Andy sat at a booth in the back of a McDonald’s outside of Big Rock, Illinois. She had been so happy to be out of Mike’s truck after two and a half monotonous days of driving that she’d treated herself to a milkshake. Worrying about her cholesterol and lack of exercise was a problem for Future Andy.
Present Andy had enough problems already. She was no longer an amoeba, but there were some obsessive tendencies that she had to accept were baked into her DNA. She had spent the first day of the trip freaking out over all of the mistakes she had made and was probably still making: that she had never checked the cooler in the Reliant for a GPS tracker, that she had left the unregistered revolver in the glove box for Mike to find, that she had possibly broken his testicles and actually stolen his wallet and was committing a felony by taking a stolen vehicle across multiple state lines.
This was the really important one: had Mike heard Paula tell Andy to look for Clara Bellamy in Illinois, or had he been too concerned that his nuts were imploding?
Future Andy would find out eventually.
She chewed the straw on her milkshake. She watched the screensaver bounce around the laptop screen. She would have to save her neurosis about Mike for when she was trying to fall asleep and needed something to torment herself over. For now, she had to figure out what the hell had landed Paula Kunde in prison for twenty years and why she so clearly held a grudge against Laura.
Andy had so far been stymied in her computer searches. Three nights spent in three different motels with the laptop propped open on her belly had resulted in nothing more than an angry red rectangle of skin on her stomach.
The easiest route to finding shit on people was always Facebook. The night Andy had left Austin, she’d created a fake account in the name of Stefan Salvatore and used the Texas Longhorns’ logo as her profile photo. Unsurprisingly, Paula Kunde was not on the social media site. ProfRatings.com let Andy use her Facebook credentials to log in as a user. She went onto Paula’s review page with its cumulative half-star rating. She sent dozens of private messages to Paula’s most vocal critics, the texts all saying the same thing:
DUDE!!! Kunde in FEDERAL PEN 20 yrs?!?!?! MUST HAVE DEETS!!! Bitch won’t change my grade!!!
Andy hadn’t heard back much more than Fuck that fucking bitch I hope you kill her, but she knew that eventually, someone would get bored and do the kind of deep dive that took knowing the number off your parents’ credit card.
A toddler screamed on the other side of the McDonald’s.
Andy watched his mother carry him toward the bathroom. She wondered if she had ever been to this McDonald’s with her mother. Laura hadn’t just pulled Chicago, Illinois, out of her ass for Jerry Randall’s birth and death place.
Right?
Andy slurped the last of the milkshake. Now was not the time to dive into the silly string of her mother’s lies. She studied the scrap of paper at her elbow. The second that Andy was safe enough outside of Austin, she had pulled over to the side of the road and scribbled down everything she could remember about her conversation with Paula Kunde.
—Twenty years in Danbury?
—QuellCorp?
—Knew Hoodie, but not Mike?
—31 years—interesting math?
—Laura full of the worst type of bullshit?
—Shotgun? What made her change her mind—Clara Bellamy???
Andy had started with the easiest searches first. The Danbury Federal Penitentiary’s records were accessible through the BOP.gov inmate locator, but Paula Kunde was not listed on the site. Nor was she listed on the UC-Berkeley, Stanford or West Connecticut University alumni pages. The obvious explanation was that Paula had at some point gotten married and, patriarchal constructs aside, changed her last name.
I know how marriage works.
Andy had already checked marriage and divorce records in Austin, then in surrounding counties, then done the same in Western Connecticut and Berkeley County and Palo Alto, then Andy had decided that she was wasting her time because Paula could’ve flown to Vegas and gotten hitched and actually, why did Andy believe that a shotgun-wielding lunatic had told her the truth about being in prison in the first place?
Snitch and two dimes were basically in every prison show ever. All it took was saying them with attitude, which Paula Kunde had plenty of.
Regardless, the BOP search was a dead end.
Andy tapped her fingers on the table as she studied the list. She tried to think back to the conversation inside of Paula’s kitchen. There had been a definite before and after. Before, meaning when Paula was talking to her, and after, meaning when she’d gone to fetch her shotgun and told Andy to get the hell out.
Andy couldn’t think of what she’d said wrong. They had been talking about Laura, and how she was full of bullshit—the worst type of bullshit—
And then Paula had told Andy to wait and then threatened to shoot her.
Andy could only shake her head, because it still didn’t make sense.
Even more puzzling was the after-after, because Paula hadn’t given up Clara Bellamy’s name until after Andy had kicked the shit out of Mike. Andy could take it at face value and assume that Paula had been impressed by the violence, but something told her she was on the wrong track. Paula was fucking smart. You didn’t go to Stanford if you were an idiot. She had played Andy like a fiddle from the moment she’d opened the front door. She was very likely playing Andy even now, but trying to figure out a maniac’s end game was far beyond Andy’s deductive skills.
She looked back at her notes, focusing on the item that still niggled most at her brain:
—31 years—interesting math?
Had Paula gone to prison thirty-one years ago while a pregnant Laura ran off with nearly one million bucks and a fake ID to live her fabulous life on the beach for thirty-one years until suddenly the diner video appeared on the national news, pointing the bad guys to her location?
Hoodie had strangled both Laura and Paula, so obviously both women had information that someone else wanted.
The mysterious they who could track Andy’s emails and phone calls?
Andy returned to the laptop and tried QuellCorp.com again, because all she could do now was go back and see if she’d missed anything the last twenty times she had looked at the website.
