“She said she ‘arranged’ for a family to take her — a couple who already had kids but really wanted to adopt a baby and could care for her and give her a ‘proper’ life. She said it had all gone through the county and was totally legal and there was nothing I could do, that it was the only way and to just shut up about it. Shut up about it! Of course with my adult brain, I know her story was bullshit. ‘The county’! And the woman who’s helping me… find her… thinks there’s a — possibility… that Reina may have caused her harm. And I know she was absolutely capable of that.”
“Jesus.”
“The morning after she ‘went missing,’ I took an overdose. My father did the same thing a few weeks later! They pumped my stomach and Reina said that was further evidence I was unfit to be a mother, that she always knew I was unstable and that was why the baby couldn’t—”
“I’m so sorry, Dusty.”
“—she said Daddy overdosed because of me! Because of the baby, that I bullied him so much about keeping the baby and made him feel so worthless that he wanted to take his life! That was like putting a knife in my heart! But now I think he did that because — because he might have known what Reina—that he knew what she did…” Ronny put a hand on her shoulder while she cried. “That was when we sold the house and moved to Carlsbad. And I never forgave myself for continuing to live with that woman — for three more years! Three more years before I got the balls to run away to New York! I told myself I stayed because of my dad but that wasn’t really why. I stayed because of Reina. I guess I still wanted her to love me, as sick as that fucking sounds. I’ve spent a thousand years in therapy trying to figure it out. It was like I was married to her and was the battered wife.”
Neither spoke for a while.
“I thought about you,” said Ronny. “Did you think about me?”
“Of course I did.”
“I’ve seen all your movies. Even the awful ones,” he smiled. “Sam was all over me for never mentioning you. She was flattered too — you know, that she got the man who got Dusty Wilding.”
“The man who turned me gay?” They laughed.
“I told her that we had a little thing. She pried it out of me.”
“She’s pretty amazing, your wife. She’s beautiful.”
“Hey, don’t make a move on her. She might go for it.”
“Ha.”
“She’s tough,” he said, admiringly. “Wouldn’t have got through half my crazy shit without her. You know, when I saw you on talk shows, and on the covers of magazines… I was actually really proud. Not just about your career but how you’ve conducted your life.” She laughed again at the irony of that, and cried some more too. He drew her close. “I used to trip on what things would have been like if we’d hooked up and got married. I mean, even with the gay thing. How my life would have been different. You know — Mr. Hollywood! Then I’d think, Naw, that wouldn’t have worked. ‘That ain’t me.’ Oh, I had the whole deal going on in my head though, for real. Even included a few kids.”
“Are you serious?” It touched her.
“Maybe my life wouldn’t have been so different after all. We’d probably have hung in there a while because of the… children, then split up. I’d have let you have custody—”
“How kind of you.”
“—even though the judge would have sided with me because of the, you know, the gay thing. Times were different then.”
“You’re too much.”
“Maybe you’d have thrown a little palimony my way… ho ho! Then I’d’ve probably walked into a bar somewhere and met my Sam. You know what’s funny? In my head, the kids we had were all boys, you gave me sons. And I was tripping on that before I had my girls. That was always the fantasy. It’s fuckin’ amazin’—these thoughts we have, and they’re all bullshit! ‘I think this, I think that. I’m fantasizing this, I’m fantasizing that.’ All these years I’m tripping on us having sons, but we made a little girl together, no lie. You know, I did think about trying to get in touch with you. Just to say hey. But you were rich and famous and I guess I thought it might be too weird. What would I say, anyway? What would I have said? I’d have felt like the world’s biggest loser. Which I was, for a lotta, lotta years. You had this big life and at the time, mine was kind of falling apart. I was a drinker. Bad drinker. But then I met Sam and got sober, got ‘in the middle’ of A.A. I have twenty-three years now — it’s crazy. There’s a guy I know in the program who walked out of his son’s life. Knocked a girl up and vamoosed. When he turned forty, he decided to find him so he could make amends. His sponsor said, Don’t do it. ‘Don’t you dare.’ What he meant was, you fucked up his life once and you don’t have the right to step in and maybe fuck it up again. Let him find you. Otherwise, let it go.”
Dusty wondered if that story was for her — or just a story. Then she said, “Hey, Ronny. Think we can fish?”
“I know I can,” he smiled. “Can you?”
They waded in. He caught one right away. He held it and stuck a small plastic siphon into its mouth.
“What are you doing?”
“Pumping its stomach.”
“Oh shit, it O.D.’d!”
“I want to see what’s on the menu today.” He pulled out the tube and squinted at the bugs in the see-through pump. “What they’re hungry for — sometimes it’s the usual, and sometimes it’s a little more exotic. You think they’re eatin’ hamburgers but they managed to find caviar. If they’re having caviar, they won’t bite if you’re baiting the hook with a Big Mac. You’ll be here all day and go home with nothin’.”
He reached into one of his boxes and pulled out a nymph. He put it on the line and showed her how to cast the lure. In less than a minute, he shouted that she had one (Dusty wouldn’t even have known), then talked her through as she reeled it in. She held the fish in her hand while he removed the hook.
“I’m going to find her, Ronny — dead or alive. I’m going to find out what happened to her. I owe her that.”
It sounded like a line she once said in a movie, and he responded in kind. “I believe you will, Dusty. I believe you will.”
He told her to put the fish back in the water and she watched it swim away. When they reached the truck, he helped her out of the waders. They sat in the cab and finished what was left in the thermos.
“Will you… be there?” she said plaintively. “If I need — to talk? If I need you?”
“You know I will.”
“I’m so sorry, Ronny.”
“It is what it is. I just hope she’s alive. That your mother didn’t do that terrible thing.”
“Thank you.”
“And that’s a beautiful name—‘Aurora.’ I didn’t tell you that.”
They drove off. Dusty got weepy again. “You were just a boy but you were so good to me. I think I even finally told you about being in love with Miranda! I was crying all the time when she left and you kept asking what was wrong, so I told you… I can’t believe I did that, but it shows how much I trusted you. You cared about me.”
“I loved you.”
“And you didn’t judge. You were like a man that way. Or how a man should be.”
It was cold and beautiful and the sky looked so heavy. He suggested they go for breakfast.