He replaced the tool, reached for a walkie-talkie, and requested the presence of Gwendolyn Sunrise.
Minutes later, he showed her the signalless TV.
“What does it mean?” she said. “Is this another attack?”
Desmond took the woman in his arms. “No, my beautiful Sunrise. Nothing can attack us now. A nuclear device has been dropped on Los Angeles.”
Her eyes went wide.
“And not just LA,” he continued, “but Moscow, Tehran, Mecca, London, and Paris.”
“Does this mean—”
He nodded. “A wildfire burns to the south of us and will be here soon.”
A shudder shook Gwendolyn’s body.
“Don’t be afraid, my love.” He lifted her drooping chin with his finger. “This is the day we’ve worked so hard to see.”
Gwendolyn’s fear transformed into enthusiasm.
“The Cataclysm is here?”
Desmond lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “And we must ready the Daughters. I didn’t want to create jealously among the others, but Daya told me one other thing before she ascended.”
He kissed her forehead.
“You are to be the shepherd, Sunrise. You will administer the Calm, both in liquid form and in spirit. You will walk the Daughters into the Light. That is, if you’re willing.”
She threw her arms around Desmond, crying in joy. “Tell me what needs to be done, and I will make sure every single Daughter hears her name tonight.”
CHAPTER
46
THE DAYANS HAD outfitted the cabin more like a construction trailer than the ranger station Caitlin’d expected. A series of maps lined one wall, though there was nothing she could use to get to town. The large, professionally drafted charts featured every bit of the God’s Hill compound, from the roads in and out to the flow of water down various elevations.
“Watch the window, Caitlin, not the blueprints.”
She glanced back at Magda, who scribbled on a pad of paper under the narrow beam of a pocket flashlight, then looked back out the single window.
Moonlight revealed both the paved road in front of the cabin and the rough path they’d taken up the hill in her truck.
“How bad was this landslide or washout or whatever?” Caitlin said, trying to ignore the constant sway of the trees on both sides of the road. Heavy winds made every bit of the forest look like trouble. “With all the equipment you ladies have, why not just fix it?”
Magda held up a hand. “I’m doing this from memory, you know.”
“I mean, you built all of this yourselves, right?”
Magda answered without looking up. “Daya sold the paving equipment after the Five ascended. The mixer, our bulldozer, even the screed.”
“What’s a screed?”
Magda looked up, smirking. “About ninety thousand dollars used.”
She returned to her feverish scribbling.
“I just need to get back to the Five,” Caitlin said, “meaning the I-5 freeway, not your Five.” She laughed. “Look at us, we both have a Five in common.”
“Almost there. I don’t want you to get lost.”
“As long as I get back to a phone signal, I’ll be fine.”
They returned to anxious silence. Caitlin blinked hard twice. She wasn’t sure how many hours it’d been since waking up stoned, but a headache was forming behind her eyes.
Magda broke the silence first. “Do you have any children, Caitlin?”
Caitlin looked back. “What? Me?”
Magda put her pen down. “Sure. Ever married?”
“No marriages, no kids. Why?”
“From your phone history, I thought maybe you had a daughter named Lakshmi.”
Caitlin laughed. “Not exactly.”
“A friend, then?”
“I look out for her.”
Magda tore the piece of paper from the pad and stood. “I’m glad for you. The joy that comes from looking after someone else is the Spirit’s gift to us all.”
She stepped closer and held out the paper.
“I’m sorry Maya couldn’t give that to you.”
“Me too.” Caitlin took the paper, a rough map next to an ordered list of street names and turns, and tucked it into her laptop bag. Her fingers brushed against her worn paperback. “About the book in my bag.”
“That Maya gave you when you were thirteen?” Magda said.
“Yes.”
Magda raised a finger to her cheek and scratched lightly. “Maya was two months out of rehab. Do you know the twelve steps, Caitlin? Step nine?”
