October 20
The Present
12:30 A.M.
It was so late. Ellie yawned. She was tired and she didn’t know if she had the energy to go play bingo with a bunch of drag queens any time soon. Plus, Brooks was still here. He’d missed dinner and the soprano and the speeches, but he was here for a drink or two. He’d come by because he was at some boring business convention and she’d invited him, since he was in town, to her birthday party.
“So how do you know Michelle?” Todd asked genially, as he brought over a round of cocktails.
Brooks raised his eyebrows. “Mish didn’t tell you?”
“Mish? You mean Mishon?” asked Todd, confused.
“Honey, I’m Mish,” said Ellie, who’d grimaced at hearing her old nickname once more. No one called her that anymore. Mishon—who had once been Shona Silverstein—was the only Mish that Todd knew.
“Right,” said Todd, after taking a sip of his drink, as if that wasn’t important. It was just her past after all. “Anyway, how do you guys know each other? Is it a secret?” Todd joked.
“Sort of,” Ellie mumbled.
Todd raised his eyebrows and gave Brooks a shrug. “Well, that’s no surprise; she keeps everything from me.”
“Ah, well, it’s ancient history,” said Brooks.
Todd grunted.
“We were married, Brooks and I,” Ellie blurted. “Technically, he’s my first husband. But it got annulled, so it doesn’t count.”
Todd took a long sip of his drink. “Well, that’s a relief.” Then they all laughed, because what else was there to say?
They had eloped that night. For some reason, it all made sense. To keep Brooks from talking about what he knew, if he knew anything. If he’d seen anything. If he’d heard anything. Had he? Would he ever tell if he had? It didn’t matter, because you couldn’t testify against your spouse, right? There was some kind of law that covered that.
“Let’s get married!” she’d demanded. The ambulance would be on its way, and if not, Leo’s mom would be there soon. They would take care of it. They didn’t need to be around for that. She knew the sooner she could get out of there, the better.
“Are you serious?” He couldn’t believe it.
“Yeah, I love you,” she said.
“I love you too, but . . .”
“But what, Brooks?”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. When?”
“Tonight.”
“But what about . . .” He gestured to the house, to everything that lay in there. So dead and so cold.
“It doesn’t matter.”
They would find them tomorrow anyway. What did it matter? And by tomorrow, she would be Mrs. Brooks Overton, and everything it promised. He would protect her. He had to do it. He was all she had now. She ran her fingers through his hair and kissed his forehead. “Please.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Is that a yes?”
“YES!”
They flew out to Mexico that very evening, Brooks putting the tickets on his dad’s credit card, and were married by a sleepy clerk at the civic office the next morning. She had no idea why they’d gone to Mexico instead of Las Vegas, but they ended up in Tijuana. Brooks bought rings from a roadside stand selling cheap silver jewelry.
When they returned to Portland, all everyone could talk about was how Leo had been killed by a neighbor, that was all that was on the news, all that anyone cared about. No one asked where she and Brooks had been that night. No one cared. No one knew they were married. They kept it a secret, until Brooks told his parents right before graduation, that he was going to college and signing up for the married people dorm, and when they asked why on earth he was doing that, he confessed.
It was over quickly. His parents were lawyers; the marriage was annulled before the next semester even began. Brooks went off to college and she never saw him again.
She would have sat around heartbroken except by then, she had booked her first gig, in Tokyo, then London, and by the time she saw her eighteenth birthday, she had already met Archer, already hooked the bigger fish.
Brooks had been a blip, a mistake, a ghost, someone she never even thought about at all.
Todd excused himself to check on the caterers, who were packing up; only Victor was still working, and Madison was trying to get people to board the party bus to the next destination. Drag queens didn’t wait for no one.
Brooks looked at her, as if studying her face. It had been a long time since they were together, alone. “I didn’t speak to my parents for years,” he told her. “I was so mad at them for what they did to us. I hated them for it.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah,” he said.
She sighed. Poor Donald and Judy Overton. The worst thing had happened; some townie had married their golden boy. She still remembered the repulsed look on their faces when they found out, the truth behind their friendly smiles all those years.
“You know, I don’t think I ever got over you,” he said wistfully.
“Oh, Brooks, stop.”
“I came tonight to tell you that.”
“Well, I wish you hadn’t,” she said. “I’m not sixteen anymore. None of us are.”
She looked at her phone. Another text from him. He was finally here.
Come out to the back, she typed. I’m by the bar. Brooks is here too.