“Can’t you just leave me alone?”
“I’m not at the paper anymore,” he said. He had a thin, reedy voice, a habit of his tone rising at the end of sentences as if he was always interviewing, always asking a question. “I’m freelancing. So, you know, a story like yours, I can sell it to a much bigger paper.”
“I’m not that interesting.”
“Did the memories ever come back?”
She decided to answer. “Not all of them. Not the past three years.”
“So your memories only go back to when your dad died. See, that’s what makes it so great. It’s such a good framing device, your two tragedies…”
At that point she turned away. He hurried after her. “I don’t mean to upset you, Jane.”
“Well, you have. I don’t have anything to say.” But then she realized, yeah, she did. What if she told Vasquez about Liv Danger, and Brenda Hobson? Of course Brenda’s misfortune might be a coincidence. She had no idea, and if she was wrong, she would sound crazy. It was better to wait. That would be so satisfying, to send a reporter after Kamala, hiding behind the Liv Danger name. But she didn’t—she couldn’t, not until she had proof.
“What if I talk to Perri Hall? Wouldn’t you want to tell your side of the story?”
“I’m not interested in what she has to say.”
“Kind of amazing you’ve both stayed in your houses.” Trying to provoke her, she thought. If he was camped out here, maybe he was waiting for Perri Hall, too. “You know, another article on you could be a big help.”
“How? You wrote my dad killed himself and he didn’t. You wrote I tried to and I didn’t. You told the world I was awful.”
“I never made a judgment about you,” he said.
“You told. You made so many more people hear about me…” As if he had exposed her, naked, to an unkind audience.
“Jane. Lots of movies come from magazine articles. Saturday Night Fever. The Fast and the Furious. If I can tell the end of your story, that you rose above what happened, then there could be real interest from Hollywood.”
If I rose above what happened. Above David’s death and losing my memory and walking around homeless with a brain that won’t always help me. She wondered what he would say if she told him she’d just recovered a memory. She stood still while he approached her and handed her a business card. The name of the Austin paper was scratched out, a cell phone number and an e-mail address written in by hand. “If you change your mind,” he said.
“The sunlight hurts my head. Excuse me.” She walked across her front yard and up onto the porch.
She hesitated at the front door. She sensed the weight of Matteo Vasquez’s stare on her back. This was still her home, right? She shouldn’t have to ring the doorbell to go inside, although she knew that was what Mom would prefer. Mom would be annoyed with Jane if she just let herself in. But. But. This was Jane’s house, the one she had grown up in. She still had a key and she hoped it would work. She felt a brief terror that Mom might have changed the locks. She had threatened to before, saying, You’re living on the street, with a key and a driver’s license that could bring some street lunatic straight here? No! But the key worked. She opened the door. There was no ping-ping-ping of the alarm system; so Laurel Norton must be home. She glanced back at Vasquez, who stood by his car, digging through one of the duffel bags in the backseat, glancing up at her, watching her, hopeful.
Like a guy who needed a movie deal? What did “freelance” mean for him? He’d lost his job? She knew the guarded look of homelessness; was Matteo Vasquez living out of his car? He might be more desperate for a big story than ever.
She slammed the door.
“Mom?” She called. Loudly. “Mom?”
No answer.
“Mom?” she yelled up the stairs. No answer.
Jane wandered into the kitchen. She was thirsty. She poured herself a glass of water and drank it slowly. There wasn’t a lot of food in the refrigerator—half a casserole, a few half-full jars of condiments. Four bottles of white wine, chilled. That seemed a lot for a person living here on her own.
She spotted her mom’s Filofax on the kitchen counter. Laurel had always kept a paper calendar. She thought it more elegant than always tapping at a phone screen, “like a woodpecker,” as she once put it. Jane looked at today’s date. Mom had an appointment and she would be back in an hour. The handwriting was neat and small. She flipped through the previous few weeks and the approaching weeks. Her mother had a few business appointments, usually marked with initials of the person she was meeting. In addition to writing her mom blog, she had run a charity for the past several years, helping deserving students overseas get needed books and supplies. Jane wondered exactly how much money her mom had raised. When she had been a volunteer supreme at Lakehaven’s schools, she’d been very good at getting people to donate money.
She went into her mother’s home office. Once, before everything fell apart, when her blog was getting nearly two hundred thousand unique visitors a month, it had been featured in an Austin design magazine. The antique desk gleamed. Books filled the bookshelf. There were very few papers on the desk; before, it was always full of file folders related to her volunteer work for the school district. Or she volunteered to help other charities. But Laurel didn’t seem to volunteer anymore. There had not been a single such entry in her carefully maintained calendar. Now there was only her charity.
Of course not. No one wants her around. You made sure of that when you crashed the car.