Here Lies Daniel Tate

“If you knew how many times a day she tries to feed me,” I continued. “Like she thinks I can’t take care of myself, that I would starve if she wasn’t there force-feeding me peanut butter sandwiches.”

  Jessica twisted her wine glass by the stem. “She’s always been like that, ever since she was young.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “We used to have this dog. Sweet creature but very stupid. She thought she could train it, and you should have seen her trying to—”

  Jessica froze. She’d fucked up, and she knew it.

  “Trying to what?” I asked.

  She pushed her chair back from the table and tried to get to her feet, but she knocked a glass of ice water over with her elbow. It rolled across the table and crashed to the floor, soaking the tablecloth and carpet. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look. Our waiter rushed toward us.

  “I’m sorry,” Jessica stammered as he mopped at the mess with a napkin. “I-it was an accident . . .”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I said.

  “It’s nothing, madam,” the waiter said.

  People were still staring. Jessica swayed on her feet.

  “Excuse me,” she mumbled, and turned to flee the scene.

  I went after her and caught her outside the restaurant.

  “Mom, wait,” I said, catching her by the arm.

  She turned to me as she pulled her arm out of my grasp, and her unfocused eyes were swimming. She was, I realized, terrified.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said. Why was I still lying? We both knew this was a farce, so why pretend? Maybe, for once, I could get what I wanted by telling the truth. “I think we should talk.”

  I paid the bill at Mélisse with the emergency credit card and then walked Jessica over to a Starbucks across the street. I bought her a black coffee, and we sat down at a table next to the window.

  “I’m sorry this has been so hard for you,” I said. “Me being here and everything.”

  She looked up at me uncertainly.

  “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you. Really.” I thought of a woman in an arm chair, flipping channels on the television, a phone ringing in the distance, and I couldn’t keep the tinge of bitterness out of my voice. “I can see that Lex and Patrick put a lot of pressure on you to treat me like everything is the same, but I want you to know that I understand. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

  Jessica’s face went very still, and then I noticed tiny movements around her eyes and mouth, like something was happening inside of her that she was trying to contain.

  I leaned closer to her. “Lex and Patrick aren’t here. We don’t have to pretend nothing’s changed.”

  Moisture gathered in her eyes, clinging to her lower lashes. “Please don’t tell them,” she whispered.

  “I promise,” I said.

  I was convinced; Jessica couldn’t have been the one to kill Danny. How many times had I seen Lex or Patrick remind her to keep up the façade? They wouldn’t have had to do that if she were the one with something to hide. She wouldn’t seem so scared of them right now if it were her ass she was protecting. No. Setting aside how I felt about them, it was more likely that Lex or Patrick had been responsible, and Jessica was keeping the secret to avoid losing another child.

  “I can’t imagine what it must have been like,” I said, “to have your son be missing for so long.”

  She looked down at the table and blinked to clear her eyes. “I . . . I wasn’t always such a bad mother, but after . . . what happened . . .”

  I wanted to tell her that Danny might be gone, but her other children still deserved a loving mother, but that would be taking honesty too far. She had to feel safe with me if I was ever going to get anything useful out of her.

  “You know you can talk to me,” I said. “I know it seems strange, but if you need someone to talk to about all of this, no one understands better than I do.”

  Her voice was so soft I could barely hear it. “I just want everyone to be safe.”

  “That’s what I want too,” I said, reaching out to touch her cool hand. “That’s why I’m here.”

  She looked up at me and, very slowly, nodded.

  • • •

  It wasn’t a confession, but it was progress. With enough time I was pretty sure I could get her to tell me what she knew.

  The only question was how much time Nicholas would give me.

  • • •

  Nicholas was not happy.

  “So she didn’t tell you anything?” he asked as we sat alone together during lunch period. He’d banished Asher to his backup seat at the jock table so we could talk openly.

  “What did you expect?” I said. “I did everything I could. Hopefully I’ll be able to build on it, and eventually she’ll confide more in me, but all I know for sure now is that she knows I’m not Danny.”

  He sighed. “Which means she must know what really happened to him.”

  I nodded. “She’s covering for someone.”

  “We’ve got to go to Patrick’s apartment and find those files,” he said. “He never wants any of us to go over there, and that just makes me want to even more. Did you ask Mom where she goes all the time?”

  “Yeah, she fed me some bullshit line about long drives to the beach,” I said. “If we want to know, we’re going to have to follow her.”

  Nicholas’s phone rang. The administration had recently lifted the cell phone ban, and so far no one had dared to take my picture again. He frowned down at the display but answered it anyway.

  “Hello? . . . Yeah, okay . . . Yes. Thank you.” He ended the call and started gathering his things. “That was the prison. You’re on the visitors’ list. We can go see my dad.”

  “What, now?” I said as he shouldered his bag.

  “Yes, now. I’m not drawing this out any longer than we have to,” he said. “If we leave now, we can be back before anyone even knows we’re gone.”

  • • •

  Nicholas and I headed north to Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution, a prison with one of those minimum security, luxury resort sections for criminal CEOs and power brokers no one wanted to piss off too badly.

