by Hester Young
“It sounds like they do good work, at least,” I venture.
“They do,” Pam says grudgingly. “Donna loved it there. The stuff she saw, though, it took its toll. Five, six weeks ago some girl killed herself, and Donna about went off the deep end. Because she cared, you know? Those were her women. Teresa—she just spends all her time fund-raising. Doesn’t have a clue what’s happening on the ground.” Her gaze shifts to something behind me. “Speak of the devil,” she mutters, and I realize that Teresa is headed our way. The four of us fall quiet, and I wonder if Teresa can tell that we were talking about her.
“Pam. I hope I’m not interrupting.” She’s a tiny woman up close, scarcely more than five feet in heels, and she smells like something edible, a mixture of vanilla and cinnamon. “I just wanted to thank you. I’m so honored you let me speak today.”
“No problem.” There is nothing warm or welcoming in Pam’s dismissive tone. Whatever the precise source of her jealousy, it must run deep.
“Listen, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but . . .” Teresa looks apologetically at the rest of us. “There’s a donor luncheon on Sunday at the Desert Museum of Contemporary Art. We’d originally planned to present Donna with a service award. I thought . . . maybe you could be there to accept it. As a representative of the family.”
Pam watches her for a few seconds, waiting just long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable. “I’m not really interested in being part of your show, Teresa,” she says at last.
Teresa flushes. “Of course. I understand.”
“If you’re looking for family representatives, maybe bug Charlotte here.” Pam gives me a little nudge in Teresa’s direction and, having made what could loosely be termed an introduction, finds pressing business across the room. Pam’s friend delivers a brusque good-bye and takes off after her.
“Well!” With a faltering smile, Teresa turns her attention to Noah and me. “Charlotte, was it?” Teresa studies me, and I can see her making a sudden connection with my name. “You’re . . . a relative?”
I nod but don’t elaborate.
“You’ve come a long way, then. Assuming you still live on the East Coast?”
I swallow. She knows who I am. How does she know who I am? What did Donna say about me? How many people did she tell?
“We live in Texas now,” Noah says. “But we’re thinkin’ about movin’ to Tucson. Sure would make it easier to adopt Micky.”
Teresa touches her hand to her heart. “Oh my goodness, you two are taking Micky? You don’t know what that would mean to Donna, knowing Micky had a stable, loving home to go to. She’s never really had that before.”
It’s a subtle dig at Jasmine, but probably accurate. I don’t tell Teresa that our plans regarding Micky are far from definite. “I hope we can give her what she needs,” I say.
“I guess Micky didn’t make it to the funeral today?”
“No,” I confirm. “Her foster parents felt that all the people might be . . . overwhelming. They’re bringing her to the cemetery later to have a more private good-bye.”
“Closure is important.” Teresa sighs deeply. “Poor Micky. She’s been on my mind, ever since I heard. How is she holding up?”
“Time will tell, right? She’s lost a lot.”
“She has.” Teresa touches my hand, her dark eyes welling up. “Listen, I know you didn’t really know Donna. But I hope you’ll learn more about her someday, about the things she did. Donna and Micky were very close, and . . . I think Micky should know the positive impact her grandma had.”
Her words feel both intrusive and true, an echo of Noah’s own reminder that having a relationship with my niece entails coming to terms with her family. My family.
It would be easier to dismiss Micky’s dearly departed as deadbeats with no real value, but the kid deserves more from me. If Donna added something to the world, it’s time I know about it. I lift my chin, meet Teresa’s teary gaze straight on.
“The donor luncheon on Sunday,” I say, “what time does it begin?”
• • •
THOUGH NOAH’S ATTEMPTS to protect me sometimes come off as old-fashioned rather than chivalrous, I don’t object when he offers to bring the car around. Waiting in the funeral home’s cool, shadowy vestibule seems vastly preferable to enduring the intolerable temperatures of our vehicle.
“Give me ten minutes,” he says, kissing my forehead. “I’ll get the A/C goin’ for you.”
