Smoke

Twenty-Nine

The box sat waiting for her when they returned home from bringing Lily back to her mother. Dax drove the Land Rover back to New York. Lydia, Jeffrey, and Lily had boarded a plane in Tampa in the interest of getting Lily back to her mother as quickly as possible. It was midmorning by the time they stepped from the elevator onto the bleached wood floor of their loft.

They’d been up all night. But Lydia didn’t even take her coat off; she went straight to the kitchen for a box cutter, then strode over to the box and slashed at its taped center. Her eyes were heavy and her body ached with fatigue and from the fall she’d taken. She would have liked to climb into bed but now was the time; if she didn’t look inside the box this morning, she never would. She had a gift for avoidance but she didn’t want to do that this time. To turn her back on what could be inside those cardboard walls would be like turning her back on a part of herself.

“Do you want me to go?” asked Jeffrey, taking off his coat. She turned to look at him. There had been times in their past together when she would have pushed him away, asked him to leave so that she could experience her emotions the only way she knew how, alone. She saw the worried uncertainty in his face and she felt a wash of sadness; she’d often treated him badly and the memory of it hurt her.

“No,” she said. “Stay with me.”

He smiled at her and sank into the couch. She knelt on the floor near his legs, leaned into the box. Inside were stacks of large leather photo albums, color faded, edges frayed with age. On top rested a single letter. There were five albums in total. She lifted one out at a time and stacked them on the floor between her and Jeffrey. He leaned in, resting his forearms on his thighs.

She sat on the floor beside Jeffrey, her shoulder resting against his leg. She took the letter in her hand, and broke the seal, unfolded the single page inside. The handwriting was thick and uncertain, the author pressing so hard in places that the ink pooled and blotched. She read the words aloud so that Jeffrey could hear.

Dear Lydia,

You can probably guess the kind of man I am, if you don’t already know from the letters I’ve sent you over the years. I have no reason to think you’ve ever read any of them. Maybe you just threw them in the trash unopened; or maybe they were kept from you. I know your grandparents aren’t especially fond of me. Never were. Can’t blame them really. There’s a voice inside of me that tells me you’ve never seen them. You’re a curious one, I know. I don’t think you could have stayed away, had you known I’d been trying to reach you.

Anyway, if you’re reading this, I guess I’ve taken leave of this place. I can’t say I’m sorry to go. When you’ve spent most of your life making a mess of things, trying in your own pathetic way to clean up and then making even more mess, it starts to get a bit wearing. I don’t imagine anyone will be shedding any tears. Not you, certainly. Not your half-sister, Estrellita or her mother Jaynie.

Some of the biggest mistakes I made involved your mother. I’d say, though you probably won’t believe me, that she was the great love of my life. Life with Jaynie was a lot easier, don’t get me wrong. Though I eventually screwed that up, too. But the love I felt for your mother… nothing ever came close to that again. Her death haunts me still today. I ask myself the question I know you must have asked yourself a thousand times. If I had stayed, would she still be with us? If I had been a different kind of husband and father, where would we all be? I think about her every night, remember her as she was when I married her. There are photos of the three of us enclosed that I know you’ve never seen. And I’m willing to bet that the woman there will be unrecognizable. When I met her, she was funny and full of passion, a prankster and a lover and there was this light inside her. I’ll admit to you that I’m the one that snuffed out that light with my cruelty and irresponsibility. And then when it was gone, I couldn’t bear to see her burned out and empty. I left her and you. But, Lydia, trust me, it was my loss. I truly believe you were better off without me.

I’m leaving these albums to you so that you can see that your mother and I shared happy times. That I held you in my arms and loved you like a father should. That as a family, we knew great joy for a short time. And most importantly, that I was always a part of your life whether you knew it or not.

I could tell you how sorry I am and try to convince you of how much I love you. I could tell you that I’ve lived my life in regret for all the mistakes I’ve made. But instead I’ll tell you the only thing I’ve learned for sure about this life:

The past disappears into the air like smoke. We might catch its scent when the wind shifts but it is irretrievable, no matter how long we gaze after it wishing. The bad thing about this is that sometimes the consequences, the charred remains of our lives cannot be repaired. The good thing is, smoke can’t bind you. It can’t hold you prisoner. Only rage and regret can do that. You always can move forward, whether you deserve to or not.

Your father,

Arthur James Tavernier

The air in the apartment seemed heavy and silent when Lydia stopped reading. She waited for tears that didn’t come, then she reached for one of the photo albums and moved up on the couch beside Jeffrey. She felt his eyes and turned to meet them.

“How are you doing?” he asked, putting an arm around her shoulder, pulling her in and putting his lips on her forehead.

She shook her head slowly, sank into him.

“I don’t know,” she said, feeling a little numb. “Sad, I suppose. But okay.”

He nodded. She flipped the lid of the photo album, one side resting on her lap, the other resting on Jeffrey. The photos were black and white, darkened and yellowing with age. But there was something so beautiful about them, about the happy couple captured there.

Her mother laughed in the arms of a fair, handsome man with light eyes and a wide, generous smile. She leaned her head against his shoulder, her mouth open, her eyes moist with her happiness.

Marion Strong straddled a motorcycle, a young woman flirting with whomever held the camera, her hands on the grips, her eyes half-lidded. Sexy, mischievous, the light her father had mentioned blasting out of her like klieg.

There were others like this; her father had been right. The woman in the photographs was nothing like the woman Lydia knew. She was dancing, she was laughing with abandon, she was sexy and flirting with the man she loved. The woman Lydia had known had been exacting and sometimes cold, never cruel, always loving, but uncompromising and strict. Surely, she’d never been young the way the woman in the photographs was young, she’d never known that kind of joy or abandon.

Tavernier held a dark-haired child with storm-cloud eyes. The little girl had her tiny arms wrapped around his neck, her head against his face. They both showed wide smiles for the camera. He was movie-star handsome with beautiful pronounced cheekbones and a strong ridge of a nose. In his eyes she saw a great capacity for humor.

She was glad to know her mother had been happy once and sad to never have witnessed it firsthand; she was glad that her mother had loved her father but sorry Marion had never shared the happy times with her. She flipped the page.

The later photos in the album showed Lydia from a distance: Lydia outside the church at her first communion, looking sweet and gazing up at her mother from beneath a veil; Lydia’s high-school graduation, where she stood on the stage, looking too thin and not smiling at all. He’d been there for all those things, standing apart in the crowd, taking pictures for an album. The thought made her tired, sad, and a little angry that he’d always been within reach. That’s when the frustrated feeling of regret came and settled in her bones.

