Red Light (39 page)

I reached for Jean’s hand. “I don’t have anything to hide,” I said to Fran. I looked up into Jean’s pale face. “If you want to stay, I want you to.”

She crouched down until we were eye to eye and folded my hand in both of hers. “I want whatever you want. If you want me to stay, I’m right here with you, but…” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “This is really private, really personal stuff, Tori. Don’t do it just because you think you have to.”

“I know I don’t have to,” I said as Fran shuffled papers. “I’d feel better, though, if you stayed.” It was true, I would. And I didn’t want Jean to have doubts about me, either—think I’d lied or held something back.

“You got it,” she said and kissed my fingertips. She held my hand through the whole thing.

*

“Tori, why haven’t you spoken with your mother about this?” Fran asked as we sat around the table in the kitchen swapping cartons of Chinese food. She’d had amazing timing, because it seemed the very second she’d said we’d gone through enough, Nina and Samantha had returned—bearing food.

“She was an absolutely brilliant prosecutor, she’d be able to help, I’m certain,” she added.

“Tor, that’s not a bad idea,” Jean seconded.

“No fucking way.” No way did I want to discuss this with my mother because she’d go one of two ways, either devastated and tragic, and then I’d be responsible for her next heart attack, or she’d be exactly what Fran had said, the prosecutor, the judge, and I couldn’t face that.

“It’s like this, Tori. This isn’t California,” Fran said, her eyes a kindly amber glow. “The law is very clear about this exact sort of situation there, but right now? New York, neither state nor city, has any law regarding this directly, but this isn’t my specialty. Tori, even if your mom hasn’t practiced in years, she’s going to know what to look for, criminally or civilly. You should think about it.”

Nina must have known what I feared when she spoke up. “Tori…I know…look, in the clutch, your mom? She can be pretty amazing. I’ll talk with her.” She covered my hand with her own. “Would you let me do that for you?”

I couldn’t say no to the expression in her eyes, the combination of love and pain in them. She hurt for me, and the knowledge of that…it threatened to break me. I didn’t want anyone to hurt for me, because of me. I didn’t know what good speaking with my mother would do, but if it made her feel better…

“You can try, I guess.”

Nina nodded as she removed her hand. “I’ll do better than that.” She excused herself to make that call, and about twenty minutes later, Samantha left.

She returned in less than an hour carrying the mail and accompanied by my mother. For the first time since I could remember, for a situation that was not a family gathering of some sort or one of her organizational functions, my mother had really dressed: she wore a suit and had pulled her hair severely back. I remembered that look, my strong mother who had faced down desperate, conscienceless thugs and corrupt governors.

Sam handed Jean the mail as my mother held me to her firmly. “Let me help you,
mi hija querida
, okay?” she said before she turned to Jean and gave her a big hug too.

“You have to remember, Tori, Jean,” she said, her tone gentle as she observed us both, “you’re
both
going through this, okay?” Her tone shifted, became brisk and matter-of-fact. “Have you found a therapist yet?”

Jean and I looked at each other as I held her hand tightly.

“I, uh…no, Mom, haven’t thought about that, honestly.”

“I didn’t think about it either,” Jean answered.

“Well, that’s your next task,” my mom said, “but for now, it’s a beautiful day out there—why don’t you two go see a movie or go to the zoo, and—”

Nina came into the living room, Fran beside her. My mother beamed at her niece and at her friend as they approached.

“Nina…Samantha’s taking wonderful care of you two, I see,” she commented as they hugged each other and my mom took a second to do what everyone did, which was pet the belly.

“
Tía
, you remember—”

“Francesca? Of course, but it’s always wonderful to see you again,” she said as she shook her hand.

Jean swore under her breath next to me. “Fuck.” She held two envelopes in her hand and stared anywhere but at me as I took them from her.

