slept home and was still asleep when the first plane hit. Horrified, Mom had watched it by herself. Dad’s office was on the 103rd floor of the North Tower, the first one to be hit. She had tried to phone him and actually got through to him. “Liv, the fire’s underneath us,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll make it.”

The connection had gone dead, and minutes later, she saw the tower collapse. She had let me sleep until I woke up naturally, about forty-five minutes later. I’d opened my eyes to find her sitting in my room, tears streaming from her eyes. Then she’d rocked me in her arms while she told me what had happened.

This was my mother as she was until year after year, the annual Mother’s Day call from Mack tore her apart.

“Mom, if you’re comfortable here, I wish you’d stay a while longer,” I said. “You don’t want to be on Sutton Place the way it is now, and once the media got word you were back at Elliott’s apartment, they’d be gunning for you there, too.”

“I understand that, but Carolyn, what about you? I know you wouldn’t come here, but isn’t there someplace you can get away from them?”

You can run but you can’t hide, I thought. “Mom, I think it’s necessary for me to be around and visible,” I said. “Because until we have absolute proof to the contrary, I am going to believe and publicly swear that Mack is innocent.”

“That’s exactly what your father would do.” Now Mom smiled, a real smile. “Come on. Let’s sit down. I wish we could have a cocktail, but that’s not going to happen here.” She looked at me, a bit anxiously. “You know that Elliott is coming?”

“Yes. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

“He’s been a rock.”

I admit I felt a twinge of jealousy and then felt guilty about it. Elliott was a rock. Two weeks ago, Mom had said that I was her rod and staff. My guilt faded as I remembered that Elliott might just be about to announce that he needed to separate himself from our problems. Jackie’s words played again in my mind. Appearances mean so much to people like Elliott.

But when he arrived, everything I feared turned out to be totally wrong. In fact, in his endearing, formal way, he was looking for my blessing to marry Mom. He sat next to her on the couch, and addressed me earnestly.

“Carolyn, I guess you know I’ve always been in love with your mother,” he said. “I always thought she was a shining star beyond my reach. But now I know that I can offer her the protection of a husband at a very difficult time in her life.”

I knew I had to warn him. “Elliott, if Mack were ever to go on trial as a serial killer, you have to be aware that the publicity will be awful. Clients of the caliber you have may not be pleased that their financial advisor is in the tabloids on a regular basis.”

Elliott looked at my mother, then back at me. With something of a twinkle in his eyes, he said, “Carolyn, word for word, that is the same speech I heard from your mother. I can promise you this: I would rather tell all my distinguished clients to jump in the lake before I give up one day of being at your mother’s side.”

We had dinner in one of the private dining rooms. It was a low-key celebration. I agreed with their plan that they would be married as soon and as quietly as possible. I drove home that evening feeling so much better about Mom, but also with the strange sensation that Mack was trying to reach me. I could almost feel his presence in the car. Why?

Again there was no sign of the media on Sutton Place. I went to bed and listened to the eleven o’clock news. A clip with part of my statement to the media was shown, and I sounded strident and defensive. By now it had leaked out, or been allowed to leak out, that Leesey had named Mack as her abductor.

I turned off the television. Love or money, I thought as I closed my eyes. That’s what Lucas Reeves said were the causes of the majority of crimes. Love or money. Or lack of love, in Mack’s case.

At three A.M., I heard the buzzing of the intercom. I got out of bed and rushed downstairs to pick it up. It was the concierge. “I’m so sorry, Ms. MacKenzie,” he said. “But someone just handed a note to the doorman and said it was a matter of life and death that you have it immediately.”

He hesitated, then said, “With all the publicity, this may be someone’s terrible idea of a joke, but-”

“Send it up,” I interrupted him.

I stood at the door and waited until Manuel came down the hall and handed me a plain white envelope. The note in it was handwritten on plain bond paper.

It read, “Carolyn I am sending this by messenger because your phone may be wiretapped. Mack just called me. He wants to see both of us. He’s waiting on the corner of 104th Street and Riverside Drive. Meet us there. Elliott.”