When he had called the hospital, the nurse had told him Mr. Salmon was with his wife and family. Now his guilt thickened as he pulled his car into the hospital parking lot and sat for a moment with the hot sun coming through the windshield, baking in the heat.
I could see Len working on how to state what he had to say. He could work with only one assumption in his head – after almost seven years of ever more dwindling contact since late 1975, what my parents would hope for most was a body or the news that Mr. Harvey had been found. What he had to give them was a charm.
He grabbed his knapsack and locked up the car, passing by the girl outside with her replenished buckets of daffodils. He knew the number of my father’s room, so he did not bother announcing himself to the fifth-floor nurses’ station but merely tapped lightly on my father’s open door before walking in.
My mother was standing with her back toward him. When she turned, I could see the force of her presence hit him. She was holding my father’s hand. I suddenly felt terribly lonely.
My mother wobbled a bit when she met Len’s eyes, and then she led with what came easiest.
“Is it ever wonderful to see you?” she tried to joke.
“Len,” my father managed. “Abbie, will you tilt me up?”
“How are you feeling, Mr. Salmon?” Len asked as my mother pressed the up arrow button on the bed.
“Jack, please,” my father insisted.
“Before you get your hopes up,” Len said, “we haven’t caught him.”
My father visibly deflated.
My mother readjusted the foam pillows behind my father’s back and neck. “Then why are you here?” she asked.
“We found an item of Susie’s,” Len said.
He had used almost the same sentence when he’d come to the house with the jingle-bell hat. It was a distant echo in her head.
The night before, as first my mother watched my father sleeping and then my father woke to see her head beside his on his pillow, they had both been staving off the memory of that first night of snow and hail and rain and how they had clung to each other, neither of them voicing aloud their greatest hope. Last night it had been my father who’d finally said it: “She’s never coming home.” A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed to hear him say it.
“It’s a charm off her bracelet,” Len said. “A Pennsylvania keystone with her initials on it.”
“I bought that for her,” my father said. “At Thirtieth Street Station when I went into the city one day. They had a booth, and a man wearing safety glasses etched in initials for free. I brought Lindsey one too. Remember, Abigail?”
“I remember,” my mother said.
“We found it near a grave in Connecticut.”
My parents were suddenly still for a moment – like animals trapped in ice – their eyes frozen open and beseeching whoever walked above them to release them now, please.
“It wasn’t Susie,” Len said, rushing to fill the space. “What it means is that Harvey has been linked to other murders in Delaware and Connecticut. It was at the grave site outside Hartford where we found Susie’s charm.”
My father and mother watched as Len fumbled to open the slightly jammed zipper of his knapsack. My mother smoothed my father’s hair back and tried to catch his eye. But my father was focused on the prospect Len presented – my murder case reopening. And my mother, just when she was beginning to feel on more solid ground, had to hide the fact that she’d never wanted it to begin again. The name George Harvey silenced her. She had never known what to say about him. For my mother, connecting her life to his capture and punishment spoke more about choosing to live with the enemy than about having to learn to live in the world without me.
Len pulled out a large Ziploc bag. At the bottom corner of the bag my parents could see the glint of gold. Len handed it to my mother, and she held it in front of her, slightly away from her body.
“Don’t you need this, Len?” my father asked.
“We did all the tests on it,” he said. “We’ve documented where it was found and taken the required photographs. The time may come when I would have to ask for it back, but until then, it’s yours to keep.”
