Kelly stared into Shane’s empty bedroom. “We don’t know each other anymore,” she said.
She thought about all the letters she used to write him when she was in prison. All those questions she asked him, each one answered so carefully. Had they ever spoken to each other aloud with the same abandon as in their writing—or had they been strangers throughout their marriage, ever since her pregnancy, that first secret Kelly had decided to keep from him?
Time for another letter.
Her laptop was still on the kitchen table, screen still frozen on The Demon Pit. Just send him an e-mail. She ejected the DVD, then clicked on the Internet icon. She was about to open up her e-mail, but her fingers froze on the keyboard.
Kelly’s thirty-year-old mug shot stared back at her from her home page, alongside a photograph of the medical examiner’s van, leaving yesterday morning through the gates of the Marshalls’ home on Blue Jay Way. She read the headline:
TWO MURDERS: EERIE SIMILARITIES
She clicked on the article, forced herself to skim through. No new information, yet so many phrases that jumped out and slapped her: As Marshall’s family members gathered at his home, Lund was nowhere to be seen . . . Shane Marshall is now living separately from his wife . . . None of the Marshall family is talking to reporters, but sources close to the Hollywood dynasty say there is no love lost between them and Lund, an “odd duck” who largely keeps to herself and makes a living by working in some capacity for notorious “cheaters’ Web site” SaraBelle.com . . . Spotted leaving the West Hollywood precinct, where her husband had been held following his emotional breakdown at Teaserz, Lund appeared to show no emotion . . . “Kelly never really got along with anyone in the family,” says a source close to the Marshalls, who wishes to remain anonymous. “Shane distanced himself from them during his marriage, but now, they’re so happy to have him back in the fold.”
Kelly looked bad on paper. She always had—though in the past, she’d at least had youth on her side. But that wasn’t what bothered her. Of everything inferred by the Web news piece, what hurt her most was one phrase: a source close to the Marshalls, who wishes to remain anonymous.
“Why do you hate me so much, Bellamy?” Kelly whispered. “What did I ever do to you?”
She thought about Shane, passed out in his sister’s spare bedroom, location unknown. She thought of the text he’d sent her: I NEED SOME TIME AWAY FROM YOU. It didn’t sound like Shane—at least not the Shane she thought she knew. Had Bellamy sent it? Had she stolen the phone when Shane was safely passed out and typed out the words she’d always wished he would say? It made sense. Bellamy had always been her father’s daughter, after all . . .
And Shane was weak—weaker than anyone knew him to be. A few weeks ago, he’d been out with his camera and Kelly had gone into his room to borrow a pen. In his nightstand drawer, she’d found easily thirty empty bottles of Ambien—so many bottles above and beyond his regular prescription, no doubt to be disposed of when the time was right.
She hadn’t said a word to him about it. In fact, she’d forced it out of her mind. What right did she have to confront Shane, after all? What were a few extra pills anyway, compared to the pregnancy, compared to Rocky? You have your secrets, she had told herself. Let Shane have his. But where had that gotten her? Where had it gotten them both? If she had spoken to him about it, he might not have taken whatever he had taken back at his parents’ house, trying to drown his grief. He wouldn’t have gotten himself arrested and he wouldn’t have wound up at his sister’s. He could have come home. They could have told each other everything.
“Secrets can kill you.” Kelly’s dad used to say that when he was nodding off, but he’d never explained what he meant, so it had come across as babbling. “They gnaw at your insides. You try and kill ’em with booze, but that’s just like watering plants, kiddo. The secret grows bigger and stronger inside you. Gets to feeling sometimes like it can burst right through your skin. Like it can eat you alive . . .”
She’d never asked Jimmy what secrets were killing him back then and now they were all gone, her father’s secrets scrambled with everything else in his brain—mashed together with fantasies and memories and lies.
Kelly clicked out of the article, opened her e-mail, and typed Shane’s address into the box. She wrote quickly:
Shane, we need to talk. If you are going to leave me, I can’t stop you. But first, please, let’s tell the truth. Let’s share all the secrets we’ve been keeping from each other and end things clean, so we both know who exactly it is that we’re leaving.
