The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry(53)

THAT NIGHT IN bed, after the lights are off, Lambiase pulls Ismay close to him. “I love you,” he tells her. “And I want you to know that I don’t judge you for anything you might have done in the past.”

“Okay,” Ismay says. “I’m half asleep and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know about the bag in the closet,” Lambiase whispers. “I know that the book’s in there. I don’t know how it got there and I don’t need to know either. But it’s only right that it be returned to its rightful owner.”

After a long pause, Ismay says, “The book’s ruined.”

“But even a damaged Tamerlane might still be worth something,” Lambiase says. “I searched the Christie’s website and the last copy on the market sold for five hundred sixty thousand dollars. So I figure maybe a damaged one is worth fifty thousand or something. And A.J. and Amy need the money.”

“Why do they need the money?”

He tells her about A.J.’s cancer, and Ismay covers her face with her hands.

“The way I see it,” Lambiase says, “we wipe the book down of fingerprints, put it in an envelope, and return it. No one has to know where or who it came from.”

Ismay turns on the bedside lamp. “How long have you known about this?”

“Since the first night I spent at your house.”

“And you didn’t care? Why didn’t you turn me in?” Ismay’s eyes are sharp.

“Because it wasn’t my business, Izzie. I wasn’t invited in your home as an officer of the law. And I didn’t have a right to be looking through your stuff. And I figured there must be a story. You’re a good woman, Ismay, and you haven’t had it easy.”

Ismay sits up. Her hands are shaking. She walks over to the closet and pulls down the bag. “I want you to know what happened,” she says.

“I don’t need to,” Lambiase says.

“Please, I want to tell you. And don’t interrupt. If you interrupt me, I won’t be able to get it all out.”

“Okay, Izzie,” he says.

“The first time Marian Wallace came to see me, I was five months pregnant. She had Maya with her, and the baby was about two. Marian Wallace was very young, very pretty, very tall with tired, golden-brown eyes. She said, ‘Maya is Daniel’s daughter.’ And I said—and I’m not proud of this—‘How do I know you aren’t lying?’ I could see perfectly well that she wasn’t lying. I knew my husband after all. I knew his type. He had cheated on me from the day we were married and probably before that, too. But I loved his books or at least that first one. And I felt like somewhere down deep inside him the person who wrote it must be there. That you couldn’t write such beautiful things and have such an ugly heart. But that is the truth. He was a beautiful writer and a terrible person.

“I can’t blame Daniel for all of this, though. I can’t blame him for my part in it. I screamed at Marian Wallace. She was twenty-two, but she looked like a kid. ‘Do you think you’re the first slut to show up here, claiming to have had Daniel’s baby?’

“She apologized, kept apologizing. She said, ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life’—she kept calling him by his first and last name. She was a fan, you see. She respected him. ‘The baby doesn’t have to be in Daniel Parish’s life. We won’t bother you ever again, I swear to God. We just need a little money to get started. To move on. He said he would help, and now I can’t find him anywhere.’ This made sense to me. Daniel was always traveling a lot—visiting writer at a school in Switzerland, trips to Los Angeles that never resulted in anything.

“ ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to get in touch with him and see what I can do. If he acknowledges that your story is true—’ But I already knew that it was, Lambiase! ‘If he acknowledges that your story is true, maybe we can do something.’ The girl wanted to know how she could best contact me. I told her I’d be in touch.

“I talked to Daniel that night on the phone. It was a good talk, and I didn’t bring up Marian Wallace. He was solicitous of me, started making plans for our own baby’s arrival. ‘Ismay,’ he said, ‘once the baby’s here, I’m going to be a changed man.’ I had heard that before. ‘No, I’m serious,’ he insisted, ‘I’m definitely going to travel less. I’m going to stay at home, write more, take care of you and the potato.’ He was always a good talker and I wanted to believe that this was the night everything was going to change in my marriage. I decided right then and there that I would take care of the problem with Marian Wallace. I would find a way to buy her off.

“People in this town have always thought my family had more money than we actually did. Nic and I did have small trust funds, but it wasn’t a ton. She used hers to buy the store, and I used mine to buy this house. What was left over from my side, my husband spent quickly. His first book sold well, but the ones after less so, and he always had champagne tastes and an inconsistent income. I’m only a schoolteacher. Daniel and I always looked rich, but we were poor.

“Down the hill, my sister had been dead for over a year, and her husband was steadily drinking himself to death. Out of obligation to her, I would check on A.J. some nights. I’d let myself in, wipe the vomit off his face, and drag him to bed. One night, I go in. A.J. is passed out as usual. And Tamerlane is sitting on the table. I should say here that I was with him the day he found Tamerlane. Not that he ever offered to split the money with me, which probably would have been the decent thing to do. Cheap bastard never would have been at that estate sale if not for me. So I put A.J. to bed, and I go out to the living room to clean up the mess, and I wipe everything down, and the last thing I do, without even really thinking about it, is I slip the book into my bag.