Many of the blossoms on the pair of camellia trees, one planted when Henry had been born and another about a year later for Deirdre, had turned brown and rotten, their season ended, though Deirdre’s tree still bore white camellias. Once smaller than she was, the tree was now about ten feet tall. It was probably the only thing she wanted to take when the house was sold. She hoped it could survive being dug up and transplanted in the backyard of her little bungalow in Imperial Beach.
Deirdre tried the front door. It was locked, so she had to ring, which set off Henry’s dogs. She didn’t have a key to the house because Arthur kept forgetting to send her a set. That was his way, everything always and forever at his convenience.
When still no one answered the door, Deirdre knocked again, then rang some more. The dogs were going bananas. None of it roused anyone. Now what?
She dropped her duffel on the front step and walked back across the courtyard, trying not to slip on the olives or get the tip of her crutch stuck in the pillowy moss that grew between the stones. On the driveway the air was fifteen degrees hotter. A shovel was lying behind Henry’s car. Deirdre picked it up, leaned it against the two-car garage, and peered in through one of the little windows in the overhead door. Motorcycles, at least two of them, were lined up in one bay. Her father’s car was in the other. Which meant he had to be there, too. He was probably in his office up on the second floor of the garage.
Deirdre tried the overhead doors. They were both locked. Then she tried the regular door that led to the stairway. It was locked, too. She knocked. Hollered. Whistled. Was he asleep? She ought to just go over and bang on Arthur’s bedroom window. It was nearly noon, for heaven’s sake.
She was crossing the yard when she noticed the gate to the pool was open—wide enough for a pet or a child to easily slip through and fall in. Keeping that gate secured was one of the few things that her parents had agreed upon. She was about to go over and shut it when the dogs started up again. There they were, on the other side of the living room’s sliding doors to the patio, their claws scratching the glass.
Deirdre went over to them. “Hi there, knuckleheads,” she said. Bear whined and wagged his butt where there was the stump of a tail. Baby, who was a little smaller and had a bit more golden brown over her eyes and around her muzzle, woofed and stood up, her front paws resting against glass smeared with doggie saliva. She was nearly as tall as Deirdre.
Deirdre tried to slide open the door, but of course it was locked too. “Dad! Henry!” she shouted. “Would one of you please get out here and open a damned door so I can come in, preferably before one of the dogs has a heart attack. Come on! It’s hot as hell out here.”
She waited. Someone had been out there not all that long ago: on the patio table sat a cut-glass tumbler with a bit of pale amber liquid at the bottom of it.
The only vestiges of Gloria, who’d long ago walked out on Arthur, were barren terra-cotta pots surrounding the patio. Once they had contained her collection of scented geraniums. Now they held only dried-out soil and the skeletal remains of weeds.
How her mother used to fuss over her prized specimens, as she called them, picking off dead leaves and pruning the branches into striking, bonsai-like shapes. Now she grew herbs and taught serenity and was well along on “the path,” as she termed it, in the midst of a Buddhist retreat that required her to shave her head and—something Deirdre could barely imagine—remain silent. Deirdre had known her parents’ marriage was over when her mother started carrying malas, prayer beads, that she fingered in quiet moments as she meditated and whispered mantras under her breath. When she’d moved to the desert commune near Twentynine Palms, she’d taken only one plant with her, a rare hybrid that smelled like smoked chili pepper, abandoning the rest to Arthur’s inevitable neglect.
Deirdre turned back to the pool. Her mother had detested that pool and the chain-link fence that surrounded it. She’d tortured Arthur with plans for turning the entire backyard into a Japanese-style garden of raked stones and koi ponds. He’d wanted a sauna and hot tub. It made Deirdre wonder: If it hadn’t been for their success as a screenwriting team, would her parents have stayed together even long enough to have had Deirdre?
That’s when Deirdre noticed Arthur’s favorite Hawaiian shirt draped over the chaise longue by the pool and his slippers on the ground beside it. She couldn’t remember him ever swimming laps in the morning.
Behind her, the dogs quieted. She turned back. Henry was there on the other side of the glass, bare-chested and wearing a pair of drawstring sweats that rode low on his hips. The thick gold chain he wore around his neck reminded Deirdre of the choke chains he used to train the dogs. He yawned and rubbed his grizzled face, then unlatched and slid open the door.
The dogs burst from the house and ran joyous victory laps around the yard. Bear leaped for the knot at the end of a rope Henry had tied to a tree branch and hung there wriggling and snarling. Baby circled back to Deirdre, who crouched and let Baby lick her face. She buried her face in the soft ruff around the dog’s neck. Whatever else you could say about Henry, he raised the sweetest dogs.
“Yo, Deeds,” Henry said, offering his hand and helping her up. He gave her an awkward hug, then stood back and yawned, exhaling stale beer breath. “What are you doing here?”
Deirdre forced a smile. She knew it wasn’t fair—after all, how could he have known she was coming if she or Arthur hadn’t told him—but the question annoyed her. “Dad asked me to come up and help him with the house.” She couldn’t resist adding, “He’s selling it, you know.”
“Yuh.” Henry crossed his arms. “I know. Whyn’t you ring the front?”
“I rang. I knocked. Whyn’t you answer?”
“I was sleeping. And besides, Dad’s here. Why didn’t he—” He turned and bellowed into the house. “Yo, Dad! Where the hell are you?”
Deirdre listened with him, but when the house remained silent, Henry said, “Well, I thought he was here.” He shuffled off in the direction of the bedrooms, only to reappear moments later. “So . . . where is he?” He stepped out onto the patio. “Is his car here?”
“Parked in the garage.”
“Maybe he’s up in his office.”
“It’s locked. I knocked. And yelled. Looks like he took a swim. He left some stuff out here.” Deirdre pointed to the shirt and slippers.
She edged a few steps closer to the pool, then stopped. Her neck tingled and she smelled blood in her nose as she realized that there was a shadowy shape submerged under the water at the deep end of the pool.
Chapter 3
Deirdre felt as if, for a moment, the iris of a camera closed and opened again in front of her. Click. She dropped her messenger bag and stumbled across the patio, onto the grass, cursing the crutch that made a lousy substitute for a good leg. She was a strong swimmer if she could ever get to the damned pool.
Henry flew past her. In seconds he was across the yard, through the gate, and diving in. He took two strokes underwater and then surfaced, driving the body that Deirdre knew was her father to the side of the pool.
Deirdre reached the edge and sank to her knees. “Oh my God. Daddy?”
Henry held on to the tile edge of the overflow channel, gasping and trying to lift what was surely dead weight. Deirdre grabbed her father under an arm. Between her pulling and Henry pushing they managed to lift him out onto the concrete apron.
Time seemed to slow down as Deirdre shivered and backed away, then sank into a crouch. Her father lay on his side, his back curled and knees bent, hands stiff in front of him as if the water had returned him to the womb. His eyes were open, their surfaces clouded over, and the skin on his hands had shriveled like loose latex. She knew CPR, but anyone could see that her father was well beyond help.