What Remains of Me Page 24

  “HE’S BEEN IN A GOOD MOOD TODAY,” AN OVERLY CHEERFUL NURSE named Dahlia said when Kelly first showed up at the rest home where her father lived—a place called Hollywood Haven that reminded her of an efficiency motel, but with a heavy smell in the air—ammonia and air freshener and something else underneath, something cloying and stale and sad. The place hadn’t changed much in five years—same beige and gold color scheme, same bright lights and impressionist prints on the walls of the common room, same TV flickering probably the same daytime game show, same number of men and women parked in front of it, some hooked up to IVs, no one speaking.

  “I think it’s because we gave him a shave,” Dahlia said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your father,” she said, a slight sting beneath the sugar. “A good shave always makes him happy. You might not know that?”

  “I didn’t.”

  She peered at Kelly. “When was the last time you were here?”

  “Five years ago.”

  “Oh. Well . . . nice you’re here now.”

  Kelly felt a tinge of guilt—Dahlia’s intention, no doubt. Of course Dahlia was new here—too young to be anything but new here, really—and so she had no way of knowing that Kelly’s father hadn’t raised her from birth, that the sum total of her memories of Jimmy Lund consisted of four months thirty years ago, two or three prison visits, and one hazy, soft-focus trip to Disneyland, back when she and Catherine were too small for any of the E-ticket rides. A memory flitted into her mind—the visiting room at Betty Ford, Jimmy smiling and clear-eyed. “We’ll show ’em all, kiddo. You and me. We’re stronger than anybody knows.”

  “Your daughter is here, Mr. Lund.” The nurse ushered Kelly into her father’s room, a sparse, dimly lit space with a single chair, a nightstand, a tiny closet, and a hospital bed. The only personal touch was the bedspread—the same maroon plaid comforter Jimmy used to keep folded on the couch at his old house. More than once, Kelly had draped that comforter over him when she’d found him passed out in front of the TV, and now, here it still was, covering her barely conscious father—the only person in the room. The second bed and the shouting man in it had both vanished since her previous visit; Kelly didn’t want to ask where. A lot can happen in five years, and in places like this, it usually does.

  Jimmy was propped up to sitting, an uncertain smile on his face. Kelly tried to smile back. “Hi, Dahlia,” he said to the nurse.

  “I’m going to leave you two alone.” Dahlia gave Kelly a pointed look. “You probably have a lot of catching up to do.”

  Kelly wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t much of a hugger these days, especially with strangers—and from the way he was looking at her, she was pretty sure that’s what she was to him.

  “They gave me a shave,” Jimmy said.

  “Dahlia told me you like that. Getting a shave.”

  “I just say that because it makes her smile at me.”

  Kelly pulled a chair next to his bed and sat down. “You look very nice,” she said. He did. His steel gray hair was neatly brushed and he had on a crisp army-green sweatshirt, a white T-shirt underneath that brought out the whites of his eyes and made him look more alert.

  She thought back to the first day she’d knocked on his door, kicked out of her apartment, alone and terrified, nowhere else to go. Kelly hadn’t really known Jimmy—only heard about him from her mother. She’d expected a crazed, angry drug addict. But she’d gotten the opposite. Kelly could still remember the door flying open, the way those watery eyes had lit up. “Kiddo!” he’d said, hugging her as though he’d been waiting for her forever. “I just wish your sister could visit me too.”

  So many times, when she was locked up, Kelly would think about what her life would have been like if Jimmy had never OD’d. She’d had a lot of time to think about those “what ifs” at Carpentia, and this was such a huge one. If Jimmy hadn’t OD’d, Kelly’s life wouldn’t have changed in the same way it had. She never would have found out about John McFadden and Catherine when she did because she wouldn’t have asked Vee to pick her up at the hospital. If she hadn’t seen John McFadden in his aviator glasses on that day—one week before her screen test—Kelly probably wouldn’t have looked further. She wouldn’t have made that awful discovery days before the Resistance wrap party. McFadden would probably be alive. Kelly wouldn’t have been charged with his murder. Vee might have stuck around . . .

