Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

  “Is that what we’re talking about? You think I’ve surpassed you. Is that what she is?” She pointed upstairs. “Your new student?”

  “Of course not. She’s just someone who needs us right now. In this world, you make a family where you can find it.”

  “You just need someone to worship you.”

  He shook his head, looked down again, this time at the grain of the wood on the table. “I’ve taken care of you, Pearl. Haven’t I? Good care of you? I’ve loved you like my own child.”

  That anger, it boiled over, was a siren. But she stood stock still. She almost never lost her temper.

  “Children grow up,” she said quietly.

  Pop looked at her as if she’d slapped him.

  She went upstairs. She could pack her things, everything that meant anything to her in twenty minutes. She did so. Through the wall, she could hear the stranger still weeping. The sound was low and despairing, toxic sadness, leaking in through her pores.

  Fuck. This.

  When she got back downstairs, Pop was waiting by the door.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “We can be a family.”

  “I need space,” she said. “I need to figure out who I am.”

  He smiled, expansive, understanding, took her into his arms and held her tight. She found herself sinking into him, almost changing her mind. But then she hardened inside again. He seemed to feel it, released her with a kiss on the forehead.

  “Come for Sunday dinner,” he said. “Children may grow up. But they can always come home.”

  She walked out the door, opened the trunk of the car she’d bought with her own money and put everything she owned inside. A glance in the rearview showed Pop in the doorway, waving, and the shadow of a girl in an upstairs window.

  Her anger subsided; Pearl, Anne, Elizabeth, or whatever her name was now, felt nothing at all.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Cora

  “What is it, Mom?” demanded Selena.

  Cora clutched the iPad, still staring in disbelief. Her daughter’s face was a mask of confused anger. “This woman on the street with Geneva—” Cora still couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

  “Oliver,” said Selena, looking at her son. A tear trailed down his cheek. “Go to bed, sweetie. This is a grown-up conversation.”

  “But—” the boy said, staring back and forth between them. “I’m sorry.”

  “Now,” said Selena, too sharply. She shut her eyes, as if summoning patience, then softened her voice. “Please, honey. Please.”

  Oliver opened, then closed his mouth, finally storming off, the door swinging behind him. Cora heard him stomping on the stairs, had the urge to chase after him, to comfort him. He’d be upset because he was a sensitive child.

  Selena took the iPad from Cora’s hands and touched the screen, the glow lighting her face as she watched the video.

  After a second she gasped, sank into the seat behind her with a thud. She shook her head, seemed to be puzzling.

  “Do you know her?” Selena asked finally.

  “Do you?” asked Cora.

  “I—met her on the train,” Selena said, sounding a little dazed, incredulous. “She’s been—texting me. I saw her again for a drink in the city.”

  The revelation pulsed through Cora. “Oh my god.”

  “Who is she? Mom?”

  The words jammed up in Cora’s throat. There were so many things that she’d never told her daughters about their father, the things he’d done. She’d kept his secrets, to spare her girls.

  Cora reached for Oliver’s iPad again, clicked on the image. Yes, it was her. Cora had immediately recognized the girl in the video.

  “Mom!” said Selena. “Who is she?”

  The first time Cora laid eyes on her, the girl was young, in her late teens. She was hovering outside the grocery store. Dark, with strong features like Cora’s husband, slim like their daughters—there was something feral about her, something that awakened Cora’s mothering instincts. She saw the girl in produce, inspecting apples. What was it about her, she always wondered, that caught Cora’s eye that afternoon? Then she was by the newspapers.

  Cora almost approached her. Do you need help? She wanted to ask, even though there wasn’t any overt indication that anything was wrong. Just a sense she had. But when Cora was finished with checkout, the girl was gone.

  The next time, the girl was walking up their block, trying to look like she belonged there. But she wouldn’t belong anywhere, Cora thought. She had the energy of an outsider, eyes searching, shoulders hiked. Her clothes were shabby, but she was leggy and buxom, a bombshell beauty. She kept walking.

