We Know

Chapter 42

When she opened the door, I was struck by the lack of resemblance. Maybe it was the years that had passed, or maybe it had always been that way, but Lydia Flores looked nothing like her sister. At least nothing like how Jane Everett had looked at thirty-two. I stuffed the Polaroid of Jane and Bilton back in my pocket and smiled in greeting.

Lydia studied me through the screen, mottled by the morning light. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so. I'm Nick Horrigan. I'm sorry to intrude on your morning, but I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about your sister."

She unlatched the screen and pushed it open.

She'd be sixty now, but she looked older, with that timeless grandmotherly bearing. She wore a housedress, and her hair was neatly done up in a bun. Her face was soft and round, made rounder by oversize glasses. Makeup-nothing excessive, but she was of the generation that really used it. Stockings and sling-back shoes, sensible but certainly not comfortable for hanging around at home alone. Somehow I knew that she'd been widowed-a sixth sense had emerged from an unknown part of my brain to make the diagnosis.

She said, "Are you with the press? Every few years someone comes knocking. A retrospective or whatever they call it. Last year I got contacted by someone doing a psychology study about grief."

"No," I said, "I'm not a reporter."

But that didn't seem to deter her. She didn't even bother to ask who I was with. She led me back in through a narrow hall to a living room. The house was clean, but every surface was cluttered. A side table crowded with antique Limoges boxes. Porcelain cats on a doily. Plants everywhere, sprouting from decorative watering cans and hanging from crocheted slings, lending the air a musty quality. Framed pictures rising like feathers from the lid and key cover of a small upright piano. Lydia at the altar, Jane in the maid-of-honor spot, though she couldn't have been more than thirteen. It was impossible not to recognize Jane Everett's lips. Lydia's husband, a kindly-looking

Hispanic man, appeared to be at least a decade older than his bride. He aged with dignity across the piano. The last shot, a close-up of him in a yellow sweater holding a tennis racket, was years old, bleached like the others from the facing window. He reclined at a club table, sipping iced tea, and his hair was silver, his teeth pronounced against a nice retirement tan.

I sat on a plastic-slipcovered couch. The seat was slightly warm, and beside me was a crossword-puzzle book, folded back to a pencil-indented page. I'd taken Lydia's spot, though she'd been too polite to say anything. Across, on a flat-screen that looked anachronistic contrasted with the other furnishings, two soap stars were mashing their faces against each other in a way that looked distinctly uncomfortable.

When I realized that Lydia was watching me, some prudish impulse made me turn my gaze away. The unplayed piano was too depressing, so I looked out the window beside it. A short, square garden met its end five feet out at the neighbor's aggressively tall slat fence.

Lydia followed my stare and said, "The young couple added that fence when they moved in. It's at the property line, so there was nothing we could do."

"Bad zoning laws."

She slid sideways into an armchair, a graceful, feminine movement. "Their house isn't even close. It sits a half acre back, but they wanted that fence there. They took it right up to code. My husband was furious. I lost him three years ago May. Ernesto. Heart attack."

She said his name with a slight accent. A WASP woman marrying an Hispanic man wasn't so common back when they wed. I thought of those Hispanic males who'd reportedly dumped Jane's body, how neatly Bilton's team had taken advantage of people's prejudices. I felt like an intruder here in Lydia's cluttered little house, my eye to the peephole of a private life.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I find myself thinking about Janie more. With him gone."

I realized that Lydia didn't care if I was with The L.A. Times or the CIA or Brownie Troop 9882. She just wanted to talk.

"It's a hard thing to forget."

She firmed her mouth, looked up at the corner of the room. "It was a long time ago."

"Yes," I said. "It was."

Her eyes lingered on the ceiling for a while. Then she angled her head and spoke from the side of her mouth though we were across the room from each other. Confiding in me. "I loved Ernesto dearly, as you can imagine. Thirty-eight years of marriage. And there are still mornings where I… where I…" Her voice trailed off. "But the violence of Janie's death. It doesn't sit. It never sat."

"No," I said. "There's nowhere to put it."

"They talk about closure all the time. Putting it behind you. Coming to grips."

"Who does?"

"The TV. 'Closure.' Like it's a thing. An actual thing that you can achieve. That you can hold in the palm of your hand."

Her fingers fussed in her lap, taking up a fold of fabric. Her candor caught me off guard. Her loneliness. How deeply the loss still touched her.

"You never get there," I said. "I guess you just keep trying."

"But these things damage you- I'm sorry, what'd you say your name was?"

"Nick."

"They damage you, Nick. My niece…" Her fingers trembled, and then she fished a tissue out of a sleeve and held it in a fist. "Ernesto and I never had children. I took care of Janie growing up. Eleven years older. That's a lot. So I suppose I wanted… I don't know. Ernesto and I enjoyed our time so much. Janie was like my daughter. My niece would have been like… like another daughter, you see? Janie liked 'Grace,' but I was the one who started calling her 'Grade.' That part was… that part was mine. And after they died…"

"I understand."

"Do you?" Her tone wasn't accusatory. It was deeply, intensely curious. Needy, even.

"Yes. I think I do."

"You give something up, maybe. Like a penance.

A part of your life. To honor what was lost. To not replace it."

"I understand that, too."

We sat in silence, not looking at each other. Another picture on the piano caught Jane in close-up, working some campaign event, election ticker tape and confetti frozen in a red and white blur in the background.

"What was she like?" I asked.

"She was sweet" She shook her head slowly with the last word. "You know how some people just have that heart? And quiet. Had a laugh that'd catch you by surprise. She made some choices that, well…" The tissue rose halfway to her face, but then her knuckles whitened and she lowered it. She would not cry. "She didn't know how long the future can be. How long it can be."

I said, carefully, "The father-"

Her lips tensed. "I never knew who the father was." She shook her head, quickly this time, as if fighting off a bad taste. "She never breathed a word. Not even to me." But her face couldn't hide the truth. I knew she was lying, and she knew I knew.

The soap actors had pulled apart, the woman resisting in that no-means-yes way, and then, like a horrible joke, there was Bilton. His sweater-and-khakis spot, the business-casual commander in chief surrounded by his progeny on the spotless Oval Office rug. Mr. Morals, a sharp contrast to his twice-married challenger.

Lydia dug in her armrest pouch for the remote. I watched Bilton's well-shaven face. "Senator Caruthers says he doesn't 'understand family values.' Do you really want someone in the White House who's proud to make that claim?" Dignified cursive across the screen announced, Paid for by Andrew Bilton for President.

Lydia finally fought the remote free and shut off the TV. We sat in the awkward silence for a moment, and then she said, bitterly, "Janie deserved more from this life. And Gracie. She would have been loved. She was a person, too, and she would have had a family." Lydia stared at the dark TV with disgust. Her eyes finally lifted to me. "You said you were with the press?"

My throat was husky with emotion. I said, "Yeah, I'm with the press."

She rose and smoothed her dress in the back with a practiced sweep of her flat hand. "Please write about her kindly. There was some innuendo around her when she died."

I said, "I'm going to do everything I can for her."