Glimmer (5 page)

Chapter 10
DARK-EYED BOY

“Yeah . . . figured that one out.” Looking dazed, she picks up the map and holds it clenched between her fingernails, digging into the paper version of Los Angeles like a cat clawing into a sweater. “Jesus. What a dumb, dangerous plan. Wonder how long I’ve been saving up for it.” And where were you getting all that money? I think but don’t say. The seamier possibilities would freak her out, and she’s already freaking. Her worried fingers are crumpling the page. I take the map from her hands, try to smooth it. “It’s not dumb to have big dreams.”

“I guess. But Hollywood?” She snorts. “Small-town prom queen trying be a movie star—what bigger cliché is there?”

She has a point there. “Still, you could have made it.”

“No, actually I couldn’t have.” Her voice is flat as her fingers tick off the reasons. “I’m short, I’m bigger than a size two, and I don’t know anyone in Hollywood. What the hell was I thinking?”

“You could have made it, Elyse. You have something.” I’m fully serious, but she groans and shakes her head. Something tells me to drop it. “Just don’t be down on yourself for dreaming.”

“Dreaming.” She snaps her fingers. “I just remembered. Before I woke up this morning, I dreamed I was on a white beach with palm trees, celebrities everywhere. I guess I was obsessed.”

“Then why hadn’t you left yet? What were you waiting for?”

“Graduation, maybe?” She sighs. “Or more money. Or the return of my common sense.”

The clack of skinny heels on the hardwood staircase makes us scramble. I launch myself at the stack of papers and cash, hurling it all back into the drawer and sliding my elbow across the sticky paper to reseal it. Elyse tosses an armful of socks over the top just as Liz stumbles in, hobbled by a small mountain of photo albums.

I try for a winning smile. “What you got there, Liz?”

“Oh,
hi
, Jim.” She smiles back at me, but it’s all lipstick. I can tell she’s less than thrilled to discover a tourist in her daughter’s bedroom. Then again—I can practically see the wheels turning in her innkeeper mind—I was only talking to Elyse, with the door wide open. Is it really worth her saying something and risking losing my business? “We were just heading downstairs,” she says finally. “To look through some dusty old photo albums. Wouldn’t want to bore you,” she adds.

Since I haven’t been lobotomized, I get the point. Tourist Jim is not on the invite list.

I clear out of Elyse’s room and follow her and her mother down the stairs. Hoping to hang around within eavesdropping range, I wander into the breakfast room for a snack. The cheery oval table is bare, but there’s a bowl of cocoa-dusted dark truffles and a crystal decanter of port on the sideboard. I take a truffle, realize I’m starving, and grab two more. The heat’s already melted them a little, and the sweet chocolate liquefies on my tongue.

Weird how I somehow knew these would be here. Maybe I really have stayed at Preston House before.

I hear Liz’s and Elyse’s voices nearby and stealthily creep back into the hall. In the sunken front parlor, Liz perches on a high-backed striped sofa, plunks down the photo albums, and pats the seat beside her. Elyse sits down, but leaves more space between them.

Seeing them side by side almost takes my breath away. It’s startlingly obvious they’re related. Liz is Elyse plus twenty years. Both small and curvy and fit, tan-skinned, wavy-haired, with the same sharp chin and big round eyes. They even carry themselves the same way, shoulders down and back, like runway models. I feel a sudden pang of sadness for both of them. It seems absurd to the point of cruelty that Elyse could not remember Liz. Hopefully seeing these photos will help.

Craving something more substantial than chocolate, I head back through the breakfast room and swing open the kitchen door. And nearly run smack into the Bishops, the thirtysomething couple I talked to earlier.

Before I can say hi, she hisses at him, “Don’t call me paranoid, I
heard
her texting you.”

“For God’s sake, Luci—”

“This trip was our last chance.”

They’re standing squared off at the counter, their angry faces only inches apart. This is none of my business. I should go. But why haven’t either of them noticed me? Frank in particular is facing the door, but he’s not making eye contact or lowering his voice.

“The damn text was from work!” His every syllable leaks contempt. “You know, the job that pays for your Botox?”

It’s uncanny and weird, just like it was weird when Kerry the receptionist didn’t notice me till I got up in her business. Like it was weird when Liz didn’t notice me until I spoke up to protect Elyse. Is it just my imagination, or are people not registering my presence unless I speak?

“If it was work, then show me. Show me your goddamn phone.” Her skinny bird-talon fist pounds the countertop. Then her eyes grow round and she gasps.

And crashes to the ground in a heap.

“Holy crap!” I rush over to her still form. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Oh, hey, Jim.” Frank gives me a casual wave.

“Why aren’t you helping your wife?” I kneel down on the carpet and grab Mrs. Bishop’s wrist. I’m relieved to feel her pulse beating strong, regular. Her breathing’s deep, peaceful. “She’s fainted.”

“Buddy, relax.” He whips open a BlackBerry from his pocket, tamps down the volume, snaps it closed again. “It’s just a heatnap.”

