After a minute or so, Julia hung the wet towel over the shower and rubbed her daughter’s legs with her hands.
“Chloe bought us coats and stuff,” Destiny said through chattering teeth. “In the bags.”
“Don’t move,” Julia said.
“Like I can?”
Julia went back into the bedroom, checked Chloe. Her breathing seemed fine and the stench of alcohol had somewhat worn off. She should have called for an ambulance when she had the chance and not let Destiny browbeat her. What could she say now? This woman who is really not much more than a girl got drunk and maybe got drugged and maybe got raped—dear God, please no—and I know we’re in the middle of a blizzard but I haven’t been her mother long enough to know what to do.
Julia grabbed the bags Destiny had brought in, shook off the snow into the tub. She pulled off her slacks and put on the snow pants. They were beyond cold because they’d been sitting in Chloe’s car.
“Real nice,” Destiny said. “I sit here half naked and you—”
“Can’t you shut up, just for once?”
The girl laughed. “Finally, a family resemblance asserts itself.”
“Here, put these on.” Julia helped Destiny into the slacks she’d just taken off and a dry pair of boots.
“Can I have the jacket too?”
“Not yet.” Julia went back into the main room and stuffed the winter clothing Chloe had bought along the length of the baseboard. The pipes were still hot, though with the way the wind howled and the temperature plunged, they wouldn’t be for long.
Julia went back into the bathroom and used a hand towel to dry Destiny’s hair. “Why did you go all the way to Chloe’s car?”
“I thought there might be some clue as to who that jerk was. At least I found all this snow gear. And Chloe’s phone. Why do you think she left it in the car?”
“I don’t know. Denial, maybe?” Julia jogged in place, trying to warm up. The cloak was a nice, soft wool, a blessing despite the hideous fire-engine red and olive-green plaid. That she took any time to buy snow gear for all of them was lovely, especially since the early forecast had been for all rain in Boston.
“This is your fault,” Destiny said. “I had my life, Chloe had hers—that’s what you said you gave us up to. Good lives and all that blah-blah. And then you literally drop out of the sky and now she’s been messed with and I’m . . . I don’t even know what I am. Obligated to her, I suppose, even though I didn’t know she existed three days ago. And I feel guilty as sin because you need a chunk of my body for your son, and to get it, you put a claim on me as your daughter and you tied me to you by my sister and it’s all sick. You realize that, don’t you? I was sick to go with you; Chloe was sick to come with us. And something sick led her to this place and made us follow her.”
“You’re looking for something,” Julia said. “Or you wouldn’t have come with me from Los Angeles. You’re the one who jump-started this third leg of the trip so you could meet Tom.”
“Big whoop. Like any five-dollar shrink couldn’t tell you what I was looking for? You see what love gets you, right? Luke gets the heart, you get the liver, and Chloe gets my frostbitten toes and nose and—”
“—and nothing, young lady. Enough now.” Julia didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her.
“Oh, Big Mama talk. I’m scared.” Destiny mocked a tremor, then got caught in a convulsion of genuine shivers.
Julia wrapped her cloak around the girl’s shoulders, fastened the buttons under her chin. “You’ve blamed me your whole life,” Julia said. “Haven’t you?”
“You told me to shut up. So you don’t get to psychoanalyze me.”
Julia went back into the bedroom, flashed the light on Chloe before retrieving the pants she had shoved under the baseboard. Back in the bathroom, she knelt on the hard tile, pulled off Destiny’s boots, and worked the snow pants up her legs. The sturdy fleece and wadded down made it tough with only one hand.
Destiny made a motion as if to help but her arm fell back. “You warmed them up for me?”
“Least I could do, considering I’ve ruined your life forever.”
“You were an easy target. Because I didn’t know you, I could blame anything on you. Can’t sit still in class—must be something genetic because my parents and sister are perfect. Can’t buy that old-time religion? Must be because bio-mom was a slut. Won’t go to college and meet a nice Christian boy? Must be because bio-dad’s wild blood is having its way.”
