Valley of the Moon (13 page)

That broke the spell. My brain made radio contact with my legs. I tiptoed back through my old bedroom, slipped out the door, and grabbed my stuff. At the top of the staircase, another wave of blackness rose up, but I clenched my teeth to stay conscious. The sweet metallic taste in my mouth made me gag.

You are not here. You are home in bed having a nightmare.

I was halfway down when I heard a car rolling up the driveway outside. A car door slammed.

I bolted down the stairs two at a time, and tripped on my dress as I jumped off the last one, smacking hard onto the marble. The noise reverberated across the foyer.

There was a sudden thump from upstairs. Then, beeping outside the front door.

The keypad—someone outside was pressing the code to get in.

There was nothing to hide behind in the vast marbled expanse.

I made it to the powder room under the staircase and eased the door closed just as the front door opened. For a terrible moment, there was just silence. Then the door swung shut with a tremendous clang.

The memory of that sound sent a shockwave through my body.

LEAVE.

I peeked out.

Ramona stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. She had a Louis Vuitton duffel bag in her hand and wore workout clothes. Her hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, but she was in full makeup. Her tanned forearm tensed as she gripped the balustrade.

“Cressida? Darling, I’m home!”

There was no answer. She shook her head, looking disgusted, and dropped her bag at the foot of the stairs. She walked towards the kitchen and stopped at the key cabinet. I watched as she unlocked it and hung up her keys. Then she glanced into the kitchen.

“Goddammit, Cressida. I told you to keep everyone outside,” she muttered. She disappeared into the kitchen and I heard plates clanking in the sink, bottles being tossed into the garbage. I heard the back doors open. Then, nothing.

Another thump from upstairs.

Then I spotted something miraculous.

Ramona left the key cabinet open.

I held my breath as I padded over to it. I had five choices of cars to steal: the Town and Country minivan the housekeeper used, Ramona’s black Mercedes, Cressida’s Range Rover, or a Mini. And one key fob I didn’t recognize: a Rolls Royce.

There were no cars parked in the driveway the night before. I’d have to choose whatever Ramona had left in the driveway. But which? The last time I saw her car at Briar, she’d driven the Mercedes.

I heard Ramona’s voice. She was outside yelling at someone, on her phone, I presumed.

As I reached for the Mercedes keys, a faint but firm voice in my head said, NO!

When I touched the keys, it said NO again. I glanced behind me.
You’re hallucinating. You must still be drunk.

I moved my hand to the Rolls Royce keys. The voice shrieked
yes yes yes
!

There was no more time. I grabbed the keys to the Rolls, yanked open the front door, and stepped outside.

A black Rolls Royce Wraith glittered in the morning light. Tears of relief burned my puffy my eyes. The engine purred to a start, and I felt around for the gas pedal with my bare foot. The pedal was tiny and sensitive, which I only discovered when the Wraith leapt forward. I came about two inches from knocking down one of the stone greyhounds that stood guard on either side of the portico.

I eased the car around the curved drive as slowly as I dared, then tore down the road. I stopped at the gate and found the remote control in the center console. My hand shaking, I pressed the button.

The gate didn’t move. I pressed it again. And again. Nothing.

“No!” I screamed, pounding the wheel. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and I tasted salt and bitter metal on my tongue. I pressed and pressed and pressed. Any second, Ramona would come out and find me in her car. In my ruined dress. With blood still trickling out of my body.

“Please God, please help me,” I rasped. “I want to go home. Momma, please help me. I need you to help me.”

At that moment, the gate creaked and slowly rolled open. Behind it, a huge white truck idled. The words “Valley Party Rentals” were painted on its side. The driver stared at me.

I squeezed past it with just inches to spare. Once I was clear of the truck, I jammed on the gas. The Wraith purred as I sped away, as though it was thrilled to be free of the Crawfords, too. From the temporary safe harbor of my stolen car, I tried to process the enormity of my situation.
Cressida lied about Eden. Had she lied about wanting to be my friend? Probably. Obviously. And you believed her. After everything.

And Caleb. Oh God, Caleb. When had my sins begun and when would my penance end? I used to tease my dad for being a bad judge of character. Apparently it was a genetic defect he’d passed on to me.

At the bottom of the road heading into town, I glimpsed my face in the mirror, and gasped in horror. I was a pale wraith in a Wraith. My eyes were bloodshot and sunken, my skin milk white with hot red blotches, and my lips cracked and split. There were small marks on my chest that looked like angry red frowns.

