She hadn’t remembered Nicola either, not at first. She pulled Morasco’s business card out of her bag and called it on her phone. He picked up after one ring. “I don’t know if this information is important at all,” she said, “but my mother’s old friend Nicola used to be friends with Quentin Garrison’s mother.”
“Is that right?” Morasco sounded distracted and strange. She heard voices behind him. People shouting to each other.
“Are you outdoors?” she said.
“Ms. Diamond,” he said. “You have to clear out your voice mail. I tried to call you a few times, but I couldn’t leave a message.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Listen,” he said. “We found Quentin Garrison.”
Robin stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You did?”
The shouting got louder. Someone saying, “Stand back.”
“Detective Morasco? Has he been arrested?”
“No,” he said. “Quentin Garrison is dead. He appears to have shot himself.”
Thirty-One
June 20, 1976
Midnight
Dear Aurora Grace,
Jenny is dead. Gabriel told me. He said she’s been dead from the beginning of our trip. He said he killed her before Papa Pete came home, that he buried her body in our backyard.
The times he’s called her on the phone, the times she’s listened to me and I could hear her breathing... He said that was just dead air. A random number that he’d called.
I don’t know whether he was telling me the truth, or if he just said it to hurt me. He was angry at me for so many things: Not forgiving him for hitting me. Spending the day with Elizabeth. Getting drunk with Elizabeth when I was supposed to be with him. “You can’t abandon me like that,” he had said. “You’re Bonnie. I’m Clyde.”
And because I was drunk, I didn’t lie and tell him how much it meant to me for him to say that. I didn’t make big sad eyes at him like I normally would. I didn’t say I was sorry, that I’d never abandon him again.
What I did was this: I pointed out to Gabriel that Clyde Barrow couldn’t get it up. Just like him.
That was when he told me about Jenny. Because he knew he couldn’t hit me anymore without Elizabeth cutting him in his sleep with her sewing shears, which she’s sworn to him she’ll do. Because he knew he couldn’t shoot me in the Bristol Arms because there would be too many witnesses. But most importantly, because he knew that telling me he’d killed my sister would hurt me more than hitting or shooting ever could.
At first, I didn’t believe him. I told him I know what Jenny’s breathing sounds like, and I can feel that she’s alive. I told him that he’s a liar and that lies can’t hurt me. But he just laughed. “She’s dead,” he said. “Whether you want to believe it or not.”
“You will chase your enemies and they will fall before you by the sword.” That’s what the Bible says. Jenny was never his enemy, even for a second. She wasn’t anybody’s enemy. She wasn’t big enough.
Never trust a boy, Aurora Grace. Even if it’s the one boy in the world you’ve been forced to rely on. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t confide in him. And whatever you do, do not believe that he is interested in keeping you safe. A boy will use you. He will hurt you. He will lie, and worse.
Love,
April (Your Future Mom, but only when she is living another life, far away from here)
Thirty-Two
Robin
BY THE TIMERobin got back up to her desk, Quentin Garrison’s death was all over social media. The facts of it first: his body discovered in Tarry Ridge Park, dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. Then came the players: Quentin’s coworkers at KAMC in Los Angeles. His coproducer, Summer Hawkins, leaving the station in tears. His husband, Dean Conrad, photographed in the parking lot of the university where he taught, his face pale, his jaw slack, as though he’d had the life knocked out of him. The old mug shot of Quentin’s mother.
The hot takes on Twitter and then the reporters—dozens more of them direct messaging Robin, emailing her at work, still more calling in, to the point where Eileen suggested she go home early without her even having to ask. Robin headed for Grand Central and took the 2:45P.M.train home, Quentin Garrison on her mind the entire time—how he’d been found dead in a park near a playground, and when she’d spoken to him two and a half days ago, she’d heard children’s voices in the background. Had he still been at the same park when he’d texted her that night? Or had he left, then returned after emailing his confession?
At least the police detail no longer seemed necessary. And once she got past the two reporters who remained at the foot of her driveway and entered the house and saw her mother sitting in the living room watching the news, a blanket thrown over her waist, she felt a bit relieved over that. “I was trying to make salmon tarragon,” Mom said. “But I got a bit tired.”