The splash page offered a Ken Burns–effect photo slowly zooming onto a young, multicultural group of lab-coated scientists staring intently at a beaker full of glowing liquid. Violins played in the background like Leonardo da Vinci had just discovered the cure for herpes.
Andy muted the sound.
She was familiar with the pharmaceutical company the same way everybody was familiar with Band-Aids. QuellCorp made everything from baby wipes to erectile dysfunction pills. The only information Andy could find under HISTORY was that a guy named Douglas Paul Queller had founded the company in the 1920s, then his descendants had sold out in the 1980s, then by the early 2000s QuellCorp had basically swallowed the world, because that’s what evil corporations did.
They could certainly be an evil corporation. That was the plot of almost every sci-fi movie Andy had seen, from Avatar to all of the Terminators.
She closed the QuellCorp page and pulled up the wiki for Clara Bellamy.
If it was strange that Laura knew Paula Kunde, it was downright shocking that Paula Kunde knew a woman like Clara Bellamy. She had been a prima ballerina, which according to another wiki page was an honor only bestowed on a handful of women. Clara had danced for George Balanchine, a choreographer whose name even Andy recognized. Clara had toured the world. Danced on the most celebrated stages. Been at the top of her field. Then a horrific knee injury had forced her to retire.
Because Andy had had nothing better to do after driving all day, she had seen almost every video of Clara Bellamy that YouTube had to offer. There were countless performances and interviews with all kinds of famous people, but Andy’s favorite was from what she believed was the first Tchaikovsky Festival ever staged by the New York City Ballet.
Since Andy was a theater nerd, the foremost thing she’d noticed about the video was that the set was spectacular, with weird translucent tubes in the background that made everything look like it was encased in ice. She had assumed that it would be boring to watch tiny women spinning on their toes to old-people music, but there was something almost hummingbird-like about Clara Bellamy that made her impossible to look away from. For a woman Andy had never heard of, Clara had been extraordinarily famous. Newsweek and Time had both featured her on the cover. She was constantly showing up in the New York Times Magazine or highlighted in the New Yorker’s “Goings On About Town” section.
That was where Andy’s searches had hit a wall. Or, to be more exact, a pay wall. She was only allowed a certain number of articles on a lot of the websites, so she had to be careful about what she clicked on. It wasn’t like she could just pull out a credit card and buy more access.
As far as she could tell, Clara had disappeared from public life around 1983. The last photo in the Times showed the woman with her head down, tissue held to her nose, as she left George Balanchine’s funeral.
As with Paula, Andy assumed that Clara Bellamy had been married at some point and changed her name, though why anybody would work so hard to create a famous name, then change it, was hard to fathom. Clara had no Facebook page, but there was a closed appreciation group and a public thinspo one that was grossly obsessed with her weight.
Andy had not been able to locate any marriage or divorce documents for Clara Bellamy in New York, or Chicago’s Cook County or the surrounding areas, but she had found an interesting article in the Chicago Sun Times about a lawsuit that had taken place after Clara’s knee injury.
The prima ballerina had sued a company called EliteDream BodyWear for payment on an endorsement contract. The lawyer who’d represented her was not named in the article, but the accompanying photo showed Clara leaving the courthouse with a lanky, mustachioed man who looked to Andy like the perfect embodiment of a hippie lawyer, or a hipster Millennial trying to look like one. More importantly, when the photographer had clicked the button to take the photo, Hippie Lawyer was looking directly at the camera.
Andy had taken several photography classes at SCAD. She knew how unusual it was to have a candid where someone wasn’t blinking or moving their lips in a weird way. Hippie Lawyer had defied the odds. Both of his eyes were open. His lips were slightly parted. His ridiculously curled handlebar mustache was on center. His silky, long hair rested square on his shoulders. The image was so clear that Andy could even see the tips of his ears sticking out from his hair like tiny pistachios.
Andy had to assume that Hippie Lawyer had not changed that much over the years. A guy who in his thirties took his facial hair grooming cues from Wyatt Earp did not suddenly wake up in his sixties and realize his mistake.
She entered a new search: Chicago+Lawyer+Mustache+Hair.
Within seconds, she was looking at a group called the Funkadelic Fiduciaries, a self-described “hair band.” They played every Wednesday night at a bar called the EZ Inn. Each one had some weird facial hair going on, whether it was devilish Van Dykes or Elvis sideburns, and there were enough man-buns to start an emo colony. Andy zoomed in on each face in the eight-member group and spotted the familiar curl of a handlebar mustache on the drummer.
Andy looked down at his name.
Edwin Van Wees.
She rubbed her eyes. She was tired from driving all day and staring at computer screens all night. It couldn’t be that easy.
She found the old photo from the newspaper to do a comparison. The drummer was a little plumper, a lot less hairy and not as handsome, but she knew that she had the right guy.
Andy looked out the window, taking a moment to acknowledge her good luck. Was finding Edwin, who might know how to find Clara Bellamy, really that easy?
She opened another browser window.
As with Clara, Edwin Van Wees did not have his own Facebook page, but she was able to find a homemade-looking website that listed him as partially retired but still available for speaking gigs and drum solos. She clicked on the about tab. Edwin was a Stanford-trained, former ACLU lawyer with a long, successful career of defending artists and anarchists and rabble-rousers and revolutionaries who had happily posted photos of themselves grinning beside the lawyer who’d kept them out of prison. Even some of the ones who’d ended up going to jail still had glowing things to say about him. It made perfect sense that a guy like Edwin would know a crazy bitch like Paula Kunde.