I examined them. Both were cards, one from the Cayden family, thanking me for attending the wake, the other from Trace. I stared at the handwritten name and address in the corner. Whatever composure I’d had left was gone.

My mother turned back to us. “Give that to me,” she said, her voice gentle as she took them both from my numb fingers. “Victoria?”

My head snapped up at her voice speaking my name. “Huh?”

“Give me your cell phone.”

I automatically reached into my back pocket for it. “I haven’t had it on since…” I couldn’t finish that thought as I handed it to her. My chest began to squeeze, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to breathe normally again.

“I know. I left you a message yesterday.”

My mother’s eyes snapped like lake fire as she took my phone from me. “I need this,” she said, waving it at me. “It’s going to help. I’ll find something—
te lo juro
.”
I swear
, she promised.

“I…I still have her stuff from…from the hospital,” Jean said to her. “Bagged it and tagged it. It’s in the car.”

“I’ll get it,” Samantha offered and slipped out.

My mother nodded at Jean with approval. “Good. That will help. Girls, please. Go out, do something nice, let the lawyers”—she grinned at Fran, who gave her the same grin right back—“take care of it.”

She stepped away and tucked Nina’s hand in her arm, and Nina smiled reassuringly at me over her shoulder as we were dismissed.

“You don’t need to ask me questions or anything?” I asked, finally able to speak around the painful buzz that filled me.

My mother walked back to me. “Victoria,
querida
,” she said quietly, and she brushed the hair behind my ear, “it’s better for both of us if I read it, okay? Let me be a lawyer now, and later, when this is all done, I can be your mother, you can be my daughter.” She glanced up at Jean and smiled. “You can both be my daughters and we can talk about this, any way you’d like to.”

I understood, I really understood her need to be objective at the moment; I wished for that ability myself. “Okay, Mami.”

A thought struck me. “Mami, should I talk to Elena?”

I could see her hesitate, think before she spoke. “She’s your sister, and she loves you,” my mother said finally. “It’s your decision,
hija
. I’d advise you…give her a chance to be there for you, to…to…you know what I mean.”

She smiled at me and chucked my chin. “But don’t worry about that right now. Go out, girls. This might take some time.”

Jean and I opted on Ralph’s Ices, where they served over twenty different flavors of combinations of milk, ice, sugar, and flavors, and a gratifyingly stupid movie, followed by the promised trip to the hardware store for paint. We didn’t speak much. I was still numb, and Jean was giving me room.

“Hey, Jean?” I asked on the way home. “Can we go somewhere?”

“Any place you want. Where to?”

“I want…” I hesitated. I felt a little silly asking, but it was a compulsion, a directive I had to follow. “I want to see my grandmother.”

We stopped so I could pick up some flowers on the way.

“It’s all right, I’ll wait here if you want,” Jean said as I stepped out of the car. I smiled at her in thanks and made my way among the headstones.

I cleaned out the old flowers, carefully put the new ones down, and pushed away the grass from the marker.

“Hi, Nana,” I said quietly as I sat on the grass. “I’m sorry it’s been so long, but I think of you all the time.”

I traced the engraving on the polished granite, following the whorls and the curves with my fingers over her name, Sophia Del Castillo Monte Negron, past the date of her birth and the date of her death. The anniversary of the first would arrive in a few days; the anniversary of the second had already passed.

It was so strange, I mused, how two days, two different days separated by years, could follow one another in reverse of their events in each twelve-month cycle.

“Nina’s pregnant, she’s due in about twelve, thirteen weeks, but you probably knew that,” I said, then laughed a little self-consciously. I was talking to a stone, but I continued anyway. “I got married, Nana, to Jean, right after Easter. She’s a paramedic, and you’d love her, you really would, everyone does. I…” and my breath caught.