Lydia flipped through a few more pages and then shut the cover. She gazed at the pile of letters on the table. It was too much, the pain in her chest, the ache in her head. Too much lost that could never be found. She placed the book on the table and turned to her husband. She put her hands on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him. She put her lips to his and breathed him in.

“You can finish tomorrow,” he said softly. He bent and lifted the album from her lap and stacked it on top of the others.

“I love you,” she whispered. He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. He stood and pulled her to her feet. They walked upstairs to their bedroom and made love until the present drowned out the past and until Lydia remembered that she was not a lost girl, but a woman found and claimed by herself.

Thirty

He looked older and very tired in the dim blue light of the room. And she’d never seen him look so sad. He sat uncomfortably on a vinyl chair with metal arms, slouching, his chin resting on the knuckles of one hand and he stared out a window that looked out only into blackness that she could tell. She could see orange light coming in from under the doorjamb and she felt terrible pain in her arm, her head, her throat. She was aware then of a low beeping, distant voices, a peal of laughter somewhere outside.

Okay, she thought to herself, what’s going on? She searched the room for something to orient herself but the only thing she recognized was her ex-husband and even he looked changed.

“What’s wrong?” she managed. “What’s happening?”

He jumped at the sound of her voice and looked at her, first with stunned disbelief and then with joy. He started to cry then, dropped from the chair beside her and knelt beside her bed, putting his lips to her hand.

“Jesamyn. Thank God.” He just kept saying it over and over. She wanted to reach with her other hand to comfort him but it hurt too much. She’d never seen him cry, not like that. Never heard him sob. What could make him cry like that?

“Where’s Ben?” she asked, suddenly feeling a deep dread.

“He’s fine, honey. He’s with your mom downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

He looked at her, seemed to be searching for words. But he didn’t have to. It all came rushing back… the man in leather, the car chase, the showdown on the shoulder of the road. She had him. She had him down, she remembered. How did she wind up shot? She couldn’t remember. She started to cry then. The act of it was painful.

“Dylan,” she said after a moment when she’d struck up the courage. “Please tell me he’s okay. Please.”

“Mount?” he asked quietly.

She nodded.

“Jez.”

“Please.”

“He’s alive,” he said solemnly. “Barely, but he’s alive.”

She let relief wash over her and felt her sadness and fear start to fade a little. He’d make it; he didn’t have a choice. He was her partner and she needed him. She’d tell him so as soon as she could. Then the darkness came and washed over her again.

Lily Samuels awoke with a start in her own bed, in her own apartment, and practically wept with relief at the sight of her Ikea furniture. The images from her nightmares still lingered, the white room, the restraints, the feeding tube, the sound of gunshots, the raging fire. But they weren’t nightmares; they were memories. She wondered if this was how soldiers who’d survived combat felt when they woke up after their first night home from war. She wondered if they felt as cored out and empty, the fear and anger still raging in their blood.

The sun streamed in the tall windows and she could hear her mother moving about in the kitchen. She could hear the Today show on the television. Outside the song of New York City, the horns and sirens, the buzz of a million footfalls and voices. Normal sounds. But they seemed strange. She wondered if normal would ever seem normal again. Right now, it just felt like a veneer over the dark truth of her life.

She pushed herself upright on the bed, flipped the covers back. She looked at skinny arms and knobby knees she didn’t recognize. She’d always considered herself to be a little fat; she’d dieted and exercised all her life like everyone else trying to get skinny, trying to fit the image the media plunged down her throat every day. Now she just wanted herself back, her healthy pink skin, her too-round bottom. She didn’t want to be gray and sticklike, bony and strained-looking like the girl in the bathroom mirror last night. She couldn’t wait to start eating real food again. In fact, did she smell bacon?

But there was another, much stronger urge than hunger. She looked around the room for her black case and remembered that she’d lost her computer somewhere along the line. And the notes she’d taken had to be abandoned when she fled the burning New Day compound. No matter; she remembered everything. Everything. Her fingers were itching, and her adrenaline was racing. Lydia Strong had always called this “the buzz.” That tingle in your chest, that racing urge to get the words down, to get them out before they burst through your skin.

She slid off her bed and went over to the faux leather chair at her desk. She pulled a notebook and a pen from the drawer. And then she started to write.

Thirty-One

The headline read: NIGHT FALLS ON THE NEW DAY.

Hokey but effective, thought Matt. Gotta love the Post; they knew how to write headlines. It blared out at him from Jesamyn’s hands as she read the article out loud from her wheelchair. They made quite a pair, him still in his hospital bed, the healing wound in his abdomen that nearly killed him still making it impossible to sit nearly a week after he’d taken the bullet. The shot that tore up his shoulder making it impossible for him to lift his right arm to hold the paper.

Jesamyn looked smaller than ever and was being wheeled around in a wheelchair until her bullet wound that had shattered her right thigh bone was healed enough to start rehab. Her shoulder and left calf were healing fine. Her memory of that night was still sketchy. She’d killed the shooter, who remained unidentified. The second van had not yet been found. But the important thing was that they’d both be okay, a hundred percent eventually. They both had a long road ahead of them, but neither of them was complaining. It definitely beat the alternative.

“I think your kid probably weighs more than you right now.”

She peered over the paper at him. “You’re pretty ballsy for someone who’s totally defenseless.”

“What are you gonna do-roll over me with your wheelchair?”

“Are you going to let me finish this?”

He nodded.

“Officials from The New Day have officially distanced themselves from what they refer to as the Rhames Division of their church. Officials claim that he joined as a member in 1998 and moved up the ranks of the organization until he was eventually awarded his own Initiation Center in Riverdale and control of one of their businesses, the New Day Farms in Central Florida. At a certain point, The New Day asserts, Rhames broke contact and affiliation from the organization and that they have been on the verge of initiating legal action to stop him from using their name. The techniques of brainwashing and the usurping of member funds are neither employed nor condoned by The New Day, claimed one official. Likewise, they deny any involvement in what appears to be the framing of NYPD Detective Mateo Stenopolis in the beating death of Katrina Aliti and the shooting of witness Clifford Stern.

“In spite of their disassociation from Rhames, an official federal investigation has been opened into The New Day. Charges could include kidnapping, extortion, coercion, and fraud. And past complaints from former New Day members, including some that ended in the complainant’s mysterious deaths, will be reexamined.”

“So what does that mean?” asked Matt.

“It means that Trevor Rhames takes the fall in the public eye and for The New Day, it’s probably business as usual. A couple of well-placed contributions and I bet that investigation goes away.”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Lydia Strong, walking into the room with an armful of pink and white tulips in one hand and a large white take-out bag in the other. Jeffrey Mark was behind her.