“Something about apologizing to the people you’ve wronged.”
A swell of wind whipped around the cabin, and the whole building settled like it’d taken a deep breath. Magda looked up, took her own calming inhale, then continued. “Direct amends. Of course, what Maya didn’t know was that she still hadn’t faced her past with God’s eyes and the full clarity of the Light, but she tried—”
“You sent a book.” Caitlin refused to refer to the woman in front of her in the third person.
Magda nodded. “She’d called Matt. He wasn’t hard to find. They met at that deli on Fairfax, the one with the bar called the Kibbutz Room. I don’t remember the name—”
“Canter’s,” Caitlin said. Her father’s favorite lunch spot.
Magda smiled. “That’s right, with the pickles. He still looked great. Older, and with one of those ridiculous cop moustaches, but healthy and happy enough. Did you know they went to junior prom together?”
Caitlin had heard that part of the story. Maya Aronson had asked Matt Bergman to prom, but two hours into the date, the girl’s father had shown up and made Maya leave.
Magda’s smile faded. “Anyway, Matt told Maya about you, and how smart you were, and how much you loved to read. She’d never read much but wanted to get to know you, to impress you even, so she bought a copy of the only book she knew anything about. Rehab had been hard, especially that first month, so Maya tried to busy her mind with any book or newspaper they had at the center. As far as she was concerned, She Taught Me to Fly was the best book she’d ever read.” She let a small laugh out. “Maybe the first.”
“So you—” Caitlin stopped. This time, she let the third person correct the second, partly because it felt easier to keep Magda talking, possibly to make it easier to hear. “Maya sent me a copy?”
Magda moved beside her and faced the window. “She showed up at your dad’s apartment with a copy, but he didn’t let her in.”
“Didn’t let her in? Wait, when was this?”
Magda didn’t hesitate. “October tenth, nineteen eighty-eight.”
“That was—”
“Your birthday. Of course.”
Caitlin looked over, confused, or amazed, or both. Her brain and heart fought over the right term for the feeling, finally settling on dumbfounded.
Magda raised an eyebrow. “You came out of my body, Caitlin. No matter how much of Maya I’ve forgotten, I’ve never forgotten your birthday.” She shook her head and laughed. “They wouldn’t give me anything for the pain.”
Caitlin caught the slip into the first person but tried to hide any reaction. Magda continued like she hadn’t noticed either.
“You were early, and honestly, everyone thought you’d come out stillborn. I wish I could tell you I took care of myself during the pregnancy, but—” She turned away from the window, looking back into the cabin. “Maya spent two months on crank before she knew she was pregnant. Even after she knew, she didn’t exactly stop. You came during the seventh month, very much alive, and despite everything Maya had done to herself, you were healthy. Thank the Spirit.”
Caitlin started to speak but found she had to clear her throat first. “And you gave me to Matthew Bergman.”
Magda nodded.
Caitlin wanted to get into so much more of the backstory, including putting a name to her birth father, but her heart was stuck on that day.
“Until I
turned thirteen, when he turned you away.”
Magda let out a sigh, nodding again. “You were at school. Maya showed up way too early. Matt wasn’t even there.”
“Then how—”
“She wasn’t sober. That’s how weak Maya was. Two days after she’d met Matt for lunch, all the way to step nine, she threw out everything she’d worked for.”
Magda looked up. Even in the dark, Caitlin saw tears forming in the corners of the woman’s eyes. “Someone must have called about the junkie passed out on the front porch, and Matt rolled up, still in uniform.” She blinked the moment away, but the tears still came out. As did Mama Maya. “I don’t know what I said, if I even made sense, but he calmed me down, told me to come back another time, when I was sober.” She sucked in a sharp breath but couldn’t stop a sudden sob from shaking her frame. “He was right,” she said, before a second gasp rocked her again, “so I left that note.” She wiped her eyes and caught her breath. “Did it even make sense?”
“Did what make sense?”
