The Girl of Sand & Fog (18 page)

Everything about that observation only adds to my
frustration. Shit, why doesn’t anyone just talk about it to me? It’s
emotionally devastating to learn how obvious I am to everyone, that no one will
approach me directly, but at least Linda eventually got around to it in her
no-bullshit kind of way.

I stare at her. “What makes you think he’s my
dad?”

“Christ, girl, it’s the worst-kept secret in the
industry.” Linda sits down on the sofa close beside me. “Everyone knows. It is
still talked about sporadically when he can’t hear.”

“You’re not telling me anything,” I say in
frustration.

Linda rolls her eyes. “What do you want? Do you
want me to say I was in the bedroom the night you were conceived? Well, I can’t
say that. Do you want me to say that your mother told me? Well, I can’t say
that either. But, Christ, it is so glaringly obvious just to look at you.
Chrissie has loved Manny since the age of eighteen. That’s it. Married to
Jesse. Married to Neil, but in love with Manny. Only him. It’s simple logic.
Only him. No one else. Obvious.”

I’m encouraged since Linda seems willing to talk
about things that people in the know never talk about with me. I pull my legs
up in front of me, hug them, and study Linda as I consider where to start to
get the most out of this rare opportunity.

Before I can frame my first question, Linda
lights a cigarette and gives me a reproaching glare. “I’d feel a lot more
comfortable talking to you if you’d put your legs down so I wouldn’t have to
see that you forgot to put on panties, dear.”

Oh fuck. My cheeks burn.

I drop my legs and the matter-of-factness of that
observation makes me feel for the first time as though my behavior of late is
wrong. Linda is a superlative mother. Calm, matter-of-fact, all knowing, and
strangely tolerant and reprimanding simultaneous. A Jewish mother’s power.
That’s what Bobby calls it.

“Was there ever a paternity test?”

Linda shakes her head. “It wasn’t something
Chrissie would do. Not for a lot of reasons.”

“She’s spent most of her life hopping in and out
of Alan Manzone’s bed. Why wouldn’t she need it? My mother is a slut who can’t
keep her legs closed with him—”

The pain shooting through my cheek is so
overwhelming that it nearly takes a minute to realize that Linda just slapped
me hard on the face.

“Put a lid on that anger. It’s going to hurt
you,” Linda says calmly. “You don’t believe that and I won’t listen to it. If
you want to talk to me there will be no cheap shots at your mother. That was a
really ugly thing to say.”

That makes me cry, first softly and then harder.
It is like a magical power Linda has to douse the anger first in shock and then
in regret. I am ashamed of myself for the second time in less than five
minutes, and as awful as it is, it feels realer and nearer to myself than I’ve
felt at any other moment in the past year, except in those new moments of me
and Bobby.

Linda begins to slowly rock me in her arms. “Oh,
Kaley. You’ve got a lot bottled up inside of you. Just don’t hurt yourself with
it.”

I nod.

She brushes back my hair and smiles.

“Is my boy good to you? Does he treat you the way
he should?”

My face burns darker.

Linda is the weirdest mom I’ve ever known, but
did she just ask me if her son treated me well in bed?

“W-what? I’m not answering that,” I sputter.

God, this is humiliating.

Linda laughs quickly. “No. No. I’m not asking how
my boy treats you sexually. God, Kaley, not that. Have I raised a good man? Is
he a good man with you?”

Oh.

I nod, feeling badly for Linda and not exactly
sure why. “Bobby is wonderful,” I admit. “He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”

Linda smiles, pleased, and nods.

For a moment she seems lost in her own thoughts.

“Why are you so certain Neil Stanton is not my
father?” I ask.

Linda takes a puff of her cigarette, seems to
debate with herself her answer, and then says it bluntly. “It’s obvious.”

“Does my dad know the truth?”

Linda sighs. “I don’t know what Manny knows. He
doesn’t talk about Chrissie with me. Not anymore. Not in a long time.”