My revolutionary days are over.
Andy believed with all of her heart that Edwin Van Wees still knew how to get in touch with Clara Bellamy. It was the familiar way she was touching his arm in the courthouse photo. It was also the nasty look Edwin was giving the man behind the lens. Maybe Andy was reading too much into it, but if the professor from Andy’s Emotions of Light in Black and White Photography class had tasked her with finding a photo of a fragile woman holding onto her strong protector, this was the picture Andy would’ve chosen.
The toddler started screaming again.
His mother snatched him up and took him to the bathroom again.
Andy closed the laptop and shoved it into her messenger bag. She tossed her trash and got back into Mike’s truck. Stone Temple Pilots’ “Interstate Love Song” was still playing. Andy reached down to turn it off, but she couldn’t. She hated that she loved Mike’s music. All of his mix-CDs were awesome, from Dashboard Confessional to Blink 182 and a surprising amount of J-Lo.
Andy checked the time on the McDonald’s sign as she pulled onto the road. Two twelve in the afternoon. Not the worst time to drop by unannounced. On his website, Edwin Van Wees had listed his office address at a farm about an hour and a half drive from Chicago. She assumed that meant he worked from home, which made it highly likely that he would be there when Andy pulled up. She had mapped out the directions on Google Earth, zooming in and out of the lush farmlands, locating Edwin’s big red barn and matching house with its bright metal roof.
From the McDonald’s, it took her ten minutes to find the farm. She almost missed the driveway because it was hidden in a thick stand of trees. Andy stopped the truck just shy of the turn. The road was deserted. The floorboard vibrated as the engine idled.
She didn’t feel the same nervousness she’d felt when she walked toward Paula’s house. Andy understood now that there was no guarantee that finding a person meant that the person was going to tell you the truth. Or even that the person was not going to shove a shotgun in your chest. Maybe Edwin Van Wees would do the same thing. It kind of made sense that Paula Kunde would send Andy to someone who would not be happy to see her. The drive from Austin had given Paula plenty of time to call ahead and warn Clara Bellamy that Laura Oliver’s kid might be looking for her. If Edwin Van Wees was still close to Clara, then Clara could’ve called Edwin and—
Andy rubbed her face with her hands. She could spend the rest of the day doing this stupid dance or she could go find out for herself. She turned the wheel and drove down the driveway. The trees didn’t clear for what felt like half a mile, but soon she saw the top of the red barn, then a large pasture with cows, then the small farmhouse with a wide porch and sunflowers planted in the front yard.
Andy parked in front of the barn. There were no other cars in sight, which was a bad sign. The front door to the house didn’t open. There was no fluttering of curtains or furtive faces in the windows. Still, she wasn’t too much of an imbecile to leave without knocking on the door.
Andy started to climb out of the truck, but then she remembered the burner phone that Laura was supposed to call her on when the coast was clear. In truth, she had lost hope around Tulsa that it would ever ring. The Belle Isle Review had provided the salient facts: Hoodie’s body remained unidentified. After analyzing the video from the diner, the police had reached the same conclusion as Mike. Laura had tried to stop Jonah Helsinger from killing himself. She would not be charged with his murder. The kid’s family was still making noises, but police royalty or not, public sentiment had turned away from them, and the local prosecutor was a political weathervane of the vilest kind. In short, whatever lurking danger was keeping Andy away from home was either unrelated or simply another part of Laura’s colossal web of lies.
Andy unzipped the make-up bag and checked the phone to make sure the battery was full before slipping it into her back pocket. She saw Laura’s Canada license and health card. Andy studied the photo of her mother, trying to ignore the pang of longing that she did not want to feel. Instead, she looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Maybe it was Andy’s crappy diet or lack of sleep or the fact that she had started wearing her hair down, but as each day passed, she had started to look more and more like her mother. The last three hotel clerks had barely glanced up when Andy had used the license to check in.
She shoved it back into her messenger bag beside a black leather wallet.
Mike’s wallet.
For the last two and a half days, Andy had been studiously avoiding opening the wallet and staring at Mike’s handsome face, especially when she was lying in bed at night and trying not to think about him because he was a psychopath and she was pathetic.
She looked up at the farmhouse, then checked the driveway, then opened the wallet.
“Oh for fucksakes,” she muttered.
He had four different driver’s licenses, each of them pretty damn good forgeries: Michael Knepper from Alabama; Michael Davey from Arkansas; Michael George from Texas; Michael Falcone from Georgia. There was a thick flap of leather dividing the wallet. Andy picked it open.
Holy shit.
He had a fake United States marshal badge. Andy had seen the real thing before, a gold star inside of a circle. It was a good replica, as convincing as all of the fake IDs. Whoever his forger was had done a damn good job.
There was a tap at the window.
“Fuck!” Andy dropped the wallet as her hands flew up.
Then her mouth dropped open, because the person who had knocked on the window looked a hell of a lot like Clara Bellamy.
“You,” the woman said, a bright smile to her lips. “What are you doing sitting out here in this dirty truck?”
Andy wondered if her eyes were playing tricks, or if she had looked at so many YouTube videos that she was seeing Clara Bellamy everywhere. The woman was older, her face lined, her long hair a peppered gray, but undoubtedly Andy was looking at the real-life person.
Clara said, “Come on, silly. It’s chilly out here. Let’s go inside.”