“Hey,” said Matt. “The nurse’s station told me that you’ve been calling to check up on me.” He tried to rise a bit on instinct and received a nasty reminder from his middle that it wasn’t an option.

“I don’t know what they’re feeding you in here,” she said. “But I brought you some take-out from the Greek place where we ate together.”

He could smell it from where he lay. “You rock. I don’t know if they’ll let me eat it… but just the smell is making me feel better.”

“We’ve never met,” said Lydia, holding her hand out to Jesamyn. She took it and gave Lydia a smile. “But these are for you, Detective Breslow.”

“Thank you,” she said. “They’re gorgeous.”

“This is my husband, Jeffrey Mark,” she said. Jesamyn nodded and took his hand.

“Good to meet you both. Thanks for bringing Lily Samuels home.”

Matt thought he detected a note of sadness in her voice but when he looked at Jez’s face, she was smiling. Maybe he was the one who was sad it hadn’t been them to help Lily.

“You both look like you’re on the mend,” said Jeffrey, moving into the room and leaning against the windowsill.

“We’re getting there,” said Matt. “I’ve been dying to hear what happened that night in Florida.”

Lydia told them about their visit from Grimm and their fall down the hole. She told him how Dax blasted them out and the ATF tried to hold them as scapegoats, then changed their minds and let them return home with Lily. She told him about their last visit with Tim Samuels and then about his suicide, and how a former employee from his company, Body Armor, was linked to the jewel robbery on the service road at JFK.

“So did you figure it out? What deal he made and with who?”

“The beneficiary on his policy was his wife, just as it should have been. Now she and Lily are left with nothing. The only one he screwed with his suicide was his family.”

“Seems like he had a lot of practice at that,” said Matt.

“And Rhames?” said Jesamyn.

“He disappeared that night. With his resources and connections… he’s going to be hard to find.”

“Is anybody looking?”

Lydia looked away and Matt could tell that there was more to say but that she wouldn’t say it to him.

“So how is she?” asked Matt, trying and failing to seem casual. He was nursing a fantasy that she would come to see him, but that hadn’t happened.

“Lily? Tough enough to write that article,” said Lydia, nodding toward the newspaper in Jesamyn’s hand. “But I think it’s a long road back to normal.”

His eyes traveled over to some pink roses that sat on the dresser across from his bed. “She sent those, thanking us for searching for her and not giving up.”

“She’s a good kid, stronger than I would have guessed. She’ll be okay,” said Lydia. She went on, saying how Lily and her mom were living together in Lily’s apartment for the time being, trying to move forward together, but Matt stopped listening. He was watching Jesamyn who suddenly had gone pale; she had a dazed expression on her face, her head cocked to one side.

“Jez?”

“Oh, shit,” she said. She held the paper in her hand and was looking at it closely. “This picture.”

She handed the paper to Lydia. She saw the picture of Mickey and Michele LaForge that she’d taken from Lily’s apartment early in the investigation. It was the only recent picture they had of the woman who remained at large, so Lydia had returned it to Lily for her article.

“What?” said Mount.

“The second van, the shooter that got me in the shoulder. There was a couple… a gorgeous woman with long blonde hair and a young guy. He shot me.” She let her sentence trail off, shook her head, and they all looked at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve only had this really vague memory of that night. And this picture-it’s shaken something loose.”

Lydia felt her heart thump. “That man is Mickey Samuels,” said Lydia. “He’s dead, Detective Breslow.”

Jesamyn nodded slowly. “I know,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “But I’d almost swear to it. These are the people in the second van.”

“Is it possible?” said Matt.

Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged a look, both afraid that it was entirely possible… and that they’d been wrong about everything all along.

Where are we going?” asked Jeff, gripping the dashboard as Lydia quickly wove the Kompressor through the thick street traffic. She saw him pump his right leg, instinctively reaching for the breaks. He didn’t like the way she drove. He said she was an “offensive” driver rather than a “defensive” driver. But Lydia believed that, even in driving, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

“To Riverdale. To talk to Dax.”

“Why? What does he have to do with this?”

She glanced at him and then put her eyes back on the road. “Think about it.”

He stared ahead for a moment and then lifted his hands. “You lost me.”

“Something Lily said in the motel. When I asked her what secrets her stepfather could be keeping that were bad enough to sacrifice his children. Something her mother would go along with.”

“She said she didn’t know. She said something possibly to do with Body Armor or with his military career before he met her mother.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You think Dax might know something about that?” he said.

She cut across two lanes, leaving an angry cabby leaning on his horn. “Remember what Grimm said about Sandline?”

“What about it?”

“How you don’t get fired from a company like that; you get eliminated.”

“So?”

“Okay, so what if Samuels worked for Sandline, too? What if he and Rhames knew each other from way back then? And what if that’s the reason he couldn’t say anything to help himself. All the mistakes he supposedly made, like his wife and Lily said, this dark past. He was willing to sacrifice Lily and Mickey. Maybe he didn’t reveal it because he couldn’t, not because he just didn’t want to.”

“Out of some kind of loyalty to Sandline?”

“Or fear of what they would do to him.”

“But his life was already in shambles. The New Day killed his stepson-or so he believed-took his daughter, his wife had left him. He stood to lose all his money. What else could they take from him?”

“His life; until he took it himself.”

Jeffrey tapped his finger on the door handle, was silent for a moment. “Maybe Dax was right after all; suicide as the ultimate act of control.”

“Or surrender.”

“Okay, say any of this is true. What does Dax have to do with it?”

“I just think he knows more than he’s saying.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “If he knew something that would help us, he would have told us.”

“Not if he thought he was endangering us by doing so.”

More silence. Then, “Where does Mickey fall into this?” asked Jeffrey.

“If Detective Breslow truly did see him that night and he’s still alive, then we have to assume that he’s in partnership with The New Day and not a victim,” said Lydia.

Jeffrey shook his head. “Since Florida we’ve been thinking that he infiltrated The New Day to help Tim Samuels and either they fucked him up so badly that he killed himself, or he got too close and they took care of the job for him.”

“But maybe Mickey was working with them,” said Lydia, thinking aloud.

“But why? And how would they even have come in contact with one another?”

“Maybe Rhames sought him out. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Did Mickey really consider Tim Samuels his enemy?”

“I guess it depends on what those dark secrets are, on what Trevor Rhames may have told Mickey about his stepfather’s past.”

When they got to Dax’s house, the windows were dark and the gate was locked. Lydia rolled down the car window and pressed the buzzer near the gate but the box was silent. She stared at it worriedly, as if doing so would cause him to answer. But it didn’t work. She felt a rise of dread in her chest.