In the warm confines of the car, I made another discovery—I smelled awful. Like blood and sweat and alcohol and bile. The smell made me want to throw up again. At the light at the bottom of the hill, people streamed by me, on bikes and on foot, looking happy and healthy, headed down to the Sunday farmers market. They were oblivious to the ravished miscreant in their midst. Luckily I had Ramona’s huge black sunglasses, which she’d carelessly left on the passenger seat. I eased them onto my face.

A block from the hotel, I spotted my Golf where I’d parked it the day before. A white parking ticket under the windshield wiper flapped in the breeze. I pulled the Wraith into a red No Parking zone, then I quickly wiped the steering wheel with the hem of my dress, like they do on TV, so my prints wouldn’t show up. I scooped up the bundle of blankets and my shoes—make that one shoe. The other one had vanished in my frantic escape.

Barefoot, I slunk towards the hotel, praying no one would notice me.

The valet area was empty except for a few expensive cars and a Napa sheriff’s cruiser. After a mortifying stop at the front desk, I picked up a key to Piper’s room from a kind desk clerk who took pity on me.

When I slipped into our hotel suite, I could hear loud snoring through the doors to the bedroom. Pieces of a black tuxedo were strewn on the couch.
At least Piper had a good night.

Shivering, I stripped off my dress and my bloody Spanx in the middle of the living room. I changed into clean underwear, leggings, and a t-shirt, and slid my aching feet into flip-flops. After stuffing my ruined dress and undergarments inside the bundle I planned to incinerate later, I picked up my tote bag and left without making a sound.

Back in my Golf, I was about to drive away when I caught movement in my side mirror. It was the same Napa sheriff’s cruiser I had just seen at the hotel.

The cruiser was rolling towards me, so I ducked down in the seat, my heart banging in my chest. The cop slowed down and inched by me. I watched it from my crouching position. It stopped next to Ramona’s Wraith, and the cop got out. He peeked in the windows, and then he stood and looked around. I knew that walk. I knew that face.

Wade Jenner.

I ducked down lower and waited in terrified silence. I heard his sirens switch on and he sped away.

As soon as he was gone, I drove home, every nerve in my body jangling. My nightmare was finally over.

So was I.

I am sitting on the park bench
. The old lady with the long white braid perches next to me. The sun is impossibly bright and her nightgown billows out in the breeze. She holds out her fist, her bony fingers clenched tight.

She opens her hand.

A tiny golden key sparkles on her palm.

***

“Your fever’s down.” My father put the thermometer on my bedside table. “Your friend Caleb called again. I told him you were sick. Piper and Maya called, too. I turned off your cell phone because it kept buzzing.” He regarded me quizzically. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

I had been in bed for three days. “I told you, everything’s fine. I just stayed up too late and caught a cold.” He raised an eyebrow.

“Fine, huh?” He scowled like he knew I was lying, but he didn’t have the parenting skills to dig further.

“It was great. I had the best time.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. His sideburns had gotten grayer.

“If you had a fight with your boyfriend or something, you wouldn’t want to talk about it with your dad, I guess.”

“Dad, we didn’t have a fight—my throat hurts too much to talk to everybody right now.”

He looked away and sighed. “I wish your mom was here.”
I wish that every day.
I blinked and smiled at him.

“I’m glad you’re here, Dad.”

He dabbed his eyes on the sleeve of his bathrobe and laughed. “Ah, Lana. So grown up. Listen, you can take one more day off school, but stay in bed. I’ll call you from work, okay?”

“Dad, can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Who is Tanith Fremont?”

His head snapped towards me, his mouth open. For a second I saw a flash of fear in his eyes, but a moment later it was gone. “Why are you asking me about her again?” Her.
He knows it’s a woman’s name.

“I’ve been thinking about those letters we got.”

He smoothed my hair down. “I guess it’s possible it was some relative of your Grandpa Bart. You know your mom never wanted to talk about—”

“About that side of her family, I know. But why? Did she hate them or something? Do you maybe think that’s why she…” I trailed off when I saw him look away. He stood up and went to the door.

He turned and smiled at me. “Stay in bed, honey. You need to rest.”

