“Underneath. Christ, underneath what?”
“Our careful constructions, duh,” I say, smiling, pulling the letter from the pocket of my dress, scanning it, and handing it to him. “Are there any U words, aside from that last paragraph?”
Wyatt reads through it quickly. “Just ‘untied’ and ‘untethered.’ ”
“Okay. That could be…a reference to the barn doors?” I suggest. “How they were locked from the outside?”
Wyatt tilts his head skeptically. “Maybe, but that’s kind of thin…”
“Maybe the most important thing to figure out isn’t the next letter, though. We still don’t know who was in that barn,” I point out.
“How will we figure it out? I mean, we’re sort of assuming it was Kayla Richardson, right? If it’s not her…”
“It could be any number of people. It could be some homeless guy.”
“She could have dug up a body and set it on fire first,” Wyatt says.
“I think the fact that I find that the most comforting hypothesis of the morning is a sign of how generally fucked up this is,” I say with a smile.
“Yeah, I prefer that theory too.”
“Well, I’m not about to head to the cemetery and check every single fresh grave,” I say. “She could have gotten a body from a morgue or a medical school. I mean, maybe if you fuck the right person, bodies are easy enough to procure.” I wonder if that’s true. Things I never would have asked myself before today. “Come to think of it, maybe she was fucking the right person. Kayla? Who works at the funeral home?” Wyatt’s eyes widen, and we both contemplate that possibility.
“Okay, so we’re left with the letter U,” he finally says. I sigh in frustration.
“Fuck, Wy. I got nothing. Do we just wait for another clue?”
He grits his teeth. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s go look for my passport. That will at least confirm my theory.”
“Before we put the cart in front of the horse.”
“Right. Maybe we’ll think of something on the way. Or Zelda will send us another hint.” I stand up to leave.
“You’re the boss,” Wyatt says agreeably, and he playfully scoops me up in his arms and spins me. I shriek like a little girl and am momentarily, incandescently happy.
—
In the truck, Nico finally texts me back: I search u at urs. No one there. Y? I tell Wyatt that Zelda isn’t at my place, or at least isn’t currently at my place. I can see her there, though, flicking through my infinitesimal closet, chuckling over some of my new Parisian clothes. She’ll have found the bottle of Cognac on the shelf over my sink and will be sipping it while she tries on my things, playing some of my music. She’ll smoke a cigarette out my window, and then she’ll scoop up my keys and wander out my door, into the city. All my neighbors will recognize her, and the bartender at my favorite café will offhandedly slide her a coupe of Champagne. I wonder if she’s bothered to learn any French.
I look at Nico’s text unhappily. I haven’t called him back, and I’ve been cagey and secretive in my texts. I haven’t even told him that Zelda is technically dead. In fact, if someone were watching me, I might look sort of suspicious. I’m behaving weirdly. If someone had a warrant for my phone, I’d have a hard time explaining my last few messages. Things I should be thinking about. I can smell Wyatt’s peculiar blend of scents on my skin and in my hair, and it makes it impossible for me to call Nico, even to formulate what to say to him. He is an abstraction. I look at the abbreviations in the text, all pretty standard messaging. But I find myself reading into things, constructing outlandish scenarios, based on the presence of a solitary U, a lonely Y. Could Nico be involved, wrapped around Zelda’s finger? Paranoid thinking. But isn’t that legitimate?
We’re at the house before I know it. Marlon’s rental is there, and I can see the whole family up on the deck. I sigh inwardly, wishing to spare both myself and Wyatt, but we have to go inside.
We climb the stairs to the second story and join my parents and grandmother on the sunny balcony. Mimosas are half empty on the table. Mom stares glassily out at the vineyard, Opal is flipping through an address book (how quaint), and Marlon is typing on his iPad.
“Morning,” I say and receive two unenthusiastic greetings. I suspect they’re not impressed by my disappearance last night. But fuck them.
“We’ve started organizing the memorial service, dear,” Opal says, her lips thin.
