“You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Food? I might have some—”
“Could we maybe just sit down?”
He gestures toward a fancy gray sofa and then sits across from me on an uncomfortable-looking art deco chair. Outside, piñon branches scratch against a picture window as the wind howls. Snow White in the haunted forest comes to mind, which doesn’t ease my mood.
“So,” I say, right as he says, “I guess—”
I clear my throat. “You go first.”
“I was going to say, the other day you asked me where I’ve been.”
My heart jumps. “Yeah?”
“And I’m going to tell you, I swear. But, first, I was hoping you could tell me something.”
“Me?” I squeak. “Like what?”
“Well,” he sighs. “It’s about something you said. At the café.”
My brain turns photographic, flipping back to earlier Bluebell conversations. Honestly, I said a lot of stuff. Rambled, even. I shake my head, smiling apologetically. “Sorry, what was it exactly?”
“We were talking about your mom. Listen, I know it sounds strange, but I need you to tell me what they told you.”
I squint. “What who told me?”
“Kate and Jimmy. How did they explain Mandy’s death?”
“Her death?” I feel the back of my neck prickle. “Sorry, what exactly are we talking about here?”
Robert exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m asking—how did they tell you she died?”
“God, I don’t know.” I mean, seriously. His tone. That answer-me-young-lady dad voice. It’s disorienting. “Why does it matter? I wasn’t even three when it happened.”
“But—” He sighs again, more pointedly, fingers diving through his hair. “How did she die? It’s really important that you tell me.”
“A car crash. Jesus, why are you asking?”
“Shit,” he whispers, face souring.
My stomach twists. “You’re being super weird right now.”
“I’m not trying to.” He rubs sweaty palms against his thighs and squeezes his kneecaps. “Look. We really—really—need to talk. Okay?”
I hesitate. Because, I mean, “Aren’t we already talking?”
“I need a second,” he says. “I can’t believe they never told you.”
“They did tell me,” I insist.
“Right, but—” Again he sighs, wiping saliva from the corners of his mouth. “It’s all so messed up, but I can’t explain my side of the story if you don’t know hers.”
“I’m trying to tell you, I do know. I just don’t know all the gory highway details.”
“No, you don’t know. There were no highway details. Listen to me. You need to hear the truth about Mandy.”
“The truth?” I say. “Like, what? She was abducted by aliens? I don’t know what you think you know, but—”
“I’m not trying to scare you. Shit, that’s probably why your grandparents lied to you. But that’s what they did. They lied.”
“Gran and Grandpa? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not.”
“You honestly think my ancient, Baptist grandparents are capable of some elaborate sabotage? I mean, it’s legitimately hilarious.”
A nervous giggle bursts out of me, and Robert’s face reddens. “Would you stop?” he snarls. “This isn’t easy for me.”
“What isn’t? I don’t—whatever you think you know, it isn’t—”
“Jesus, stop being so stubborn and listen to what I’m trying to tell you!” he yells. He has to pause and catch his breath before looking back at me. “Johanna, your mom got shot.”
My pulse races. I duck back.
Ten seconds go by, and Robert swallows. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. Are you okay?”
I can’t answer. Can’t even manage to shake my head.
“Do you at least understand what I said?” he asks, eyebrows twisting. “I know your grandparents told you she died in a car accident, but it wasn’t like that. It was a shooting.”
He waits a beat. Lets it hang in the air again. The words are the same, though. Still bullshit. “Listen to me. You have to know, none of this was your fault.”
“My fault?” I bristle. Now I’m out of my haze. Head spinning, hands shaking. “This is ridiculous. I don’t know who told you she was shot, but it was a car accident. A truck crashed into her car—”
“Johanna—”
“Head-on—”
“Jo, stop—”
“And my mother died instantly. That’s what happened.”
“No. It’s not.”
“But—”
“You’re not listening to me,” he snaps, and I jolt at the bark of it. “You have to hear what I am saying. There was a gun in the house.”
“No, there wasn’t.”
Why is he doing this to me? What is he doing to me?
“One morning, by accident, you found it.”
“No,” I whimper.
“That’s what happened. That’s the truth.”
Over and over again, I shake my head, dizzied by the orange walls pulsing around me. I should stand, but my legs are sandbags, the wooden vigas crashing down on my shoulders. Nothing that happens next makes any sense. Words fly out of Robert’s mouth and bob around the room like bats. They’re familiar words—dictionary words—but none of them fit together in a way I can understand. It’s a story being told to me in a nightmare or some parallel universe, and my vision seems to blacken in response.
The neighbors had heard the gunshot. They’d knocked on the door and run inside. They’d seen Mandy on the floor and found me in the corner of the room. Crying. Soiled. Hiding beside the gun.
Afterward, they’d called 9-1-1. Then Robert, but he couldn’t be reached at work. After that, they’d found a number for my grandparents, who were in California visiting. Thank God, because someone needed to come for two-and-a-half-year-old me.
More words describe how Robert arrived home, terrified, only to find me in Gran’s arms, police cars everywhere. He’d been arrested, he says, for owning the .22 caliber handgun. He’d been arrested while my mother’s body was zipped up in a rubber bag and carted away. Pronounced dead at the scene. Sent to the morgue.
