Remarkably Bright Creatures(29)

“Well, because.” Cameron lets this stand on its own as an explanation, as if it should be obvious that the whole background-check-and-credit-history thing is a problem.

“Suit yourself.” Old Al shrugs, swiping circles on the bar with his rag, pausing every so often to wring dusky water into the sink. He finally stops, tossing the rag back into the sink. “That was your old lady’s stuff, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Your aunt gave it to you?”

“Yep.”

The bartender picks up the gold tennis bracelet and holds it up. “Some of this ain’t half-bad.” Then he picks up the Sowell Bay High School, Class of 1989 ring and says, “Huh, look at that. No one buys these as graduation gifts anymore, do they?”

Cameron shrugs. How would he know? He never graduated high school, a fact Old Al is surely aware of.

“Sowell Bay. That’s up in Washington, ain’t it?”

“I think so,” Cameron says. He knows so. He Googled it, of course. So what? That ring is some random thing his mom stole to pay for one of her bad habits, for all he knows. Maybe the guy in the photo was her accomplice.

“You know, I remember when Jeanne went up there to get her.”

“Get who?”

“Your mother.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your aunt never told you?

“Told me what?” Cameron lets the wad of cocktail napkin he’d been balling between his thumb and fingers drop to the bar.

Old Al sighs. “I never knew Daphne as anything other than Jeanne’s hell-raising little sister, mind you. Way I understand it, she ran away from home when she was in high school. Went up to Washington, who the hell knows why? Got in some sort of trouble up there. Jeanne had to call off work to go drag her sister home. I remember her in here one night, talking about it.”

“Oh” is all Cameron says. His brain feels weirdly numb.

“Anyway.” Old Al holds the ring in his upturned palm and bobbles his hand like he’s weighing it. “A boyfriend’s, maybe. I gave mine to my sweetheart my senior year.” A slow smile spreads over the bartender’s face. “She wore it on a chain around her neck, just long enough so it rested right in the sweet spot, right there in the crack of her rack.”

Cameron cringes.

“Yeah, probably still there, for all I know. Never got it back from her after we broke up,” he says with a gruff grunt.

The door creaks open, a triangle of dusty light cutting across the bar as two old guys come in. Cameron recognizes them from around town. The day crew. They nod to Cameron before settling a few stools down.

Unbidden, Old Al caps two longnecks and slides them across the bar. He holds up a third bottle in Cameron’s direction. “Want one?” Then he adds, his voice slightly softer, “On the house.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Old Al gives him this guilty little nod, as if a two-dollar beer makes up for being a giant douchebag about not renting out his empty apartment. Then he sidles over to the radio and yanks the cord before coiling it neatly around his fist. A moment later, the jukebox in the corner lights up and the twanging guitar comes through the speakers. Apparently, the day crew likes country music, and Dell’s is officially open for business.

Cameron swallows the entire ice-cold beer in one long pull, then wipes the ring from the bar top before slipping out the door.

AS A GROUP, the class of 1989 at Sowell Bay High School has a surprisingly robust online presence, owing to the fact, he supposes, that their thirty-year reunion is coming up later this year. Thirty, just like him. His mother would’ve gotten pregnant that same summer that all these kids were graduating.

A boyfriend’s ring. Which one of these assholes knocked his mom up?

Someone has gone through the trouble to scan and upload a shit ton of pictures to this reunion page. The entire goddamn senior yearbook, it seems. Old people have too much time on their hands. Cameron scrolls through the grainy images, pausing occasionally when he spots feathered brown curls like his mother’s, but really, he’s looking for someone else. The guy with her in the wrinkled photo on the kitchen counter next to him

He turns the ring over. To his surprise, there’s a faint engraving on the underside. EELS. The Sowell Bay High School . . . eels? Well, it’s a weird mascot, but it makes sense if they’re by the water. Weird that the yearbook pages don’t seem to have an eel theme, but what would that even look like?

He continues to look through the scanned photos. Random pictures of kids and their basic high school antics, mugging for the camera with their big hair and cheesy ’80s clothes. Something catches his eye: a photo of his mom he’s never seen before, standing on a crowded pier with that same guy’s arm slung around her. The guy’s head is turned sideways; his face is buried in her windblown hair, like he’s kissing her on the cheek, but it’s him, sure as shit.

Fingers suddenly clammy, he zooms in. There’s a caption. Daphne Cassmore and Simon Brinks.

“Bingo. Simon Brinks.” His own gravel whisper seems to drag through his vocal cords. Quickly, he opens a new window and types in the name.

Page after page of search results paint a clear picture: a renowned Seattle real estate developer and nightclub owner. A feature on his vacation home in the Seattle Times. A photo spread with his goddamn Ferrari.