With love,
K
She took a deep breath. But before she hit “send,” she stopped herself. If Bellamy was screening Shane’s calls and possibly sending his texts, odds were she was also checking his e-mail. And even if she wasn’t, did Kelly really want to put these feelings into writing? You put anything out there—your words, your tears (or lack of them), your face, bending into a nervous smile—it’s all there for public consumption. And make no mistake: it will be consumed and digested and spit back out as something it never was. And then there’s nothing you can do but live with it. Become it. Your one-word responses become evidence of cold-bloodedness. Your shabby clothes become a sign of disrespect. Your facial tic becomes The Mona Lisa Death Smile.
What was it that Ilene Cutler had said? The world’s a stage, Little Miss, but very few of us get to write our own roles. Ilene Cutler, right about everything.
Kelly deleted the e-mail. The best solution, the only solution, was to speak to Shane in person. In his own words, he could explain to Kelly why he’d gone to a strip club and beaten up a stranger while saying her name. He could tell her about his pill addiction—when it had started, why—and let her know why he was leaving her. In turn, she could tell him about her late-night drives, about her terminated pregnancy, about Rocky . . . And she could open up that final drawer in her mind for him, the one she’d locked tight two mornings ago when she’d pulled into her driveway with dawn close to breaking, the sleeve of her favorite gray hoodie spattered with Sterling Marshall’s blood . . .
Moments later, Kelly was standing at the sink with the water running, breathing hard, that locked drawer opening. The night of April 21 sprung to life in her mind, starting with the midnight drive up Outpost Road—a short solo run to clear her head before sleep, the radio on and that song playing, making her feel seventeen again. Bette Midler. “The Rose.” Bette had been singing about an endless aching need when Kelly’s cell phone had started ringing—ringing past midnight. She hadn’t recognized the number on the screen. And she never would have answered if the song hadn’t brought back memories, if it hadn’t made her feel so stupidly, stubbornly hopeful.
More hopeful still when she heard Sterling Marshall’s voice. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, Mr. Marshall.”
“Call me Dad,” he had said. “Call me Dad, Kelly,” and “Please don’t tell Shane. We need to talk. I need to see you.” And then, “Kelly, my girl, I have cancer. I’m dying.” A triple blow. Who wouldn’t have gone to Sterling Marshall after that? How could anyone resist that kind voice? Call me Dad . . . My girl . . .
And so Kelly had gone. Instead of turning around and heading home, she’d swung onto 62 and flown toward Hollywood at eighty-five miles per hour. “I’ll be there,” she’d said into her phone. Like an idiot. Like a child.
When she arrived, the gate had been open. She’d driven through and parked in the Marshalls’ driveway and rung the front doorbell and when no one had answered she’d opened it herself. Like someone dumb and trusting. She’d run up the stairs to his office—weird how it all felt to her, as though no time had passed, as though Kelly really were the same person she’d been thirty years ago, before McFadden, before prison. She’d half-expected Bellamy to greet her as she passed the den, seventeen-year-old Bellamy, shaking a bag of magic mushrooms, her smile lighting up the room, the street, all of Hollywood and beyond . . . “’Bout time you showed up, Kelly . . . Let’s have a ‘no-day.’”
Kelly had run up the stairs, feet clomping like a kid, “The Rose” still playing in her head along with Bellamy’s voice, her best friend’s voice . . . “Check it. I got some of my mom’s pills too. I think they’re downers. Wanna try?” The whole house had been silent, Mary Marshall passed out in her room no doubt, the servants sleeping, everyone asleep save for Sterling Marshall and whatever he had to say to her . . . An apology? After all these years?
She’d thrown open the door to her father-in-law’s office, thinking, I’m here, Dad. God, that really had been what she was thinking. All is forgiven. I’m home.
And then the smell had hit her, that awful smell, coppery and intimate. Blood. Bits of bone on the polished wood floor, his face destroyed. A gun next to his hand and she’d knelt down, she’d touched him.
Had it all been a setup? Had he called her with a plan? I’m dying of cancer, Kelly. I’m killing myself and leaving no note and you, you, my girl . . . You will take the rap. My son will be rid of you at long last.
She’d pulled up her hoodie. She’d run out the back door. But did that matter? Did any of it matter—a convicted killer, leaving a dead man’s house at 2:00 A.M.?
