Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
“Well?” Elodie asks, by way of greeting when I call her. I’m in the parking lot, leaving Bertram’s apartment.
“I thought we were getting somewhere, but as usual he cut me off. More than that, really. He practically shoved me out the door.” I shiver at a gust of cold November wind. A lone raindrop falls on my nose, a sign of a pending storm.
“What did you find out?” she asks. “Anything good?”
“No,” I lie, as I climb into my car. Poor Elodie. She wants to be my friend because she’s realizing how lonely it is to live a double life. She hasn’t learned yet that we’re so good at what we do—and were selected by Mr. X—because of our ability to keep secrets. She’ll learn soon enough.
“What about you?” I ask her.
“I’ve just gotten off the subway,” she says. “I’m headed to see Skylar now. I thought—screw it, why not go in person and turn the day into a shopping trip?”
“Naturally,” I say. It would be nice to spend the day looking at designer bags and playing Harriet the Spy; maybe I should have gone with her instead of wasting my time here.
I’m irritated that Bertram kicked me out just when I thought I was getting somewhere.
The sudden emotion on his face, the intensity when he looked at me, was an open door.
But he slammed it shut before I could walk through it.
I need to speak to my brother. He’ll know where to steer me, if I’m honest with him about what’s just happened.
Elodie and I say goodbye, and I make my way to the hospital. When I glance in the rearview mirror, I see a purple gel pen that must have fallen out of Collette’s backpack, and I catch myself thinking of her.
She doesn’t know anything about my family, apart from the fact that her grandparents died before she was born. She doesn’t know that she ever had an uncle, or that he’s dying.
Maybe they should meet. I can trust her to keep a secret.
Hell, she barely tells me what’s going on in her own life anymore.
But Collette is observant, and she’ll ask questions.
She might even try to research him in secret, without telling anyone, and go fishing for details she doesn’t think I’ll tell her.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
One thing I have learned in my line of work is that the truth always comes up.
Not right away. Not next week. Maybe not even next year.
But someday. When she’s twenty-five, or thirty, or cradling a baby of her own, she’ll come across the information somehow and she’ll want to know why I kept it from her.
Because if my brother dies, his existence doesn’t die with him.
Yes, I’ve lied to Collette about her family, but if I never tell her the truth even after he’s gone, every year will be a lie, too.
When I’m bringing her flowers at her college graduation, or helping her pick out a wedding gown, or coming with her to her seaside vacation to celebrate her new promotion—I’ll know something that she has a right to know.
I keep secrets from everyone, and I have my reasons. But Collette changes the game. My secrets belong to her by extension. Your child is different from your husband or your neighbor, or even yourself.
And my brother is dying. That’s the truth, even if I don’t want to admit it. In a few weeks, or months, maybe a year, he won’t be conscious enough to speak. He won’t know who’s coming to visit. He won’t be able to answer her questions, or tell her how much she looks like our mother.
“Damn it,” I mutter to the purple gel pen. Life was so much easier when the only person I had to hurt was myself. Having a daughter is like giving birth to a mirror that you can’t help glancing into.
As though in response to my frustration, the rain picks up, smashing down on the windshield so hard that I can barely get visibility even with the wipers on high.
The rain is so loud that I don’t hear the metal grinding sound or the low sputtering sound until I try to turn the steering wheel and the car doesn’t move. Then all the lights in the car go dark as the engine shuts off.
“No, no, no,” I say, pushing the start button and pumping the brake over and over. “Why are you doing this? You’re a new car!”
Thunder roars outside as the rain turns angry. I grab my phone and start googling for everything I can think of. Car suddenly stopped working, Car lost power.
I’m just about to call roadside assistance when there’s a knock at my window.
Of all people, Bertram Casimir is standing outside in the rain, holding a sleek black umbrella that hardly shields him as the rain falls sideways. He gestures for me to get out, but I shake my head. He tries the handle and the doors are locked.
Did he do something to my car? I was with him all morning, but he could have hired someone to mess with the engine. Why, though? If he wanted me alone, he already had me there in his apartment. He’s the one who kicked me out.
