Don't Fail Me Now(18)

“That’s just her face,” Cass says.

Fifteen feet ahead, the light turns yellow, and I have to make a split-second decision whether to speed up or slam on the brakes. I choose brakes. We screech to a halt.

I was seven when I found out Leah existed. It wasn’t that Mom tried to keep it from me for a year, it was just that it took her that long to say it plainly instead of using grown-up code I couldn’t understand. “Knocked up” sounded violent, which confused me even more, because despite his many failings, Buck didn’t hit us. (He was even big into Gandhi for a while and interpreted passive resistance as a good excuse not to get a job.) I didn’t ask questions because back then, when it was still new, anything could make her crumble. I knew he’d left, and I knew he wasn’t coming back, and I poured all of my anxiety into making sure I didn’t do anything to make my mother cry.

One day, in late summer, we were sitting on the stoop in the early evening, trying to cool off, because somehow it was hotter in the house than outside no matter how many fans we had running. I remember I was blowing bubbles, barefoot, as Cass tried to catch them between her palms before they burst against the pavement. Mom was leaning against the house, talking to one of our neighbors and smoking a cigarette, when a four-year-old girl whizzed by, topless, on a scooter. Mom turned after her and stared.

“What is it?” the neighbor asked.

“Buck’s other daughter would be about that age,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Every time I see one, I just . . .” She shuddered.

I had just released an enormous bubble when she said it and can still remember seeing the world reflected upside down in its shimmering skin as it bobbed lazily down toward the weeds lining the basement wall.

I got up the courage to ask her later, while I was brushing my teeth and she was struggling to give Cass her nightly injection. “Why did you tell Mrs. Wilson that Daddy has another daughter?”

“Because he does.” She finally landed the needle, and Cass howled.

“Is she my sister then?”

“No,” Mom said softly, kissing the top of Cass’s head. “Don’t worry about her. She’s nobody.”

? ? ?

Back at the house, I take a much-needed shower while the kids watch one of those cooking-nightmare shows on TV. Aunt Sam’s working a late shift, so I stand under the spray for fifteen minutes, ignoring the Post-It on the door reminding us that hot water isn’t cheap. Despite her stinginess, though, the shower caddy is packed full of upscale shampoos, scrubs, and body washes (mostly for “mature skin,” or “color-treated hair,” but whatever—Devereaux rule #2: Free is free), and I use a tiny bit of everything, luxuriating in the sweet botanical smells as they wash down my body in a sudsy waterfall. What is it about water that’s so healing? I remember reading in a magazine that some women have their babies in tubs and that even though it seems like they would drown, they know not to breathe until they break through the surface. Mom says when I was a toddler, I would lie on my back in the bath and let the water cover my face. She said it didn’t scare me. She said I could smile and hold my breath at the same time—which is funny, because that’s still what I do every single day.

I’m tugging some leggings over my still-damp thighs when I hear the TV go off and feel a pang of guilt. I’ve barely spoken to my siblings all day, aside from some grunts in the car. And while I know I need to tell them about what happened, I just don’t know how. They’ve been through enough in the past forty-eight hours, and I can’t stand seeing them hurt again. Besides, I don’t even know if Buck’s really dying. All I have to go on is what Tim said, and he flat-out lied about Leah not being there with him. Before I do anything else, I should make sure that’s true, at least.

I tiptoe across the hall into Aunt Sam’s room, which I usually avoid both because I fear her wrath and because of the Hoarders-level foot-high layer of wrinkled clothes and romance paperbacks littering the floor. Luckily her laptop is partially visible under a towel on the unmade bed. Hunched and hovering, trying to keep my wet curls from dripping any evidence of my presence onto the duvet, I turn it on and open a Google search box.

“Buck Devereaux California,” I type quickly, keeping an ear open for the sound of a key in the front lock. No matches. Just a listing for Charles Buck in Georgia (work on your reading comprehension, Google), a Wikipedia entry about some old MLB player with our last name, and a reddit thread about the Milwaukee Bucks.

“Allen Devereaux California” gets one legitimate hit, but when I follow the White Pages link, it turns out that guy is sixty-four years old. Try again.

“Devereaux California dying” is a stretch and gives me nothing but unrelated obituaries and funeral homes. I even type in “hospice California,” thinking maybe I can call around to places and ask if he’s there, but without a city to filter by, there are enough listings that I’d be glued to my phone for a month straight.

Then I remember what Tim said about finding me on Facebook, open a new window, and sign in to my account. Ironically, I only created it in the first place to search for Buck, when I was twelve. Now I have a couple hundred “friends,” but no one my age really updates. The top story in my feed is from one of Mom’s weird junkie pals/ex-babysitters named Violetta.

Buck didn’t have a Facebook page five years ago, but I type his name into the search bar anyway, holding my breath. Nothing. I don’t even bother looking under Allen, since he would sooner show up at our door with confetti and one of those giant TV checks for eleven years’ worth of child support than identify himself by his given name on anything but government paperwork.