  But there was more to it than that—something she couldn’t help but think of now. If he hadn’t OD’d and she hadn’t gone to prison, Kelly might still be living with Jimmy. She might be the one taking care of him. That’s how much she’d loved him back then. That’s how much she’d loved having a real father.

  “Do you know me?” she asked.

  Jimmy gave her that uncertain smile again—a smile with nothing behind it other than basic decency, politeness, which was in Jimmy’s fabric, as much a part of him as his scars. Interesting, most people had to work at being good, but for Jimmy it was a genetic trait. And judging from Kelly and Catherine, a recessive one.

  “Sondra?” he tried.

  “I’m not Sondra Locke, Dad.” Kelly pulled her chair a little closer so he could see the necklace she was wearing—the necklace she’d taken from Bellamy’s house. “See?” she said, lifting the delicate gold heart away from her throat to show him. “It’s me.”

  Jimmy stared at the necklace. The smile fell away. Tears welled in his eyes.

  “You remember me?”

  He nodded quickly. He grasped her hand. “Catherine,” he said.

  “Kelly, Dad,” she said. “I’m Kelly.”

  “Kelly . . . Kelly never called me Dad,” he said. “She called me Jimmy.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Jimmy.”

  “I should be sorry. I’m the one who let you down. I let everybody down.”

  “Jimmy.”

  “I was a bad father.”

  Kelly put a hand on the side of his face, brushed away a tear. “You weren’t.”

  “I couldn’t keep you out of jail. You shouldn’t have gone to jail.”

  She shook her head. “I should have gone and I did,” she said. “It’s okay. I survived.”

  “That bastard deserved to die.”

  “McFadden.”

  “Yes. McFadden. I tried to tell them I killed him myself.”

  She thought back to her talk with Sebastian Todd. “You told Mom.”

  “She didn’t believe me. The police didn’t believe me either.”

  “Because it wasn’t true, Jimmy.” She plucked a Kleenex out of the box on the nightstand. “You didn’t kill him.”

  “He deserved to die.”

  “Dad.”

  “He ruined my life.”

  “Because of Demon Pit? Your injuries? Why didn’t you ever tell me about that? You said you got hurt on a horror film but you never . . .” Her voice trailed off. He was shaking his head, again and again. “You okay?”

  “It wasn’t because of my damn injuries.”

  He closed his eyes. Kelly took his hand in hers. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay, Dad.” She looked at his hands—the skin so dry it was cracked in places—scars over scars over years of battered muscle, the long, deep red blotches, burn marks that would never heal. She wanted answers. Needed them. But she didn’t want to hurt him any more. Poor Jimmy, so much of his life spent hurting. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  “I’m okay,” he said. He opened his eyes again, looked at her. His breathing settled, and it was as though he’d just landed after a long, rough flight. “Can you get me a cup of water? There’s a stack of cups in the bathroom. It’s right next door.”

  Kelly nodded. She left the room and went into the bathroom, filled one of the plastic cups with water from the sink. A nurse passed her in the hallway—same bright, fake smile on her face as Dahlia’s. This place was a madhouse, really. No wonder Jimmy could hardly keep it together.
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  When she returned to her father’s room and handed him the cup, she half-expected him not to recognize her, but he thanked her by name. He drank the whole cup before speaking.

  “Why do you have that necklace, Kelly?”

  “Catherine told me to keep it for her,” she said, watching his face.

  “Didn’t you lose it though? A long time ago?”

  “I found it,” she said. “I found it today.”

  “Wow . . .” He swallowed hard. “Some things won’t stay lost, I guess.”

  “Jimmy,” she said. “Where did Catherine get this necklace? You told me that it was from a friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it John McFadden? The friend? Is that why you hate him?”

  “Let’s talk about something else, honey.”

  “I need to know, Dad. It’s important.”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Why not? John McFadden is dead.”

