The Alone Time, page 14
I spy Violet’s blue, boxy SUV in the shadow of a café awning next to the gallery. When I cross the street to her passenger door, she narrows her eyes. The door is unlocked and I slip inside.
“What were you doing over there?” Violet asks. “I thought you had more installation stuff to do.”
“I just needed some air. Geri Vega is now talking to print publications in the art world about me.”
She pulls forward, then flips a U-turn back toward the freeway. “Anything new?”
“No.”
“Great. The same tired story, we can handle. Good thing we’re going to Mira Mesa today.”
In the days since Violet and I agreed that we need to go on the offensive against the woman harassing us, we’ve learned her basic résumé: Geri Vega worked as a social worker for a few years in Orange County before she got her master’s in clinical psychology from a college in San Diego. She moved to Del Mar around the time that Violet was born, then set up an office in North County, near Carlsbad, where she seems to have held an address until one year after our plane crash. She let her state license to practice psychology lapse nearly twenty years ago. From what Violet and I could find on the internet, Geri has been doing consulting work for oddball corporations, across a variety of white collar–company needs: team building, trust seminars, “Bringing Your Whole Self to Work” workshops, and goal setting for personal and professional objectives.
When we discovered an old archived image of Geri’s former website that was shared on LinkedIn back in 2012, I contacted the person who posted it. A man named Phuong Nguyen, the small business owner of a paper supply company. All these years later, he still had nice things to say about Geri Vega, especially to a “prospective client” of hers like me. When I asked if he’d be willing to discuss his experience in person, he offered his address.
The freeway moves us inland and away from the ocean view in minutes, thanks to light Thursday morning traffic. Violet turns down the radio, quieting the twang of country music to a low percussion. “So, I wanted to . . . ask you something.”
I stiffen, anticipating another bomb. I fumble for the oh-shit bar on the passenger door. “What is it?”
“I was just thinking. Well, that is, I spent the morning writing.”
My heart sinks into my stomach. “Your memoirs.”
She pauses. A yellow sports car floors past us in the fast lane, and Violet checks her mirrors. “Bingo.”
Instantly, my mind jumps to the night our mother died, the strange empty shock across young Violet’s face, and the disturbing events that followed. “Violet, I don’t know how many ways I can tell you this: please, don’t. It’s a mistake. Don’t put anything in writing that you don’t have to. Us signing new statements with the police is already enough.”
“I know you think that, but—”
“No buts. Literally, everything in writing will be used against us.” That woman—Geri Vega—and her false concern pictured for that interview with one of the great benefactors of American art, seems to underline that possibility as a probability.
“Why is the documentary okay, but not my memoirs? That’s ass-backward.”
“In the doc, we’ll each have twenty minutes of screen time, while Daley splices in other interviews with rescue teams and experts on aviation and weather patterns. You’re talking about putting down details to paper for public consumption.”
“The public likes us, remember? What’s the big deal?”
“What if they stop liking us, Violet? What if Geri Vega convinces them there is more to our story than what we’ve shared? The millions of people who donated to our GoFundMe could ask for their money back.” I shake my head, nearing my boiling point. Why doesn’t Violet see this?
She heaves a sigh, casting me a quick glance. “Fiona, my memoirs will mostly be for me. For us—and the final exam of my humanities class. Let’s not freak out about putting the cart and the horse together.”
“The cart before the horse. Look, would you really write all that, then keep most everything to yourself?”
She hesitates and I have my answer. Violet probably likes the idea of submitting her side of the story for the world to consume. Certainly, she was too little to form her own account of what happened when we were rescued. Plus, the money.
“Okay, I’m not going to repeat myself here,” Violet says. “I just shared because I think I’m remembering more, and . . .”
An ambulance surges from the slow lane, and Violet steps off the gas in the middle of the freeway as it peels past.
“And? Spit it out, please.”
“Fine. I think I was alone with Mom while she was dying.”
