“I just know that any time I undertake a case, I’m apt to run into some kind of a trap.”
—Nancy Drew, The Clue of the Broken Locket (1934)
Raymond Darke’s face blanched. He looked as if he might be sick. I was feeling that way myself.
Daniel knew.
He already knew!
“Hello, Dad,” Daniel said. “Surprise! Cherry didn’t get that abortion that you wanted her to get. You do remember her, right?”
Darke’s features turned stony. “I don’t know what you want me to say. That was twenty years ago. Do you want money from me? Is that why you’re here?”
“You can’t buy my silence. I’m here to expose you for the fraud you are.”
Darke struggled for words, scratching the back of his head, looking around the corridor as if someone would come save him. He finally said, “I have a right to use a pen name. I just want a peaceful life, and—”
“Why is that?” Daniel asked. “I keep asking myself why you’d want to be anonymous. See, my mom didn’t tell me who you were. She kept it secret and said you weren’t worth the hassle. It was my grandfather who spilled the beans to me last year. I’ve been trying to hunt you down for months. Imagine my surprise when fate dropped you right into the back seat of my van, and I overhear you yelling at your agent on the phone.”
Fate. Imagine that, I thought, frantically trying to piece together what I knew and when I knew it and all the signs I’d missed. That afternoon I found Daniel in the market, in front of the magic shop. I know a real-life mystery going on at the hotel.
“Fuck,” Darke mumbled, scrubbing his hand over his mouth, as if he could somehow rub away the conversation. “That’s where I know you from. The Cascadia.”
“Bingo, Dad.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sucks that you didn’t put a hat on your jimmy, but here we are. And yeah, you know me from the Cascadia. See, we followed you and your wife to room 514. We know you were meeting Ivanov there. We have evidence you left behind—your list from a Ukrainian company that doesn’t exist? I’m sure a newspaper would love a juicy scoop about an illegal international sex ring.”
“Sex ring?” Darke bellowed.
“Whatever nefarious thing you’re up to with your ‘facilitator,’ Ivanov,” Daniel said, throwing up air quotes.
“He’s helping my wife and me adopt a child!”
The din in the theater below floated up through the private box as Daniel stared at Darke in disbelief.
“Adoption from the Ukraine,” I said in a daze, thinking back to the list of the names we found. Males and females. Dates. Birth dates.
Darke glanced at me. “My wife can’t have children, and I got snipped years ago, after . . .” His eyes flicked to Daniel. “Adoption takes time. We’ve been on a list in the United State, since last summer. They told us it could take five years for a healthy newborn. My wife and I aren’t young. We don’t have that long.”
“Fran Malkovich. Your wife is Ukrainian,” I said, suddenly placing her accent.
He nodded once. “She found Ivanov. He makes things happen quickly. There are too many laws about adopting newborns—it’s complicated. And expensive.”
Everything suddenly became clearer. “You’ve been giving Ivanov adoption payments every week. In room 514.”
“It’s none of your business,” he snapped. “That’s between me and my wife. It’s personal, and you had no right to spy on me. I’ll have you both fired.”
“Oh, will you?” Daniel said. “Because what you’re doing still sounds pretty fucking illegal. And there’s the fact that we know who you are, Bill Waddle.”
“What do you want from me? An apology? It was twenty years ago, and we only saw each other for a few weeks. I can’t even remember her last name, for the love of God. But I was up front with her about our relationship. We weren’t exclusive. I dated a lot of women. She knew I wasn’t ready to start a family.”
“But you are now,” Daniel said. “Sorry I was such an inconvenience.”
“Daniel,” I pleaded in a low voice.
He tossed me a look, but I wasn’t even sure that he saw me through the haze of anger and pain that tightened his jaw and made his eyes swim with emotion.
“Look, kid,” Darke said. “I don’t know what you want me to say. If I could go back and change things, I would have never seen your mother. I was young and foolish—”
“You were almost forty! Twice her age!”
“It takes two to tango. I never forced her to see me. And what difference does it make now? I have my life and you have yours. If you want money—”
“I don’t want your goddamn money!” Daniel shouted, startling me with the level of explosive animosity in his voice.
Darke lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine. But if you change your mind, I can have my lawyer draft up an agreement. After a paternity test, of course. But you get nothing if you go public. And if you’re going to threaten me with that, I’ll beat you to the punch and do it myself. You’ve got nothing on me.”
“We have Ivanov’s spreadsheet.”
Darke shrugged. “What does that prove? I never checked in at the hotel. I was just meeting a friend for a drink.” He stuck his finger in Daniel’s face. “You’ve got nothing. You’re just a lawless kid who’s making up stories.”
Down the hall, Darke’s wife was tottering toward us in stilettos. “William?” she called out. “Is anything wrong?”
Yes, I thought. Everything’s wrong. All of this was a terrible, terrible mistake.