  “I know.”

  “Catherine is dead.”

  “I know that too.”

  “So who is this going to hurt?”

  He began to tremble. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Me.”

  “You?”

  “Secrets,” he said. “They can kill you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His eyes started to cloud and shift, his gaze drifting over her head. Taking off again. “Secrets gnaw at your insides, and you try and kill ’em with booze . . .”

  “Jimmy . . .”

  “They kill you. They kill you every time.” He started to cry. She tried to put her arms around him, but he pushed her away. “Can’t cry in front of you, Sondra,” he said. “You always were a pal.”

  Kelly let out a long, trembling breath. Bad idea. Cruel. You try to get answers and you just make things worse. You always make things worse. So often when she was young, Kelly wished she understood people better, wished she knew how to make them happy, calm them down, draw them in. The shrink at Carpentia had said she didn’t care enough about others—that her mother had failed to teach her empathy during her toddler years and so she needed to learn late. But that had never been the problem. She cared about other people a lot. Maybe too much. She just didn’t understand how most of them worked. “Shall I get the nurse?” she said.

  Jimmy shook his head, the tears subsiding. He blew his nose. “Sondra?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get that necklace?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “My daughter used to have one just like it.” His gaze drifted back to her. Landing. He knew who she was.

  The same look had been in Jimmy’s eyes when he was on the witness stand, offering timid yeses and nos to the prosecutor’s questions. From time to time he’d meet Kelly’s gaze and try to smile and that’s when she’d see it. Fear. Not a fear of Kelly—which everyone else seemed to have, including Bellamy and even Mom. It was a fear for her.

  “Dad,” Kelly said.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, Kelly. I can’t tell you.”

  She exhaled.

  He said, “I want to talk to Sondra.”

  Kelly nodded slowly. She placed her hand on his. “Jimmy,” she said. “It’s your pal Sondra.”

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  “Not bad,” she said. “Get to missing Clint sometimes.”

  “You were always too good for him, kiddo.”

  She smiled.

  “I think you were going to ask me a question?”

  “Yes, Jimmy, I was,” she said. “Who was it that gave your daughter Catherine this lovely necklace?”

  “No one.”

  She looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “No one gave it to her. She took it. It belonged to her mother.”

  Kelly’s eyes widened. “Her mother?” she said.

  “Rainy Daye.”

  “Rainy Daye,” she whispered, thinking back, way back, to Catherine’s discovery—the box of zed cards in their mother’s closet.

  “You know what, Kelly? I don’t think anybody really knows each other.”

  “Except you and me, right?”

  “Except you and me.”

  “Rainy wore it to work on The Demon Pit. She was wearing it when I met her and when she and I got married, she threw it out. I swiped it. Figured the girls might want it someday, but that’s before I knew who it was from. After I knew, I still kept it. Out of spite, I guess.”

  “Who was it from, Jimmy?”

  “Catherine came to visit me once, and she found the necklace. She was always going through closets and drawers, that one. Always looking where she wasn’t supposed to look . . .”

  “She stole it?”

  “Just started wearing it. I shouldn’t have told her who it was from, but she caught me a few glasses of Jack in, caught me feeling sorry for myself . . .”

  “Who was it from?”

  “Catherine wore it around. That awful secret. Around her neck. I made her promise not to tell Kelly. I told Kelly the necklace was from me.”

  “I remember,” Kelly said. “Who gave it to Rainy, Jimmy? Tell me. Please.”

  He took her hand in both of his, squeezed so tight it hurt. “I’m sorry,” he said, and that sad fear took over his eyes, his face. “The necklace came from their father, Sondra. From Kelly and Catherine’s real father.”

  OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD HAVEN, KELLY FOUND IT HARD TO STAND UP—knees weak, head floating, a strange feeling coming over her, as though she were coming apart, atom by atom. She’d felt this way before, thirty years ago, the world pulled out from under her, up turning to down, black becoming red, friends disappearing.

  Everything a lie.

