Текст книги "The Girl of Sand & Fog"

Автор книги: Susan Ward

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

 

 

CHAPTER 16

I park in the alley behind Bobby’s house, pull my keys from the ignition, and grab my stuff. After punching the security code into the back panel, I hurry across the lawn praying I don’t run into anyone. Getting caught sneaking into Bobby’s bedroom means discussion time with Linda.

Linda would take one look at my face, know shit’s going down in my world, latch on and pump me for the full 411. Linda knows and sees everything. It’s a freaking nightmare how on target she can be without ever being told anything. As for keeping my shit private, there is no such thing in the domain of Linda Rowan.

I make my way around the pool, slip into Bobby’s bedroom and flip on the light. Frowning, I drop my junk on the floor.

Where the hell is he?

I only left an hour ago.

I pull my phone from my pocket and check my texts. Nothing. Of course, he doesn’t have to tell me everything. He wasn’t expecting me back tonight. But, damn, I’m in crisis here.

I plop on the bed and start to type.

Me: Where are you?

 

I stare at the screen, expecting my usual rapid-fire response, and when nothing comes I fight the impulse to text him again and toss aside my cell.

Fuck. My gaze settles on his laptop still open on the bed. I slide it toward me and hit a key. His Facebook page comes up with an open chat box.

My entire body grows cold.

What the fuck is Caroline doing texting him? I scroll through the messages.

Caroline: Bobby, call me now. I fucked up big. I can’t reach anyone. I need help. NOW. Definite emergency. Don’t talk to Seth. Call me now!!!!!

 

Really, the I can’t reach my boyfriend, please come, fembot in distress bullshit?

Emergency my ass.

I continue to read. Crap, it doesn’t say what’s going on or where they went. Bobby must have called her. My insides grow queasy and chaotic. I can’t believe he jumped for her. I can’t believe he went. And I can’t shut off the voice inside my head wondering how often she has emergencies, how many times he’s run to the rescue, and what the fuck else I don’t know about.

Stupid?

Maybe.

Irrational jealousy?

No doubt, since Bobby isn’t a player.

But I can’t contain my spiking temper. He’s my guy. He should be here when I need him, not with her. You’re going to have a lot to answer for, Bobby Rowan, when you get back.

I exhale loudly.

Crap, I wish he were here.

My nerves feel like they’re about to snap.

Fuck.

What’s happening at my house?

Why is Alan in Pacific Palisades at long last?

I start clicking away, cyberstalking my dad. It’s galling that I have to surf the net to know what’s going on in his life. I hit a link. Nothing. Another. Nothing. Why isn’t there ever anything useful on the Internet? But nope, no answers here about what’s going on in my dad’s universe. Just the standard PR bullshit—blah, blah, blah—and Kodak tabloid moments.

Damn. I’m going to be a fucking mess until I know everything is all right with my mom. Maybe I shouldn’t have left the house, even though Chrissie wanted me to. I know it was just because she didn’t want me to hear if everything exploded but, fuck, I’m not a little girl and really there’s not much I can go through at this stage in my life any more intense than the shit I’ve already been through.

I type in my mom’s name on the search bar. Lots of links. Nothing new. At least there isn’t any gossip about Chrissie online yet. There never is. Mom’s about as boring a recording artist as they come. But, oh, there will be. Once the shit hits the fan, the rag sheets are going to be running full press 24/7.

It’s how it works whenever Alan drifts into our world.

Tabloid-mania.

Going back to school after winter break is going to be an all-out nightmare.

Grabbing my phone, I text my mom to let her know I’m at “Zoe’s.” My eyes widen when I hear the ding. She answered back—Love you. Have a good night. I didn’t expect that. Maybe things aren’t going into the crapper the first minutes of Alan’s return.

Maybe it will be OK.

For Chrissie’s sake I hope so.

Then maybe we’ll be able to move on to my issues with Alan.

It sucks to be the oldest and always have to wait.

First born.

