I didn’t change the expression on my face. “No wonder Aurora left.”
He clenched his jaw. “It probably would have done her good. She was totally out of control, wild. It could have scared her straight.”
I shook my head in wonder. “Yeah, she is the messed up one in the Family.”
“Let me tell you, you don’t know the first thing about my cousin. She was disobedient just for the sake of disobeying. There wasn’t anything she wouldn’t have done for attention. She would have loved my scheme. Lapped it up afterwards, all the press.”
I stared at him as he spun lie after lie, justifying this to himself.
He lashed into my silence. “You’re no better than I am. You’re taking money from the Family for lying. How is that different than what I would have been doing?”
“I am nothing like you,” I said.
He crossed one knee over the other and leaned back again, nodding genially. “Sure. You’re worse. You’re stealing from strangers. I’m just taking an advance on what’s supposed to be mine.”
His fingers toyed with the handle of the flashlight. “You’re wrong about the other part too, about me being the last person to see Liza at the party. She and I were talking, and she got a text and took off.” He seemed to get very interested in the flashlight’s On/Off button.
“Who was the text from?” I asked.
He looked up. “From you.” He shook his head. “I mean from Ro. Ro was the last person to see her alive.”
I tried to put the chain together. Liza gets a text from Colin. Ro and Liza fight. Ro goes out to meet Colin. Then Ro sends Liza a text. And Liza winds up dead. I felt my eyes widen. “You think your cousin killed her best friend?”
Bain tried to sound casual. “All I know is she texted Liza.”
I sat forward, leaning toward him. “This whole time. This whole time you thought I—she—was a murderer. That’s why you were so confident Ro wasn’t coming back. Because you thought she’d killed Liza.”
“That’s it,” he said agreeably. Something about his enthusiasm pricked at me, as though he liked that answer a little too much.
What could he still be hiding?And why had Ro crossed out Colin’s face in the photos? I was still missing something.
My phone rang, cutting through the silence between us. I answered it and had N. Martinez’s voice in my ear.
“Are you on your way?”
“Not yet, I—”
“You need to leave. Now.”
CHAPTER 45
I got dressed, borrowed Mrs. March’s car, and made it to the hospital in record time—twenty-two minutes. N. Martinez was standing in the middle of the lobby in a pair of jeans and a dark green T-shirt that, despite saying, “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” on it, looked like it had been custom-made to flatter him. It was the first time I’d seen him casually dressed, and it was not unappealing.
I said, “I think your shirt might be lying.”
“It’s my sister’s birthday. Part of her present is she gets to choose what I wear.” He started walking toward the door, and I had to move fast to keep up.
“Is my grandmother okay? Are we going somewhere?”
“For a walk. It will be better if you’re not easily available when they get there.”
“They?”
“The police.”
“I thought you were the police?”
I glanced over and saw his jaw tighten, but he didn’t answer me. What was going on?
We were at a crosswalk. He pushed the button repeatedly. Finally he said, “I checked Liza’s file. The shoes she was found in were definitely hers. They had LAWSON written in them. The only strange thing is that they were a size 8, and she wore a 10. Is that what you were thinking of when you said they were off?”
“Maybe,” I said. It didn’t trigger any insights the way I had hoped it would. “That’s not what you came to tell me, is it?”
His head went back and forth slowly. “Regina Boyd, Colin Vega’s girlfriend, was attacked last night.”
“My God.” He stepped off the curb, and I stayed with him. “Is she okay?”
He shot me a quick glance, and I couldn’t tell if I’d said the right or the wrong thing. Of course that wasn’t at all unusual between us. I never seemed to know where I stood with him.
“She will be,” he said. “It was mostly superficial. But her assailant did try to strangle her. Using the belt of a trench coat. The same kind of trench coat you bought three years ago.”
I stopped walking without realizing we were in the middle of the street. “No.”
He grabbed my arm and nudged me to the curb. “What I think you will find most interesting is that there was no sign of forced entry. All her doors and windows were locked from the inside, and the security cameras on her building didn’t catch anyone going in or out.”
I felt like the sounds around us were echoing loudly in my ears. No sign of forced entry. No one in or out. “Liza,” I whispered. I have to believe in her now. I have no choice.
I hadn’t realized I’d said the words aloud until N. Martinez countered, “I still think there must be a rational explanation. I’m just not sure my reason is up to it.” He shook his head. “Nothing makes sense anymore.”
There were benches laid out in a sort of serpentine pattern on a large reddish concrete courtyard. We sat down at one. Across from us two women dressed for office work poked at salads with white plastic forks. A University student jogged by.
I wondered if you asked them how many would say they believed in ghosts.
N. Martinez said, “Regina’s assailant kept saying, ‘Leave them alone.’”
“Them?” I repeated.
“Colin thinks she must be confused, and it was ‘him.’ But Regina is sure it was ‘them.’”
I thought of my phone’s dead battery. Of how angry Liza had been the day before when I was talking to Regina. How she’d said I’d never have another friend like her.