  Nicholas radiated impatience the entire ride. I needed an escape plan. He wasn’t going to last the weeks or months or years it might take to discover what really happened to Danny. At any moment he could get fed up and decide it was worth it to turn me in as a fake. And if we did find out who had killed Danny, my window for escape was even narrower. Nicholas and I had reached an uneasy sort of truce lately, and part of me hoped he would let me go in return for helping him find his brother’s killer, but the chances were slim. Other than a packed bag hidden in Danny’s closet, ready for me to grab and run, I hadn’t made any preparations. I needed to start, or I’d end up in a place a lot less nice than the prison we were approaching.

  “So what are we going to do?” I asked as we parked in the lot across from the prison. It was surrounded only by a low chain-link fence, and beyond that were a lush, green lawn and a modern building that could have just as easily been a nicer-than-average public school.

  Nicholas shrugged, which was probably difficult considering how tense he was. “We see how he reacts to seeing you. It should give us some idea how much he knows.”

  “And the Mia thing?” I asked.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Just let me handle that part.”

  “Okay. What are you hoping for here?”

  Personally, although I doubted it, I hoped like hell that Robert Tate had been the one to kill Danny. It would mean the members of the family that I knew hadn’t. But obviously it wasn’t as easy for Nicholas. Unlike everyone else in the family, he actually seemed relatively close to Robert. They talked on the phone, and I suspected some of his weekend “hikes” with Asher were actually trips to Lompoc.

  He sighed. “I honestly don’t know.”

  We checked in with the guard at the front desk and went through a metal detector and bag sear
ch, and then we were led to the visiting area.

  “Does he know we’re coming?” I asked, suddenly feeling nervous. I’d spoken to Robert on the phone a half a dozen times, but coming face-to-face with the man was different.

  Nicholas shook his head. “They’ll have told him he has visitors from his list but not who.”

  We entered a room that looked a lot like the cafeteria at my old high school, which seemed appropriate. It had a similar smell, too: staleness and watered down bleach. The room was filled with tables and chairs where men in blue clothes sat with their family members as bored guards watched from the perimeter. Nicholas surveyed the room before heading toward a table in the back corner. I followed behind him.

  “Nicholas!” A man stood up from his chair and hugged him.

  “Hey, Dad,” Nicholas said.

  Robert Tate looked mostly the same as I remembered him from the home movies. Tall and handsome, with sharply defined features that Nicholas had inherited. The salt-and-pepper hair at his temples was quite a bit saltier, though, and he’d grown a beard that made him look about ten years older than he really was.

  As he hugged Nicholas, Robert’s eyes landed on me.

  At first his expression didn’t change. I don’t even think he really saw me. But as I looked back at him, he realized I wasn’t some other inmate’s kid, and his face changed in slow motion. His brows furrowed in confusion, then his eyebrows lifted and his eyes widened. Realization, shock. Then a darkening of his expression. Doubt.

  His arms dropped from around Nicholas, and he looked back and forth between us.

  “Is . . . is that . . .”

  Nicholas nodded. Robert still looked confused. He took a halting step toward me.

  “Daniel?” he breathed.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said.

  He stared at me, shook his head, and took another step forward. The frown lines in his face deepened. He reached out his arms and pulled me to him, crushing me in a tight hug, releasing a sound that was a combination of a laugh, a sob, and a punch to the gut. He rocked me back and forth, saying “Danny, oh my God, Danny” over and over under his breath.

  If it was an act, it was a damn good one.

  The hug lasted a long time, maybe longer than any I’d ever received, and Robert only let go of me by degrees. Pulling away to look at my face but keeping his arms around me. Separating his body from mine but keeping his hands on my arms. Sitting down across from me, but keeping my hands in his. All the time staring at me like I was some puzzling but miraculous creature.

  “I’m so happy you’re here,” he said. His eyes were pink and shiny. “Your sister told me you weren’t ready to come out here yet, so I was trying to be patient, but the waiting was killing me. My boy.” He put his hands on my face, just staring into my eyes, and then he bowed his head and rubbed his beard. When he spoke again, his voice was rough with unshed tears. “I never gave up hope, and now—” He abruptly started to cry.

  Nicholas and I looked at each other as Robert covered his eyes with one hand, the other still holding tight to mine. Robert obviously wasn’t a part of the scheme to hide Danny’s death. His joy and grief were palpable, so pointed and piercing that I shriveled a little inside. It was a cruel thing I had done to this family. This wasn’t an act; Robert had no idea his son was dead.

  I was disappointed. Nicholas looked relieved.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Nicholas said. “Everything’s going to be fine, okay?”

  Robert took a few deep breaths to compose himself. He gave us a sheepish smile and murmured an apology. Then he asked, “How’s your little sister? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “We ditched school,” Nicholas said. “Danny wanted to come, and we didn’t want to wait.”

  Robert reached for my face. “Just let me take another look at you.”

  He held my jaw in his hands and ran his eyes over every inch of my face. He stared at me, Nicolas stared at him, and I tried to hold Robert’s eye and not to stare down at the table. I guess I did a decent job, because I saw the moment he started to truly see. To recognize all the things about me that weren’t quite right. Weren’t quite Danny.