***

As soon as he left, I hauled myself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. I peeled off my nightgown and my underwear and stood in front of the full-length mirror. There were still faint hickies on my chest—even on my breasts. I went closer to the mirror so I could examine them. They almost looked like bite marks. How had I slept through all the action? How drunk
was
I? And the million-dollar question: how could Caleb have done what he did?

The fact that Ramona’s warning had come true made it even worse.

The bleeding had stopped, but my innards still felt sore. It burned when I peed. And I had a four-day old migraine. But so much worse than the physical pain were the images seared into my brain. After taking a scalding hot shower, I pulled on a clean nightie, crawled back in bed, and squeezed my eyes shut. But it was no use—I kept seeing Caleb and Cressida together. Him doing to her what he had done to me. The same night.

Only, I hadn’t enjoyed it quite as much as she had.

Ramona said he liked his girls unconscious, since it made “the conquest” easier. Did he always get girls wasted their first time? Was that his thing? How many other girls had there been? I remembered the joke Wyatt made at the party—how there were no more “virgin Cressidas.” Had Caleb been Cressida’s first, too?

And—was it date rape? I was definitely passed out—but there were no witnesses. Still, he could probably go to jail. But what proof did I have? I would look like the jealous girlfriend trying to get revenge.

It was Trevor all over again, but a thousand times more painful, since this time my heart was broken. Not just broken—obliterated, shredded into a thousand bleeding pieces.

My phone buzzed on my beside table. It was another text from Caleb; one of about fifty I had ignored since Sunday.

Lana! I need to talk to you. Please!! I need to know you’re OK!!!

I turned my phone off and threw it to the floor.

I was tired of being awake. I was sick of being alive. I had to get out of the house.

I had to get away.

***

The buzz of a thousand flies hummed across the sunbaked parking lot. The Sonoma City Dump was not in any glossy travel brochure about wine country. I popped my trunk and gathered up the wad of stiff, blood-stained blankets in the back of my car. My ruined formal gown was stuffed deep inside the bundle.

I lifted the heavy lid of one of the enormous dumpsters lined up outside the chain link fence. The metal handle burned my hand and the stench of rotting food assaulted my nose. I dropped my bundle in and let the lid slam down.

If only I could drop a few memories into a dumpster.

If only there was one big enough to hold all the bad ones.

An hour later, I remembered the empty blue envelope I’d stuffed in the bundle—the one addressed to me that I’d found at the Crawford’s.

The one with the New York City return address. I’d had that tantalizing bit of information in my hands, and stupidly, inexcusably, I’d thrown it away.

***

The massive wall of fog just offshore looked like it was about to obliterate the coast.

I wanted to be obliterated.

The guy at the Point Reyes visitor center gave me a visitor’s guide and used a pink highlighter on the map to show me which road would get me to the lighthouse. He had gauged ears and a long ponytailed braid that smelled like it had been dipped in patchouli oil.

“The fog’s looking pretty gnarly, girl. Drive safe, okay?”

As I walked back to my car, groups of expensively outfitted Marin hikers and shivering European tourists streamed past me to the trailhead.

I glanced at the visitor’s guide.

Point Reyes: A Treacherous Obstacle to Mariners

Point Reyes is the windiest place on the Pacific Coast and the second foggiest place on the North American continent. The historic lighthouse has warned mariners of danger for more than a hundred years.

I wish it had warned me.

I drove west along the narrow cliffside road to the tip of the peninsula.

The road dead-ended at a tiny parking lot by the trail up to the lighthouse. I stepped out of my car and into a sticky, gray cloud. A dozen feet away from where I parked, windswept grass sank away in a steep descent to the sea below. The trees there grew horizontal to the ground, constantly harassed by the wind.

I spotted a narrow path that wound around the hill and disappeared into the briny fog.

The path led down to a small flat area marked by a large rock just a few feet from where the ground gave way to a sheer drop. I could hear the surf roaring far below. The thin sweatshirt under my jacket quickly got damp, and the wind kept whipping my hair into my mouth. My sneakers sank into the damp, soft earth as I walked.

The rock was as high as my waist and water dripped down its sides. On a whim, I climbed to the top. There I crouched, like a gargoyle on the ledge of a cathedral, relishing the slap of wind on my cheeks.