Why was she talking to Andy like she knew her?
Clara pulled open the door. She held out her hand to help Andy down.
“My goodness,” Clara said. “You look tired. Has Andrea been keeping you up again? Did you leave her at the hotel?”
Andy opened her mouth, but there was no way to answer. She looked into Clara’s eyes, wondering who the woman saw staring back at her.
“What is it?” Clara asked. “Do you need Edwin?”
“Uh—” Andy struggled to answer. “Is he—is Edwin here?”
She looked at the area in front of the barn. “His car isn’t here.”
Andy waited.
“I just put Andrea down for a nap,” she said, as if she hadn’t two seconds ago asked if Andrea was at the hotel.
Did she mean Andrea as in Andy, or someone else?
Clara said, “Should we have some tea?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She looped her arm through Andy’s and led her back toward the farmhouse. “I have no idea why, but I was thinking about Andrew this morning. What happened to him.” She put her hand to the base of her throat. She had started to cry. “Jane, I’m so very sorry.”
“Uh—” Andy had no idea what she was talking about, but she felt a strange desire to cry, too.
Andrew? Andrea?
Clara said, “Let’s not talk about depressing things today. You’ve got enough of that going on in your life right now.” She pushed open the front door with her foot. “Now, tell me how you’ve been. Are you all right? Still having trouble sleeping?”
“Uh,” Andy said, because apparently that’s all she was capable of coming up with. “I’ve been . . .” She tried to think of something to say that would keep this woman talking. “What about you? What have you been up to?”
“Oh, so much. I’ve been clipping magazine photos with ideas for the nursery and working on some scrapbooks from my glory years. The worst kind of self-aggrandizement, but you know, it’s such a strange thing—I’ve forgotten most of my performances. Have you?”
“Uh . . .” Andy still didn’t know what the hell the woman was talking about.
Clara laughed. “I bet you remember every single one. You were always so sharp that way.” She pushed open a swinging door with her foot. “Have a seat. I’ll make us some tea.”
Andy realized she was in another kitchen with another stranger who might or might not know everything about her mother.
“I think I have some cookies.” Clara started opening cupboards.
Andy took in the kitchen. The space was small, cut off from the rest of the house, and probably not much changed since it was built. The metal cabinets were painted bright teal. The countertops were made from butcher’s blocks. The appliances looked like they belonged on the set of The Partridge Family.
There was a large whiteboard on the wall by the fridge. Someone had written:
Clara: it’s Sunday. Edwin will be in town from 1–4pm. Lunch is in the fridge. Do not use the stove.
Clara turned on the stove. The starter clicked several times before the gas caught. “Chamomile?”
“Uh—sure.” Andy sat down at the table. She tried to think of some questions to ask Clara, like what year it was or who was the current president, but none of that was necessary because you don’t put notes on a board like that unless a person has memory problems.
Andy felt an almost overwhelming sadness that was quickly chased by a healthy dose of guilt, because if Clara had early-onset Alzheimer’s, then what had happened to her last week was gone, but what had happened to her thirty-one years ago was probably close to the surface.
Andy asked, “What colors were you thinking of for the nursery?”
“No pinks,” Clara insisted. “Maybe some greens and yellows?”
“That sounds pretty.” Andy tried to keep her talking. “Like the sunflowers outside.”
“Yes, exactly.” She seemed pleased. “Edwin says we’ll try as soon as this is over, but I don’t know. It seems like we should start now. I’m not getting any younger.” She put her hand to her stomach as she laughed. There was something so beautiful about the sound that Andy felt it pull at her heart.
Clara Bellamy exuded kindness. To try to trick her felt dirty.
Clara asked, “How are you feeling, though? Are you still exhausted?”
“I’m better.” Andy watched Clara pour cold water into two cups. She hadn’t heated the kettle. The flame flickered high on the stove. Andy stood up to turn it off, asking, “Do you remember how we met? I was trying to recall the details the other day.”
“Oh, so horrible.” Her fingers went to her throat. “Poor Andrew.”
Andrew again.
Andy sat back down at the table. She wasn’t equipped for this kind of subterfuge. A smarter person would know how to get information out of this clearly troubled woman. Paula Kunde would likely have her singing like a bird.
Which gave Andy an idea.
She tried, “I saw Paula a few days ago.”
Clara rolled her eyes. “I hope you didn’t call her that.”
“What else would I call her?” Andy tried. “Bitch?”
Clara laughed as she sat down at the table. She had put tea bags in the cold water. “I wouldn’t say that to her face. Penny would probably just as soon see us all dead right now.”
Penny?
Andy mulled the word around in her head. And then she remembered the dollar bill that Paula Kunde had shoved into her hand. Andy was wearing the same jeans from that day. She dug into her pocket and found the bill wadded into a tight ball. She smoothed it out on the table. She slid it toward Clara.
“Ah.” Clara’s lips turned up mischievously. “Dumb Bitch, reporting for duty.”
Another spectacular success.
Andy had to stop being subtle. She asked, “Do you remember Paula’s last name?”
Clara’s eyebrow went up. “Is this some sort of test? Do you think I can’t remember?”
Andy tried to decipher Clara’s suddenly sharp tone. Was she irritated? Had Andy ruined her chances?
Clara laughed, breaking the tension. “Of course I remember. What’s gotten into you, Jane? You’re acting so strange.”
Jane?
Clara said the name again. “Jane?”
Andy played with the string on her tea bag. The water had turned orange. “I’ve forgotten, is the problem. She’s using a different name now.”