Last priority.

That doesn’t seem right.

Exhaling loudly, I try to figure out what to do now. Maybe I should go to Zoe’s. Or should I wait for Bobby? I check my phone again.

Still no text.

My stomach turns.

Like hell I’m leaving before he comes back.

By 9:30 p.m. I’m ready to explode. How could he just blow me off this way? It’s been hours with no answer. What the fuck is he doing with Caroline?

The door opens.

I leap up off the bed and cross the room, my entire body twitching with anger. “Where the fuck have you been?”

Bobby freezes just inside the room. He frowns. “What are you doing here? I thought you had to stay home tonight.”

Really? That’s how he wants to play this?

“Don’t even try to lie to me. I know you were with Caroline. Where were you?”

He blinks at me, shocked. “Nope, not answering, and I’m not even going to ask how the hell you know who I’ve been with. But the spying shit, Kaley, not cool. You either trust me or you don’t.”

He grabs a beer from the small fridge, twists off the top, and tosses it into the trash before sitting on the foot of the bed.

“Then we’re over. I don’t need one more liar in my life and not answering me is a form of lying. You just don’t want to tell me what you’ve been doing. Pretty clear confirmation that you can’t tell me.”

He gapes. “Over? Is that really what you want to have happen here tonight?” He stares and has the gall to look angry at me. “Do you really think I’d cheat on you?”

“You’ve been with her,” I snarl. “It doesn’t matter what you did together. That’s a form of cheating.”

“There are times you have totally fucked-up logic.”

He swallows down half his beer, then sets it on the floor and tries to reach for me, but I twist away.

“Baby, why are you crying? I know you don’t really believe that I’d mess around with Caroline. What is going on, Kaley?”

I become aware of the light trickle of tears spilling down my cheeks—fuck, when did those start?—and I brush at them furiously.

“I’m surprised you care,” I counter petulantly.

His jaw clenches.

His eyes flare and widen.

He picks up his beer and polishes off the remainder. “That’s fucking sad because you shouldn’t be surprised.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m answering your question because I want to. Maybe you’ll figure out how fucking wrong you always are when you let your anger take control of your brain. I’m telling you this not because you threatened me but because I love you and I want to.”

I cross my arms and wait. I’m way out of line, I know it, but something in me won’t let me relent.

“I’ve had a fucking miserable day since you left,” he says after several minutes of squaring off with our eyes. “Caroline hooked up with some guys from Simi Valley that she shouldn’t have. The party got rough. She got scared and called me to come get her. She’s a friend and I’m not leaving her somewhere dangerous because my girlfriend might get pissed off. I picked her up. I drove her home. End of story.”

End of story, my ass!

He’s keeping something from me.

“It’s only like an hour each way to Simi,” I murmur accusingly. “You’ve been gone six hours, Bobby. What did you do? Stay to comfort her after the trauma of making an incredibly stupid decision? Is that part of you being a friend, too?”

“No, saving her from fucking gangbangers about to rape her and a pit bull attack falls into the friend category,” he snaps and every ounce of steam in me evaporates. He shakes his head, and I can see now he’s struggling to control his anger over whatever happened with Caroline. “Those fucking bastards had illegal fight dogs. They let one loose when they saw me cutting out with Caroline. I don’t know what the fuck would have happened if I’d left her there with them. Crazy shit was going down. The dog nearly got her before I shoved her into the car. I don’t know how I managed to keep it off me. It kept snarling and coming at me with its mouth open no matter how hard I kicked it, and I thought, ‘Shit, I’m going to have to kill this dog to get away’ and then some guy from the house next door shoots it, and Caroline and I just fucking burned rubber out of there without sticking around to see what happened next. Fucking insane.”

I pale and drop down on the bed beside him. “Oh God. Are you all right? Are you sure the dog didn’t get you anywhere?”

He nods, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “I’d really appreciate it if, whatever is going on with you, you’d keep the anger and verbal attacks at a minimum tonight. I’ve just pissed off a Simi Valley gang, saw a dog be executed, and have had to listen to Caroline wail for the past five hours.”

