“I can’t believe this. We have a kid—or had a kid! — and you knew about it and never told me…”
“I was sixteen, Ronny.”
“And now you’re fifty-three. And you kept this a secret? For forty fuckin’ years? Why, Dusty? What is that? You didn’t want people to know? Because you thought it’d hurt your fuckin’ career?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Bullshit.” He started back to the truck, muttering, “Yeah, it’s complicated. It’s fuckin’ complicated.”
She chased after. “Wait! Ronny, wait… please. Just—please wait. Can you please just listen?”
There wasn’t much of a choice — he’d been thrown down a dark well and she was the only one with a lantern, weak as it was. Grudgingly, he followed her back to the bank, where she asked him to sit. The onshore angler had vanished during the argument. On their return, the remaining one threw them a look of reproof and reluctantly kept fishing.
“Do you know about those women whose babies die in their wombs and the doctors say they still have to carry them to term? That’s what it’s felt like every day since she’s been gone. Except she was alive, and I held her and nursed her and loved her. And I’m sorry I never — if I had kept her — if I’d been allowed to keep her, I–I know I would have found you, Ronny. I would never have deprived you of that. But when I lost her… I was — it just, it destroyed me and I–I was ashamed, and… it took all those years until now to even begin to look for her. And I feel horrible about that too, that it took me so long! So please don’t judge me! Because I’ve judged me every day! And it’s not about me, Ronny, I know that, but that’s how I feel! When that bitch died last month — Reina, my mother, I… it — I guess I couldn’t, until she — even though I’d already kind of started putting things in motion before, something was stopping me—”
She broke. The angler looked over and shook his head with disdain then waded to the opposite shore and left. They sat and listened to the sporadic plashing of trout. With the river as their stage and the embankment their proscenium, they began an operatic duet, a fearful, star-crossed give-and-take without promise of grandeur or resolution. Tenuously, Ronny’s rage subsided.
“My parents sent me to my uncle’s,” he said. “In Ogden.” Each sentence was marked with a sigh. “A few weeks after you disappeared. Suddenly I was in fucking Ogden, away from my friends, and I didn’t know why. None of it made sense. I never went back to Tustin, either. A month or so later they sold the place. Then we moved to Provo and I’ve been here ever since.” He threw a rock into the water. “I kept in touch with some buddies back home. A few guys from the team. For a little while, when I first got to Ogden. No one knew what happened to you. Now I’m wondering if my parents knew. They must have. Or who else in the family did.”
“Reina took me to L.A. for the abortion. I was super-cooperative — I think I even told her I was glad to be getting rid of it. We were at a motel and I went down the hall for ice and never came back. Stuck out my thumb and climbed in the first car that stopped, a guy going to Arizona. So I went to Arizona. My daddy used to give me spending money that Reina never knew about. I saved it and probably had a few hundred dollars on me. Got a job waitressing in Wickenburg — that’s a big rehab town now. Might have even been one back then. It’s, like, the hottest fucking place in the world, it was a hundred and twenty when I got there, but I was so, so happy… to be away from her and still have my baby. I knew Reina was going to do everything she could to find me but I was safe there. I felt safe in the desert… My little girl was safe and that was the only thing that mattered.
“I was kind of taken in by these… lesbians. They were sort of wiccans—you know, hippy-dippy witches — but to me they were saints and angels. I could tell them anything, and I did. And they just loved me, like big sisters, and they listened. I told them all about Miranda — remember Miranda? — and all about you and my cunt mother and poor, sweet Daddy… and they totally got it. They were on my side, a hundred percent. It was like I’d stepped into a dream, a paradise. You know: Honesty World. No Secrets World. Unconditional Love World. They mothered me, I never had that, I didn’t even know what that was. I tried to seduce them but they weren’t going for it. They were righteous! I was terrible. But they knew I was just a child, wanting to be loved. When I was seven months, they made me stop working at the restaurant and took care of me. They took such good care of me. And — they knew a bunch of midwives, and I had Aurora at home in a tiny swimming pool. They cried as much as I did when she was born.
“But something happened… when she was about three months old. I started getting homesick. I missed my daddy, I mean, really missed him. He was such a gentle, tortured soul! And he couldn’t defend himself against her… I loved him so much. I just wanted to protect him. And I guess I missed ‘home’ too, no matter how fucked up it was. It’s pathetic but that’s how I felt. So I started secretly thinking about going back. To Tustin. It just totally started to preoccupy me, to you know, go back with my baby — and part of it was a Fuck you. A fuck you to Reina. I am woman, watch me roar. I mean, like, what could she do? What could Reina do? What was done was done. That’s what I was thinking: What could she or anyone do? The sickest thing is that part of the fantasy was that Reina would welcome me! I know that was in there somewhere… that she’d welcome us. You know, that once she saw Aurora, she’d be able to see the error of her ways. How twisted is that? I guess I kinda brainwashed myself — and they warned me, my angel-witches warned me. A leopard does not change its spots, they said. But I was young and hardheaded, and one day I just split. Got on the bus to Cali, I was finally going home. And Aurora was so beautiful. That’s what I named her, after the Northern Lights. Oh my God, Ronny, she was so, so beautiful. Madonna and child were going home. Supergirl and Superbaby — in matching capes. I had a lot of strength but too much innocence.
“And she did welcome us. But Reina was only doing what I did that time we went for the abortion. Playing a role. One morning — I’d only been back a week, hadn’t even taken a step outside the house — I went to her crib to feed her and Aurora was gone. Like that. Can you imagine? She wouldn’t tell me where she was, all she’d said was I’d never see her again. And I know it doesn’t make sense, that I didn’t go to the police or just tell someone—”
“What happened?”