The fog charged in and changed from pale gray to wet cement. It was like a thick veil dropped down around me. No one knew where I was. Maybe I could disappear into the mist and float away. I envisioned myself slipping—my body sliding down the wet sloping edge and falling three hundred feet to the sharp teeth of the rocks and the full force of the Pacific Ocean.
Would it even matter if I fell? I was already shipwrecked. My ship had careened into the cliffs, smashed, and sunk to the bottom. The tears I had been too numb to release since Sunday morning poured down my damp cheeks. A tremendous wind came up and whipped my hair in every direction. It sounded like howling. I stood up on the rock and took a deep breath of salty cloud.

“
Ahhwwooooo
!” I howled back.

“Whoa! What the holy hell!” The voice yelled at me from just a couple feet away. A dog barked in my face. I screamed and lost my balance.

My hip hit a sharp edge of stone. I bounced off the rock and landed hard on the wet, grassy slope. My body started to slide as I scrambled for a hold on the dirt. I grabbed fistfuls of mud but kept right on sliding.
The next thing you grab will be fistfuls of seawater.

Someone yanked me up by my wrists and dragged me onto the flat muddy ground. A huge yellow Labrador retriever started licking my face.

“Jeez Louise, are you okay?” A rotund man in tight cargo shorts, hiking boots, and a tie-dyed sweatshirt top was standing over me. “You scared me nearly to death!” Frizzy gray hair swirled around his head. He stared at me slack-jawed. “What were you
doing
up there, honey?”

“Looking at the view.” He looked at me like I was insane. For some reason, I started laughing. I had almost fallen hundreds of feet to my death in the Pacific, but an old hippie saved me. “Thank you for helping me, sir. I really appreciate it and I’m so sorry I scared you!”

My hands were freezing as I jogged up the trail to my car, so I stuck them in my jacket pockets.

Something crinkled against my fingers in one of the pockets.

It was a crumpled piece of paper.

I pulled it out and examined it. It fluttered violently in the wind.

It was the envelope I’d taken from Ramona’s. There was a dried smear of blood across the front of it, obliterating my name.

But the tiny calligraphied return address was still legible.

***

As soon as I got home, I ran to my room, closed the door, and carefully typed the return address into Google.

The first two pages of results were real estate listings. Apparently the letter writer lived in a building crammed full of multimillion-dollar apartments. Then, I saw a link to a
New York Post
story from January.

I
clicked on the story and found myself staring at a black-and-white photograph of two young women in chic 1930s outfits standing on a city street, in front of a huge black Rolls Royce. The younger one had short, dark curls and wore a beret and a somber expression. Next to her stood a taller, elegant beauty wearing an elaborate hat and pearls. I read the caption. “Mysterious heiress Georgette Ambrose and her older sister Claudette in 1936. Claudette Ambrose died in 2001.”

I sat back, stunned. I read the rest of the article like it was on fire.

Reclusive Heiress Dies

Battle is on over estate

“A few days before Christmas, famed recluse Georgette Ambrose passed away at the age of 101. The last link to New York’s decadent Gilded Age, Ms. Ambrose hadn’t been seen publicly in decades. By all accounts she spent the last years of her life in self-imposed solitude inside the vast Fifth Avenue apartment, surrounded by her precious collection of rare dolls and a few loyal servants.

No one knows what her estate is worth, but some experts say it could be worth tens, even hundreds, of millions. Her jewelry collection is rumored to include the famed Dove of Justice, a diamond pendant once owned by Marie Antoinette.

Ms. Ambrose, the youngest daughter of industrialist and steel magnate George Ambrose, designated no heir, according to sources. The estate will be contested by various family members, although Georgette never married and had no children. The only thing we can be sure of is that a large portion of her inheritance will be going to the lawyers.”

I leaned back in my chair. My brain was spinning. Suddenly, I remembered the snow globe incident. That night was a few days before Christmas—around the time Georgette died.

It was also when I started having strange dreams about an old lady.

My mouth went dry.

I clicked “Images.”

Dozens of black-and-white photos filled my computer screen. As a little girl, she wore ringlets and frilly dresses. I marveled at her magnificent childhood mansion in New York. There was even a photo of her bedroom in her Fifth Avenue apartment. It was filled with porcelain dolls sitting in rows, each in its own tiny armchair.

And then—a single photo in color. In it was the oldest human I’d ever seen. She was in a wheelchair at a park, next to what looked like a model boat pond. Her long, snow-white braid was draped over one shoulder. Large, dark eyes stared out from a deeply lined face. She held an enormous balloon on a string.

It was her. The lady from my dream.

I screamed out loud, clapping my hand over my mouth so my dad wouldn’t hear me.