He leans forward, elbows on knees, and drops his head into his hands. It’s then I notice his muscles are still quivering from the adrenaline rush pumping through his veins from everything that’s happened.

As calm as he looks and sounds, he’s really shaken up. The events of my afternoon now seem trivial in comparison.

I stare down at the ground, not touching him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone off on you the way I did when you walked through the door. I know you wouldn’t cheat on me. Especially not with her.”

He doesn’t look at me. “No, you shouldn’t have pounced on me that way. And definitely not over her.” He sits up. “Are you going to tell me what happened with you today? Don’t tell me nothing. I can feel it when shit’s going down with you.”

I shrug. “Nothing as dramatic as your evening. It’s just…well, I saw my dad today. At my house. Alan’s back.”

His eyes widen and grow serious. “Fuck, are you OK?”

Now I want to cry. How the hell can he worry about me after the crap he’s been through?

I shrug. “Sure, why wouldn’t I be? He said I looked good. Ask me how I like my new home. And that was it. My mom wanted me out of the house and I came here. Pretty fucking uneventful.”

He pulls me into him and kisses me on the head. “It’s more than that and you know it.”

I battle back fresh tears. “It’s OK. Same shit. New day. Nothing to get worked up about.”

“Then why are you worked up?”

I lift my chin. “I’m not.”

“Bullshit.” He stands and pulls off his shirt. “I’ve got to pop into the shower. It was a pigsty there. I’ll just be a couple minutes. When I’m done, I expect you to tell me everything you’re not telling me.”

I roll my eyes. “There’s nothing to talk about. That was it. Really. Nothing else happened. It’s all peachy in my world.”

His mouth forms a tight line, but he doesn’t argue with me. He goes into the bathroom. The water turns on. I hear the shower doors open and close.

I listen to him, my head at the foot of the bed and my feet kicking over and over against the pillows. Maybe I should leave and really spend the night at Zoe’s. Dumping more crap on Bobby doesn’t seem right tonight, but it’s definitely there, a whole lot of shit, simmering inside me and wanting to come out.

I know it and so does he.

Fucking Caroline.

I’m anxious, worried, totally a mess post-seeing my dad, and she’s like a fucking arctic wall preventing me from working through what I’m feeling with my best friend.

Crap, I can’t believe I actually threatened to break up with him.

I don’t want to be like Caroline.

Drama Queen from hell.

I’m not like her.

The fridge door makes a squeak and I find Bobby, a towel wrapped around his hips, pulling out another bottle. He stretches out on the bed beside me, sitting with his back against the headboard, and twists off the top of the beer.

“You going to tell me the rest of what happened today?” he asks.

“I told you everything.”

He take a long swallow and just sits there, watching and waiting. I struggle not to look at him. It’s hard because the crazy-girl nonsense is a sure tell I’m not doing OK. And Bobby really does care. It makes it painful not to share with him, but the junk inside me is just too raw right now.

He picks up my ankle and studies my Vans. “I like your shoes. You’ve not worn them before. Where did you get them?”

Neutral topic.

Waiting and not pushing me mode.

I turn to face him. “You mean with all the spying you did of me on the Internet before we started dating you didn’t find my website? My shoe art? My videos? Kaley’s Kustom Kicks. All Ks. I used to sell them.”

I open the laptop, type in my URL, and turn the screen to face him.

“You do realize you named your website KKK?” he asks, amused.

“Of course. All things bad eventually become good with a little push. I wanted to remove KKK as a negative in American nomenclature.”

“Ambitious, aren’t you?” He’s fighting back a grin.

“No, entrepreneurial.”

He takes another sip of his beer. “Did you ever sell any?”

“I used to. A lot. But I jacked up the prices to get fewer orders because it takes quite a bit of time to paint the shoes, and I stopped the shoe art when we moved here.”

