And Now She's Gone(54)

And so, three months after the first, Natalie Grayson planned a second funeral. Not many agents attended, but Dominick Rader came. Educators, students, and their parents filled the pews. Despite the hundreds that attended, despite the assurances that Faye had loved her, Natalie knew and understood the truth—that Faye had loved Victor more. She’d only been a Grayson for seven years. That had been enough time, though, to inherit the house on Monterey Bay and to receive insurance and Social Security payments, pension payments, access to bank accounts, a Volvo, a Jeep, and jewelry. She had more than she’d ever had, but …

She was alone in the world again.

Natalie sold the Volvo and stored the jewelry, including Faye’s diamond engagement ring, in her parents’ safe deposit box at a bank in the city. She also kept the house and paid a company to manage renters. Zoe, Jay, and Avery persuaded her to move to Oakland—they lived across the street from Lake Merritt—and so she packed the Jeep and rolled up the highway.

And now, on the seventh anniversary of Victor Grayson’s death, Natalie visited a seaside cemetery near Monterey Bay to place yellow tulips on his marker and to place tiger lilies on Faye’s marker just a reach away. She tasted tears from crying and she tasted blood from tearing at dry skin on her lips. Her parents had been dead now for seven years.

Felt like a hundred.

Someone came to stand behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder.

That familiar face had always been a grab bag of ethnicities. Today, Dominick Rader looked African American.

“Didn’t think I’d see you today, Dom,” she said. “It’s been a while.”

“Wow,” he said, that word flat and far from “wow.” “You remember my name.”

Every time he’d come to their house for dinner, Natalie’s belly had fluttered, just like it fluttered now. “Yeah. I remember all of Dad’s agents.”

“Hunh.” Irritation flashed across his face—he’d been more than just an agent to the Graysons. “You still living here?” His voice was deep and scratchy, like stones and whiskey.

“No. I live in Oakland. Like you don’t already know that.”

“And the house?”

“Still mine. A minister and his family are renting it, but…” She had spent the happiest years of her life grilling and reading big books on that deck. “I’ll never sell it.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Sunlight danced across the steel plate of her father’s marker. The salty Pacific rode atop the breeze and her stomach wobbled. Dominick wanted to say something to her, but he was hesitant. And she was impatient. “What is it? Just spit it out.”

“Victor and Faye wouldn’t be happy,” he said. “With you and Sean—”

“I thought I asked you to stop—”

“Nat, come on.”

“And we’re just dating. And I’m twenty-nine years old. Most people my age are married by now and have a house and a retirement plan. I don’t need your advice.” She glared at him, frustrated. “Anyway, you don’t even know him.”

“And here I thought you knew me.” He folded his arms.

She glimpsed his holster and badge beneath his jacket. “You don’t know him.”

“I know enough about him to know that your father—”

“Daddy was being hyperbolic when he asked you to look after me. He was dying, Dom.”

On his deathbed, Victor had forced her to memorize Dominick Rader’s phone number. Once she recited it without pause, then recited it backwards without pause, he let go and let God.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dominick said now. “He gave me an order, and I’m following it.” He clasped her arm. “Natalie, look—”

“No.” She broke from his hold and kneeled beside her father’s grave. “Thank you—and I mean that—but I don’t need you to look after me. I mean that, too. Just let me be. Please?”

Grief paralyzed her lungs and her breath caught in her chest. Fat teardrops tumbled down her cheeks and plopped down to the grass—her tears were keeping that piece of land green. She bent and kissed the grave marker’s cold metal like she kissed it on every visit.

She looked back over her shoulder. “Dom, I’m—”

Dominick Rader was gone.

She was alone again beneath that hot August sun.





29


Grayson Sykes knew that, in the end, it would all be handled—by her, by Sean Dixon, and by her Heavenly Father above. She knew this was chess, and despite Victor Grayson’s insistence on teaching her the game, she had remained a mediocre player. Instead, she excelled at Tetris and Centipede, games that threw spiders and bombs at her, quicker and more complicated missiles with each round, until they burned and separated and spiders and blocks covered every blank piece of the screen.

That afternoon, he had stood from his armchair, beer bottle in hand, Polo shirt still tucked into his khakis even though he was home. “Reactionary,” her father had said.

“Nimble,” Natalie had countered with a smile.

His love was like fresh strawberries and warm socks, and it flowed over her, that love, like clear, clean water over smooth river stones. A daddy’s girl. Finally.