I pulled my hand away from his and unwrapped the rest of it myself, then pushed the wadded wrap into his chest. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m up for anything.”
He grinned. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I remember that.”
I unwound the other wrap, my jelly arms starting to regain some feeling, and pulled my T-shirt back on. It was hot and my sticky hair felt trapped between the shirts. I would definitely need a shower before going anywhere with him.
“It’s good, trust me,” I said as we walked.
“I have something for you,” he said as we pushed our way back out into the parking lot.
I followed him to his car. He opened a back door and tossed the gym bag inside, and then opened the front door and leaned in. He came back out with a fat manila envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked. My eyes burned. I knew exactly what it was.
He held it out. “It’s what you asked for. I told you I’d look.” I stared at the file, suddenly afraid of what it could do to my life. He shook the envelope. “Take it.”
“Did you look inside?” My voice was almost a whisper.
“No time.” He started to pull it back. “We can look at it together, if you want.”
“No.” My arm shot out and grabbed the envelope from him. My dad’s name, in its typical fuzzy tangerine, bounced around on the front of it. If there was something in there that implicated him in Mom’s murder, I wanted to be alone when I found out.
Why, Nikki? Why keep so many secrets from him? Still keeping Chris at arm’s length? Why? Don’t trust him? Don’t think he’ll trust you?
Fuck that. It was personal. That was why. The only reason why. It was personal and I wanted to be alone when I read it. Period.
And I supposed that was because part of me didn’t know how I would handle it if I found out my dad was the murderer. As tough as I wanted to believe myself to be, I didn’t know if I was tough enough to accept that kind of information. If it did me in, I didn’t want anyone there to see it. Not even Chris.
I hugged the envelope around my middle. “What time today?”
He shut the car door. “Three o’clock? That give you enough time?”
“Sure.”
More than enough time to find out if my dad was a murderer.
11
I STOOD IN my bathroom, palms pressed flat on the countertop, leaning over the envelope, staring at it. Fuzzy tangerine name, ringed with yellow, the whole envelope shading over into smooth slate, then rippling into asphalt gray and black. So many emotions. So many fears.
Did I really want to do this?
He had raised me. Alone. He had taken good care of me, even if he was a little more of a semi-interested roommate than a dad for most of my life. He’d tried. Until I’d found that box, and those photos with Bill Hollis in them—the ones that disappeared—I never would have even considered that my dad would be capable of hurting anyone. No way would I have considered he could hurt the love of his life. I couldn’t believe I was considering it now.
My mind swirled around so many possibilities. It was an accident. It was revenge. It was rage. He’d found out about Hollywood Dreams. About Bill Hollis. About Peyton. He’d tried to be calm and rational. But his love for her was so fierce. A love that fierce could turn into rage without meaning to, right?
I couldn’t open the envelope. My hands shook every time I touched it. My heart pounded so hard I felt breathless. Opening this envelope could change everything.
Wasn’t that the point, though? Opening this envelope could change everything. It could solve everything. Every question I had. Gone. Finally.
I took a deep breath, made sure the bathroom door was locked, sat on the floor with the envelope, opened it, and pulled out the file.
Dad had been a suspect all right. There was his name, our address, a mug shot, Dad’s eyes looking bloodshot and saggy, the tip of his nose red, his hair dirty-looking and mussed. I flipped through the pages, swimming through words and passages that looked important but I couldn’t quite absorb.
No alibi.
Murder weapon in kitchen.
Disputes.
The words opened up a world I’d left behind long ago—a world with my mother newly gone, and questions and images and suspicions and grief. I felt like I’d stepped onto a stage, and the set was my life, circa ten years ago. And it was all colored over in crimson.
I saw the word recordings, maroon and royal blue. There were recordings of Dad’s interviews. I laid the papers down and opened the envelope again, holding it up so I could peer inside. Sure enough, there were two tapes. I tipped the envelope over and dumped them into my lap. One slid off my thigh and landed with a rattle on the tile floor. I stared at it.
Dad’s voice would be on that tape. Fresh after his wife was murdered. How would he sound? Devastated? Bewildered?
Guilty?
I picked up the cassette and turned it over in my hands. I didn’t know what I expected—for it to feel strange, to feel telling? It felt like plastic. Plastic that I couldn’t listen to because who owned a cassette player anymore?
Dad did.
As far as I knew, he still owned one. The question wasn’t whether I could find anything to listen to them on; the question was whether I could force myself to listen at all. I felt light-headed and sweaty and a little bit gutted and oh so confused.
I stood, gathered up the file and cassettes, and took them out to my desk drawer, cramming them in with the black notebook where I’d kept Peyton’s letter. I didn’t want to listen when I knew I had to leave soon. What if it completely shattered me and I couldn’t leave at all? I would want to be alone if I was a hot mess of tears and snot and bitterness, not at the community center with an audience. I would wait until I had some extended alone time, swipe Dad’s cassette player, and listen until I had the answers I wanted.
I BEAT CHRIS to the Waller Recreational Center by ten minutes. He pulled up eating a sandwich.
I waited for him on a bench outside the center. I’d been watching the comings and goings, but because I had no idea who I was looking for, it was a pretty fruitless endeavor. Everyone could have been Heriberto Abana. Or no one could have been him, for all I knew.
Chris plopped onto the bench next to me, finishing up the final corner of his sandwich. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. He uncapped a bottle of soda, swigged it, and stifled a belch. “You been here long?”
I shook my head. “Not really.”
“What kind of trouble have you been into since I last saw you? Do I even want to know?”
I chewed the inside of my lip. “No trouble. Just hanging at home like a good girl. Aren’t you proud?”
“Surprised is more like it. You go through that file yet?”
I shook my head again. He didn’t press. I noticed the hair on his legs rubbing against mine. He was wearing a pair of orange-and-blue Hawaiian-style swim trunks. I’d never really gotten a look at his legs before. They were warm and brown and muscular. And now they were scarred, too, but the scars didn’t make them look bad. He had a towel draped over his shoulders and was wearing his sunglasses.
“You ready to go in?”
I stood, picking up my bag, which had a beach towel and some sunscreen jammed into it. The towel was old—pink and frilly. It had been a while since I’d last gone swimming. My swimsuit was just as pink and frilly . . . and small. Or maybe it just felt small because I was in public. With Chris Martinez. And a lot of exposed skin.
I followed him into the center and waited while he paid our admission. I could smell the chlorine on the air, and for a minute it was almost as if we were on vacation, or maybe just relaxing for a day. God, I could use a day of relaxation. It felt like it had been forever since I’d had one. Would my life ever have another relaxing day? Had it ever had one? Mom was murdered when I was so young—how do you relax after that? The thought made me unreasonably tired.
“Let’s go out to the pool,” Chris said, “but keep your eyes open.”
I quickened my pace to catch up with him. “What am I looking for?”
“Someone familiar, I guess.”