  Nicholas saw it too. “So, Dad,” he said. “How’s the joint treating you?”

  It distracted Robert enough. He dropped his hands and turned to Nicholas.

  “Not too bad, I guess,” he said. He poked Nicholas in the side with his finger. “Haven’t been shivved yet, at least.”

  Nicholas rolled his eyes, but there was an upward curve to his lips. Robert turned back to me, took my hand again on top of the table.

  “So, you’re back in school?” he asked, the faintest note of disbelief in his voice.

  “Yeah, but I don’t do any work,” I said. “I just go and sit in on classes.”

  He nodded and frowned at the same time. “What about you, Nicky? Excited for next year?”

  I snorted. It was always a little surprising when Nicholas managed to make it through a day at Calabasas High without setting the place on fire.

  Nicholas shifted beside me. “Dad, I—”

  “When do you find out where you’re living?” Robert continued.

  I frowned. “Huh?”

  “We can talk about it later, Dad,” Nicholas said. “Have I told you about the play Mia is writing?”

  Robert didn’t appear to notice the awkward dodge. His face turned instantly wistful at the mention of Mia. I wondered if he was always this expressive or if it was something about prison. Like he was trying to squeeze every emotion he could into these short, infrequent visits. “No. She’s doing well?”

  Nicholas nodded. “Yeah, great. She’s been practically living in the pool lately, and she gets the brace off in a couple of weeks.”

  “You know, I never asked because I know I should know,” I said, “but is Mia’s condition genetic?”

  Nicholas snapped his head around to look at me. I knew I was taking a risk by pissing him off, but I needed to know what Robert knew. I needed to know if he had a motive to kill Danny, and Nicholas believed in his dad too much to push him.

  “No, no,” Robert said. “It just happens sometimes.”

  “So no one on your side of the family ever had it?” I asked.

  Robert’s lips thinned just a little. “No. It’s nothing like that.”

  Nicholas veered the conversation away again, and when Robert was momentarily distracted by an argument that broke out at the next table over, he shot me a hard look. I didn’t care. I’d found out what I needed to.

  When the visiting period was over, Robert hugged me again and told me how happy he was to see me. That he loved me. Then he asked to speak privately to Nicholas for a moment. I nodded and left the two of them alone, walking back to the lobby of the prison by myself. Nicholas followed a couple of minutes later.

  “So?” I asked as we walked back to his car.

  “He wants to believe it’s you,” he said, “but he’s suspicious. He can’t be in on this.”

  I nodded. It was what I suspected, but God, everything would be so much easier if Robert had been the one who’d killed Danny. “I think you’re right.”

  “Yeah. I knew it.” Nicholas’s obvious relief gave way to irritation. “And hey, I told you I would deal with the Mia thing.”

  “But you weren’t going to deal with it,” I said. “Did you see how angry he got? He knows he’s not her real father. Maybe that has something to do with—”

  “He is her real father,” Nicholas said, “in every way that matters. You’re still here so that I can find out what happened to Danny. That’s it. Leave Mia out of it.”

  “You can’t assume the two things aren’t related,” I said. “Two huge secrets like that.”

  “Everyone has secrets,” he said, “and neither of my parents would kill their son over something like that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  I thought Nicholas was wrong—people were capable of darker stuff than he imagined when pushed—but I also thought
Jessica and Robert were probably innocent and didn’t want to risk provoking him any further, so I dropped it.

  We climbed back into the car, which was sweltering after baking under the sun for an hour. Nicholas rolled down the windows and blasted the AC, and soon we were on the freeway headed south to Hidden Hills. I replayed the visit in my head as we drove, looking for any clues I might have missed. We were nearly home when I remembered an odd moment in the conversation. I turned to Nicholas, who had spent most of the drive staring silently out at the road in front of him.

  “Hey, what did your dad mean about being excited for next year?” I asked.

  Nicholas didn’t look at me. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “I know it was something.”

  He sighed. “Fine. But you can’t tell anyone.”

  I gave him a look. “I can keep a secret.”

  “I’m going away to college,” he said.

  I frowned. “Yeah, but that’s not until—”

  “Next fall,” he said. “I’m graduating early. I’ll have all my credits by the end of the semester, and I already got into NYU.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “No one does. Just my dad,” he said. “And I only told him so that he’d have the accountant unlock my trust early so I can pay for it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’m sick of that school and my family and this place,” he said, “and I didn’t want to argue with anyone about it. It’s my life. It’s my decision.”

  “When are you going to tell them?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Whenever I absolutely have to.”

  I imagined what a bombshell it would be for everyone. The Tates were fucked up on a lot of levels, but they were also close-knit. For them to suddenly lose another person—even if it was only in a temporary way, just to the other side of the country—would rock them.

  “You . . . don’t think that’s a little selfish?” I asked. I knew it was stupid to antagonize him when he held my life in his hands, but I didn’t care.

  He turned his head and stared at me.

  “I mean, it’s your life, do whatever you want,” I said, “but I don’t get why you’d want to hurt your family on purpose like that.”