Dear Daughter (16 page)

Kelley nudged me forward. “Coffee’s through there.”

I stepped into the kind of room you can feel in your nose hair. Books were stacked on books; shelves were stacked on shelves; dust was stacked on dust. I moved to the nearest bookshelf, tilting my head to read the titles before pulling one out. On the cover a green-skinned woman embraced a tiger-tailed man. I actually thought for a second about buying it. I hadn’t read for fun in years—ten years, in fact. Solitary confinement and obsessive investigation kind of gets in the way of that.

“And this,” Kelley said, “is what Cora likes to call the Oglala Sioux Interpretive Exhibit.” She was fighting a smile.

“I don’t follow.”

“Each of these volumes is an artifact of great cultural importance to Ardelle’s Oglala Sioux community—which is to say, my dad.”

“Sounds like Cora could’ve had a career in advertising.” I put the book back. “He didn’t take his books with him to Florida?” I asked. Only when Kelley failed to respond did I realize what I’d given away. “I ran into your brother again on my way back to the inn last night,” I said lightly. “He mentioned that your folks had retired.”

She watched me, her face teetering on the edge of so many different expressions all at once, I couldn’t even begin to guess what she was thinking.

“I was hoping you’d be halfway to someplace nicer by now.”

Over Kelley’s shoulder I saw Renee, barefoot and cradling a mug of coffee, standing at the bottom of a staircase I hadn’t even seen. I looked her over anew, wondering if I’d see her any differently now that I knew she was my second cousin, and I couldn’t resist searching her face for something, anything, that reminded her of me. I wasn’t exactly counting on it, though: Any similarities between me and my mother had always been conspicuously absent. I’m blowsy blond, fox-faced, built like a ballerina but lacking the grace. My mother, on the other hand, looked like Marilyn Monroe—but carried herself like Grace Kelly. I wasn’t just the apple that had fallen far from the tree. I was the apple that had been eaten up by worms, too.

It was only because I was watching Renee so closely that I noticed it. When she came over to stand next to us, Kelley brushed her knuckles against Renee’s hip in a way that made me think she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. The side of my mouth quirked up. They may as well have been carrying matching copies of
Rubyfruit Jungle
.

For the first time in I don’t know how long, I let out an honest, full-throated laugh. It was an awful, rusty sound, like a screw being stripped by a drill, but it was, I admit, a relief to know it was still there.

They both turned to me, Renee stepping slightly in front of Kelley, unifying their front. The softness that had snuck into their smiles was replaced by a grim watchfulness.

My own smile sagged, and I tugged it wearily back into place.

Secrets are my stock in trade, but damn if they’re not a pain in the ass.

There are three ways to approach secrets, you know. The first is what you find on soap operas and in poorly executed middle-school maneuvers. First you uncover a piece of incriminating information, and then you use it to force a steady stream of favors or payment or behavior. The problem here is that, if extended indefinitely, the expected cost of compliance eventually outweighs the cost of exposure. Moreover, the probability that you’ll lose your monopoly on your information increases with each passing day. Never, ever assume that you’re the only person digging for dirt, especially in Los Angeles. Vipers are measured by the pitful for a reason.

The second approach is more effective: You make one, single, very carefully chosen demand. And you give your mark just one chance. This was my usual MO. If the mark doesn’t do as you ask, when you ask, you leak their secret. No excuses. No mercy. Brutal consistency is the key to credibility. Mothers, dog trainers, Israel—you know what I’m talking about.

But there’s also a radical third approach: You reveal that you know the secret . . . and then you keep it under wraps. Do that, and they’re not just going to tell you other secrets, they might even keep yours in return. And they’ll think they’re doing it of their own free will when what you’ve really done is painstakingly aligned your incentives. That’s all trust is, really. Some people are just incentivized by virtue.

That’s why I decided on the third approach.

It might be just what I need to win them over.

•   •   •

“What’s so funny?” Renee said, breaking the silence.

“Does Leo know?” I asked.

They exchanged a look.

“Know what?” Kelley asked.

I decided to see how they’d react if I let a little Jane show through: “That his wife is doing his sister.”

Kelley stifled a giggle. Renee rolled her eyes. Success.

