What Remains of Me Page 19

  “Where did you come from, Rocky?” she whispered.

  “Ask me when you’re sure,” he had said.

  Kelly felt for the postcard and pulled it out. She read the faded postmark: May 30, 1982. Los Angeles, California. And then the note. Just one word:

  Someday.

  It had been addressed to her in prison and it hadn’t been signed. She ran her fingers over the pen indents. That handwriting. Those clean, block letters. She’d always been so sure who had sent it. But was that just because she’d wanted to be sure? Kelly had hardly ever seen Vee’s handwriting, yet she’d convinced herself of it anyway, kept the postcard with her at all times, under her pillow in prison and then in this drawer. She’d received so many postcards and letters when she was in jail—hate mail and love notes, questionnaires from journalists and missives from public advocates and conspiracy theorist nutjobs, not to mention all those wonderful letters from Shane. Yet this one-word postcard had been the only piece of prison mail she’d kept after her release.

  Vee.

  Vincent Vales had left Kelly’s life the night of the murder—not just her life, but everyone’s. Back then, you could disappear without technology betraying you, and so that’s what he had done. Even Sebastian Todd had been unable to find him. Sebastian Todd, who had apparently managed to track down Kelly’s cult-member mother.

  She’d admired Vee for being able to do that—to fly away like one of her desert birds, without ever migrating back. At just sixteen years old, he’d taken a leap that had lasted decades. But that hadn’t stopped Kelly from seeing him everywhere—in the crowds at televised sporting events, in Carpentia’s visiting room, in the backgrounds of photographs in glossy magazines . . . and up the hill from her new home, sawing those creations in his yard.

  Kelly gazed at the postcard, at those hopeful block letters, written when both of them were still children: Someday. She turned it over and looked at the picture on the back: a flowering cactus. The desert spring. The caption beneath: VISIT JOSHUA TREE, CALIFORNIA!

  You’re my only friend.

  Six months before her release, she’d told Shane she wanted to live here. She hadn’t told him why, but deep down, her request had been based on the belief that one day, someday, the three of them could be friends again—Vee and Bellamy and herself, Shane serving to bridge the divide, the diaspora reunited. Happily ever after. That’s the type of thing you think about when you are in prison for that many years, the imagination being a powerful salve, the fact remaining: you’re only as sure of anything as you want yourself to be.

  She slid the postcard under the beaded bags, shut the drawer. She grabbed her robe off the hook by her bedroom door and pulled it on, glancing at the clock by her bedside: 6:00 A.M. Twenty-four hours ago, she’d woken up to her husband taking her picture. God, things knew how to change.

  RUTH WATCHED ZEKE SLEEPING FOR QUITE A WHILE BEFORE SHE TRIED to wake him. She’d been doing this often—sneaking into his room to watch the steady rise and fall of his frail chest, to listen to him breathing. She used to do the same thing with the girls when they were babies, but now more than then she feared the spaces between breaths.

  Ruth crouched down next to Zeke’s futon and took his hand in her own. He’d always had strong, graceful hands, but the one in hers felt clammy and weak, the spark that was Zeke already fading. Three days ago, he had asked her to shave off his beard, complaining of its heaviness, its itchiness. Ruth had brought a tub of warmed, soapy water and a straight razor into his cabin and gone to work, marveling at the face as it revealed itself. In twenty-seven years, she’d never seen him clean-shaven and she’d never expected those cheekbones, that chin . . . “Why would you want to cover up a handsome kisser like that?” Ruth had said, trying to keep things light.

  He’d given her a smile—sweet but full of pain. “It’s a face only a mother could love.”

  When Ruth had first met Zeke, he’d been a boy. Twenty-one at the most. She’d been sitting in a coffee shop near her old apartment—unemployed, close to broke. She’d lost her job at I. Magnin eight months earlier and hadn’t even the slightest chance at new work since. She was infamous, after all. The bad mother of a bad girl. But every morning, she’d put on full makeup and a nice outfit. She’d go to this coffee shop two blocks from her home, and sit there for hours, reading the want ads over one cup of coffee with bottomless refills. Taking advantage of the owners’ generosity. Acting as though she had somewhere to be.

