Lost and Wanted(26)
“I should check it out.”
“You should.”
There are different degrees of fringe science, usually undertaken by the kind of person who begins with a real career and goes off the rails: people who post their unconventional ideas on the alternative preprint server viXra all the way down to the unhinged, profanity-fueled climate-change-denying blogger. I once spent some time answering a sociologist’s questions about what made these propositions nonscience. One clue is that in pseudoscience, every piece fits neatly inside a theory and the scientist is never wrong.
“I think you’re doing such a great job with all this,” I said. “Simmi really does seem okay.”
Terrence made a skeptical noise.
“As okay as could be expected.”
“In public,” he said.
I was sorry then that I hadn’t been more receptive to whatever it was—popular science, literature, or quackery—that had gotten him through the last few months. Why did I have to be so critical, Marshall, my most recent POI, would demand. When I’m honest I have to admit that he wasn’t the first person-of-interest to mention it.
“I guess I’d have some coffee,” Terrence said. “Just black.” He stayed in the living room while I got it, scrolling through his messages. But he thanked me genuinely when I handed him a mug.
I realized I hadn’t heard the kids in a while. “They’re quiet.”
“I’ll check on them,” Terrence said immediately.
I went back to the kitchen. I hadn’t thought of lunch, but luckily there were apples and bread. I started to make peanut butter sandwiches.
“They’re upstairs,” Terrence said when he returned. He retrieved his coffee from the living room, and joined me in the kitchen. “He’s giving her a tour.”
“It’s pretty much what you see. I don’t think Simmi’s going to be impressed.”
Their most recent house in L.A. was white stucco. I’d looked it up online when they bought it. There was a gunite pool, outlined in blue-and-white ceramic tile. Charlie had sent me a picture of the living room, which she’d decorated with mirrors and patterned fabrics, Moroccan in character. Her taste in home décor was dramatic and over-the-top, what she liked to call “barococo.”
“Simmi spends time with my mom,” Terrence said.
“Where’s your mom?”
“Where she always was. Palms—near Culver City.”
“I know right where that is. We were all the way out in Pasadena.”
“Private school?”
“Nope. But the high school there is pretty good, especially for science and math.”
“Mine wasn’t. But we had a gifted and talented program—it was called GATE. I tested into it, actually.” Terrence glanced at me. “But then things weren’t so great with my mom, and I basically stopped going.”
“She’s okay now, though?”
“She married a cop, this retired guy with a pension. Now she paints dolphins and sells them at a craft fair in Altadena. That’s what she’s been doing for twenty years.”
“That sounds okay.”
“I just mean, Simmi’s not spoiled.”
“I didn’t think that—I just—Charlie sent pictures of your house. It’s beautiful.”
“I hope someone else thinks so—we’re selling it. It was always too much space for us, and now…” Terrence’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah.”
“We left all the furniture, because the broker says it’s easier that way. She’s saying the owners are ‘relocating to Europe.’?”
“Why?”
“It sounds better than ‘Someone died here.’?”
“Oh—right.”
Terrence eyed the sandwiches on the counter. “I don’t think we can stay,” he said. “I promised Addie.”
I felt a kind of panic. Should I mention the messages? It was possible this would be my only chance. Terrence had said Charlie would’ve wanted them to play together, but he might consider once to be enough. And who knew how long they would end up staying in Boston? Wouldn’t it be better to say something now?
“Addie said you might be in Boston for a while.”
“That’s the plan.” Terrence’s tone was gently ironic. “She had a plan beforehand, too.”
“The hospice care at home?”
Terrence looked surprised. “Yeah. But, you know—that was exactly what Charlie didn’t want: everyone parading through our house. And then getting in their cars—that’s what she said. That everyone would come, and then they’d get in their cars and put on their headsets, and call other people to say how hard it had been to say goodbye. How guilty they’d felt for actually wanting to get out of there. And then the other friends, the people they’d called, would be like, ‘Yeah—don’t blame yourself. It’s so hard.’ And then they’d all go out for drinks to comfort themselves. And all the time she would be there, dying.”
“She said that about me?”
Terrence swallowed the rest of his coffee. “With you it would’ve been on the phone.”