“Do you believe in God, Paul?”
He was slow to answer. “I’m not sure.”
“Does Julia?”
“Tessa, this is-”
“None of my business?”
He looked at her closely. “No, I don’t think Julia believes in God.”
Tessa felt it in the air: awkwardness, awkwardness, awkwardness.
“So.” He pointed to a nearby sculpture: a toilet seat surrounded by fake fur and framed inside a giant green triangle. “What about this one? Let’s see if you can get two in a row.”
Oh, please don’t tell me Julia the Sculptress made that thing too.
Tessa glanced at the name on the placard.
Good.
“Well?”
“Come on, Paul. I just want to talk. I’m really not into this whole sculpture-interpretation-thing.”
“You nailed the last one.”
“Luck.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She held back a sigh. “It’s a toilet seat in a giant triangle. Can we move on? Please?”
“Come on, you can do better than that. Can you tell me what it means?”
All right.
Enough with this.
“I’m no artist, but I don’t think the point of art is to mean, I think it’s to render. If it doesn’t do that, if it needs a plaque to explain it, it’s not art. It’s like nature-what does a bird mean by its song? What does a flower mean when it blooms? It means beauty. Any explanation beyond that is superfluous.”
He stared at her.
“Look, what did you do before moving to Wyoming and becoming a recluse?”
“I worked for the government. I told you that before. How do you know so much about-”
“Yeah. The game and fish department.”
“That’s right.”
“Why are you living out there in the middle of nowhere? Are you running from something?”
“I needed a place to be alone to work on my sculptures; we went through all of this when you and your stepfather came to my cabin. Did you study art or-”
“Patrick. When Patrick and I came to your cabin. Please use his name.”
A hard look. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here. Are you angry at me?”
“No.”
“Let’s try to switch this from an interrogation to a conversation, okay?”
She felt a sharp itch of anger. “I’m not interrogating you.”
“How about we just go back and forth, okay? You ask me a question, then I’ll ask you one.” He gestured toward some leather chairs near the window, but she didn’t move.
“How long did you and Mom go out?” she said.
“Three weeks.”
“And did you-”
A smile. “It’s my turn, Tessa.”
She said nothing.
“Do you love Patrick?”
“I love him. Yes. What about Mom? Did you love her?”
A pause. “We went out for three weeks, Tessa.”
“And?”
He didn’t answer.
“So,” she said, “you slept with her even though you didn’t love her?”
“We slept together. Yes. Three or four times.”
“Three or four? You don’t remember?”
“My turn for a question. Has he ever done anything to hurt you?”
“Who?”
“Patrick.”
“To hurt me? What are you talking about?”
He pointed to her right arm, to her scars. “Did he do that to you?”
“How could you even think that? I did that to myself. You can’t remember how many times you slept with my mom? How many other women were you sleeping with at the time that made it so hard for you to keep track?”
“There weren’t any others.” Then back to the scars. “Some of those look recent. Why didn’t he stop you?”
She stared at him coolly. “I think I’m done with this little conversation-bonding-time.” She slung her purse strap over her shoulder. “And I’ve had enough art appreciation for one day. I’m leaving.”
He reached out for her arm to stop her, but she glared at him. “Don’t even.”
He stopped just short of actually touching her.
“I care about you.” He let his hand retreat. “I want you to be safe. During Basque’s trial last month, your stepfather-Patrick-admitted to physically assaulting him, to breaking Basque’s jaw when he arrested him.”
“The guy was trying to kill him.”
“That’s not exactly how the press portrayed-”
“Patrick would never hurt me. Ever.”
A drop of silence. “I’m glad to hear that.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What’s with all the questions about Patrick?”
“You’re my daughter. I just want to make sure you’re in a safe environment. You’re important to-”
“Oh yeah? Well, then, answer me this: if I’m so important to you, why didn’t you ever come to see me? And please don’t tell me it’s because you thought Mom was going to abort me. You kept tabs on her. You wrote to her fifteen years later -I found the postcard! You would have known about me.”
She watched him closely. His face. His body language.
“Honestly, I always thought your mother went ahead with the abortion.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t know you were born, Tessa. I had no way of knowing. Before your mom moved away she made it very clear that she didn’t want me in her life.” A pause. “But now we’re here; we’re together, and I’m just trying to make sure that this man who is taking care of-”
“Patrick! His name is Patrick! And he’s more than just the guy who takes care of me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Show him, Tessa. Prove it.
She yanked up her left sleeve, revealing the raven tattoo she’d gotten to conceal the scar Sevren Adkins had given her when he slit her brachial artery and left her to bleed to death.
“Patrick saved my life last year when this serial killer attacked me. He risked his life. He almost got killed doing it.”
“A serial killer?”
“That’s right.”
He was looking carefully at the tattoo. And at the scar.
“I didn’t know that.”
She let go of her sleeve. “Yeah, well, now you do.”
“I’m sorry you were hurt like this. I would never have let someone-”
“I am so done with this.” She turned to go.
“Tessa, don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”
She whirled around. Got in his face. “Patrick would do anything for me, and while you were out there in your little Una-bomber cabin playing with papier-mache, he was busy being a dad to me. Don’t email me anymore. I think I know everything I need to.”
“There’s still a lot we need to discuss. I’ll-”
“Discussion’s over. Paul.”
“I told you before. In my emails. You don’t need to call me Paul. I’m your father. You can call me Dad.”
Unbelievable.
“Patrick’s my dad. You’re just the man who impregnated my mom.”
She strode away, but as she boarded the elevator, she shot a glance at him, and saw that he hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing. He was still watching her with clear, unswerving eyes.
It creeped her out.
The elevator doors closed.
He used your mom. He didn’t love her.
He used her…
She felt a rush of hot anger and a tight coil of disappointment.
He didn’t love Mom. How could he have ever loved you?
And as soon as she reached the ground floor she escaped to the bathroom to think. To hide. And despite herself, to cry.
25
The woman in the back of the van was silent now, and still.
Earlier, as Brad had transferred her from the basement to the vehicle, she’d struggled more than he would have liked, but he’d put a stop to it.
Now, compliant once again, she lay next to the wheelchair that he would use to take her to the room where she would die on the eighth floor of the newly renovated Lincoln Towers Hotel, best known as the place where a would-be assassin tried to kill the vice president six years ago.
He and Astrid had taken a room at the hotel last month and, using the television’s volume, had tested how much sound was noticeable in the hallway. They’d found that, while the room wasn’t as soundproof as the one in their basement, with the television turned up to hide the woman’s cries, it would work just fine.