She was very good at keeping her promises, I thought, again amazed at my calmness.
“Colin found Reggie on the floor of her apartment, unconscious.” N. Martinez’s voice pierced my thoughts. “He called an ambulance, and on the way to the hospital she told him what had happened. Then he came to the station to give evidence.” He paused. “I took his statement. He had a lot of interesting things to say. Mostly about you.”
This was it. I’d known this was coming. If it hadn’t been for what came before, I would have been almost relieved. I said, to be the one who put it out there, “He told you that I’m an imposter.”
N. Martinez nodded. “So I ran your prints. By name as well as from the prints in the system.”
He’d found one flaw in Bridgette’s plan, the one vulnerability. And now he knew. Knew the truth. It was almost a relief, and I realized I’d been braced for this, half-hoping for it all along.
I wasn’t ready for what he said next.
“I also checked your prints nationally.”
My breath caught in my throat.
“I only got one hit. Someone named Edie Poe with fingerprints that match yours was arrested for shoplifting in Oregon. An ice cream cake. And the only reason she got caught was because she stayed long enough to write the name Nina on it.”
I waited for what else he would say. What he was going to do.
“So who is Nina?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does. Who is she to you?”
“She was my foster sister. She was eight.” I saw him waiting for more, and I longed to spin a life story for him so interesting, I would wish it were mine.
“What happened?” he asked.
I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to talk about this. I closed my eyes, and there she was.
Tell me a story, I heard Nina’s tiny voice in my mind. I remembered how I had to lean close to hear her, her request a faint whisper over the sound of the traffic nearby. Her voice was disappearing, but her skin was still as soft as a
downy peach.
I was exhausted, spent. She was dying. There was nothing I could do to help her; she was beyond all help, the nurses at the mobile clinic told me. Assured me. As though that was supposed to make me feel better.
It did not. I couldn’t give up.
Our days passed in a strange haze in the corner of the abandoned warehouse we were living in, the sound of traffic and birds nesting in the rafters and squatters at the other end like white noise. They’d once stored fruit here, and the air was always tinted with the faint scent of overripe melons.
Nina lay behind the pink-and-gold cotton tapestry I found in the dumpster next to some college dorms, alternating between wake and sleep, two-hour intervals of each. While she slept, I went out and tried to find, steal, or trade for things I thought she would like: a mango one day, a bottle of Horchata, rose-scented soap snatched from the bathroom of a fancy restaurant, a penguin that dispensed toothpicks from its beak, a Cadillac hood ornament, a crystal star on the end of a fishing wire. One day, cutting through the park, I found a toilet seat with a mirror glued to the inside of the lid and the words “Hello, Good-looking!” hand-painted around the edges. All these treasures sat on the ledge next to her, a museum of memory, along with a doll missing its arm and an ivory comb. Mostly, though, I stayed near her, telling her stories of princesses and adventures like a 99-cent store Scheherazade, hoping to save her life with my tales.
That day she’d surprised me. When her eyes opened, I’d said, “I have a new story. Princess.”
But she shook her head. She got the little furrow between her brows she had whenever she was doing really deep thinking. “How do the princesses know? If they are sleeping, how do they know when the right prince kisses them so they can wake up?”
“They can just tell.”
“But don’t all kisses feel the same? Nice?”
“Not all kisses are nice,” I told her.
“So you think there’s a difference.”
“There must be,” I said, not wanting to admit I didn’t have enough experience to know.
She closed her eyes, and I thought she was going to sleep. But instead she spoke. She said, “You have to go.”
“Go where? What do you need? Juice?”
“Go,” she said. “You know where.”
“I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to be but right here.”
“Yes,” she insisted, opening her eyes. She tried to raise herself off the bed of green wide-wale corduroy couch cushions and snoopy blankets I’d gathered around her, to protect the frail bones and razor sharp elbows that threatened to shear through her skin. “We both do.”
I wanted to pretend not to know what she was talking about.
“No,” I said. Pleaded. Begged. “Not yet. You can’t go yet. You don’t know what happened to the princess.”
Her head turned to me. She smiled. “I do,” she said and closed her eyes.
In the park, sitting next to N. Martinez now, I opened mine. I told him, “She died. Nina died. I tried to save her, but I couldn’t.”
He sat next to me, being quiet in a way that was better than words.
“She was my sister in my third foster placement, with Mrs. Cleary. She came when I’d been there about six months. Mrs. Cleary was a widow who lived by herself except for me. She had a son who was older, maybe thirty. At first when he would come visit, I was nervous, but he never bothered me.” I swallowed. “I only found out why when Nina arrived.”
Who would believe a little whore like you? I heard echoed from memory.
As though he were reading my thoughts, N. Martinez said, “So you rescued Nina.” It was a statement, not a question. But then he asked, “Why not go to the police?”
“He was the police.” We were quiet again until I said, “Nina made me believe in family again,” answering the question I knew he had to ask, why I would ever agree to a scheme like Bain and Bridgette’s. “But family you chose. That’s why I came here like this. As a fake Aurora. I thought maybe this way I could, you know, choose my own family. And be chosen.”
