She looked up at the window behind the couch. The sun was bright against the blue sky. Tears dripped down into the collar of her shirt. She tried to think of a word to describe how she was feeling—
Astonished? Bewildered? Overcome? Dumbfounded?
Laura had been the one thing that Andy had wanted to be close to all of her life.
A star.
She studied her own hands. She had normal fingers—not too long or thin. When Laura was sick and unable to take care of herself, Andy had washed her mother’s hands, put lotion on them, rubbed them, held them. But what did they really look like? They had to be graceful, enchanted, imbued with an otherworldly sort of grace. Andy should have felt sparks when she massaged them, or spellbound, or—something.
Yet they were the same normal hands that had waved for Andy to hurry up or she’d be late for school. Dug soil in the garden when it was time to plant spring flowers. Wrapped around the back of Gordon’s neck when they danced. Pointed at Andy in fury when she did something wrong.
Why?
Andy blinked, trying to clear the tears from her eyes. Clara had disappeared. Maybe she hadn’t been able to handle Andy’s grief, or the perceived pain that Jane Queller experienced when she watched her younger self playing. The two women had clearly discussed the performance before.
That green dress!
Andy reached into her back pocket for the burner phone.
She dialed her mother’s number.
She listened to the phone ring.
She closed her eyes against the sunlight, imagining Laura in the kitchen. Walking over to her phone where it was charging on the counter. Seeing the unfamiliar number on the screen. Trying to decide whether or not to answer it. Was it a robocall? A new client?
“Hello?” Laura said.
The sound of her voice cracked Andy open. She had longed for nearly a week to have her mother call, to hear the words that it was safe to come back home, but now that she was on the phone, Andy was incapable of doing anything but crying.
“Hello?” Laura repeated. Then, because she had gotten similar calls before, “Andrea?”
Andy lost what little shit she had managed to keep together. She leaned over her knees, head in her hand, trying not to wail again.
“Andrea, why are you calling me?” Laura’s tone was clipped. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Andy opened her mouth, but only to breathe.
“Andrea, please,” Laura said. “I need you to acknowledge that you can hear me.” She waited. “Andy—”
“Who are you?”
Laura did not make a sound. Seconds passed, then what felt like a full minute.
Andy looked at the screen, wondering if they had been disconnected. She pressed the phone back to her ear. She finally heard the gentle slap of waves from the beach. Laura had walked outside. She was on the back porch.
“You lied to me,” Andy said.
Nothing.
“My birthday. Where I was born. Where we lived. That fake picture of my fake grandparents. Do you even know who my father is?”
Laura still said nothing.
“You used to be somebody, Mom. I saw it online. You were on stage at-at-at Carnegie Hall. People were worshipping you. It must’ve taken years to get that good. All of your life. You were somebody, and you walked away from it.”
“You’re wrong,” Laura finally said. There was no emotion in her tone, just a cold flatness. “I’m nobody, and that’s exactly who I want to be.”
Andy pressed her fingers into her eyes. She couldn’t take any more of these fucking riddles. Her head was going to explode.
Laura asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m nowhere.”
Andy wanted to close the phone, to give Laura the biggest silent fuck you she could, but the moment was too desperate for hollow gestures.
She asked Laura, “Are you even my real mother?”
“Of course I am. I was in labor for sixteen hours. The doctors thought they were going to lose both of us. But they didn’t. We didn’t. We survived.”
Andy heard a car pulling into the driveway.
Fuck.
“An-Andrea,” Laura struggled to get out her name. “Where are you? I need to know you’re safe.”
Andy knelt on the couch and looked out the window. Edwin Van Wees with his stupid handlebar mustache. He saw Mike’s truck and practically fell out of his car as he scrambled toward the front door.
“Clara!” he yelled. “Clara, where—”
Clara answered, but Andy couldn’t make out the words.
Laura must have heard something. She asked, “Where are you?”
Andy listened to heavy boots pounding down the hallway.
“Andrea,” Laura said, her tone clipped. “This is deadly serious. You need to tell me—”
“Who the fuck are you?” Edwin demanded.
Andy turned around.
“Shit,” Edwin muttered. “Andrea.”
“Is that—” Laura said, but Andy pressed the phone to her chest.
She asked the man, “How do you know me?”
“Come away from the window.” Edwin motioned Andy out of the office. “You can’t be here. You need to go. Now.”
Andy didn’t move. “Tell me how you know me.”
Edwin saw the phone in her hand. “Who are you talking to?”
When Andy didn’t answer, he wrenched the phone out of her hand and put it to his ear.
He said, “Who is—fuck.” Edwin turned his back to Andy, telling Laura, “No, I have no idea what Clara told her. You know she’s been unwell.” He started nodding, listening. “I didn’t tell her—no. Clara doesn’t know about that. It’s privileged information. I would never—” He stopped again. “Laura, you need to calm down. No one knows where it is except for me.”
They knew each other. They were arguing the way old friends argued. Edwin had known Andy by sight. Clara had thought she was Jane, who was really Laura . . .
Andy’s teeth had started to chatter. She could hear them clicking inside of her head. She rubbed her arms with her hands. She felt cold, almost frozen.
“Laura, I—” Edwin leaned down his head and looked out the window. “Listen, you just need to trust me. You know I would never—” He turned around and looked at Andy. She watched his anger soften into something else. He smiled at her the same way Gordon smiled at her when she fucked up but he still wanted her to know that he loved her.
Why was a man she had never met looking at her like her father?
Edwin said, “I will, Laura. I promise I’ll—”
There was a loud crack.
Then another.
Then another.
Andy was on the floor, the same as the last time she had heard a sudden burst of gunfire.
Everything was exactly the same.
Glass broke. Papers started to fly. The air filled with debris.
Edwin took the brunt of the bullets, his arms jerking up, his skull almost vaporizing, bone and chunks of his hair splattering against the couch, the walls, the ceiling.
Andy was flat on her belly, hands covering her head, when she heard the nauseating thunk of his body hitting the floor.
She looked at his face. Nothing but a dark hole with white shards of skull stared back. His mustache was still curled up at the ends, held in place with a thick wax.
Andy tasted blood in her mouth. Her heart felt like it was beating inside of her eardrums. She thought that she had lost her hearing, but there was nothing to hear.
The shooter had stopped.
Andy scanned the room for the burner phone. She saw it fifteen feet away in the hall. She had no idea if it was still working, but she heard her mother’s voice as clear as if she was in the room—
I need you to run, darling. He can’t reload fast enough to hurt you.
Andy tried to stand. She could barely get to her knees before throwing up from the pain. The McDonald’s milkshake was pink with blood. Every time she heaved, it felt like fire was ripping down her left side.
Footsteps. Outside. Getting closer.
Andy forced herself up onto her hands and knees. She crawled toward the door, her palms digging into broken glass, her knees sliding across the floor. She made it as far as the hallway before the searing pain made her stop. She fell over onto her hip. She pushed herself up to sitting. Pressed her back to the wall. Her skull was filled with a high-pitched whining noise. Shards of glass porcupined from her bare arms.
Andy listened.
She heard a strange sound from the other side of the house.
Click-click-click-click.