We sit in silence for a moment. Penny makes no move to pull away. I hear a little snuffle. She uses one sleeve of her ruffly pink T-shirt to wipe her nose.
“Should we talk about them?” I ask softly. “What’s your favorite story about Flo and Eddy?”
“They were cute fish,” Penny replies after a moment. “They would swim after each other. And they liked when I gave them food. And they were pretty in the sun. Like gold.”
“Like little treasures, right? And they loved you, too, don’t you think?”
I hear Penny breathing, sniffing a few times, as if she’s considering. “Yes,” she says. “They did.”
“Creatures like goldfish, they aren’t like us humans,” I say. “They live a long time for fish, you know, sweetheart? But it doesn’t always seem like a long time to us.” I pause. “So, we will miss them. But we were glad to know them.”
Penny pulls her feet back under the spread, wraps her arms around her legs, then plunks her chin onto her knees. “I knew it would happen,” she says, still staring into the flowered cotton. “Everybody I love…goes.”
I don’t know how to be a mother. I don’t know how to deal with a little girl who feels as if the rug has been yanked out from under her still-uncertain little legs. Who thought she knew what she could rely on and how her world works until suddenly, through no fault of her own, it doesn’t anymore. Penny’s bereavement isn’t only about fish. And this isn’t the first time today I’ve been faced with this.
“You know, Pen,” I begin. “I was talking to someone else today, who’s missing someone. Someone she loves very much. And you’ll never, ever guess what she does. Want to hear?”
A sniff from beside me, then the back of her hand unabashedly wipes her runny nose. “I guess,” she says. “Was she missing her fish?”
“Nope,” I reply. I edit the story a bit. “She was missing her best friend.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But they had a secret signal, you know? And she showed it to me.” I look down at Penny, who’s turned her face up to mine, inquiring. I nod, as if I have some profoundly valuable information. “It’s very powerful. And it means-it means no matter what, you’re a team. And it means no one is going to leave. Even if you’re far apart, you’re together.”
“What is it?” Penny whispers. Her brown eyes are wide, leftover tears still clinging to her lashes, but she’s turned toward me and she’s put one little hand on my knee. “Can you tell me it?”
I nod, closing my eyes briefly to emphasize the gravity of the moment. “I think we should take off the quilt, okay? The secret signal is better in the light.”
With a careful hand, Penny deliberately peels back the quilt. Her thin brown hair clings to the fabric as she curls out from underneath. I lift up my end, too, and turn to the little girl who’s looking so expectantly at me.
I slowly hold up two fingers. “Do like this,” I instruct.
Staring intently at my example, she carefully arranges her right hand in the peace sign. She holds it up and a watery smile begins to form.
“Like this?” she asks.
“Perfect,” I say. “Now. Any time you give me that sign? I know you’re on my team. It means the two of us. And you know what? Do you think we should go show it to your Dad? Let him in on the secret sign?”
A glimmer of anticipation begins to erase her sorrow. She carefully reties the drawstring of her baggy purple cotton pants and pushes her pearlized white plastic headband back from where it’s fallen down her forehead. “Think Dad will get it?” she asks. “That it’s like, the two of us? Me and Dad? And we’ll only know it?”
“Just you two.” I nod solemnly.
“Yay,” Penny says. She practices the sign again, then scampers toward the bedroom door. As she enters the hall, she turns around, a smile-almost a smile-on her face. “And, um, you’ll know it, too.”
And she’s gone.
THE PATTERNS ON THE CEILING are different in Josh’s bedroom. My apartment is third floor, too high for the lights of traffic. When I snap off my night-table lamp, it’s dark. Here in Josh’s bed, I can watch the shadows flicker on the white walls, the headlights from passing cars rising and falling, crosshatches of shadow floating by through the window blinds, appearing then disappearing.
“You’re good with Penny, “Josh murmurs. He spoons closer and nestles one arm over me. He tucks his hand around me.
“Ah, well, she’s adorable,” I say, snuggling in. “And, you know, it’s kind of a journey for us both.” I breathe in the scent of Josh’s arm, wondering, as always, how he can unfailingly make me feel so female. “Life is unexplored territory, you know? For a little kid?”
I think about my mom. How she taught me about putting the peanut butter on first, how to ride on the El, how to make a new friend. She comforted me when I failed the driver’s test and when I didn’t get invited to the prom. Even though she keeps telling me not to come visit, maybe, now, it’s my turn to comfort her. She just won’t say it. I smile into my pillow. Seems like thinking about being a stepmother is forcing me to think about being a daughter. Maybe I need some exploration there, too.
“And I kind of feel, well, Penny and I are exploring together,” I continue out loud. “Each other’s worlds. And what we mean to each other. Must be hard for her.
“Josh?” I say softly. I can feel his breath on my skin, even the touch of his eyelashes. For a while tonight, there was no thought of anyone or anything except the two of us. No sounds that could be translated into actual words. Our private passion was all that mattered. If he’s still in that world, I don’t want to interrupt. I love it there, too.
But my eyes are wide open and my mind is racing ahead.
CHAPTER 21
Bars are creepy in the morning. At night-with the lights and the crowds, and the haze of perfume and hairspray, and the reflections of glasses and earrings and whitened teeth in the requisite room-long mirror-you don’t notice that there are no windows. So as I step through the thick wooden doorway into The Reefs, the blazing July sunlight is snuffed out, and I’m dumped into dank timelessness. I know it’s morning, but it could be any time. What’s making The Reefs even creepier, this is the last place Ray Sweeney was seen alive by anyone except Gaylen. And maybe whoever killed him.
I plop my folder and my second latte of the morning on one of the chest-high round tables-high tops, they call them. Draping my black linen suit jacket over the back of a long-legged wooden chair, I wait for Del DeCenzo to finish his phone conversation.
Waiting seems to be the developing theme of my day. This morning I waited outside Kevin’s office, drinking latte number one and watching CNN with no sound. Kevin eventually came out, and told me he’d gotten some nuclear-level threatening letter from Oscar Ortega, reiterating his continued opposition to our “political motivation” and “ratings lust.” Which I thought was a bit overdramatic. Kevin then reminded me the station was counting on our story to win the July book. Which I thought was a bit over-confident.
Then I waited while the tech support guys unhooked every single wire from my computer and installed a new hard drive. Which prevented me from checking my email and printing out my story notes for an indescribably long time.
But good things did come, as they are proverbially supposed to, after I waited. There in my mail box was the long-awaited info from Tek Mattheissen listing the witnesses who identified Dorinda in the bar. I’m here trying to understand why those witnesses got it wrong.
Del’s still talking. Back to me, for privacy I suppose. The bar owner is leaning one elbow against the wall, while his other arm gestures animatedly. His voice is too low for me to hear what he’s saying, but his body language telegraphs a battle in progress. I open my overstuffed folder, my bible for the investigation. Might as well look at the list again.