“Penny?”
Penny?
“I just—” Andy couldn’t keep playing these games. “Just tell me, Clara. What’s her last name?”
Clara reeled back at the demand. Tears seeped from her eyes.
Andy felt like an asshole. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
Clara stood up. She walked to the refrigerator and opened it. Instead of getting something out, she just stood there.
“Clara, I’m so—”
“It’s Evans. Paula Louise Evans.”
Andy’s elation was considerably tempered by her shame.
“I’m not completely bonkers.” Clara’s back was stiff. “I remember the important things. I always have.”
“I know that. I’m so sorry.”
Clara kept her own counsel as she stared into the open fridge.
Andy wanted to slide onto the floor and grovel for forgiveness. She also wanted to run outside and get her laptop, but she needed internet access to look up Paula Louise Evans. She hesitated, but only slightly, before asking Clara, “Do you know the—” She stopped herself, because Clara probably had no idea what Wi-Fi was, let alone knew the password.
Andy asked, “Is there an office in the house?”
“Of course.” Clara closed the fridge and turned around, the warm smile back in place. “Do you need to make a phone call?”
“Yes,” Andy said, because agreeing was the quickest way forward. “Do you mind?”
“Is it long-distance?”
“No.”
“That’s good. Edwin’s been grousing at me about the phone bill lately.” Clara’s smile started to falter. She had lost her way in the conversation again.
Andy said, “When I finish my phone call in the office, we could talk some more about Andrew.”
“Of course.” Clara’s smile brightened. “It’s this way, but I’m not sure where Edwin is. He’s been working so hard lately. And obviously the news has made him very upset.”
Andy didn’t ask what news because she couldn’t bear to risk setting the woman off again.
She followed Clara back through the house. Even with the bad knee, the dancer’s walk was breathtakingly graceful. Her feet barely touched the floor. Andy couldn’t fully appreciate watching her move because so many questions flooded her mind: Who was Jane? Who was Andrew? Why did Clara cry every time she said the man’s name?
And why did Andy feel the desire to protect this fragile woman she had never met before?
“Here.” Clara was at the end of the hall. She opened the door to what had likely been a bedroom at some point, but was now a tidy office with a wall of locked filing cabinets, a roll-top desk and a MacBook Pro on the arm of a leather couch.
Clara smiled at Andy. “What did you need?”
Andy hesitated again. She should go back to the McDonald’s and use their Wi-Fi. There was no reason to do this here. Except that she still wanted to know answers. What if Paula Louise Evans wasn’t online? And then Andy would have to drive back, and Edwin Van Wees would probably be home by then, and he would probably not want Clara talking to Andy.
Clara asked, “Can I help you with something?”
“The computer?”
“That’s easy. They’re not as scary as you think.” Clara sat on the floor. She opened the MacBook. The password prompt came up. Andy expected her to struggle with the code, but Clara pressed her finger to the Touch ID and the desktop was unlocked.
She told Andy, “You’ll have to sit here, otherwise the light from the window blacks out the screen.”
She meant the giant window behind the couch. Andy could see Mike’s truck parked in front of the red barn. She could still leave. Edwin would be home in less than an hour. Now would be the time to go.
Clara said, “Come, Jane. I can show you how to use it. It’s not terribly complicated.”
Andy sat down on the floor beside Clara.
Clara put the open laptop on the seat of the couch so they could both see it. She said, “I’ve been looking at videos of myself. Does that make me terribly vain?”
Andy looked at this stranger sitting so close beside her, who kept talking to her like they had been friends for a long time, and said, “I watched your videos, too. Almost all of them. You were—are—such a beautiful dancer, Clara. I never thought I liked ballet before, but watching you made me understand that it’s lovely.”
Clara touched her fingers to Andy’s leg. “Oh, darling, you’re so sweet. You know I feel the same about you.”
Andy did not know what to say. She reached up to the laptop. She found the browser. Her fingers fumbled on the keyboard. She was sweaty and shaky for no reason. She squeezed her hands into fists in an attempt to get them back under control. She rested her fingers on the keyboard. She slowly typed.
PAULA LOUISE EVANS.
Andy’s pinky finger rested on the ENTER key but did not press it. This was the moment. She would find out something—at least one thing—about the horrible woman who had known her mother thirty-one years ago.
Andy tapped ENTER.
Motherfucker.
Paula Louise Evans had her own Wikipedia page.
Andy clicked on the link.
The warning at the top of the page indicated the information was not without controversy. Which made sense, because Paula struck Andy as a woman who loved controversy.
She felt a nervous energy take hold as she skimmed the contents, scrolling through an extensive bio that listed everything from the hospital where Paula had been born to her inmate number at Danberry Federal Penitentiary for Women.
Raised in Corte Madera, California . . . Berkeley . . . Stanford . . . murder.
Andy’s stomach dropped.
Paula Evans had murdered a woman.
Andy looked up at the ceiling for a moment. She thought about Paula pointing the shotgun at her chest.
Clara said, “There’s so much information about her. Is it horrible that I’m a bit jealous?”
Andy scrolled down to the next section:
INVOLVEMENT WITH THE ARMY OF THE CHANGING WORLD.
There was a blurry photo of Paula. The date underneath read “July 1986.”
Thirty-two years ago.
Andy could remember doing the math back in Carrollton at the library computer. She had been looking for events that had taken place around the time she would’ve been conceived.
