Everything Leads to You(18)

“This is really sad,” I say.

“The acting stuff?”

“All of it. That she died, I guess. And the acting.”

“We all die,” Charlotte says.

“Well, yeah.”

“Sorry. It’s just that the acting part seems the worst. I mean, she was an extra. Her character didn’t even have a name but it was her greatest accomplishment.”

“Hopefully, she was proud of it,” I say. “We should find the movie. The Restlessness? I haven’t even heard of it.”

Charlotte gets out her laptop and transcribes the obituary, word for word.

“Ava’s name isn’t even in it,” I say. I read it again. “Who do you think wrote it?”

Charlotte bites her lip. “I’d assume Tracey Wilder,” she says. “She’s the only person mentioned by name.”

“Hey,” I say. “We should search for Ava Wilder. It would make sense, wouldn’t it? If I had a kid and I died, you’d adopt her, right?”

“I think your parents or Toby would probably—”

“But if I didn’t have parents or a brother. If Clyde Jones was my dad but you didn’t even know it. If, for all you knew, I had no one but you. You’d adopt her, right?”

“Of course,” she says, starting a search for Ava Wilder.

Three in the entire US. One in Leona Valley, a town that borders the desert.

We stare at the screen.

“Search for Tracey,” I say.

Charlotte’s hands fly across the keyboard.

Twenty-one Tracey Wilders in the US. Charlotte starts to scroll down the list and I see it before she does.

“Oh my God,” I say, and Charlotte gasps when she sees it: Tracey Wilder, Leona Valley, California. Next to her name is a phone number.

“Let’s call her.”

“Tracey or Ava?” Charlotte asks.

“Ava,” I say. “Definitely. Clyde wanted the letter to go to Caroline, but he said she could give the money to Ava. Tracey has nothing to do with it.”

We gather all of our stuff and Charlotte returns the microfilm to Joel-the-cute-librarian and we walk fast toward the exit.

“You call,” I tell her.

“Okay,” she says, “but let’s get in the car so it’ll be quiet.”

Down in the garage we can’t get service, so I have to drive up to the street; and even though Charlotte’s ability to have a successful phone conversation in no way requires my full attention, I pull into a loading zone because I’m too nervous to drive.

She dials the number and I lean in close enough to hear a boy’s voice say hello.

“Hi,” she says. “My name is Charlotte. Is Ava home, by any chance?”

There is a pause, and then the kid says, “No, she isn’t.”

“Would you mind taking a message?”

“Ava’s, um. . . I mean, I can? But I don’t know when she’d get it.”

“Oh,” Charlotte says.

“She doesn’t live here anymore.”

“Is there another way to reach her? Another number?”

“I don’t really know where she is,” he says.

Charlotte bites her lip.

He says, “I can take your number, and if I talk to her I’ll give it to her, but I don’t know when she’ll get it.”

“Okay,” Charlotte says, and she leaves him her number.

“I’ll give it to her. If she calls, I mean.”

“Okay,” Charlotte says again. I can tell she doesn’t want to hang up and I don’t want her to either.

“Bye,” the kid says.

She doesn’t say anything, but soon there’s a click.

And now it’s just Charlotte and me, illegally parked in downtown Los Angeles, all of the answers lost in the vastness.





Chapter Five



On Monday, I go straight to the room Morgan’s been working on. I can play hard to get only for so long. Really, I am easy to get. And I keep thinking of how she drove all the way to Pasadena to pick up the sofa, and how she’s been saying nice things to Rebecca-who-has-a-boyfriend about me, and how she wants to show me this space she’s been working on, because she cares about her work and knows that I also care because we are aligned in this way among many others.

Her back is to me when I walk into the room. She’s putting up wallpaper, sponging the corners of a panel to smooth it out.