A Seahorse in the Thames (9 page)

I sit down on the floor next to Priscilla and reach for my own cup without answering.

“Lexie?”

“What?”

“Pardon my bluntness, but I think the sooner you realize she doesn’t need you like you thought she did, the better off you will be.”

Priscilla’s words hit me in a place where I feel surprisingly unprotected. I have not thought about my dependence on Rebecca for providing a purpose for my life in a long time. The funny thing is, the minute Priscilla says this I know she is right. Since Rebecca’s disappearance four days ago, I have been wrestling with the notion that my need for Rebecca’s company has always exceeded her need for mine. And now Rebecca has proved it true by packing a bag and leaving without a trace of a trail. I guess my way of dealing with the disintegration of my family has been no less peculiar that Mom’s or Priscilla’s.

“Lex?”

“Yes?”

“I am
really
glad you have fallen in love with someone.”

And I know what she means. This growing attraction I have for Stephen, even though his future is uncertain, could not have come at a better time.

“Me too,” I say.

We each take a sip of tea and then turn back to the boxes. I open one that I carried out of my room. Inside are promotional fliers from the museums at Balboa Park, a dozen or so movie stubs, a nest of Laffy Taffy wrappers and some recipe cards. There are also postcards from friends who live at the Center as well as a Ziploc bag full of letters. I reach into the bag and pull out a handful of envelopes, each with a foreign stamp. My breath catches in my throat when I see the return addresses. It is Priscilla’s.

“Why, these are from you!” I say, astounded.

Priscilla looks up from the floor plan of a Tudor-style house. “Oh, she keeps those, does she?”

I am still taken aback. I had no idea Priscilla had been writing to Rebecca. The postmarks span the years she has been gone.

“I didn’t know you were writing to her,” I say.

Priscilla looks not the least bit nonplussed. “Should you have known?”

“Well, I mean, Rebecca never mentioned it.”

“Probably because it is not such an odd thing to have your sister write to you,” Priscilla says, looking back at the pile of house pictures. I can see that she is annoyed that I assumed she has ignored Rebecca in the years she has been away.

“Sorry, Pris,” I mumble. “I just… I thought…”

“I can see what you thought,” she says, not looking at me. “Don’t worry about it, Lex. I only wrote her a few times a year. It’s not like we were pen pals.”

I’m trying not to worry about it but I can’t stop. Guilt is a hard thing to wish away.

“Did she ever write back to you?” I ask.

Priscilla tosses a pile of house pictures back into the box. “Sometimes. There’s nothing in here.” She means there are no clues in the “house” box. But it also means she wants to move on. I’m not quite ready.

“Did you tell her about—” but Priscilla doesn’t let me say Isabel’s name.

“Of course I didn’t, Lex. Are you crazy?” Priscilla puts the lid on the box and grabs another one.

End of discussion.

I place the letters back in the bag and place them back in the shoebox. There are no clues in that box, either. I grab my second box. It is the oldest one of the bunch. Inside are the swimming medals from high school, a prom corsage, her address book and several smaller boxes of high school mementos.

Nearly everything in this last box is yellow and crisp with age. There certainly can be nothing in here that relates to Rebecca’s current whereabouts. From the bottom of the box, I lift a thin, white gift box held closed by two rubber bands that break when I touch them. I peek inside the box to see what Rebecca has hidden away. I see a couple cards from her nineteenth birthday, some photographs from her freshman year at UC Santa Barbara and a broken charm bracelet. Nothing earth-shattering to say the least. I toss the little box onto the coffee table. This has been a completely fruitless search.

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to find anything here,” Priscilla says, standing and stretching. “And I think that second wind I had was just a second breeze. I’m going to go to crawl in bed with Isabel. Want help with the mugs?”

“No, go on ahead. Good night, Priscilla. And I’m really glad you are here.”