Bombings and plane hijackings and shoot-outs at banks.
Andy studied the photo of Paula Evans.
She was wearing a weird dress that looked like a cotton slip. Thick, black lines of make-up were smeared beneath her eyes. Fingerless gloves were on her hands. Combat boots were on her feet. She was wearing a beret. A cigarette dangled from her mouth. She had a revolver in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. It would’ve been funny except for the fact that Paula had murdered someone.
And been involved in a conspiracy to bring down the world, apparently.
“Jane?” Clara had pulled a blue afghan around her shoulders. “Should we have some tea?”
“In a moment,” Andy said, doing a search for the word JANE on Paula’s Wikipedia page.
Nothing.
ANDREW.
Nothing.
She clicked on the link that took her to the wiki page for THE ARMY OF THE CHANGING WORLD.
Starting with the assassination of Martin Queller in Oslo . . .
“QuellCorp,” Andy said.
Clara made a hissing sound. “Aren’t they awful?”
Andy skipped down the page. She saw a photo of their leader, a guy who looked like Zac Efron with Charles Manson’s eyes. The Army’s crimes were bullet-pointed past the Martin Queller assassination. They had kidnapped and murdered a Berkeley professor. Been involved in a shoot-out, a nationwide manhunt. Their crazy-ass leader had written a manifesto, a ransom note that had appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Andy clicked on the note.
She read the first part about the fascist regime and then her eyes started to glaze over.
It was like something Calvin and Hobbes would concoct during a meeting of G.R.O.S.S. to get back at Susie Derkins.
Andy returned to the Army page and found a section called MEMBERS. Most of the names were in blue hyperlinks amid the sea of black text. Dozens of people. How had Andy never seen a Dateline or Lifetime movie about this insane cult?
William Johnson. Dead.
Franklin Powell. Dead.
Metta Larsen. Dead.
Andrew Queller—
Andy’s heart flipped, but Andrew’s name was in black, which meant he didn’t have a page. Then again, you didn’t have to be Scooby-Doo to link him back to QuellCorp and its assassinated namesake.
She scrolled back up to Martin Queller and clicked his name. Apparently, there were a lot more famous Quellers out there that Andy didn’t know about. His wife, Annette Queller, née Logan, had a family line that would take hours to explore. Their eldest son, Jasper Queller, was hyperlinked, but Andy already knew the asshole billionaire who kept trying and failing to run for president.
The cursor drifted over the next name: Daughter, Jane “Jinx” Queller.
“Jane?” Clara asked, because she had Alzheimer’s and her mind was trapped in a time over thirty years ago when she knew a woman named Jane who looked just like Andy.
Just as Andy looked like the Daniela B. Cooper photo in the fake Canada driver’s license.
Her mother.
Andy started to cry. Not just cry, but sob. A wail came out of her mouth. Tears and snot rolled down her face. She leaned over, her forehead on the seat of the couch.
“Oh, sweetheart.” Clara was on her knees, her arms wrapped around Andy’s shoulders.
Andy shook with grief. Was Laura’s real name Jane Queller? Why did this one lie matter so much more than the others?
“Here, let me.” Clara slid the laptop over and started to type. “It’s okay, my darling. I cry when I watch mine sometimes, too, but look at this one. It’s perfect.”
Clara slid the laptop back to the center.
Andy tried to wipe her eyes. Clara put a tissue in her hand. Andy blew her nose, tried to stanch her tears. She looked at the laptop.
Clara had pulled up a YouTube video.
!!!RARE!!! JINX QUELLER 1983 CARNEGIE HALL!!!
What?
“That green dress!” Clara’s eyes glowed with excitement. She clicked the icon for full screen. “A fait accompli.”
Andy did not know what to do but watch the video as it autoplayed. The recording was fuzzy and weirdly colored, like everything else from the eighties. An orchestra was already on stage. A massive, black grand piano was front and center.
“Oh!” Clara unmuted the sound.
Andy heard soft murmurs from the crowd.
Clara said, “This was my favorite part. I always peeked out to feel their mood.”
For some reason, Andy held her breath.
The audience had gone silent.
A very thin woman in a dark green evening gown walked out of the wings.
“So elegant,” Clara murmured, but Andy barely registered the comment.
The woman crossing the stage was young-looking, maybe eighteen, and obviously uncomfortable walking in such dressy shoes. Her hair was bleached almost white, permed within an inch of its life. The camera swept to the audience. They were giving her a standing ovation before she even turned to look at them.
The camera zoomed in on the woman’s face.
Andy felt her stomach clench.
Laura.
In the video, her mother performed a slight bow. She looked so cool as she stared into the faces of thousands of people. Andy had seen that look before on other performers’ faces. Absolute certainty. She had always loved watching an actor’s transformation from the wings, had been in awe that they could walk out in front of all of those judgmental strangers and so believably pretend to be someone else.
Like her mother had pretended for all of Andy’s life.
The worst type of bullshit.
The cheering started to die down as Jinx Queller sat down in front of the piano.
She nodded to the conductor.
The conductor raised his hands.
The audience abruptly silenced.
Clara turned up the volume as loud as it would go.
Violins strummed. The low vibration tickled her eardrums. Then the tempo bounced, then calmed, then bounced again.
Andy didn’t know music, especially classical. Laura never listened to it at home. The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Heart. Nirvana. Those were the groups that Laura played on the radio when she was driving around town or doing chores or working on patient reports. She knew the words to “Mr. Brightside” before anyone else did. She had downloaded “Lemonade” the night it dropped. Her eclectic taste made her the cool mom, the mom that everyone could talk to because she wouldn’t judge you.