“And have you?”
“I don’t know. That depends. Are you going to tell what you learned about me?”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t see any reason that anyone needs to know. Or at least needs to find out from me. Not right now anyway.”
I turned to look at him. Right at him. I felt as though I were seeing him, and seeing him see me, for the first time. My heartbeat felt like a butterfly in my chest. “Thank you. Why?”
He took a deep breath. His eyes stayed on me. “Wildfires,” he said. “That’s why it smells so smoky. We had a dry winter, so the brush is like kindling.”
My eyes couldn’t look away from his face. “Are they different from regular fires?”
“They’re more unpredictable. They leap from one object to another, so it’s hard to guess at their path or limit their destruction. Outside the city, they can roll over the landscape like a wave and hit you before you know it.”
I couldn’t stop watching his mouth move. I wanted to touch it. “How do you stop them?”
“You can’t. Once they start, they choose their own path. All you can do is try to contain them until they burn themselves out.” His eyes held mine. “They’re beautiful to watch, but they can be dangerous.”
We sat next to each other in silence for a little while. I had the sense that he was building to something unpleasant, so when his jaw got tight, I braced myself. “Do you want to come to my sister’s birthday party tomorrow afternoon?”
I touched my chest. “Me?”
He made a little growling noise and rolled his eyes. “Who else? Why do you have to be so difficult?”
“It’s just a little out of the blue.”
“Forget it.”
“I’d love to.” I reached out and touched his arm, and I felt the same electric jolt I’d felt the first time. “I would really love to.”
He stared at my arm on his. Then his eyes came to my face.
“I just realized. I don’t know your name,” I said.
If it were possible for him to frown more, he did. “I usually reserve that for people I’m not going to see again. Clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Court reporters. Insurance agents. Official business. My family calls me Leo.”
“That doesn’t begin with an “N.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He stood up, slipping away from my touch. “Tomorrow at six. There’s a pool, so?” He shrugged. “Here’s the address.” He handed me a card with a pony on the front. Inside it said, “You are invited to come horse around for Josephine’s birthday.”
“How old is she turning?”
“Eight. Like Nina. That’s what made me think of it.”
I fell in love with him at that moment. It was like the pin being pulled out of a grenade, the tiny little ping that turns something inert into something dangerously combustible. I stared at him, willing him to kiss me. His eyes moved over my face, from my eyes to my lips and my chin. For a split second I saw something soft and yearning.
“What if you don’t want to contain them? The wildfires?” I asked.
“People would get hurt.”
“Not if they were careful.”
“I don’t think that would work.” He shook his head, and I thought I saw a whisper of sorrow in his frown. “See you tomorrow.” He turned and left.
I watched him go, feeling confused and rejected and cherished and paid attention to at the same time. He knew all my secrets now, and he’d neither embraced me nor repudiated me. He’d just accepted me.
As a friend, I reminded myself. A dangerous friend.
Best… friends forever.
My phone rang, jolting me out of my thoughts, and I saw it was Grant. “Are we still on for lunch?”
I’d completely forgotten about our date. I said, “Of course. Sure. I—”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m—I’m fine. I just—”
“Where are you? I’ll com
e and get you.”
I described where I was, and he said he’d be there in five minutes. But my phone rang again almost immediately. “Are you having second thoughts?” I said, trying to joke.
“You’re… in danger, Ro-Ro,” Liza’s voice said.
“What did you do to Regina?”
“Girl… no good. Distraction… They’re coming for you.”
Despite myself, I shivered. I thought of Reggie being attacked in her apartment with no sign of anyone coming in or out. “What do you want from me?”
“Pay attention… they are already…”
“Already what?” I demanded
“Turn around!”
I turned and saw Bridgette crossing the street toward me.
Before she reached me, Grant’s car pulled up at the curb. I ran for the door and leaped in.
PART III
AWAKE
She’s had this nightmare before.
She’s running through an unfamiliar landscape, pursued by footsteps that get closer with each step, each breath. Tree branches slash at her, and her ankles wobble like buoys.
But this is no dream, no nightmare she can wake from. The footsteps she hears behind her now are real. Her neck aches for real, every muscle in her body burns, and each breath sears her windpipe. But she can’t stop.
As she runs, flashes of what happened earlier in the night grab at her, trying to slow her down, trap her. Shopping at the mall. The party. The bathroom. The text messages. The fight.
Opening her eyes and seeing the girl, wide eyes nearly sightless, lying on the gravel next to her. The girl saying, “Go. It’s me they want, not you.”
Hearing herself promise to be right back. “I’ll bring help. I won’t leave you alone.”
Her chest heaves with a sob, which catches in her throat as the beam of a flashlight scores the path in front of her. She’s been found, they’re closing in, they—
She veers away from the flashlight and is engulfed by complete darkness. Giving her eyes no chance to adjust, she heads blindly toward where she thinks the path should be. Before she reaches it, she stumbles over a rock and is flung headlong past the path and down a steep slope.