“So Evie overheard the pregnant part and she went nuts,” says Yegina. “But she was so calculated, too. I feel like I never knew her.”
“I agree.” I grab an article and read aloud about Evie’s childhood in small towns in the Imperial Valley and Northern California. She moved often with her single mother, who had a drug habit, and for several years was placed in foster care by the state for neglect. Evie’s biological mother declined to be interviewed, but the foster mother characterized Evie as the “prettiest little psychopath” she’d ever met.
“One thing we do know: it was dangerous to be close to her,” I say. It was dangerous to know her at all, I add internally, wanting to confess to my stolen phone, my hunch that Evie sent the warning note to Greg, that she was scoping out my house to figure out how to frame me next and ran out of time. I wait again for Yegina to say something about my fall in the sculpture garden, but again, she doesn’t. She is looking down, pressing a finger into her forearm until the skin whitens.
I ask about her brother. She tells me Don is living at home, but the whole family is seeing a great therapist, and Don’s saving money to bike up the coast to San Francisco. Yegina says she might go with him.
“Work is so busy, though,” she adds. “With you and Jayme gone. And Bas is fund-raising like crazy in Kim’s name, which I know you’ll think is crass, but people want to do something, they feel so sad …” She trails off.
“How is Bas?” I say. “I mean, how are Bas and you?”
Yegina heaves a giant sigh. “The day Don tried to … Bas was with me in my office,” she says. “And yes, we’d been flirting, in this silly, sinkingship sort of way, because his career was going down and his marriage was breaking up and Kim Lord was missing and my best friend was lying to me and we might all lose our jobs if the Rocque couldn’t balance its budget.” She absently stacks the magazines as she talks, periodically pausing to tuck her black hair behind her ear. “And then I get a call from my mom saying she’s bringing Don back from the hospital because he tried to hang himself. I can’t drive, I’m too upset. And you’re totally unreachable. So Bas just dumped everything and drove me.” Bas told her that his older sister had committed suicide when he was a teenager, and that he’d never recovered from it. “We both realized we came from these pressure-cooker families, where you have to stay on track or you’ve failed forever.”
That day, Bas stayed in the car for two hours while Yegina went inside with her family, and then he escorted her home.
“And if you must know, we decided not to sleep together,” she adds. “He’s only an okay kisser, anyway.” Her tone is light, but her eyes, locked on mine, are hurt. “So you didn’t really interrupt anything, and you didn’t have to take off like that.”
“I was in shock,” I say. “And there you were with him. I felt like an intruder … What was I supposed to do?”
“You could have trusted me,” Yegina says.
I did trust her. I might have died if Yegina hadn’t believed my text in J. Ro’s garden. It hurts how much I trust her, and she rescued me. But I don’t want to start bawling now because I don’t know when I’d stop.
The bustle of the ward fills the silence: the custodian rattles her mop bucket, rolling it down the hall. There’s a burst of conversation at the nurse’s station.
“Ray Hendricks was in the office today,” Yegina says. “He said he left something for you.”
“Strange,” I say, my stomach dropping. Hendricks hasn’t been back to the hospital since we lied to Detective Ruiz. “Why was he there?”
Yegina says that Hendricks came for the legal sorting out of the Still Lives paintings. J. Ro insisted he take part in the dialogue because he was the one who identified Kim Lord’s alleged stalker. “It was this big collector who was trying to own everything Kim Lord ever made. Really creepy.”
“Sounds it,” I say.
“Anyway, J. Ro is buying them, on the condition that Nelson give Kim’s percentage of the proceeds to Kim’s family, and Nelson’s percentage to nonprofits for women artists. And then Janis is loaning the paintings to the Rocque indefinitely.”
I try to show enthusiasm, though I am having a hard time processing the news. Still Lives will belong to the Rocque, as Kim wanted, but what will happen with the rest of her paintings—all her early work in The Flesh and Noir? Now that Steve Goetz and his supercollector scheme are known, will he continue with it?
“How did you figure out that Evie did it?” says Yegina, watching my face.
“I don’t know.” I don’t meet her eyes. “I just pieced things together.”
“You should have gotten credit.”
“So I could put it on my résumé?” I ask.
“Hendricks said you would make a great investigator if you weren’t such a decent person,” she says.
“It sounds like you two talked for a while,” I say.
“Not really. He didn’t want to talk to me,” Yegina says, now smiling. “But I knew something was up between you, so I got nosy.”
My mind flashes to Hendricks jumping into the pit of glass, smashing down with his knees bent, then swimming over to me, his hands cut on the broken pieces. His red-streaked palms reaching. I don’t remember what happened next, but he must remember. He must have done something to stop me from bleeding to death. He must also have taken the cassette in my recorder. And then he made me lie. Made me look like a clumsy idiot to Detective Ruiz. And never apologized. I mumble something and flip through the magazines. A masthead catches my eye.
“Check this out,” I say, grabbing the issue of ArtNoise, which shows a blurry picture of the crew party on the roof on the night of the Gala. Evie is circled in bright-red ink. “Kevin’s article.” There I am in a full-page photo, standing at the threshold of the third gallery, my head bowed, blond hair falling in my face. Jayme’s green dress curves tight around me; her high-heeled boots extend my legs to spikes. I look good. A little dangerous. Unpredictable.
But I also look like someone has just slapped me hard, and I am afraid to raise my head.
I close the magazine and sink back to my pillows, suddenly exhausted. “I’ll read it later. I’m sorry. I’m so tired.”
Yegina sits there a moment, and then starts sliding the magazines back into her bag. “I’ll hold on to them,” she promises. “Do you want me to bring whatever Hendricks left you?”
“No,” I say, closing my eyes. “Leave it in my office. I’ll be back.”
“Good,” Yegina says softly, and strokes my forehead. “I’ll swamp your inbox and take you to lunch at the new shabu-shabu place on Sunset. It’ll be old times.”
“Can’t wait,” I say.
I wish we both believed it was true.
A MONTH LATER
30
The swelling is down all over my body, thanks to walks to the creek with my parents’ collies and deep sleeps in the starry northern quiet, but my face still looks unbalanced to me. Not bigger or puffier, just not mine. Every morning I pull my T-shirts over it, open my mouth for hearty breakfasts, whistle as I wander down cool dirt rows, helping my parents plant tomato seedlings. Every day I try to look pleased to hear (again) about the neighbor’s grown-up doctor son, who runs marathons and works at the local hospital, and I smirk at stories of the town’s crazy libertarian, who recently hung the governor in effigy from his plumbing sign.
Yet every evening I stare at my face in my mother’s mahogany mirror, and try to find what’s different.
“Mirror, mirror,” my mother says from the threshold one day. “You look like my daughter again.”
“Thanks to you,” I say. Every day I ricochet between gladness and dread at my mother’s homemade bread, her clean, crisp sheets, at my father’s ebullient teasing, the solid weight of his arm around my shoulders. I wish I could belong to them again.