“Really?” I remember that term from Wikipedia, but her sudden spill seems way too violent to have been a nap.

Frank opens his mouth, but only a gasp escapes him. Then he too falls to the ground, his unconscious body landing only three feet away from his wife’s.

Adrenaline pumping through me, I burst through the door into the dining room. “Help!” There’s no one in here. Liz can’t hear me from the parlor. A loud groan—or yawn—behind me sends me tearing back into the kitchen. To my shock, both Bishops are stirring again. Mrs. Bishop is already on her feet and with a smile she offers an outstretched hand to her husband. He groans and dusts himself off, then pecks her on the lips.

“Ready to go antiquing?” she says. Purrs.

He kisses her hand indulgently. “No man is ever ready to go antiquing, but I’d do anything for you.”

Then, as if they’d never fought, they hook pinkies and waltz out the backyard door together. I watch them merrily swinging their arms through the backyard.

What the hell just happened?

Chapter 11
ELYSE

Liz opens a pale blue album. “This is the first one with you in it,” she says, a note of nostalgia catching in her voice, and I lean close to her, hoping to recognize myself.

Hoping to remember.

Instead all I see is a baby who could be anyone, and then a toddler with inquisitive green eyes and blond curls that grow longer over the course of years and pages. Within a few pages, she grows into a small, nervous-looking girl with pale braids bent toward an easel, painting, or hunched over a sketch pad, crayon in her hand. Tongue pressed against the corner of her lower lip.

“You were like our own mini Picasso.” The corners of her eyes crinkle with amusement. “When I was a girl, I drew horses and princesses. I tried to show you how to do a horse, but you only wanted to draw one thing. Your imaginary friends.”

“What imaginary friends?” My chest tightens as I think back to the woman pushing her empty stroller, the woman who might have been a hallucination. “Did you keep those drawings?”

“Honey, there were so many drawings . . . you had so many imaginary friends, it was hard to keep up. Doc said it was a sign of creativity, but I was still relieved when you outgrew it all.” She ruffles my hair. “Those art supplies were getting expensive, whew. And now you’re all grown up and well-adjusted and you have real friends . . . coming out of your ears.”

I stare at her. What is she talking about, normal and well-adjusted? As far as I’m concerned, I have one friend. Dark-Eyed Boy. Why can’t Liz keep her mind focused on the huge, gaping problem before us:
my amnesia
?

I listen to Liz’s breathless remembrances of the “good times.” Thanksgiving dinner. Christmas morning. Birthday parties; how hard she worked on those cakes; how much fun the kids had breaking piñatas and pinning the tails on donkeys. The middle of the album is all me: first days of school, Halloween costumes, track meets. The elementary-school girl racing across the finish line has the same face I saw in the mirror, but her body hasn’t betrayed her yet. It’s still normal-looking: lean, straight lines like a boy’s.

Then Liz turns the page, and without warning my stomach sinks.

It’s just a picture of a family dinner table, decorated with a centerpiece of Thanksgiving gourds. Liz is wearing a pink dress, smiling up at a man in a blue plaid shirt as he prepares to carve the turkey. “Is that my father?”

She nods and chuckles. “I remember you snapped that shot of Daddy with your new camera, you were so proud of that thing.”

Looking at the big, sturdy, grinning man with the cleaver poised over the poor dead bird is sending waves of nausea over me. I avert my eyes. “I think . . . I might be a vegetarian,” I say.

“Praise God.” Liz lets out a long sigh of relief. “It’s coming back to you! I knew it would.”

“No, I was just guessing.”

The next album is wedding pictures, a beaming young Liz who looks startlingly like the Elyse in the mirror, in a white princess gown. Half the album is empty, though, like someone just pulled out every other picture. I look for a clear picture of the groom, my father’s face, but it’s mostly Liz and her bridesmaids.

She wants to zip through them quickly because I’m not in them, but I’m fascinated. “Is that the church downtown? Who’s that lady standing next to you in that one?”

“That’s my mother, your Grandma Bets.” She points to the gray-haired lady in the flower-sprigged lavender dress. The woman doesn’t look healthy at all; in fact, Liz is helping support her on the left side while on the other side a guest is steadying her right arm. The guest is grinning with obscenely crooked teeth. Grandma Bets’s brilliant ruby necklace only makes her neck look more wrinkled. “Said she could rest easy now that she’d seen me walk down that aisle.” Liz’s ringed fingers drift toward her throat, and I can see the oval ruby resting against her collarbone.

Hesitantly I say, “I’m . . . sorry for your loss.”

Liz’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “Momma’s doing just fine.” She snaps the book shut.
Creepy.

The sound of tires winding up the driveway makes Liz hop to her feet. “Ah, that must be Candace and Aiden, the young couple from California.”

Sure enough, when Liz opens the door, there’s a college-aged woman in a designer sundress, her chestnut hair in a short, tousled cut, standing beside a thin goateed man in his early twenties, dressed in dark colors. Between them are two black Samsonite suitcases. They introduce themselves to all of us and to each other as Candace and Jim.

