I tried to storm off, my shoulder-length hair whipping around with me, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me against him like he had that last time he touched me. I winced, my side expecting the tip of a blade. “Emily, please listen to me.” A genuine plea, but I could only react to the whiskey stench it floated on.
“You can’t hold me back now, just like you couldn’t then. And this time you don’t even have your knife.” I planted the sharply pointed toe of my patent leather high heel into his shin.
His hand loosened around my wrist, but he let his body topple forward, leaning over me. “I’m sorry. Please, just come outside and talk to me.”
His warm lips grazed my ear. The sensation made me shudder, and not out of fear like it should have, but I still resisted my twisted craving for his kiss. I flipped him off over my shoulder as I stalked away.
“It’s not over between us, Emily,” he called after me. I could picture the self-assured smirk on his face as he said it and knew that, unfortunately, it wasn’t.
OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS
September 1996
When Nadia entered middle school, Colette constantly said to Louisa, “I hardly recognize her.” And she wasn’t just talking about how the petite girl had suddenly gotten tall, changed the color of her hair monthly, and coated her eyes in glittery makeup. Nadia’s personality had flip-flopped. She’d gone from a sweet, quiet introvert to a door-slamming, loud-music-blasting, boy-crazy social butterfly in a matter of months. “Is this normal?” Colette wondered.
Louisa shrugged in reply and turned away so Colette would have no idea how much the question stung. Emily had been completely lost to Louisa by the time she reached Nadia’s age, and watching Nadia grow up made Louisa wish she’d kept in touch with Molly. Whenever Colette said, “The problem is that Nadia’s turned in to me, but nowadays kids are so much crazier,” Louisa craved reassurance that Emily had made it through adolescence in one piece and hadn’t turned out like her. But all Louisa could do was hope for the best for Emily and play mediator between Colette and Nadia. Which was why she’d been the one to answer the phone on that awful night in September.
Colette’s grand plans for Labor Day weekend—to go to a cabin in the mountains they could rent cheap from her coworker’s sister—had gone bust when thirteen-year-old Nadia pulled her usual attitude. “Who goes to the mountains?” she complained, crossing her arms and pouting bright pink lips. “Palm Springs or Vegas, or I’m not going.”
Colette tossed her hands in the air. “Who taught you to act so spoiled, because it sure wasn’t me!”
So, Saturday night, Nadia went out as usual, and Louisa and Colette sat around at home watching Saturday Night Live. Half an hour into the show, Louisa headed into the kitchen to make more margaritas and the phone rang.
“If that’s Nadia, tell her I’m not extending her curfew,” Colette shouted from the living room.
But Louisa was surprised to hear Brenda, Nadia’s best friend, on the other end, and was even more shocked by the way she sounded.
“Colette?” Brenda’s panicked voice came on the line. The haughty, self-assured, “back by midnight” snap of lips painted too thickly with red gloss was gone.
Louisa’s skin went cold. “No, Brenda, it’s Louisa. What’s wrong?”
“Nadia …” Louisa immediately knew that Nadia was in trouble. She heard the tears in Brenda’s voice, hard tears that ripped at the throat. “She …”
“What? Spit it out!” Louisa’s words came out sharper than she intended.
“Just come to the motel where I live. Come to the p-p-pool,” Brenda stuttered. And then she hung up the phone.
“Brenda, what happened?” Louisa screamed at the dial tone.
The drive to the motel would take less than five minutes, but it sounded like there was no time to spare. Louisa’s bare feet slapped against the wooden floor as she ran down the short hallway to the living room.
Colette sat on the floor with the TV blaring, her long, snowy legs stretched out beneath the coffee table; she was cutting lines of cocaine on her mirror, clearly oblivious to the conversation that had gone on in the kitchen.
“Something’s happened to Nadia!” Louisa yelled as she skidded into the room.
Colette scrambled up, knocking the coffee table on its side. The mirror, landing beneath it, cracked, and the white powder poofed up, forming a perfect cloud that hung in the air for a moment, then settled, covering the floor in a white film. Louisa’s six years in L.A. had been coated in this same white dust.