“Come on,” Kelley said. “You have to admit that when you put it like that it
is
pretty funny.” She wrapped an arm around Renee and dropped kisses on the curve of her neck until Renee relaxed. Then she pointed at me. “I take back what I said about you needing to leave town. I think we’re going to keep you.”

I let my shoulders settle.

Footsteps sounded in the neighboring room; Kelley and Renee pulled apart. Seconds later the reporter wandered in. I retreated to one of the corner bookshelves.

“Hey,” Peter said to Kelley and Renee, clearly uninterested in preamble. “Are these the archives?”

Renee gave him a disdainful onceover, lingering on his navy-blue espadrilles. “Yeah, sure, have at ’em.” She jerked her thumb toward a pyramid of sagging cardboard boxes in another corner of the room.

The look on Peter’s face was reminiscent of a nightgowned virgin in a vampire film.

“It’s on microfiche, too,” Kelley said apologetically, “but the reader’s been broken since June.”

Peter went over and, with two fingers, lifted a box flap. The cardboard was limp and green, with the texture of a cracker that had been left too long in chicken soup. “If you have any questions,” Renee said, “you’re probably better off asking Hermione Granger here.”

Kelley raised her hand. “That’s me,” she said. “But I also go by Kelley.”

Peter took a step toward her. “I’m Peter Strickland, and I’m writing a piece on Ardelle—”

“Oof, what’d you do to deserve that?” asked Renee. Kelley elbowed her in the ribs.

“—and I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Sure, I’d be happy to help,” Kelley said. She settled herself on the room’s plump green sofa and patted the cushion next to her, sending up a chalky puff of dust. Peter squinted at the sofa in distaste before settling down next to her.

Renee leaned against the wall next to Peter, not realizing, I didn’t think, quite how protective her posture was. I kept my distance, stroking the spines of the books, pretending to be engrossed in my explorations. Giving myself a reason for being there.

“I was wondering what you could tell me about the Kantys,” Peter was saying.

Dance, monkey, dance.

I took a deliberate step away—but not so far away that I couldn’t hear Kelley’s answer.

“Well,” she said, “Albert Kanty was the first to stake a claim out here, of course, so they’ve been in Ardelle even longer than the Percys.”

“But it was the Percys who founded Ardelle.”

Kelley shrugged. “It wasn’t a very good claim.”

“That must have generated some resentment.”

Renee laughed. “The Kantys hold grudges like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think I ever even heard Eli say two words to Stanton until Cora came along.”

Well,
that
sure sounded like my mother. She always kept a running log of everything I’d ever done wrong, a Santa Claus with a chip on his shoulder. Like the time I was five and made her miss a flight to Turks and Caicos because I’d decided my nanny was a ghost that only I could see. The time I was eight and ruined a dinner party because I was looking for a secret passage in the coat closet and sent a decrepit archduchess into a dead faint when she came in to find her mink. The time I let that photographer for
W
into our house. Everything I ever did was unforgivable—irrevocable. In the court of my mother, running a red light was the same as capital murder.

I moved to another shelf, pulling out a book here, a book there.

“What can you tell me about Tessa Kanty?” Peter asked.

“Not much,” Kelley said. “I haven’t seen Tessa since I was a kid.”

“Were she and her brother close?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

Now why did I think she was lying?

“And what was her relationship with, uh”—he pulled out his notepad and checked it—“with Jared Vincent?”

I froze.
Who the fuck is Jared Vincent?

“That’s your angle?” Renee asked. “’85 Bonnie and Clyde? There’s no story there.”

Peter’s lips thinned. “Jared Vincent stole thirteen thousand dollars that was never recovered around the same time that his eighteen-year-old girlfriend disappeared. Sounds like a story to me.”

A hardcover fell to the floor.

. . . the summer of ’85, when Eli’s little sister ran off with a bank robber.

How hadn’t I made the connection?

Wait—my mother had only been eighteen?

Renee thumped her mug on the table, startling me out of my haze.

“If it’s a story, it’s short,” she said. “Just one word, in fact: coincidence.”