  It should only happen to a person once, yet there it was, the same ugly shock, lightning striking twice, burning everything to ashes. It all fell into place now, and in a different way than it had back then—Catherine’s taunting of their mother, Rose’s growing rage. “Where did you get that necklace? Answer me!” Rose had shrieked. And oh, how Catherine had delighted in not answering, the necklace her loaded weapon, reveling in that type of freedom that comes from leverage. Catherine could do anything back then—drop out of school, do drugs, screw her way through Hollywood, live life up to its bendy edge at just fourteen, fifteen years old.

  She could steal her mother’s car and run off to see John McFadden, a black-hearted Hollywood narcissist who had been older than Rose. Catherine could wind up dead in a canyon and Rose couldn’t fight back. She had to stay silent, because keeping the secret had been that important. She had given up everything for it—including her own child.

  Kelly’s birth father had been that powerful.

  She couldn’t think too hard about him. Couldn’t ask herself who her biological father was because she all but knew the answer for sure, and that answer was too ugly, too sad. The answer was in that necklace, stolen off her while she slept by a knowing Bellamy thirty years ago. It was in Bellamy’s feelings toward Kelly, that sister-love turned to hatred, in her creation of a piece of art designed to keep her in prison—and away from her family—forever. It was in Kelly’s mother’s desperate attempt to keep her away from “Hollywood Royalty,” Bellamy in particular and in the one letter Sterling Marshall had ever sent her, demanding she terminate her pregnancy, that she never have any children with his son.

  Saddest of all, it was in the feeling she got when she looked at Shane—a pang in her heart that had nothing to do with really knowing him. She felt the same way about Bellamy. Bellamy who had once kissed her and said, “We’re sisters.” Bellamy, with her slender, slashed wrists, forever hinting at her “secrets.” Bellamy, who must have known the truth, even back then.

  Call me Dad . . . My girl . . .

  Credits scrolled through Kelly’s mind. Sterling Marshall, executive producer on The Demon Pit—a film that had come out the same year Kelly and Catherine were born. Sterling Marshall, employing his best friend as director, his pregnant mistress as makeup artist. Poor Ji
mmy, falling in love with Rainy on that set, walking into that web . . .

  “I knew it . . . maybe a few months after you guys were born,” Jimmy had told her, back in his room. “I found a heart-shaped box of chocolates in her drawer with a note: ‘For my three beauties,’ it said. Unsigned. I threw out the note. Left the box. She didn’t say a word about it and I didn’t bring it up.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was scared.”

  “Of what, Jimmy?”

  “The truth.”

  Kelly could still see his face, his eyes misting over. “As long as Rosie didn’t say anything, I was still your dad.”

  All those years of living a lie, of keeping Rose’s secret—a stand-in his whole life, even as a father. When Jimmy had moved out of the house, it had been because she’d kicked him out—Kelly remembered. She remembered the fights, but she hadn’t been able to hear what they were saying. Catherine had heard a little. Later, it seemed, she’d found out more, learning something even Jimmy didn’t know: her birth father’s name.

  “Why did you put up with all that?”

  “Because I loved you. I loved all three of you. I always will.”

  Kelly started to choke up again. “You deserved a better father,” Jimmy had said, when the opposite was true. They didn’t deserve him. Not a single one of them did.

  She swatted a tear from her face, looked at her watch. Sebastian Todd should have been here by now. What was taking him so long? Her phone’s battery dead as usual, her charger left behind in Joshua Tree, Kelly had called him from the front desk at the nursing home and asked him to take her to her mother’s cult. Two hours away, Todd had said. In the middle of the desert. “I’d be glad to take you there,” he’d told her, claiming to be “just around the corner.” That had been more than half an hour ago.

  Kelly was about to go back inside and call Todd again when he finally pulled up, behind the wheel of a gleaming white Mercedes that matched his white suit, the white frames on his sunglasses. He rolled down the window.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  He removed the sunglasses. “I’m sorry.”