“Quit my job? Sell the house? You bet. I’ll get right on that.”
“I’m serious, Frank. This is what killed Julie.”
Finally, he lowered his glass. “The EPA say that?”
“No. But they will.”
“What did they say?”
“They have to do more testing. But it’s just a matter of time . . .”
“So even though this nano zinc’s everywhere, they’re not concerned. They’re not closing down the plant.”
“You can’t listen to them.”
“You’re the one who called them in. Which way is it, Dana? We listen to them, or we don’t?”
“I thought they could help.”
“You just wanted them to rubber-stamp this crazy notion of yours.”
“It’s not crazy. They’re looking into it. They’re worried about it.”
“But they’re not doing anything.”
“It’s the government,” I snapped. “They’re the ones who put lead in paint. Look at asbestos. Thalidomide. They’re not going to do anything until more people die. You want Peyton to be one of them?”
“Leave my daughter out of this.”
“She’s not your daughter.”
He started to laugh, then saw the expression on my face. His eyes went blank with confusion. “What are you talking about? Julie tell you that?”
“She’s not Julie’s, either. She’s mine.”
“Right. She looks just like Julie.”
“And me.”
His gaze settled on me, as if he was forced to see me for the very first time.
“That’s why Julie and I moved to Hawley that summer. Not so she could be closer to nursing school, but so no one would know I was pregnant.”
He set the bottle down.
“You came home for Christmas that year, remember?” I continued. “Of course you’d think Peyton was yours.”
“You’re lying.”
“It was a big surprise, wasn’t it, finding out Julie had had a baby? She’d never said a word.”
“She said it was because she didn’t want to get my hopes up.”
“You must have suspected something, but you bought it anyway. Because you wanted to believe it.”
“Get out.”
“The way Peyton holds her spoon with her thumb overlapping? The way she sometimes walks around with just one sock on, sleeps on her stomach with her head in her pillow? That’s me, Frank. She’s mine.”
Red crawled up his cheeks and his eyes went hard. I stumbled back a step as he raised his arm.
“You stay away from her, you interfering bitch! I raised her. She’s my daughter—”
The sudden crunch of footsteps outside, the slam of a door. A car was pulling out of the driveway, tires squealing against asphalt.
By the time we reached the door and looked out, all we could see was the car accelerating down the street.
Peyton had heard everything.
FORTY-EIGHT
[PEYTON]
CORAL REEFS ARE BUILT BY LIVING CREATURES called polyps that shape limestone shells all around their soft, vulnerable bodies. They live two to three years, and when they reproduce, they release larvae that settle on the tops of other corals to begin making their own limestone houses. Because they’re so tiny, reefs grow only about an inch a year. Scientists estimate that the coral reefs around today are between five and ten thousand years old. Over a million different species of animals and plants live in them. It’s the most diverse habitat on earth.
Polyps feed at night by poking their tentacles out to catch plankton. Because these tentacles sting, they also protect the polyps from predators. But it’s an inefficient feeding process, not enough to sustain them. It’s the microscopic algae inside the polyps, converting sunshine into food, that really keep the polyps alive. Algae require tropical temperatures, a certain level of salinity, ample sunlight, and a current that’s not too fast or too sluggish in order to thrive. So when you come down to it, over a million species rely on something so fragile it almost doesn’t exist, and so microscopic it’s invisible.
Her mom’s lucky charm smacked against the glass. Her books slithered out of her bookbag and thudded to the floor.
Eric’s house flew by, hunkered down and smug, like all the houses beside it. Another turn, the road curving up and down and she flew into the air for an instant, a stomach-assaulting moment of pure joy when gravity let go, and then the car of its own accord leaped the curb and crashed to a halt in front of the nursing home where her mom had taken her for countless visits.
Not her mom. She was Dana’s daughter.
The entrance doors were closed—someone had once tried to make a run for it. Peyton punched the automatic button and the doors opened slowly like butterfly wings. She strode by the nurse writing at her desk and the old man in his chair, awake today and grinning at her. She’d smack his hand if he reached up toward her. The papers tacked to the bulletin board fluttered as she ran past them. Down the hall past the dining room, where people worked setting up the tables, the steamy smells of overcooked food swarming into the hall.
Her grandma’s room was empty. Instead, she sat playing cards with Mrs. Gerkey and two other old ladies in the games room, holding their cards in special little grippers so the cards stayed put and didn’t shake to the table.
“Hello, Peyton,” Mrs. Gerkey said.
Peyton ignored her. She put her hands on her grandma’s thin wrists, the skin papery soft over the bones. “Who’s my real dad?”
Her grandma’s eyes widened. “I don’t think I know you, dear.”
“Yes, you do!” She gave her grandma’s hands a shake. “I’m Julie’s daughter.” Not Julie’s daughter. “Frank’s daughter.”
Her grandma pursed her lips together, then nodded. “Yes. That’s right. Frank’s daughter, but not really.”
Not really. That was a laugh. “Who is my real dad?”
“Dana got herself in trouble. I should have seen it coming.”
“Peyton,” Mrs. Gerkey said. “None of that matters. You need to calm down.”