“How dare you plan my funeral before I’m even dead. You want to kill me!” my mother accuses, trying to stand up from the table. She’s too wobbly, though, and aborts halfway through the motion, sinking back into her Adirondack chair and swiping for her mimosa.
“Decided it would be nice to have some closure, even though we might be waiting for the…body a little longer,” Opal explains, ignoring Nadine.
“And I have to get back to Napa,” Marlon says brusquely, not looking up from the email he’s typing. “Busy season, and I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Well, we’d hate to tear you away from the important things,” I snipe. “Glad you’re carving out some time.”
He raises his eyes to glare at me with dislike, and I balk. I’m used to his abandonment and his excuses, not his anger. He seems to have hardened overnight. He no longer looks haggard and old, as he has for the last few days, as though Silenus were sapping him of his youth every second he stayed on this soil. His eyes are wide open, his skin looks tighter, and he has shaved. I find it very strange that the official death of his daughter has somehow rejuvenated him. But then, I’ve never understood my father. I glance at his drink and am surprised to see that it is mostly full. Maybe he figures that Zelda’s death puts him one step closer to finishing with this chapter of his life. With Zelda gone, it’s just me, Nadine, and Silenus, and the last two won’t be around too much longer.
“When will it be? The service?” Wyatt asks.
“Tomorrow,” Opal says. “Without any remains, it seems pointless to wait. And she’s been dead for days.”
“It’s not like people will be traveling from all over the world for Zelda’s funeral,” I point out. “I’d be surprised if people even come from Ithaca.”
“Your sister was loved and treasured,” Opal snaps. “I won’t hear you jeering at her the day after we learn of her passing.” She stands up from the table and gives it a small shove. Her upper arms wobble, the bluish rumpled skin swaying comically with the effort. She strides inside in a huff, thoroughly peeved. I roll my eyes at Wyatt as though we’re fifteen, an unvocalized “Jeee-eeez” accompanying my adolescent expression.
“What happened to Ava, sweetheart?” Nadine asks, leaning toward Marlon and squeezing his knee affectionately. He looks trapped, and I almost laugh as he pats her hand in an attempt both to dislodge it and to soothe her.
“Ava’s fine, Nadine. Don’t worry.”
“Oh. Marl. Will you hold me?” She sounds small and timid, and I wonder if she was more like this when they met, with softer edges and some vulnerability. He looks taken aback, but he leans over to give her a squeeze. I retreat from this foreign scene of tenderness. I feel as if I can remember moments like this between them, but they’re obscured behind so many years of tension and aggression.
“Do you need help with the organizing?” I ask Marlon.
“I might. I’m trying to let everyone know right now. Is it gauche, do you think, to make a Facebook event?” he asks with a curious frown.
“I’ve seen it done,” Wyatt confirms. “It’s efficient.”
“Zelda wouldn’t mind,” I say. “Surely that’s what counts.”
Marlon grunts and resumes his typing.
“Let me know if you need anything, Mr. Antipova,” Wyatt says as we duck back inside. “My parents are happy to help too. With food or any, uh, coordination that needs to happen.”
Marlon looks up, surprised, and nods mutely.
Wyatt and I head for my room. I feel my nerves rumble at the prospect of reen
tering the bedroom, as part of me realizes that last night served to establish at least a partial reinstatement of our relationship. We’re not just old friends and former lovers anymore. There is a currency to our closeness, a now-ness that runs alongside what happened before. The frisson of anxiety that I feel at the sight of clean white sheets spread before us is not because of our past but because of what is happening between us now. I can tell he feels it, in the way he looks at me while trying not to look at me, the way his fingers curl when I stand close to him, as though he is both avoiding and seeking my skin.
I perch on the edge of my bed and open my suitcase, exposing the neat rows of clothes piled inside. Unzipping the liner pouch, I curl my arm inside it up to the elbow, fishing for my zippered folder of indispensable official documents. I tug it out and flip through the pages. There are bank statements proving solvency, a copy of my lease agreement for my apartment in Paris, extra copies of passport photos and photocopies of my passport, a letter documenting my enrollment in grad school. All the accessories of international travel. And there, in the left-hand slot of the folder, the place of privilege, I scoop my finger, expecting to come up empty. I’m meticulously organized, and this is the only place my passport could be.