“The note I left in the book.”
Caitlin could tell the woman was in pain, but if Maya, Magda, or who-the-hell-ever thought two highlighted lines in a kids’ book would have made everything better, she wasn’t going to pat her on the back and say yes.
“The crystalline bird thing?” Caitlin fought with her clenched jaw. “Nope, never really understood it.”
Magda sucked back some snot. “No, the note, on the outside of the wrapping.”
Caitlin shook her head. “There wasn’t a note. Just the brown paper.”
“Matt must have thrown it away.” Magda turned back to the window. “Well, he was the sober one.”
Caitlin touched her shoulder. “What did it say?”
“Doesn’t matter. Maya didn’t have the words then.” Magda raised her own hand and met Caitlin’s at her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I need to show you the files. They’re in your truck.”
“Files? What files?”
Magda turned and walked toward the cabin’s back door.
“Financial records. Proof that Daya was stealing from the Daughters by moving money around in the names of the Five, after their ascension.”
Caitlin followed after. “Wait, what about my father?”
CHAPTER
47
THE WOMAN MOVED fast for her age. By Caitlin’s first step out of the cabin, Magda had already entered the garage and started raising the door.
Caitlin caught up. “Did Matthew Bergman know who my father was the whole time? Was that what was in the note?”
Magda had the door halfway up. “We don’t have time. If you want to stay the night, I can tell you everything.”
“Bullshit, Magda. This is the deal. I got you here, so you have to tell me who my father was.”
Magda didn’t let up on the chain, hand over hand. “Matt was your father.”
Caitlin grabbed the chain, stopping the process. “That’s what everyone keeps saying, and I get it. He was amazing. He never did anything wrong and I’ll always love the man, but I need to know. Who is my biological father?”
Magda looked away, then looked back, meeting Caitlin’s eyes. “Everyone does something wrong, even Matt Bergman.”
Once again, Caitlin felt her blood rise. “You make someone else raise your baby, and you’re gonna badmouth—”
Magda turned quickly and knocked Caitlin’s hand off the chain. “I was twenty-two. I’d already done a few films but was still dancing at the Tropicana and turning tricks when the manager wasn’t looking, or even when he was. I didn’t do it sober, either. Coke, speed, you name it, one of us always had a vial or a pipe. So one Thursday, the LAPD raided the place. Two of the girls were under eighteen, and we all ran for it. I ended up in the bath- room, topless and struggling to toss an eight-ball, when the stall door opened up and in walked my junior prom date, Officer Matt Bergman.”
“Bullshit.”
“He threw a shirt over me and walked me out. The whole time, I think he’s gonna throw me in the truck with the rest, but he snuck me into an alley and let me go, told me to call him that night.”
“To call him?”
“He went back in for my purse and whatever, so I called him to get it back, and one thing led to another. We finished what we never got started back on prom night.”
Caitlin almost laughed. “You had sex with Matt Bergman?”
“Sex? We fucked in the back of a squad car off Mulholland.”
In the past week, Caitlin had learned her birth mother was part of a doomsday cult, then dead, then alive, then that she handled modern weaponry like a Green Beret. Each one of those surreal discoveries made more sense than the idea of her dad, the fountain of wisdom and enforcer of laws, banging a stripper in an official LAPD vehicle.
“But he was dating Jane—”
“Actually, they were engaged.”
“And you—”
“Had a gift.”
“But he—”
“Was a man, Caitlin. A young man whose high school sweetheart fucked like a pro.”
Caitlin hard-swallowed a breath. “So you?”
Magda nodded, then started pulling the chain again.
Caitlin’s hands fell to her sides. “Did he know?”
The door neared the top.
“Of course he did.”