  He’d slipped into the seat across from her, this brash boy in a flannel shirt, his heavy black beard reminding her of a character from the Bible. “Mrs. Lund,” he had said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Ruth—then Rose—had glanced up from her newspaper, expecting another scum-of-the-earth supermarket tabloid reporter. But then she’d locked eyes with this young stranger, and her whole world had changed. Zeke’s eyes were the kindest she’d ever seen.

  “How would you like to go somewhere where you’ll never hurt anyone again?”

  Looking back, it had sounded a bit like a death threat. But it had turned out to be the opposite—a lifeline. A place to start over. Zeke had a piece of land, and he’d made it into a type of failures’ utopia—a self-sustaining farm in the middle of nowhere. “It’s for people like me, who have made mistakes they don’t want to repeat,” he had said. “People who are better off set apart from the rest of the world.”

  “Like prison?” she’d asked.

  “A little. But you only stay as long as you like.”

  Orange and lime trees, a vegetable garden, a chicken coop and five cows, a generator, indoor plumbing, a small library, and thanks to the efforts of some of the newer, more tech-savvy recruits, an old computer in the canteen with pirated Internet . . . Zeke’s compound had everything anyone could ask for. And until now, Ruth had had no desire to leave it. While other residents had come and gone, she remained constant in her belief that the outside world—Kelly especially—was better off without her.

  But then she’d spoken to Sebastian Todd. I need you, he had said. Kelly needs you. And she’d believed him. Despite all those awful, untrue things he’d written about Kelly in the past, in the newspaper and book excerpts she’d found while searching the Internet after he left; despite the fact that when she’d asked how he had tracked her down here in the first place, he’d tried to make her believe she’d told him herself (“Don’t you remember the letter you sent me?” As though she were some senile old woman who sent letters in her sleep). Despite all of his lies, Ruth had believed him, which she hoped hadn’t been the biggest mistake of her life.

  She placed a hand on Zeke’s smooth face, felt his eyelids flutter open. “What did he say?”

  “What?”

  “Sebastian Todd. What did he say? How is your daughter?”

  “She’s all right.”

  “Switch on the light,” Zeke said. “I need to see your face.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve never been able to look me in the eye and lie to me.”

  She removed a wooden match from the box on Zeke’s nightstand, lit the three candles in their slate holder. They were beautiful candles—the color of fresh cream and with a heady vanilla scent. Demetrius had made them—he was wonderful at crafts.

  “Now,” Zeke said, face flickering in the candlelight. “Look into my eyes and tell me your daughter is all right.”

  On the wall behind him, a print was tacked—a portrait of the biblical Ezekiel, the lifelong exile, son of Buzi, whose name meant “contempt.” Underneath the portrait, the meaning of the Ezekiel’s name: May God Strengthen Him. Ruth read the line and prayed it at the same time.

  “I’m waiting,” he said.

  “I can’t,” Ruth said slowly. “My daughter’s in trouble.” She cleared her throat. “Sebastian Todd told me. There’s been another shooting.”

  His eyes opened wider. “Who was shot?”

  She tried to say the name, but choked on it. “Kelly’s father-in-law
.”

  He let out a long, shaking breath. “And you know for sure Sebastian Todd was telling the truth.”

  She nodded. “I went into the canteen. I read the news on the Internet. People think she did it. The comments on the news stories—”

  “People are the reason why we never leave this place.” He struggled up to sitting. It took him two tries. “Well, hardly ever,” he said softly. “Has she been arrested?”

  “It looks like she’s about to be. I don’t know what to do. Kelly’s an adult now. She might very well get the death penalty.”

  Zeke stared at her. “She won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got some money saved up. A lot of money. We can hire her a great lawyer . . .”

