Dear Daughter (22 page)

I was just on my way out the door when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

“Rebecca, right?”

I turned around and found Eli. His face was set in the same stern lines it always was. I wondered if I was supposed to salute.

“That’s right,” I said. “Good to see you, Eli.”

His eyes darted off to the side. “I saw you sitting with that reporter guy,” he said.

“Peter?”

“Yeah, that’s him.” He hesitated. “Look, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or anything, but I was wondering if you could tell me what he’s working on.”

I glanced at Peter. He was still engrossed in his binder.

I looked back at Eli. This would require some delicacy, but if I could get him on my side, it would be worth it. “Let’s talk outside,” I said.

He followed me out to the front porch. I sat on the swing; he leaned against the railing.

I folded my hands in my lap. “You’re worried that he’s writing about your sister,” I said.

His fist clenched, then released. “Goddammit, I told Cora a reporter would be a pain in the ass.”

I gave him a reassuring smile. “Is there something I can do?”

“Do you know what he’s planning to write?”

“He’s looking into the bank robbery, that’s all I know.”

“Well—I suppose I can’t stop him from reading what was already in the papers,” he said.

His voice was tight, but in the moment before he’d responded, I’d seen his jaw relax. Interesting.

“I’d be happy to keep an eye on him if you’d like,” I said. “Make sure he’s minding his manners, that sort of thing. I was planning on spending some time in the archives anyway.”

He put his hands behind his back and looked out at the street. “I’d appreciate that.”

I sat back and stared at Eli’s profile, looking for the answer to the question I wasn’t yet brave enough to ask:

Ever been to Beverly Hills?

•   •   •

An hour later I was heading north on US-16, driving as fast as Peter’s shitty rental could take me. The cloud cover that day was unsettlingly uniform, smooth and white. It looked like a perfectly clear sky whose blue had been sucked right out of it, like there’d been a fundamental molecular shift in the Earth’s atmosphere since last I’d looked.

I knew I was taking a risk in going to Rapid City, but
god
it felt good to get out of town. The farther away I got, the easier I could breathe. I mean, granted, yes, Rapid City was a cosmopolitan metropolis compared to Ardelle, and each additional person I ran into would increase the odds that I’d be recognized. And then there was this address I was heading for—it could be the headquarters of the Janie Jenkins Is Crazy-Guilty Club for all I knew.

Although . . . at least then I’d be making someone’s day for once.

But the risk was worth it. I had an address—
an actual real-life clue
. And even if I didn’t know where I was going, I knew that the place had meant something to my mother. Otherwise she wouldn’t have hid it so well.

Rapid City came into view, a dusting of buildings that from a distance looked less like structures than a scattering of people gathered for a picnic in the park. I checked the map I’d picked up at the inn and headed downtown, to the sort of historic district that was largely maintained for the purposes of weekly art fairs. I parked in front of a boxy four-story building with a western-wear outfitter on the first floor. I checked the directory listing. The lower units were all occupied by various practices—a chiropractor, a podiatrist, an accountant. Next to unit #5 it read
M. Copeland, Photographer
.

My brow furrowed. If there was one thing my mother hated, it was photographers. Could someone else have hidden the address? If I’d come all this way just to find out that Rue liked to get glamour shots, I was going to burn off her hair.

I pushed the buzzer.

“Come on up!” The voice was so clear it sang straight through the static of the intercom.

I climbed up a narrow stairwell to a door that was otherwise just like all the other doors, light green with streaks of blinding-white primer showing through where the painters had gotten sloppy. Before I had a chance to rethink my decision, the door opened.

“You must be Candace!”

The woman who greeted me was white-haired and tiny—tinier even than me—and dressed in a macramé tunic and flowing skirt. Her feet were bare, her toenails long and unpainted.

“Well, actually—”

She pulled me inside and swung me over to a chevron-patterned sofa. “I’ll just make some tea, why don’t I?”