  Then, a few days later, she was hovering by the oak tree. Cora watched her from the kitchen window, then sauntered out onto the porch to water some plants, wondering if she’d approach the house. Finally, Cora walked down the flagstone path. I’ll invite her in. See what she wants, thought Cora. But the girl scurried off.

  Cora knew who she was. The resemblance was so strong.

  Marisol was off to college. Selena was a senior, would be leaving for NYU in the fall. It was spring, a time of new beginning, rebirth.

  That girl. The girl on the street outside her house. The one on the video now.

  She was the final straw for Cora.

  Not because she was angry that her husband had clearly fathered another child outside the marriage; that was bad enough. But that he had abandoned that child and now she was so lost, so alone that she hovered on the street, waiting—for what, Cora didn’t yet know. What kind of man was he? How could she have ever loved someone so utterly morally and emotionally bankrupt?

  Cora summoned her courage. It was so much easier to talk to her older daughter.

  Marisol. Marisol talked—she might cry, or yell—but they talked and talked, worked it out. For Selena, everything was always black-and-white, good or bad—she was like her father that way. Marisol understood the shades of gray that comprised most of life—that sometimes what seemed right was wrong, that what was wrong might feel right. She wasn’t as hard on Cora as Selena had been and still was. Cora knew that Selena thought she was weak for staying with Doug so many years, for keeping his secrets. But she’d done what she knew how to do. She’d endured her own unhappiness because she thought an intact home was best for her children. Or maybe she was just afraid.

  And now Selena found herself in the same mess—even worse. As a mother, how could Cora not take some responsibility for that? She’d been a poor role model.

  The words, when they came, were little more than a whisper.

  “She’s—your father’s daughter by another woman. A child from one of his affairs,” she said.

  Selena blanched, mouth opening.

  “She’s your half sister,” Cora went on. “Her name is Pearl.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Pearl

  The call came late. The ringing of her phone leaked deep into her dream, where she ran down the stairs of an underground turret that bored into the earth. Her footfalls echoed and a shadowy figure was behind her. She could feel its chill breath. Down, down. Deeper, deeper. The sunlight above faded, and the stairway let out into a system of low caves. She felt her way toward the ringing of the phone, a lifeline, a way out. When it finally pulled her from sleep, she saw her phone glowing on her bedside. Jason had an arm and a leg draped over her; he slept like a child, deeply, nearly impossible to wake.

  The phone stopped ringing. She didn’t reach for it. Nothing good; she was sure of that. It was 3:00 a.m. She hadn’t been back to Pop’s since the night she left. She figured it was him calling. Something was wrong.

  She lay in the dark, her heart thumping, the tendrils of the dream pulling her back toward sleep. She nestled in closer to Jason. His body was a furnace.

  Pearl had all but disappeared into her lif
e as Elizabeth. She’d moved in with Jason, sharing his simple one-bedroom apartment near campus. They went to class together. She worked at the pizza place; he worked as a mechanic at a local shop, fixing vintage cars as an apprentice. They went to the movies, whatever he wanted to see—art films, and obscure documentaries. They hung out with his friends at house parties and barbecues. They ate out, inexpensive dinners at casual restaurants. They made love finally. It was easy. So easy. A normie life, as Pop would call it. It washed over her, like a cleansing rain. Every day, Pearl got a little fainter, and Elizabeth got a little stronger.

  She remembered her life with Stella—all the drama of her many boyfriends, constant stress over the store, Stella’s moods, her distance. Little Pearl lived in her chaotic mess of a life, burying herself in stories, in books. She escaped into other worlds, other lives. In the pages of her books, she became. Jane Eyre always running from one bad situation to the next. The new Mrs. DeWinter withering under the hateful gaze of Mrs. Danvers. Laura Fairlie in the evil clutches of Sir Percival Glyde. This wasn’t so very different. She’d disappeared into the story of Elizabeth and Jason.