“I am glad, too, Lex.” She turns and starts to leave the living room. “Thanks for what you did today at Mom’s, for me and Isabel. I don’t know what you told her, but whatever it was, it was the right thing.”

“You’re welcome.”

Priscilla heads down the hall as I take our mugs to the kitchen and wash them quickly. It is after ten, but I feel the urge to call Stephen, to hear his voice, to tell him the news that I have a niece. I stand and look at my kitchen phone for several minutes as I summon the bravery to call him. Then I reach into my purse and pull out the grocery receipt that bears his phone number. I look at those numbers for several minutes, too. Then I punch in the number, hoping it’s not too late.

He answers on the second ring.

“Stephen?”

“Alexa! Hi.”

He recognizes my voice.

“So how was your first full day home?” I settle into a kitchen chair.

“I managed to shave, make coffee and work the TV remote with one good hand and one good leg. How was your day? Did Priscilla arrive?”

Within those few seconds we are off the subject of him and onto the subject of me. He lets me rattle on for nearly twenty minutes as I tell him about Isabel, about my mother’s and Priscilla’s reunion, about my realization that I have been using Rebecca as a way of finding purpose in my life for the last seven years. It’s amazing how easily I open up to this man.

It’s nearly ten-thirty before I realize the conversation has been drastically one-sided.

“I’m sorry, Stephen.” I cover my face with my free hand, even though I know he cannot see this. “I didn’t call to talk about me.”

“It’s okay. I asked. I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know.”

“So, you are doing okay? Really?”

“Today I am doing okay. Really.”

“When do you see the oncologist?”

“Thursday.”

“Do you have someone to take you?”

“Yes, Alexa, I do.”

“Oh. Okay.” I’m chewing on my lower lip and glad he cannot see it.

“Were you going to offer to take me?”

I cannot tell by his voice if he is smiling or not. And he thankfully cannot see that I am fidgeting like a kindergartner in my chair. What the heck. “Well, yes, I was.”

“That’s really kind of you. But you have Priscilla visiting you. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

We spend the next thirty minutes talking about virtually nothing. It’s just the kind of conversation two people have when they first meet and there is attraction between them.

“I’d better let you get to bed,” I finally say, when it is a little after eleven.

“I am really glad you called, Alexa. It’s been great talking with you. And now that you’re on my caller ID, I can call
you
sometime.”

“Okay.” I smile, toying with my hair.

“Alexa, I want you to know some friends and I are praying for Rebecca, that she will be kept safe wherever she is. I hope you don’t mind that I told a few people.”

His compassion for me and for Rebecca intrigues me. I don’t mind at all.

“Thanks. I mean, that’s really nice of you.”

“Well, good night, then,” he says.

“Good night, Stephen.”

I hang up the phone and sit for several long minutes in my quiet kitchen. I feel a little like I am falling into quicksand. It’s unnerving and wonderful at the same time.

I rise from the kitchen table with images of Stephen crowding my thoughts. I see him on my porch pulling boards, in my living room listening to me confess my deepest fears, in my kitchen drinking lemonade and talking about God. And now I see him in a circle of friends, praying for Rebecca, someone he has never met, someone for whom life dealt a heavy, unexplained hand.

Amazed, I lean down to put the contents of the last shoebox away. I pick up the little box with the broken charm bracelet inside, but I lose my grip and the box and its ancient contents fall to the carpet. It’s as I am replacing the tissue paper that lined the bottom that I see the yellowed envelope that must have been at the very bottom of the little box, underneath the tissue paper. I pick it up and scrutinize it. It’s sealed and there is nothing written on it. I hold it up to the light and I can see that something is inside—a piece of paper. It has the size and look of a check. It is highly unlikely that an old check will offer a clue as to where Rebecca is, but I turn the envelope over anyway and slide my finger across the seal. It crackles open.

I look inside and I see the back of a typical bank check. I pull it out, turn it over and gasp.

It’s a check for $50,000. Made out to Rebecca a month before her accident. Signed by Gavin O’Neil.