I steal a couple mints from a candy dish and then stand by the window, watching cars do battle in the chaotic parking lot. The funeral attendees trickle steadily out of the building until only a handful remain. One of them, a sniffling brunette with red-rimmed eyes, takes up residence with me at the window. She peers outside, presumably searching for her ride, and then wipes at her eyes, her finger dragging with it a dark trail of mascara. I reach into my purse and hand her a Kleenex.
“Thanks.” She dabs carefully at her lower lashes, gathering up the little black flecks. “I hate crying. It’s so ugly.” She stuffs the dirty tissue in her pocket. “This whole thing . . . I mean, it’s un-freaking-believable, right?”
“Yeah,” I agree, popping a mint into my mouth in what I hope is a suitably somber fashion. “Hard to wrap your brain around.”
“Jazz was, like, my best friend. We live at the same apartment complex and everything.”
“I’m so sorry.” And I am, for a fleeting moment, sorry for her, although my sympathy rapidly diminishes as she continues speaking.
“I totally don’t understand why they asked Bree to do the speech. I mean, Bree? Just ’cause they bonded over some stupid mall job? What a joke.” The thought of this injustice brings forth a fresh round of tears, and it takes a minute for her to get herself together. “You heard it, right?” she sniffs. “Worst speech ever? It’s like Bree didn’t even know her. And then she’s up there stuttering like a retard. I mean, wow, those are some top-notch public-speaking skills, am I right?”
I glance around the lobby to see if anyone else is catching this, but I’m on my own. Does this girl have a personality disorder? Am I supposed to be kind and understanding here?
“I would have killed that speech,” she says. “Well . . . Bree killed it all right.” For the first time, she actually looks at me, takes in the identity of the person she’s been talking at. “I guess you were here for Donna?”
“Um . . .” I’m too caught off guard to give anything but an honest answer. “More for Micky, actually.”
“That’s cool.” She plays with a strand of her streaky brown hair. “I’m Serena, by the way.”
I don’t tell her my name or my relationship to Donna and Jasmine, and I don’t think she cares. But hey, if she wants to talk, I’ll let her. Someone this wildly inappropriate may give me some candid answers about Micky’s childhood.
“Serena,” I say. “That’s a pretty name. It sounds like you and Jasmine were really close. You must know a lot about her, everything she’s been going through lately.”
“I dunno.” She looks a little defensive. “Probably not since she started dating Doug last year.”
“Doug McCullough? What’s he like?”
She folds her arms across her chest. “He thinks he’s hot shit. And yeah, okay, he’s good-looking. But trust me, he’s not all that.”
“So you weren’t a fan.”
“He told her what to do and who to be friends with.” Serena tosses her hair, as if calling attention to her own freedom from male dominance. “Jazz used to be super cool and fun, but when she started seeing Doug, it was always, ‘I can’t hang out with you, Doug wants to stay in tonight,’ or ‘No, no, Doug won’t let me.’ He hated that me and Jazz were friends.”
While I can see how McCullough would’ve been a convenient excuse for Jasmine to avoid this little drama queen, I don’t entirely discount Seren
a’s assessment of their relationship. Not that it matters. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one useful metric to judge McCullough by.
“Did Doug get along with Micky?”
She makes a derisive noise. “He didn’t give a crap. They just passed her off to Donna all the time, the two of them.” Serena looks about to say something else and then thinks better of it. “Whatever. I’m not gonna talk bad about Jazz today. She was the best mom she could be, I guess.”
“Yeah, it must’ve been hard, raising a kid without a dad.” I say this like I’ve never done it, but of course I have. And it is hard. Damn hard. “Did you know Ruben at all?” I ask. “Were he and Jasmine in touch?”
She regards me with sudden suspicion. “Why’re you asking me that? You’re not in with Doug, are you?”
“No, no. This has nothing to do with Doug.” I move away from the window and study a crucifix on the wall. In this particular artistic rendering, Jesus looks more exhausted than pained. Like he’s been chasing toddlers, or up at night with a newborn, instead of dying for six hours on a cross. “Here’s the thing, Serena. My boyfriend and I, we’re thinking about adopting Micky. But Ruben Ramos is her father. He has parental rights until a court terminates them, so I’d really like to speak with him before we go making any big decisions about Micky’s future.”
