“Daddy just getting some things to put in the U-Haul. No problem.”
Charles slammed the car door shut. Let them puzzle over what he was doing; better that than to explain or ask permission. Anything stealthy was always best done out in the open; confidence was the truest disguise. Not that there would be anyone else watching in this strange little city where only factories and warehouses lived. He and KoKo had once explored their way through Vernon after her first big order went into production—she in a violet-and-canary-patterned kimono minidress and platform sneakers, he in a crisp, banded straw fedora, walking arm in arm through the dusty streets littered with salsa-smeared balls of foil and other taco-truck detritus. Now KoKo wouldn’t even speak to him and that fedora was still hanging on a peg in his closet, waiting to be sold off.
Charles rounded the corner. When the bank took possession of his properties, he’d been required to sign a stack of contracts, one of which ensured that he would no longer approach or access any of them. The surveillance cams weren’t mentioned in the endless triplicates that he signed, each with a flourish bigger than the last, so Charles had asked Manny, the manager—so satisfying that match between name and occupation!—to switch them all off. He’d never bothered to contract with an outside security firm; pricey as it was, there wasn’t much of a black market in argan oil.
This should be simple. Go in the front door, grab a dolly from the office, locate the fifteen boxes that were marked for Ellie and Trip Yates in Opelika, Alabama, go out through the back door, load up the U-Haul, maybe slip the dolly in with the boxes, and speed back onto the 10 freeway.
And then he saw it. Glinting betrayal in the form of a new doorknob, gaudy gilt where the old brass one, worn smooth by years of maize-powdered hands, had once been.
Now the sun felt almost unbearably hot and Charles backtracked around the corner only to spot the same Home Depot special on the rear door. Alright. There was one more solution left.
“Gracie . . .?,” said Charles, leaning in through the driver’s side window. “You want to help Daddy?”
She looked up, frowning at him. “With what?”
Charles paused. It was hard to predict what would launch Grace into a wounded fury. She never used to be like that, his Gracie. It was his fault. He never should have sent her away. Charles could feel himself sagging with middle-aged defeat, a loser who lacked the hot-blooded need to wrestle America to the ground and take her milk money, who never had the balls to flip his father’s shame into a triumphant empire, who marched obediently towards death and hid from life and always chose the wrong path. No. Not yet. He was still Charles Fucking Wang and he would lead the way out of the wilderness. Straightening to his full five feet eight inches and sucking in his stomach so that his shirt rode smoothly into the waistband of his trousers, Charles cocked his head at Grace and gestured for her to get out of the car.
“Sorry, Daddy, yes—I’ll help you. What do you want me to do?”
Charles looked down the alley. It was past sunset and all the workers at the factories on either side of his had long since gone home.
“Daddy’s key not working. You just climb in the open window up there and open door from inside, okay?”
One long look from Grace, and then a smile that he wasn’t expecting. “Good one, Dad.”
“Not a joke, okay? Daddy too old to climb things, right?”
“Oh, no, I know, I don’t think it’s a joke. Just a good one,” she said, winking.
Teenagers were such a mystery. Parts of Saina and Andrew had turned unknowable in those years, too. There was a time when he thought that Saina might be someone else forever, back when she was entangled with that fiancé of hers. Grayson.
Charles shook his head. A terrible name. Cold and limp, followed by a diminutive. The son of something boring and colorless could only be even more boring and colorless, yet somehow his brilliant daughter had been taken in by him. It was true that the boy had been good-looking. Charles suspected sex was the lure, though he didn’t quite want to admit that to himself.
“Okay, I’m ready.” Grace had taken off her ridiculous fur vest and little boots, and slipped on a pair of those fabric shoes that Charles had noticed on the feet of more and more of his friends’ children recently. Ugly shoes, like the ones that poor people in China wore. “What if we pull the car over and I stand on the hood? I think I can boost myself up from there.”