I suck in a breath. The ambulance makes a sharp right onto the next exit ramp, nearly clipping a concrete divider. “Okay.”
“Why would that be the case?” Violet asks. “Why would a seven-year-old have been with a dying person? I wasn’t screaming, or begging for mercy from her attacker. I wasn’t shielding her from a monster or animal surging from a bush. Why was I there and calm and alone?”
All good questions. Ones I have tried to ignore for years. “Some things are better not known, Violet. I don’t have any answers to share.”
“What does that mean?” She sucks her teeth. “None you can share. Do you have answers that you’re keeping to yourself?”
“No. Look, I am as confused and concerned by your memory of sitting with Mom as you are. But I don’t know why you were . . . what you were doing there.”
Violet is silent the rest of the drive into Mira Mesa. Thankfully. When she parks at the curb of a nondescript commercial building, I’m relieved someone else will be in the hot seat for the next half hour.
We enter a beige tiled lobby, then turn left into a glass-walled shop. A literal pyramid of paper occupies a corner dedicated to printing products. A square sign hangs above a shelf display, advertising CREAM MATTE REAMS beside the front door, while a copy machine in the window is ready with “classic white” reams, according to the laminated page on the control panel.
An older man with graying black hair lifts a hand from the back of the shop. “Fiona?”
“Hi, yes. Thanks for meeting us.”
Phuong crosses pilled blue carpet to the edge of the copy machine. The starched collar of the white dress shirt he wears could double as cardstock. “Any friend of Geri Vega’s is a friend of mine. Should we sit?”
Violet and I exchange a look. We follow him to an alcove set up with folding chairs.
“Coffee?” Phuong points to a makeshift coffee station on an end table, motioning with his own paper cup. “We have real sugar and all the fun imitations.”
Violet shakes her head, while I get settled. “No, we’re good,” I say. “Thanks for agreeing to talk with us. Has your company been here long?”
“Oh, about fifteen years. I hired Geri right before actually. Business was booming prior to the paperless movement, and I had a staff of twenty-five people.”
Violet casts an eye behind him to the empty shop.
“Yeah, there have been a lot of changes. But we’re still hanging in there.” Phuong smiles.
“Of course,” I reply, genuinely meaning it. If I weren’t an optimist after all this time, I couldn’t be an artist.
“So what did Geri do for you back then?” Violet begins rubbing her fingers together, her anxiety showing. I pass her a wooden stirrer from the coffee station.
“She led a goals workshop for us. It was all about helping us brand our respective groups—I had a marketing team, wholesale, finance and ops, and a strat planning team—and then helping us transfer that vision to tangible goals with milestones.”
“Sounds pretty helpful,” I offer.
Phuong smiles again, revealing a chipped yellow front tooth. He sips his coffee. “It was. I invited her back for another workshop after that—team building to better foster relationships among my employees.”
“Geri seems like she was pretty effective. You didn’t have any complaints?” I ask.
“Any concerns about her character, or her integrity?” Violet adds. I nudge her knee with my own.
Phuong slowly shakes his head. “Well, not initially. Geri and I became friendly over time.”
“Romantic?” I ask. Phuong has a tan line on his ring finger, evident when he raises his paper coffee cup. Maybe Geri Vega has a history of seducing married men. Any detail that paints her in an untrustworthy light—rather than the lovesick, remorseful schoolgirl she’s been playing on camera—would be a bull’s-eye for me.
He chuckles. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just friends. We often had conversations about the future of our respective businesses and strategized about new tactics to gain more customers, or clients. Geri was all in on that. She was always coming up with wacky new ideas to generate interest.”
“Like handing out flyers?” Violet asks.
“Or renting billboard space?”
Phuong lifts both eyebrows. “The zaniest thing Geri suggested was meeting with a psychic. Apparently, she had one that she visited every month, who gave her some pretty good advice.”
“Oh. Well, that is . . . zany. Did you go with her?”
