?How?? Trixie asked.
She could see him weighing his words for an example he was willing to offer out loud. ?Well, for one thing, I ran away a lot.?
Trixie had run away once, when she was little. She?d walked around the block twice and finally settled in the cool blue shadow beneath a hedgerow in her own backyard. Her father found her there less than an hour later. She expected him to get angry, but instead, he?d crawled underneath the bushes and sat beside her. He plucked a dozen of the red berries he was always telling her never to eat and mashed them in the palm of his hand. Then he?d painted a rose on her cheek and let her draw stripes across his own. He?d stayed there with her until the sun started to go down and then told her if she was still planning on running away, she might want to get a move on-even though they both knew that by that point, Trixie wasn?t going anywhere.
?When I was twelve,? her father said, ?I stole a boat and decided to head down to Quinhagak. There aren?t any roads leading to the tundra-you come and go by plane or boat. It was October, getting really cold, the end of fishing season. The boat motor quit working, and I started drifting into the Bering Sea. I had no food, only a few matches, and a little bit of gas-when all of a sudden I saw land. It was Nunivak Island, and if I missed it, the next stop was Russia.?
Trixie raised a brow. ?You are totally making this up.?
?Swear to God. I paddled like crazy. And just when I realized I had a shot at reaching shore, I saw the breakers. If I made it to the island, the boat was going to get smashed. I duct-taped the gas tank to myself, so that when the boat busted up, I?d float.?
This sounded like some extravagant survival flashback Trixie?s father would write for one of his comic book characters-she?d read dozens. All this time, she had assumed they were the products of his imagination. After all, those daring deeds hardly matched the father she?d grown up with. But what if he was the superhero? What if the world her father created daily-full of unbelievable feats and derring-do and harsh survival-wasn?t something he?d dreamed up but someplace he?d actually lived?
She tried to imagine her father bobbing in the world?s roughest, coldest sea, struggling to make it to shore. She tried to picture that boy and then imagine him fully grown, a few nights ago, pummeling Jason. ?What happened?? Trixie asked.
?A Fish and Game guy who was taking one last look for the year spotted the fire I made after I washed up on the island and rescued me,? her father said. ?I ran away one or two times each year after that, but I never managed to get very far. It?s like a black hole: People who go to the Alaskan bush disappear from the face of the earth.?
?Why did you want to leave so badly??
Her father came up to the sink and wrung out the sponge. ?There was nothing there for me.?
?Then you weren?t really running away,? Trixie said. ?You were running toward.?
Her father, though, had stopped listening. He reached over to turn off the water in the sink and grasped her elbows, turning the insides of her arms up to the light.
She?d forgotten about the Band-Aids, which had peeled off in the soapy water. She?d forgotten to not hike up her sleeves. In addition to the gash at her wrist, which had webbed itself with healing skin, her father could see the new cuts she?d made in the shower, the ones that climbed her forearm like a ladder.
?Baby,? her father whispered, ?what did you do??
Trixie?s cheeks burned. The only person who knew about her cutting was Janice the rape counselor, who?d been ordered out of the house by Trixie?s father a week ago. Trixie had been grateful for that one small cosmic favor: With Janice out of the picture, her secret could stay one. ?It?s not what you think. I wasn?t trying to kill myself again. It just?it?s just?? She glanced down at the floor. ?It?s how I run away.?
When she finally gathered the courage to look up again, the expression on her father?s face nearly broke her. The monster she?d seen in the parking lot the other night was gone, replaced by the parent she?d trusted her whole life. Ashamed, she tried to pull away from his hold, but he wouldn?t let her. He waited until she tired herself out with her thrashing, the way he used to when she was a toddler. Then he wrapped his arms so tight around Trixie she could barely breathe. That was all it took: She began to cry like she had that morning in the shower, when she had heard about Jason.
?I?m sorry,? Trixie sobbed into her father?s shirt. ?I?m really sorry.?
They stood together in the kitchen for what felt like hours, with soap bubbles rising around them and dishes as white as bones drying on the wire rack. It was possible, Trixie supposed, that everyone had two faces: Some of us just did a better job of hiding it than others.
