Two Girls Down(58)

“Hello,” she said.

“Nell, Alice Vega,” said Cap.

“Nice to meet you,” said Nell, coming forward to shake her hand.

“Hi,” said Vega.

It was a firm handshake for a young girl. Self-assured. When she let go, she backed up and examined Cap’s face.

“Are you swollen?”

“Yeah,” Cap said, touching his chin. “I got in a tussle.”

“What kind of tussle? Who hit you?” she said, calm.

“Brad Ralz.”

“Brad Ralz hit you? Why would he do that?”



“There’s a story,” said Cap. “Let’s eat and we’ll tell you all about it.”

“Well, okay then,” she said. Then, confessional: “I made too much food.”

“Great,” said Cap. “You ate, didn’t you?”

“Not yet.”

Cap shrugged at her, incredulous.

“It’s after nine,” he said.

“I had an apple after practice and I’ve been studying.” Then she looked at Vega. “My dad has a tendency to worry. Have you noticed this, Miss Vega?”

“I have.”

“He forgets I’m not seven,” she said.

“There needs to be at least one person in the household who maintains healthy eating and sleeping habits,” said Cap, removing his jacket and dropping it on the couch. “It was specified on the census.”

Nell sighed and said, “Whatever.” Then she went back to the kitchen.

“What?” said Cap, holding his hands out. He looked at Vega like, Can you believe this kid?

She knew right then he was a dorky dad, like one on TV. Here in this cartoonishly inviting house with a smart, witty teenage daughter. And she, Vega, was here with them.

She smiled, and it was real.

—

Nell was impossibly good with people, Cap thought, as he watched her pile whole wheat spaghetti onto Vega’s plate with tongs. It was like she was the perfect mix of him and Jules: She had Jules’s intensity and sincerity that came from the education background; the look on her face said I am listening to everything you’re saying and taking it very seriously. This combined with Cap’s easy smile and ability to make a stranger comfortable and therefore likely to tell him secrets.

But there was no calculation in Nell’s demeanor; she asked Vega polite questions and passed her bread and butter, refilled her club soda, apologized for the lack of lemons. Vega said more words in ten minutes than she’d done in two days. And there was something so surprising and soothing about it, listening to them talk, watching Vega actually smile, one tooth overlapping the other like the one in front was trying to hug the one in back.



Somehow Nell made it all sound natural and noninvasive: What’s the origin of the name Vega? Are you married? Have you always lived in California? Do you have family there? What’s it like living there? And Vega’s answers, similarly, were direct, but she seemed not at all uncomfortable responding between small bites of pasta: It’s Mexican—you can call me Alice; No; Yes; My father and my brother and his family live about ninety minutes away; it’s warm most of the time.

Vega pulled out her phone and looked for something on it, then handed it to Nell.

“This is my backyard. That’s my palm tree.”

Nell’s eyes got huge.

“Oh my God. Dad, did you see this? She has a palm tree in her backyard.”

Nell stretched across the table to give Cap the phone. Cap saw the picture, a thick, short palm tree that reminded him of an ear of eaten corn. The sky was a ridiculous Windex blue behind it. No clouds, just power lines. It looked like a set from a science fiction movie.

“Wow,” said Cap. “You should not look in our backyard.”

“Yeah, it’s a little overgrown. We don’t do a lot of landscaping,” said Nell.

“The palm tree was there when I moved in,” said Vega. “I don’t have to water it or anything.”

Cap smiled and couldn’t look at her for a second, something about how she was trying to not make Nell feel bad, fusing a connection through shitty backyards. It made him feel shy.

“So,” said Nell, looking at the clock on the coffeemaker. “I have to go up in ten minutes to finish Civ. You want to update me on the case and tell me about your jaw?”

Cap glanced at Vega, who nodded. Be my guest.

“I’ll give it to you in five.”

Cap gave her the highlights, as he’d been doing since she’d been about ten or eleven. Back then he left out the worst details: the ones that involved abuse of children, or anything particularly bloody, but now she could take it. She listened intently and crinkled up her face at certain points, covered her mouth in shock when Cap told her about Evan Marsh.



“That’s awful—he was shot in the head?”

“Looked like it.”

“This all happened today?”

Cap nodded. Nell thought for a moment.

“So why did Ralz punch you in the face?”

“Getting to it.”

Cap described the fight; Nell looked back and forth between him and Vega, dark eyebrows arched.

“So you basically taunted him into attacking you?” she said to Vega.