Chapter 19 #3
All at once, her brain turned to scrambled eggs.
None of this made any sense. Her mother had gotten pregnant young, and, when her boyfriend, Cami’s father, had fled, she’d moved to Tennessee with her parents, where Cami had been born and raised.
She remembered knocking on the door of this apartment building a year ago, the painted blue door pulling open to reveal a flustered Lenny trying to hold back an excited Holmes.
She’d gotten the address after a significant amount of digging through old records featuring her father’s name.
Lenny’s home had once been Steven Whitmore’s, Cami’s dad.
She’d explained, flushed and embarrassed, how she came to be on Lenny’s stoop, and who she was looking for, and Lenny had only frowned thoughtfully and told her no one by that name lived there.
But if Lenny didn’t know her dad, then why did she have his prom photo in an album stashed under her couch?
Holmes tucked his head against her thigh, and Cami huffed a laugh that was just broken enough for her to realize she was crying.
Lenny had lied to her. This whole time, all the months since she’d given Cami a job and a place to live.
She’d known exactly why Cami came to California, what she’d been looking for, and she’d had all the answers, and for whatever reason, decided Cami didn’t need them.
Lenny was the only connection to her family Cami had.
Lenny was her grandmother. And she’d known and never said anything.
She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her T-shirt, blew out an exhale, and turned the page again.
There were several pages left, populated with a few photos of Lenny’s son—her dad—clutching a high school diploma, then at the graduation ceremony for some sort of military training, judging by the uniform.
Then, a newspaper clipping, before two more empty pages.
She flipped back to the cut-out, dark text on yellowed newsprint.
It was an obituary: STEVEN H. WHITMORE, 1980 - 2006.
Killed serving his country. Predeceased by father Joseph Whitmore. Survived by mother Lenore Seaver.
No mention of the girl he’d gotten pregnant or the daughter he’d abandoned.
He was dead. He’d been dead this whole time, and Lenny had said nothing.
She’d let Cami sit up in her little apartment above the store, idly googling her father’s name every few weeks in the hopes that he’d be mentioned somewhere.
Refreshing her Ancestry DNA account as though he’d magically appear.
How had she missed the obituary in all her searching?
Had the Santa Monica newspapers even published obituaries from the 2000s online?
It didn’t matter. Whether she’d missed it, or whether it had never been online for her to find, Lenny had known and chosen to keep it from her. Like Cami didn’t deserve to know if her father was alive or dead.
She couldn’t feel her hands or feet, but somehow she stood. She fumbled her phone out of her pocket, Holmes nosing around her toes as she swiped for Lenny’s number on the speed dial screen.
Before it started ringing, she disconnected.
She couldn’t talk to Lenny. What would she say? She’d only yell at her, cry and demand answers, and where would that get her?
It would go badly. And as much as she didn’t care, as much as she yearned to inflict on Lenny some fraction of the pain that was pulsing through her veins like septic blood, a tiny voice in the back of her head reminded her of one important fact: Lenny was her landlord and boss.
If she lashed out the way she wanted to, she could wind up homeless as well as jobless. She could find another job easily enough, but she’d never find another place she could afford on part-time wages. She’d have to drop out of school. If she confronted Lenny, she’d lose everything.
She had to leave. This was too much for her to process here, in Lenny’s home. In her dad’s home.
But she hadn’t walked Holmes yet.
She considered texting Tristan and asking him to do it for her, but that would inevitably raise questions she didn’t want to answer. So, head swimming, she strapped Holmes into his harness and grabbed a poop baggy. She could get this out of the way and head home; maybe the air would do her good.
She couldn’t say the air was cleaner outside—it was L.A. after all—but it smelled like air instead of cloves and marijuana. It was an immediate relief to be out of the usually comforting scent of Lenny’s apartment, even with a hundred-fifty-pound dog jerking on her shoulder.
While she walked, the sound of her shoes rhythmically hitting the pavement was grounding. Holmes tugged on her, sniffing his way along the sidewalk and the sporadic tufts of weeds cropping up through the cracks. The buzzing in her brain started to fade the farther she got from Lenny’s.
Maybe she was being too hasty. This was a problem, yes, but one she could handle.
She needed space, which posed an issue when she worked for Lenny and rented from her.
She’d been able to save a bit of money with her discounted rent—which, she now realized, was likely the result of guilt on Lenny’s part—but probably not enough to find another place to live.
At least, not one that had electricity or running water, let alone the internet she’d need to keep up with her homework.
So she couldn’t find another place to live.
Maybe she could get another job? She liked the store, and it was convenient that she lived right above it, but she could look into freelance coding projects.
If she didn’t rely on Lenny for her income, she would feel better.
Some distance between them would help give her perspective.
Her phone buzzed as she was considering the likelihood of getting good recommendations for freelance sites from her teachers.
It vibrated in her pants, and her blood ran cold.
It was probably Lenny, texting to check up on Holmes or letting her know what time she’d be home.
It would be an innocuous text, but the idea of replying as though she didn’t know, hadn’t found out, made her feel like someone had stuffed cotton balls in her ears.
Breathing deeply to steady herself, she withdrew her phone from her pocket and lifted it, depressing the power button just to light the screen.
It wasn’t Lenny at all. It was Des.
How presumptuous would you find it if I said I bought a vibrating cock ring?
All the air left her lungs in a rush of laughter, and Holmes lifted his head at her curiously before approaching a lamp post to do his business. Just the pure Des-ness of the text made her feel lighter, freer. Maybe what she needed was a good old-fashioned distraction.
Just presumptuous enough.
When should I come by?