Leanne’s father.

M
orning clouds fat with moisture hang over the surf at Mission Beach, but Isabel doesn’t seem to care in the least. She is walking barefoot at the water’s edge, picking up shells, poking at bits of seaweed with a stick and turning to Priscilla and me every now and then to let us know what she sees.

My sister and I stand a few yards away, each holding a caramel macchiato from the Starbucks down the street. We are watching Isabel, but our minds are busy with contemplations.

I’d shown the check to Priscilla the moment she got up this morning. Her reaction mirrored mine; it was one of utter astonishment. Even now, nearly an hour later, I can’t think of a reason why Rebecca would have a check made out to her from Leanne’s father for that amount of money.

It can’t be that Gavin wanted to help with Rebecca’s medical bills. The check was dated a month
before
the night of the accident. That means it can’t be related to the accident in any way.

So why does Rebecca have it? What was it for? Why didn’t she cash it? Why did she keep it? If she wasn’t planning on cashing it, why didn’t she just give it back or rip it up and throw it away? Is this the thing she could not find? Could this be the item she had practically begged me in her note to quietly dispose of?

And why is the check for so much money? Fifty thousand dollars! Why would Gavin McNeil write out a check for that kind of money to his daughter’s best friend? Granted, it probably wasn’t a ton of money to him, but to nineteen-year-old Rebecca it must have seemed like a million dollars. It made no sense.

Priscilla is now looking past the frothing, breaking waves to where calm water meets sky.

“I really don’t think this has anything to do with why Rebecca left, Alexa,” she says. “We should just put it back and forget we saw it.” I can tell by her tone that she wishes I had not opened the envelope; that she wishes we didn’t know what we now know.

But I cannot turn my back on what I know. She can, but I can’t.

“I can’t forget I saw it, Priscilla. I know maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with why she left, but—”

“I am quite sure it doesn’t. The envelope was sealed and you said the rubber bands disintegrated at your touch. Rebecca probably hasn’t touched or had a conscious thought about that check in years.”

“But then why did she keep it?”

“Why does Rebecca keep anything? Priscilla turns to me. “Why does she have a hundred pictures of houses?”

But the minute she says it, I can see in her eyes that Priscilla knows there is a reason why Rebecca has been cutting out pictures of houses. I’m already beginning to the reasons.

“Besides,” Priscilla continues. “Rebecca’s memory of that time is locked away. She no doubt kept it because she doesn’t remember why she has it.”

“Her memory of the accident is locked away, but not her memory of that
whole year,
Priscilla. How do you know she doesn’t remember how she got that check? How do we know this isn’t the very thing she knew she had somewhere in her room but she couldn’t remember where?”

“Well, if it is indeed what she was referring to in her note, then you should respect her wishes and destroy it.”

But that is not what I want to do. Sometimes Rebecca asks for things that aren’t in her best interest and my gut tells me this is one of those times. Something is very wrong here. If Rebecca was trying to escape from something, and if the last thing she wanted to do before she left was destroy this check, then it was certainly possible the check is mixed up in this.

Priscilla is looking past me to the ocean and to her little girl, running like a nymph across the sand. When I say nothing in return she turns to me

“What are you going to do with it, Lex?” she says.

I think for a moment. I haven’t really had time to think of a plan of action, but I know I simply cannot throw the check away and pretend forevermore that I didn’t see it.

“I don’t know. Maybe I will give Gavin McNeil a call.”

“For God’s sake, Lexie, please use your head!” Priscilla turns her attention back to me. “Why would a rich man give his daughter’s best friend fifty thousand dollars! Think about it!”

“I don’t know.”

“I can think of just two reasons why a man like Gavin McNeil would do that. And if you stopped to put two and two together, Lex, you would see it, too!”

My mind tries to obey Priscilla but the minute I try, I am besieged with images of Rebecca being involved with something illegal. Or, at the very least, unethical.

“A bribe?” I say.

