“What’s clear?”
“It’s gotta be room 324. Robert and Hope Katz. That’s your father and daughter. Those are the names Melody and her . . . minder, or whoever he is, are traveling under. Bet your bottom dollar. Open the door to their room and the bathroom’ll be on the left.” Tarin shakes her head and chuckles. “I can’t wait for Bonnie Juno to get ahold of this new chapter in the story. I knew she was wrong about the Chapas. Can’t tell you how many times I said, ‘But there’s still no body,’ to anyone who’d listen. Question is, will Juno ever admit it? Maybe her crime-busting sidekick, the Lord, will help her to solve this new phase of the mystery and do a better job this time. I’m sure he will. It seems to matter to the Lord that the ratings of Justice with Bonnie should remain high.”
Our club car passes the tennis courts. They’re all occupied—balls flying through the air and thwacking against rackets. How can people do it, in this heat? “The gay couple, Carson Somebody and his partner . . .” I start to say, not sure what I want to ask. Why did my mind snag on them in particular?
Then my brain catches up. “Yesterday, I overheard you say something to Zellie about the best choice always being a gay man. I wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping—”
“Who cares if you were? Jeez, Cara, you’re so English. It must be horrible. I must make sure never to visit your country. I wouldn’t fit in.”
“What did you mean by that comment? What were you talking about?”
Tarin stares at me. “Interesting question. You got some kind of conspiracy theory brewing?”
“According to Bonnie Juno, Annette Chapa said in an email that Jeff Reville was gay.”
“Did she?” Tarin shrugs. “I was talking about hiring staff, for my shop. I interviewed a few people last week. Haven’t made any offers yet because no one was quite right. No gay men applied. At all. That’s what Zellie and I were talking about. I was saying, what I want is a gay man—not a straight man and not a straight woman.”
“Why not?”
“The women always wanna knock off early and come in late if they’ve got kids, and if they don’t have kids, they’ll be trying to have kids, or if they’re older they’ll want time off to babysit grandkids. I can do without all that. And straight men? They have wives who want them to get home early, or drop the kids at school in the morning, or order a fondue set, or fix the screen door . . . and even though these guys don’t wanna do any of that shit, they can’t say no to their wives because they’re a bunch of pussies.”
“What about gay women?”
“Two wombs instead of one? No, thanks. Per couple, I mean,” Tarin clarifies. “Oh—driver? Can we swing by the Studio Zone on the way? Might as well pick up Zellie from her art class. We’re a bit early, but the less time she spends with dying-of-cancer Hayley the better, far as I’m concerned.”
My shock must show on my face, because Tarin says, “What? Oh, you think I’m cruel? You think it’s nice for Hayley to have a friend? Look, I’m a mom. I don’t want Zellie to get close to this girl and then be all cut up when she dies and start brooding about her own mortality. No one I cared about died till I was over forty—that’s the way it should be. I mean, I lost my mother at twenty-two, but let’s just say that was a death with some powerful upsides.”
Who is this woman? What am I doing with her?
“This art class?” Tarin chatters on, oblivious. “Other day they did portraits. They do a different art thing every day: spray paint, cubism, watercolors, you name it. Anyway, they needed models—and, what d’ya know, every art class parent loses a morning of their vacation, but that’s fine. Guess what Zellie called the picture she painted of me? It was actually pretty good, apart from the title. ‘Irreversible Decline.’” Tarin laughs. She sounds more proud than annoyed. “Nothing as simple as ‘Portrait of Mom’ for my Zellie. And you know what they’re doing today? Sculpture. Fucking sculpture! I am so not okay with art that takes away floor space. Same goes for shelf space, table space . . .”
She seems to have lost interest in what she’s saying, which is lucky, since I can’t think of a suitable response.
“Annette Chapa thinks Jeff Reville’s gay?” she says suddenly. “Are you sure? I never heard that.”
“I got it from the internet. Maybe it’s not true.”
“Did you happen to come across Ingrid Allwood’s ingenious theory during the course of your online investigations?”
