Keith Webster had let Peter know that he, Eve and Max were on their way. The call was a surprise. The two families had never been close. Peter didn’t trust Eve as far as he could throw her, and Keith had always struck him as a little odd. But Max seemed like a sweet kid. It would be nice if he and Lexi became friends.
“Show them in.”
The door opened. Lexi’s eyes lit up like candles on a birthday cake.
“Hey, kiddo. I missed you.”
Robbie swept his little sister up into his arms. The two of them clung to each other like limpets.
Peter stood rooted to the spot. It was awful to admit it, but in the last three weeks he had not thought about Robbie once. Lexi’s kidnapping had driven every other thought out of his mind. Robbie and his problems felt like part of another lifetime. But now here he was. It was only three weeks since their last meeting, but his son looked different.
“I’ve stopped drinking, Dad. And the drugs. For good.”
Lexi was superglued to her brother’s neck as he spoke.
“I made a deal with God. If He saved Lexi, if He let her be okay, I’d get my shit together. I’m gonna make something of my life, Dad. I promise you.”
“I hope so, Robert.”
Peter put an arm awkwardly around his son’s shoulders. He remembered what a beautiful, gentle little boy Robbie used to be. Was that person still inside somewhere? If he was, would he ever be able to forgive his father for what he’d done?
I could have shot him. I could have killed my own son.
Still holding on to Robbie, Lexi put one arm around Peter’s neck, pulling father and son closer together. Reluctantly, Peter met Robbie’s eyes. The old anger was gone. But there was still a sadness there. Perhaps there always would be.
What a lovely family, thought the interpreter, Rachel. They’ve been through so much. No wonder they’re so close, poor things.
“I hope we’re not interrupting. We can come back later, if you prefer.”
Keith Webster was smiling in the doorway. Behind him stood Eve and Max, hand in hand.
“No, no.” Peter pulled away from his children, glad of an excuse to break the tension. “It’s good of you to come. You remember Robert?”
“Of course.” Keith smiled. “My goodness, you’ve grown. Last time we saw you, you were knee-high to a grasshopper, wasn’t he, Eve?”
“Mmmm.” Eve nodded.
Shut up, you obsequious cretin! What the hell is Robert doing here? He’s supposed to be shooting up in a doorway somewhere. Lionel Neuman told me he’d signed away his inheritance. Has he come to try to claw back his shares in Kruger-Brent?
Since Alex’s death, Eve and Keith had seen Peter and his kids a handful of times at family functions, but the two families were not close. Years ago, Peter had warned Alex about her twin sister’s psychotic personality, a slight that Eve had neither forgotten nor forgiven.
“Max. Go say hello to your cousin.” Keith pushed the boy forward. “Why don’t you give Lexi her present?”
Reluctantly, Max thrust a brightly wrapped box at Lexi.
The two children eyed each other warily.
Max thought: I hate you. You and your brother. You want to steal Kruger-Brent from me.
Lexi thought: He hates me. I wonder why?
She opened the present. It was the latest limited-edition Barbie doll. The one with roller skates that she’d been hankering after all summer. Before it happened. Before the terror. Before the pig.
The psychiatrists thought Lexi was blocking out what had happened to her. She could read their lips: Repressed memory syndrome. Classic posttraumatic stress responses. But they were wrong. They were all wrong.
Lexi remembered everything. Every hair on his forearm, every mark on his skin, every cadence in his voice, every grunt, the fetid smell of his breath.
She may have nightmares. Deep-rooted fear of the bad men returning.
Lexi wasn’t afraid. She was determined. She knew her kidnappers had escaped justice and she knew why. Because it was her destiny to find them, to pay them back for what they’d done. She had told the police nothing. Pretended that she remembered no details. But she remembered it all.
One day, pig, I will find you.
One day…
“Lexi” Rachel was signing at her. “Aren’t you going to say thank you?”
Lexi looked down at the doll. She touched her lips with the front fingers of her right hand, then moved her hand away from her face with her palm upward, smiling.
“That’s the sign for ‘thanks,’” Rachel explained.
Max said, “You’re welcome.”
His mouth returned his cousin’s smile. But his glinting black eyes were as cold as the grave.
THIRTEEN
SOUTH AFRICA WAS BEAUTIFUL.
No question about it. Here was beauty on a grand scale. Epic beauty. Awesome beauty. The sort of beauty that man, over the centuries, had tried to imitate with his cathedrals and temples and pyramids, his feeble attempts at grandeur. Keith Webster was well traveled. He had been to Carnac in Egypt, to the Great Wall of China, to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. He had stood on top of the Empire State Building, marveled at the Colosseum in Rome, and gazed in wonder at the Taj Mahal in India. Now, standing on Table Mountain with the wind in his hair and the city of Cape Town sprawled out below him, he thought of all those places and laughed. Just as God must have laughed:
You call that beauty? You call that greatness? Is that really the best you can do?
Keith Webster had been in the country for three weeks. He was flying back to America tomorrow, and though he longed to see Eve-it was the longest they had been apart since they married-he realized he would be sorry to leave Cape Town. Not just because it was beautiful. Cape Town was magical in a way that Keith had never experienced before. But because it was here, in South Africa, that he had finally managed to bond with his son. For Keith Webster, Cape Town would always be the city that brought Max back to him. The city of hope, of joy, of rebirth.