  “I did that thirty years ago,” Ruth said, her voice louder, shriller than she wanted it to be. “I used every penny of my savings and hired Kelly the best lawyer in the business and look where it got her!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t want to hurt you, Zeke. You don’t deserve that.”

  He collapsed back onto the futon, pain twisting his handsome features.

  “Can I get you anything?” she said. “Glass of water? Something to eat?”

  Zeke shook his head. “Ruth.”

  “Yes.”

  “What can we do for Kelly?”

  She couldn’t meet his gaze. Even by candlelight, she could see the illness in his eyes, the whites a dull yellow. Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Stage 4. He’d never told her about it. “Just a temporary bug,” he kept saying. “Nothing they can do for me at the hospital.” But at some point, he’d looked it up on the computer: Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Stage 4. Survival chances without treatment. She’d seen it tonight in the search history. And looking it up herself, she’d learned that it would have been treatable even six months ago, when Zeke had gone to the hospital in an ambulance and come home armed with a battery of lies.

  Why the lies, Zeke? Why wouldn’t you want to save yourself? Do you want to escape the world so badly that even this place is too much for you?

  He struggled up to sitting again and strained to hug Ruth, for she’d been crying without realizing it. Crying for him.

  She pulled away. “I gave Sebastian Todd an interview,” she said.

  Zeke nodded.

  “I didn’t say a word about you or any of the other residents. He promised not to reveal the location of the compound. He just wants to paint Kelly in a different light. Show the world she’s human.”

  “Do you think it will help?”

  She sat down on the smooth wooden floor. Her eyes were hot from tears. She looked at Zeke in the bed and tried to imagine what she would think if she were seeing him for the first time—the frail arms, the sunken cheeks, the skin, so pale it was nearly translucent—the illness devouring the man. “I do think it will help,” she said.

  Slowly, he shook his head, his face as sad as she’d ever seen it. “No you don’t.”

  She thought of Zeke as a boy again—that strange bearded boy with the kind eyes. “I’ll help you,” he had said. “We can help each other.”

  Ruth had left the café with him. Headed out to his van without hesitation and driven with him to the compound without even stopping home to pack bags. She’d never looked back. Not once.

  “Zeke,” she told the pale shadow on the bed. “You saved my life. I want you to know that.” She made sure to look into his eyes when she said it.

  “Vice versa, Ruth,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “Vice versa.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Kelly stared into Shane’s empty bedroom. “We don’t know each other anymore,” she said.

  She thought about all the letters she used to write him when she was in prison. All those questions she asked him, each one answered so carefully. Had they ever spoken to each other aloud with the same abandon as in their writing—or had they been strangers throughout their marriage, ever since her pregnancy, that first secret Kelly had decided to keep from him?

  Time for another letter.

  Her laptop was still on the kitchen table, screen still frozen on The Demon Pit. Just send him an e-mail. She ejected the DVD, then clicked on the Internet icon. She was about to open up her e-mail, but her fingers froze on the keyboard.

  Kelly’s thirty-year-old mug shot stared back at her from her home page, alongside a photograph of the medical examiner’s van, leaving yesterday morning through the gates of the Marshalls’ home on Blue Jay Way. She read the headline:

  TWO MURDERS: EERIE SIMILARITIES

  She clicked on the article, forced herself to skim through. No new information, yet so many phrases that jumped out and slapped her: As Marshall’s family members gathered at his home, Lund was nowhere to be seen . . . Shane Marshall is now living separately from his wife . . . None of the Marshall family is talking to reporters, but sources close to the Hollywood dynasty say there is no love lost between them and Lund, an “odd duck” who largely keeps to herself and makes a living by working in some capacity for notorious “cheaters’ Web site” SaraBelle.com . . . Spotted leaving the West Hollywood precinct, where her husband had been held following his emotional breakdown at Teaserz, Lund appeared to show no emotion . . . “Kelly never really got along with anyone in the family,” says a source close to the Marshalls, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Shane distanced himself from them during his marriage, but now, they’re so happy to have him back in the fold.”