I’m about to say yes when I realize that’s wrong. I didn’t. I was on the point of reading it, but I got distracted by seeing Lilith McNair’s name, and then I clicked on another link and forgot all about it.
“Tell me,” I say.
“Allwood claimed—and I believe she’s still standing by her hypothesis—that neither the Chapas nor the Revilles could have abducted and killed Melody without the help of the other couple. She thinks the four of them were all in on it, and their aim was to get away with it by planting evidence to incriminate all of them, all four. They knew it’d be impossible to destroy all the evidence, or leave none, but if each couple could make it look as if the other had tried to frame them, while also making sure there was other stuff to suggest each couple couldn’t have done it, maybe they could all get acquitted. Or not even charged in the first place. Personally, I don’t buy it. I can’t see an elaborate ‘Hey, guys, let’s all frame ourselves!’ plan ever attracting any support. Here we are.”
The club car stops outside a brown bungalow-style building—long and rectangular, with a red door, along the bottom of which someone—a previous art class, no doubt—has painted a row of yellow and blue flowers with green stalks.
“Wait here,” says Tarin. “I’ll run in and grab Zellie, then we’ll go find Riyonna. I’ll be five seconds.”
Normally when people say that, they mean they’ll be at least ten minutes, but Tarin is as good as her word. She and Zellie emerge from the building almost immediately.
They’re arguing about Hayley. “She’s sick, Mother. I can do a painting for you anytime.” Zellie doesn’t say hello to me or acknowledge my presence. “You’re so selfish. Did you not hear me say she’s getting worse?”
“But I’m a florist, and it’s a painting of some flowers!” Tarin complains. “I mean, do I need to spell it out?”
“Yeah, well, Hayley, despite not being a florist, loves it too, so just drop it.”
I try not to picture Tarin scrapping with a terminally ill child for a painting. Did the art tutor have to intervene? Apart from anything else, how was there time for it to happen? How much unpleasantness could Tarin pack into four seconds?
Probably quite a lot.
She sighs, defeated. “Hotel reception, please, driver,” she says.
“Wait!” I say. I’ve seen something. Someone. In the distance.
It can’t be. This is wrong. Wrong person, wrong place.
Oh, my God. It is. It’s him.
I jump out of the club car and run, ignoring Tarin’s cries of protest. I keep telling myself I must be wrong until there’s no doubt anymore, until I’m standing in front of him, out of breath and sweating.
“Hi.” He smiles as if there’s nothing at all remarkable about us both being here and bumping into each other.
It’s really him: my husband. Patrick.
8
October 11, 2017
I blink, inhale, exhale, repeat—blink, breathe, blink, breathe—but it makes no difference. Patrick is still here.
“You could try looking a bit pleased to see me,” he says with a wry smile. “I ran to the airport like the romantic hero of a cheesy movie, determined to find my one true love.”
He’s flown for ten hours to get here, and he doesn’t seem angry that I disappeared without warning. I should be a little bit happy about all of this.
“No?” Patrick’s sticking with the jokey tone, but I can see he’s hurt. He must have expected me to burst into tears and throw my arms around him. “All right then, how about some grudging admiration for my investigative skills? I
successfully and single-handedly tracked you down.”
I can’t bring myself to look at him.
“With great cunning and aplomb?” he tries again hopefully.
I need him to stop talking. The discomfort and shock I felt when I first saw him is turning into a swelling fury. If only I could yell at him my rage might dissolve, but I’ve never been able to let rip in that way. I’d rather make secret plans and disappear to another continent than tell anyone how I feel.
You’re a joke, Cara. A mess.
“How did you find me?” I manage to say. Much easier than I don’t care what you want. I’m not getting rid of the baby.
“Aha!” Patrick grins. “You didn’t leave many clues—hardly any, in fact—but you forgot one major thing. You forgot to delete your browsing history on the computer.”
“I wouldn’t have known how to do that even if I’d thought of it.”
I never considered that he might ignore my clearly expressed need to be alone for a while.
What do you expect? You’ve got children. Responsibilities.
