“It was on the Internet.”
“Well, I guess his cheating was part of it,” Caroline said, answering Lili’s question. “Combined with what happened in Mexico, well…People handle grief in different ways and those ways aren’t always compatible. And guilt and blame are two very powerful weapons. Weapons of intimate destruction,” she said with a wry smile.
“But you’re friends now?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call us friends, no. But we don’t hate each other. That’s something. And of course, we have a child—children—together.”
“Is that Michelle?” Lili pointed to a picture of a sleeping infant with both hands raised above her head, her pose identical to Samantha’s the last time Caroline saw her. She was wrapped in a blanket and wore a pink woolen cap sporting a large GAP logo. Her mouth was turned down in a natural frown.
“That was the day we brought her home from the hospital.”
There followed pages of pictures of Michelle as she grew from frowning infant to somber-looking child. Soon the serious-faced little girl was joined by her golden-haired, sweet-faced sister. “Samantha,” Lili said, her eyes proceeding cautiously from one photo to the next.
Picture after picture of Samantha, Caroline realized, interspersed only intermittently with photos of Michelle. She tried to tell herself it was because Michelle would never sit still long enough to have her picture taken or had run out of the room whenever a camera materialized in her mother’s hands, or that she would always make silly faces or do something to make Samantha cry. But was that really the reason pictures of Samantha were by far in the majority?
“I don’t have any pictures of me as a baby,” Lili said, interrupting Caroline’s reveries.
“None at all?”
“My mother…Beth said they got lost during one of our moves.”
“I guess that’s possible. You said you moved around a lot.”
“My brothers’ baby pictures didn’t get lost. Just mine.” Lili reached across the bed for her overnight bag. “There’s nothing until I was about six years old. My mother—Beth—always claimed she was hopeless with a camera.” She unzipped the top of the bag and extricated half a dozen pictures from a side compartment. “Meet the Hollister family,” she said, dropping the first photograph into Caroline’s trembling hands: Lili as a fair-haired little girl sitting beside two smaller dark-haired boys. “That’s me and my brothers. See? We don’t look anything alike. And this is my father. Tim. Before he got sick, of course. I don’t look anything like him at all. And this is my…This is Beth.” She passed Caroline a picture of an attractive woman with frizzy dark hair, wide-set eyes, and an engaging, if somewhat wary, smile. “My brothers look just like her. Don’t you think so?”
Caroline scraped her memory to determine if she’d ever seen Beth or Tim Hollister before. She tried to picture them poolside at the Grand Laguna Hotel in Rosarito or sitting at the next table in the garden restaurant. Maybe she’d smiled at them as she passed them in the hotel lobby one afternoon. But no such memories existed.
The last two pictures Lili showed her were of the entire family. Lili was right—she stood out like the proverbial sore thumb. Mother, father, and two sons formed a tight little group, while Lili stood shyly off to one side.
Standing ramrod straight. Aloof and apart.
“It’s a nice-looking family,” Caroline said, returning the photographs to Lili.
“Do you know what she said to me? Beth, I mean? On the phone earlier, before I hung up.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was glad my father isn’t alive to see what I’m doing. That it would break his heart.” Her voice trembled to a stop. She took several long, deep breaths and bit down on her lower lip to still its quivering.
Caroline said nothing. What could she say? She knew all about broken hearts. Words couldn’t heal them. She was about to step forward and take Lili in her arms when Michelle poked her head into the room.
“So, how’s the family reunion going?” she asked. “Enjoying your little jaunt down Memory Lane?”
“Lili was just showing me pictures of her family in Calgary,” Caroline said.
“Would you like to see them?” Lili shyly extended them toward Michelle.
Michelle took the pictures from Lili, studying each one in turn. “Your brothers are really cute.”
“Yeah, they are. I don’t really look like them…”
“No, you don’t,” Michelle agreed. “Well, it’s late. I’m going to bed.”
“Sleep well, sweetheart,” Caroline said.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“I guess.” Reluctantly, Caroline walked toward the door. “Are you all right? Is there anything you need?” she asked Lili.
“No. I’m fine.”
“If you get hungry…”
“She knows where the kitchen is,” Michelle said.
“If you can’t sleep or you think of anything…”
“She knows where to find you.”