“Oh, you’ll think I’m a bitch for a month or so. You’ll hate me because I got the closest to him. But in another month or two, you’ll remember this conversation, realize I was right, realize I was being nice to you, trying to save you, and you’ll thank me. You might even write me a nice note.” She smiles. “I have quite a few of those.”
And then she turns and walks away before I can tell her that she’s wrong. Before I can thank her right then. Before I can tell her that she’s confirming everything I already think about the man, giving me the power to resist my baser urges while reminding me why I’m here. That if I knew where to send it, I’d write her that note right now. And I am newly resolved to reach out to her for an interview before I publish my final piece. I now have my in: I can tell her she was right, that I want to thank her in person, and that I want to know more about Ness’s unhappiness, where it comes from, and why he keeps it so cleverly hidden.
I’m running all this through my head when someone says, “I’m hungry.”
I refocus and see the gangly girl from Ness’s pictures standing in the doorway. Holly. His daughter.
“You’re the new one, huh?” she asks. And before I can answer: “What can you make me for breakfast?”
24
“I’m Maya,” I say. I reach out my hand, and Holly studies it a moment before accepting.
“Riding practice got canceled,” she says.
“So I heard.”
“Mom says I’m not old enough to stay at our house by myself, but she leaves me alone here all the time. I think if I get hurt, she wants it to be on his property.”
“Or maybe if you break something, she wants it to be his,” I suggest. I smile and hope she knows it’s a joke.
Holly smiles back. And then I feel a pang of sadness at how this seems normal to her, talking to a strange woman in her father’s bedroom, a woman who is wearing her father’s robe, and asking that woman to fix her something to eat. Thankfully, she turns and leads me toward the kitchen, and I’m able to use the robe’s lapel to dab at my eye.
“Let’s cook something outrageous,” Holly calls out above the noisy rain. “How about a peanut butter omelet? With a cranberry chocolate milkshake. We’ll get flour everywhere.”
“I don’t think any of those things take flour,” I say. I re-knot Ness’s robe around me as I follow her to the kitchen. No use changing into his clothes now, no use explaining. Everyone has already made up their minds.
“The flour won’t go in anything we make,” Holly explains. “It’s just because. And if we ask Monique nicely, she won’t clean up after us. Dad’ll have to do it.”
Holly cracks the fridge and pulls out eggs and a carton of chocolate milk. Even with the note suggesting I make myself at home, it feels strange to rummage around Ness’s kitchen. Especially in his robe and with his daughter.
“You don’t think your dad will mind me raiding his fridge, do you?” I ask.
Holly turns and looks at me with stern seriousness. “Dad says when he’s dead and gone, all of this will be mine.” She waves her arms at his house and the estate beyond. This proclamation seems to come out of nowhere. I’m trying to make sense of it when she continues: “So how do we know he isn’t already dead?”
Two heartbeats pass before she smiles at me. She turns and brings out a handful of items that no sane person would combine: pickles, blueberries, cheese, a stick of butter.
“Are you pregnant?” I ask, catching on to her sense of humor.
“Twins,” Holly says, not missing a beat. “So triple portions for me.”
“Have you ever had an egg-in-a-hole?” I ask.
She scrunches up her face. “That sounds disgusting. Make me one.”
“Okay. Why don’t you put on some music. I couldn’t figure out how the radio works earlier.”
I don’t even know that there is a radio. But Holly shouts “Righto!” and trots to a wall panel. Like magic, there’s music in the room, the lilting up and down of reggae. That distracted her for all of five seconds. I arrange her ingredients by the stove and study them the way a chemist might. I can make this work, I tell myself.
“Do you want to sit at the counter and keep me company while I cook?” I ask.
“Yes I do,” Holly says. She pulls out one of the stools and arranges herself in it, props her elbows on the counter and rests her chin in her hands. “I hate the rain,” she says. “There’s nothing fun to do in the rain.”
“Naps are good in the rain,” I offer. I open a few cabinets, looking for a pan.
“To the right,” Holly says. “And naps are boring. Unless you get a good dream, and that’s like winning the lottery. Too much luck involved.”
“What about reading?” I ask.
“Booooring,” she says, but I suspect that’s going to be her reply no matter what I say. So I try a different tactic.
“You got me, then. I now hate the rain as well.” Grabbing a spatula, I turn and offer my hand to her a second time. “We shall form the I-Hate-Rain Society,” I announce. “Lovers of rain need not apply.”
“Righto!” Holly says. With a grand gesture—elbow crooked up in the air—she takes my hand and gives it an exaggerated pump.