I looked around me. The room was triangular and windowless; on the hypotenuse, a pass-through led to the kitchen. It was silent save the sound of running water, a kettle being filled. The clatter of mugs being removed from a too-full cabinet.

“My name’s not Candace!” I said, not wanting to get caught in a useless lie.

“Oh, that’s fine, too!” she called back.

I sat down. The ceiling, a grid of pinpricked acoustic tiles and fluorescent lights, was better suited to a room full of cubicles. The overhead lights were turned off, though, the room illuminated instead by the small forest of floor lamps in one corner, as if a few rays of agreeable gold light could dress up the room’s bleak pragmatism.

The woman poked her head out through the pass-through. “Are you here for engagement photos? Wedding photos? Maybe something special for your boyfriend or girlfriend?”

Special
photos? That sounded even more like Rue.

I rolled my lips over my teeth, thinking through what I wanted to ask. “I’m looking for pictures of my mother,” I said, swiftly, as if the sentence were a single word. “She was one of your clients, and since she passed away—well, I don’t have as many photos of her as I’d like.” I cast my eyes down and away, like I do when a therapist asks me a question that I need to pretend is hard to answer. “I was wondering if maybe you saved some negatives.”

The woman set her elbows on the edge of the pass-through and propped her chin in her hands. Her expression went soft and loamy and sympathetic. “I’m not sure how far back my files go, but I can certainly take a look. Do you know when she would have come in?”

“Not exactly—probably eighty-four or eighty-five?”

Her eyes snapped to mine. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but you must be mistaken. I’ve only been in business since ninety-two.”

“But I found your address in her things.” I dug the card out of my bag and she came around into the living room to take it.

She read it once, then turned it over and over again before handing it back.

“She kept it in a very special place,” I said, “so I assumed—I thought it was something important.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“Can you tell me what used to be here?”

She sat down next to me. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Rebecca.”

“I’m Marilyn. Are you from around here?”

I reined in my impatience, reminding myself that I wasn’t some cop who could just bulldoze an interview subject. “No,” I said. “I’m from California.”

“Oh, lucky you. Such a lovely part of the country—I have friends up in Monterey. Glass artists. They do
fabulous
work. Maybe I should give you their information, in case you’re ever up that way.” She crossed her legs and pulled absently on her earlobe. “How long ago did she pass?”

I swallowed. “My mother? It’s been ten years now.”

“Not so long, then.” The kettle whistled, and she drifted back into the kitchen to pour the tea. She emerged with two steaming mugs and a carton of cream tucked between her shoulder and her chin. She set everything down on the coffee table, rotating the mugs until their handles were aligned. “My own mother’s still alive, if you can believe that,” she said. “A hundred and four and still kicking like a Rockette. The heart of a horse, the doctors say—and the mind of one, too. You know, I came out here twenty years ago so I could be with her at the end, and now . . . well, I’m still here, aren’t I? Seventy-four years old and just waiting for my mother to die.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

•   •   •

This is a story you probably know. And I can’t dispute its veracity.

The night of the murder, after I left Kristof in the billiard room, I ran upstairs to grab my purse before leaving for Ainsley’s.

My mother was waiting for me in my room.

“Pack up whatever you want to take with you,” she said. “We’re leaving first thing tomorrow.”

I stumbled in surprise, and when I caught my mother’s disgusted look I wanted to shout, “I’m not drunk, I’m clumsy!” But in all honesty she probably would have preferred the former. It would have meant my gracelessness was just a temporary condition.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I can’t leave.”

“You can and you will.” This, for her, was the end of the discussion, and she turned to go back to her room. I wasn’t about to let it end there, though. I ran ahead of her.

“But I’m finally starting to get somewhere,” I said.

“As what—professional jailbait?”

I drew back. “At least I
earn
my money.”

I caught a rare glimpse of that one wrinkle between her eyebrows before she rubbed it away. “I’m leaving whether or not you come with me,” she said.

“Is that supposed to be a threat?”

“Yes.”

“What part of ‘I don’t need you’ don’t you understand?”