“Is that what your parents said?”
“Of course not. They’re perfect, remember? They took great pains to hide their displeasure. This one time I heard them praying. I must have been eight or so, and it was Palm Sunday and our Sunday school teacher told us to draw a card for our parents to surprise them with for Easter. And I drew a picture of Jesus on the cross and I drew Him as a baby because it didn’t seem such a far stretch from Christmas to Easter and because my sister had been born a few weeks earlier—a miracle birth, my mother said to anyone who asked. They hadn’t bothered to tell me I was adopted yet, so I figured I had to have been the opposite of a miracle.”
“Oh no,” Julia said.
“Shut up and let me finish. So I gave them the card on Easter morning, and I could see it in my mother’s eyes even though she tried to hide her horror. She thought I had drawn my baby sister, Sophie, on the cross. And, like you, I could draw so beautifully, even then, so the baby Jesus did look a lot like her. Only because she was the only baby I had as a model.
“They sent me to my room without a word because my mother couldn’t even look at me. They went into their room and I heard my mother crying. I snuck out to ask them to ask God to forgive me, and that’s when I heard them pray that God would wash away any darkness in me.
“And I felt something being ripped away, right then and there. As if a clawed hand tore something out of me because this is the truth, Julia—that Jesus had showed me that picture of Himself and so I had to draw it. I thought that my parents would help me understand what Jesus wanted me to know, but instead, they wanted Him out of me—and they wanted you and Tom out of me—because they feared it was all part of something very wrong and bad.”
Julia slipped her arms under Destiny’s and helped her stand so she could get the pants up all the way. “We think we can create those we love in our own image. When we realize we can’t, we get scared. They didn’t know that you had been given a gift.”
“They didn’t see it like that.”
“They do now. Don’t they?”
“How could you say that? You don’t know them.”
“No,” Julia said. “But this time we’ve been together, you have never once run down your parents to me. You say they’re perfect, and that’s as derogatory as you get. You could have ripped them to shreds and maybe found a willing cheerleader in me. You haven’t done that. So tell me how they do know you.”
Destiny clutched Julia’s shoulders. She hadn’t sat back down, and she wouldn’t come into the hug that Julia so desperately wanted to give her. Face-to-face was enough, for now.
“Tell me, Destiny. Please.”
“They invited Luke into their home, treated him like a son, though it made them crazy that we lived together. They knew he was good for me because he never reacted in the moment. Wisdom to wait, my father called it. They knew I was good for Luke because he’s laid back and sunny California and, for all my bucking the system, they knew I was ambitious and would push him.”
“What about when you were younger,” Julia said. “When you left college?”
“I ended up in Los Angeles with literally nothing. The first month I slept in a booth in the restaurant where I worked in exchange for giving the manager half my tips. I hustled and finally earned enough to rent a room. My parents bought me a bed and a dresser so I wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor or keep my clothes in a box.
“When I was in high school, they renovated the garage so I’d have a studio to work in. They got me ar
t lessons and supplies and encouraged me to work at my craft, even though my art confused and sometimes offended them.
“There was this guy . . . as off-beat and quirky as I was. I couldn’t resist him, couldn’t keep my wits about me. So when I was fifteen, I had a pregnancy scare. Mom caught me digging through her files for abortion providers within a bus ride of Nashville. She didn’t yell—though she couldn’t be more pro-life if she were the pope. She reminded me”—Destiny leaned into Julia—“that every day she and Dad gave thanks that there was a woman out there somewhere who had loved me enough not to abort me. That this woman had blessed them beyond measure and if need be, I could do the same.
“If I had been pregnant, I knew she’d stand by me and wouldn’t try to hide me away or make excuses. She and my father would just . . . give me room to do the right thing. So what does that all mean?”
“They knew you well enough to free you,” Julia said.
They freed Baby Doe.