My fingers dug into the grass, letting the blades wrap around them as I combed along. “Nana…I feel so lost. I miss you so much and I’m scared, so scared, Nana, that I’ve fucked everything up. Everyone’s back at the house, trying to figure something out, ready to go do I don’t know what, and I don’t even know why. Why do they care? If I hadn’t gone there in the first place, nothing…”

I swallowed and wiped my eyes. “And Nana, I feel so strange…it’s like I had a whole life before two days ago, and that day? That day is a wall, separating me from everything, like there’s a field of grass behind it, and ahead? It’s all gray stone. I hurt, Nana. I didn’t tell anybody, everyone’s stressed enough, but it hurts, and…and…” I wiped my eyes again.

“I can’t even
feel
you anymore. You’re completely gone, and I can’t feel anything but the hurt, and the gray…”

I couldn’t continue. I buried my face into my hands and wept, part of my mind surprised I could even do that.

“I just wish I knew where you were,” I said quietly through the tears, “that you could tell me somehow that it’s all gonna be okay.”

I sniffed as I stood. I could hear someone approaching through the field of stones and knew, without looking, that it was Jean.

“Hi,” I said softly and held out my hand for her. “There’s someone I want you to meet,” I told her as her palm met mine. “Nana, this is Jean.”

*

We spent the next few days moving things around and painting in the apartment, although I still slept in the house with my Jean blanket.

“You still interested in diving?” Jean asked on the way back from one of our many trips to and from the hardware store.

“Yeah, definitely.”

“All right, then.” Jean nodded as she drove. “Let’s go down to my favorite dive shop.”

We crossed the Narrows and went to Sheepshead Bay near Manhattan Beach, where we walked along the piers and the promenade hand in hand. When we got to the shop, we picked up some basic books on equipment and technique, decided on a wet suit—“It’s all cold water around here,” Jean informed me—and I registered for a class that would start in two weeks. Jean would attend as well, so she could make sure “all my stuff is current,” she said.

It was after one of those busy painting days, following a shared pizza with Nina and Samantha, that Nina convinced me to go for coffee and dessert at the local coffeehouse with her and my mother while Samantha took Jean and Fran with her, destination unknown. Mission? “Just some stuff to take care of,” Samantha said.

I tried not to think about what they were doing, though I noticed my mom cast occasional sharp and worried glances my way while she asked Nina if she and Samantha had already picked out a name for the forthcoming niece or nephew (they had some ideas, but Samantha thought it was bad luck to name a baby before it was born), whether they knew if it was a niece or a nephew (they didn’t want to know, and those procedures weren’t always reliable anyway), and what was new with the label and the club. I understood none of that part of the conversation, so I just let myself enjoy the rhythm and enthusiasm of their voices as they spoke and I savored my cappuccino.

When Jean and I got ready for bed later, I asked her what that had been all about, and she told me that she and Samantha took Fran to take care of a few things with Trace. I asked her what that meant.

Jean carefully caught my shoulders. “It’s taken care of,” she said softly. “You won’t have to deal with her.”

Her expression was so somber it alarmed me.

“You guys didn’t make her take a long walk off a short pier with heavy shoes or something like that, did you?” I asked, half joking, half afraid they’d done something unrecoverable, that could put them at risk. Then again, considering the 911 connections we all had, it was unlikely that they would get in trouble, but still…I didn’t want
anyone
to do
anything
unethical, not for me, not because of me, not ever. And if anyone was going to do anything, it should be me.

Jean studied me intently. “No. Nothing like that.” She carefully caught my chin in her hand. “Would you want that?”

My entire body flushed as I thought about it and stared back up at Jean. “Yeah,” I said finally, “yeah, I would, but I’d want to be the one to do it.”

I didn’t know how she’d react, but she had to know how I honestly felt.

Jean sighed and wrapped her arms around me. “Me too.”

*

We both woke suddenly to Nina’s voice calling for Samantha in a tone I’d never heard before, and as I jumped out of bed and slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, Sam knocked on the door as she passed. I could hear the rapid tread of her feet across the hallway as she ran to the bathroom.