And lo, no passport. I cock my head toward Wyatt, as though this proves something.
“Does Zelda have a passport? Do you think she would have brought that one too?” Wyatt asks.
“It’s in the drawer in her room.”
“Can I see it?”
I’m already heading to Zelda’s room, and I make my way through her clutter, finding her passport after a quick paw through her top drawer. Wyatt has followed me, and he peers over my shoulder as we look at it. He takes it from my hands and flips through it. “You said she went to France. Why?”
“I have no idea,” I say with a shake of my head. “I’ve tried to puzzle that out. It would have been after she went to the doctor. Maybe she was freaked out about her health and wanted to make up with me? Do it in person?”
“Could be,” Wyatt says, sounding unconvinced. I don’t blame him. I’m not convinced either. We start to paw through Zelda’s papers, deciphering the palimpsest of all the physical documentation she considered important. We become historians of her life, analyzing receipts for dinner and excavating random business cards that have sieved down through to the contact paper that lines the bottom of the drawer. Anything could be important, which renders the stacks illegible, opaque. There are too many letters, too many clues. Too much text. Wyatt picks up the receipt for the hotel she stayed in in Paris, analyzing it.
“Where is this?” he asks.
“Around the corner from my house.”
“Is there anything else there? Something she would have to go to Paris for, specifically?”
I think hard. “Other than decent wine and healthcare…no, nothing I can think of.” I shrug.
“Can you think of something you can do only in France?”
Half a dozen silly quips rise to mind, covering the gamut from the raunchy to the political, but I bite my lip. “I’m sure there must have been something, but…” I lift up a stack of papers and fan through what seems to be a pile of bills. The heading on one makes me pause. “Wy? You said she’d been using a burner phone for the last few months?” I ask.
He nods. “Yeah. But she had her iPhone the whole time too. She only used the burner sometimes. I figured it had to do with the drugs or something. Like, she only called her dealer from the TracFone.”
“But then why do the cops know about the TracFone and not that she still had her iPhone? Surely it should be the other way around,” I muse aloud. “Look at this.” I hand him the bill I just found.
“Verizon?”
“Like Healy told me, she canceled her iPhone contract. Here’s the thing, though: Ending the service cost a fair bit, and it wasn’t due to expire for a few more months. But she canceled it three months ago. When she bought the TracFone.”
“And went to Paris,” Wyatt adds, looking at the dates on the hotel bill.
“Oh,” I say slowly. “Oh.”
“What is it?” Wyatt’s head jerks up.
“She cancels her iPhone contract, goes to France, and buys a TracFone when she comes home. But we know she keeps using her iPhone.” I waggle Zelda’s phone in illustration.
“How do you do that, without service?”
“Indeed.” Agitatedly, I graze through the papers in the drawer, looking for the receipts that will confirm what I’ve just suspected. They wouldn’t really count as official or important documents in her mind; Zelda kept business cards that she found attractive, postcards she pocketed from interesting places, scraps of napkins and beer coasters, trouvailles from her adventures. But I’m pretty sure she will have left these papers for me somewhere in this drawer. I find what I’m looking for on the right-hand side, two pieces of paper stapled together. I skim them and hand them to Wyatt.
“Verizon pay-as-you-go card?” he says, puzzled, waiting for the epiphany to strike. “Is this V? Did we skip U?”
“It might be V. But it’s definitely U. Read the next page.”
“It’s in French. De-ruh-voo…” He looks at me for help.
“Déverrouiller votre portable,” I say, enjoying the French words in my mouth. “They passed a law a few years ago in France. You can use any service provider you want, even without a contract, with any phone. It’s called ‘unlocking.’ It’s not like here in the States, where Apple ensures that you’re stuck with whatever multinational you sell your soul to when you buy your damn phone. I think maybe you can swap out the SIM card with the new iPhones, but Zelda has an ancient 4S.”
“So Zelda went to France to get her phone…unlocked?”
