Free The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian Page B

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    “And, of course, this all presupposes that the little boy in the photo is Pamela’s brother and the little girl is Pamela,” her aunt continued. “Why would you make such a leap? Why couldn’t they be two other children visiting the house? Guests, maybe?”
    “I guess they could be.”
    “Yes! Maybe they were friends of the family. Or cousins,” the older woman added, her voice regaining its typically agreeable lilt. In the background, Laurel could hear that Martin had skipped ahead on the CD all the way to the king’s first big number, and was belting out “A Puzzlement” with his usual flair. What Martin lacked in pronunciation, he more than made up for in enthusiasm.
    “But I really have a hunch I might be on to something here,” she said.
    “Then maybe you should talk to Pamela Marshfield. Why not? Show her the pictures. See what she says.”
    Laurel reached for the photo with her phone on her shoulder and gazed at the little girl. The child looked entitled and intense; when she envisioned her as an elderly woman, she saw someone who was more than a trifle intimidating.
    “Do you know where she lives now?”
    “Haven’t a clue. But the Daytons might. Or the Winstons.”
    “The Daytons are the family that bought her house?”
    “That’s right. And the Winstons built that elegant Tudor on some of the land she’d once owned. Mrs. Winston is very old now, too. I believe her husband has passed away. I think she lives there alone.”
    Laurel’s office door was wide open, and she saw a slightly walleyed young man with spaniel ears and a scrawny turkey neck hovering in the hallway outside it. His hair was dyed the color of orange Kool-Aid, and he had long cuts on both emaciated arms, one stitched till it disappeared beneath the sleeve of his sweat-stained gray T-shirt. He was a mess, and Laurel could tell by his deer-in-the-headlights stare that he couldn’t believe he was here at the city’s shelter for the homeless.
    “I have a client,” she told her aunt. “I think I need to go now.”
    “All right. You let me know if you find out anything interesting about your mystery man,” Aunt Joyce said, and they exchanged their good-byes and hung up. Then Laurel rose to greet her new client. She had the sense that he had been hungry for a very long time, and so she suggested that they stroll to the kitchen for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The intake forms could wait until after he’d eaten.

C HAPTER F IVE
    H IS MOTHER NAMED HIM W HITAKER, which was also her father’s name. His older brother recast him as Witless when they were arguing siblings in Des Moines. His resident adviser his first year at college christened him Witty, because he tended to hide his nervousness and insecurity behind a thick veil of irony. The RA thought this was clever, and for a while the young man had feared the name was going to stick. It didn’t. Thank God. That would have been too much pressure. And so most people simply viewed him as Whit. At least that was how he introduced himself, and that’s what the other tenants in the apartment house, including Talia and Laurel, called him that summer and autumn.
    He had two buddies helping him move his stuff in, including a bruiser with whom he’d once played rugby, but Talia and Laurel were around that Saturday morning and offered to help, too. He was instantly smitten by both. Talia had exquisite, almond-shaded skin and a raven’s black mane that she wore in a single long braid that fell almost to her waist. She managed to make gray sweatpants and a yellow UVM T-shirt look like loungewear from a lingerie catalog. She was disarmingly tall and moved with the grace and poise of a dancer. He assumed that every one of the teenage boys at her church had a crush on her—that is, if she didn’t leave them intimidated and mute—and every one of the girls wanted to emulate her. She was, clearly, a rock-and-roll pastor.
    Laurel was wearing a ball cap with her