  Jason wanted to know about her life before, her parents, how she grew up. Pearl-Elizabeth wove a story of half truths. Her mother died; she never knew her father. Her uncle had taken her in. She traveled around with him for a while, but they’d had a falling out. Jason said he had a big family back in Minnesota; they planned to visit over the summer. He loved her; she could see that. She could pretend to love him and enjoy doing that. Maybe he sensed it, her distance.

  Sometimes, I wonder where you are, he said one night. It’s like you’re always just drifting away from me.

  I’m right here, she said. She went down on him, making him go helpless with pleasure. And that seemed to settle the matter.

  Sometimes in the night, she looked at the objects around the room cast in shadows. Her clothes over the chair, her books and laptop, flowers in a vase, the television they bought and rarely watched. What would I take with me if I had to run? she thought.

  Maybe some of her books. A few items of clothing. The bag in the closet that contained money, passport, Social Security card. She’d never been out of the country, then. But if she had to run, she thought, she’d go to London. She didn’t know why. There was something about the gauzy idea of it, the gray skies, the persistent chilly drizzle she imagined, that appealed. It was a place where you could disappear into the fog.

  The phone rang again, and this time Pearl reached for it. A number she didn’t recognize. She should just send it to voice mail. But she answered. There was weeping on the other line, a voice she recognized. A girl.

  “Pearl?”

  “What is it?” She could barely contain her annoyance.

  “Please come.”

  She felt a jolt, a shock of fear through her system. She extracted herself from Jason, who rolled over oblivious, still deeply asleep.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Please,” she said. “Please come. I—don’t know what to do.”

  She ended the call and lay quiet for a moment, then she got up and packed her few things. She took her duffel from the closet, stuffed in her clothes, her books, her laptop.

  She didn’t know why. Something about the dream, the call, the sound of the girl’s voice. Some strange energy on the air. She suspected that once she walked out the door, the way back to Jason, to Elizabeth, would be closed to her. A closed book, a story ended.

  When she had everything, she lingered a moment, her bag heavy on her shoulder, and stared at Jason sleeping. She searched herself for feeling—sadness, regret, longing. And, as usual, she felt nearly nothing. Maybe a twinge of something, a faint wish that things were another way.

  She gave herself a moment with the story—he proposed, they got married, maybe they moved back to Minnesota to be closer to his family. They bought a pretty house, nothing fancy, lived a quiet life—maybe had children, raised them in safety and comfort. Elizabeth took over. The story became the truth; Pearl faded to nothing, just a ghost from the past, a girl who barely ever was. She could almost see it. She could almost go there.

  Jason never stirred as she left without a sound.

  * * *

  She drove nearly an hour back to the house, leaving the little college town behind, taking the winding roads into the country. She hadn’t been there since the day she left, though Pop kept calling, inviting her to dinner. He left messages that were more like letters with updates, little snippets of news, mentions about the house, things that needed fixing. He had stories about his new little pet who he referred to annoyingly as her sister. Your sister—don’t get me wrong, she’s nothing like you—is a quick study. I think she’ll adjust to the life just fine. She kept sending him to voice mail.

  Just come home, little girl, he said in his final message. Nothing’s changed. We’re family. Family is never perfect. There are always problems, but we’re always here.

  Family.

  Pop was obviously losing his mind. The distance she’d achieved from him allowed her to see what he was more clearly. A con at best. Maybe something worse. Maybe her abductor. A killer. Stella’s murder—it remained unsolved all these years later. And where had Gracie come from? Who was she? Where was her mother?

  When Pearl brought the car to a stop, she saw the girl sitting on the porch, a slouched rag doll against the railing. She was curled up over her knees, fetal. Pearl felt a dump of dread; she sat with it. Listening to the ticking engine of her car, she thought, I should go. Far from here. But she didn’t. Because she knew it wasn’t what he wanted her to do.