Calm down? Was the old witch kidding? “It does matter. It matters to me.”
“What matters is that Dana did the right thing,” Mrs. Gerkey said.
“What do you know about anything?” Peyton snatched back her hands. “She gave me away, like I was garbage. How is that the right thing?”
“Don’t talk to your grandma that way,” Mrs. Gerkey chided.
“I can talk to her any way I want,” Peyton shot back. “She’s not my grandma.” She leaned down and spoke the next words into Miriam’s startled face. “I never loved you, either.”
She should drive to Fargo. It was only an hour away, but what would she do when she got there? The Twin Cities lay hours away and she wasn’t really sure how to get there. Eric would have helped, but not now. Hawley? Yuck—that was even smaller than Black Bear. It didn’t even have a DQ. There really was only one place.
She swerved off the road and down the long driveway to the plant. The workday was over; there were only a few cars in the parking lot. She skewed into an end space and climbed out, holding her face to the hot sun. Birds cawed nearby; the lake glinted between the trees. She ran for her thinking rock.
She was her mom’s daughter. Of course she was. They looked just like each other. Didn’t they have the same trick of jiggling their right foot when their legs were crossed? Didn’t they love the same movies and think kiwi were slimy? When Peyton looked in the mirror, she always saw herself, but with her mother gently shaded in, as if the two of them were together occupying the same space.
She pulled her cigarettes from her bag. Just two left and they were a little bent.
What about her dad? She didn’t look like him, but then, she never had. Who was she, if she wasn’t his daughter? They hung out together. He’d taught her to fish and ride her bike. When they went camping, the two of them sat out by the campfire after her mom had gone to her sleeping bag, and he told her
about the stars in the sky. He’d been the one to approve buying such an expensive aquarium. He’d been the one to look up how to become a marine biologist. They both loved her mom, equally. If that didn’t unite them, nothing did. But there was part of him she’d never known, that part that didn’t talk about what had happened overseas, the cold scary stranger who emerged whenever he’d been drinking. He was her dad, but he wasn’t just like her, not the way her mom had been. He was all Peyton had left. Maybe he really didn’t love her, either.
Who did this make her? Joe Connolly’s daughter? There was nothing special about him at all, nothing that told her they had anything in common.
Who did this make her mom, the woman who’d lied to Peyton every single day of her entire life? What else had she lied about? Nothing made sense anymore.
She scrabbled through her purse for her lighter, pulled at all the pockets, took out her wallet to look beneath. No luck. She rested her chin on her bent knee and stared out at the lake. So Dana had gotten pregnant. What was the big deal about that? Lots of kids got pregnant. A girl in her class had a three-month-old, and one of the sophomore girls was pregnant, wearing tight shirts that rode up on her belly. What was so horrible about Peyton that made Dana want to give her away? And her mom want to keep it a secret?
She needed her lighter. Jumping down, she made her way around the building toward the parking lot. She couldn’t go home again. She could never look her father in the face. She was afraid of what she’d see there. She never wanted to see Dana again. Eric teased into her mind, but she pushed him away. She wasn’t Eric’s girlfriend anymore, not Julie and Frank’s daughter, but someone else. Someone she hadn’t figured out.
The side entrance to the plant was ajar. That was weird. Martin always walked around and made sure everything was locked up tight.
Mr. G’s secretary smoked. She’d have a lighter or a matchbook in her desk. There were still some people around. She could hear their voices in a nearby room. Machinery thrummed from the other end of the plant, not making noise but making the floor tingle beneath her feet. She hadn’t realized that it did so before. What else had she missed or not noticed? Her mother was always telling her to slow down and enjoy the process. Scratch that. Julie had always said that.
It was delicious being here, where she had no right being. She ran her fingertips along the wall, recently papered in white and soft gray stripes, the paper bumpy where the gray came in, smoothing out for the white. A metallic scent hung in the air. Maybe one of the machines was running wrong and her dad would be called in to fix it. Nope. Not her dad. Just some guy named Frank.
She found the lighter in the secretary’s desk, in one of the compartments of the plastic divider. She thumbed the wheel, holding the lick of flame to the tip of her cigarette. She drew in and the cigarette caught.
The two clownfish were swimming in unison, flipping this way and that, like they were playing a game. Mr. G was right: Charlie was getting along with his new friend, someone who looked just like him, to reflect back his happy self and show him he belonged.
She had a wild thought. The best thought.
All that powder Dana claimed was making people sick. Peyton knew where it was stored. Everyone was so afraid of it, and wouldn’t it be something to send it flying all around? She could rig up that fan Ronni used in the packing room, and position it over the opened bin of powder. That would be cool. Then everyone would be equal. She wouldn’t be the only rudderless one.
She’d get into the storeroom through the manufacturing room. She knew the code. Fern had tried to be secretive about it, but she was old and her fingers had moved slowly. If anyone had been clever, it had been Peyton, who’d looked away the instant Fern glanced over to see if she’d been watching. Ha.
She turned the corner and saw a bright yellow wire running along the baseboard, like it was leading somewhere. Interesting. She decided to see where it led.
Around the next corner, she saw LT crouching at the end of the corridor. He saw her at the same moment, and scrambled to push himself up. “Peyton?”
