So many good things had happened that it would have been easy to lose track of the reason I was in San Diego at all. And I wish that I had. Juliet was getting bigger, laughing aloud now. I could pose her, sitting up, like a little frog, before she rolled over on the rug. I would get her all propped up in a tripod position and run for the camera, and by the time I got back, she’d be on her tummy, waving her legs and arms, doing the swim. Then one morning when I showed up, Kelly made me stop and shut my eyes. When I opened them, she showed me that Juliet, easily a month before most babies, could turn herself over entirely, back to front. Before I could catch myself, I clapped my hands, and Kelly hugged me. When I drew away gently, I saw the puzzled hurt on her face.
“I’m sweaty,” I explained. “I just had time to splash and towel off after my run.” When she smiled her upside-down smile, I realized that I cared about her feelings.
But the days sailed past, until just before Kelly was to leave for a two-day conference in Las Vegas. Scott Early would be deep in his finals. I knew Kelly was worried, from little things she said about making sure Scott got “time to study,” even if it meant “extra hours at double time” for me. She was afraid, she said, that the extra stress might cause him to slip, or despair, or give up. And Scott seemed distracted, too. Feeling dirtied even by the thought, I realized that the time was now. Juliet was attaching to her parents, even to me. She was doing everything she could to woo our eyes, to get us to see her, flirting and mugging, struggling to take her place as a part of the human race. If I waited too long, she would be frightened and disoriented. All this, only to hurt Juliet? No. I loved my job. I’d grown to care for my friends—especially Kevin, who’d been especially tender to me since what Shelley persisted in calling “the resurrection,” and comforting Mrs. Desmond. I even liked San Diego. But it was too clear that I had to do this thing and then go home, to where I could take back my name, the color of my hair, and the texture of my soul. For the first time since I’d come, I felt real fear. What color would my soul be, afterward?
I was about to unlock their door on the morning Kelly was to leave when I heard them, Kelly’s voice raised in anger.
“I can’t leave you alone with her for a minute! I worry constantly!” she shouted.
“Kels,” Scott Early pleaded.
“I mean it, Scott! It’s bad enough that I have to be away from her for two days without—”
“It’s not like that,” he said.
“Yes, it is! I lie down for a nap because I’m exhausted, and I wake up and she’s been sitting in poop while you watch the Discovery Channel! When I say you have to change her, I mean more than once a day!”
My breath escaped in a rush. They were an ordinary couple, arguing about ordinary things. I leaned against the door, annoyed to tears at how life mocked me just as it seemed about to prove my point. I waited until Mrs. Lowen downstairs came out to get her newspaper and waved to me, until I heard Kelly begin to sob quietly. She said, “I hate this.”
“Kels, please, I’m sorry,” Scott Early was saying. “I know this isn’t about her diaper. It’s about that you can’t go anywhere without worrying about me. You can’t go to a conference without thinking I’m going to fall asleep and forget we have a baby. I’m not, Kels! You’re driving yourself crazy with this! And you’re like the little girl who wants to be friends and watches everyone else down the street at the birthday party. We can’t go anywhere without people knowing it’s me. No one asks us to join the bowling league. You hear the other teachers talking about the cookout and you—”
“I don’t even care!”
“You do care. Anyone would. And I’m so ashamed. I feel as though I have a big red sign around my neck that says, ‘Run!’ You must be so ashamed. I should move somewhere so far from people—”
“No,” Kelly said quietly. “We’ve come this far.”
“I will, Kels. I’ll go. Juliet doesn’t even know me. She doesn’t ever have to see me again. It’s not myself I feel sorry for. . . .”
That’s a comfort, I thought.
“Scott, we’ve been over this. I don’t blame you. I blame—”
“I am the disease, Kelly!”
“No, Scott.”
“The first time I touched you, you started to cry. . . .”
“And I’m ashamed of that.”
“I don’t even remember. . . .”
“And you don’t want to remember. You don’t. You couldn’t live with it. You’re too sweet.”
“Kelly, I love you.”