Kelly’s car in his driveway. Her number in his phone. All that blood. Her footprints in it. Her fingerprints on him, two days after he’d given an interview to the Los Angeles Times on the fifth anniversary of Kelly’s release, reminding the world of her role: Hollywood have-not. Drugged-out wild child. Murderer.
“He even gave me a motive,” she whispered, her voice hollow in her ears, doomed.
ONCE SHE WAS IN SHANE’S ROOM, KELLY TRIED TO IGNORE THE VINTAGE movie poster over the bed (Sterling Marshall shines on in GUNS OF VICTORY!). She headed for the desk in the corner of the room and turned on his computer. Shane’s bedroom doubled as his office. (With clients, he called it the “guest room.” Yet another secret in their lives.) And so it was very neat—pristine, save for the empty pill bottles stashed away in the nightstand drawer—the computer ringing in such a clean, professional way as she switched it on and clicked on the icon marked “address book.” She searched for Bellamy’s name, found it. But there was no address listed; no e-mail, even. Just a home phone.
Without thinking much about it, Kelly clicked on Shane’s Internet icon and opened his e-mail. In the five years she’d lived with him, she’d never once used his computer without him in the room, let alone opened his e-mail. But after scrolling through to find only client correspondence and, later, queries from the press, she switched screens to Google. She had never before checked his search history.
But she did now, moving from step to intrusive step as though by reflex, as though Shane had forfeited his right to privacy by turning into someone she needed to figure out.
A sound just outside the house snapped her out of it. A car horn honking, out on the road, and when she listened more carefully, voices. People out there. Shame filled her, an awful cold feeling, as though whoever was outside had actually seen Kelly at Shane’s computer. She shut it off—but not before she noticed something strange on her husband’s search history. In the midst of searches for porn and photo processing centers and generic Ambien, one name had jumped out at her. And judging from its placement, the search had taken place within the last week or two.
Shane had googled Artist + Rocky Three.
Kelly swallowed hard. She left Shane’s bedroom quickly and headed back to the kitchen. Outside, she heard tires skidding to a halt. A door slamming. A man’s voice saying, “Dude, this is our space.”
“What, you reserved it?” another, deeper voice laughed.
“What the hell . . .” Kelly cracked the front door.
“Kelly!” a woman’s voice yelled.
She opened the door a little wider and found herself staring at a small cluster of news vans parked just across the street.
“Kelly, have you spoken to your husband?”
“Do you know who killed Sterling Marshall?”
“Does Shane have substance abuse issues?”
She sighed. Slammed the door. “No, maybe, and yes,” she said quietly.
Amazing. Her address wasn’t listed. And, except for meetings with his most trusted clients, Shane did most all of his photo archive business remotely. Yet still the press had found her.
The press could find anybody . . .
Kelly backed away from the door, an idea closing in on her. She grabbed her purse off the table, opened her wallet, pulled out Sebastian Todd’s business card. She tapped the gold-embossed number into her phone.
“You’re a mind reader,” Todd said by way of answering. “I was just about to call you. What did you think of The Demon—”
“I’ll give you an interview.”
“Wow that’s . . . impulsive of you.”
“An exclusive. When the time is right. I’ll talk about my parents. John McFadden. Anything you want.”
“To what do I owe this—”
“I just want one thing in return.”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t pay.”
“I don’t want money.”
“I’m married.” Sebastian Todd laughed. Kelly didn’t.
She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “The only thing I want,” she said, “is Bellamy Marshall’s home address.”
“THIS IS GOING ON TOO LONG,” MARY MARSHALL SAID. “I NEED TO plan the funeral.”
Barry Dupree coughed and got an elbow in the ribs from Louise Braddock. He frowned at her. What? He hadn’t meant anything by the cough. It was just a cough. What kind of an asshole did Braddock think he was?
“Mrs. Marshall,” Braddock said. “I understand your frustration. But as I said before, the medical examiner will be releasing your husband’s body very soon.”
“I need to contact his relatives. He has relatives all over the country. He comes from a big family. How will they be able to get out here if I don’t know when the funeral will be?”
She said it to Barry, not Louise, but they were both used to that. Most older ladies preferred Barry’s company to that of his partner—either because he was a guy and therefore more trustworthy to them or because Louise was about as welcoming and warm as the iceberg that sank the Titanic or both. Probably both.