Trixie imagined her father jumping into water so cold it stole his breath. She pictured him watching his boat break to pieces around him. She bet that if he?d been asked-even when he was sitting on that island, soaking wet and freezing-he?d tell you he would have done it all over again.
Maybe she was more like her father than he thought.
The secret recipe for Sorrow Pie had been passed down from Laura?s great-grandmother to her grandmother to her mother, and although she had no actual recollection of the transfer of information to herself, by the time she was eleven she knew the ingredients by heart, knew the careful procedure to make sure the crust didn?t burn and the carrots didn?t dissolve in the broth, and knew exactly how many bites it would take before the heaviness weighing on the diner?s heart disappeared. Laura knew that the shopping list in and of itself was nothing extraordinary: a chicken, four potatoes, leeks more white than green, pearl onions and whipping cream, bay leaves and basil. What made Sorrow Pie a force to be reckoned with was the way you might find the unlikely in any spoonful-a burst of cinnamon mixed with common pepper, lemon peel and vinegar sobering the crust-not to mention the ritual of preparation, which required the cook to back into the cupboard for her ingredients, to cut shortening only with the left hand, and, of course, to season the mixture with a tear of her own.
Daniel was the one who usually cooked, but when desperate measures were called for, Laura would put on an apron and pull out her great-grandmother?s stoneware pie plate, the one that turned a different color each time it came out of an oven. She had baked Sorrow Pie for dinner the night Daniel got word of his mother?s death-a funeral he would not attend and a woman he had, to Laura?s knowledge, never cried for. She made Sorrow Pie the afternoon Trixie?s parakeet flew into a bathroom mirror and drowned in the toilet. She made it the morning after she?d first slept with Seth.
Today, when she had gone to the grocery store to gather the ingredients, she found herself standing in the middle of the baking goods aisle with her mind blank. The recipe, which had always been as familiar to her as her own name, had been wiped out of her memory. She could not have said whether cardamom was part of the spice regimen, or if it was coriander. She completely forgot to buy eggs.
It was no easier when Laura came home and took out a stew pot, only to find herself wondering what on earth she was supposed to put inside it. Frustrated, she made herself sit down at the kitchen table and write what she remembered of the recipe, aware that there were huge gaps and missing ingredients. Her mother, who?d died when Laura was twenty-two, had told her that writing the recipe down was a good way to have it stolen; Laura hated to think that this magic would end with her own carelessness.
It was while she was staring at the blanks on the page that Trixie came downstairs. ?What are you making?? she asked, surveying the hodgepodge of ingredients on the kitchen counter.
?Sorrow Pie,? Laura answered.
Trixie frowned. ?You?re missing the vinegar. And the carrots. And half the spices.? She backed into the pantry and began to pull jars.
?Not to mention the chicken.?
The chicken. How had Laura forgotten that?
Trixie took a mixing bowl out and began to measure the flour and baking powder for the crust. ?You don?t have Alzheimer?s, do you??
Laura couldn?t remember ever teaching her dau
ghter the way to make Sorrow Pie, yet here Trixie was passing the whisk to her left hand and closing her eyes as she poured the milk. Laura got up from the kitchen table and started peeling the pearl onions she?d bought, only to forget why she?d begun when she was halfway through.
She was too busy recalling the look on Daniel?s face when he?d finished his first serving, after hearing of his mother?s death. How the deep vertical lines between his eyes smoothed clear, how his hands stopped shaking. She was thinking of how many helpings this family would need to come close to approximating normal. She was wondering how her mother never thought it important enough to tell her that missing a step might have grave consequences, not only for the person dining but also for the chef.
The phone rang when they had just finished putting the top crust on the pie and painting their initials across it in vanilla. ?It?s Zeph,? Trixie told Laura. ?Can you hang up while I go upstairs??
She handed Laura the phone, and moments later, Laura heard her pick up an extension. As tempted as Laura was to listen, she hung up. When she turned around, she noticed the pie, ready and waiting to be baked.
It was as if it had been dropped down onto the counter from above. ?Well,? she said out loud, and she shrugged. She lifted it up to slide it into the oven.