“The shoes are amazing. Why’d you stop doing it?”

I slap closed the laptop and turn on the bed.

“I guess I didn’t need it anymore. It was just something I started to keep my mind off other things the months after Jesse’s funeral. We moved twice, first to my grandpa Jack’s and then here. It was really hard watching my mom take apart our life in Santa Barbara, how quickly she got over my stepdad’s death and then knowing why once it became obvious she was pregnant. I needed something to work on, and doing the shoe art helped.”

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling, hating that something girlie and fragile slipped into my voice just then.

“It used to be a profitable website,” I add. “I’d get white Vans for twenty bucks at an outlet and sold them for 750 plus shipping. I have something like 240,000 hits on my Kaley’s Kustom Kicks website and videos even though I haven’t posted on that site for a long time. I used to try to post a new video each week of me painting shoes.”

“Capitalist,” Bobby teases, a smile in his eyes.

I shrug. “What’s wrong with being a capitalist? What’s wrong with knowing how to make your own money?”

“Nothing.”

I give him a serious stare. “You didn’t apply for college. I thought you were going to apply to USC so we could go to college together. I don’t know why you didn’t. You can’t just surf and live off your dad forever.”

“I don’t plan to live off my dad forever. But you can live off your dad forever. Alan is worth over a billion dollars,” he mocks, blowing past my comment about not applying for USC and adroitly easing into the topic of my dad.

I sit up, pushing the hair from my face. “The money won’t do me any more good than Alan ever has. I might be his daughter, but he’s never going to admit it. You should have seen the way he looked at me today. He can see it. It rattled the shit out of him. He knows I’m his daughter and won’t say a word. And even if he did decide to come clean, I wouldn’t depend on him for anything, ever. Alan can go fuck himself. It really doesn’t matter if my dad someday acknowledges me because I won’t ever forgive him. I realized that today when I saw him stare at me and then say nothing. I’ll never forgive him for that or let him be a part of my life. I’d rather die than ask him for anything. And he can leave and never come back for all I care. I’ve had enough. I hate him. I just want him gone, Bobby. I don’t want him part of my life.”

That prompts Bobby to shift back into quiet and serious. Oh crap. I don’t know what he’s thinking but I know I’m not going to like it.

“You’re not done with him, Kaley. Not by a long shot. You do know, don’t you, that you relentlessly compete with Alan?” he asks quietly in his all-knowing way. “He isn’t even aware. But you do it anyway. It must really piss you off. You are not even close to being over this.”

I give him a mocking look. “You think I’m competing with Alan Manzone? With what? My websites? My films? My shoe art? With my capitalism? That’s really a stupid theory, Bobby. You must have spent days thinking up that one.”

He shakes his head. “No, you compete with him with your attitude. All the ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ It’s not who you are. Don’t waste your time trying to be him just to get back at him. It won’t work. And the person you are is amazing.”

That comment hurts me, even though I know he intends to be constructive and not mean. I roll over on his stomach. “Is my hypersexuality, as you so kindly phrased it this afternoon, me trying to get back at my dad as well?”

Bobby gives me a lazy smile. “Maybe. Jury is still out on that one, but we’re not discussing that here.”

“Then what are we discussing?”

He pulls me up into him and surrounds me with his arms. “How did it make you feel to see your dad today?”

Those penetrating green eyes lock on me.

I make an aggravated shake of my head.

“It made me feel like shit, Bobby. How do you think it made me feel?”

His arms tighten. “I’m sorry that it felt that way. If I could fix this for you I would. I hate when you’re hurting, Kaley, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

He starts kissing my curls gently, comforting touches, nothing more. But it’s not long before I pull him into me for a deep, open-mouth kiss that makes my blood start to pump again. Then without intending this, we are heatedly kissing, touching, straining and stripping. My clothes are lying in a heap on the floor with Bobby’s towel, and he is in me.

*  *  *

Bobby collapses on the bed and takes me with him until my head is lying on his chest and we’re both struggling to breathe.

