by Lisa Unger
Who you were is gone. Who you will be—she doesn’t exist. The only thing that matters is who are you are right now. Pop. Con artist. Zen master.
Did you get what you wanted? He would surely ask. Are you done?
Not quite.
She finished the lunch they’d ordered but hadn’t touched—a beautiful lobster Cobb, whole grain bread with truffle butter, cut strawberries. She poured herself another glass of champagne, watched the darkening clouds drift over the treetops, the city streets far below.
When she was done, she walked unhurriedly to the bathroom where earlier she’d propped up her phone and set it to record, turning it off after they were done. Back in bed, she played the video and watched the steamy image of Hugh and her in the shower. It was a little blurry, but there was no mistaking it was him—especially with all the moaning. Her back was to the camera. His groans were guttural, primal. It went on and on. She had to hand it to herself: stamina was her strong suit. Then, as Hugh climaxed clumsily, Anne turned to face the camera and smiled. It was a sweet smile, mischievous as if she expected that Kate would be in on the joke of it all. Because wasn’t marriage the ultimate long game?
She imagined that, on some level, Kate would feel a measure of gratitude to Anne for showing her once and for all that her husband was a cad. Kate, who had everything, who could probably take her pick even now from a hundred eligible men, would be well rid of Hugh. He didn’t deserve a woman like Kate. She liked the guy, but he was an unrepentant cheater.
Now, comfortably propped on the plush pillows, Anne did a little cropping, a little editing, even filtered just a shade—the skin on her back looked a little pasty in the white bathroom light.
Then, she showered alone, taking her time—relishing the hot water, the thick body wash, the whisper of water on the heavy marble tile. Once dressed, she sat at the desk and opened her laptop. Using the credit card number Hugh had given her, she purchased a slew of things—a pair of Jimmy Choo pumps, a Gucci tote, gleaming Prada sunglasses—she had saved in her Neiman Marcus shopping cart, then had them shipped overnight to an address that couldn’t be traced back to her.
She called housekeeping, asking for more of the luxurious toiletries, amber bottles with crisp black-and-white labels. When the maid arrived, Anne tipped the young, wide-faced woman generously. And the girl gave her even more from the cart, giggling and saying something in another language. Czech if Anne had to guess. Anne stuffed the haul into her roller suitcase, along with the unused bathrobe in the closet and some of the fresh towels.
Online again, she sent a few emails, managing a few more of the various personas she had running.
So sorry I’ve been out of touch, my love! I’m having a bit of a family emergency. Can we talk later?
Can’t wait for Saturday! It’s so nice to feel like a part of a family.
Then a text.
This one was being stubborn. She hadn’t had a response yet.
Was Anne going to get more aggressive about it? Or let it go? The whole thing was—sticky. That was Pop’s word. Some people were too smart, too intuitive. Or they were skeptical, slow to trust. Or they didn’t want enough. Then suddenly you were the one wanting something from the mark. And that was always a bad place to be. Anne watched her phone. No read receipt. No little dots that indicated the other party was typing.
Also, it was messy. A couple of moving parts that weren’t cooperating. And she’d already had to do more management than she liked. And the motive...well. For Pop, it was always about the money. Sometimes Anne had a different agenda.
She waited. No answer.
When Anne was ready by the door, bag packed, she took a last look at the gorgeous room, the beautiful view. Don’t forget to breathe. Take in the moments and appreciate them. They pass too quickly.
She did that.
Before she left, shouldering her tote, and rolling her stuffed suitcase over the plush blue carpet, she did two other things.
She sent the video to Kate. It stalled a moment, the file quite large. Then it was gone with a satisfying swish.
Yep, she thought. All done here, Pop.
Then she fired off another text, an adjunct to the one she’d sent earlier to her stubborn case—just to make sure there wasn’t any confusion.
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
FIFTEEN
Pearl
“So—who’s your father?”
The storeroom was overwarm, the air conditioning on the fritz again. Pearl and Charlie were both sweating with the effort of packing up books.
“I don’t have a father.” She used to make up stories about the man she imagined could be her dad. She’d stopped doing that, now that she was older.
“Everyone has a father,” said Charlie, not looking at her. He was filling out a shipping label. He had very neat handwriting.
“Not everyone,” she said.
He peered at her over his glasses. “Biologically. Yes. Everyone.”
“I don’t know.” Pearl blew out a breath, annoyed. This was not her favorite topic of conversation.
“Your mother never told you.”
“She’s not sure,” she said. “Could be a couple of different people. You know Mom.”
He was quiet a minute and she figured he’d let it go.
“Aren’t you curious?” he asked.
She finished putting a box together with a swipe of the packing tape gun, then let her arms drop to her sides.
“Curious about a man who doesn’t know I exist? Who is basically a sperm donor?”
Charlie lifted his shoulders, still watching her over his glasses.
“Some people are even curious about the sperm donor, you know,” he said. “It’s normal to want to know where you came from.”
“The past doesn’t matter. That’s what Mom always said. All we have is right now.”
“That’s very evolved of you.”
