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“I didn’t,” she responds with a tight smile.
Once again, I don’t believe her.
“Listen, I’m so glad we had the chance to meet,” she says. “But I better get back to rehearsal.”
“Thanks for taking the time to speak with me,” I say.
“It was a profound pleasure,” she says.
I walk away and slip out of the back of the theater, thinking about what Laura might have been withholding from me and why.
My phone starts ringing. It’s the NYU registrar’s office. I pick up. “Hello?”
“I have an old address for your mom,” Neil says. “From when she went to NYU. I found it after you left the office. Maybe someone there knows something about what happened to her. Probably a long shot, since it’s been decades.”
“I’ll still take the address,” I say. I have no other leads.
“It’s not university housing. It’s on 15th Street, near Union Square Park—313 East 15th street,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, quickly taking out my notepad and pen from my purse to jot it down. “Thank you again for helping me.”
“No problem,” Neil says.
After we hang up, I look up and think I see that guy again, the one from the registrar’s office and the bus stop. He’s about halfway down the block, leaning against an electric pole. He’s in his thirties and doesn’t look like a student. He meets my eyes and stares at me.
My heart begins to race. I instinctively turn around, walking in the opposite direction, camouflaging myself in the middle of a packed sidewalk filled with people.
As I walk up 15th Street, my cell phone starts ringing. It’s Paul. I quickly answer, glancing behind me to see if the man is still following me. Thankfully he isn’t.
“Should I still wait for you to eat lunch?” Paul asks.
“I only have one more stop to make,” I say. “I’m going to see where my mom lived during college. I’ll head back to your place right after. Feel free to start, if you’re hungry.”
“Okay,” he says.
We hang up, and I reach the exact spot where the building for 313 East 15th street should numerically be, but the building doesn’t exist. Instead, it’s a parkette—a small lot of land filled with grass and benches in the middle of a dense city block. People are using it to walk their dogs. A young couple is sitting and laughing on one of the benches.
I look down at the paper again with the address Neil gave me, wondering if I wrote it down incorrectly. I quickly call him to verify that what I wrote was correct, which he does.
After we hang up, a large group of teenagers on a field trip led by a guide walk toward me. I immediately recognize their black shirts withD.A.R.E.printed in red, bold cursive font.
My mom used to volunteer for the organization—to my great embarrassment, because no teen wants their parents hanging out at their high school. WhenD.A.R.E.members visited my freshman year, she was on stage with them in the auditorium, facilitating a group discussion.
“Excuse me,” the guide says, trying to move the teens around me. She leads them to a small monument by the entrance of the parkette that I didn’t notice before.
“You’re standing in front of a city landmark,” she tells them, pointing to a gold plaque on the top of the monument. She reads its inscription out loud:
“In 1973, in a building located at this address, 313 East 15th Street, Alexander Valentine established one of the first halfway houses in New York City: Valentine’s House. Itremained on this site until 1992. This monument was erected by the New York Preservation Society.”
The guide adds, “It wasn’t only one of the first halfway houses in New York City. It was one of the first halfway houses in the world which served as transitional housing for people leaving drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. There are now hundreds of halfway houses throughout the country.”
She asks the teens if they have any questions, but they don’t, so she points to a subway entrance up the block, and they all walk toward it.
After they’re gone, I walk up to the plaque, reading over the inscription, honing in on the address—the one the registrar’s office had on file for Mom.
I then notice an engraved sentence in tiny font below the inscription. A sentence theD.A.R.E.guide didn’t read out loud:
This property is maintained by the generous donation of the Cadell family.
