Everything Leads to You

She flips through the paperback, which I now see is the kind of biography that would make my dad cringe—the kind packed with conspiracy theories and so-called explosive revelations.

“There’s this part where it talks about her imagining that Clark Gable was her father because her mom showed her a picture of a man who looked like him and told her he was her dad, even though her dad was supposed to be another guy.”

“So depressing,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

We’re on the freeway now, and it’s one of the rare afternoons when traffic is light and we can actually go the speed limit, so I’m barreling toward the desert, about to perform some unknown favor.

“So,” I say. “Leona Valley.”

She nods. “You want to know what we’re doing,” she says.

“I mean, I’m a little curious . . .” I shrug like it’s no big deal.

“I need to get my birth certificate.”

“From your house?”

“Thursday afternoons are a good time. Tracey has a knitting circle, and Jonah goes to guitar lessons. Not that it would be that bad if Jonah came home. I want to see him, but, I don’t know . . .”

“I get it,” I say. “Like, you miss him, but maybe you’re not ready to see him yet.”

She nods.

“So where do I come in?”

She grins at me. “Lookout girl,” she says. “Getaway driver.”

“Wow. When you said favor I thought you’d want me to, like, run lines with you or help you paint your bedroom or something.”

She laughs, but I feel immediately insensitive for joking about paint when she doesn’t even have her own bedroom. And though she doesn’t seem to mind, it only gets worse when she tells me why she needs it.

“So, you know how Clyde mentioned the guy at the bank in his letter?”

“Right,” I say. “The money.”

Even though the money has always been part of all of this, it hasn’t ever quite been real to me. Not in the way the feeling that took over me in Clyde’s study was real. That was something I could believe in, but the money seemed more abstract. I guess it’s easy to ignore the promise of fortune if the money isn’t intended for you, and if you have no use for it because you live in a nice house on a safe, tree-lined street in the best city in the world, and your parents have a college fund all tucked away and probably other money, too, for weddings and things you haven’t even thought about yet because you’ve never had to worry about anything financial.

“I called the bank and he was still there,” she said. “Everyone else is dead, but not Terrence.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

She nods. “I went there yesterday afternoon and met with him in a private office. I showed him the letter and my driver’s license, and he told me that there was an account with Caroline and me on it, but since my name is different now from what it was when Clyde knew about me, I have to show him my birth certificate.”

“How much is in there?” I ask, and then rush to say, “I don’t mean dollar amount. Just a ballpark. Like enough for a vacation somewhere, or enough to change your life?”

“He can’t tell me yet,” she says. “But I asked him if it would be enough for me to afford to rent my own apartment for a few months until I get a job that pays well and his face got all twisted, like he was trying not to smile, and he said yes.”

“A definitive yes,” I say.

She nods.

“So that’s great. That’s awesome.”

“I need to get out of the shelter,” she says. “I really like Venice, actually. I think I might find a place there. Here’s our exit.”

I turn off the freeway, already imagining Ava and me in her new Venice apartment, decorating all the rooms, spending all this time with each other.

We drive past a couple of restaurants, some dirt lots and tractors, and Ava has me turn left onto a residential street. We pass a nineties-era house, brown and beige.

“Okay, make a U-turn,” she says.

“Did we go the wrong way?”

“I just wanted to make sure no one was home. It’s that one we just passed.”

I pull up in front of her house. The shutters in the front windows are closed; junk mail sticks out of the box by the door. A few small pots of pink flowers line the path to the door, surrounded by a bright green lawn.

I turn off the car.

“Okay,” Ava says. “Tracey drives a white station wagon. She has long hair that she will probably be wearing in a braid. If you see her coming, call me.”

“Got it.”

“I can go out the back door when she goes inside and then come back around to you.”

“That sounds good.”

“But she shouldn’t come home for another two hours. She has her knitting circle until eight and she usually stays longer, talking.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t know for sure. Things change all the time, I guess, and I’ve been gone for a while.”

She’s staring at the front door, not moving.

“It’s good we have a plan, then,” I say. “We probably won’t need it, but if she comes, I’ll call you the second she rounds the corner.”

She bites at a nail.

“I’m ready,” she says.

“Okay,” I say. “Good luck.”