Not sent to the hospital. No attempts to resuscitate.
Just, dead.
“Stop talking,” I say, when I can’t hear anything apart from the throbbing of my heart inside my ears. “Please, stop.”
“I know this must be a huge shock for you.”
I rip my eyes from the marble coffee table and glance up at him. It’s the first time I’ve looked at him properly since he started spouting this gibberish. This totally absurd bullshit. Tears stream down his face and into his goatee.
“Are you okay?” he asks, rubbing a trail of snot along the sleeve of his sweater.
“How can you expect me to answer that?”
“I know,” he snivels. “I don’t know.”
It makes me sick to see him cry. Tears can be contagious, but in this case, his blubbering only makes me nauseated. Makes my skin itch and burn like a bad penicillin reaction. I finally manage to stand, legs trembling.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m getting out of here,” I say through gritted teeth. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“I know how crazy this must sound, but you’ve got to believe me.”
“Believe you? I don’t even know you. You say you’re my father, but you’ve been nowhere for my entire life. Then you appear, acting like you want to be best friends, and you tell me I shot and killed my own mother? What the actual fuck?”
“I know. But, please—”
He stands, but I send him back down with a feral glare.
“This ridiculous lie still doesn’t explain why you waited so long to find me. Were you in jail all this time? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?”
“That’s not—it wasn’t t
he whole time,” he stammers. “You’re right, though. I was in jail. Things got rough, which is partly what kept me away. But I found God. My pastor helped me a lot, helped me get the job I’m at now. Everything’s finally on track for me, but I’ve always hated myself for leaving you. That’s why I really need you to hear me out.”
“Why?” I ask. “So you can go into more detail?”
My insides scream as I race toward the entryway, yanking my coat off the hook and slamming the front door so hard, the thud of it rattles my whole body. The air outside feels sharp and crisp, and it shocks some of the life back into me as I stumble across the street.
Every part of me hurts. Physical pain, knowing that my own father could suggest something so cruel. And for what? What does he get out of it, accusing me like that?
Sick and twisted. I feel sick, and he is so twisted. All those years spent fantasizing about meeting him, wishing he loved me and that he’d tell me stories about my mother. Now it’s all coming true, and—
It takes my shaking hands two tries to fit the key in the car door lock, and another three to jam the key into the ignition. The car screeches out in horror as I peel off down the street. Without thinking, I make a right and then a left and then veer onto a dead end and cut the engine.
Then I sit.
Shaking. Thinking. Weeping. Because I’ve lost something. Any hope or dream or possibility of having a relationship with my father is dead. Robert Newton is mentally ill. Vindictively, certifiable.
After a while, after I’ve caught my breath and my blood is no longer lava spilling through my veins, I turn the car back on and start driving. Toward home and the only two people who love and respect me and don’t keep secrets from me.
Except …
At a red light, I think about my house. The staggering lack of photographs and the way Gran won’t talk about her own daughter. Is it more than a car accident’s worth of pain? Something more traumatic? More tragic? The light turns green, and I think about Robert and why he let them adopt me. What event could have been so catastrophic as to take him away?
There was a gun in the house.
You were only a baby.
You found it.
11
The sky is liquid black and starry when I pull into the driveway. I sit there for a minute with the engine off, coiled around my own confusion. Through the window, I can see Gran at the kitchen sink—scouring pans, squinting out toward the driveway every few seconds. She notices my car and waves, smiling briefly before a dirty pan recaptures her attention. Her face settles back into its usual heavy meditation.
I have to tell them. I mean, it will kill them, but they need to know I’ve been secretly meeting with Robert, and that he just described the most unthinkable bullshit of all time. They need to tell me that my father is lying. He’s a liar, and this is a sick joke.
Magic starts to bark as I walk up the path, and Gran meets me in the front hall, her mule slippers shuffling across the brick floor. She smiles as she dries her hands on a dishtowel.
“How was the sleepover? Pastor Thompson asked after you—two weeks in a row now you’ve missed,” she says, her singsong tone masking the accusation. “I promised him you’d be back next Sunday.”
“We need to talk. Where’s Grandpa?”
She frowns. “Oh. Well, let’s see. He’s out in the shed, but it’s nearly suppertime. Why don’t you set the table and then—”
“No,” I growl. We both flinch. “I need to talk to you guys right now. It can’t wait. Will you get him and meet me in the living room?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. I don’t know. Can you please go get him?”
Gran opens her mouth again, but then forces it shut, annoyance flexing her nostrils. She crosses her arms over her cable-knit sweater, heading for the backyard where Grandpa is probably freezing his ass off, building a bird feeder in the shed.
I run down the hall to my bedroom. Magic trots along after me, all riled up, drunk on the scent of Leah’s corgi on my clothes. It’s hard to stay calm as I grab the envelope of photographs that’s hidden in my bookshelf. Hard to walk into the living room without shaking. Hard not to see a toddler with a gun in her tiny hands.
I mean, I can’t see it, but I can’t not imagine it.