“I did, a few times actually.”
“Learn anything interesting?” Violet asks, barely concealing her amusement.
Phuong smiles. “No, I did not. A total waste of money the two times I went. But Geri was deeply invested there, so the next time she suggested we go together, I made an excuse. And the next, and the time after that.”
“What was such a waste about it?” I ask. Violet turns toward me, ever so slightly, in my peripheral vision.
Phuong sighs. “I mean, I feel bad saying it, even today. I haven’t spoken to Geri in years, but it was clear to me then how much she needed the psychic sessions for emotional support. And that wasn’t my thing.”
“As in, Geri treated the psychic like a therapist,” Violet offers.
“A little. When I visited with her, there was some time spent on our business endeavors and what the psychic saw for our futures. Said my business would expand into a megacorporation—” Phuong rolls his eyes. “But the rest of the visit was spent trying to contact someone.”
“Who?” I lean forward. Violet resumes rubbing the pads of her fingers, the wooden coffee stirrer forgotten.
“I don’t remember. An old boyfriend, who I guess died.”
“Henry? Was it Henry?” Violet asks.
Phuong shrugs. “Sorry. It was a long time ago.”
“Would you remember the name of the psychic? Or where they were located?” I whip out my phone, ready to type myself notes.
“Not the name, no. But the location, yes. It’s on the corner of Garnet and Ingraham in Pacific Beach. But why would you want to meet the psychic, to vet Geri for work?”
I glance at Violet, who has always been a better liar than me. “We’re very thorough in all our hiring decisions,” she says. “You said you didn’t have any integrity concerns initially. What changed?”
Phuong exhales a big breath. “Yeah, she—uh—stole from me. I loaned her two thousand dollars for a new business venture, something about hosting seminars in a dedicated workspace, and she took the money, then ran. I called her and drove by her office, but she packed up and went someplace else. Never heard from her again after that, and honestly, I never tried to contact her.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“I mean, I needed the money,” he says. “Still do. But I think she was much worse off than she let on. Probably in the hole with that psychic too. And anyway, I’ve been there—down on my luck. Rather than dwell on it or hire legal counsel, which would cost me more money in small claims court, I decided to call it a business expense and move on.”
Violet and I exchange a look. The white paint is beginning to chip on Geri Vega’s perfect veneer. I stand, then shake his hand. “Thanks so much for your time. And the transparency.”
As we walk toward the shop’s exit, Phuong clears his throat. “Hey, uh, if you get a chance, let Geri know I said hello, will you? I always felt bad about how things ended between us. And she still owes me money.”
23
HENRY
The Wild
Bright, twinkling lights cover the sky overhead. I’ve never seen so many at once before. Thousands—tens of thousands—blanket the black canvas. The night sky could be a mirror of the river down below so that if I allow my mind to wander free, I could lose my sense of direction, whether I’m up or down. I’ve never been this far from civilization in the US before. Even in Yosemite, the lights from campfires and a small grid of official buildings cast a glow across the park.
After the girls settled down, I went back to Janet and laid a tarp across her, weighting it with stones I grabbed from the mountainside. Then I went looking for help. Again. I walked probably three miles in one direction, then at an angle forty-five degrees opposite, bisecting my return route to camp so I was only gone about two hours total. When I arrived, Fiona was fuming and Violet was licking a wrapper from the trash bag. My girls were hungry. And I wasn’t about to let them starve.
“Stay here, girls. I’m going to go get dinner.” As I withdraw the knife from my pocket, the handle glints brown instead of black in the moonlight. For a moment, it resembles the government-issued knife I used back in Kuwait.
Fiona eyes me from where she sits beneath the tarp on an overturned bucket, her arms crossed. “What are you going to do? Play Whac-A-Mole with a gopher? Mom was the cook.”