You have to hand it to Liz. When the real Jim shows up, she doesn’t lose her professional composure for even a second. “Welcome to Preston House,” she says with her warm innkeeper smile. “Come in, both of you. Candace, are we still waiting for one from your party?”

Candace gives an impish grin. “Aiden dumped me last week, but we’d already booked the trip, so I decided to go anyway. I mean, I’m not going to miss fair weekend in Summer Falls just because of some guy.”

“We’ll make sure you have a fabulous time and forget all about him,” Liz says, patting the young woman’s arm.

“Solo vacations rock,” Jim tells her. “You really get to be one with the place you’re staying.” He stretches his arms and breathes a sigh of pure relaxation. “See? I think I’m already feeling the drop!”

“The drop?” I say.

“Oh my god, lucky!” Candace squeals with envy. “When my ex and I came last year, it took me, like,
days
before I felt any different. But then when I did it was awesome.”

I have no idea what they’re talking about ‘feeling’—relaxation? But something about Candace’s perky laughter bugs me. It’s like she’s talking up some fabulous Disneyland ride. Not a real town where real people live. People like me.

“This house you’re staying in,” Liz says, “is the original construction built by our town’s founder, William Phillips Preston, in 1897.” You can tell she’s said it a hundred thousand times, but there’s still a pride in her tone.

“God, I’d give my eyelashes to live here.” Candace takes off her sunglasses and turns to Jim. “Can you imagine one couple had this whole mansion to themselves?”

“Preston and his wife did have servants,” Liz reminds her, a few fibers of disapproval woven into her silky voice as if to say,
Servants are people too.
It’s the first sign of independent thinking I’ve ever seen from her, and it makes me like her more.

While Liz shows them to their separate rooms, I retreat to the kitchen.

Dark-Eyed Boy is leaning against the marble counter. “Sounds like my cover’s blown.” He stares at the cookie jar. “Think your mother’s going to call the sheriff or just kick me out?”

“I don’t know her well enough to guess.”

“I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

I don’t want to stay here alone. “Who cares if she calls the sheriff?” I say. “We can run away together. Skip town.”

“And go where?” It’s weird to hear him sound so hopeless. Earlier in the day, I’d poked holes in his cloudless optimism, just to vent my own frustration. Now I miss it.

“We’ll go wherever we have to go.” I put my hand over his. “Maybe find a big city, where there’s a real hospital. And we’ll just keep moving till we get help or our memories come back on their own. We have money now—”

“
Some
money, and that’s your safety net. I’m not touching it.”

I try not to feel insulted that he’s turning down my offer to share what I have. “It’s ours, really,” I say. “I never even would have found it if it wasn’t for you. Don’t be such a hero. Let me help you for once.”

“All right.” Liz wanders in, looking dazed. “If that was Jim I just led into the Country Sun Suite, then who exactly are you?”

“He’s my friend,” I say. “He’s been there for me and he really needs a place to stay for a while. And if you don’t let him crash here when we have
plenty
of room . . . then I’m leaving too.”

“Elyse—”

“No, it’s true. If you can’t take both of us, you can’t have either of us.”

Liz looks from me to him and back. “Well, there’s no need to be so dramatic.” She sounds exasperated. “A friend of my daughter is a friend of the family,” she says, patting his knee. “For now you can stay in the Rustic’s Cottage.”

“Seriously?” From the way his eyes are shining I can tell that her generosity’s making him feel ashamed of lying to her before.

“It’s in the backyard,” she warns, “and you’ll have to be all right with taking a bath instead of a shower since the curtain rod broke last week.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You just did.” She pulls a key ring from her pocket and removes one key.

“Hey, who’s renting the Cottage?” says a hearty voice. A big, tall man strides into the kitchen.

“Honey!” Liz runs over to kiss his cheek. “Did you order the new shower rod?”

“They’ll have it in day after tomorrow.” He thrusts out his hand amiably at Dark-Eyed Boy, who shakes it. “Don’t believe we’ve met, sir. I’m Jeffry Alton.” Even though he’s being friendly and polite, I can pick up subtle hints of suspicion in his voice. “So, you a student? Staying in that Cottage all alone?”

“He doesn’t speak much English,” I say quickly. “He’s from . . . Brazil.”

Whoa, did I just lie?

I spontaneously lied to my own father—just to keep him from asking Dark-Eyed Boy too many questions. How could I do that, after my whole song and dance earlier about how Lying Is Bad and Wrong? What a hypocrite. Sure, I don’t want to do anything to risk Dark-Eyed Boy getting to stay here. Still, this is my
father
we’re all deceiving, I think, and guilt nags at me. Then I notice several white dots on his chin and pick up on a familiar medicinal smell. Good god, is that . . . pimple cream? My father’s face is covered in pimple cream? I hope his acne isn’t hereditary. Jeffry Alton’s blue eyes, set deep in his ruddy square face, meet mine and I look away.

“Full house, and a rich foreigner to boot.” Jeffry smiles broadly and rubs his hands together. “Looks like the season’s heating up.”