“Ah, well, you see . . . if you’d been a more tech-savvy fugitive, you might have got away with it. I could see you’d been looking at various resorts and hotels in America, and the one you’d looked at most often and most recently was this one. And then there was the location: Camelback Mountain. You don’t usually run away from home, so there must have been some sort of catalyst—a straw that broke the camel’s back. I wondered if Camelback Mountain might have appealed to you for that reason.”
“So you just ditched the kids, booked a flight and came?”
“Well, I checked you were here first. I rang up. They wouldn’t tell me at first—said they couldn’t give out confidential blah-blah. So I waited, rang back an hour later and asked to be put through to your room, as if I knew you were staying here. They fell for that. ‘I’m getting no reply from Mrs. Burrows’s casita, sir.’ I tricked the truth out of them, like an ingenious double agent.”
“The kids hate staying at your mum’s. What about school?”
“What about it? Broadly speaking, I’m in favor of it.” Finally, Patrick drops the comedian act. “You ran away from home, Cara. Without saying why, or talking to me, or anything. Would you have preferred me to shrug and say, ‘Ah, well, that was fun while it lasted, no point trying to get her back—better just accept it’?”
I didn’t run away. I left. I’m not a child or a possession that can be retrieved against my will.
“My note made it clear I was coming back. I told you exactly when: the twenty-fourth of October.”
“So I was meant to just sit at home and wait, with no clue what was going on in your mind or where you were? Come on! What was I supposed to tell Jess and Olly? Cara, what’s wrong? What’s the problem? Sorry, that sounds flippant. I don’t mean it to. What I mean is: I want to make everything okay, but you’re going to have to give me a clue. Is it about . . .” He stops.
“You can’t bring yourself to say ‘the baby,’ can you?”
“Well, it’s not a baby yet, is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t when you first told me. You said it was no bigger than an olive.” Patrick sighs. “Do you desperately want to keep it? I mean . . . okay. Fine.”
“That’s not what you said before. You, Jess and Olly all made your feelings clear: none of you want the inconvenience, you all think our family’s exactly the right size—”
“We made our feelings clear because you asked us. You kept asking us. So we told you, and you nodded and listened and encouraged us to be honest, share all our reservations and anxieties. And then you punish us by leaving home? I mean . . . unless this is about something else altogether.”
“You’ve no idea, have you?”
“Right.” Patrick nods. I see the first stirrings of anger on his face. “Because you haven’t told me. Why don’t you tell me?”
Breathe, Cara.
I could answer him—so easily, the words are almost bursting out of my mouth—but I won’t. We shouldn’t be having this conversation now, here. It was supposed to happen on Tuesday 24 October at home. That’s when I wanted it to happen. What I want ought to matter—and not only to me.
“I emailed you,” I say. “You ignored my email. You could have replied and asked me anything you wanted to know. You didn’t have to—”
“I didn’t reply because I was already on my way here. I wanted to talk face-to-face. Is that so wrong?”
Maybe it isn’t. All I know is that if I can’t have these two weeks to myself—to think, to work out who I am and what I want—then I can’t have any time, ever. This is my one chance.
“I told you when I’d be back. You should have respected that.”
“Sorry, but that’s crap, Cara. You made a unilateral decision to disappear. All right, you had your reasons—ones you won’t tell me—but having done that, you can’t accuse me of imposing my terms against your will. At least I’m talking to you!”
“You never asked me—not once—if I wanted this baby!” I’m too angry and miserable to hold it in anymore. “You never asked me how I felt. Hours we spent talking about it, me asking you and the kids what you thought, how you felt, listening carefully to everything you said, all your reasons—the expense, and the stress, and where would the baby’s bedroom be, and we can’t move house, it’s too much hassle, all of that—and not one of you asked me even once, even indirectly, in any way at all, what I wanted to do. You all treated me like someone who was chairing an important meeting, someone whose own opinions and feelings weren’t relevant enough to be mentioned.”