Louise held Sterling Marshall’s appointment book in her lap, and she kept tapping on it—an almost hostile gesture, somehow made worse by the fact that she was wearing evidence gloves.
Barry said, “Can I get you a glass of water, Mrs. Marshall?”
She shook her head. Pointed at Louise Braddock. “She isn’t listening to me.”
“We’re both listening, ma’am,” Barry said. But he couldn’t return her gaze. It was the look in her eyes—this-can’t-be-happening to the hundredth power. He’d seen it before on people like her—attractive, wealthy, basically happy people who’d lived a certain number of years and thought they could make it all the way to the finish line without the world falling in on them. What could you say to that look—Life sucks? Shit happens? Sorry you had to live so long?
Making matters worse was the pharmaceutical influence. By her own admission, Mary Marshall had been zonked out on sleeping pills when the shots had woken her. She was half groggy when she found her husband’s body, and had tried to numb the initial horror with a handful of Xanax (she couldn’t remember how many), then a few Klonopin parsed out by her well-meaning daughter when the Xanax-calm started to loosen its grip.
As a result, the shock was settling in little by little as the drugs wore off. One minute, she’d be perfectly lucid, answering questions, asking them . . . and then reality would hit her and she’d get that look in her eyes and she’d shatter. She’d go either comatose or combative—and at the moment she was definitely combative. “You can’t just hijack my husband’s body,” she said.
“No one is taking Mr. Marshall’s body for any longer than it needs to be taken. You must try to be patient,” said Louise, ever the diplomat, talking to Mary Marshall like she’d been complaining about her dry cleaning not being ready. Barry couldn’t believe Louise had given him shit for coughing. Did she ever even listen to herself?
“When was the last time your son spoke to your husband?” Louise said.
“My son? Why are you asking about my son?”
“He took a whole bunch of your pills, ma’am.”
“I know that.”
“A dangerous amount.”
“He is grieving, Detective Braddock. We’re all grieving. Do you know how that feels?”
“They didn’t see each other much, though, did they?”
She looked at Barry again, for such a drawn-out moment that he felt obliged to nod. “My son and my husband spoke on the phone every week,” she said. “They were close.”
“When was the last time you and your husband had dinner with your son and his wife.”
“We don’t do that.”
“When was the last time the two of them just got together to play golf? Shoot the breeze?”
“I don’t know.”
“So would you classify Shane and Sterling’s relationship as strained?”
“No,” she said. “No, they loved each other very much.”
Louise opened the appointment book. “When was the last time Mr. Marshall spoke on the phone to Shane?”
She exhaled. “Just this past Sunday.”
“What did they talk about?”
“Sterling told Shane about his cancer diagnosis. My daughter, Bellamy, had already known for weeks.”
“Were you in the room during the phone call?”
“No.”
“How did your husband seem after he hung up with your son?”
“He seemed the way he always seemed,” she said. “Why are you asking me about Shane?”
“Did your son know that Sterling had made an appointment with his lawyer for this coming Monday?”
“What?”
“It’s in his book.” She tapped at the open page. “Did you know about it?”
She shook her head.
“When did he last speak to your son again?”
“Sunday.”
“He made the appointment on Monday, for one week later.”
“So what?”
“Is there anything your son could have said to him during that conversation that would make him call his lawyer?”
“What are you hinting at, Detective?”
“Louise,” said Barry.
“Did they fight at all? Did your husband mention anything about changing his will?”
“What are you trying to say about my son?”
“Louise, it stands to reason that he would want to get his papers in order.” He gave Mary Marshall a sad smile that he hoped would appease her. “I mean, in his condition.”
“Yes,” Mary said, the tension draining out of her. “Yes, that’s true.” So often, Louise and Barry played good cop/bad cop. But it was very rarely intentional.
“I’m going to check in with the rest of the crew.” Louise got up from the couch, leaving the two of them, taking the appointment book with her.
It was probably the kindest thing she could have done under the circumstances, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable for Barry. “We called your daughter a little while ago, ma’am,” he said. “She said she would be here soon.”
“With Shane?”
“I’m not sure.”
Mary gave him a weak smile, which crumbled fast. “I hope he’s all right.”