He knocks on the window again, this time frantically. I shake my head. I’m not getting out. Not without knowing what his game is.
Seconds later, my phone rings. It’s him, holding his own phone pressed against his ear as he stands in the middle of the street.
“Margaux, goddamn it, you’re in danger,” he snarls at me. With his other hand he’s pounding on the glass so hard I think he’ll shatter it.
My heart is hammering, and I clutch at the hilt of the box cutter I keep in my pocket. If he tries anything, he may be stronger, but I know where the jugular is. “What are you talking about?” I demand into the phone.
“This is her doing, I know it.”
“Annie?”
“Yes—please. I’ll explain everything if you just come to my car where it’s safe.”
A pair of high beams floods my car as he says the words.
There’s a car coming toward us, bright lights on and penetrating through the gloomy, cloudy day.
It’s nobody important, I tell myself. Just someone trying to get a little visibility on their way home from the store.
But it speeds through a stop sign, makes it to the end of the street, and then swings back around in a U-turn.
Muttering curses, I unlock my door and allow Bertram to rush me to the back seat of his car, and his driver speeds us away.
My wet hair is plastered to my face, and a bit of it slaps him in the face when I turn my head to look at him. “How did you know something would be wrong with my car?” I demand. “Did you have something to do with it?”
“N-no,” he says, more flustered than I’ve ever seen him. “I just had a terrible feeling, and with the weather, I—”
“Bad weather doesn’t make a car shut itself off!” I cry. “Bertram, what’s going on?”
The car is tailing us, and when I glance at the speedometer, we’re exceeding eighty miles per hour in a city grid, blowing through stop signs and swerving around the few cars that are out on the road in this weather.
“Don’t tell me this is your ex-girlfriend,” I say, turning in my seat to look at the black car with the tinted windows. It’s the same one that was in the hospital parking garage.
“I warned you to stay away from me!” he cries.
“Oh, not this again.” I grab his arm, my fingers digging tightly into his muscle.
“Annie is dead, isn’t she? And this is all some sort of scare tactic to stop me from finding out about it.
” Being charming hasn’t worked. Being sweet, being romantic, and even being blunt.
This has gone far enough, and it’s time to switch gears. “Admit it!”
The shock in his eyes is immediate. “What?” he rasps. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Because Annie Clarke doesn’t exist, Bertram. I’ve looked. It’s the twenty-twenties; everyone has some sort of social media profile. But there isn’t a trace, not even an embarrassing college Facebook photo from decades ago.”
Apart from the thunder and the splash of the car hitting the puddles as it speeds through the city, there’s silence. I crash into Bertram as we take a hard turn, and he steadies me.
“I never told you her last name,” he says softly.
“What? You must have.”
“No,” he says, with deliberation. “I know I didn’t.
” He stares at me. “Oh God, she’s sent you, hasn’t she?
That’s why she’s following me again, just when I thought she had finally eased up.
Just when I thought I’d made my life so boring, stripped myself completely of any personal relationships, made my life nothing just to get away from her, you’ve gone and brought her back. ”
I’m so confused that I don’t know how to respond. He sounds so certain that I begin to wonder if he’s suffering from some kind of delusion. I’d almost think Annie Clarke didn’t exist at all, except that his own sister confirmed it when she asked me to look for her.
He pulls at his hair and then strikes out and hits his fist against the door.
The sound of it makes me jump. “Why is this happening? I’m not the one who ended things.
I loved her!” I don’t know if he’s talking to me or to some painful old memory that keeps following him like an apparition.
“After that day under the waterfall, I woke up the next morning and she had gone. Abandoned our whole vacation and flown home to her parents. They convinced her to go back to medical school, and she didn’t have the nerve to tell me, so she just left. ”
I blink. “She’s the one who left you?”
“It would be years before I saw her again,” he confesses. “We tried to rekindle—we even got engaged, but I wasn’t the same person as when we first met. Neither was she. The fire had gone out.”
“But then why was she so angry?” I ask. “Why is she doing all of this to you?”