It still felt strange to Kelly, sitting next to her mother, but she was getting used to it. Mom had visited her in the hospital several times when she was recovering from her bullet wound, accompanied by guards from Mariposa County Jail. The guards treated the two of them like A-list celebrities. Odd, one of them a farmer who used to work at I. Magnin, the other an ex-con who worked for a semi-illegal dating Web site. These guards couldn’t get enough of them. One had even asked for Kelly’s autograph.
Of course, people change. Wounds heal, some faster than others. Kelly’s neck wound, for instance, was almost completely healed, flesh wound that it was, while her shoulder, still in a sling, would keep her in physical therapy for months. Good thing Bellamy wasn’t a better shot, her southwestern couch having taken most of the bullets. It’s not personal, she’d kept saying as she fired and fired, Bellamy who had once picked up Vee’s gun and shot at a stream full of fish without checking to see if it was loaded. Bellamy had always been more about impulse than aim.
Strange, as Kelly lay bleeding on Bellamy’s living room floor, Bellamy knelt down and said to her, “I’m only protecting my family.” But who had she meant? Her father was dead, mother had already confessed to the police, and her brother had left her house, vowing never to speak to her again. “I’m your family, you idiot,” Kelly had whispered. And that’s when Bellamy had finally called 911.
So the irony wasn’t lost on Kelly—her mother and herself sitting across from Bellamy in the sun-drenched visitors’ room of Malibu’s Passages Mental Health Center, the closest thing to family that Bellamy Marshall now had. As usual, she wore full makeup, bright red lips, but the effect was strange with hospital scrubs, vacant eyes.
Her intense gaze was gone—Kelly knew it was probably the meds, but Bellamy looked as though she’d had the spirit sapped out of her, as though she had nothing to live for with her family gone and she was wandering through life aimlessly, a ghost looking for the next role to inhabit. Maybe that’s why she’d asked them to come. It had been her doctor who called both Kelly and Ruth, saying it would be a great service, but she’d never explained why Bellamy wanted to see them, or even if she did.
“I’m writing a book,” Bellamy said now for the third time, staring at the middle distance between Kelly and Ruth, so neither one of them knew to whom she was speaking. “A tell-all about growing up in Hollywood.”
“Are we going to be in it?” Kelly said.
“Maybe.” She lit a cigarette. Exhaled slowly. Looked at Ruth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Did my father love you?”
Ruth’s gaze moved from Kelly to Bellamy. “It was a long time ago.”
“I know that. But did he? Did he tell you he loved you?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes, Bellamy,” she said carefully. “He did.”
“What did that feel like?”
“Being in love?”
“No. How did it feel to hear my father say ‘I love you’?”
Kelly looked at her. “He never said it to you?”
She shook her head. “Not once,” she said, her voice small, lost. “I’d love to know how it sounds, my father saying those words.”
KELLY AND RUTH LEFT THE FACILITY IN SILENCE, IMAGES ROLLING through Kelly’s mind—Bellamy Marshall at seventeen passing her notes in science class, mascaraed eyes searching for her in the rearview mirror of the car, asking if she was having fun.
“You know what I liked most about Bellamy when we were kids?” she said.
Ruth turned to her. “Her glamorous lifestyle?”
She shook her head. “No,” Kelly said. “I liked her because she paid so much attention to me. But now that I look back on it, I think maybe she was just sizing up the competition.”
Ruth shook her head. “Don’t be cynical about your memories, Kelly. Paint them in a golden light. Make them into beautiful fiction. They’re all you’ve got.”
“Okay,” she said. “Bellamy adored me. She really did love me like a sister.”
“That’s the spirit.” As she slipped into her pickup truck, ready to head back to Defiance, she touched Kelly’s hand, gave her a smile. “You know, now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure Sterling ever said he loved me. But it’s still nice to remember it that way.”
Kelly swallowed. “I miss Shane,” she said.
“It’s good to miss people. It reminds you you’re not alone in the world.”
“Did you miss me, Mother?”
“Every day.”
Kelly kissed her mother on the cheek. She watched her drive away, thinking of Shane just one week ago, leaving for good to go to San Francisco, the latest person in her life to fall away. Their parting had been amicable but strange and sad. “You’re not losing a husband, you’re gaining a brother,” he had said as he’d gotten into the airport limo.
“But I am losing a husband,” she’d replied.
“Miss Lund!” An excited young voice shook her out of her thoughts. Kelly turned to see a nurse rushing across the parking lot toward her, waving a piece of notebook paper.
“Did I leave something?” she said.
“No.” The nurse had shiny blond hair. Round, light eyes like a kitten’s. “I just can’t believe it’s you. I’m a huge fan.”
Kelly stared at her. “Of me?”
“Yes! Taking the rap for your friend like that. All those years in prison when you didn’t kill anybody. You’re a hero.”
Kelly forced a smile, the night of June 28, 1980, coming at her in flashes before she shoved it into a drawer. “Thank you,” she said.
The nurse handed her the piece of paper and a pen. “Can I have your autograph, please? I’m Jenna. With a J.”
Kelly held the paper against the car and wrote.
To Jenna:
Don’t stop believing!
Love, Kelly Michelle Lund
The girl nearly swooned. Kelly got in her car. “Thanks, Vee,” she whispered, though really, she’d never needed any favors from Vee, never needed him in her life for any longer than he’d been in it.
In two hours, she’d be back at her home with her birds and her laptop computer, her skull-headed angel and her tattooed ex-bully—Rocky Three, who for now was someone to believe in. She pulled out onto the Pacific Coast Highway and rolled down the windows, smelling the ocean air, gazing out at the road ahead, and, for the briefest of moments, recalling McFadden’s last words, the feel of the gun discharging in her hands as he lay on that jewel-toned carpet, mouthing his speech. A hero. Kelly felt as though she could drive forever.