When they reached the motel, the sight of Louisa and Colette, barefoot and disheveled, dashing around the side of the building for the gated-in pool caught the attention of the night manager. He stumbled up, shouting, “Hey, the pool is for guests only!” as he pursued them to the back of the building.
Propelling herself up and over the short chain-link fence—her heels hitting the cement hard, though she wouldn’t feel them throb until much later—Louisa saw five kids squatted in a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder, heads bowed like they were performing a séance alongside the deeper end of the kidney-shaped pool. Louisa didn’t see Nadia and realized that they were bending over her. She convinced herself that it was innocent, that the kids were chanting “Light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board” in a collective murmur and Nadia would soon rise.
Colette’s ragged wail shattered Louisa’s fantasy. “Nadia!”
The coven of teenagers took flight, scattering to the back fence. The chairs in which overbaked guests sunned themselves during the day clattered against the concrete as the kids knocked them aside in their hasty escape.
When the circle broke, Nadia was revealed, lying on her back, limbs flung out at her sides haphazardly as if she’d fallen from the sky when the clouds cracked open for a sudden downpour. Water puddled around her body, fanning outward and darkening the cement. Brenda staggered backward, away from Nadia, leaving wet footprints. Louisa clamped her hand around Brenda’s wrist as Colette collapsed on her knees at Nadia’s side, moaning, “No, no, no!”
Colette’s ringed fingers prodded at Nadia’s neck, digging for a pulse. The purple tone glistening through Nadia’s translucent skin had to be the sign of blood trying to push through her veins. Colette’s hands slid over the straps of Nadia’s soaked, glittery black tank top and down her clammy arms. She rubbed her daughter’s skin like Nadia was a tarnished treasure chest that had been submerged deep beneath the waters of the Bay Motel pool. If she massaged the waxy skin hard enough, perhaps words would be revealed, a magical spell that Colette could recite to unlock Nadia, cause her to sit straight up, spewing the water in her lungs freely like a fountain.
Colette quickly moved her hands from her daughter’s arms to her chest, pounding on it. Her fingers pinched Nadia’s nose as she forced her breath in through Nadia’s wilted lips. Lifting her mouth from her daughter’s and glancing into the night momentarily, Colette screeched, “Call someone! Help me!” The word “help” was breathless, Colette having given nearly all her air to Nadia.
The sallow-faced night manager had come to a halt at the gate, mouth hanging open, chin dangling like an undercooked dumpling. When Colette screamed, he sprang into action, his sausagelike legs propelling him back to his office.
Louisa wrenched Brenda out of the shadows toward where Nadia lay on the ground. Nadia’s bright crimson hair, which Louisa had helped her dye just days ago, was plastered flat against the concrete beneath her, sticking out around her head like a flaming crown extinguished by the scummy pool water. Louisa got close enough to see Nadia’s face. Her red lipstick smeared outward, giving her cheeks the illusion of pinkness. The black eyeliner and dark shadow Nadia had artfully smudged before going out that night spread down her face like mud.
At the sight of Nadia, Brenda faltered and stopped pulling away from Louisa.
“Did you call 911?” Louisa demanded as she stared into Brenda’s amber eyes, which were just as waterlogged
as Nadia’s.
Brenda’s bony face shook like her voice. “Y-y-yes,” she choked. Her answer was punctuated by the shriek of sirens drawing near. Louisa let Brenda lower herself to the ground. The girl wrapped her spindly arms around her legs. “I didn’t mean for N-N-Nadia to get in trouble. We didn’t want to get in trouble.”
We didn’t want to get in trouble, the empty eulogy for Louisa’s time in California. Every time she’d tried to leave, Colette repeated, “You know we’ll get into trouble without you.”
Nadia, just last year, had mimicked her mother, blocking the door alongside her, arms crossed, hip cocked, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “My mom is always in trouble without you,” she sighed melodramatically before dissolving into giggles.
Louisa hurried over to Colette and knelt down beside her and Nadia. As if Colette couldn’t hear the wail of the sirens, Louisa reassured her, “They’re coming.”