Because she had played Carnegie Hall and she knew what the fuck she was talking about.
In the video, Jinx Queller was still waiting at the piano, hands resting in her lap, eyes straight ahead. Other instruments had joined the violins. Andy didn’t know which ones because her mother had never taught her about music. She had discouraged Andy from joining the band, winced every time Andy picked up the cymbals.
Flutes. Andy could see the guys in front pursing their lips.
Bows moved. Oboe. Cello. Horns.
Jinx Queller still patiently awaited her turn at the grand piano.
Andy pressed her palm to her stomach as if to calm it. She was sick with tension for the woman in the video.
Her mother.
This stranger.
What was Jinx Queller thinking while she waited? Was she wondering how her life would turn out? Did she know that she would one day have a daughter? Did she know that she had only four years left before Andy came along and somehow took her away from this amazing life?
At 2:22, her mother finally raised her hands.
There was an appreciable tension before her fingers lightly touched the keys.
Soft at first, just a few notes, a slow, lazy progression.
The violins came back in, then her hands moved faster, floating up and down the keyboard, bringing out the most beautiful sound that Andy had ever heard.
Flowing. Lush. Rich. Exuberant.
There weren’t enough adjectives in the world to describe what Jinx Queller coaxed from the piano.
Swelling—that’s what Andy felt. A swelling in her heart.
Pride. Joy. Confusion. Euphoria.
Andy’s emotions matched the look on her mother’s face as the music went from solemn to dramatic to thrilling, then back again. Every note seemed to be reflected in Jane’s expression, her eyebrows lifting, her eyes closing, her lips curled up in pleasure. She was absolutely enraptured. Confidence radiated off the grainy video like rays from the sun. There was a smile on her mother’s lips, but it was a secret smile that Andy had never seen before. Jinx Queller, still so impossibly young, had the look of a woman who was exactly where she was meant to be.
Not in Belle Isle. Not at a parent–teacher conference or on the couch in her office working with a patient, but on stage, holding the world in the palm of her hand.
Andy wiped her eyes. She could not stop crying. She did not understand how her mother had not cried every day for the rest of her life.
How could anyone walk away from something so magical?
Andy sat completely transfixed for the entire length of the video. She could not take her eyes off the screen. Sometimes her mother’s hands flicked up and down the length of the piano, other times they seemed to be on top of each other, the fingers moving independently across the white and black keys in a way that reminded Andy of Laura kneading dough in the kitchen.
The smile never left her face right up until the ebullient last notes.
Then it was over.
Her hands floated to her lap.
The audience went crazy. They were on their feet. The clapping turned into a solid wall of sound, more like the constant shush of a summer rain.
Jinx Queller stayed seated, hands in her lap, looking down at the keys. Her breath was heavy from physical exertion. Her shoulders had rolled in. She started nodding. She seemed to be taking a moment with the piano, with herself, to absorb the sensation of absolute perfection.
She nodded once more. She stood up. She shook the conductor’s hand. She waved to the orchestra. They were already standing, saluting her with their bows, furiously clapping their hands.
She turned to the audience and the cheering swelled. She bowed stage left, then right, then center. She smiled—a different smile, not so confident, not so joyful—and walked off the stage.
That was it.
Andy closed the laptop before the next video could play.
She looked up at the window behind the couch. The sun was bright against the blue sky. Tears dripped down into the collar of her shirt. She tried to think of a word to describe how she was feeling—
Astonished? Bewildered? Overcome? Dumbfounded?
Laura had been the one thing that Andy had wanted to be close to all of her life.
A star.
She studied her own hands. She had normal fingers—not too long or thin. When Laura was sick and unable to take care of herself, Andy had washed her mother’s hands, put lotion on them, rubbed them, held them. But what did they really look like? They had to be graceful, enchanted, imbued with an otherworldly sort of grace. Andy should have felt sparks when she massaged them, or spellbound, or—something.
Yet they were the same normal hands that had waved for Andy to hurry up or she’d be late for school. Dug soil in the garden when it was time to plant spring flowers. Wrapped around the back of Gordon’s neck when they danced. Pointed at Andy in fury when she did something wrong.
Why?
Andy blinked, trying to clear the tears from her eyes. Clara had disappeared. Maybe she hadn’t been able to handle Andy’s grief, or the perceived pain that Jane Queller experienced when she watched her younger self playing. The two women had clearly discussed the performance before.
That green dress!
Andy reached into her back pocket for the burner phone.
She dialed her mother’s number.
She listened to the phone ring.
She closed her eyes against the sunlight, imagining Laura in the kitchen. Walking over to her phone where it was charging on the counter. Seeing the unfamiliar number on the screen. Trying to decide whether or not to answer it. Was it a robocall? A new client?
“Hello?” Laura said.
The sound of her voice cracked Andy open. She had longed for nearly a week to have her mother call, to hear the words that it was safe to come back home, but now that she was on the phone, Andy was incapable of doing anything but crying.
“Hello?” Laura repeated. Then, because she had gotten similar calls before, “Andrea?”
Andy lost what little shit she had managed to keep together. She leaned over her knees, head in her hand, trying not to wail again.
“Andrea, why are you calling me?” Laura’s tone was clipped. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Andy opened her mouth, but only to breathe.
