Remarkably Bright Creatures(81)

Tova nods, then leans in conspiratorially. “I won’t double-check the trash liners this time. I trust you.”

Cameron gasps, feigning shock. “You trust me to assemble garbage cans! Wow, I’ve arrived.” He laughs, and Tova laughs along with him. “So, where were you, anyway?”

“Oh, well, it’s been quite an adventure.” Tova picks up a rag and begins to wipe down the glass front of the bluegill exhibit, while relaying an almost-unbelievable story about Grateful Dead memorabilia and online auctions and some guy at a warehouse down in Tukwila who almost wouldn’t hand her purchase over because she couldn’t confirm her friend’s email address, which she’d used because she doesn’t have one of her own. She scrubs at a fingerprint on the glass as she talks. Her cheeks are flushed in a most un-Tova-like way.

“Good heavens,” she says with a small laugh. “Look at me, yammering on and on.”

“It’s fine. It’s a great story,” Cameron says, chuckling. “And I could help you set up an email if you want. They’re free.”

“I don’t own a computer.”

“Neither do I. My email goes to my phone.”

“To your phone,” she says, with a dismissive wave of her rag. “Young people and their phones.”

“Well, having a smartphone would make it easy to keep in touch when you move away.”

At this, Tova’s face stiffens. Was he not supposed to bring that up? Is her departure some big secret? But how could it be? Ethan has mentioned it casually several times. It’s a source of discontent for him, his hopeless crush moving upstate.

“A smartphone. Perhaps.” She smiles. “I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to say hello at Ethan’s house the other night.” It’s like she’s reading his mind.

“Ethan was super stoked about your date. How did it go?”

Tova straightens. “It was not a date.”

“Okay. Your . . . dinner.”

Tova folds the rag and tucks it in her back pocket, then leans on the cart. “You know, Will and I were married forty-seven years when he passed away. I cannot date.”

“Why not?”

She sighs, as if the answer is beyond explaining. They clean together in silence for a while, rounding the curved hallway, pausing in front of the sea lion statue. Cameron makes a point of mopping thoroughly, getting into every corner of the alcove, under the benches and behind the trash can.

Tova polishes the creature’s bald head with her rag. “Make sure you get under its tail, dear.”

“Under what?”

“Under the statue’s tail. Here, I’ll show you.” She takes her dust rag and starts to slide it under the polished brass tail. Cameron resists the urge to roll his eyes. How would that spot possibly get dirty?

“I know, I know. There’s a right way to do things,” Cameron mutters, but Tova’s not listening. She’s squinting at something in the little gap between the statue and the floor.

She stands, slowly, not taking her eyes off the thing she’s clutching. A credit card? From the look on her face he expects her to say good heavens or my word or goodness gracious, but for a long moment, she says nothing.

“Is this your driver’s license?” she finally whispers, holding the card up.

It is, in fact, his license. He’d planned to collect it from his cubby, where Terry said he would leave it, on his way out tonight. How had it gotten all the way over here?

“Yeah, actually.” He holds out a hand to take it, but she grips it firmly, studying it closer.

“Cameron,” she says slowly. “I know you are here in Sowell Bay looking for your father. And I know you don’t have a relationship with your mother. But what is her name?”

He frowns. “Why?”

Tova waits patiently.

“Her name is Daphne.”

“Daphne Cassmore?”

“Um, yeah.” What is going on? He reaches again for his license and this time Tova lets him take it. Her face is as pale and thin as the moonlight streaming through the skylight.

“She was seeing him,” Tova says quietly. “Your mother is the girl.”

HEARING THE STORY of Erik’s disappearance from Tova herself, instead of Ethan, is different. They sit on the alcove’s bench, on opposite sides but facing each other across the sea lion’s smooth back. In a quiet, even voice, Tova tells Cameron how her son, the summer after his senior year of high school, went to work at the ferry dock one July night and never came home. The boat no one noticed missing. The cut rope on the anchor.

“I never believed it.” Tova shakes her head. “I never believed he killed himself. When I found out that Erik might have been seeing a girl, a girl his friends didn’t really know about . . .”

“Wait. This girl. How do you know it was my mom?”

Tova rubs at a black smudge on the bench. Probably a mark from someone’s shoe. “A former classmate. A long-forgotten memory.”

“And the police never talked to this classmate?”

Tova clicks her tongue. “Adam was not a close friend, and the investigation was thorough, at first. But with no eyewitnesses and zero leads . . . well, they wanted to close the case, I suppose.”

“You think my mom could’ve had something to do with . . .” Cameron lets out a low whistle.