“He’s not here,” she said pointlessly. She turned anxious eyes on him.

He released a breath. “Oh no,” he said raising his hand. “You don’t want to break in.”

She looked at him.

“Bad idea,” he said. “Very bad idea.”

She had to agree with him. She took her cell phone from the center console and dialed Dax’s number. The voicemail picked up before the first ring.

“Leave a message. No names, no numbers. If I don’t know who you are, you shouldn’t be calling.” A long tone.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s urgent. Seriously.”

She ended the call and looked with dark frustration at the windows of his house. She fought the urge to pound the dashboard with her fist.

“What now?” she asked, as much of herself as of Jeffrey.

He was quiet a second. Then, “I think I know where we can get some information.”

He got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s side. “I’m driving.”

She rolled her eyes and slid over to the passenger seat.

“Control freak,” she said.

Manny Underwood looked as if he’d been on the losing end of an argument with a jackhammer. He lay on a thin cot in the center of a stone room beneath the streets of the diamond district. He turned swollen eyes on them when they entered the room.

“You can’t keep him here forever,” Jeffrey said to Chiam Bechim.

“We’re very patient people. But, no,” the old man said solemnly, “we can’t.”

“So what are you going to do with him?”

“All we want to know is where the rest of the stones are,” he said vaguely.

“And who he was working for.”

Chiam shifted on his feet, his eyes on Lydia. He leaned into Jeffrey and whispered, “This is not a place to bring a woman, Mr. Mark.”

“She’s no ordinary woman,” said Jeffrey with a smile. “She’s my wife.”

Chiam made some kind of uncomfortable throat-clearing noise and looked over at Underwood. “He has been wholly uncooperative. But I have the sense that under the right circumstances, he might begin to loosen up.”

Jeffrey looked at him.

“We’re employing a program of gradual escalation,” Chiam said softly, as if he were a doctor discussing the treatment of a terminally ill patient.

The man on the cot released a low groan. He didn’t sound healthy and Jeffrey felt a wash of compassion for him.

“Don’t feel too badly for him, Mr. Mark,” said Bechim, reading his expression. “This is a very bad man, guilty of some heinous acts. When we enter this business and conduct ourselves poorly, we all know where we might wind up.”

The old man’s words were a warning and Jeffrey felt them in his bones. He felt Lydia stiffen at his side. He turned a cold stare on Chiam.

“All I’m saying is that you might just ‘escalate’ yourself out of what you want to know.”

“If you think you can do better, be my guest,” he said. He turned and left, leaving Lydia and Jeffrey alone in the cellar with Underwood. Jeffrey didn’t hear the door at the top of the staircase open or close so he knew Chiam was nearby, listening.

“Mr. Underwood,” Jeffrey said softly. “If you talk to us, we might be able to help you out of this mess.”

Underwood jumped at the sound of his name, struggled to sit up and couldn’t. Another low groan accompanied by a gurgling sound in his chest.

“You’re thinking if you tell them what you know then they’re going to kill you. And you might be right. But if you cooperate with me, I’ll do my best to see that doesn’t happen.”

Manny turned to look at Jeffrey, moving his head slowly to the side. His face was purple and swollen and Jeffrey doubted that he’d recognize the man before the beating he’d received.

“Did Trevor Rhames hire you to steal those diamonds?”

He jumped at the sound of Rhames’s name but didn’t say anything. Jeffrey waited a minute for him to speak.

“We found a pink diamond in an abandoned house in Riverdale that we know is connected to The New Day. We believe that diamond was in the cache stolen from the dealer who was killed at the JFK airport. Who hired you to do that job?”

Still nothing from Underwood. Jeffrey waited a beat and then released a low sigh.

“Okay, this is what we’re thinking, Mr. Underwood. We’re thinking that Rhames had an issue with Tim Samuels, your former employer. That he bought Body Armor when Samuels put it up for sale and has been using it as a front to launder stolen money and gems. We think that you went to work for Rhames when he bought the company, just like the mercenary that you are and shifted easily from doing legitimate bodyguard work to being a thug for hire. You were unlucky enough to get caught by the people whose diamonds you helped to nab; now you’re stuck. No one’s going to help you because you’re a mercenary. If you give up your employer, you’re going to die. If you don’t, you’re going to die. So what are you doing-just buying time?”

Underwood started to shake a bit and made a low, horrible noise. “You don’t understand,” he said.

“Make me understand,” said Jeffrey

More shaking from Underwood. It was disturbing, making Jeff uncomfortable. He looked over at Lydia who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, eyes narrowed on Underwood.

“He gets in you. Whatever they do to me here can’t compare to what he can do.”

Jeffrey heard Lydia draw in a breath and release it slowly.

“Rhames?” he asked.

Underwood nodded. Jeffrey noticed that a pool of blood was collecting beneath him, thick and black in the dim light.

“Manny, he can’t do anything more to you.”

“You saw what he did to Samuels and his family. And they were friends once. Imagine what he’d do to my kids.”

Jeffrey watched as tears mingled with blood and traveled down Manny’s face. He reached for Jeffrey’s arm and gripped his wrist hard. “He knows everything. They’ll never be free. No matter where they go or how they try to hide. And he’ll wait until they think they’re safe, until they think he’s forgotten them or that he’s dead. And then he’ll move in and lay waste to their lives. That’s what he does.”

Jeffrey looked at Underwood’s eyes and saw that he was starting to get a dazed look. He wasn’t sure what to ask next.

“How did they know each other?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago; that was the rumor anyway. There was bad blood. No one knew what.” He was using all his strength to force the words out; it was painful to hear the horrible croaking of his voice.

“They worked together at Sandline?” asked Lydia.

Underwood didn’t say anything. He turned his eyes back to Jeff; his face was too ruined to read his expression.

“Do yourself a favor,” he said softly. “Stay out of it.”

Jeff nodded. Underwood’s eyes went blank then and he didn’t say anything else. Ever.

Thirty-Two

They brought the Kompressor to a stop in front of Lily Samuels’ apartment building and idled.

“We shouldn’t be here. What if we’re wrong?” said Lydia anxiously.

“Well, then. We’re wrong.”

“We need more evidence before we bring this to them. Right now we just have our hunches, the damaged memory of an injured police officer and the word of a man who was being slowly tortured to death,” said Lydia. “Lily’s fragile, just barely able to accept that her brother is gone. If we bring this to her and then it turns out that we’ve made another wrong assumption, we’ll be hurting someone who doesn’t need any more hurt in her life.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“Let’s go home, regroup, and try to corroborate some of this info.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh.