“Andrea, please,” Laura said. “I need you to acknowledge that you can hear me.” She waited. “Andy—”
“Who are you?”
Laura did not make a sound. Seconds passed, then what felt like a full minute.
Andy looked at the screen, wondering if they had been disconnected. She pressed the phone back to her ear. She finally heard the gentle slap of waves from the beach. Laura had walked outside. She was on the back porch.
“You lied to me,” Andy said.
Nothing.
“My birthday. Where I was born. Where we lived. That fake picture of my fake grandparents. Do you even know who my father is?”
Laura still said nothing.
“You used to be somebody, Mom. I saw it online. You were on stage at-at-at Carnegie Hall. People were worshipping you. It must’ve taken years to get that good. All of your life. You were somebody, and you walked away from it.”
“You’re wrong,” Laura finally said. There was no emotion in her tone, just a cold flatness. “I’m nobody, and that’s exactly who I want to be.”
Andy pressed her fingers into her eyes. She couldn’t take any more of these fucking riddles. Her head was going to explode.
Laura asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m nowhere.”
Andy wanted to close the phone, to give Laura the biggest silent fuck you she could, but the moment was too desperate for hollow gestures.
She asked Laura, “Are you even my real mother?”
“Of course I am. I was in labor for sixteen hours. The doctors thought they were going to lose both of us. But they didn’t. We didn’t. We survived.”
Andy heard a car pulling into the driveway.
Fuck.
“An-Andrea,” Laura struggled to get out her name. “Where are you? I need to know you’re safe.”
Andy knelt on the couch and looked out the window. Edwin Van Wees with his stupid handlebar mustache. He saw Mike’s truck and practically fell out of his car as he scrambled toward the front door.
“Clara!” he yelled. “Clara, where—”
Clara answered, but Andy couldn’t make out the words.
Laura must have heard something. She asked, “Where are you?”
Andy listened to heavy boots pounding down the hallway.
“Andrea,” Laura said, her tone clipped. “This is deadly serious. You need to tell me—”
“Who the fuck are you?” Edwin demanded.
Andy turned around.
“Shit,” Edwin muttered. “Andrea.”
“Is that—” Laura said, but Andy pressed the phone to her chest.
She asked the man, “How do you know me?”
“Come away from the window.” Edwin motioned Andy out of the office. “You can’t be here. You need to go. Now.”
Andy didn’t move. “Tell me how you know me.”
Edwin saw the phone in her hand. “Who are you talking to?”
When Andy didn’t answer, he wrenched the phone out of her hand and put it to his ear.
He said, “Who is—fuck.” Edwin turned his back to Andy, telling Laura, “No, I have no idea what Clara told her. You know she’s been unwell.” He started nodding, listening. “I didn’t tell her—no. Clara doesn’t know about that. It’s privileged information. I would never—” He stopped again. “Laura, you need to calm down. No one knows where it is except for me.”
They knew each other. They were arguing the way old friends argued. Edwin had known Andy by sight. Clara had thought she was Jane, who was really Laura . . .
Andy’s teeth had started to chatter. She could hear them clicking inside of her head. She rubbed her arms with her hands. She felt cold, almost frozen.
“Laura, I—” Edwin leaned down his head and looked out the window. “Listen, you just need to trust me. You know I would never—” He turned around and looked at Andy. She watched his anger soften into something else. He smiled at her the same way Gordon smiled at her when she fucked up but he still wanted her to know that he loved her.
Why was a man she had never met looking at her like her father?
Edwin said, “I will, Laura. I promise I’ll—”
There was a loud crack.
Then another.
Then another.
Andy was on the floor, the same as the last time she had heard a sudden burst of gunfire.
Everything was exactly the same.
Glass broke. Papers started to fly. The air filled with debris.
Edwin took the brunt of the bullets, his arms jerking up, his skull almost vaporizing, bone and chunks of his hair splattering against the couch, the walls, the ceiling.
Andy was flat on her belly, hands covering her head, when she heard the nauseating thunk of his body hitting the floor.
She looked at his face. Nothing but a dark hole with white shards of skull stared back. His mustache was still curled up at the ends, held in place with a thick wax.
Andy tasted blood in her mouth. Her heart felt like it was beating inside of her eardrums. She thought that she had lost her hearing, but there was nothing to hear.
The shooter had stopped.
Andy scanned the room for the burner phone. She saw it fifteen feet away in the hall. She had no idea if it was still working, but she heard her mother’s voice as clear as if she was in the room—
I need you to run, darling. He can’t reload fast enough to hurt you.
Andy tried to stand. She could barely get to her knees before throwing up from the pain. The McDonald’s milkshake was pink with blood. Every time she heaved, it felt like fire was ripping down her left side.
Footsteps. Outside. Getting closer.
Andy forced herself up onto her hands and knees. She crawled toward the door, her palms digging into broken glass, her knees sliding across the floor. She made it as far as the hallway before the searing pain made her stop. She fell over onto her hip. She pushed herself up to sitting. Pressed her back to the wall. Her skull was filled with a high-pitched whining noise. Shards of glass porcupined from her bare arms.
Andy listened.
She heard a strange sound from the other side of the house.
Click-click-click-click.
The cylinder spinning in the revolver?
She looked at the burner phone. The screen had been shattered.
There was nowhere to go. Nothing to do but wait.
Andy reached down to her side. Her shirt was soaked with blood. Her fingers found a tiny hole in the material.
Then the tip of her finger found another hole in her skin.
She had been shot.