A few tears trickled down her cheek. She wiped them away with a handkerchief she’d tucked into the sleeve of her silk blouse, plucked a gold compact out of her handbag, and applied red lipstick. “Do I look okay?” she said. “I don’t want to scare my son again.”
“Again?”
“I think one of the things that upset him yesterday . . .” She cleared her throat. “I think I frightened him with the way I looked.”
“You look great, Mrs. Marshall,” he said.
“You’ve got to act and dress as though you always have an audience,” she said. “Sterling used to say that.” She let out a long sigh that became a sob. “Hell of a curtain call he’s taking.”
Mary Marshall cried quietly into her handkerchief. Barry waited for the crying to subside. He wanted to pat her on the back but resisted the urge. Even in his mind, that felt awkward.
Finally, when she calmed, he cleared his throat, turned the page in his notebook. “Can you tell me a little bit about Mr. Marshall’s schedule on April twenty-first?” Barry already knew about Sterling Marshall’s schedule that day—at least he knew what he’d planned to do from the appointment book Louise had been tapping to death at the start of this interview. The uniforms going through Sterling Marshall’s office had found the book straight off, and it had told them more by far than any witness interview. Turned out Marshall didn’t have a personal assistant, and while he did have a computer that had since been taken into possession, he preferred scheduling on paper, as anybody would expect from a seventy-nine-year-old movie star with a drawer full of fancy pens.
“I’m not asking you for specific times or anything,” he said. “Just what you might remember him doing.”
She dragged the handkerchief across her eyes. “I wasn’t home the whole day,” she said. “I . . . I had tennis and errands.”
“I understand. If you can just think back, though. Did he do anything out of the usual? Was he behaving strangely at all?”
“He had a doctor’s appointment.”
Barry nodded. He’d seen that in the book. “What kind of doctor?”
“His oncologist.”
“Routine, or . . .”
“Nothing was routine. He’d just been diagnosed a few weeks ago with pancreatic cancer.” She got up from the couch, moved over to the window.
“Yes. Of course,” he said. “I guess what I’m saying is, how was he handling it?”
“Handling it?”
“His diagnosis. On that day. Was he acting strangely?”
“Detective Dupree. I have a question for you.”
“Okay . . .”
“How do you suppose Kelly Lund got into our house?” She said it flatly, matter-of-factly, and she didn’t turn around. She stayed facing the window, the sun on her silver hair, her posture rigid as a ballet dancer’s.
He stared at her back, not sure what she was asking. “We don’t know who that was leaving the . . .”
She turned and faced him. “It was Kelly Lund. I know it was.”
“All I can tell you,” he said, “is there were no signs of a break-in.”
“It was the maid’s day off. The cook only rarely stays nights and didn’t last night. He and I were in the house alone.” She stared at him, eyes hurt and blazing. “And I was asleep.”
He took a breath, said it calm as he could. She was trying to put words in his mouth, and he couldn’t let her do that. “You’re saying,” he said, “that whoever this on the surveillance video is . . .”
“Kelly Lund.”
“Fine,” he said. “You’re saying your husband must have let her into the house.”
She nodded vigorously.
“So . . .”
“So, if that’s the case,” she said, taking a few steps toward him, the hurt in her eyes turning fierce. “If Sterling allowed Kelly Lund to come into this house, then yes. My husband was behaving very, very strangely.”
There was a soft knock on the closed door. Barry cracked it, saw Braddock’s face.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Seriously?”
She didn’t even bother nodding.
Mary Marshall was back on the couch now, her head in her hands.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said.
She didn’t look up.
Once he’d closed the door behind him and was out in the great room, Braddock pulled him aside to one of the enormous windows behind the pink marble staircase, overlooking the canyon. Every once in a while, it would hit him how incredible this house was—probably the ritziest crime scene he’d ever set foot in, and with such perfect air-conditioning. He’d wonder if Mary planned to unload it fast and take the hit, or wait at least three years so her Realtor wouldn’t be obligated to tell prospective buyers what had happened in the study. He’d go back and forth over what he would do in her position and then he’d feel bad for it—what an obnoxious train of thought to be having at a murder house.
A uniform stood beside Braddock—a tiny young girl who looked far too happy, given the situation. He half-expected her to start jumping up and down.
Louise said, “Get anything?”