He rakes back his hair, clutches it tightly in his fingers, looks at me and exhales slowly. “As amazing as that was, there is no way we’re doing it again today. I don’t know how you got me going this time. I’m exhausted.”

I lift my face to look at him. “Have we finally reached that point where we’ve done it over and over again and can’t take any more?”

“I have—for today—but I’m not sure about you.”

I pout and then frown. He does look tired, and I’m suddenly reminded of all the crud Caroline—then I—put him through in the past eight hours.

Yep, time to let my guy sleep.

Bobby fires up a joint and seems content to silently watch me through his cloud of smoke. Good, he doesn’t want to talk either. We’ve had enough intense discussions for a single day. I’m a little brain fried, and emotionally, if not physically, exhausted myself.

Shit, I wish I could sleep. I can’t believe I’m still too amped to sleep after that last fuck. I wonder if it’s true what Bobby said, that my hypersexuality has something to do with my unresolved issues with my dad. Nope, don’t want to think about that one tonight.

I climb from the bed and pull Bobby’s t-shirt over my naked flesh.

He sets aside the joint and sits up. “You’re not leaving, are you? I thought you were staying the night.”

“I’m just going to the kitchen. I’m hungry. Want anything?”

Bobby relaxes back against his bed and shakes his head. “Try to be quiet, will you? My folks know you stay the night, they’ve given up on trying to stop that, but they would prefer not to see you. Get it?”

Frowning, I run my fingers through my hair. “No. Actually, I don’t get it.”

“If Linda doesn’t see you, she doesn’t know, then she isn’t lying to Chrissie. OK?” He watches me as I grab his UGG slippers. “Where does Chrissie think you’ve been spending your nights?”

“With Zoe. I’m a good girl, remember? Chrissie never checks. Doesn’t have to because I’m so good.”

I make a cutesy sort of face, expecting Bobby to laugh.

His expression changes into that one that pisses me off, the one he only gets when he feels a little sorry for me. “I love you, baby,” he says. “Everything is going to be fine. We’ll get through it together.”

Fuck, abrupt shift into emotional landmine territory again. A lump rises in my throat and a flash of anger pulses through my veins. I narrow my eyes at him. “Fuck you. Don’t do that. I don’t need a pity I love you when you feel sorry for me.”

Bobby’s eyes flash, surprised. “I don’t feel sorry for you. Not ever.”

“Well, you should. I’m not just here tonight because I love you. My mom wanted me fucking out of the house so I wouldn’t hear the shit going down and I didn’t have anywhere else to go. OK? I’m not here because I want to be. I’m here because I have to be.”

Crap, why did I say that? It’s not even close to reality and I’ve tapped into his anger when I didn’t want to.

He stares at me with harshly penetrating green eyes. “Then you shouldn’t be here. You should go home or to Zoe’s or anywhere else. But not here, if that’s how you really feel.”

“Fuck you.”

He picks up the joint, takes a hit, and then another one before setting it aside. “You only think you’re in control, Kaley. I let you be in control. It is the submissive who is really in control. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”

I stomp my feet into his UGG slippers until I have them on securely. “Well, fuck. I guess I’ll have to think about that one the rest of the night.”

He grabs my wrist to stop me from leaving. “Kaley, listen. I get it. I know seeing Alan is going to have you all fucked up for a while. That you’re working through a lot of shit. It’s OK. I’d rather you let it out here. With me. Because I love you and I will love you through anything.”

Now, on top of everything, he is doing it again, being a really great guy when I am being a total bitch.

I sink my teeth into my lower lip to hold back the tears.

“I’m glad that you’re here, Kaley. I’m glad that I’ve got your back through this. I don’t want you getting hurt before you resolve this junk with your dad.”

The tears come this time. I can’t stop them. He doesn’t climb from the bed, doesn’t close the space between us, but somehow I am surrounded by the feel of him, comforted without being touched by him.