“I love you! Scott! Why won’t you believe it? Why did this have to happen when I was going to be away? Now you’ll be more stressed, and I won’t be able to pay attention,” Kelly said. If she didn’t hurry, she’d miss her plane.
I coughed so they’d hear me turn the key in the lock. Kelly, her eyes streaming, opened the door before I could. “I bumped my leg on the bed. Right on the shin? You know how that kills?”
“It kills,” I said. “Put some ice on it.” I stared at Scott. He picked up Juliet and carried her into their bedroom. Kelly put ice in a towel and laid it across her eyes for a few minutes.
“Better,” she said. “Wow, am I going to be late!” She started to walk out, then came back for her overnight bag. “Look out for things, Ronnie,” she said, searching my eyes.
It might have stopped right then. But I heard Scott singing to Juliet, behind the bedroom door. “When you wake, you shall have all the pretty little horses . . .”
I pushed the door open with my foot.
“Why are you singing that song?” I asked him.
I fell back in time as if my shoulder had been shoved, to the sight of my mother, crouched in the dust, crooning and stroking the tangled hair of her two little girls—already beyond the sound of her voice. Only four years ago. Only four years.
Scott Early looked up at me, his eyes red.
You sorry piece of trash, I thought. You poor lost soul.
Then he said, “You sing it to her all the time. I never heard it until I heard you sing it.” He smiled.
I turned and left the room, the irony of it curling my hands into fists. In the kitchen, I had to consciously unfurl each finger from gripping the sink. “Leave the car seat today, please,” I called, and made up an excuse: “I’m thinking of going to Balboa Park with some of my friends, from my school. Is that okay with you?” I heard the rustle of the sheets as he laid Juliet in her basket.
“Okay,” he called. “Is your car open?”
“Keys are on the hall table,” I called back.
If only she would leave him, I thought. None of this would be necessary. But Kelly would never leave if she hadn’t already. She would never take Juliet away. But how could I take Juliet away from Kelly? Just as Scott Early had taken Ruthie and Becky from my mother, only in a decent, kindly way. Would they have other children? What if they did? That wouldn’t be my concern. Or would it? Was I really convinced that I had come here to protect Juliet? Or did I want only revenge, the knowledge that Scott Early and his foolish wife would feel exactly what we had felt? The-end-of-the-world pain? The knowledge that tomorrow wouldn’t be better? Would I wish that on another living soul? How could I call Kelly foolish? Nothing about this was Kelly’s fault. But she could have left him! She had free will! I recognized what was happening. I was “cascading,” as they said in class, contradictory emotions flowing over me like driven water.
I picked up the telephone and called True West Airlines.
Chapter Twenty
It was dark when I tucked Juliet’s blanket around her and began walking back to the apartment.
I’d never gone to Balboa Park, of course—never intended to. What I’d done instead was make a false start to the airport and then ask the driver to turn around. Instead of going straight back to the apartment, though, I had stopped at the tea shop. I wanted to see Kevin once more, and I knew he’d be there. He usually was on Thursdays. It was open mike night, and he liked hearing the musicians. Now th
at it wouldn’t matter, I wanted to tell Kevin who I really was and why I’d come. I wanted to tell him my feelings about Miko and why no one would ever be hurt by the things I’d planned but would never really do.
I guess I wanted to be understood.
“Ronnie!” Kevin called when he saw me, motioning me over to his table. He was alone that night, all his buddies busy with other matters. He’d told me once he preferred listening to music alone, without chatter—that for him it was like meditation. “You missed a guy who was really good, even though he didn’t sing much of his own stuff, just Josh Groban covers. . . .”
“Kevin,” I said, “I have something I have to tell you.”
“What?” he asked, distracted. The next guitarist was setting up.
“I might not be . . . ,” I began, but I chickened out. “I was just going to say a lady complimented me on my bracelet today. She said she’d never seen anything like it.”
“Shira’s pretty talented at jewelry.”
“You think you’ll get married?”
“That’s a long way off,” he said. “You want some tea?”