  Kelly looked bad on paper. She always had—though in the past, she’d at least had youth on her side. But that wasn’t what bothered her. Of everything inferred by the Web news piece, what hurt her most was one phrase: a source close to the Marshalls, who wishes to remain anonymous.

  “Why do you hate me so much, Bellamy?” Kelly whispered. “What did I ever do to you?”

  She thought about Shane, passed out in his sister’s spare bedroom, location unknown. She thought of the text he’d sent her: I NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM YOU. It didn’t sound like Shane—at least not the Shane she thought she knew. Had Bellamy sent it? Had she stolen the phone when Shane was safely passed out and typed out the words she’d always wished he would say? It made sense. Bellamy had always been her father’s daughter, after all . . .

  And Shane was weak—weaker than anyone knew him to be. A few weeks ago, he’d been out with his camera and Kelly had gone into his room to borrow a pen. In his nightstand drawer, she’d found easily thirty empty bottles of Ambien—so many bottles above and beyond his regular prescription, no doubt to be disposed of when the time was right.

  She hadn’t said a word to him about it. In fact, she’d forced it out of her mind. What right did she have to confront Shane, after all? What were a few extra pills anyway, compared to the pregnancy, compared to Rocky? You have your secrets, she had told herself. Let Shane have his. But where had that gotten her? Where had it gotten them both? If she had spoken to him about it, he might not have taken whatever he had taken back at his parents’ house, trying to drown his grief. He wouldn’t have gotten himself arrested and he wouldn’t have wound up at his sister’s. He could have come home. They could have told each other everything.

  “Secrets can kill you.” Kelly’s dad used to say that when he was nodding off, but he’d never explained what he meant, so it had come across as babbling. “They gnaw at your insides. You try and kill ’em with booze, but that’s just like watering plants, kiddo. The secret grows bigger and stronger inside you. Gets to feeling sometimes like it can burst right through your skin. Like it can eat you alive . . .”

  She’d never asked Jimmy what secrets were killing him back then and now they were all gone, her father’s secrets scrambled with everything else in his brain—mashed together with fantasies and memories and lies.

  Kelly clicked out of the article, opened her e-mail, and typed Shane’s address into the box. She wrote quickly:

  Shane, we need to talk. If you are
going to leave me, I can’t stop you. But first, please, let’s tell the truth. Let’s share all the secrets we’ve been keeping from each other and end things clean, so we both know who exactly it is that we’re leaving.

  With love,

  K

  She took a deep breath. But before she hit “send,” she stopped herself. If Bellamy was screening Shane’s calls and possibly sending his texts, odds were she was also checking his e-mail. And even if she wasn’t, did Kelly really want to put these feelings into writing? You put anything out there—your words, your tears (or lack of them), your face, bending into a nervous smile—it’s all there for public consumption. And make no mistake: it will be consumed and digested and spit back out as something it never was. And then there’s nothing you can do but live with it. Become it. Your one-word responses become evidence of cold-bloodedness. Your shabby clothes become a sign of disrespect. Your facial tic becomes The Mona Lisa Death Smile.

  What was it that Ilene Cutler had said? The world’s a stage, Little Miss, but very few of us get to write our own roles. Ilene Cutler, right about everything.

  Kelly deleted the e-mail. The best solution, the only solution, was to speak to Shane in person. In his own words, he could explain to Kelly why he’d gone to a strip club and beaten up a stranger while saying her name. He could tell her about his pill addiction—when it had started, why—and let her know why he was leaving her. In turn, she could tell him about her late-night drives, about her terminated pregnancy, about Rocky . . . And she could open up that final drawer in her mind for him, the one she’d locked tight two mornings ago when she’d pulled into her driveway with dawn close to breaking, the sleeve of her favorite gray hoodie spattered with Sterling Marshall’s blood . . .