Confessions on the 7:45(38)

They stopped for Chinese food on the way home, and he parked in front of the house, walking her inside. He carried her heavy backpack and the food. She opened the door.

“I have to talk to your mom. Maybe she’ll eat with us.”

He was going to leave. She could tell. He had that sad, careful look that grown-ups had right before they were about to disappoint you in some way. Stella had used him up, probably she’d stopped paying him or something. That’s what she did. She took everything she could from people and, when they were done, she showed them the door, not caring whether they walked, ran, yelled or cried.

I never asked you for a thing, Pearl had heard Stella say to more than one angry beau, friend, neighbor. And that was true. Stella never had to ask.

But the house was dark and quiet when they went inside. Pearl turned on the lights; Charlie put down her bag, carried the food to the kitchen. Pearl’s morning dishes were where she’d left them.

Something. Something made the hair stand up on the back of her neck, made her breath catch.

“Stella?” Charlie called out.

Their eyes met in the dim of the messy kitchen, and something passed quicksilver between them. She couldn’t even say what. A kind of knowledge, an awareness of a subtle shift of energy. Over the years, she’d come back to that moment. It would mean something different every single time she recalled it.

He walked past her, brushing close, hurried. She caught the scent of him—soap and paper. Pearl stayed rooted, listening to his footfalls move from room to room.

When he called out in shock and terror, his voice a vibrato of despair, she stayed stone still, frozen, unable to move, unable to think. Time stopped.

Oh, God. Oh, Stella. No! Oh, nonononono.

Pearl followed the sound of his wailing and stood shaking in the doorway. Charlie was on his knees beside the bed. Stella stared unseeing, eyes red and glassy, her neck black with bruising. Pearl felt part of herself die, too.



SIXTEEN

Selena

She pulled into her mother’s driveway, the boys both uncharacteristically quiet in the back. In the rearview mirror, she saw that Stephen was dozing, but Oliver stared out the window, frowning.

“Everything’s okay,” she said. “Just an unexpected visit to Grandma.”

Oliver caught her eyes in the mirror, looking older than his years. Stephen was a little Tonka trunk, chunky, rough-and-tumble, oblivious. But Oliver was an observer. His expression, the one he wore when she tried to keep the Santa thing going or convince him that he was going to one day love brussels sprouts, was skeptical, nearing disdain.

“Okay,” he said.

She looked up at the house. Her mom, Cora, stood in the doorway, waving. She was a small woman who seemed to be shrinking a little bit every time Selena saw her. Cora and Marisol both got the compact, petite thing. Selena got the tall, athletic thing. Secretly, she always wished she was tiny like her sister. Paulo, Cora’s second husband, was tall behind her, nearly filling the door frame.

“Paulo!” cried Oliver, frown dropping, replaced with a grin. Stephen stirred awake, groggy.

Paulo—a husky, jovial guy—was beloved by the boys. He was a bear hugger, a piggyback ride giver, Lego builder, all day at Extreme Jump kind of grandpa. No kids or grandkids of his own, he was fresh to the fight, as he liked to say. He had lots to give to her, her sister and their kids. Which was nice, because Selena’s actual father was an impatient jerk—always annoyed with the kids, their noisemaking, their poor table manners, their fighting. Scolding and frowning was his default setting. He thought they were pampered, hassled Selena and Graham about their lack of discipline, their lack of scheduling, and just made himself generally difficult to be around. Then he wondered why they weren’t all closer and complained that they didn’t visit enough.

Cora and Paulo came to the car to greet Selena, Paulo giving her a big squeeze and an encouraging pat on the back, then ushering the boys inside with their luggage and big box of toys. Cora took Selena into an embrace.

“I’m sure it will just be a couple of days,” said Selena. There was a weight on her shoulders that she couldn’t shift off, a deep fatigue tugging at her brain.

“As long as you need us,” she said. “We’re here.”

Inside, they got the boys settled in the room that was just for them, another one adjoined by a jack-and-jill bath for their two cousins, Lily and Jasper. Paulo said that he’d tend to the kids, and Selena and her mother went to the kitchen, where Selena told her everything. The cheating, Geneva not showing up for work. Not the girl on the train.

“This is all just some crazy thing,” she heard herself say. “A misunderstanding.”

That could still be true, right? She pulled a tissue from the box Cora had produced, dabbed at her eyes.

Cora pulled the folds of her blue cashmere wrap tighter around her. “But he slept with her?”

Selena turned to the door to the kitchen, which her mother had pulled closed. The kids, especially Oliver, had a way of sneaking up.

“Yes,” Selena admitted. She felt her face redden, her eyes fill again. “He did.”

Her mother reached for her hand.

“But you don’t think—”

“That he has anything to do with her disappearing? No,” said Selena, a shock moving through her. “Of course not.”

But of course everyone was going to think that, if it came out. Which, it still might not. Geneva would turn up. All of this was going to be a big nothing. So what if Geneva’s car was there all weekend and she’d missed a date with her sister, hadn’t turned up for work? Maybe she’d met someone, went on a bender. It happened, right? Even to nice girls like Geneva. Who wasn’t such a nice girl, after all, was she? Sleeping with Graham, and now rumors of issues with her last employer. So, maybe Geneva was somebody else entirely than she pretended to be. That happened all the time.