“Why would Underwood lie? He knew he was dying; that’s why he told us as much as he did.”

“Why does anyone lie, Jeffrey? Because they can.”

“Awfully cynical.”

“Just drive. Please.”

Before the elevator doors opened into their loft, they heard the television on inside. Jeffrey reached for his gun and Lydia quickly put her hand on his.

“Dax has a key, remember?”

Jeffrey rested his hand on the Glock at his waist but didn’t draw the weapon. He’d given Dax a key when he was charged with protecting Lydia from Jed McIntyre and never asked for it back. Dax hadn’t been up and around without their help much in the last year so he hadn’t had the need to let himself in recently. Still, it wasn’t good to make assumptions.

The doors opened but the apartment was dark except for the large flat-screen television in the living room. A huge dark form sat on the edge of the couch, feet up on the coffee table. An episode of South Park was turned up too loud. An arm the size of a jackhammer reached out and the light on the end table came up. Dax turned to look at them.

“What are you two looking so tense about? You said it was urgent, yeah?”

Lydia started to breathe again and wondered when she’d become so jumpy.

“Yeah,” she said, dropping her leather coat over one of the chairs and stepping down into the sunken living room. “It’s urgent.”

“Great,” he said. “Can we talk over pizza? I’m starved.”

She sat on the coffee table and looked at him, reached for the remote, and flipped the television off.

“This is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking all of this started a long time ago. I’m thinking Rhames and Samuels both worked for Sandline.”

The smile dropped from Dax’s face and he got that granite look, those flat eyes he got when she pushed too hard into his past.

“I think Rhames and not The New Day was trying to ruin Tim Samuels’ life. And I think he convinced Mickey to help him.”

Dax sat silent and Jeffrey came up behind him.

“What I don’t understand is what Tim Samuels did that could cause Rhames to hate him so much for so long, what could cause Mickey Samuels, the boy Tim raised like his own, to join forces with a psychopath and do all the awful things he’s done.”

“And you think I know the answer to that?”

“I think you know something about Sandline. And if you do, maybe you know something about what might have happened between those two.”

Dax got up and walked toward the window on the other side of the television. He drew in and released a breath.

“If I knew something that would help you, do you think I would keep it from you?”

“If you had to or thought you had to, yes,” she said to his back. “There are huge parts of your life we know nothing about.”

He nodded but kept his back to her. “And that’s probably not going to change. But I’m telling you the truth when I say that I don’t know anything about this situation.”

Lydia sighed and leaned back on the couch. She looked at the familiar form of their friend and thought he seemed like a stranger. She didn’t think he would lie to her but she realized she didn’t know for sure. And she wondered what that meant about their relationship. Can you trust someone who chooses what he reveals about himself? Can there be a true friendship with someone who hides huge parts of his life? Lydia didn’t know. She felt a strange sadness, an odd distance from him as he came to sit across from her on the low, stout cocktail table.

“What I can tell you is that no one talks about Sandline. Everything about them, including whatever you’ve done for them, is classified. You violate that agreement and they burn your life down-not just your life, but the life of anyone you’ve told.”

“If that’s true, then I don’t know where to go from here.”

He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“There’s only one place we can go, I think,” said Jeffrey.

“Grimm, right?” said Lydia, leaning forward looking at Dax. “How do we find him?”

Dax smiled. But the smile was cool and didn’t reach his eyes. “You’ll never see Grimm again.”

“There’s only one person who knows what links Rhames and Tim Samuels,” said Jeffrey, coming to sit beside her. “There’s only one person who might know the secret that would cause Mickey to turn against his stepfather like this, destroying his whole family in the process.”

Lydia rubbed the tension from her neck. “Monica Samuels,” she said. “She wouldn’t tell us before.”

“Let’s try again,” said Jeffrey.

Thirty-Three

They found Monica Samuels at Lily’s apartment, looking pale and shaken.

“The police were just here,” she told them as she held the door open for them. “They say Mickey may be alive, that he tried to kill a police officer. Can that be true?”

She looked at them with wide eyes and her skin was gray and papery. She seemed fragile, barely solid, as though the news the police had brought her might carry her away like a tornado.

“Where’s Lily?” asked Lydia, looking around the small apartment.

“She left,” said Monica, looking at the door.

“To find Mickey?” asked Jeffrey.

“Mostly to get away from me, I think,” said Monica, sinking into the couch and curling her legs up beneath her.

“You fought?” asked Lydia sitting beside her. Jeffrey leaned against the granite countertop. Lydia released a breath when Monica didn’t answer.

“Let us help you,” Lydia said. “This has to end. Whatever you’re hiding has destroyed your life.”

Her face stayed blank, her eyes glazed over. “It’s too late, I think. The family is shattered, just like he wanted. Just like he’s wanted since he was a little boy.”

“Why would he want that?”

She rested her forehead in her bony, well-manicured hand. “Because he thinks we killed his father.”

“Simon Graves?”

Monica nodded. “They’re so alike, that same dark place inside of them. They disappear in there. It swallows them… the anger, the sadness.”

Lydia didn’t say anything, waited for her to go on.

“Simon had Mickey with him that day when he walked in on Tim and me making love. We were at Tim’s house on the island, you’ve been there. Simon and Mickey came strolling in. We were by the fire.”

“They knew each other?”

“They were close friends,” she said, looking at Lydia. “And they worked together.”

“At Sandline,” said Lydia.

Monica startled, like the sound of the word frightened her. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “How do you know that? We’re never to talk about that.”

“So all of them, Rhames, Samuels, and Graves worked together?” Jeffrey said from the counter.

Monica gave the slightest nod. But that’s not what she wanted to talk about. There were other things she wanted to lay down before Lydia. “Mickey was too young to really understand what he was seeing. And because he was there, Simon just picked him up and left us without a word.” She laughed a little. “Part of me was glad he found us. All the lies and sneaking around were finished. I figured he’d leave me; we’d all pick up the pieces and move on. I could finally be free of that darkness that leaked out of him like a fog. It was killing me.”

“But he killed himself instead.”

“Several weeks later, yes,” she said, her hand flying to her mouth, the tears starting to fall.

“And Mickey blamed you and Tim.”

“At first, yes,” she said with a quick nod, wrapping her arms around herself.

“What changed?”

She seemed to shrink a little here, wanted to make herself as small as possible. “He was young, too young to really understand what he saw. Simon tried to spare Mickey by hiding his anger that day. But you can’t really hide things from children. ‘You made Daddy so sad and now he’s gone,’ he’d say to me afterward. ‘Why was he so sad?’ ”

She paused here, released a shuddering sigh. Then, “We couldn’t take it. We didn’t want Mickey growing up with that memory.”