“I just don’t care,” she said exasperated. Once he was on a topic, you could not get him off. “You’ve seen the kind of men she’s with. What if I went looking and found him? What if he was just another tattooed muscle head, someone with a man bun? What if he worked in marketing?”
Charlie laughed. They were packing up books for return, filling boxes, sealing them, printing address labels. It was always so hopeful when the new shipment arrived and they stocked the bestsellers, the obscure literary titles, the new nonfiction. Every book crisp, unopened, waiting for its reader. Then, after a certain point, the books went back if they didn’t sell. The publisher refunded the money.
It seemed to Pearl that more and more books went back. The store was empty much of the time, despite Charlie’s efforts to increase foot traffic. Mom had a new boyfriend; but Charlie stayed. He manned the store, took care of Pearl—drove her home and made sure she had dinner. He even proofread her homework. He, Charlie, who had been in her life for fewer than six months, was more a parent than she’d ever had. She kept this to herself.
“Your mom didn’t come in today,” said Charlie. The packing tape made a loud hiss as he ran its dispenser over the box, sealing the fate of the books inside. Return to sender.
Pearl had a nightmare last night. Raised voices, some kind of loud bang. A scream. She woke panicked. But when she walked out of her bedroom, the house was quiet. There was a dim light from under the door of her mother’s room, music playing. She knew better than to knock, looking for comfort. In the morning, she hadn’t seen Stella. But she’d heard the toilet flush, water running for the shower.
Pearl ate a bowl of sugary cereal and left for the bus; she hadn’t thought about her mother again.
“Late night, I think.”
Charlie, who was smallish, was very strong. Hauling heavy boxes, stacking them.
“The store is not doing so well, Pearl,” he said. “I tri
ed to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen.”
“The store never does well,” said Pearl. “It’s a bookstore. That’s the model.”
“Yeah, but it’s been operating in the red all year.”
Pearl shrugged. The mysteries of how her mother made ends meet did not interest her. It’s your job to be a kid, my job to worry about everything else, which was a very motherly thing that the nonmotherly Stella often said.
“There’s a stack of past due bills,” said Charlie. Then he shook his head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. You’re just a kid.”
“She owns the building.”
It was a big warehouse on the bad side of town, an area that was supposed to gentrify but hadn’t. There was someone in Stella’s life who had given her money in the past, a large sum. She turned to him when things got tight and he always came through. Who he was, why he’d give Stella money, Pearl had no idea. Stella called him her “benefactor.” But she hadn’t mentioned him in a while.
“Yeah, but there’s a tax bill she hasn’t paid,” said Charlie.
Pearl shrugged.
“Forget it. I’ll talk to her again,” said Charlie with an easy wave. “She’ll have a plan for how to manage if I know Stella.”
Did anyone know Stella?
Pearl held an unread paperback in her hands. On the cover a faceless woman in a flowery dress drifted dreamily past a beach house. She stacked the book in the box with the others.
Pearl watched Charlie pack and seal, lift and carry. She pretended not to watch him, or to notice that he sometimes watched her. She didn’t know how old he was; he didn’t look much older than the senior boys at school—he was narrow, pretty around the eyes, clean-shaven always. He had a long nose and full mouth that looked very serious until right before he smiled.
“What about your father?” asked Pearl. He rarely talked about himself, his family, where he came from. Just snippets here and there.
“My father,” he said, dropping a box, “was a monster.”
“Really?”
He turned to her, wiped a forearm across the sweat on his brow. “Yes, really. He was a drunk, an abuser. A con man.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’s dead now.” Another box on the dolly. His face was still; there was no tension to him, as if he was just stating the facts.
“And your mom?”
“She’s gone, too.” He sealed the final box.
“It’s just you.”
“Yes. An orphan. The only child of unhappy people.”
“That—sucks,” she said. Because what else was there to say?
He shrugged. “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset, right? What’s that book? Pinkalicious?”
A book about a spoiled girl who was in a rage over cupcakes.
“But she got very upset.”
Charlie smiled in that knowing way he had.
“And how did that work out for her?” he asked.
“I think she made herself sick—or something like that.”
“So there you go.” He nodded in affirmation and Pearl laughed as he rolled the dolly out to the front door, where the UPS guy would pick the boxes up. The sun was setting, and the store was completely empty. The after-school thing had petered out. The open mic night dried up when they stopped serving free food and wine, which they could ill afford in the first place.
They stopped for Chinese food on the way home, and he parked in front of the house, walking her inside. He carried her heavy backpack and the food. She opened the door.
“I have to talk to your mom. Maybe she’ll eat with us.”
He was going to leave. She could tell. He had that sad, careful look that grown-ups had right before they were about to disappoint you in some way. Stella had used him up, probably she’d stopped paying him or something. That’s what she did. She took everything she could from people and, when they were done, she showed them the door, not caring whether they walked, ran, yelled or cried.
I never asked you for a thing, Pearl had heard Stella say to more than one angry beau, friend, neighbor. And that was true. Stella never had to ask.
But the house was dark and quiet when they went inside. Pearl turned on the lights; Charlie put down her bag, carried the food to the kitchen. Pearl’s morning dishes were where she’d left them.