He hoped the uniform hadn’t smiled like this around Mary Marshall. “Not really.” He gestured at the much-too-young officer, that face she was making—like somebody had just given her backstage passes to a One Direction concert. “Looks like she does, though.”
“This is officer Nutley. She’s on the team that’s been going through everything in Sterling Marshall’s office.” Louise handed Barry a pair of evidence-handling gloves. “She did indeed get something.”
The smile erupted, taking over the kid’s entire face. Nutley going nuts, as it were. She held out a burner phone.
Barry put the evidence gloves on and took it from her—a basic flip phone. Didn’t even have a display screen. It was still on, battery charged.
“It was at the bottom of the trash can,” Nutley said proudly.
Barry stared at it. He flipped it open.
“It’s on,” she said. “It was on when I found it.”
“You always jump to conclusions, Barry,” Louise said.
Barry looked at her.
“With this case, you were all ready to tie Kelly Lund to the crime, relying on your intuition like you always do. And you remember what I told you yesterday morning?”
“Innocent until proven guilty.”
“That’s right. And of course I still hold by it. But, Barry . . .”
“Yeah?”
“That intuition of yours. It isn’t always wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hit redial.”
Barry put the phone on speaker, pressed the redial button on Sterling Marshall’s burner, and connected with the dead man’s most recent call—very recent, considering that the phone had been on when it was found and still held a charge.
It went straight to voice mail. Kelly Lund’s voice mail.
BELLAMY MARSHALL LIVED CLOSER THAN KELLY MIGHT HAVE IMAGINED—in Irvine of all places. Sebastian Todd had explained to Kelly that Bellamy had done an artist-in-residence year at the college several years ago and had liked the town so much she’d stayed on, long after the one class she’d taught had graduated and moved away.
But knowing this did nothing to ease Kelly’s shock when she saw Rancho Escondido, which was the name of the sprawling, sterile-looking condo complex where Bellamy now lived. When they were kids, Bellamy used to call them “space fillers,” complexes like this, every house exactly the same, manicured lawns, carefully trimmed topiaries doled out equitably, two to each lot, shining Spanish tile roofs and faux adobe, each house exactly the same as the next, the whole lot looking as though it had gone up overnight. There were hundreds of these in Southern California, particularly the more recently developed areas in Orange County. But never once in thirty years had Kelly expected ultrahip, march-to-her-own-beat Bellamy to live in one.
Bellamy’s street was called Vista Verde. Kelly had to look carefully for the address; even her GPS had trouble discerning which of the houses was hers—but then she saw it in one of the driveways: a deep green Jeep Cherokee. She pulled up behind it and saw the license plate, Shane’s license plate, the Hollywood Photo Archives bumper sticker—a marketing idea of his from three years ago, as though seeing a sticker in traffic would lead anyone to make a decision regarding vintage movie photos. It got Kelly choked up—the simple sight of her husband’s car. It made her wonder if maybe this was a bad idea, coming to Bellamy’s house now, with her feelings still so raw.
Of course, she didn’t have the luxury of waiting, not the way things were going, with her prints all over Sterling Marshall’s study and the press already connecting the dots.
Kelly got out of her car and headed up the path to the front door. A single sprinkler halfheartedly spritzed Bellamy’s square of a lawn, a FOR SALE sign positioned up front, the two regulation topiaries flanking it like backup dancers. Okay, so she doesn’t love it here after all. Kelly reached the front door and pushed the bell without taking a breath, giving herself no time to think about reconsidering.
No answer. She pushed it again. Pressed her ear to the door, but heard no movement. She tried the big, faux-antique knocker, then balled her hand into a fist and pummeled the door with the side of it.
Still nothing. Were they both still asleep? Gone to comfort their mother? Passed out indefinitely? Or were they hiding?
Kelly walked around the side of the house, rapped on one of the windows. “Shane,” she said. “Shane? Bellamy?”
“Excuse me?”
Kelly turned to see a tiny, white-haired woman of about eighty. She wore a velour tracksuit, JUICY COUTURE spelled out across her chest in tiny pink rhinestones. “Hello,” Kelly tried.
The woman said, “Are you the Realtor?”
Kelly looked at the dark house, then at the woman. Instinct took over. She nodded slowly.
“I’m Connie, the next door neighbor.”