  She exited and walked to Gracie, footfalls crunching on the drive.

  “What’s happened?” she asked. Her voice rang back harsh; she sounded like Stella, who never had any patience for weakness. Pull yourself together, Pearl.

  But the girl just shook her head, expression blank. Pearl moved in closer and saw that there was a dark skein of blood down the front of her shirt, on her hands, under her nails. Those pale blue eyes were staring at something a million miles away.

  “Are you hurt?” Pearl asked. Her voice calm, softer now. It seemed to disappear in the heaviness of the air.

  Another slow shake of her mousy head.

  The door stood ajar, light casting a yellow rectangle onto the boards. Silence. The night held its chilly breath. Pearl climbed the steps to the porch, the wood creaking beneath her weight. Slowly. She paused at the top, trying to quiet her beating heart. Then she pushed inside.

  There were two bodies, lying side by side, blood pooling. An unpleasant odor, something metallic and sharp in her nose. She took a step back, time freezing solid. Pop, faceup—a hole in his head, in his chest. He lay on his back, palms up. Eyes calm, mouth frozen in surprise, as if he died trying to believe what was happening.

  Was it another nightmare? Would she wake up? Down, down the turret that bored into the earth, a shadow behind her. But no. The details were too sharp, the odors too strong.

  “Pop,” she whispered. But he just stared back at her, knowing.

  There was no justice in the system for a con. When the tables turned, when the mark got wise, when the bill for your deeds came due, there was no one to call. There was an order to the universe, and you could only run your scam for so long.

  Beside him, a woman lay prone, the back of her head a messy pulp. Even so, Pearl recognized her. Pearl felt bile rise in her throat but she forced it back. Something about the thickness of the woman’s shoulders, her style of dress—tacky top and too-tight jeans. The dyed red of her hair. Bridget. The woman who’d rattled Pop in Phoenix.

  Never leave them with nothing left to lose. Pop hadn’t taken his own advice. He’d hurt her and she’d hunted him down.

  She stared, a siren in her head. Then, tears. They seemed to spring from her eyes of their own volition, not propelled by any feeling. Inside,
she was quiet as a tomb.

  Footsteps behind her. Soft, shuffling.

  “I killed her,” said Gracie. It was just a whisper.

  Pearl surveyed the scene. The gun Bridget clearly used to kill Pop lay near her hand, some kind of semiautomatic, she thought—but Pearl didn’t know anything about guns. Also on the ground, covered with blood and gore, a heavy jade bookend Pearl recognized from a set in the study. A Fu Lion, something Pop had taken from the bookstore. Stella had picked them up at an estate sale; Pearl remembered her elation at the find. Supposedly they protected their owners from harm. Another one of life’s little ironies.

  “I hit her from behind,” Gracie said, voice more solid. “She just—crumbled. But I was too late. She’d already shot him. He died—so fast. We were just cooking dinner.”

  Pearl could smell onions on the air.

  She couldn’t find her voice, so she turned to look at the girl. Gracie was thinner, her features more angular. A kind of common prettiness had started to emerge. Her eyes were steely, revealing a strength that Pearl wouldn’t have imagined from their few encounters where she’d largely been weeping, puking, hunched into a fetal position.

  “What do we do?” the girl asked. She gulped back a sob.

  We? thought Pearl.

  Yes, we, Pop would have said. She’s your sister. She’s all you have now.

  The shock of it started to lift. There was a problem here to be solved and she was good at that. Her brain started to work again—calculate, strategize. A solution architect.

  The property was isolated; chances were that no one heard the gunfire. Pop was a ghost. He barely existed. The only people who would ever come looking for him were already there. All good things.

  She knelt down, hesitated a moment. Careful of the pooling blood, Pearl then started looking on the woman’s body for her phone, finding it in the back pocket of her jeans. A smartphone. She pressed the home button, quickly determined that it wasn’t password-protected.