Last night, when G was sleeping, I got the knife out of my bag and I stood over his bed for so long I got light-headed. I kept telling myself it’s like opening a door. Just push it and you can be free. The police will understand.
But I couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t that I was scared. It was something he had said to me, as he was falling asleep. “If you’re good, I’ll letyou talk to Jenny tomorrow.” It’s 7:00A.M.He’s still asleep. When he wakes up, I will remind him.
Love,
Your Future Mom
June 13, 1976
11:30A.M.
Dear Aurora Grace,
I spoke to your aunt Jenny! Gabriel took me to a pay phone and called the people who are keeping her. He put me on the phone with her, and she didn’t say anything but I could hear her breathing. I know the sound. Back home, I shared a room with her and sometimes, to get to sleep, I’d listen to the way she’d take the air in through her lips and push it out so fast, like she’d changed her mind and wanted it out of her as soon as possible. Shallow, baby breathing. I always wondered how any of it had time to reach her little lungs.
Sweet Jenny. I miss her so much. Talking to her on the phone, I told her I loved her, and I told her not to be afraid. “See you soon, kid,” I said, like it was no big deal and she was silly to be scared. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she understood me.
When I hung up with Jenny, I felt a little better about everything. Even Gabriel. He’s been telling me how sorry he is for “all the stuff.” That’s what he calls it. He tells me how he let his passion for me get the best of him, and that he’ll make it up to me by becoming a better person after we’veescaped. How he’ll be the best man he can possibly be, so that he can be deserving of my love.
It’s hard to trust him, but when I opened the motel room Bible this morning, this was the first sentence I read: “For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.” Could it be a sign? I want to believe in signs, Aurora Grace. I want to believe in things.
Right now, Gabriel and I are driving to the house of a man he knows. The man doesn’t live far from the Motel 6, which is kind of weird. I never knew Gabriel had any friends outside of Santa Rosa. Anyway, this man we’re going to see is a property master for TV shows. His job is to buy and keep track of all the props you see on-screen, whether it’s guns on the cop shows or stuffed animals, like Boo Boo Kitty onLaverne and Shirley. It sounds like a good job to me. I can’t think of a single TV show that doesn’t have props in it. And Gabriel says that this man has worked on a whole bunch of them, includingStarsky and Hutch. I wonder if he’s met David Soul, who plays Hutch. In case the show isn’t on anymore by the time you’re born, I should tell you this: Hutch is my Dream Man. He isn’t beautiful, like David Cassidy. But he’s good-looking in a subtler, more grown-up way. The thing I love the most about him, though, is the way he acts. Hutch seems so calm and serene all the time, as though nothing could ever upset him—what Papa Pete used to call a “cool customer.”
Someday, I’d like to meet a man like that, a man who doesn’t let his emotions get in the way of being a good person. Gabriel is more like Starsky.
Anyway, Gabriel swears that this property master guy is superrich and can set us up with another car, more money,maybe even new identities. Gabriel’s convinced that, when all this blows over, this property master can help us break into the movie business. I have no idea how Gabriel knows this superrich man with a job in Hollywood, but I’m going to guess he’s sold him weed. We’re about fifteen minutes away from the property master’s house. His name is Ed Hart. I hope he’s not as weird as Gabriel (ha ha).
Love,
Future Mom (FM!!!)
Ten
Quentin
QUENTIN HAD NEVERmet his father, though he did know his name: Hamish Garrison. As a kid, Quentin had believed his mother when she told him that Hamish had been an award-winning investigative journalist for theLondon Timeswho had been killed in the line of duty while embedded with troops in Iraq. But in truth, he had been a reporter for one of the supermarket tabloids and had met Kate at a bar in Las Vegas while covering the wedding of Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford. She’d admitted that to him nine months ago, when he’d come to visit her in rehab and started asking her questions, taking advantage of her newfound lucidity.
Kate had told him the whole story—insomuch as Quentin’s mother could tell anyone the whole story of anything. Hamish had been thirty-eight years older than Kate, who at the time had been living just off the Strip with no real game plan, just a vague idea about setting up residence in a different state. The Garrisons had married the night they met and stayed together just long enough to conceive Quentin, after which Hamish moved back to his native Britain and reunited with his estranged wife. “Your father gave you one thing,” Kate had said, tears in her eyes. “His curiosity. You’re a born reporter.” She hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
Quentin was in the Rose Main Reading Room of the New YorkPublic Library, having just found Hamish’s obituary on microfilm, in the August 2, 1996, issue of theMirror. He liked the cool of the room, the dead, cavelike silence and the location of the library, at the center of a bustling city where he knew no one and no one knew him.
He might stay here forever, he thought. Or at least until no one knew him anywhere anymore.
Quentin finished reading the obituary, his gaze hanging on the last line:Mr. Garrison is survived by Hannah, his wife of 40 years, as well as his two grown sons Mark and Martyn. No mention of Kate, or of Quentin, who at the time of the obituary had been just four years old. Not even a line about a brief sabbatical in Las Vegas.
Quentin heard his mother’s voice in his head, weary and mocking, the way he’d so often heard it in the months following her death.
Seems to me, you’ve lived your life...
Quentin’s phone went off in his pocket, drawing a disgusted look from a nearby security guard—the only other person in this cavernous room on such a warm summer day. The sternness in the guard’s eyes, his uniform... It spooked Quentin a little.
He took the phone out and glanced at the screen—Summer, wanting to FaceTime him. He wished he could turn the phone off, but he couldn’t. She’d been trying to get hold of him since last night, and if he ignored her again, she’d probably call the cops.
He hurried out of the room, through the lobby and out of the building, to the safety of the steps and the stone lions and the crowded sidewalks below. Summer was trying Quentin for the third time in a row by the time he finally responded.
“Where the hell have you been?” On the small screen, Summer resembled a horror movie heroine with that paperwhite skin, those huge, wide eyes that seemed to be in a permanent state of shock. She had a way of looking at you too, as though she could see all the way through to your every thought.