Kelley, good cop as ever, put her hand on Peter’s arm. “Don’t mind her,” she said. “Tessa and Renee—they’re family. It’s a touchy subject. But she’s right. There’s nothing particularly scandalous about it. Tessa just had terrible taste in men.”

“Not so terrible if it made her more than ten grand.”

“No one thinks Tessa took that money,” Kelley said. “If she had, she’d’ve given it straight to her brother—they lost their house in Adeline that same year. That money could’ve saved it.”

“That’s hardly—”

Renee shut him down. “It’s not that people haven’t tried to write about Ardelle. But once they get here they never end up finding anything worth writing about. We’re not interesting; we’re stubborn. Don’t waste your time.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake.
That whole bit was a
stump speech
. Renee’s eyes met mine, and she shrugged apologetically.

“But if you really want to know more,” Kelley said, soothingly, “why don’t you come with us to Adeline? You can see the old Kanty house for yourself, get a feel for the family or whatever. It’s more interesting than the archives, I promise.”

He crossed his arms. “I’d rather stay here, if you don’t mind. I’m not particularly interested in architecture.”

“You might be surprised,” Kelley said. “But sure, go ahead—make yourself at home. I just hope you brought some Claritin.”

Peter wasted no time making his way over to the boxes, which he pulled down and arranged in a methodical line, shifting a few here and there after peeking inside each. He muttered something incomprehensible.

I whirled back around and stared blindly at the books in front of me. My mother had thought matching your shoes with your purse was morally questionable. And she’d been involved with a
bank robber
?

“If we don’t hurry up, we’re going to miss the shuttle.”

I looked up. Kelley and Renee were standing by the door, waiting. For me, I realized.

“Nothing worth writing about?” I muttered.

Renee shrugged. “Like Kelley said—we’re family.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The drive to Adeline was rough going. The road hadn’t been properly maintained for years and was potholed and buckled, the trees pushing their roots up through the pavement, eager to reclaim their land. The hired shuttle bus wasn’t equipped for the terrain, and it jolted us unpredictably up into the air and then back down on the hard rubber seats. It didn’t feel so different from that time I fucked a heavy-metal drummer. I certainly felt just as queasy.

I tried to focus on Cora, who was at the front of the bus giving us a history lesson.

“The first documented commercial gold mine in the United States was discovered in 1799—”

Ugh. No.

“So,” Renee said from behind me, her voice low enough that only Kelley and I could hear it, “I hear you’ve been making time with Leo.”

“Not like you’re making it sound,” I said. “We just happened to leave the bar at the same time.”

“And he ‘just happened’ to tell you his life story along the way?”

I put one hand to the cold glass of the window, then pressed it against my cheek. “It was small talk, nothing more.”

“We passed Leo’s on our way home, you know,” Renee said. “We saw you leaving.”

“I even waved,” Kelley added. “Guess you didn’t see me.”

I closed my eyes. “No,” I said. “I definitely didn’t see you.”

Renee patted me on the shoulder. “It’s okay. I get it. He’s got a real sexy-ugly thing going on.”

“Say it runs in the family and I’ll punch you,” Kelley said.

Renee stretched an arm around me over to Kelley, tapping her shoulder twice with her fingertips before settling them on the seat back. Even in plaid flannel her arms were lissome and lovely.

The bus was climbing through the pass, and the trees were edging closer. My ears tried to pop but couldn’t; a bulge of air pressed hard against my left eardrum. Renee was saying something else, but I could hardly hear her, and so heedless of what my mother would have called impropriety, like applying lipstick at the table or emailing thank-you notes, I pinched my nose and tried to equalize the pressure in my head. When my ears cleared everything was so loud I wondered if I’d needed to pop them ever since I’d arrived in Ardelle.

“I’m not interested in Leo,” I said. “I’m just here for the history.”

“So you’ve said,” Renee murmured. “And yet you’re not paying Cora much mind, are you?”

I turned to look at her, to determine whether the gleam I knew would be in her eyes was amusement or suspicion.

“I got momentarily distracted,” I said. “But I’m not interested in him—not like that.”

Renee sat back. “Well, I suppose I’m not one to talk.”

I jostled along with the rattle and give of the shuttle’s suspension. Cora was saying something about Custer.