“But he didn’t—” Caitlin felt a weight on her chest. “I mean, he didn’t even sign the birth certificate.” She watched Magda tie off the chain. “He would have, he would have claimed me—”
“He couldn’t. Whether or not he told Jane, and he obviously didn’t, he had a future in front of him. Twenty-three, working his way up at LAPD. No one was going to promote the Jewish guy fucking the porn star who turned tricks on the side. I mean, did it never occur to you that he’d been able to adopt you so easily?”
Caitlin pulled the truck’s key fob from her pocket and squeezed the button. The truck unlocked and its lights flashed twice. She had everything she needed to leave, but none of it felt right. “You’re lying. My dad’s not—” She stopped herself from saying my father. It made sense, of course. It even felt right, except that he’d never told her. His love of the truth wasn’t just why he’d loved being a police officer but also, when he was faced with the less-than-ideal realities of his job from day to day, one of the reasons he’d encouraged Caitlin to become a journalist. “I mean, he didn’t do things like that.”
Magda raised an eyebrow, then looked away. “Fine. The man was a saint.”
Caitlin squeezed the plastic in her hand again. Her head didn’t know what she wanted, but her hand sure felt like it wanted to punch somebody.
“You’re full of shit, Magda.”
Magda nodded. “Maya Aronson was full of shit, and dope, and booze, and whatever else brought her quiet. That’s why she couldn’t be your mother, and that’s why she’s gone. I’m Magda, and I walk in the truth of the Light. Even if that means you’ll never be my daughter, I have others, and they need my help. You should get going.”
Caitlin moved three feet closer. As many years as she’d spent hating Maya Aronson, she doubted she could bring herself to hit the woman. Magda, on the other hand, was asking to get the bitch knocked out of her.
A loud gunshot stopped Caitlin halfway from the truck to Magda.
Five frozen seconds later, a second pop followed.
Caitlin turned toward the truck cab.
“No,” Magda yelled, pulling the chain off its restraint and letting the garage door spin down to the ground. “It’s too late for that.”
CHAPTER
48
THEY MET PROMISE in front of the cabin. Winded, she handed Magda the assault rifle.
“Only two so far,” the girl said between breaths, “Stupid Tom and Tammy, that girl who lives down the street from him. Tom was climbing the trail when I fired, Tammy stayed with the car.”
Magda pulled the gun’s magazine and double-checked the rifle. “Did they run?”
“She did, but Tom just kept going up the hill. Faster if anything.”
“Good.” Magda shoved the mag back in.
Caitlin tightened the strap of her laptop bag. She had no problem leaving her suitcase or even her rental truck on the hill, but her laptop was another story. “How is that good?”
“Instead of staying to protect her, a man with a gun left a woman with a car all alone in the middle of nowhere. She’ll be willing to take you back to town. If not, hit her over the head and take her car. I’ll distract the idiot in the woods, you run down the road. The washout can be tricky, so stay on the logs to the right.”
Caitlin nodded. She had no idea what was happening, but any plan sounded right. “Fine. Let’s go, Promise.”
Promise looked confused. “What? I’m staying here.” She looked at Magda. “Right?”
Magda touched the girl’s arm. “Of course.”
“Bullshit,” Caitlin said. “You said you’d keep her safe, no matter what. How is leading a teenager through a mountainside firefight safe?”
“I’m not afraid of Stupid Tom,” Promise said, “and I can handle a gun.”
Caitlin reached for the girl’s other arm. “You know damned well that your dad’s on his way. We’ve got to get you away from this place right now.”
Promise shifted away. “But Magda said she’ll protect me—”
“She says a lot of things.” If Magda hadn’t mentioned Daya’s files, maybe Caitlin would have left Promise in her care. Instead, she pulled the girl back her way. “Magda’s a liar. That’s what the Dayans do. They lie to get whatever they want. She lied to get me to Oregon, not to finally have a relationship, or to get to know her only real daughter, but to look into whoever killed the Five. I didn’t do it, and she still hasn’t found them, so she lied about my father’s identity, just now, to keep me here, to get me to look into, what, embezzlement?”
Sins of the Mother Page 22
