As I clean up the kitchen, someone knocking on the glass doors startles me. When I get closer I see it’s a girl my age, maybe a little older. Her hair is blond with two streaks of dark red and she has a tattoo of a star behind her ear.
“Oh my god, it’s so nice to meet you,” she says, barging right in and opening the fridge. “We need some young energy around here bad. This town is filled with winos and white-hairs. I’m Beatrice, but everyone calls me Beetle. Don’t ask.”
Before I get to open my mouth, she goes on.
“Holy crap, have you tried Julian’s cheesecake?”
She gets some lemonade out of the fridge and spills a little while pouring some into a coffee mug.
“Wait a second, who are you?” Then it hits me. She must be Isabella’s daughter. I remember her saying I should meet her.
“Are you Isabella’s—”
“Yes, but you’d never know it. She treats me like a friend. It’s strange, really. I think it’s just denial. She can’t face the fact that she’s old enough to have a sixteen-year-old daughter. Besides, I’m usually in Hong Kong with my father. That’s where all my friends are. I’m here for a funeral—my mom’s cat, if you can believe it. A funeral for a cat! Anyway, she mentioned you were here, so I thought I’d stop by.”
Beatrice’s confidence is infectious. I take the business card out of my jeans and show it to her. “Do you know where that is?” I ask.
“Superclose,” she says, running it through her fingers. “Maybe ten kilometers.”
I feel dorky that I don’t know how long that is. She senses my apprehension and says, “About six miles. Why?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s do it.”
Just like that, Beatrice is out the door and hopping into one of those miniature euro cars. I scrawl a note for Richard and follow suit. I’m in Europe and anything’s possible.
On the way she asks me who Cole is, and I fill her in on everything. It feels good to talk to someone completely outside my life, one who won’t judge the situation or be biased.
“Okay,” Beetle says, “but what if your dad had some part in it. How’s that information going to help you?”
“Well, I don’t know, but I just feel talking to Cole may be the missing piece. Give me some kind of closure.”
“Sometimes it’s better not to know, though. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
“Well, just remember, whatever happens, it’s already happened. It’s hard to give and it’s even harder to get, but we all need forgiveness.”
“I just feel like I’ve come too far to turn around.”
Beetle tells me about her mother and her girlfriends, and her crazy father (who is different from her mother’s current boyfriend), and her grandmother who’s on her fourth husband, and my jaw drops lower with each story. Basically, she makes my family look like the Cleavers.
Cole’s villa is like a modern log cabin on a very remote road. Before I get out, Beetle says, “If he tries to pull anything, just scream and I’ll come kick his ass.”
I smile, take a deep breath, and get out of the car. I bet he’s not even here, but it’s worth a try. I stand outside Cole’s door for a few minutes before ringing the old-fashioned bell. Just as I’m about to turn around and leave, he answers the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt. He lets me in like he’s expecting me.
“Oh, well, hello,” he says. “You must be visiting Richard?”
I nod and he motions for me to enter. He pours me a glass of orange juice, and I know it’s strange, but he reminds me of my father—his tanned fingers and the way he sits on the edge of the counter.
“As you know, I found out a lot of stuff about everything. The thing is, I know it’s not really your fault. I think it’s actually no one’s fault, you know? But I need to confirm a couple things. The night my mother died. Did you have sex with her in the studio before?”
“Absolutely not.”
I tell him about the cuff links and he doesn’t even flinch. “She let me use it for client meetings. In exchange, I paid the utilities.”
“And why did you never turn them off?”
“I was waiting for your father to sell it.”
“Okay, that makes sense. I just need to know one more thing. What went on at dinner that night?”
He looks out the window and for a second seems angry. Then he scratches his head and says, “To be honest, it was a sad dinner. Sad for both of us. She couldn’t do it to Jules anymore. She didn’t want to. Neither did I. I never wanted to do it to Jules in the first place. Our friendship was wonderful, and we filled certain holes in each other’s lives. But then, a few times, it went farther than friends, as you know. But that night at the restaurant. That was our end.”
“But my father thought you were being romantic again.”
“Yes, he always thought that. But I will say, your mother flirted with everyone. So it really wasn’t any different with regard to me. Believe it or not, I was on your father’s side the whole time. He was so kind to her always, such a gentleman.”
“On his side? So you show it by sleeping with his wife?”
He is silent for a while, treating it as a rhetorical question.
“Did he push her into the street?”
“Absolutely not. They were arguing, but he never touched her.”
“Good.”
A bulldog comes out of the pantry and scares me out of my seat. Cole laughs and says, “That’s Tiny. I’m dog-sitting.”
“Not so tiny.”
I look outside and can see Beetle in her car, bopping her head to the radio. The thick trees outside the house stand proud in scattered formation. Tiny’s heavy breaths, Cole humming, the smell of burned coffee. An end, and a beginning.
“I know she was feeling something missing with my dad. I know that she hurt him, but she wasn’t a mean person. It’s not fair that she died. It’s not fair.”
Now there are tears in his eyes.
“No, it’s not,” he says faintly.
I get up to leave and he holds out his arms. I let him hug me, because everyone makes mistakes, and because sometimes people just need each other, no matter how screwed up a situation is.