Wednesday, 1:05 a.m.
“You’re a genius,” Julia said a little while later. Destiny had stopped at the motel office on her way back to the room to return the clerk’s boots and to bribe him to unlock his snack cabinet. Julia and Destiny sat on the bathroom floor, munching Twinkies and potato chips and drinking Coke. The sugar rush made Julia light-headed and brought some heat back into her legs and feet.
“Nicest thing you’ve called me today.” Destiny’s cheeks had flushed to a healthy pink in the glow of the flashlight. No sign of frostbite. “Why are we still in the bathroom?”
“We’re avoiding the obvious.”
“We are not calling the cops.”
“It’s too late for that anyway,” Julia said. While Destiny had been gone, she’d been on her knees. Praying for an answer, understanding she didn’t even know the question.
“We don’t even know if this was involuntary.”
“This what? That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“You ever work with any celebrity brides?” Destiny said.
“What does that have to do with Chloe?”
“Just answer the question, woman.”
“Matt screens our clients very carefully. It’s the best marketing ploy ever—because not everyone can book Myrrh, everyone seems to want us. Why do you ask?”
“Because Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian both made sex tapes and became famous. The Kardashians converted her so-called shame into an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“Chloe doesn’t seem the type.”
Destiny poked her with her foot. “You know an idealized version of her. The perfect baby you handed off to adoption. And I will admit, the instant I realized I had a sister, I created this idealized image in my head of who I decided she should be. And when she was almost the opposite, I re-created her in my mind to be a Pygmalion I could reshape.”
“What about her husband? Surely he knows her.”
“Maybe he does,” Destiny said. “And maybe that’s why he keeps her on such a short leash.”
“That’s harsh.”
“And this isn’t?”
“So you think that man shot a video of her?”
“The question is—did he get the money shot?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe stood in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. “I don’t remember what he did or saw.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Julia struggled to stand.
She tried to wrap her arms around Chloe, but Destiny got in between them. “No. Chloe is getting dressed and then she’s going to ’fess up whatever she does remember so we can figure out what we need to do.”
“Julia—” Chloe tried to escape Destiny’s grasp.
Julia folded her arms. “Your sister is right. Get some clothes on and then we’ll sit down and see what we need to do.”
“Now,” Destiny said. “We put your clothes under the blankets to try to keep them warm. Get dressed, we’ll give you some food, and then we’ll talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” Chloe said. “I just want to go home.”
“Sweetheart, we’re not going anywhere for a long time,” Julia said.
Wednesday, 1:34 a.m.
Chloe sat on the bed and tried to snap her bra. Her hands shook from shame more than cold. Destiny rolled her eyes and did it for her. “I’m sorry,” Chloe said.
“What for?” Julia’s voice was thin, tinged with a kindness Chloe didn’t deserve.
“What for is the question,” Destiny said. “We didn’t call the cops when we still could have because we didn’t know what you had done.”
“Terrible things,” Chloe said.
“Stop it,” Julia said in a stronger tone. “Let’s put aside the adjectives and get to the facts so we can know how to help you.”
Chloe took a deep breath. “My marriage is not the happiest. Please don’t take that to mean I blame Jack for any of this.”
“I don’t mind doing that,” Destiny said. Julia gave her a stern look. She curled up on the bed so she practically surrounded Chloe.
“Jack has his ways and they’re good ways.”
Destiny opened her mouth to speak. Chloe pressed her hand to her sister’s mouth. “He measures everything we do in terms of what can best bring Christ to a needful world. And how could I say I needed anything for myself when my husband has plotted out every move in his life to bring glory to God?”
“I don’t get how this type-A thing he’s got going brings any glory to anyone but him,” Destiny said.
“You don’t know him. The success that he’s working so hard for and is pushing me to work hard for is part of a plan to serve Christ. He wants to go to Washington and intern for the Federal Reserve. Because he’s got this grand vision of work being good for the soul.”