“Or blackmail,” Priscilla says, making eye contact with me, forcing me to look at her. “If you go poking around in this, you may unearth things that ought to be left where they lie.”

I am considering her words when it suddenly occurs to me that I know now why Gavin and Kevin McNeil came to see Rebecca so often after her accident. I’d chalked it up to compassionate sensitivity or a desire to know what really happened the night of the accident. But in truth, Gavin probably just wanted to know what happened to the check. He had written it a month before. And Rebecca had not cashed it. He no doubt wanted to know where it was. Was it safe? Had she destroyed it? Was she planning to cash it? Had the memory that she even had the check been swept away along with her memory of that night? And if so, then where was the check?

I then remembered how Gavin and Kevin had asked if they could be alone with Rebecca whenever they visited her at the house and that I had thought nothing of it. I wonder now if my parents had thought that was strange. My mother never said anything if she did. She no doubt also wanted to know why Leanne had driven off the road and if Gavin McNeil could pry it out of Rebecca’s wounded brain, well, then so be it.

But Gavin never got what he wanted.

And Rebecca had the check all along, in a shoebox in a sealed envelope buried beneath her high school swimming medals. If the reason had indeed been blackmail, then Rebecca knew something or had seen something that could’ve ruined Gavin McNeil in some way. And she had then capitalized on her knowledge with extortion.

Impossible. I remember Rebecca being opinionated and self-centered before the accident but not devious and conniving. It could not possibly be blackmail.

But a bribe? Was it possible Gavin McNeil was buying something from Rebecca? Silence, perhaps? Cooperation?

For a moment my mind flutters to the possibility that Gavin McNeil was paying Rebecca for sexual favors but I whisk these nauseating thoughts away as quickly as they come. I cannot conceive of Rebecca selling her body to her best friend’s father. And Gavin certainly never seemed the type to have committed something so grotesque and immoral.

He was no doubt paying Rebecca to do or not do something, to say or not say something. But what?

My mind takes me to the night of the accident. Rebecca had been moody and short with everyone that day. Mindy had called and they had had some kind of argument over the phone. Then Leanne had come over but she had not come up to the door. She had just honked the horn at the curb. Two hours later Leanne was dead and my sister was near death. Did the check have something to do with the events of that night?

“Alexa?” Priscilla says, rousing me from these thoughts.

“What?” I say, but I am replaying the night of the accident in my head.

“Do you hear what I am saying?”

“Priscilla, I don’t think it was blackmail. I think it was a bribe. Gavin McNeil was paying Rebecca for her cooperation. And I bet it had something to do with Leanne.”

Priscilla says nothing. She waits for me to continue.

“Do you remember how Gavin and Kevin used to come visit Rebecca after the accident?”

“Yes,” Priscilla says slowly and I can see she is tracking with me.

“Don’t you think now that that was kind of odd?”

“I always thought it was odd.”

“I think Gavin had paid her for something. It was some sort of deal they had made. A deal
he
had made, anyway. But I am thinking Rebecca was having second thoughts about the deal. She hadn’t cashed the check. And then she was in the accident and Gavin was afraid someone would come across it. He was afraid that with her injuries, Rebecca might not remember she even had the check. He needed to get it from her. But he never did. He finally gave up.”

Priscilla is considering my theory. I can see that it makes sense to her. But even so, she is still not convinced we should do anything besides put the check back and take Isabel to the zoo.

“That was seventeen years ago, Lex,” she says. “I am sure he has come to believe the check no longer exists. I don’t think calling him to tell him that it does will accomplish anything. It will probably just make him angry. And it won’t get you any closer to finding out where Rebecca is.”

“But Priscilla, I think this check might have something to do with happened to Leanne and Rebecca. Don’t you ever wonder why Leanne lost control of her car? The roads were dry. There no other cars involved. Something caused her to go off the road, Pris. What if she and Rebecca were arguing? What if it had to do with this check?”