My temper flares, because I don’t believe that
last comment. Everyone talks about everything with Linda. There is just
something about her and I hate the suspicion that she is lying in an attempt to
protect me.

“Does he know I’m his daughter? Does he or
doesn’t he? Is he part of this fucked-up pretense and lie? Does he know and
pretends he isn’t?”

Linda’s head shakes in an aggravated tempo in
sync with the movements of her hand as she stomps out the cigarette.

“Grow up, Kaley. Life doesn’t devolve into giant
conspiracies. Life happens, sometimes quickly, and your mother was young. We
make the wrong turn. It gets fucked up. It gets hard to correct. This is not a
conspiracy against you, so knock that victim chip off your shoulder and be done
with it. No, he doesn’t know. He is about the only one who doesn’t think it. I
don’t know how things got so fucked up. But it’s not a conspiracy.”

“That’s stupid. I don’t believe any of that.”

Linda makes a face and then shrugs. “Fine. Don’t
believe it. It is the truth. Love can make you see whatever you want to see.
I’ve seen a lot of things with my eyes that my heart won’t let me believe. It’s
how people cope, manage. You’re no different. We all muddle through believing
what we want to believe.”

OK, what a fucked-up group of people I’ve been
born into. I give up, and watch Linda as she rises from the sofa in a silent
announcement that this is through for tonight.

I follow her back into the kitchen. In the
silence we stand at the breakfast bar, picking at a bag of Oreos and staring at
the sleeping pyramid in the chair. After wiping the crumbs from my face, I
cross the room to the sliding door. Linda is watching me like a woman standing
guard, not wanting anything to erupt in her house.

I look at Alan. My dad. Linda says he is, I can
feel it inside me, and yet it still isn’t real, would never be real, until I
know for certain and he acknowledges me.

As an afterthought I go back to my dad, prop his
feet up on a stool and cover him with a throw blanket. Linda gives me an
approving nod, clearly thinking she’s fixed everything, and quickly I slip
through the door.

When I return to the pool house it’s even more
full of pot smoke than when I left and that really pisses me off. I hate the
pot. Bobby smokes it every night, though not until after we’ve had sex because
I won’t fuck him if he is stoned.

His eyes are lazy and red when they fix on me and
the silence has more to do with his ability to read my moods than how fucked up
he is. I lift the joint from his fingers, take a hit, and then drop it into a
half-finished beer. One hit is more than enough for me. It is dispensary
quality—he got a script from a doctor downtown—and I can’t understand how he
can smoke so much of it and still be coherent. Any more than one hit and I’m
out for the night.

I pull off the t-shirt and climb into bed,
spooning against him so he can hold me while I sleep. “How can you get so
fucked up every night and still have a perfect GPA? You really need to stop
that shit.”

He gently pulls my long black curls over my
shoulder to tuck them behind me so they don’t cover his face. “What happened?
You were gone a long time.”

“My dad is sleeping in your parents’ house.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. Just stared. Ran into Linda, though.
She wanted to have a talk with me. No big deal. Didn’t tell me to go home. It’s
cool.”

Bobby eases up to look at my face. “Safe sex or
guys are assholes. Which talk?”

I laugh. “I didn’t realize that Linda had two
talks. I thought she only had one. The only talk she ever has with me is about
my anger issues.”

“Oh, the anger issue talk. How did that go?”

“I’m less angry.”

“Really?”

“No. But I’m tired. I want to go to sleep. I
can’t even see in this room through the smoke. Try opening a window once in a
while. I don’t know how you’re awake.”

He lies back down behind me and pulls me more
intimately up against him. “I waited for you.”

I lie in the smoke-filled room, listening to
Bobby breathe. “Do you know where my dad’s house is in Malibu?”

Bobby leans up on an elbow and stares at me. “Of
course.”

That causes anger to flash upward with all the
other junk in me. I’m grateful for the anger. It helps me keep an ‘I don’t give
a shit’ tone of voice.