Colette’s anguished scream matched the sirens’ volume. “She won’t wake up! Nadia, wake up!” Colette’s hand lashed across Nadia’s ashen cheek, leaving a red imprint that did nothing but upset Colette further. “Oh god, I’m sorry!” She pulled Nadia up into her lap, wrapping her arms around Nadia’s body, wet and heavy as a pile of soaked towels. “Please wake up.”
Though neither Colette nor Louisa heard him approach, an EMT put his hand on Colette’s shoulder. “Let us take her.”
“But I’m her mother. I have to be here!” Colette insisted.
“I know, ma’am, but if you could stand to the side so we can treat her.” He squatted behind Colette. He had kind, brown eyes that reminded Louisa of Michael’s, eyes she hadn’t seen in twenty years. Like Michael, the EMT also had thick, tanned, hardworking arms. Arms that were stronger than Colette’s and Louisa’s combined. Arms that could revive Nadia.
“C’mon, Colette, he’ll take care of Nadia. He’ll wake her up,” Louisa said soothingly.
She stood as Colette transferred Nadia into the EMT’s arms carefully, as if she were a newborn baby. After Colette slowly backed away, his partner rushed forward, a woman with blond hair tied back in a tight ponytail. They surrounded Nadia the same way the kids had, shielding her with their white-uniformed backs. Their limbs moved in a blur as they worked to revive her
At first Colette stood right behind them, sobbing silently. After a minute of watching strange instruments pass back and forth, she started to whimper. Then her chest began to heave as she pulled at tufts of her black hair. “I can’t see her,” she implored. “I need to see her.”
A police officer stepped up from somewhere, a lean, Hispanic man who raised both of his palms as he talked, addressing Louisa since Colette didn’t seem to see him, her eyes still seeking Nadia. “They need some room. If you, the mother, and the other girl can please step back and tell us what happened.”
Reminded of Brenda’s presence, Colette whirled around like a tornado, arms outstretched and right index finger pointing accusatorily. “She knows what happened!”
Sobs wracked Brenda’s skinny frame. “I … I … I …”
“How did Nadia end up in the pool?” Colette’s red-rimmed eyes seemed ready to burst from her anger-stiffened face.
The policeman stepped between Brenda and Colette, putting one hand on each of their arms. He entreated Colette to stay calm, then swiveled to face Brenda. “Please tell us what happened as best you can. Don’t leave anything out.”
“N-Nadia went to the pool before any of us. When we got there she was already underwater,” Brenda stammered. “We thought she was swimming … and then she didn’t come up. We thought she was just messing around, but she was down there too long. We dove in and pulled her up. She’s going to be okay, right?”
Brenda’s face, wet with tears and pool water, glistened even though it was half shaded by the palm trees that cut into the hazy yellow lamplight surrounding the pool. Everyone always glistened in L.A. because it never got completely dark. Nowhere, Louisa had noticed over the years, got as dark as Carlisle. She’d run from that darkness, the way it cloaked nasty secrets that could destroy lives, but, she wondered, was it that much different in the light? What had Nadia and Brenda done out in the glaring California sun that she and Colette overlooked?
“Where were you beforehand?” the officer asked. “I need you to be honest with me. I need to know if there was drinking, drugs. Remember, this is Nadia’s life at stake.” He sounded rehearsed, but perhaps, Louisa thought, it was because she had seen this happen on TV so many times that it didn’t seem real. The emergency workers and their frantic hands pumping on Nadia’s chest; the cop with his notepad, his professional words working to both question and console; and the red-faced manager trying to keep curious motel guests from getting through the gate.
Brenda stared down at the cement, her wet hair swaying like seaweed. “We started at Nick’s, and then we came here. I live here, me and my mom, in room 204.” Her arm moved like it was pulled by a string, indicating the motel.
“What were you guys doing at Nick’s?”
“And who the hell is Nick?” Collette snapped. “You didn’t say anything about going anywhere with anyone named Nick!”
Brenda lifted her eyes, defiance returning to her face and her voice. “Nick’s her boyfriend. Didn’t you know that? Weren’t you paying attention?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” Colette would have lunged at Brenda had the policeman not been holding them apart. “I pay attention! You two keep secrets!”