“If you find him, at least get some money out of him,” Serena advises. “His family’s loaded, but I don’t think Jasmine ever got a dime.”
I think of Jasmine raising a child alone without any financial assistance and can’t help but respect the woman. Even my philandering ex-husband managed modest child-support payments, money that allowed Keegan the extras I never had as a kid: a music class, new clothes, a swing set in the backyard. “Sounds like Ruben would surrender his rights without a whole lot of fuss, then.”
“Hey, the best way to make a man want something is to tell him he can’t have it, right? And Ruben’s parents might take Micky. Who knows?” She examines a fingernail, and I can tell that she’s growing bored.
I try to reel her back in. “Do you have any idea where I can find him? I heard Jasmine was in contact with him recently. Maybe she mentioned something to you . . .”
She shakes her head, a little bitter. “Not to me. Jazz stopped talking to me about that stuff. But I heard things.” She turns her back to the window, throwing her face into abrupt shadow.
“What kind of things?”
“She thought I couldn’t keep a secret, but Bree? That girl’s got no filter. Bree told me some interesting stuff, you know what I mean?” Beneath all the smudgy mascara, Serena’s eyes glow. “I guess Jazz never got over Ruben. She just couldn’t stay away.”
I’m losing my patience with all the secondhand gossip and innuendo. “So Jasmine was seeing him again.” I don’t pose it as a question, and she doesn’t correct me. “Is Ruben back in the States? Who would know where he is?”
She shrugs. “She didn’t tell Bree, so probably no one. I guess Donna might’ve known. Jazz and her mom were pretty tight. But that’s not gonna help you now.”
“No,” I say, “it isn’t.” I glance out the window for some sign of Noah, but the lot is still paralyzed by a post-funeral traffic jam. Sighing, I slip another mint into my mouth. “I don’t get it. If Jasmine was so into Ruben, why didn’t she just break up with McCullough?”
“You serious?” Serena leans back and laughs heartily at my ignorance. “No way. You don’t know Doug McCullough. He would’ve gone apeshit. Jazz was all in love with Ruben. She wasn’t gonna sic Doug on him. Do you know what that guy would do to Ruben? And he’s a cop. A white cop. He could probably get away with it.” She’s not scandalized, just matter-of-fact, and I can’t argue with her. There are a lot of stories McCullough could tell to justify shooting a young Mexican man. This is Arizona, after all, a state still embroiled in legal battles over its controversial show-me-your-papers law. It can’t be easy to “look” Mexican here, much less be Mexican.
I file all this away to share with Noah later. There’s just one more question I have for Serena, one raised by police that surely affects Micky and her upbringing. “Serena,” I say, “do you know if Jasmine ever did any drugs?” It is not the most delicate of questions, but I have the feeling she won’t mind.
“Just weed,” she replies without hesitation. “And we dropped X a few times when we were clubbing. But she stopped all that when she and Doug got together.”
I’m cautiously optimistic on Micky’s behalf. Having a stoner mom is a lot better than having, say, a cokehead for a mother. “What about roofies?”
Serena looks aggravated. “I already told the cops she never touched that shit. I don’t know what they found, but it wasn’t hers. And no way it was Donna’s,” she adds, anticipating my next line of inquiry. “Donna went to meetings like crazy, wouldn’t even have a beer.”
“So you don’t think—”
“You wanna know where any drugs in her apartment probably came from?” She puts her hands on her hips, looks me square in the eye. “Doug McCullough’s on Aggravated Assault. They run into plenty of drugs on the job.”
I’m tempted to press her for more details, but she begins waving wildly at two young men across the room. “Rob! Robby!” she exclaims, and I recognize Sanchez and one of his bodybuilder friends. She bounds across the room to them, far more eager to see them than they are her. “Damn, Robby,” she says, elbowing Sanchez like some annoying kid sister on a TV sitcom. “I thought you snuck out the back or something. Estás listo? Ya nos podemos ir.”