“I want you to take me there tomorrow,” I
command.

“OK.” Bobby settles back down on the pillow
behind me.

I wait.

Nothing.

I look over my shoulder at him. “Aren’t you even
going to ask me why I want to go to the Malibu house?”

“Don’t need to. You know better
than I do what you need to do to work through this.”

CHAPTER 17

We head out shortly after dawn and go
to Malibu.

Bobby pulls into a driveway, parks
and turns off the engine. We sit there silently staring through the windshield.

An enormous concrete and glass
structure hugs the beach behind a twelve foot wall. I’d often wondered if it was
as large as I remembered or if my memory played tricks on me because I’d been a
little girl when last here or if I even remembered it clearly. But it looks
exactly the same, every detail, exactly what I see in time-frozen pictures in
my head.

My pulse accelerates and my breathing
grows shallow.

I lived here. For five years. Long
ago. With my mom and dad. And then I was gone, what I thought was my family
gone, and I don’t really know why it happened.

I push away the new memories that
stir caused by seeing the house again. It’s too much to take, being here and
having more flashing images. Having them be happy and clear and real. Not false
memories, as I’ve often wondered, but true moments of my life.

“Are you all right?” Bobby asks.

I startle. For a moment I forgot he
was in the car, the emotions crashing through me so powerful they blocked out
all awareness of even his intense gaze studying me until he spoke.

I unbuckle my seat belt. “I want to
go in.”

He shakes his head, fingers
tightening on the steering wheel. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I’ll be fine. It’ll be fine,” I say,
struggling to keep the emotion from my face. “I don’t think Alan’s here. No one
will know. I just want to see inside.”

He opens his door and comes around
the car to open mine. We hurry up the walkway only to be stopped by a heavy
locked gate.

Bobby turns to me. “We’re going to
have to ring, Kaley. We can’t get any farther than this. Maybe we should go.”

I debate pressing the call button on
the intercom and then see the wall panel for security codes. I rush toward it
and stare at the numbered keys. Shit, what would the code be? Something he’d
remember. I punch in Alan’s birthday.
No bueno.
It’s state-of-the-art
security. I can see cameras everywhere. They probably advised Alan against
anything obvious. Maybe this isn’t going to be easy.

I start to punch again, frown, and
then still my fingers above the panel. “How many times do you think I can get
it wrong before the security company is notified?”

Bobby rakes a hand through his hair.
“Fuck, I don’t know. They might have already been called. Come on, Kaley. Let’s
get out of here.”

“What do you think Alan would use as
a code?”

“Who knows? And we can’t stand here
all morning with you trying anything without someone seeing us.”

Crap, Bobby is right.

I step back from the panel.

I just want to go in.

The damn place looks unchanged, so
exact in every detail to my memories. There’s got to be things inside, familiar
things, that might explain some of my questions.

Fuck, I hope there is.

I feel like I’m home, like I’m eight
and this is where I should be. Nothing has changed…

My eyes widen.

Oh no, it wouldn’t be that simple.

I punch in another code.

A loud buzz and the gate slowly opens
on its own.

Bobby follows me into the atrium,
frowning. “What did you do? How did you know the code?”

I lift my brows. “Not exactly rocket
science, Bobby. My mom’s birthday. It was a long shot but logical.”

I cut through the large front patio
crowded with potted plants, fire pits, fountains and stylish outdoor furniture,
and stop at the tall, glass double doors to the main house. Code panel again.
Perfect. I don’t need a key. I type in mom’s birthday. A click and the doors
unlatch.

Bingo.

We’re in.

The foyer is pristine white and
polished marble floors, the high-ceiling walls speckled with large canvases
protected by glass from the sea air. There is not a single unfamiliar item
anywhere. Ten years. Alan hasn’t changed so much as the art.