Kelly swallowed. “I . . . I was supposed to meet Miss Marshall,” she said.
Connie smiled. “I know,” she said. “She had to leave, though. I’m sure she told you . . .”
“Yes,” Kelly said, her voice growing stronger, her back straighter as the lie sunk in. “Such a terrible thing.”
Connie shook her head slowly, clicking her tongue. “Her father was one of my favorites,” she said.
“Mine too.”
“Anyway, she asked me to give you the key. No sense in your coming all the way here for nothing.” She reached into her hoodie pocket, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to her. “Hope you get a bite.”
Kelly forced a smile. “Thank you,” she said. “Her brother left with her?”
“Huh?” she said. “Oh, you mean the young man? She never introduced me.” Connie leaned in, gave her a wink. “Tell you the truth, she and I don’t talk much. We move in different circles, I guess.”
“Yep,” Kelly said. “She and I do too.”
Weird thing for a Realtor to say, but luckily Connie didn’t seem to notice. She went around the front of the house, opened the door on a living room—hardwood floors, flat-screen TV, overstuffed leather couch, piled with Navaho print pillows. All of it tasteful, more elegant than the house’s exterior—save for the cigarette stink hanging in the air and Kelly’s own, seventeen-year-old face staring down at her from the opposite wall: Mona Lisa, in all its glory.
“Haven’t you done anything since 1992?” she said to the empty room. “Don’t you have anything else you can be proud of?”
Kelly noticed something holstered onto the right side of the big wooden frame. When she moved closer, she saw that it was a remote. She yanked it away, pressed the button, heard her own voice, young and sad and pathetically hopeful. “I miss you. Why won’t you visit?”
Kelly gritted her teeth. She winged the remote across the room. It smashed into a framed, black-and-white photo of Bellamy, breaking the glass.
Great, she thought. Great.
What was she doing here? What exactly did Kelly hope to accomplish now that Shane was off with his sister, now that his father was dead and covered in her fingerprints? How did she ever expect him to listen to her words without them being warped into something ugly by the living, breathing fun house mirror that was Bellamy Marshall, artist?
Kelly noticed a jacket hanging on the coatrack by the door—Shane’s denim jacket. Same one he’d put on before leaving the house yesterday morning. You’ll come to the funeral, right? You’ll hold my hand. Kelly went to it. She held it up against her face and breathed in the clean smell of it, her eyes starting to tear up, her teenage voice still echoing out of the speakers. “I miss you . . .”
Shane and his squirreled-away bottles of pills, the conversations he would have with his father. Sunday nights, in his separate bedroom, his voice hushed so Kelly wouldn’t hear. Shane, who slept apart from Kelly on her insistence, who never saw his own family except on Skype. Shane who had recently searched for Rocky Three on his computer . . .
It wasn’t all Bellamy’s fault that Shane had left Kelly. Maybe none of it was.
“I miss you. Why won’t you visit?”
Kelly put the jacket down. She pressed the button on the remote until the room was quiet again. On the big, mission-style coffee table was a stack of cream-colored stationery sheets. She searched her bag for a pen but couldn’t find one, so she opened the drawer of the coffee table and found a disarray of Post-its and pastels and discarded sketch pads. After all these years, Bellamy still couldn’t keep her drawers straight . . .
Kelly found a pen and took a piece of stationery and wrote a letter to her husband. She told him the truth.
When she was finished, she folded up the letter into fourths and placed it in the inside pocket of Shane’s jacket, same place he kept his extra lenses. He would find it there because he always checked that pocket—she knew that much about him, at least.
She got up, rehung Bellamy’s photograph and tried her best to clean up the broken glass, dumping it all in the trash can under the kitchen sink, working quickly. After all, the real Realtor would be arriving any minute, showing up at the neighbors to pick up that key.
Last, she grabbed the remote and moved to replace it. She avoided Mona Lisa as best she could—her huge, pixilated, glitter and feather-festooned face—focusing only on the leather holster at the side of the frame, watching it so intently that when she started to slip the remote back in, she noticed something at the very bottom of the pouch. It glittered.
She pulled it out and stared at it—the golden heart at the end of the delicate chain. The two tiny diamonds, one slightly bigger than the other. For a long moment, she held the necklace in front of her eyes, unable to think, to move, to breathe.