“Well, partly. I’m sure she had other reasons. But she wanted to use this phone to send me these emails. The cops can subpoena her carrier for access to her messages and conversations, but she hasn’t had a contract with them for three months. Verizon will come back and say that as far as they know, she turned that phone off three months ago. She’s been using different pay-as-you-go plans for data and cell service for the past few months.”
“Don’t you have to have an account to do that? Registered, I mean? With your name?”
“Yeah, but it’s easy to fake. It’s not like signing a contract, where you have to do credit checks and deposits. You just need a name and some ID, and then they give you a phone number. She could have gotten a friend to do it. Lemme guess: Zelda’s number changed three months ago?”
“Shit. Yeah. She said some telemarketer was harassing her, so she changed the number. I figured it had something to do with a guy, so I didn’t press her too hard on it.” Wyatt looks unhappy. I know that he thought he had a piece of Zelda, that she’d opened up to him on some fundamental level while they were together. I’ve seen other people absolutely convinced that for all Zelda’s secrecy and crazy behavior, they were the only ones who truly got her, were the only ones Zelda revealed herself to. It’s always heartbreaking to watch Zelda’s friends and lovers realize for the first time that not only did they never have access to her secret heart but she was actively concealing herself all along. I’m reaching out a hand toward Wyatt in pity when I realize that I’m exactly the same as all of them. I always thought that I was privileged, different, that only I really knew Zelda. Part of me still revolts against the idea that this is not true.
“She’s really been planning this,” Wyatt finally says. “She’s known for a long time that she was going to do this.”
“ ’Fraid so,” I respond. I feel bad, I really do. But also a little vindicated. Victorious.
“Would she have had to go all the way to France to do this, though?” Wyatt asks, still skeptical.
“She could probably have found some dodgy tech store in New York who could do it for her, I guess,” I admit. “But I think she did it to be elaborate. It gave her a reason to travel to Paris, to insert herself into my new life.” The more I think abou
t it, the more I’m certain that I’ve found U.
“Where do you think she is now?” Wyatt muses, rifling through the sheaves of paper. “I mean, she has to be laying low somewhere.”
“I still think she’s in Paris.” It’s the only place that makes sense. She planned this whole elaborate game to escape, to get away from Silenus, our parents. And she set it all up for me. Not for Wyatt or for the cop she was fucking. This is about the two of us and always has been. I’m certain that it circles back around to me; she would repeat my escape, to the same place. “Maybe she just wasn’t home when Nico went up to my place,” I suggest. “I’ll ask him to keep checking back, hang out in the café across the street to watch my door for a bit.” I open up my phone and text Nico briefly, letting the guilt bubble up for a minute or two while I carefully phrase my request. He’ll do it, and he won’t ask questions. I wonder if that flexibility is part of what made me fall in love with him to begin with.
But I know she’s not at the apartment. Not just because my keys are where I left them, and not just because Nico didn’t find her there. Wyatt’s hands are plunged into the stack of papers, submerged up to the wrists, and he wiggles his fingers as though they’re underwater. He is immersed in Zelda’s paper trail. I carefully spread out the papers in Zelda’s drawer and slide it firmly shut, forcing Wyatt to remove his hands. I hope he has not memorized the name of Zelda’s hotel in Paris. When I find her, I want to do it by myself. This is not a team effort. An ungenerous part of me knows that Wyatt won’t suspect me of withholding my hypotheses from him. He couldn’t even bring himself to scrutinize Zelda, and he knew what she was like. He thinks I would never lie. Not to him.
“How about a mimosa?” I say brightly, knowing that the prospect of sitting on the deck and getting drunk with me and both of my parents while we plan a funeral will be an adequate deterrent. He grimaces but looks momentarily like he will accept. Shit: He’s trying to be supportive. I feel a wave of fondness toward him for his self-sacrifice, but I need him to go home for a spell. “Oh, damn,” I say, “I’m a ninny. Of course you don’t want to hang out with Marlon and Nadine. And Opal. You’re totally off the hook,” I add with a shake of my head.
Dead Letters Page 28