I falter at the edge of the giant
living area overlooking the beach and Pacific Ocean. Black and white plush
California-chic furnishings, natural wood tables, more floor-to-ceiling art,
dark floors that look like stylized concrete, instruments everywhere, and
framed pictures cluttering surfaces.

This room is exactly the same.

“It’s like this house has been sealed
in Cryovac.”

Bobby shrugs, wandering around,
pausing occasionally to study something. “He hasn’t lived here in ten years.
Why would he change the house?”

“I don’t know. But it’s sort of
creepy how
not
different it is.”

My eyes lock on the pictures crowding
a side table and I sink to sit on my knees. I lift one up, turning to smile at
Bobby. “This is my mom. God, she must have been only in her twenties here.
Wasn’t she beautiful when she was young?”

Bobby looks and nods. “Your mom is
still beautiful.” He drops a kiss on my curls. “Just like you.”

I set it back and study the others.
“Why would all these pictures be here? It’s weird. It’s like a family photo
arrangement, something Mom would do, only we’re not a family and never were.”

Bobby’s gaze sharpens on my face.
“You were once. That’s what you should take away from seeing this. Whatever
happened it didn’t happen because Alan didn’t love you. He wouldn’t still have
pictures of you everywhere if he didn’t care about you.”

I sink my teeth into my lower lip to
keep my emotions in check. Dazed, I move my gaze slowly around the room, and
realize in disappointment that Bobby is wrong, there are no answers here, only
more questions.

I turn and find him across the room,
a guitar in hand, examining something. I spring to my feet and close the space
between us, and then look at what’s captured his attention. An inexpertly drawn
picture in permanent black marker near the bridge.

My eyes go wide. “Oh crap. I did
that.”

I don’t know how I know it; I just
do.

Bobby lets out a soft whistle.
“Unbelievable. This is a fucking gorgeous instrument. Worth a fortune. I can’t
even imagine how pissed Alan was to find that. I bet you got into a heap of
trouble.”

My eyes narrow on the drawing.

Oh fuck, I remember it clearly.

I make a face and work to sound
casual about this. “A lot you know. I showed it to him when I finished it. I
was very proud. All he did was kiss me on the forehead and say, ‘
Thank you.
That’s a lovely picture. Go tell your mum what you did
.’ Which I didn’t
because Mom would have blown.”

Bobby beats back a smile. “Sneaky
even back then.”

I lift my face toward Bobby with what
I can feel is a gigantic smile. “No, smart. Alan never got mad about anything.
And he never tattled on me either. When I was bad he’d tell me to tell my mom
and I wouldn’t do it and he’d still not get mad.”

I start laughing. Bobby’s eyes
twinkle as he sets down the guitar and then, before I know how it happens, I’m
crying.

Bobby quickly folds me into his arms.
“Shush, Kaley. Don’t do this to yourself.”

I nuzzle into his chest. “I didn’t
expect it to feel this way being here. It doesn’t feel awful. It feels good.
And I don’t understand. I thought—”

Tears trap my words inside me.

Bobby’s mouth moves through my hair
in light, comforting kisses. “You thought what?”

I take a moment to let myself calm.

“I always assumed that whatever
happened between my mom and Alan, I made myself forget. That it had to be awful
for everything to change in our life so quickly, too awful for me to remember.
But my memories are good. Nothing terrible happened in this house. We were
happy together here. Somehow it makes it harder, all the unanswered questions
and that one day I had two parents loving me and then I didn’t.”

With his thumbs Bobby brushes at the
dampness on my cheeks. “You shouldn’t be sad that your memories are good. What
happened in your parents’ past has nothing to do with you. That you don’t know
the unpleasant parts of their history is a clear indication how much they both
love you, Kaley.”

I sniffle and nod.

He’s right; I just can’t change how
it makes me feel. 

I slowly breathe in and out to steady
myself.