“Where are you going?” Violet asks. She leans out of the passenger seat of the cockpit. Small legs dangle from the side, hitting the hull of the plane. Straight, dark hair falls across her face as she hunches into her shoulders the same way my wife did. I wasn’t able to protect Janet from the elements out here, but I’m going to do my best by our kids.
My stomach growls, reminding me that I need to eat as well. Distorted memories return—of hunger gnawing at my insides while hiding in the Iraqi desert—of strange episodes that caused my superiors to stare at me sideways. Ultimately those uneasy glances led to my dishonorable discharge; I know that.
“Your mom was able to find that bird the first night. I’ll bet there are more where that came from.”
“But what are we supposed to do here?” Fiona whines.
“Take care of your sister,” I answer, starting off toward the darkest part of the forest, up the slight incline and away from the path that Janet took—where Janet still lies.
“How? And what about . . .” Fiona looks at Violet, then stands. She crosses to me, out of earshot from her sister. “What about Mom?”
“Your mom will be okay. Just stay here.”
Fiona’s eyes nearly bug from her skull. “Okay? She’s—what are you—she’s dead.” Fiona adds, lowering her voice, “She’s not okay.”
“I know you’re worried. We’re all worried, Fiona. But we have to stay calm.”
“We don’t even know what happened to her.”
“She slipped. It had just rained and—”
Fiona shakes her head wildly. “No. No, that’s not what happened.”
“What? Do you think I—or your little sister—had something to do with—?”
“I don’t know!” she shouts. Her palms fly to her forehead. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
The pulsing continues behind my eyes, sending white spots across my vision. I need to eat something. Starting off at a wobbly gait, I reply, “Stay here. Just—I need to go.”
Up the hill, away from the crash site, conifers grow more densely together. I walk as quietly as possible, though conscious of the noise I’m making. I’m probably scaring off any wild game nearby, but I push forward. For my girls. For Janet’s memory.
She would laugh if she knew I was motivated by them all now. She’d say my actions didn’t reflect it, that cheating on her seemed to disprove that notion handily. Janet was always my guiding light, even if I ignored it from time to time. Without her, without the stability I never received from my neglectful parents, the success I yearned for in the military, or the recognition I feel owed in my current job as regional director of mall security, the world seems off-balance. It’s only been a matter of hours, but the moon has dulled—smudged at the edges.
Fiona is right to be upset. Both girls are. However, the idea that anything violent happened to Janet is laughable, and not something I want to think about—could think about, considering the only suspects would be my children.
Meanwhile, Fiona’s emotions have pivoted from sobs to anger within seconds. Violet has remained stoic even through quiet tears. Which reaction is the more appropriate one, given the horror scene we all stumbled on? Could one of my kids actually be responsible for their mother’s death?
Using thick tree trunks for leverage, I hoist myself up a sharp incline to the summit of this peak. The view is pristine. Clouds part before the stars to illuminate the valley below. The river currents shine in undulating sparkles, like something out of a wildlife program.
Movement across the river, on the back end farther away from us, catches my eye. Small dots that shift in tandem with one another, a hunting formation. One dark shape takes the lead until the dot behind relieves the first at the head of the pack. A half dozen animals sprint between trees, in patches of moonlight, before they leap into the narrow neck of the river where it curves away toward the snow-capped mountains. Wolves.
Branches nearby scratch together, though no wind twists through the leaves. Someone is close.
I crouch down into a defensive position instinctively, then back against a tree trunk. Watching, waiting for what happens next. The animal on this ridge stops moving, as if it does likewise.
A small noise reaches my ears. Dull clicking. I scan the neighboring bushes, the darkness that inks between trees, until I see it. A hunched body. Covered in thick fur, the animal could be a beaver but with a bushy tail, or a small bear with a long face. A word slips forward from a documentary I must have watched sometime in the past. A . . . a marmot?
The marmot stops. It glances around, as if sensing it has an audience. What must it feel like to constantly be on the lookout for a threat? To know that each second in repose might lead to your neck getting hacked off in the next minute?
