This Place of Wonder (33)

“It was the logical conclusion at first, but the coroner hasn’t been able to nail it down. It wasn’t a classic heart attack for sure.”

“He hadn’t been feeling very well for a few weeks.”

“Did he see a doctor? Did he talk about his symptoms?”

“Not really. He didn’t have a lot of energy.”

He writes something on his paper. “And you don’t know where Norah Rivera is?”

I shake my head. “I kicked her out.”

“Kicked her out of where?”

“Belle l’été, the house on Cliff Road.”

He nods, blank faced. “Did you have the authority to kick her out? Do you own part of the house?”

“No. It belongs to my daughter.”

“The one in rehab?”

“Yes. She needed a place to live, and I knew Augustus had left it to her.”

“She was in rehab the night he died?”

“Yes. I’m sure that’s easily verified.” My stomach is burning with tension. “Is there anything else?”

“Did you have sex with Augustus that night?”

I take a breath, meet his eyes. Lie. “No. I just brought him the strawberries.”

He scribbles on his notepad, his handwriting so tiny I’d need a magnifying glass to read it.

“Can I go now?”

“That should do it. For now.” He meets my gaze with his cool blue eyes, and again I feel a shuddering reminder of my stepfather. “Thanks for coming in. I appreciate it.”



Back in the car, I realize that my hands are shaking. For long minutes, I sit with my hands in my lap, staring out the windshield at the past.

Did you have a sexual relationship with the deceased?

The third time we started again, Maya had been settled in rehab for five days. That night, I sat in my garden beneath the moon trying to absorb the light and ease my jangled nerves, my tangled emotions. I drank my own special herbal tea blend, made with lemon balm, peppermint, and chamomile. In the darkness, I smoked a joint that had come highly recommended by the clean-shaven guy behind the counter at the local pot shop. He promised it would be mild and mellow and, maybe because my eyes were practically swollen shut from crying, added that it would probably help.

I hadn’t been high for decades, but my entire soul felt shredded, so shredded I feared that it would not come back this time. I was desperate to escape my own experience. Nothing on earth could have made me drink a glass of wine. After rescuing Maya, soaked inside and out with the wine she had so painstakingly created, that pleasure was ruined forever.

So I sat in my garden, smoking with lazy attention, waiting to see what happened between inhales. So far, he was right—a soft blurriness crept up my limbs, and the heavy weight of the past few days finally dropped away. I had my feet propped up on a table, and tilted my head to admire the bare shape of them, high arches and long toes. Nice feet, I thought.

Both dogs sat with me, alert for things to chase, or invaders, or a cat who might tease them. Elvis growled low in his throat, and I said, “It’s all right, baby.”

“Calmez-vous,” said a deep voice in French. Settle down, to the dogs.

Augustus. I looked at him, then back to the garden, unwilling to allow my anger to rise again, anger so bitterly, blisteringly hot that I’d had to walk away before I struck him in the kitchen of Peaches and Pork. His great flaw was carelessness—carelessness with me, with his life, with his daughter in particular.

“Will you share?” he asked, and without asking permission, sat in the chair beside mine. I handed over the joint.

“What are you doing here?”

The joint glowed orange as he inhaled. I waited. He exhaled in a gust, the smoke making a cloud against the stars. “I can’t sleep, thinking about her, wondering if she’ll be okay. If . . .” He paused, pressed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. “How I could have changed things.” He handed me the joint. “I wish I could go back in time,” he said.

Tears stung the back of my eyes. “Don’t,” I whispered. “I can’t cry anymore or my eyes will fall out.”

We sat in the dark in silence, smoking. In the place where the movie of Maya’s crash had been running, a softness filtered in, erasing the edges. “I do blame you,” I said quietly.

“You are not alone,” he said, but stopped short of claiming responsibility. He left her—for me, it’s true—but still.

“My mother was an alcoholic,” he said, out of the blue.

I peered at him. At that moment, I had known him for thirty-three years. We had spent thousands of nights together, had whispered hundreds of secrets to each other in the dark, from pillow to pillow.

He’d never said this aloud even once. “What?”

“She was a sex worker in New Orleans. She drank herself to death, and I became a ward of the state, as they say.”

I was too high to take this in. “I thought she died of cancer. And your aunt in Montreal?”

His mouth turned down as he nodded. His hands were loose between his knees. “That was the story I told.”

“But I always thought you told me the truth.” The anger was boiling again, right below my skin, threatening to burn me, burn him, burn us all up.