LT clasped a reel of yellow wire to his chest. So he’d been the one to string it along the floor. “What are you doing?” she asked him. LT had been fired, hadn’t he? So what was he doing here, creeping around after hours?
“Get AWAY! You’re not supposed to be here! Get AWAY.”
She glanced at the wire by her feet. The most poisonous creatures in the ocean were brightly colored. It was nature’s way of warning away other animals, Bad News. Stay Away. Here was this glow-in-the-dark neon yellow, the kind that made you automatically pay attention.
LT lurched toward her and the reel dropped, bounced. Now she saw the gray duct tape around his chest, holding a small black box against his sweatshirt. “GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!”
Yeah, good idea. He was looking real freaky.
“Peyton!”
There was Dana, running toward her, her face twisted in horror.
A loud boom and the world shook.
No one’s daughter.
FORTY-NINE
[DANA]
BY THE TIME JULIE ARRIVED HOME, HOURS AFTER she’d told me to expect her, I’d grown crazy with worry. I’d started imagining all sorts of terrible scenarios, fueled by the awful certainty that my sister would be snatched from me at the very time I needed her most. Her car sailing over an embankment. Someone kidnapping her from a parking lot. An angry employee bursting into the office and gunning down everyone in the waiting room.
At last, Julie nudged open the door and dropped her keys on the small table. She looked perfectly fine, wearing the same print blouse and denim skirt she’d left in that morning, her blonde hair falling in soft waves to her shoulders, her cheeks pink from the summer sun. She glanced around the room, at the magazines lying askew on the couch beside me, the glass of ice water sweating condensation on the coffee table, everywhere but at me. Don’t tell me you’ve been watching TV all day.
Gently chiding, not a word about why she was so late, but I could tell from the tight way she was controlling her voice that she wasn’t the least bit fine. What did the doctor say?
There are lots of things you could be doing, Dana. How about learning another language? Or how to cook?
Tell me, I demanded.
She sank into the armchair across from me, its worn cushion scooped and scratchy. It was our least favorite chair in the place, and we used it as a way station for laundry to be folded or library books to be returned, but here my sister was, leaning back against the ugly green fabric as though she did so every day. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her mascara smudged. She’d been crying, but she tried on a smile. How about knitting?
So that was it. She’d never be able to have a baby. Is he sure?
Pretty sure. She lifted her hair from the nape of her neck and let it fall. Let’s treat ourselves. How about Chinese?
But . . .
Don’t look like that, Dana. It’s not the end of the world. But it was the end of the world. I saw it in her eyes. Frank and I can always adopt.
You said Frank would never love a child that wasn’t his own.
She started to respond, then faltered. She was trying so hard to be brave, and I was making it difficult for her. I’ll have lo mein, I said, and she smiled.
Just think, she said, reaching for the phone. Soon I’ll have a little niece or nephew to spoil.
Julie had done everything for me and had asked for nothing in return. I put my hand on my belly and felt the answering kick. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. But was I strong enough to do it?
Frank and I took separate cars. Even then, we weren’t united. Even then, we were on opposite sides.
I rolled through intersections, searching in both directions for Julie’s small blue sedan. Thought I saw it in the JCPenney’s parking lot, until I spied the Wisconsin license plate. I tried every phone number I could argue out of the operator. When Eric Hofseth answered, he sounded distracted. At the mention of Peyton’s name, his voi
ce sharpened.
“I don’t know,” he told me bleakly, and I believed him.
Sheri sounded worried. “I don’t know where she could be, but if she heads this way, I’ll let you know. Dana, what’s wrong?”
I drove along the lake, turned in to the amusement park, and looked at the mob of people thronging the walkway. Peyton couldn’t possibly be there. All that giddy gleefulness would make her sick. She’d look for silence. She’d want to be alone. Where would she find that? I thought I might know.
Sure enough, along the far side of Gerkey’s parking lot the car sat at an angle. A few other cars were parked nearby. I didn’t recognize any of them.
I banged on the glass doors. A man emerged out of the gloom on the other side, someone I recalled seeing before, though no one I knew. He waved, We’re not open, and wheeled away. I rapped harder, drawing him back, pressed my hands together in supplication. Please.
Shaking his head, he unlocked the door and held it open a few inches. “Read the sign. We’re closed.”
He’d been one of the workers in the manufacturing area when I’d gone through with the monitor; he’d eyed me the entire time with a dour expression.
“I’m looking for Peyton Kelleher.”
“I told you, we’re closed.”
“Her car’s parked right there. She has to be in here somewhere. Just let me look around. I’ll only take a minute—”
“No can do. Sorry.”
He wasn’t sorry. The bastard looked pleased to be shutting the door in my face. I grabbed the handle. “Look. She’s upset. She just lost her mom.” Twice over. “I’ll be quick.”
“Frank know you’re here?”
“Frank’s looking for her, too. Please. It’s important.” I kept my gaze even on his.
“Okay,” he relented, holding open the door. “You got ten minutes.” He walked away, toward the manufacturing area, where light spilled through an opened door. People were working, their voices a low mutter.