“And lily,” Marilyn added. I reached for the mug—a local potter’s own hypsiloid-shaped, thunder-head-colored creation—and took a small sip. The woman was watching me intently. It wasn’t coffee, but it was drinkable. I was pleasantly surprised.
“Delicious,” I told Marilyn.
“I’m so glad you like it!”
“This is what you served my mom?”
“Absolutely. She was a fan.”
I nodded. My mom drank coffee at home and when she worked, so clearly she wasn’t a big fan. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said about my parents at the supermarket.”
“Oh, you should probably forget I ever said anything. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“You said that my mom was very close to the detective and my dad was a pill. That was the gist of it.”
“I didn’t say he was a pill, did I?”
“You said he was difficult to live with.”
“Children don’t need to know their parents’ secrets. I was just babbling.”
“I do need to know my parents’ secrets.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother is missing.”
She blinked and held her eyes shut a long second. I knew that maneuver. She was trying to will her buzz away. It never worked. “And your father had nothing to do with that,” she said after a moment, her eyes open and veined as ever.
“I know.”
She sipped her tea and savored—or pretended to savor—the experience. I sensed she was stalling. “Then why?” she asked. “What could I possibly tell you?”
“What sorts of things did my mom say about my dad?”
“She wasn’t playing Mrs. Robinson with that detective, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I believe you. But what might she have been sharing with Gavin Rikert that she wouldn’t tell my dad? I mean, was it as simple as she was making fun of my dad’s poetry? Or was it something more important?”
“I doubt she was making fun of his poetry. I think she respected his work.”
“Then what?”
Her shoulders sagged ever so slightly and she put down her mug. “You know how much I loved your mother,” she said, her voice a little soft and soapy because of the weed. “You know how much I miss her.”
I believe that in Marilyn’s own way she had indeed loved my mother and now she did miss her; but I had not for one moment lost sight of how quickly she had moved on—the speed with which she had forgotten my father and Paige and me. I wasn’t moved, but I pretended to be; I sensed it was the best way to wear Marilyn down. She was close to telling me something, and she was just stoned enough that she might. “I do,” I said. “And I know she felt the same way about you.”
“We were a little like sisters.”
“Absolutely.”
“Absolutely,” she agreed.
Half a dozen turkeys were wandering through Marilyn’s yard. At first I thought they were aimless, but then they stopped beneath a bird feeder on a low branch in one of her sugar maples. They were like a family. Another time, I might have watched them until they moved on, and it would have made me happy.
“So, my mom and Gavin,” I said. “Was it just the sleepwalking that connected them—when they first met?”
“Pretty much.”
“Pretty much? There’s more.”
“No. Not really.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She looked away.
“There’s something else,” I pressed.
“Oh, Lianna, you must know.” When I said nothing, she went on. “Your mother said something to me once that gave me the impression you did. Maybe you walked in on your parents and your mother didn’t stop—because she was asleep.”
“Walked in on them doing what? Having sex?”
“God, I’ve said too much.”
“No, this is important. Go on.”
She put her forehead in her hands and shook her head ever so slightly. When she looked up, I thought she was on the verge of tears. “Sleep sex,” she began. “It sounds fun and maybe it would have been okay if your father had been, I don’t know, less uptight. Hell, Justin would have been thrilled if my thing had turned out to be sleep sex. That’s part of what I mean about how your dad could be difficult. The right sort of man…the right sort of attitude…what’s the big deal? But maybe I shouldn’t judge. We all have our demons, right? Look at me. I can’t hold my dope, and I’m telling you things I shouldn’t. I just shouldn’t.”
I sat back against the couch cushions. I hadn’t heard the term sleep sex before, but its meaning was evident in the context of my mother’s parasomnia. I recalled what Cindy Yager had said at the sleep center: They have sex in their sleep. “No. You’re right to tell me,” I said simply, hoping that Marilyn hadn’t detected the way the short sentence had caught in my throat.
“So I haven’t spoken out of turn? Really, I haven’t?”
“You haven’t,” I lied.
“I mean, she was a different person. They all are then, I guess. When they’re asleep.”