She put a hand on the wall, and for a moment I thought my words were so cutting that she’d needed to steady herself. But she was just setting up her next volley. “You know,” she said, “when I had you I thought, ‘Finally,
finally
I’ll have someone on my side.’”

“That’s a terrible reason to have a child.”

“Twenty-twenty hindsight.”

She pushed past me, and if I’d been thinking clearly I might have let it go. I might have let her go. But I had no more control over my actions than a lit fuse does its direction, and so instead I spat out the five little words that take root in a girl’s brain as soon as she grows breasts:

“I wish you were dead.”

She turned, her smile a well-honed knife.

“Never forget, Jane: Wishes are for cowards.”

•   •   •

“I suppose this isn’t a particularly polite thing to ask,” Marilyn was saying, “but when you’ve been waiting as long as I have, you have a lot of time to wonder.” She laced her fingers around her mug. “Will you tell me what it was like? Losing your mother?”

I swallowed. “No one’s ever asked me that before,” I said.

“I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because it means people only care about how they want you to feel.”

I reached for my mug, ran my finger along its rim. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that.”

“Was it sudden?”

I looked up. “Not sudden enough.”

“I suppose it never is.” Marilyn sat back, pulling a long strand of white hair between a forefinger and thumb and turning it slowly, like she was cranking her thoughts up out of a well. “May I see that card again?”

I handed it back. She looked at it. I couldn’t read anything from her expression. It was as blank as that morning’s sky. I dunked my teabag up and down, up and down.

“This used to be a medical practice,” Marilyn said at last. “That’s one of the reasons I bought it—they bricked up all the windows, so it’s perfect for photography. It’s like one big darkroom.”

“What kind of medical practice?”

Her big toe tapped against the linoleum in time with my teabag. “It was a women’s clinic.” She paused. “It was empty for years before I bought it—no one else wanted it. I got a great deal.”

My hand stilled. The teabag spun in a slow counterclockwise circle. “Why wouldn’t they have wanted it?”

“It wasn’t a clinic for just any kind of woman. It was for women who found themselves . . . in a certain kind of trouble.”

“Oh,” I said. I pulled the teabag out and dropped it on the table. We both looked at our mugs.

The buzzer sounded. Marilyn stood up and went to answer it, moving slowly, like she was pushing her way through waist-deep water—or maybe it just looked that way to me. I remember wondering why the buzzer was still buzzing—
Was that Candace leaning against it? Had someone else come? Was it broken?
—but no, I realized, it was just the noise in my head.

Then a switch flipped inside me, and the world lurched back into motion, me along with it, and by the time Marilyn opened the door I was right there next to her. I pushed past a startled bobbed brunette and ran out. Marilyn must have stepped out after me, because as my feet tumbled down the stairs I heard her call out, her voice echoing in the stairwell, “Sometimes it’s possible to want something and not want it at the same time.”

“I hope your mother lives forever,” I yelled back.

•   •   •

By the time I got to the car my body was fizzling from the inside, as if my blood had turned to acid and had set to working away at my bones.

I climbed into the front seat and leaned my forehead against the steering wheel, flinging my thoughts around in the hopes of finding an alternate explanation. That the address card was for a friend. That it was the sort of contraband hush-voiced teenage girls passed around at slumber parties. That it was some kind of practical joke.

You have to understand: It’s not that I was shocked that she’d thought about an abortion. I was a sexually active adolescent in a
Sex and the City
world, remember. No, I was shocked that she hadn’t gone through with it. I was always the one thing in her life that stuck out. I couldn’t believe she’d passed up the chance to smooth me over.

Maybe she hadn’t been able to believe it, either.

Our fight that night hadn’t ended in the hallway—if it had, maybe the looky-loo caterers who had witnessed my “threat” would’ve been able to testify as to what happened next.

Recognizing that I’d lost the battle, I’d retreated into the nearest bathroom, ostensibly to fix my hair. My mother followed.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

“Heading out.” I felt my hands go to my hips and my jaw jut out.