“When I was really little, I used to
call Alan ‘Daddy.’ I didn’t remember that until today either. Standing here I
can see us together, like watching a film. All the frames three-sixty
perspective. He’d carry me, I was like three, and I’d slap his face saying,
‘Daddy.
Daddy. Don’t want to leave the beach. Want to play.’
And my mom would flush
and get nervous and try to take me from him, so I’d say it more and Alan would
just smile and whisper in my ear, ‘
No, love, we’re just good friends
.’”

I bury my nose into Bobby’s chest and
cry harder.

He soothingly strokes my back. “It’s
OK, Kaley. Let it out. You love your dad, even though you pretend you don’t,
but more importantly, you know he loves you and always has.”

I lift my stricken eyes to him. “Then
why is everything so fucked up? Why won’t he admit he’s my dad?”

“I don’t know,” he says quietly.
“Sometimes it’s better not to know everything. Have you considered that?”

A sound makes us pull apart and turn.

“I’ve called the security company.
You better get out of here fast,” says a girl from the front hall.

A young woman—college age, dressed in
boy shorts and a too revealingly thin cotton tank top. Long black hair tousled
like she just climbed from bed. Deep olive skin. Soulful brown eyes. Exotic.
Built. Holding an aluminum bat for protection—
lame, but original.

“Who are you?” I ask in a
deliberately condescending way.

She tenses, stepping back and lifting
her weapon higher. “I’m the housekeeper.”

I give her a rude stare from head to
toe. “Housekeeper, huh? Is that what they call girls like you these days?”

Her face turns scarlet, but Bobby
chides me with a stern look. And, damn, he’s right. Provoking her is not a good
move, but seeing that Alan has a hottie tucked away at the beach instantly
stirred my protective instincts for Mom.

“The cops are on their way,” she
warns. “If either of you so much as makes one step toward me I’ll bash you on
the head. Don’t think I don’t know how to use this.”

I roll my eyes—
ridiculous.

Bobby moves slowly forward.

She pivots toward him.

“I’m Bobby Rowan. My dad is Len
Rowan. Do you know who that is?”

She nods.

“Then put down the bat,” Bobby adds.
“We didn’t take anything and we’re leaving.”

She looks unsure.

Her gaze shifts back to me.

“We didn’t mean to scare you,” I say
quickly. “We thought the house was vacant. That’s why we didn’t knock and used
the codes to get in. I have the entry codes. That should tell you this is OK.
And if I were you, I wouldn’t tell Alan any of this. Do you think he’d be happy
to know you threatened to hit me with a bat today? If you really are the
housekeeper, if you really need your job, you should just let us go and not say
anything.”

She studies me, nervously gnawing her
lip. Then her eyes widen;
ah, now she sees the resemblance
. The bat
lowers to the floor.

“I’m not supposed to let anyone into
the house,” she mutters anxiously. “And no one told me he had a daughter.”

Fuck, even the housekeeper can see
it, and I’ve known her all of a half second.

Everything in me starts to twirl.

I shrug.

“I won’t tell if you don’t tell.” And
then I grab Bobby’s hand and hurry toward the door.

*
  *  *

We’re quiet on the drive back to
Pacific Palisades.

I tell myself not to, but I can’t
stop it. For the last half hour I’ve done nothing but Google my dad. Just the
same shit as last night and, oh, I should definitely knock it off because I can
feel Bobby alertly watching me.

So stupid to be doing this. Like the housekeeper
is going to get on the Internet and post something about the big drama of her
morning. Nope, not if she’s going to get into trouble for us being there. She’s
not going to post anything, ever.

Bobby hits the signal and turns onto
the street to his house. “What do you want to do now? Knock over a 7-11? Or can
we have breakfast first?”

Laughing, I lean in to him, letting
my head fall on his shoulders. “Breakfast first. I’m hungry.”

His eyes grow serious. “We shouldn’t
be joking around about this. What we did today wasn’t cool and I shouldn’t have
taken you there. What if the cops had come? Have you thought about that? I
haven’t been able to stop thinking about that since we left Alan’s.”