I don’t know why, but I drank about a quart of chamomile.
I doubted I’d be able to walk the ten blocks without having to pee. My mouth was cardboard dry, the way it is just before you have to speak in public or just after you’ve almost missed your foothold climbing a rock wall and narrowly avoided plunging down to the end of the rope. I guess the latter was more or less what had happened to me.
Finally, I gave Kevin a hug—for the last time, unbeknownst to him. I thanked him again for the bracelet. He looked surprised, like why was I bringing up the bracelet again, right then? I wanted to tell him that the red thread would connect us forever. But that would have aroused his suspicion that something was up with me. I promised I’d call him when I decided whether I was going on to full paramedic studies, as he was. When I got to the door, I looked back at him. Something about what had happened with Kevin was a lever that moved me to ask that cabdriver to turn around. I just didn’t know what it was.
I did know that I was beat.
All I’d done the whole day was to rush around—getting ready to board the plane for Texas with Juliet, my baby, my “lap sitter,” as the reservation lady called her.
I’d gone back to Mrs. Desmond’s and left her a note and the next month’s rent. She’d find my keys and the iron she’d lent me and everything else in my room. Then, as Juliet napped in a nest of pillows on my floor, I’d stuffed my duffel bag with my laptop, my makeup kit, my cell phone, and all the clothes too nice or too useful to throw out, leaving behind only trinkets and books. I’d loaded the car, which I planned to leave on a side street without the plates. With any luck, teenage punks would strip it back to the paint by the time anyone found it. I had cash for a cab ride to the airport and cash for my airline ticket. The semester had ended the previous week, and Juliet was three months old, old enough to drink formula, old enough to travel. It was now or never.
And so I’d stashed her pram in the bushes at Belleview Park and set out.
But before we were even halfway, I told the driver to turn around, asking him to stop so I could retrieve the stroller and then to drop me at the tea shop.
I felt a curious sense of relief and regret. Scott Early would never know that there hadn’t been an all-day picnic at Balboa, as I’d told him. He’d never know about the plane reservations. He’d just think I’d hung out late with my friends, and he wouldn’t worry about Juliet, not while she was with me. Once he found the note I’d leave behind, he’d think I’d resigned without giving notice. Young women did it all the time. They’d be disappointed, but not horrified. No one would ever be the wiser.
I walked faster. My bladder felt like a submarine. I could pee in the bushes, but with my luck, a bunch of runners would come past the moment I slipped down my jeans. I also wished I could just leave Juliet in the lower hall, fast asleep in her stroller. I’d dump my duffel bag into the car and head for the airport alone. I’d leave my car in the lot, change my ticket, and then sit in the lurid comfort of the lounges and eat Danishes and read about the dumb lives of movie stars until the dark morning brought an airplane that would take me as close to home as I could get. The cab ride had cost half as much as the plane would have.
But I didn’t dare leave Juliet unguarded. Scott Early could be asleep. I had to put Juliet into her bed, make up some goofy note about some emergency at home, leave their keys on the table, and go. I knew that one of my cousins would road-trip back with me to get my car. I was too diminished to hit the midnight roads alone and try to drive to Utah. I’d rather have spent my last dime. In fact, I would be spending my last dime.
Why had my nerve failed? I had been sure when I left the apartment.
I had to be alone to think this out, link by link.
I tried to connect the dots between my role in Kevin’s survival and what I wanted to do to Scott Early and his wife. But I couldn’t find the words to make sense of it. Had I been placed in the enormous position of having saved a life to see clearly the consequences of “saving” Juliet, albeit destroying her parents? Was I intended to see that what I was doing in full knowledge, Scott Early had done unknowingly? Was the magnificence of Kevin being spared some kind of sign that Scott Early truly had repented, turned entirely around in his life and proceeded from darkness into light? Or were the things connected only in my tired, tattered mind? I turned things one way, then another. The very thing that had outraged me to the point of action, Scott Early rocking Juliet and singing to her the same song Mama sang, had tugged at me, like a line reeled out to the end of the reel and then pulled taut, as I’d set off with Juliet in my arms.