An hour later, when the pie was cooling, Laura hovered in front of it. She had intended this to be supper but found herself digging for a fork. What was just a taste became a bite; what started as a bite turned into a mouthful. She stuffed her cheeks; she burned her tongue. She ate until there were no crumbs left in the baking dish, until every last carrot and clove and butter bean had disappeared. And still she was hungry.
Until that moment, she?d forgotten this about Sorrow Pie, too: No matter how much you consumed, you would not have your fill.
When Venice Prudhomme saw Bartholemew walking into her lab, she told him no before he?d even asked his question. Whatever he wanted, she couldn?t do it. She?d rushed the date rape drug test for him, and that was difficult enough, but the lab was in transition, moving from an eight-locus DNA system to a sixteen-locus system, and their usual backlog had grown to enormous proportions.
Just hear me out, he?d said, and he started begging.
Venice had listened, arms crossed. I thought this was a rape case.
It was. Until the rapist died, and suicide didn?t check out.
What makes you think you?ve got the right perp?
It?s the rape victim?s father, Bartholemew had said. If your kid was raped, what would you want to do to the guy who did it?
In the end, Venice still said no. It would take a while for her to do a full DNA test, even one that she put at the top of the pile. But something in his desperation must have struck her, because she told him that she could at least give him a head start. She?d been part of the validation team for a portion of the sixteen-locus system and still had some leftovers from her kit. The DNA extraction process was the same; she?d be able to use that sample to run the other loci once the lab came up for some air.
Bartholemew fell asleep waiting for her to complete the test. At four in the morning, Venice knelt beside him and shook him awake. ?You want the good news or the bad news??
He sighed. ?Good.?
?I got your results.?
That was excellent news. The medical examiner had already told Bartholemew that the dirt and river silt on the victim?s hand might have contaminated the blood to the point where DNA testing was impossible due to dropout. ?What?s the bad news??
?You?ve got the wrong suspect.?
Mike stared at her. ?How can you tell? I haven?t even given you a control sample from Daniel Stone yet.?
?Maybe the kid who got raped wanted revenge even more than her dad did.? Venice pushed the results toward him. ?I did an amelogenin test-it?s the one we run on nuclear DNA to determine gender. And the guy who left your drop of blood behind?? Venice glanced up. ?He?s a girl.?
Zephyr gave Trixie the details. The service was at two o?clock at the Bethel Methodist Church, followed by an interment ceremony at the Westwind Cemetery. She said that school was closing early, that?s how many people were planning on attending. The six juniors on the hockey team had been asked to serve as pallbearers. In memoriam, three senior girls had dyed their hair black.
Trixie?s plan was simple: She was going to sleep through Jason?s funeral, even if she had to swallow a whole bottle of NyQuil to do it. She pulled the shades in her room, creating an artificial night, and crawled under her covers-only to have them yanked down a moment later.
You don?t think I?m going to let you off the hook, do you?
She knew he was standing there before she even opened her eyes. Jason leaned against her dresser, one elbow already morphing through the wood. His eyes had faded almost entirely; all Trixie could see were holes as deep as the sky.
?The whole town?s going,? Trixie whispered. ?You won?t notice if I?m not there.?
Jason sat down on top of the covers. What about you, Trix? Will you notice when I?m not here?
She turned onto her side, willing him to go away. But instead she felt him curl up behind her, spooning, his words falling over her ear like frost. If you don?t come, he whispered, how will you know I?m really gone?
She felt him disappear a little while after that, taking all the extra air in the room. Finally, gasping, Trixie got out of bed and threw open the three windows in her bedroom. It was twenty degrees outside, and the wind whipped at the curtains. She stood in front of one window and watched people in dark suits and black dresses exit their houses, their cars being drawn like magnets past Trixie?s house.
Trixie peeled off her clothes and stood shivering in her closet. What was the right outfit to wear to the funeral of the only boy you?d ever loved? Sackcloth and ashes, a ring of thorns, regret? What she needed was an invisibility cloak, like the kind her father sometimes drew for his comic book heroes, something sheer that would keep everyone from pointing fingers and whispering that this was all her fault.