Something. Something made the hair stand up on the back of her neck, made her breath catch.
“Stella?” Charlie called out.
Their eyes met in the dim of the messy kitchen, and something passed quicksilver between them. She couldn’t even say what. A kind of knowledge, an awareness of a subtle shift of energy. Over the years, she’d come back to that moment. It would mean something different every single time she recalled it.
He walked past her, brushing close, hurried. She caught the scent of him—soap and paper. Pearl stayed rooted, listening to his footfalls move from room to room.
When he called out in shock and terror, his voice a vibrato of despair, she stayed stone still, frozen, unable to move, unable to think. Time stopped.
Oh, God. Oh, Stella. No! Oh, nonononono.
Pearl followed the sound of his wailing and stood shaking in the doorway. Charlie was on his knees beside the bed. Stella stared unseeing, eyes red and glassy, her neck black with bruising. Pearl felt part of herself die, too.
SIXTEEN
Selena
She pulled into her mother’s driveway, the boys both uncharacteristically quiet in the back. In the rearview mirror, she saw that Stephen was dozing, but Oliver stared out the window, frowning.
“Everything’s okay,” she said. “Just an unexpected visit to Grandma.”
Oliver caught her eyes in the mirror, looking older than his years. Stephen was a little Tonka trunk, chunky, rough-and-tumble, oblivious. But Oliver was an observer. His expression, the one he wore when she tried to keep the Santa thing going or convince him that he was going to one day love brussels sprouts, was skeptical, nearing disdain.
“Okay,” he said.
She looked up at the house. Her mom, Cora, stood in the doorway, waving. She was a small woman who seemed to be shrinking a little bit every time Selena saw her. Cora and Marisol both got the compact, petite thing. Selena got the tall, athletic thing. Secretly, she always wished she was tiny like her sister. Paulo, Cora’s second husband, was tall behind her, nearly filling the door frame.
“Paulo!” cried Oliver, frown dropping, replaced with a grin. Stephen stirred awake, groggy.
Paulo—a husky, jovial guy—was beloved by the boys. He was a bear hugger, a piggyback ride giver, Lego builder, all day at Extreme Jump kind of grandpa. No kids or grandkids of his own, he was fresh to the fight, as he liked to say. He had lots to give to her, her sister and their kids. Which was nice, because Selena’s actual father was an impatient jerk—always annoyed with the kids, their noisemaking, their poor table manners, their fighting. Scolding and frowning was his default setting. He thought they were pampered, hassled Selena and Graham about their lack of discipline, their lack of scheduling, and just made himself generally difficult to be around. Then he wondered why they weren’t all closer and complained that they didn’t visit enough.
Cora and Paulo came to the car to greet Selena, Paulo giving her a big squeeze and an encouraging pat on the back, then ushering the boys inside with their luggage and big box of toys. Cora took Selena into an embrace.
“I’m sure it will just be a couple of days,” said Selena. There was a weight on her shoulders that she couldn’t shift off, a deep fatigue tugging at her brain.
“As long as you need us,” she said. “We’re here.”
Inside, they got the boys settled in the room that was just for them, another one adjoined by a jack-and-jill bath for their two cousins, Lily and Jasper. Paulo said that he’d tend to the k
ids, and Selena and her mother went to the kitchen, where Selena told her everything. The cheating, Geneva not showing up for work. Not the girl on the train.
“This is all just some crazy thing,” she heard herself say. “A misunderstanding.”
That could still be true, right? She pulled a tissue from the box Cora had produced, dabbed at her eyes.
Cora pulled the folds of her blue cashmere wrap tighter around her. “But he slept with her?”
Selena turned to the door to the kitchen, which her mother had pulled closed. The kids, especially Oliver, had a way of sneaking up.
“Yes,” Selena admitted. She felt her face redden, her eyes fill again. “He did.”
Her mother reached for her hand.
“But you don’t think—”
“That he has anything to do with her disappearing? No,” said Selena, a shock moving through her. “Of course not.”
But of course everyone was going to think that, if it came out. Which, it still might not. Geneva would turn up. All of this was going to be a big nothing. So what if Geneva’s car was there all weekend and she’d missed a date with her sister, hadn’t turned up for work? Maybe she’d met someone, went on a bender. It happened, right? Even to nice girls like Geneva. Who wasn’t such a nice girl, after all, was she? Sleeping with Graham, and now rumors of issues with her last employer. So, maybe Geneva was somebody else entirely than she pretended to be. That happened all the time.
“No,” Selena said again, adamant in her mother’s silence. “He’s a man-baby, not a monster, Mom.”
“No,” said her mother gently, patting her hand. “Of course he’s not.”
She thought of him standing in the shadows, that unreadable expression. Maybe Graham, too, was someone other than he pretended to be. And she, like her mother, was the incurious wife so wrapped up in work and family and the inner hurricane of her own thoughts that she missed what was right in front of her. Like that big ape dancing in the background of a video where the viewer was focused on counting basketballs. Almost no one ever saw the ape at all, so concentrated were they on the bouncing orange orbs.
