That hurt worse than my ear. It hurt worse than anything. At the Arco station, I’d watched him shoot his own baby sister as his dad stood there, pleading with him to stop. He said it again. “Jenny is with my sister.” I shot him in the face.
Aurora Grace, it’s been about half an hour since I killed Gabriel. I’m sitting next to Elizabeth in front of the fire she built. I’ve shown her all these letters, and she says you’rea lucky girl to have a mother like me. She says I’m a good person, even though I’ve killed. She said God knows that. And she’s read the Bible cover to cover at least five times.
After we get some more energy, we will burn Gabriel’s body. I’m drinking from her bottle of vodka, and my ear’s starting to feel better. Elizabeth is looking through Gabriel’s wallet, and she just showed me something she found in there: a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it, and the letter K. Elizabeth thought maybe Gabriel had a secret lover, but I told her that wasn’t likely. From what I knew of Gabriel, one lover seemed like too many. Then she said something that made me stop breathing: “Maybe he has another sister besides that little girl.”
Jenny is with my sister.Was that what he had been trying to tell me—that she was alive and with some other sister, not the one he had killed? Was this number the same one that he’d been calling?
4:00A.M.
It’s another hour later. I am finally feeling like I really could sleep. Elizabeth and I built a much bigger fire and dragged Gabriel’s body into it—a very long and exhausting ordeal. The fire’s burning higher than we thought it would, and the smoke is thick and choking. I put my head on Elizabeth’s shoulder. We talk about our short-term plans. Mine is to find a working phone somewhere and call the number on the scrap of paper. Elizabeth’s is to leave this place again forever. “I was away from here so long, I forgot,” she said to me. “My father hates me because I’m not a true believer.And some of my brothers are bad. I will need to protect you.” I don’t feel like I need protection, though. Not anymore. I feel like I can do the protecting.
The sky here is so beautiful—like someone spilled a jar of silver glitter over a black velvet cape. I’ve never seen stars like this before, Aurora Grace. It’s like I’m looking straight up at heaven.
Thirty-Eight
Robin
ROBIN FELT ASthough she were standing on her tiptoes at the edge of a cliff, and any movement at all—any word in this case—was certain to make her fall.
“Robin?” Nicola said. “What are you doing?” And Robin realized how agonizing it was, standing on one’s tiptoes forever.
Robin opened her hand. Held it out to reveal the souvenir penny, older than she was but still shiny and smooth in her palm. The star. Corsica. “Do you know what this is?” she said.
Nicola took a few steps closer and peered into her hand. “A souvenir?”
“It’s from a movie theater called the Corsica,” she said. “I found it in Mom’s things.”
Nicola’s eyes narrowed. “Why were you going through your mother’s things?”
“Because when he died, Quentin Garrison was carrying a 1976 ticket stub from the Corsica in his wallet. And I have a feeling it had something to do with the podcast he was making.”
Nicola moved over to Robin’s parents’ bed and sat on the edge of it. She motioned for Robin to sit down next to her, but Robin didn’t move. This was all stall tactics, probably an interrogation technique Nicola had learned as a cop, and Robin wasn’t buying it. “I want toknow about my mother,” she said quietly. “I want to know about her past.”
Nicola exhaled. “She met your father at a coffee shop in Tucson. She was nineteen and waiting tables. He was finishing up a residency at the University of Arizona...”
“I know how my parents met,” she said. “Before that.”
“We were in foster care together.”
“What was she doing in 1976?”
Nicola smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Going to the movies?”
Robin took a step closer. “Look,” she said. “I heard Quentin Garrison’s confession. He says he shot my parents when an argument between them got out of hand, and fine. It sounds a little over the top, but I can believe that. But I don’t believe that argument had anything to do with my dad. I believe it had something to do with my mom, and this movie theater and 1976 and April Cooper.”
“You do, huh?”
“And I believe you know the truth.” She leveled her eyes at her. “CoCo. You know her better than any living person.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“I’m going in late today.”
“They let you do that?”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Nicola exhaled. “She loves you. I know that much. I also know that as many times as she’s been over at your house, she’s never gone through your personal things.”
