“That’s when you quit your job and moved to Riverdale, opened No Doze.”
He nodded. “I wanted to tell you but I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
She let out a little laugh. “You’re right about that.”
“That’s why I distanced myself from you.”
“You staged everything: the suicide, the journals.”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe I could kill myself. And I knew you’d come looking for answers. And you did. We always have known each other so well.” He came to kneel beside her but she stood and walked away.
“Who was that in the car? Who died there that night?”
Mickey closed his eyes. “I don’t know who,” he said, looking away from her. He walked over beside her and they both stared out at the surf. “Rhames took care of that. He made sure the face was unrecognizable, put him in some of my clothes, and staged the scene to look just like my father’s suicide. My fingerprints weren’t on record anywhere. There was no sign of foul play, so there was no investigation to be worried about DNA evidence. Just to be sure, they scrubbed my apartment clean and left traces of his DNA-hair in the brush, saliva on the toothbrush. Unless the police got creative and cross-referenced the DNA with Monica’s, the police would assume what was in the apartment belonged to me and if it matched the corpse, they’d consider that a positive ID. It never came to that. I left instructions in my will that I wanted to be cremated right away, my ashes scattered out there.” He nodded toward the shore and Lily remembered the day vividly as one of the worst of her life. “Whoever it was, he’s gone,” he said.
She felt a black hole open in her chest, a supernova that sucked all the hope and happiness out of her spirit. She’d never felt so angry and alone. Her mother wept on the couch, but Lily felt nothing but a kind of distant pity for her. She wondered if she’d ever feel anything else again. She was about to tell him what he’d done to her. She opened her mouth but he raised a finger and put it to his lips. He cocked his head, lifting an ear to the air. After a second, he smiled. She heard it, too, and held his eyes.
“Oh, Lily,” he said, with a sad shake of his head. “You didn’t.”
She removed the cell phone from her pocket and held it up for him to see.
“I love you, Mickey. I really do. But you have to answer for the things you’ve done. I’m sorry.”
He backed away from her slowly, shaking his head. The front door burst open and police officers entered clad in Kevlar vests, guns drawn. She saw Lydia and Jeffrey behind them, followed by another lean man with light blond hair who Lily thought she remembered as Striker. The air was still and they stood silent for a second; the moment seemed frozen where any outcome was possible. Then Mickey took a revolver from the pocket of his baggy jeans and smiled at his sister.
“Drop it, Samuels. Right now,” yelled one of the plainclothes officers, edging closer.
But Mickey lifted the gun to his temple quickly and pulled the trigger. Lily wasn’t sure what was louder, the blast of the gun or the sound of her wailing her brother’s name.
Thirty-Five
He reclined on the pool chaise, a nice fruity Merlot in one hand, a fat Cuban in the other. The sun was red and bloated, low in the sky. He waited for the cheers that would rise up from the bar overlooking the ocean when the sun dipped below the horizon. He’d never understood this, why the tourists cheered for the setting sun. To cheer the end of a day, the inevitable approach of death seemed so stupid to him. But then people were stupid. He’d made a fortune off that stupidity and he figured he shouldn’t knock it but be grateful for it instead.
The bar was far below his balcony on the edge of the cliff and by the time the cheers reached him, they’d be almost indistinguishable from the cries of the gulls floating over the blue-green waters of the Caribbean. He closed his eyes and lifted the cigar to his lips, let the last rays of the day touch the skin on his face. In the palm tree across the bluff some wild parrots bickered with each other. The smell of his cigar and the salt air mingled oddly but not unpleasantly. Then it grew dark too quickly.
He opened his eyes and a bulky shadow stood before him, muscle clad in black. The sun behind him, his face was shaded in darkness. But Trevor Rhames didn’t need to see his face to recognize the man before him.
“Hello, mate.” The thick Australian accent drew out the last syllable and Rhames could hear the smile in his voice. “Grimm sends his regards.”
The sun sunk below the horizon line then and the cheering of the crowd below rose up into the air.
Thirty-Six
Lydia knew from her father’s letters that Estrellita Tavernier, called Este by her family and friends, thought about being a writer when she was young but decided that she wanted to teach elementary school instead. She had the same blue-black hair that Lydia had-which was odd since their father had been fair. But her dark hair was the only thing she and Lydia shared. Este’s face was soft and round, a light happiness and mischief dancing in her dark brown eyes. Her skin was a soft café au lait; she was petite but round about the bottom and chest. The effect was a robust and feminine prettiness, a youthful aura. There was none of the hardness to her features or to her aura that Lydia knew herself to possess. All her hardness, she guessed, had come from her mother.
Lydia watched her like a stalker from the corner, as Este corralled a group of bundled-up little munchkins on an East Village schoolyard. Lydia wore black jeans and a three-quarter-length leather jacket, belted at the waist, a newspaper tucked under her arm. She leaned against a lamppost and felt the cold metal seep through the thin layers she wore. Her bare hands and cheeks were pink and painful from the cold. She thought about leaving. She wasn’t sure what she could say to Este; she wasn’t sure if she had anything to say at all.
For three years, Lydia’s half-sister had been teaching second grade about ten minutes from the Great Jones Street loft. The thought of this filled her with a kind of longing regret. It was a feeling that had settled in her bloodstream since the opening of the box left to her by her father and the letters her grandmother had kept shut in a drawer for most of Lydia’s life.
Lydia walked up to the chain-link fence and laced her fingers through the links. She stood waiting for Este to notice her and finally she did. She looked at Lydia lightly, with an uncertain half-smile. Lydia had the idea that Este would know her and after a moment of blankness, recognition warmed her features. She walked slowly toward the fence, then did something that made Lydia’s heart jump. She laced her fingers over Lydia’s through the fence. Lydia could smell the peppermint on her breath, the light floral scent of her perfume.
It was in that moment that Lydia felt a wave of grief for Arthur James Tavernier and the little girl who’d grown up without him. She felt grief, too, for the smiling, joyous woman Lydia saw in the photographs her father had left her, a woman Lydia recognized as her mother but whom she’d never known.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said, looking down at the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. It wasn’t an apology; more an expression of regret for the way things were.
“No,” said Este, softly. “Let’s not be sorry for all the things neither of us can change. We’ll just go forward from here.”
She looked into the warmth of Este’s eyes. In the bright, cold day with the sound of children and the promise of snow in the air, Lydia believed they could.
Epilogue
Come on, Mom. Let’s go.”
She rested her hand on Ben’s head for a second and then put the last of her stuff in the suitcase. “Get your dad,” she said. “I can’t close this with one arm.”