“I assumed you were undecided. I’m sorry I didn’t ask directly, but . . . for God’s sake, Cara, we talked about it for hours. Jess, Olly and I all said what we thought and you could have done the same. Why didn’t you? Wouldn’t that have been the sensible thing to do, instead of waiting for us to ask you, so that you could go off in a huff when we didn’t? Hang on—is that why you asked us over and over again, to remind us that we’d neglected to ask you? That’s screwed up. Why not be more straightforward?”
“All right, I will. I’d like you to leave. I’d like you to go back to England, rescue our children from your mother’s overheated house and take them back home, so that they can start going to school again. I’ll be back on the twenty-fourth of October, as I said in my note, and we’ll talk then.” Patrick tries to speak, but I raise a hand to stop him. “If you do this one thing for me, it’s very likely that I’ll come back and admit you’re at least partly right. I’ll never think it’s okay that you forgot to ask me how I felt about finding myself unexpectedly pregnant, but yes, I was weak and a coward, and I handled it all completely wrong. Then, once I’ve apologized for being rubbish and you’ve apologized for being rubbish, we can talk about the baby and how we feel about it—and I am keeping it, whether you want it or not. I won’t get rid of my own baby.”
“Cara, that’s fine by me. And the kids. Look—”
“Wait. I haven’t finished. I’m glad you think it’s fine, but I don’t want to, I can’t, discuss it now. You need to go home without saying another word and leave me here, so that I won’t always think you ruined something important I tried to do. I hope that makes sense.”
“Cara.” Patrick smiles as if I’ve said something sweet and amusing. “I’m not going home without you. Please try to—”
“Then I’ll go. I’ll leave.” Without looking back, I run as fast as I can away from him.
“Cara!” he calls out. He’s not following me—yet. He will, once he sees I’m not going to turn around like a well-trained boomerang and hurry obediently back to him.
I run and run. Where am I going? Back to my casita? No, to the car park. I’ve got my bag with me, with the hire car’s keys inside it, my passport and wallet, my ultrasound scan of the baby. That’s all I need.
I have to get right away from Swallowtail if Patrick won’t leave. I have to win.
“Cara.”
The voice—not my husband’s—is quiet and comes from behind me. I turn to see who it is. A hand shoots out in front of my face, startling me. Something yellow moves fast, presses hard against my nose and mouth. I try to call out, but I can’t make a sound.
I heard something on the radio the other day: a guest on a talk show was asked for her favorite word. She said “holidays.” I thought that was cheating. I couldn’t believe she liked the word for its own sake, for the sound of the vowels and consonants and the way they harmonize together. “Holidays” is a nice-sounding word, but if it meant “incredibly hard work,” would she still have chosen it?
I don’t have a favorite word, only two least favorites: “parents” and “family.” I can write them easily enough, but I hate saying them, and most of all I hate hearing them when I’m not prepared. But if “holidays” meant “parents” and “parents” meant “ice cream” and “ice cream” meant “family,” I think I’d feel differently about all these words. So it turns out I had no right to think the woman on the radio was doing it wrong. It’s too hard to separate the word from its meaning.
When I first made up the name “Kind Smiles” for the only people who ever smiled at me, I was six years old. I’m fourteen now, but I can’t stop thinking of them that way.
I must have been pretty naïve when I was a little kid. I thought I could protect myself from my mother by not looking at her. It worked sometimes, but not always. One time I was sitting on the carpet surrounded by the toys and dolls I liked to play with. At the other end of the room, my parents were watching TV. On this particular day, one of my teddy bears, Rosa, had a secret she wouldn’t tell anyone. The others were crowding around her begging to know, saying true friends don’t keep secrets from one another. I was explaining, in Rosa’s voice, that this was such an important secret that she couldn’t possibly share it—not yet. I hadn’t decided what the secret would turn out to be. I was looking forward to deciding later.
My mother turned the TV off suddenly. Having never shown any interest in my games before, she got up out of her chair, walked over to where I was sitting and picked up Poggy. Moving him around as she spoke for him, she said, “You’re not being fair, Rosa. Keeping secrets is wrong. You know that. We don’t keep secrets in our family.”
Keep Her Safe Page 15