The officer tried to redirect the conversation. “Let’s just go back to Nick’s. What were you doing at Nick’s?”
“We were, uhh, drinking.”
“How old is Nick?”
“Seventeen …”
“What the hell is he doing with my thirteen-year-old daughter, then?”
“Shh.” Louisa trailed her fingers down Colette’s back. There was so much they didn’t know about Nadia, so much they hadn’t known for at least a year. Or, rather, so much that they’d ignored. Just a few months earlier, on Nadia’s birthday, Colette and Nadia had had their biggest blowout yet right on the front lawn. Colette had made a reservation at a much nicer restaurant than she could afford, and Nadia, dressed in a skirt Colette deemed way too short, had run off to a party with her friends instead. When Nadia stumbled in drunk that night, Colette didn’t even pull her eyes away from the TV. She told Louisa through gritted teeth, “She’s too much like me. I can’t watch her make the same mistakes.”
Louisa tried to map out the preceding years, six short years, and figure out when it had all fallen apart. Things had only been the way Colette had promised in Portland for six months, and then Brad’s money had vanished. They moved from tiny apartment to tiny apartment, always staying in the good neighborhoods because Colette said, “My daughter is not going to a ghetto school. I’ll move her back to my god-fearing father’s house in North Carolina before she sets foot in one of those schools.” Louisa wondered why they hadn’t just gone to North Carolina then. Anywhere but L.A.
Dust coated the reasons, white dust Louisa had sworn she would never use again. Coke had transformed Los Angeles into a glittering, sun-streaked island, saying, You live in the place born from the American Dream, why leave? Numb, Louisa and Colette had listened, even let Nadia listen, and Nadia had grown up too fast because of it. The murmurs and secrets of L.A. were not intended for a child’s ears. A little girl should not hear so many fairy tales that end in broken dreams.
Louisa squeezed her eyes shut, praying that Nadia was all right. Between each prayer was one for her own daughter. Michael was smarter than me, she reassured herself. Please, as much as I hated it, please let him have stayed in Carlisle to raise her. Please don’t let me find out Emily was like this at thirteen.
Feeling guilty about the way she let thoughts of Emily overshadow those of Nadia at such a time, Louisa tuned back in to hear Brenda admitting, “He also had some pills. Ecstasy.”
“Did Nadia take any pills?”<
br />
“Yeah, on the car ride over. She was just trying to have fun. That’s all. And when we got to my room, she said it would be fun to swim, so she ran off …” Brenda broke down, crying inconsolably.
“Oh god,” Colette moaned, shaking her head, white-faced, too terrified to be angry anymore.
Louisa caught the flurry of activity around Nadia out of the corner of her eye. The female paramedic stepped to the side as the man tried to start Nadia’s heart with a defibrillator. Colette’s gaze followed Louisa’s, and at that point, no one could hold her back.
Colette arrived at her daughter’s side just as Nadia started sputtering, coughing up the pool water, gasping for air. She rolled on her side, heaving, vomiting up more water. “Baby, baby, baby,” Colette murmured, rubbing her daughter’s icy shoulders, massaging her back as she shuddered. The paramedic who resembled Michael helped Nadia sit up and wrapped her in a blanket.
Nadia’s eyes were cloudy, her head lolling on her neck as she faced her mother. Dazed, she still managed to say “Sorry” between labored breaths.
“Shh,” Colette sobbed. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve been letting you down for years.”
Louisa watched the paramedics lift Nadia onto a stretcher. As the terror she felt for Nadia subsided, remorse rose to the surface. She stared at Nadia’s delicate hands trembling in Colette’s grip. Nadia’s lips regained their natural pink hue beneath the lipstick stains, and her heavy lids slowly dipped over shocked, hazel eyes. Louisa had come to love this child, let Nadia nudge her way into the space in her heart reserved for the daughter Louisa had left behind. And the results had been disastrous. She’d infected Nadia the way she’d feared she would her own child. Just because Nadia wasn’t flesh and blood didn’t mean she wasn’t susceptible to Louisa’s bad luck.
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