And she couldn’t stop touching. The shirts, the ties, the suits, at one point, the faux-painted wall. She had a wide-eyed quality about her, like a country hick recently arrived in the big city.
I picked out a classic dark-gray suit, while the salesman followed in our wake, eyeing Shana’s wandering fingers anxiously, then my ravaged face and bandaged hand with growing concern. At last, I collected my sister, shoving her and the clothes into a dressing room.
“Holy shit,” she exclaimed thirty seconds later.
“It doesn’t fit?”
“Fit? Have you seen these prices?”
“Come, now, darling.” I overemphasized the word, given the hovering sales clerk. “Quality costs, but you’re worth it. Now, try it on!”
Shana emerged nearly ten minutes later. She was struggling with buttons, struggling with the tie. She looked like someone more at war with her wardrobe than at home in her clothes. But I buttoned her up, smoothed her out, then got her turned in front of the mirror.
Both of us stared. Was it the hair? Something about the lines of her face? Because God knows our father had never run around in a Brooks Brothers suit, and yet, for a second there . . . Shana might have been the one standing on the carpet, but it was Harry Day who stared back from the mirror.
I couldn’t help myself. I shivered. Shana saw it. She thinned her lips, didn’t say a word.
“We’ll take it,” I informed the salesman. “Clip the tags. He’ll wear it out.”
I added a long black wool coat to the stash, then handed my credit card to the attending salesman, who was still looking at everything but my face.
The credit card was my extra, the one I kept in my safe and not in my purse, in the event of theft. The police were most likely monitoring my other cards, given Shana had allegedly escaped with my purse. But this card should be clear. Even if the police tracked the purchase, a professional woman shopping at Brooks Brothers wasn’t too suspect, was it?
From the clothing store, I took my sister down a few blocks to a walk-in hair salon. There, a bored kid tidied up her hack job, then, per my request, added blond highlights. A TV was on in the corner of the salon. Evening news covering the morning’s prison escape, complete with flashing a photo of my sister’s bored-looking mug shot. I glanced at the hairstylist. He didn’t seem to notice the news or the photo. Or if he did, he didn’t seem to connect a gaunt woman in prison orange with the nicely attired gentleman sitting in his salon chair.
I was still grateful to hustle us both out of there. Across the street to the drugstore for one last purchase: a pair of reading glasses with thick black frames. When I perched them on the end of her nose, Shana frowned, looking like she might sneeze.
But the end result was worth it.
Shana Day had disappeared completely. Now, a successful businessman stood in her place.
“Is this how your father looked?” Shana asked me. “You know, your other dad.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He was an academic; he preferred tweed.”
My sister stared at me as if I was speaking another language. No doubt for her, I was.
“Roger,” I announced briskly, straightening the glasses on her face. “We’ll call you Roger. You’re a doctor. In fact, you’re my therapist. After this morning, no one would blame me for needing a shrink.”
My sister touched one of the marks on my face.
“I am an expert in pain,” she deadpanned.
Then she turned away, shifting restlessly under the weight of all the new clothes, fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides.
We continued down the street, me still looking over my shoulder, my sister with an expression that was once more impossible to read upon her face.
Chapter 35
SHANA’S FORMER FOSTER MOTHER, Mrs. Davies, was defiant.
“So she’s escaped. What can she do to me? Ruin my sleep, damage my reputation, make me wish I was no longer alive? She’s already done all that and more.”
“Can we come inside?” Phil persisted. “Take a look around?”
The old woman finally complied, floral housecoat whirling around her ankles as she bustled down the narrow hall. She moved with more energy today than yesterday, D.D. noted. Rage had that effect on people.
D.D. walked through Mrs. Davies’s home, while Phil conducted a quick sweep of the external perimeter. Outside there wasn’t much land, given how tightly together the Boston houses were constructed. Inside, D.D. could say the same, given how much stuff Mrs.