“What if it did?” Priscilla says, briskly. “What good is there in knowing why Leanne went off the road?!”

“What good is there in not knowing?”

Priscilla turns her head from me to gaze at Isabel chasing a seagull.

“It won’t help you find her,” she finally says.

I pause to let her words penetrate. She is probably right but I can’t live with endless speculation about this check.

“Maybe it won’t,” I reply. “But maybe it will help me understand why she left. I thought she was happy at the Center, Priscilla. I thought because all her physical needs were being met she had to be happy. But what if all this time she has just been waiting for the right time to spring free. What if she remembers just enough to regularly find herself at the edge of wanting to break away from it all?”

“If you feel you must understand why she left, that you won’t be able to rest until you do, then you must do what you must. Surely you know that I, of all people, understand that,” Priscilla says.

Yes, I’m sure she does know what it’s like to feel you simply must do a certain thing or go mad.

“So will you help me?” I ask.

“You don’t need my help to look up Gavin McNeil, Lex. Just Google him. And if he is still in San Diego and you plan to go see him, no, I will not come with you. I have Isabel to think about. And you might want to consider your own welfare, Lex. It may not be either smart or safe to dredge this up with him.”

“You think it’s a dumb idea.”

“It is not a dumb idea if it brings you peace, Lex. But gaining peace at the expense of the peace of other people is something I don’t highly recommend. I know all about that, too.”

I say nothing and she continues.

“You might also want to consider how exposing the truth about this will affect Rebecca,” Priscilla says. “You are more than her little sister. You are her closest friend, Alexa. She obviously thinks she told you about it. She asked you to keep it secret. She asked you to get rid of it.”

What Priscilla says makes sense. But I feel that something is amiss here. Greatly amiss. And has been for seventeen years. I’m not afraid of the truth. It surprises me that Priscilla, my shrewd and reasonable twin, seems to be. I don’t want Rebecca to be hurt by this, either. But the plain fact is, Rebecca is not around right now to be wounded.

“I’ll be careful,” I say simply.

We stand there for a few more minutes and then Priscilla calls for Isabel.

We really are taking Isabel to the zoo today.

By four o’clock, jet lag and the excitement of seeing so many animals has taken its toll on Isabel. Priscilla carries her to the car and we head over to Coronado to visit and have supper with Mom. Isabel is sound asleep in the backseat when we get to Mom’s house, so while Mom takes the dogs out into the backyard, Priscilla carries Isabel in to the guest room and lays her on the bed. She puts Clement in the crook of her arm. We tiptoe out and join Mom on her backyard patio.

Priscilla sits down by Mom and bends down to pat Margot and Humphrey. They begin to chat and I feel like they probably need some alone time together.

I ask my mom where my cell phone is and I excuse myself to make some calls. Priscilla watches me leave but she says nothing. I have no intention of telling Mom anything about the check or my suspicions. At least not yet.

I find my cell phone on my Mom’s dresser where she said it would be. I open a web browser on my phone and open up an online white pages. I haven’t thought about the McNeils in a long time. I have no idea if they stayed in our Mount Helix neighborhood or if they are even still in San Diego.

My heart falls when I see that there is no listing at all for Gavin McNeil, but then it skips a beat when I see that there is a Kevin McNeil. And that his address is the street over from our old street in Mount Helix. It’s the same address. The McNeils have not moved away. At least Kevin McNeil has not.

I stare at the telephone number listed.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is Kevin, Leanne’s older brother—the same one who came and visited Rebecca with Gavin, as well as at least once by himself. He surely must’ve known something or why else had he come with Gavin? My mind is filled with questions and I know I am not able to have an intelligent conversation with Kevin McNeil at the moment. But I turn store the number in my phone and I also jot down the address on a yellow sticky note, which I then shove in the pocket of my shorts. I expect I will have the courage and the composure to try it later. I truly would not know what to say if I called him now. I have not seen him since I was twelve.