Finally, they come in from the backyard, and Gran scowls. “Sweetheart, what’s going on? Did something happen at Leah’s?”
I stand in front of the roaring fireplace, heat prickling my back. “You should probably sit.”
Alarm flashes in Gran’s eyes, but Grandpa urges her beside him on the couch.
“I need to tell you something. Don’t be mad, but last week I got a letter in the mail. It was from Robert Newton.”
I swear, Gran ages ten years in the span of a second. It takes Grandpa a little longer to remember the name, or at least its significance, but when he does, he glances at Gran. The two of them exchange one of those secret looks that says everything, just not to me.
“I didn’t tell you because I knew it would make you mad, but he came to Santa Fe to see me. We’ve been meeting up, getting to know each other.”
“Oh, Johanna, you haven’t.”
“He gave me a bunch of pictures too.”
The envelope slides across the coffee table, but neither of them picks it up.
“They’re pictures of Mom, and baby pictures of me. He said he wants to make up for lost time. But—” I take a deep breath. “He told me something else too.”
“He’s lying,” Gran snaps.
Which is weird. Because I haven’t said it yet.
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly. “Lying about what?”
Fear bleeds into the lines on her face. Grandpa’s, too, only with him it’s almost resignation, his whole body slackening in unavoidable defeat.
Holy shit. They know something.
The thought of it unleashes my heartbeat.
“I was going to tell you guys this completely ludicrous story that Robert said, that I was sure was a lie. But he wasn’t lying, was he?”
Gran wrings her hands in her lap. “Sweetheart, listen to me. Nothing that man says is to be believed. He’s no good and, quite frankly, he’s dangerous. You owe him nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
“But I haven’t even told you yet. You don’t even know what he said. He said I—”
“Stop!” Gran screams. And I mean, scuh-reams. “Jimmy, say something to her.”
“Now, JoJo.” Grandpa clears his throat. “You should know, that man’s been in and out of prison, doing Lord knows what for over a decade. That sort of man can’t be trusted.”
“So, you’re saying he lied.”
Gran’s eyes dart sideways. “Yes.”
“Does it matter?” adds Grandpa evenly. “The past is past.”
“You can’t be serious!” I shriek. “Not when he told me I shot her.”
Gran looks away to cover her mouth.
I shouldn’t try her patience, but I stamp my foot anyway. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“Please, sweetheart.” She rises desperately from the couch. “Try to understand—”
“Oh my God,” I choke. “This can’t be happening.”
And then, everything goes into slow motion. The room adopts this lingering pulse; a gradual itch burns my chest. Now that I know it’s true, I’m desperate to replay our conversation. Because I wasn’t fully listening when I thought Robert had a mental illness. It was a heartless lie until it became the truth, and now it is everything.
“Johanna?” Gran whispers.
I look at her, uncontrollable tears spilling over my eyes. “I can’t believe you knew and didn’t tell me. How could you raise me after what I did?”
“Oh, sweetie.” She steps closer and pulls me into a brusque hug. “Listen to me. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were a child—a baby.”
You were only a baby. There was a gun in the house.
I jerk away from her and she stumbles ba
ck, calves banging against the coffee table. I never act like this—all wild and unapologetic—and it shocks us both.
“I can’t believe you’ve been lying to me my whole entire life.”
“We were protecting you.”
“By lying!” I cry. “No wonder you don’t hang any pictures of her. I’m surprised you can bear the sight of me after I killed your daughter.”
By now, I’m bawling, convulsing as I watch my speechless grandparents through sodden eyes. The two of them so frail and foreign. For one desperate second, I wish I could hit Undo and go back to living in ignorance. Or, at least, letting them think I was ignorant. I mean, how are we supposed to face one another after this? After I’ve shattered the lie they worked so hard to build for all these years.
“We never meant for you to find out,” Grandpa says.
I can’t bear to look at them. Can’t bear to be in this decrepit, airless house, suffering this bullshit conversation.
“I have to get out of here.”
“No,” Gran begs. “You’re too upset. Let’s sit and have some supper.”
“Supper? Are you kidding me right now? I just found out I’m responsible for my mother’s death and you think I want pot roast?”
“Then get some rest,” she pleads. “Everything will seem clearer in the morning.”
“Nothing will seem clear ever again!” I scream. My voice scratches against my throat, clawing the walls around us. “You lied and let me think I was normal. All this time, I thought—but, God, what an idiot! I’m sorry but, no. I will not forgive you for this, ever.”
“Jimmy, stop her!” Gran begs.
He doesn’t answer.
As I stalk out of the room, I listen for his footsteps, but Grandpa isn’t taking her orders this time. He and I both know there is no stopping me.
• • •
I can’t run fast enough. My lungs ache and burn inside my chest, but I push through it. I forget my coat, but it doesn’t matter—my skin is on fire and might be forever. I round one more corner, bending over to catch my breath. One hand clutching my heart, the other one wiping away snot with the sleeve of my shirt. Eventually, I look up, blinking in my surroundings. I’ve run in so many circles, down so many streets, I almost can’t believe it when I realized where I’ve ended up.
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