Daniel leaned toward Darke. “You know what? I got what I wanted. The knowledge that my father is the asshole I’ve always imagined. I don’t want anything to do with you, so you can keep your agreement and your money. Have a good life with your new, more convenient son,” he said, giving Darke’s wife a look of contempt before turning toward the exit. “By the way, if you fantasized about my mom pining away for you like Madama Butterfly, sorry to disappoint. She’s doing great. Best decision of her life was to walk away from a monster like you.”
And with that, Daniel stormed away.
He didn’t even look at me. Maybe he’d forgotten I was there. I chased after him as the lights above us blinked to warn the theatergoers that the production was about to start. With every step, I went from bewildered to enraged. And as we entered the mezzanine lounge, I lost both my patience and ability to reason.
“You lied to me!” I shouted at Daniel’s back.
His striding legs slowed. Then he stopped abruptly and swung around. I’d never seen him look like that, so angry and hurt all at the same time.
I repeated, “You lied to me,” in a lower voice. “You knew he was your father all along. You roped me into helping you just to figure out what he was doing in the hotel? You used me? Was this all just one big misdirection?”
“No!” His eyes squeezed shut. “I didn’t use you. I . . .”
“But you knew who Raymond Darke was when you first told me he was coming into the hotel. You knew he was your father?”
“Yes!” he shouted. “I knew. But I wasn’t using you. It’s just that you were treating me like I had the plague, saying you didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and I thought—” He tugged his ear and made a pained face. “When you were talking about detectives and mysteries, I thought it was a way for us to spend time together—to get to know you. And yeah, okay, maybe I wanted to see what my father was like. I was curious, okay? And finding out about him with you made it seem less like something personal, not some big emotional risk. I meant to tell you eventually, but one thing led to another, and when we came here, I just wanted to confront him, and then it was too late to tell you.”
“How could it be too late? You had a million chances to say, ‘Hey, Birdie. This guy is my father.’ In fact, you could have even said that after we walked into this building and I would have forgiven you.”
“And you won’t now?”
I didn’t know, honestly. I was vaguely aware that stragglers heading into the theater were staring, but I was too upset to care that we were making a scene. “You got what you wanted out of me, didn’t you? You got my help, and you got me to start sleeping with you again.”
His face darkened. “Did I show up on your doorstep with a box of condoms?”
“Don’t you dare shame me for that! I did that after you were all charming and sweet to me. Did you mean any of it?”
“Of course I meant it! How could you even say that?”
Tears stung my eyes. “Because I don’t know what’s a lie and what’s not anymore.”
He put his hands on the back of his neck, elbows bent, and paced away from me in distress before turning back around. “I told you the secrets that mattered. This doesn’t. He doesn’t.”
“He’s your father!”
“He’s nothing. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m so sorry. I’m a fuckup. I warned you. And I’m sorry I lied, but I was afraid if I told you, you’d run away like you did that first day. You’re accusing me of using you, but didn’t you use me?”
“I didn’t use you—I freaked out. I’ve already told you this.”
“But if I hadn’t asked you to help me investigate Darke, would you even have had anything whatsoever to do with me? The way I remember things, you were telling me you didn’t want to talk about what we’d done in my car. You asked me to forget it and pretend it didn’t happen. Because that’s what you do—when you’re afraid of something, if it’s just too hard for you to face, you’ll do anything to avoid it. You didn’t want to talk to me after we had sex that first time. You don’t want to face getting treated for your narcolepsy. And now you’re doing the same thing—because it’s easier to just walk away from us than to talk about all this, right? I know I screwed up, but I screwed up because I was scared of exactly this—that you’d run away again.”
“I told you I loved you, and you couldn’t even say it back.”
“You told me I didn’t have to!”
“I wanted you to want to say it. But for some reason, you feel more comfortable having sex with me than making any kind of commitment that doesn’t involve a stupid mystery!”
His words were a slap in the face. The telltale signs of bonelessness prickled in warning. It started in my face and neck, and then it spread to my arms. My hands stopped working. I dropped my clutch purse.
“Birdie?” Daniel said, rushing toward me.
But not fast enough. My legs gave out, and I collapsed on the floor like a puppet falling off its wires.
The problem with cataplexy wasn’t the sensation itself, which was disconcerting, sure, but so far beyond my control that I had no choice but to endure it until my body decided to start functioning again.
The problem was that time didn’t stop.
Everything around me moved and talked and breathed while I didn’t. I saw Daniel drop to the floor to help me. I heard him calling my name and saw him touching the side of my head, and his fingers came away red with blood. I saw the panicked look on his face and on all the faces that were swarming around us. People shouting out commands to give me room. I spotted Ivanov, of all people, Mr. Adoption Facilitator. And then Raymond Darke was dropping to the floor alongside Daniel, asking him urgent questions about my health—checking my eyes, checking the blood on the side of my head, demanding that his wife call 911. Daniel’s hands shaking as he fumbled with his phone. Were they bonding over my humiliation? That was some kind of cruel irony.
All of this was happening around me as I lay like a corpse. I wanted to answer Daniel. I wanted to scream.
All I could do was stare.
While Daniel drifted farther away, out of my dreams, out of my life.
And I was stranded on my island again.
Alone.