The only dress Trixie owned in a dark color had short sleeves, so she picked out a pair of black pants and paired it with a navy cardigan. She?d have to wear boots anyway, because of all the snow, and they?d look stupid with a skirt. She didn?t know if she could do this-stand at Jason?s grave while people passed his name around like a box of sweets-but she did know that if she stayed in her room during this funeral, as she?d planned to, it would all come back to haunt her.
She glanced around her room again, checking the top of the dresser and under the bed and in her desk drawers for something she knew was missing, but in the end, she had to leave without her courage or risk being late.
During her studies of rebellion, Trixie had learned which floorboards in the hallway screamed like traitors and which ones would keep a secret. The trickiest one was right in front of her father?s office door-she sometimes wondered if he?d had the builder do that on purpose, thinking ahead. To get past him without making any noise, Trixie had to edge along the inside wall of the house, then slide in a diagonal and hope she didn?t crash into the banister. From there, it was just a matter of avoiding the third and seventh stairs, and she was home free. She could take the bus that stopped three blocks away from her house, ride it downtown, and then walk to the church.
Her father?s office door was closed. Trixie took a deep breath, crept, slid, and hopped her way silently down the stairs. The floor of the mudroom looked like the scene of a dismemberment: a mess of scattered boots and discarded jackets and tossed gloves. Trixie pulled what she needed from the pile, wrapped a scarf around the lower half of her face, and gingerly opened the door.
Her father was sitting in his truck with the motor running, as if he?d been waiting for her all along. As soon as he saw her exiting the house, he unrolled the power window. ?Hop in.?
Trixie approached the truck and peered inside. ?Where are you going??
Her father reached over and opened the
door for her. ?Same place you are.? As he twisted in his seat to back out of the driveway, Trixie could see the collared shirt and tie he was wearing under his winter jacket.
They drove in silence for two blocks. Then, finally, she asked, ?How come you want to go??
?I don?t.?
Trixie watched the swirling snow run away from their tires to settle in the safe center of the divided highway. Dots between painted dashes, they spelled out in Morse code the unspoken rest of her father?s sentence: But you do.
Laura sat in the student center, wishing she was even an eighth as smart as the advice ladies who wrote ?Annie?s Mailbox.? They knew all the answers, it seemed, without even trying.
In the days after Jason?s death, she?d become addicted to the column, craving it as much as her morning cup of coffee. My daughter-in-law started her marriage as a size four, and now she?s plus plus plus. She?s a wonderful person, but her health is a concern for me. I?ve given her books and exercise videos, but none of it helps. What can I do?-Skinny in Savannah
My 14-year-old son has started replacing his boxer shorts with silky thong underwear he found in a catalog. Is this a style that hasn?t hit my hometown yet, or should I be worried about cross-dressing?-Nervous in Nevada
On her deathbed, my great-aunt just confided a secret to me-that my mother was born as the result of an extramarital affair. Do I tell my mother I know the truth?-Confused in California
Laura?s obsession grew in part from the fact that she was not the only one walking around with questions. Some of the letters were frivolous, some cut through her heart. All of them hinted at a universal truth: At any crossroads in life, half of us are destined to take a wrong turn.
She opened the newspaper to the right page, skimming past the Marmaduke cartoon and the crossword puzzle to find the advice column, and nearly spilled her cup of coffee. I?ve been having an affair. It?s over, and I?m sorry it ever happened. I want to tell my husband so that I can start fresh. Should I?-Repentant in Rochester
Laura had to remind herself to breathe.
We can?t say this enough, the advice columnists answered. What people don?t know can?t hurt them. You?ve already done your spouse a great disservice. Do you really think it?s fair to cause him pain, just so you can clear your conscience? Be a big girl, they wrote. Actions have consequences.
Her heart was pounding so hard she looked up, certain that everyone in the room would be staring.
She had been careful not to ask herself the question she should have: If Trixie hadn?t gotten raped, if Daniel hadn?t called her office the night she?d been breaking off her affair with Seth-would she ever have confessed? Would she have kept it to herself, a stone in her soul, a cancer clouding her memory?