He runs a hand through his hair and waits for me to look at him. “And don’t ever tell me to fuck off again when I tell you I love you. I love you, Kaley.”

“How come you’re such a good guy?”

“I don’t know that I am.”

I slip out the door, leaving Bobby naked on the bed in a cloud of pot smoke that follows me outside. I make a careful trek from the pool house to the sliding glass patio door, stepping where Bobby showed so I won’t trigger the automatic floodlights, preserving his parents’ ability to continue in non-denial denial about what I am really doing every night here since they never see me after midnight.

Carefully I close the door behind me, hear a sound and tense. After two months am I finally getting busted sneaking into the family room? Shit. I turn slowly to look into the room.

The earth drops away beneath me as I spot Alan sleeping in a chair. The house is dark, and I would have missed him if he hadn’t done the lightest bit of snoring then.

So my dad is still in Pacific Palisades. I didn’t expect that. He didn’t run off. I wonder if my mom told him about Khloe or if she lost her nerve.

What the hell is he doing at the Rowans’?

I sink down on my knees beside the chair, sitting there quietly, just studying him. Everything about me I can find in prototype on him, everything except my too-small nose and my crooked smile that I hate because it lends a flash of Chrissie’s sweetness to my features. Those are the only things I got from Chrissie’s gene set. The rest of me is him, down to the shape of our hands, the length of their fingernail beds and the shade and texture of our skin. Even our hair and eyes; the exact same shade.

I run an angry hand across my face, disappointed in myself because I can feel dampness on my cheeks. Seeing my dad is like going to see the pyramids. I look, never touch, marvel and stare. I am fucking seventeen years old and that is the sum total of my relationship with the man who gave me life. Staring at a pyramid.

I’m halfway to convincing myself to wake him up, to get the confrontation over here in the safety of the Rowan household, but Linda comes into the kitchen, sets a pair of keys on the counter, and locks me in her all-powerful stare. The look stops me cold in my tracks.

Linda’s severely beautiful face slowly softens with a look of motherly sympathy and knowing. With her brown eyes still sharply fixed on me, she gestures with her hand to be silent and follow her.

I am taken to the end of a long hallway I’ve never been down before, to a small day room that Linda has clearly appropriated for her own use. She points to the sofa and stands against the door almost in a way that suggests she is barring exit.

After a long while of silence where Linda does one of her thorough Dr. Phil searches of my face, she says, “Aha. So that’s it. That’s the anger I feel inside of you these days. I thought it was. I wasn’t certain. I didn’t want to press.”

Everything about that observation only adds to my frustration. Shit, why doesn’t anyone just talk about it to me? It’s emotionally devastating to learn how obvious I am to everyone, that no one will approach me directly, but at least Linda eventually got around to it in her no-bullshit kind of way.

I stare at her. “What makes you think he’s my dad?”

“Christ, girl, it’s the worst-kept secret in the industry.” Linda sits down on the sofa close beside me. “Everyone knows. It is still talked about sporadically when he can’t hear.”

“You’re not telling me anything,” I say in frustration.

Linda rolls her eyes. “What do you want? Do you want me to say I was in the bedroom the night you were conceived? Well, I can’t say that. Do you want me to say that your mother told me? Well, I can’t say that either. But, Christ, it is so glaringly obvious just to look at you. Chrissie has loved Manny since the age of eighteen. That’s it. Married to Jesse. Married to Neil, but in love with Manny. Only him. It’s simple logic. Only him. No one else. Obvious.”

I’m encouraged since Linda seems willing to talk about things that people in the know never talk about with me. I pull my legs up in front of me, hug them, and study Linda as I consider where to start to get the most out of this rare opportunity.

Before I can frame my first question, Linda lights a cigarette and gives me a reproaching glare. “I’d feel a lot more comfortable talking to you if you’d put your legs down so I wouldn’t have to see that you forgot to put on panties, dear.”

Oh fuck. My cheeks burn.