Sanchez responds with a few terse words in Spanish, and I get the sense that he finds this girl as grating as I do. Still, he nods at me as he passes. “Good luck with your baby,” he tells me. Serena follows him out, an eager puppy nipping at his heels. She’s already forgotten me. I wish I could forget her so easily.
It’s obvious that Serena hates McCullough, feels somehow wronged by him, but that doesn’t mean she’s off the mark. Could McCullough have been collecting drugs from perps? I gaze at the wallpaper, interlocking white flowers on a mustard background, searching for answers. The drugs would have to be about money, I figure, not recreational use. As a cop, he must get drug tested. Or maybe he was using Rohypnol on someone else? Some kinky thing with Jasmine?
I move back to the window, scanning the parking lot for Noah’s SUV. Remind myself that police corruption is not my business. If Pam wants to go searching for an institutional cover-up, good luck to her, but I’d prefer to steer clear of whatever melodrama got Jasmine killed. I’m just here to help Micky.
And yet, as Noah finally pulls up outside, I have to admit that Jasmine’s tangled love affairs do impact Micky’s future. Jasmine didn’t cheat on McCullough with just anyone. She chose the one man who had a legal claim to her daughter, the one man I can’t ignore.
Whatever secrets Jasmine took with her to the grave—secrets that could be responsible for her death—may lie with Ruben Ramos. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t go within a mile of this mess. But for Micky’s sake, I have to find him.
I have to find her father.
Eight
After the funeral, Noah and I stop for brunch and head back to the hotel to change out of our Respectful Mourner clothes. We’ve arranged to visit Micky this afternoon, leaving us a few hours to squander as we please. Though there are decisions to be made, conversations we ought to be having, neither one of us is in a talking mood. We slop on sunscreen and hang around the hotel pool as if on some lame family vacation, willfully avoiding the topic of Donna and Jasmine and, by extension, Micky.
Yet I think of them. My mother. My sister. Their deaths are not nearly as troubling as the knowledge that two weeks ago, they were alive. If Donna didn’t want me, that was her decision to make. But I had the right to know my sister, to know my niece. I should’ve been told.
Huddled in the hot shade of an umbrella, I
watch Noah do laps in the pool, watch him plow through the glowing blue water in an effort to burn off some nervous energy. Part of me wants to join him, but I’m lethargic, preoccupied, and there is no way I’m cramming this lump of baby belly into a swimsuit. Instead, I pull up images of local real estate on my phone. Though Tucson isn’t a proper city with an impressive skyline, subway system, and people living on top of one another, it has its own appeal, like an eighties rock ballad you can’t resist singing along to at full volume. There’s something about the homes here—the simple earthiness of adobe, the brightly tiled floors, the wild and scraggly look of cacti on a patio—that draws me in.
I chug water and exchange a few e-mails with my editor while Noah continues to demonstrate his maddening stamina in the pool. The temperature climbs. My skin, I realize with surprise, is sticky with sweat. I haven’t perspired much in the past few days—the desert sun seems to burn away the water within you, kill any trace of moisture long before it can escape your body—but today the air feels thicker, more humid. I notice a mass of clouds beginning to build.
The storm moves in like a creepy guy at a party, a little closer, a little closer, then suddenly, inescapably in your path. The sky darkens and the wind begins to pick up, its hot breath lifting my hair and whipping at the fabric of the sunshade.
“It’s gonna rain,” Noah says. “Hard. We better get inside.”
We’re safe in the lobby when the clouds open up. I stare out the panel of windows as a sheet of rain descends upon the pool. The drops fall in thick, diagonal lines, needles piercing the surface of the water in a sort of violent acupuncture. The palm trees rock back and forth, and the gusts rip off a few old fronds, blow them about the pavement and into the pool.
A young man wearing a hotel uniform jogs through the lobby and out into the mess, where, one by one, he closes the umbrellas. He returns, sopping and bedraggled, but cheerful nevertheless.