One thing was suddenly clear to me: I’d stayed so long at L.M.N.O. Tea not just to be with Kevin, but because I wanted it to be too late for me to catch any plane at all. I didn’t want to give myself a chance for a last-minute change of heart.
More than anything, I wished Kelly were back. If I’d been able to tell her, face-to-face, that I needed to leave, she would have been sad, but she would have taken over. I didn’t know if Scott Early could. The greatest irony of all would be to leave Juliet and have my worst fears come true.
Finally, I made it up the hill to the pink stucco duplex, feeling as though I had a hot-water balloon in my abdomen. It was dark. Every window was dark. Even the soft yellow light from the baby whale lamp in Juliet’s little room—the light they left on until I put her down the few times that they went out on weekends and I looked after her—was turned off. So I put my duffel in my car and carried the stroller and Juliet up the six stone steps, got out my key, and opened the outer door. I held the apartment key between my lips while I made my way down the hall to the elevator. Up we went, with a bump, and I maneuvered everything down the hall. But when I put my hip against the door and inserted the key, the door simply swung away silently, into blackness.
And I was frightened.
I wasn’t frightened of Scott Early, though he had avoided my eyes when I passed him on the way to the car that day, with my excuse about going with friends to the park. That was easily put down to embarrassment over my hearing their fight. What I feared was that he’d gone out to study and someone might have seen me leaving, and then him leaving, and believed the apartment was empty. Someone could have come in to rob it and might still be inside. I was in real pain now bladderwise, so I turned into the bathroom and peed for an absurdly long, blissful interval. At least, if I was going to be tied up and robbed, I’d be comfortable. Then I went back to see to Juliet.
The sensible thing would have been to back quietly out of the door, go down and find my cell phone somewhere at the bottom of the duffel, and call the police.
But before I could, I heard something—not quite a moan, more like a muffled cough and then a knocking noise, as if someone were hitting something against a heavy object. It came from Scott Early and Kelly’s bedroom. And so, leaving Juliet in the doorway, I flipped on t
he light, and I saw it.
Against the hall lamp, where Kelly always left my checks and the sweet, silly notes and cards she sometimes gave me, was a plain white envelope. On the envelope was written, “For Veronica Swan.” My arms tingled the way your arms do when a foolish driver comes peeling out of nowhere and only by swerving do you avoid getting creamed on a stretch of indifferent California concrete. As if I’d tried to stick in a plug with a bad wire. He knew me. My mind darted out at me, like a dark thing from an underwater hole. He knew it was me, and that meant he was in here and the lights were off because the only way he could free himself forever was to kill me, too. But how could he think that—would he imagine that my parents would forgive him a second time, take his hand, pray with him, wish God’s blessings on him, if he recanted on his promise to do no more harm, only good, forever in this life? Could he imagine he could put this down to an illness? Of course, killers don’t think of such things. They don’t think at all. But I did. I thought of how Mama and Papa would feel, knowing I’d gone and done this and died for it. I turned to run, but I heard that whack again, and Juliet began to fuss. Pressing my hand on her tummy, I rocked her gently back and forth until she blinked out again, her perfect mouth working around her passie. Using my fingernail, I slit open the envelope. There was a single sheet of paper inside.
Why would Scott Early write to me if he were intending to ambush and kill me?
Then again, if he had gone off his meds and waited for this time, lain in wait until Kelly was hundreds of miles away, it would make sense to him to send me a message, an explanation, to tell me in whose name and on whose orders he was acting this time . . . but I read:
Dear Veronica,
I know that you are not Rachel Byrd. I don’t know why you came here, but I assume it was to take my life. It is a life I owe to you and your family. When I first learned who you were, when a funny card from a friend back home fell out of your backpack, my first thought was to run. But I can no longer run away. I can never ask your forgiveness, but now I have to face what should have been my punishment before, and Kelly will be grateful forever that you didn’t hurt Juliet. You treated her . . .