Tina leaned close to me and said, “I’m staying at the Days Inn in Tallahassee. Practically roughing it. Come talk to me when you’re back.”
“You are clearly disturbed, and I’m going to kindly ask you to leave us alone now,” Brian said in the genteel twang that had surfaced here and there over the years when it served him, which is to say when he wanted something he wasn’t getting. Respect, namely. With his easy, loping pace and hippie hair frizzing in the humidity, he was suddenly repugnant to me. As hypocritical as a Christian lawmaker in a strip club.
“Well,” Tina said, “since you asked kindly.” She bumped my shoulder with her own. “Room two-oh-three.” With that, she did leave us alone.
Brian threw an arm around my shoulders and glued me to his side possessively. “All the crazies are out today, huh?”
I felt squeezed all over, like my skin was too tight for my body and I needed the seams let out. We were coming up on Aunt Trish helping Mrs. Andora into the limousine, and I saw my out: I ducked under Brian’s arm and reached Mrs. Andora just in time to cup the back of her head in my hand, the way cops do to suspects right before they put them into the metal cage of their cruiser, so that even if they fight the inevitable, they don’t hurt themselves.
* * *
I was putting out the second bowl of potato salad when Aunt Trish came up behind me.
“He’s ready for you, Pamela.” I turned to see she’d pressed too hard when she’d applied a fresh coat of lipstick, pruning the tangerine tip with her front two teeth.
“Remember to talk about Denise’s faith,” Aunt Trish coached me as we made our way into Denise’s childhood bedroom with the lilac walls and butterfly bedspread. A strange man was examining a piece Denise had hung in the space between the window and the chest of drawers.
“This one of Denise’s?” he asked, turning to me. He had a pencil tucked behind one ear, dark green eyes and thick black eyelashes, prominent horse teeth. His clothes were bad, his pants too short and his shirt too long. I couldn’t stop the terrible, snobbish thought from forming—he looked like he had dug his clothes out of a bin at the Salvation Army.
“That’s a weaving,” I said.
“Is that different from what Denise did?” It was the sort of soft question you ask a child, right down to the feigned wide eyes.
“Denise painted for some of her classes, but that wasn’t her real talent.”
The man slid the pencil out from behind his ear, releasing a lock of sandy brown hair. “Oh?” he said with what actually sounded like genuine interest this time. “What was that?”
“Curation. Denise had a keen eye.”
Aunt Trish averted her eyes as the man reached into the waistband of his pants and retrieved a notebook, revealing a flash of stomach, the disappearing trail of dark body hair. “Keen eye,” he repeated, balancing the notebook on his thigh so he could write it down.
“This is Carl Wallace,” Aunt Trish said, emphasizing the name the way you would an important client at a business dinner. “He’s the senior staff writer for the Tallahassee Democrat.”
Carl looked up from his notebook, blinking the hair out of his eyes. “Thank you for speaking to me, Pamela. I’m just looking for some background from the president of what I’m told is the smartest sorority on campus”—he flashed those big teeth at Aunt Trish, who was no doubt his most dogged source—“and Denise’s best friend.”
I shrugged gamely, though an unease was pooling in the pit of my stomach. “Of course. Happy to help.”
“I would love it if you could tell me a little bit about Denise.”
I found the cue lazy and impossible to answer. “Anything?”
Carl brought a hand to the back of his neck and looked up at me with a chagrined half smile. His hands were sprawling, calloused things. He’s not as tall as Brian, I thought, almost as a rebuttal to the other thought that was forming, which was that Brian sometimes reminded me of a middle school boy who had hit a sudden growth spurt, hunching and hairless in his gawky new body.
“Fair enough.” Carl tapped his pencil on his notebook, thinking of a way to rephrase. “I’ve gathered Denise loved clothes. Maybe you could speak a little on that. I always like to start by giving the reader a good visual.”
“She was a fastidious dresser,” I said.
Carl seemed delighted. “Fastidious.” He jotted that down. “Great word. Are you an English major?”
“Political science.”
“Pamela is planning on attending law school,” Aunt Trish said grandly.
“My parents certainly would have preferred that to J-school,” Carl said self-effacingly, so that he was in the clear to ask the million-dollar question. “And what about boys and dating?”
“Denise didn’t have time for dating,” Aunt Trish interjected.
“A beautiful girl like Denise?” Carl looked at me long enough that I could pick out feline-like flashes of yellow in his eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“Denise was asked out a lot,” I said carefully, “but she was picky about who she went with.”
Momentarily, both Aunt Trish and Carl were appeased. Carl moved on. “And what did Denise want to do with her life? I hear she had plans to work at the new Dalí Museum.”
“She did,” Aunt Trish said. “We have a photograph of her and Dalí. He was her biggest fan.”
“I’d love to see that,” Carl said. “And any other photographs of Denise that the family might want included in the piece.”
Aunt Trish shot me a look before she left. Do us proud.
Alone, Carl put his hands on his knees, leveling with me. “Gestapo’s gone,” he whispered, and laughed a little.
My stomach pitched. The reporter working on a piece about Denise could see right through the duress I was under to portray her in a positive light. I had better think fast.
“How old are you?” I asked.
Carl leaned back in surprise. “Why?”
I took my shot. “You look young enough to have graduated from J-school this decade. Which means you’re a student of new journalism.”
Carl closed his notebook and wrapped his forearms around his rib cage, lips curling into a small smile, as though I’d said something devastatingly cute. “And what do you know about new journalism?”
“One of my sisters is studying to be a journalist, and she said it’s not as objective as traditional journalism.”
“That’s subjective,” he teased.
“You’re asking me about Denise’s romantic life,” I said, hoping I sounded as imposing as my bigwig father, “instead of focusing on the quality evidence.” Quality evidence, how I loved that term. It made me feel like I knew what I was talking about.
“Being?”
“That I saw him. And it wasn’t someone she knew. That any of us knew.”
“The attack has all the markings of something personal,” Carl pointed out, “given that Denise’s injuries were particularly brutal.”
I thought about Denise’s peaceful sleeping face. “You didn’t see the other girls.”
Carl gave me a strange look. “The fact-checker at the Democrat isn’t even sure if I can use the word rape to describe what he did to her. Is it technically rape? You probably know how the law defines it better than I.”