“Is that woman involved?”
“No,” I said. The woman in question—remarkably young, unremarkably pretty—had a solid alibi. She’d cut herself that night while trimming her plants and had been getting two stitches in the ER at the time of the accident. When I interviewed her, all she could talk about was how the old man loved her, how he was going to leave his wife for her, how they were getting ready to move in together. I couldn’t see a motive. It was a dead end, as far as I was concerned.
“Please tell me her name.”
“I can’t do that.” I could tell she was going to try finding out anyhow, which I couldn’t blame her for, but I didn’t want this to get messy. “Nora,” I said, as gently as I could, “what difference would it make if you knew? It wouldn’t change anything about what happened. It’s better not to know.”
“Better for whom? It’s not better for me, I can tell you that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Who is she?”
“I can’t say.”
“But if it’s true that she’s not involved, what harm is there in telling me her name?”
“I’ve already explained why I can’t do that.” She was trying to get me into an argument, maybe coax me into saying more, but I resisted. Again she clicked and unclicked her bracelet watch, it was a nervous tic. “And still no new witnesses?” she asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Something isn’t right. If this was just an accident, why didn’t the driver stay at the scene and wait for the police? Why didn’t anyone see anything?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“What if I offered a reward? Would that help?”
Sometimes it helped, sometimes it created noise. People who were hoping for a reward could get creative with details. But it was going to take me weeks to check all those silver Fords, and a reward would speed things up considerably. This was my chance to turn things around. “How much were you thinking?” I asked.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars? Is that enough?”
That’s a lot for a teacher, I thought. At least, I thought she was a teacher. Her mother hadn’t been too specific on that, she’d been too busy telling me about the other daughter, the dentist. When Miles was still a baby, Ray and I had wanted to have another child, but we were both focused on our careers and it never worked out. Then we got a little too old to try. So I didn’t know what it was like to have two children, especially two daughters. The dynamics of it, I mean. Maybe the mother couldn’t help being prouder of the dentist with the successful practice and the adorable twins. I was just an observer myself, but I couldn’t help comparing the two daughters as well. Only the younger one was calling me every day, asking about the case. At first, this had irritated me, but now I found myself warming up to her. She was trying to help. “Twenty-five thousand is fantastic,” I said, unable to repress a smile, in spite of the circumstances. “We’ll have to make a formal announcement in the paper and on the radio. We can even print some posters.”
Nora
To share details of my father’s life with a stranger went against every instinct I had, and yet I did it, hoping that, in return, the detective would give me a clue that might unlock the mystery of his affair. Even if it was just a name. After all, names can tell stories. If she was a Fatima, say, then maybe my father had met her through his Moroccan friends in Los Angeles. If she was a Jennifer, then she was almost certainly decades younger than him, and he’d probably met her at a bar or the gym. If she was a Guadalupe, then I’d wager he’d tried to impress her with his fluency in Castilian Spanish. But no matter how directly or indirectly I asked about the woman, Coleman remained unmoved.
By the time I walked out of the police station, it was early afternoon and a dry, hot wind was blowing from the east. It whipped my hair violently against my face, so that I had to gather strands of it in my hands just to see my way through the parking lot. My mouth tasted like dust. I got into my car, switched on the ignition, and waited for the AC to kick in. Across the lot, two sheriff’s deputies stood together under the shade of a palm tree, smoking and talking, seemingly unbothered by the heat and the wind. I watched them for a moment, then stepped out of the car and went back into the station. “Could I speak to Deputy Gorecki?” I asked the receptionist.
She brushed her fringe out of her eyes. “Who should I say is asking?”
“Nora.”
“Last name?”
“Guerraoui. G-u-e-r-r-a-o-u-i.”
She looked defeated, but recovered somehow and told me to have a seat. The television screen in the lobby showed the local news, with the sound turned off and the closed-captioning turned on: the town council had met to review requests for funding for next year; electric-line repairs would be blocking part of Yucca Trail all day tomorrow; the Marine Corps would hold a live-fire exercise in Johnson Valley. Then it was commercials. I was on the verge of leaving when the door opened and Jeremy came out, a speck of mustard at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch,” I said.
“No worries,” he said, running the back of his hand across his mouth. “Is everything all right?”
I nodded, even though nothing was all right. In his uniform, he looked tall and imposing, an impression that was reinforced by all the things he carried—gun, baton, pepper spray, taser, and whatever else hung on his belt. In a strange way, this made what I had to say to him seem like a confession. “I just wanted to apologize about the other night at McLean’s. You were right, I shouldn’t have tried to drive.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I could’ve gotten into an accident and hurt someone.”
“You were in a lot of pain.”
I had been. I still was. And the pain was complicated now by the realization that my father had a secret life, that for weeks or months or even years, he’d lied and tricked and cheated. He was the person I trusted most in the world, and now I was learning that I didn’t really know him. I should never have picked up that damn phone in the cabin, I thought, I should’ve let it ring. I felt dizzy with loss.
“Do you want to get a cup of coffee?” Jeremy asked, touching my arm.
I was tempted to unburden myself right then and there, tell him everything I’d just found out, and my frustrations with what I still didn’t know. Behind the glass window, the receptionist was looking at her forms, but listening carefully. The elevator doors opened and a man with a police badge clipped to his belt came out, glancing at us as he walked past. “Thanks,” I said, steadying myself. “But I really should go.”
“Take care,” he called as I went down the steps to the glass doors.
Outside, the wind had grown even more violent. It rattled the windows of my car and swept sand and palm fronds across the highway, but even so it took me only a few minutes to get back to the cabin. The big bed was the first thing I saw when I came inside. How long had my father been carrying on his affair? How could he have done this to my mother, after thirty-seven years? For the first time, I began to think of him not as the father who had walked me to my piano class every Thursday, but as the man who sneaked out to the cabin every chance he got. I couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping on the mattress where that woman had slept or touching the bedding she’d used. I turned around and walked out.