“And you didn’t want him reminding you.”

She looked at Lydia and shook her head. “Over a period of months, we were able to convince Mickey that he hadn’t seen what he thought he saw, that it was a dream.”

Lydia shook her head, not understanding. “How?”

“Using the psych ops Samuels learned in the military?” asked Jeffrey.

She looked at him as if she had forgotten he was there. Then she nodded. “With the help of Trevor Rhames. It was his area of specialty, tampering with people’s minds, their memories, creating or erasing the events of their lives to comfort or torture them depending on his agenda. We thought we were helping him.

“But you can only calm the surface. The depths of him were teeming with these repressed memories. The depression that Lily never knew about, the medication, that’s why?” Lydia tried to keep the judgment out of her voice but she wasn’t sure she’d succeeded.

Monica shook her head. “He was prone to depression to begin with, just like his father.”

“But this didn’t help, tampering with his memories.”

She shook her head again, more slowly. “No. It didn’t help.”

“So Rhames and Tim Samuels were friends once,” said Jeffrey. “If he helped you to erase Mickey’s memory, there must have been a relationship. What happened?”

“I can’t talk about these things,” she whispered, pleading to Lydia with her eyes.

Lydia leaned into her. “It’s time. All of this-don’t you see that it’s toxic, it’s poisoning your life? There’s not much left to lose.”

Monica looked at Lydia and wrapped her arms tighter around herself. She shook her head and pulled her mouth into a straight line. Then she seemed to soften, to change her mind about something. When Monica spoke again it was little more than a whisper.

“They knew each other long before Sandline. This all happened before we even knew Sandline existed. But that’s all I can tell you.”

Lydia wanted to grab Monica Samuels and shake some sense into her but she was surprised by a voice behind them.

“Tell her, Mom. Tell her everything. She’s the only one we can trust now. Sandline’s gone; they don’t even exist anymore. It’s Rhames we have to worry about.”

Lydia turned to see Lily standing in the doorway. She wore jeans and leather boots, a long black coat. Without her hair, her face gaunt and still, she looked haunted. And Lydia guessed she was and would be-maybe forever.

Monica looked at her daughter with sad, frightened eyes. She seemed to steel herself.

“I don’t know if Tim would have called Rhames a friend, even then. They’d served together in the Marines. Tim consulted with him in the private sector over the years. They were colleagues, I suppose, more than anything. I guess Rhames might have thought they were friends. But I was always a little nervous around him and so was Tim. Rhames had tremendous skills in certain areas.”

“And you used those skills to erase Mickey’s memories,” said Jeffrey.

She nodded, her head hung.

“So at some point they went to work together at Sandline?” asked Lydia.

“Rhames went to work for Sandline. Tim only operated as a consultant. He had his own security firm by then, though it wasn’t called Body Armor yet. But he had a team of people who worked for him; sometimes the whole team would go to work for Sandline, but only on a job-by-job basis.”

“So what happened?” asked Lydia. “Why did Rhames grow to hate your husband so much?”

She sighed. “Rhames was reckless, dangerous. He was brilliant with the psych ops but on the field he was a kamikaze. During a Sandline op he made a tactical error and about ten men were killed. He led them into an ambush that most soldiers would have seen coming a mile away. That represents a big loss to a company like Sandline, loss of manpower, plus big payouts to the families.”

“So they wanted to get rid of him,” said Jeffrey.

Monica nodded.

“And they commissioned Tim Samuels to do that?” asked Jeffrey. “Because they were friends, because Rhames trusted him.”

Monica smiled sadly. “No.”

She sat up then, put her feet on the floor. She straightened her shoulders and seemed to come alive a bit. “Not Tim,” she said. “Me. I shot Trevor Rhames and thought I’d killed him. I emptied my gun into his chest and he fell three stories.”

“You worked for Sandline,” said Lydia, incredulous. The waif before her looked as if she could barely support her own body weight.

Monica nodded. “Not for Sandline, per se. I was one of the people on Tim’s team. I wasn’t always the emotional mess you see today.”

“No,” said Lily. “Once you were a killer just like my father.” The vitriol in her voice was palpable. Monica looked at her daughter with blank eyes.

“I was a soldier. I was one of three women; they needed us. We could go where men sometimes couldn’t. We aroused less suspicion. But you’re right, they chose me for the job because they knew Rhames trusted me.”

“And how did you feel about him? Killing a man who’d helped you in friendship.”

“I didn’t feel anything. We weren’t trained to feel; not in that context. It was a job and I completed it-or so I thought.”

“But part of you was glad, right?” asked Lily. “That the only person who wasn’t personally invested in keeping your secrets was dead?”

“No,” said Monica, shaking her head vigorously. “No. It never entered my mind.”

“Must be nice to operate without a conscience, Mom,” said Lily, keeping cold eyes on her mother. Monica just sat there, taking her hits. She deserved Lily’s anger and her judgment, and Monica knew it.

“Oh, and there’s more,” said Lily, moving into the room from the doorway where she’d been standing. “Did she get to the best part?”

Lydia shook her head. She wanted to reach for Lily but she was a bottle rocket, fuse sizzling; Lydia wasn’t sure when she was going to blow.

“Simon Graves was not my father; Tim Samuels was. But I was never allowed to know that because to reveal it would be to undermine the memory altering they did on Mickey. So because of all their lies and all the black, terrible things they did, I never knew he was my father. Isn’t that sick?”

They were all silent for a second, the air electric with Lily’s rage.

“This is what happens to you when you fuck with Trevor Rhames,” said Monica, to no one in particular. “He cores you, destroys you from the inside out.”

Lily looked at her mother with undisguised hatred. “But he can only do that if there’s an empty space inside you, someplace dark where he can get his hooks in.”

Monica nodded, looked away from her daughter, to Lydia, and then into the space above her head. She leaned back into the couch. “I thought he was dead,” she said pointlessly.

Lily released a disgusted breath but didn’t say anything.

“So what kind of deal did Tim make with Rhames?” Lydia asked Monica.

“I really don’t know. He called me that night,” said Monica, tearing. “He told me that he’d made everything right and that Lily would be home soon. That was the last time I spoke to him.”

“I don’t think he made his deal with Rhames,” said Lily, leaning against the wall. She seemed cool, dispassionate suddenly, and Lydia thought she was in some kind of shock. “I think he made the deal with Mickey.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Lydia.

“Because it’s so perfect. It’s like poetic justice. My parents’ infidelity so wrecked Simon Graves that he ended his life; Mickey wanted Tim’s life to end the same way. It’s childish, like a child’s tantrum. Only this child is grown and gone mad, with the help of my parents and Trevor Rhames.”

