Everything Leads to You(46)

“I’m happy to help.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

“I assume the 405 to start,” I say.

I’ve hunted for furniture in almost every city in Southern California, so I know the urban sprawl well. The sad cities that call themselves part of LA even though they feel so distant from it; the rough, flat, gritty neighborhoods; the sterile suburbs with perfectly mown lawns; the wealthy, mysterious, unattainable hills. I never got as far as the desert, but when you need to get out of LA, the 405 is what takes you away.

She nods yes. I pull out of the driveway and onto the road.

I assume that she’ll explain why we’re going, what we’re going to do once we get there. I’m trying to be patient and let her get to it eventually, but instead she tells me about Marilyn Monroe.

“This book was in the donation box at the shelter, and I immediately thought of you. I mean, does it get any more tragic?”

She flips through the paperback, which I now see is the kind of biography that would make my dad cringe—the kind packed with conspiracy theories and so-called explosive revelations.

“There’s this part where it talks about her imagining that Clark Gable was her father because her mom showed her a picture of a man who looked like him and told her he was her dad, even though her dad was supposed to be another guy.”

“So depressing,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

We’re on the freeway now, and it’s one of the rare afternoons when traffic is light and we can actually go the speed limit, so I’m barreling toward the desert, about to perform some unknown favor.

“So,” I say. “Leona Valley.”

She nods. “You want to know what we’re doing,” she says.

“I mean, I’m a little curious . . .” I shrug like it’s no big deal.

“I need to get my birth certificate.”

“From your house?”

“Thursday afternoons are a good time. Tracey has a knitting circle, and Jonah goes to guitar lessons. Not that it would be that bad if Jonah came home. I want to see him, but, I don’t know . . .”

“I get it,” I say. “Like, you miss him, but maybe you’re not ready to see him yet.”

She nods.

“So where do I come in?”

She grins at me. “Lookout girl,” she says. “Getaway driver.”

“Wow. When you said favor I thought you’d want me to, like, run lines with you or help you paint your bedroom or something.”

She laughs, but I feel immediately insensitive for joking about paint when she doesn’t even have her own bedroom. And though she doesn’t seem to mind, it only gets worse when she tells me why she needs it.

“So, you know how Clyde mentioned the guy at the bank in his letter?”

“Right,” I say. “The money.”

Even though the money has always been part of all of this, it hasn’t ever quite been real to me. Not in the way the feeling that took over me in Clyde’s study was real. That was something I could believe in, but the money seemed more abstract. I guess it’s easy to ignore the promise of fortune if the money isn’t intended for you, and if you have no use for it because you live in a nice house on a safe, tree-lined street in the best city in the world, and your parents have a college fund all tucked away and probably other money, too, for weddings and things you haven’t even thought about yet because you’ve never had to worry about anything financial.

“I called the bank and he was still there,” she said. “Everyone else is dead, but not Terrence.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

She nods. “I went there yesterday afternoon and met with him in a private office. I showed him the letter and my driver’s license, and he told me that there was an account with Caroline and me on it, but since my name is different now from what it was when Clyde knew about me, I have to show him my birth certificate.”

“How much is in there?” I ask, and then rush to say, “I don’t mean dollar amount. Just a ballpark. Like enough for a vacation somewhere, or enough to change your life?”

“He can’t tell me yet,” she says. “But I asked him if it would be enough for me to afford to rent my own apartment for a few months until I get a job that pays well and his face got all twisted, like he was trying not to smile, and he said yes.”

“A definitive yes,” I say.