This Place of Wonder (47)

I take a bite of cheesy eggs, and they’re so delicious I almost moan. It’s like my taste buds have been dead for years and I can taste every molecule of everything. I swallow. “He was a player. He deserted my mother, and then he broke Meadow’s heart, and I’d just had it.”

“Maybe he broke your heart, too, huh?” she asks. She has bright black eyes that reflect light like a mirror.

“Sure.” I take another bite, lift a shoulder. “I mean, I was in my twenties by the time he fucked up his marriage, so it wasn’t like I was some little kid. I was just . . . over it.”

“Did you have a good relationship with him as a child?”

“I did.” This is the hard part of it all. When he wasn’t awful, he was wonderful. “I always knew he loved me, and he was fun to be around. When he was around. Mostly, he worked.”

She inclines her head. “Didn’t he abandon you with your mother—your biological mother—when he met Meadow?”

I meet her probing gaze, feeling anger snap and crackle along the bones of my spine. “Abandoned is a pretty strong word,” I say. “She was my mother and he left her.”

“But when she died you were trapped in the apartment for several days, isn’t that right?”

I hate it when this comes up. It’s so intensely, painfully personal, and yet it was all over the news of the time. Carefully, I place my fork on the plate and press my hands to my thighs. More flame edges along my ribs. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just seems like a crappy thing to happen.”

“It was. But even if I’d somehow harbored revenge fantasies about killing my dad over that, I was in rehab the night he died.”

“Your dad paid for the rehab, is that correct?”

“Yes, I think he and Meadow paid together. Again, what difference does that make?”

“We’re just trying to get a feeling for what was going on in his life when he died.”

I incline my head. “So he didn’t die of a heart attack?”

“Maybe not.”

“So what killed him, then?”

“We don’t know enough to say yet. We do want to rule out poison.”

I choke on toast crumbs. “Poison?” I frown. “Really?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Can’t you test for that?”

“Some things. Not all of them,” Vaca says. “Doesn’t your stepmother make herbal concoctions at her farm?”

I roll my eyes. “Meadow didn’t poison him, trust me. She loved him.”

“But they’ve been divorced a long time. Were there still feelings between them?”

A warning rushes up my spine. What are they digging for here? I temper my reply. “Not feelings feelings. They were like siblings.”

“Hmm. More than that,” Vaca says.

“No,” I say dismissively. “It wasn’t that kind of relationship. He had some new girlfriend. Have you talked to her?”

“Norah Rivera,” he says. “We’d love to, but we can’t find her. She lived here when he died, but your stepmother kicked her out and we haven’t been able to locate her.”

“Meadow kicked her out?” I draw my brows down. “Why would she do that?”

“She said she wanted the house to be ready for your return.”

“Ah.” I lift my chin. That makes sense.

“Who inherits all this?” Vaca asks, spinning his finger in a circle. “The house, the restaurant?”

I sigh, cross my arms. “Me.”

“Nobody else gets any of it?”

“Not as far as I know. He didn’t have a wife, and Rory really, really didn’t want it. She was very clear about the house coming to me.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, she has a house in Santa Barbara that she’s worked her ass off on, and they love it. As for the restaurant, she never, ever wanted to be part of the restaurant business.”

“Not fair that one daughter should get everything and the other nothing, though. Is it?”

“It’s not nothing,” I say. “She inherits all of her mother’s property. And honestly, my dad didn’t do the fair thing. He did whatever the fuck he wanted, all of his life. Why should it be any different now?”

“That’s Meadow Sweet Farms? In . . .” Vaca flips through his notes.

“Ojai,” I supply.

The woman nods, but Vaca inclines his head. “If you hear from Norah, we would really like to speak with her.”

I lift my shoulders. “I wouldn’t know her. We’ve never met.”

“All right.” He holds up a business card and sets it down on the counter. “If you think of anything that might be helpful, give us a call.”

“Sure.”



The Brewed Bean is fairly busy when I first arrive, and it’s pleasurable to lose myself in physical activity, making espressos and lattes, delivering sandwiches, running dishes back to the kitchen. It’s a small staff, just me and the prep cook in the back, and whoever is upstairs roasting beans. I can smell them, and the scent layers over the top of brewing espressos with a heady depth that makes me remember I once read that the smell of coffee has healing properties. It’s so thick here that I wonder if it can also make you high. When things slow down, I run upstairs to see what they’re doing, but the room is empty.