They’d created a honeycomb of lies and deceptions, Tim and Monica Samuels, and tried to build their life upon it, thought Lydia. And all these years, Trevor Rhames had just been waiting to put his boot through it.

Thirty-Four

The water was painfully cold but she stood ankle deep in it, her jeans rolled up, her feet bare, and looked back at the house just as she’d done a hundred, a thousand times. The sea was moody gray with high, forceful waves and thick whitecaps; it just barely seemed to be containing its anger. Or maybe she was just projecting.

She tried to imagine other people living in that house, other people laughing, crying, fighting, putting their keys in the door and turning the lock to come home. She tried to imagine another little girl sleeping in her room, getting ready for her first day of school, her first slumber party, her prom. She’d always hoped to get married at this house. But she guessed it was a little dream to lose compared to everything else she’d lost. Her brother, her father, even her mother through her various betrayals now just seemed like a stranger to Lily, someone she could not understand and was not sure whether she could forgive.

When her mother delivered the news that Tim Samuels was her father, it didn’t even come as a surprise. Hadn’t she always known it on a cellular level? She might have been able to forgive them for that. After all, she’d always thought of him as her father; he’d loved her and raised her well. Biology didn’t matter all that much, did it?

It was all the rest of it. Her parents’ awful past, what they did to Mickey, what Mickey became as a result of that. That Trevor Rhames was free. Those were the things that were killing her inside. Angry tears spilled down her face and she felt like she had a rock in her throat where the injustice sat, impossible to swallow and digest.

Her mother stepped out through the French doors and leaned against the railing, gave her a wave that meant, “Come in. It’s too cold out here.” But Lily turned her back. Her mother was collecting photographs and knickknacks, the detritus of their ruined lives, putting them in boxes. Lily wanted no part of anything like that. She’d only come to say good-bye to her home, her father, and the little girl who used to love them both. She would cut it all loose, let the ocean take it and start again.

She turned around again to look at her mother. But she was gone. On the balcony, there was a man. He had close-cropped, bleached-blond hair, wore a pair of black jeans and a hooded gray sweatshirt. She frowned, felt her heart lurch. Then she started to run toward the house as the man turned and walked inside. The sand slowed her progress as she ran with all her strength. Finally, she reached the wooded walkway and pounded toward the balcony. She flew up the stairs.

Inside her mother sat on the chintz couch weeping, and beside her stood her brother, changed in every way, his appearance, his aura, but still her brother. She didn’t know whether to punch him or embrace him. She threw herself at him in some combination of those things, screaming at him in a voice she barely recognized.

“You bastard,” she yelled. “You fucker.”

He held onto her and let her pound on him with her fists. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” She just kept saying it over and over, like the words could hurt him the way he’d hurt her, like they were blades she could throw at him. Finally, exhausted, she slumped against him, felt his arms around her. She heard Lydia Strong’s words in her head.

“Lily, I think he’ll come to you. He loves you and he won’t be able to live with himself without trying to make you understand why he did what he did. He’ll come for your forgiveness.”

She’d thought about it and knew Lydia was right.

“And when he does?” she’d asked.

What makes you think he’ll come today?” Jeffrey asked.

Where they sat in the Kompressor on the bluff, they could see Lily Samuels standing on the beach.

“The closing on the house is tomorrow; they have personal items they want to retrieve,” said Lydia, staring at the ocean. “It seems like a good day for contrition.”

Christian Striker sat in the backseat. “He’d be crazy to come back.”

“I think it’s safe to assume he’s crazy, Striker,” said Lydia. She caught his ice blue eyes in the rearview mirror and smiled.

“Look,” said Jeffrey. “She’s running. She’s running toward the house.”

Just then Lydia’s cell phone rang.

They killed my father,” Mickey said to Lily while she was still in his arms.

“And you killed mine,” she whispered.

“I didn’t kill him. He killed himself.”

The irony of his own words was completely lost on him. She pulled away from him and looked into his eyes. He looked a little unhinged, a little vacant.

“Mickey,” she said softly. “Your father committed suicide. No one killed him.”

“Their actions, their betrayal killed him,” he said, waving a disgusted hand at their mother.

“You father was unwell, Mickey,” Monica said softly. “He abused me. He abused you-”

“Don’t do that,” Mickey screamed. “Don’t tell lies to make what you did okay. You betrayed him, you tampered with my mind-my mind.”

Monica stood and reached for him. “We wanted you to forget, to move on and live a happy life. We didn’t want the ghost of that day haunting you.”

He pushed her away and she landed on the couch, put her head in her hands. “Get away from me,” he yelled. “Stay away.”

“You’re acting like a child, Mickey,” said Lily. “Grow up.”

He looked at her in surprise. The wind wailed outside and the smell of salt was strong in the air. The door stood open and the room was growing cold.

“You burned the house down, okay,” she said, spreading her arms. “Figuratively speaking, anyway. You’ve avenged your father; you’ve ruined your mother. You got everything you wanted, right? What I don’t get is-why me? I’ve never done anything but love you.”

He looked as his feet, then up into her eyes. She saw shame and a pouty, childish anger there. She wanted to slap his face.

“You were the only thing they really loved,” he said with a shrug. “Their marriage went to shit. They thought I was dead, and they were about to lose all their money; Tim thought he might possibly go to jail, and they were still standing. It was only when Tim thought he’d lost you that he started to unravel, that he started bargaining with his life.”

She thought about it a second.

“So that was the deal you made. He ended his life and you spared mine.”

“He came to see us; he wanted to deal. He said if we killed him and made it look like an accident, that there would be insurance money. His cash and assets would cover his debt to the IRS and he knew he could get Mom to hand over the insurance money if it meant your life. He wanted to buy you back.”

“But it was never about money,” said Lily.

He shook his head. “I have money, Lily. I always have. I just wanted him to look down the barrel of that gun and see what my father saw: hopelessness, despair, the end of a life badly lived. I wanted him to die with all his sins and failings staring back at him from that cold metal eye. Just like my father. And I wanted her to be left with nothing. That was the deal, not some paltry insurance payout.”

“And he agreed.”

“As long as I promised to let you go when the deed was done.”

“How did he know you’d keep your word?”

“He knew I loved you. That was the only thing we ever had in common. We both loved you so much.”

Lily sank to the couch, feeling suddenly like her own legs couldn’t hold her. Monica wept quietly beside her.

“How did Rhames find you?”

“He always knew where we were. He was watching for years, waiting.”

He sighed, paced the room for a second.