“Maybe my husband could understand the link between the Fed and the soul,” Julia said. “I’m not getting it.”
“Jack could step into one of our family’s companies and be a great success. We could lead a normal life with the house, kids, church. Like our parents had. He had this other idea, what he sees as his calling. Starting in ninth grade, he studied the global economy extensively because he knew himself even then. He got into currency in his first class at Duke.”
“Money is the root,” Destiny said. “You know that, right?”
“The love of money is the root of all evil,” Chloe said. “Everyone gets that wrong. Not Jack. He sees so much manipulation in currencies, especially in third-world nations. In America, if interest rates rise or fall, our 401(k)s feel the hit, the stock market quavers, some companies go under. In poorer nations, people starve. And that’s what Jack grasped when he was still a teenager—that one way to ensure justice was through a stable and honest money supply. His vision is so far-reaching and so pure that it’s awe-inspiring.”
“Terrifying is more like it,” Destiny said.
“Maybe. Is it bad out there?” Chloe said.
“Horrible,” Destiny and Julia said together, then laughed.
“Dez, what happened to your face?”
“I slipped and hit it on the car door. Enough about my stupid black eye. Talk.”
“I got . . . the worst way to say it is that I got bored,” Chloe said. “It’s one thing to point to the glory of God twenty-five years down the road, but it’s another to try to live each day as if that was all you could see. We ate on schedule, studied on schedule, prayed on schedule. And we even . . .” Chloe covered her face.
Julia sat next to her. “You made love on schedule?”
She nodded. “It was like Jack used his passion on everything else. He was kind and loving and careful and . . . always holding back, as if he was afraid. I didn’t know how to talk to him about it. It was all knotted up in my mind. Was it because he was afraid of giving up control in the one place you should be able to lose yourself? Or was I tainted in some way?”
“You were a virgin when you married him,” Destiny said. “How could he see any baggage in you when you hadn’t traveled enough to g
et any?”
“This is the man,” Chloe said, “who is able to project complex economies for the next five or ten years. When he became so . . . hesitant . . . I began to think that he’d seen some trend in me and projected it out to a bad place. It got so I was afraid to show my pleasure because I thought—feared—that somehow it scared Jack. And he’s pretty fearless. The only thing he admits to being frightened by is disappointing God. So I guess, in my mind I saw wanting a more vibrant sex life as the equivalent of disappointing God.”
“Stick to bored,” Destiny said. “That’s what really happened, right? He wasn’t giving you what you needed.”
“Honey, it can be so much more complicated than that,” Julia said.
“Not if you keep it between man and woman. Once God gets in the mix . . .” Destiny curled tighter around Chloe. “. . . everything blows up.”
Julia sat on the bed next to Chloe. “So what happened?”
“One night—a Saturday night, of course—we made love the usual way. Jack cradled me and fell asleep. Like you’d see in the movies. And I was left wanting—so much so that I had to get up and do something. I figured I’d work on my research. I turned on the computer and went to download my latest data. The condo was dead quiet. And I felt alone. Just so alone. I typed something like alone at midnight into my search engine. The first few pages connected to a song by some group. Deeper into the search, I found some sites claiming to be a place where you can talk to someone. Most of them were filthy, and I backed out as quickly as I clicked in. But I found this one called talkatnight.com where people actually do discuss things and not talk dirty. I went looking for people who were engineers—”
“Engineers?” Destiny said. “You’re a med student.”
“And I’m good at it. Because I’m supposed to be. It’s just that when I see how things work, I get really jazzed.”
“So you trusted some guy you met on the Internet,” Destiny said. “You’ve never heard of Catfishing?”
“What?”
“Creating an online persona to punk someone. Like that poor football star, a couple years back.”
“I thought we were compatible,” Chloe said. “I just needed someone to talk to and he always seemed to fit whatever . . . mood I was in.”
To Know You (9781401688684) Page 20