I drop my legs and the matter-of-factness of that observation makes me feel for the first time as though my behavior of late is wrong. Linda is a superlative mother. Calm, matter-of-fact, all knowing, and strangely tolerant and reprimanding simultaneous. A Jewish mother’s power. That’s what Bobby calls it.

“Was there ever a paternity test?”

Linda shakes her head. “It wasn’t something Chrissie would do. Not for a lot of reasons.”

“She’s spent most of her life hopping in and out of Alan Manzone’s bed. Why wouldn’t she need it? My mother is a slut who can’t keep her legs closed with him—”

The pain shooting through my cheek is so overwhelming that it nearly takes a minute to realize that Linda just slapped me hard on the face.

“Put a lid on that anger. It’s going to hurt you,” Linda says calmly. “You don’t believe that and I won’t listen to it. If you want to talk to me there will be no cheap shots at your mother. That was a really ugly thing to say.”

That makes me cry, first softly and then harder. It is like a magical power Linda has to douse the anger first in shock and then in regret. I am ashamed of myself for the second time in less than five minutes, and as awful as it is, it feels realer and nearer to myself than I’ve felt at any other moment in the past year, except in those new moments of me and Bobby.

Linda begins to slowly rock me in her arms. “Oh, Kaley. You’ve got a lot bottled up inside of you. Just don’t hurt yourself with it.”

I nod.

She brushes back my hair and smiles.

“Is my boy good to you? Does he treat you the way he should?”

My face burns darker.

Linda is the weirdest mom I’ve ever known, but did she just ask me if her son treated me well in bed?

“W-what? I’m not answering that,” I sputter.

God, this is humiliating.

Linda laughs quickly. “No. No. I’m not asking how my boy treats you sexually. God, Kaley, not that. Have I raised a good man? Is he a good man with you?”

Oh.

I nod, feeling badly for Linda and not exactly sure why. “Bobby is wonderful,” I admit. “He’s the best guy I’ve ever known.”

Linda smiles, pleased, and nods.

For a moment she seems lost in her own thoughts.

“Why are you so certain Neil Stanton is not my father?” I ask.

Linda takes a puff of her cigarette, seems to debate with herself her answer, and then says it bluntly. “It’s obvious.”

“Does my dad know the truth?”

Linda sighs. “I don’t know what Manny knows. He doesn’t talk about Chrissie with me. Not anymore. Not in a long time.”

My temper flares, because I don’t believe that last comment. Everyone talks about everything with Linda. There is just something about her and I hate the suspicion that she is lying in an attempt to protect me.

“Does he know I’m his daughter? Does he or doesn’t he? Is he part of this fucked-up pretense and lie? Does he know and pretends he isn’t?”

Linda’s head shakes in an aggravated tempo in sync with the movements of her hand as she stomps out the cigarette.

“Grow up, Kaley. Life doesn’t devolve into giant conspiracies. Life happens, sometimes quickly, and your mother was young. We make the wrong turn. It gets fucked up. It gets hard to correct. This is not a conspiracy against you, so knock that victim chip off your shoulder and be done with it. No, he doesn’t know. He is about the only one who doesn’t think it. I don’t know how things got so fucked up. But it’s not a conspiracy.”

“That’s stupid. I don’t believe any of that.”

Linda makes a face and then shrugs. “Fine. Don’t believe it. It is the truth. Love can make you see whatever you want to see. I’ve seen a lot of things with my eyes that my heart won’t let me believe. It’s how people cope, manage. You’re no different. We all muddle through believing what we want to believe.”

OK, what a fucked-up group of people I’ve been born into. I give up, and watch Linda as she rises from the sofa in a silent announcement that this is through for tonight.

I follow her back into the kitchen. In the silence we stand at the breakfast bar, picking at a bag of Oreos and staring at the sleeping pyramid in the chair. After wiping the crumbs from my face, I cross the room to the sliding door. Linda is watching me like a woman standing guard, not wanting anything to erupt in her house.