“He came to see me when Body Armor went on the market. He was just in my apartment one night when I came home. I was terrified, thought he was some kind of maniac. But he knew things about us, about our life, about Monica and Tim. He knew everything. And then he helped me to retrieve my memories. Memories he had helped to erase.”

“That’s when you quit your job and moved to Riverdale, opened No Doze.”

He nodded. “I wanted to tell you but I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

She let out a little laugh. “You’re right about that.”

“That’s why I distanced myself from you.”

“You staged everything: the suicide, the journals.”

“I knew you wouldn’t believe I could kill myself. And I knew you’d come looking for answers. And you did. We always have known each other so well.” He came to kneel beside her but she stood and walked away.

“Who was that in the car? Who died there that night?”

Mickey closed his eyes. “I don’t know who,” he said, looking away from her. He walked over beside her and they both stared out at the surf. “Rhames took care of that. He made sure the face was unrecognizable, put him in some of my clothes, and staged the scene to look just like my father’s suicide. My fingerprints weren’t on record anywhere. There was no sign of foul play, so there was no investigation to be worried about DNA evidence. Just to be sure, they scrubbed my apartment clean and left traces of his DNA-hair in the brush, saliva on the toothbrush. Unless the police got creative and cross-referenced the DNA with Monica’s, the police would assume what was in the apartment belonged to me and if it matched the corpse, they’d consider that a positive ID. It never came to that. I left instructions in my will that I wanted to be cremated right away, my ashes scattered out there.” He nodded toward the shore and Lily remembered the day vividly as one of the worst of her life. “Whoever it was, he’s gone,” he said.

She felt a black hole open in her chest, a supernova that sucked all the hope and happiness out of her spirit. She’d never felt so angry and alone. Her mother wept on the couch, but Lily felt nothing but a kind of distant pity for her. She wondered if she’d ever feel anything else again. She was about to tell him what he’d done to her. She opened her mouth but he raised a finger and put it to his lips. He cocked his head, lifting an ear to the air. After a second, he smiled. She heard it, too, and held his eyes.

“Oh, Lily,” he said, with a sad shake of his head. “You didn’t.”

She removed the cell phone from her pocket and held it up for him to see.

“I love you, Mickey. I really do. But you have to answer for the things you’ve done. I’m sorry.”

He backed away from her slowly, shaking his head. The front door burst open and police officers entered clad in Kevlar vests, guns drawn. She saw Lydia and Jeffrey behind them, followed by another lean man with light blond hair who Lily thought she remembered as Striker. The air was still and they stood silent for a second; the moment seemed frozen where any outcome was possible. Then Mickey took a revolver from the pocket of his baggy jeans and smiled at his sister.

“Drop it, Samuels. Right now,” yelled one of the plainclothes officers, edging closer.

But Mickey lifted the gun to his temple quickly and pulled the trigger. Lily wasn’t sure what was louder, the blast of the gun or the sound of her wailing her brother’s name.

Thirty-Five

He reclined on the pool chaise, a nice fruity Merlot in one hand, a fat Cuban in the other. The sun was red and bloated, low in the sky. He waited for the cheers that would rise up from the bar overlooking the ocean when the sun dipped below the horizon. He’d never understood this, why the tourists cheered for the setting sun. To cheer the end of a day, the inevitable approach of death seemed so stupid to him. But then people were stupid. He’d made a fortune off that stupidity and he figured he shouldn’t knock it but be grateful for it instead.

The bar was far below his balcony on the edge of the cliff and by the time the cheers reached him, they’d be almost indistinguishable from the cries of the gulls floating over the blue-green waters of the Caribbean. He closed his eyes and lifted the cigar to his lips, let the last rays of the day touch the skin on his face. In the palm tree across the bluff some wild parrots bickered with each other. The smell of his cigar and the salt air mingled oddly but not unpleasantly. Then it grew dark too quickly.

He opened his eyes and a bulky shadow stood before him, muscle clad in black. The sun behind him, his face was shaded in darkness. But Trevor Rhames didn’t need to see his face to recognize the man before him.

“Hello, mate.” The thick Australian accent drew out the last syllable and Rhames could hear the smile in his voice. “Grimm sends his regards.”

The sun sunk below the horizon line then and the cheering of the crowd below rose up into the air.

Thirty-Six

Lydia knew from her father’s letters that Estrellita Tavernier, called Este by her family and friends, thought about being a writer when she was young but decided that she wanted to teach elementary school instead. She had the same blue-black hair that Lydia had-which was odd since their father had been fair. But her dark hair was the only thing she and Lydia shared. Este’s face was soft and round, a light happiness and mischief dancing in her dark brown eyes. Her skin was a soft café au lait; she was petite but round about the bottom and chest. The effect was a robust and feminine prettiness, a youthful aura. There was none of the hardness to her features or to her aura that Lydia knew herself to possess. All her hardness, she guessed, had come from her mother.

Lydia watched her like a stalker from the corner, as Este corralled a group of bundled-up little munchkins on an East Village schoolyard. Lydia wore black jeans and a three-quarter-length leather jacket, belted at the waist, a newspaper tucked under her arm. She leaned against a lamppost and felt the cold metal seep through the thin layers she wore. Her bare hands and cheeks were pink and painful from the cold. She thought about leaving. She wasn’t sure what she could say to Este; she wasn’t sure if she had anything to say at all.

For three years, Lydia’s half-sister had been teaching second grade about ten minutes from the Great Jones Street loft. The thought of this filled her with a kind of longing regret. It was a feeling that had settled in her bloodstream since the opening of the box left to her by her father and the letters her grandmother had kept shut in a drawer for most of Lydia’s life.

Lydia walked up to the chain-link fence and laced her fingers through the links. She stood waiting for Este to notice her and finally she did. She looked at Lydia lightly, with an uncertain half-smile. Lydia had the idea that Este would know her and after a moment of blankness, recognition warmed her features. She walked slowly toward the fence, then did something that made Lydia’s heart jump. She laced her fingers over Lydia’s through the fence. Lydia could smell the peppermint on her breath, the light floral scent of her perfume.

It was in that moment that Lydia felt a wave of grief for Arthur James Tavernier and the little girl who’d grown up without him. She felt grief, too, for the smiling, joyous woman Lydia saw in the photographs her father had left her, a woman Lydia recognized as her mother but whom she’d never known.

“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, looking down at the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. It wasn’t an apology; more an expression of regret for the way things were.

“No,” said Este, softly. “Let’s not be sorry for all the things neither of us can change. We’ll just go forward from here.”

She looked into the warmth of Este’s eyes. In the bright, cold day with the sound of children and the promise of snow in the air, Lydia believed they could.