Chapter 6
I pluck three glossy photos from the bottom of a drawer.
We’ve been at this for almost a week. I’ve taken loads of stuff to a consignment store, made three trips to Goodwill, and paid several visits to the dump.
Beau has stopped by for a few hours each day, helping me dig through the worst of the detritus to find clues.
We’ve thinned the debris, leaving only a few piles to contend with. And we haven’t killed each other.
“Look at these,” I say.
Beau accepts the pictures between careful fingertips and squints at the worn photo on top. “You look like a rainbow sherbet ice cream cone.”
“Well, I couldn’t have you upstage the bride.”
The photo captures our backyard civil ceremony, presided over by his older cousin, Shelley, with my incontinent one-eyed mutt, Billy Goat, as our witness.
Someone had strung wildflowers on his tree house to create a makeshift altar.
Beau was dressed as Spider-Man, complete with the plastic mask, and I donned my favorite dress from that summer—a rainbow-striped tube top connected to a chiffon chartreuse skirt.
Beau is shooting fictional webs at the camera with flexed wrists as I hold a bouquet of wilted dandelions.
We were five, I think. But the day lived on in infamy.
Dad called Beau my “first husband” for the next decade.
“Can I keep this?” Beau asks, looking away.
“Be my guest,” I say, although I’m unsure if he’s serious.
He sets it on the chair behind him before returning to his earlier task. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
We’re almost done, but I glance around the space to hide my disappointment at losing my sparring partner.
It’s been nice having him here. There’s something familiar and comforting in the way we finish each other’s sentences, even when we’re bickering.
We’ve found a few clues—Mary’s place and date of birth, my parents’ marriage certificate, and a few photos I hadn’t seen before.
They will come in handy. But I haven’t found pages 2 through 10 of the original legal document.
And there is no letter from Dad explaining everything he never told me.
It’s like finding blank pages at the end of a book.
“Where are you going? Home?”
“No. I have to do some book research. I have several interviews set up—beginning in SoCal and traveling up the West Coast.”
“Oh.” I look away, biting my bottom lip. He’s stuffy, distant, and sometimes arrogant, but I’m accustomed to his company now. “Thanks for all of this.” I brush my hands against my shorts. “For an academic, you are surprisingly good at manual labor.”
He shakes his head but otherwise doesn’t react. “Are you staying here or heading back to LA?”
I shrug. I don’t know what’s worse: wallowing in the space that has borne witness to my pain or fleeing to a place with no memory of Dad at all. Beau’s trip sounds more interesting than either of my options. He gets to escape.
“Are you meeting with the liars or their victims?” I ask, deflecting.
“Liar—” He clears his throat and closes his eyes. “The people with secrets.”
“Sounds like an uplifting vacay.”
“It’s work.” He heaves a box into his arms, and I wander into the kitchen to refill my coffee.
When Beau steps through the doorway a moment later, I’m at the window staring out over the brown lawn and the cracked walkway linking the porch to the sidewalk.
My Realtor has hired a contractor to do a bit of work—exterior paint, cosmetic touches, minor repairs—before the house goes on the market.
But I suspect the new buyer will scrape and rebuild.
And that will be it. My childhood, as misleading as it was, will be wiped off the map.
“Want me to help you do some online research to find your mom before I leave?”
I turn to see him leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed.
He looks so handsome in the fractured light coming in from the kitchen window—the sunbeam highlights the hard angles of his cheekbones and the soft lines of his mouth.
I want to collapse into him, let him wrap those impressive arms around my waist, squeeze away all my pain, and maybe kiss away all my confusion.
I look away and shake off the absurd fantasy.
I may not recognize him in that body, but I can’t forget he’s Beauregard Augustin.
He’s quicksand and would drag me deeper into self-doubt and melancholy—he can’t be my escape.
“What’s the worst lie you’ve heard so far?” I ask instead. We haven’t talked about his book. I think it’s bizarre he wants to speak to liars and paint their deceptions with watercolor words.
“I haven’t ranked them. Because I’m trying not to pass judgment.”
That’s peculiar. The Beau I knew had a metaphorical gavel on hand for every moral infraction. “Then what are you trying to do?”
He hesitates for so long I’m not sure he’ll respond. But then he drops his voice to a whisper. “I just want to understand why.”
Lani invites me to dinner for Beau’s last night in town.
I’m too tired to be good company, but she will do most of the talking.
She has a feast of sweet and sour chicken, sweet rolls, and corn spread over the counter.
The scent of her food, mixed with Lani’s perfume and the essential Augustin of it all, is comforting but mournful.
When I peer into the kitchen, Beau’s dad, Arthur, is pouring wine.
He looked youthful and alive on the podium at Dad’s service, delivering a eulogy that feels euphemistic in hindsight.
But here, in the overhead lights, I see how much Arthur has aged.
Dad had been here, watching a Padres game with Arthur and Beau, when he had his stroke.
Arthur and Lani followed him to the hospital, and Beau was the unlucky soul who called to tell me.
He tried five times before leaving a voicemail—I didn’t have his number programmed in my phone, so I thought it was a telemarketer.
But when I raced into the hospital after fighting traffic from LA, I caught a glimpse of Beau and his parents still in the waiting room.
Arthur turns and smiles at me now, lines cutting deep grooves in his cheeks.
“Ophelia Rose,” he says in his soft French lilt as he reaches for me.
I step into him, and he kisses my cheeks before cupping my shoulders in his hands and leaning back to assess me.
“You don’t look well, ma puce . I thought Beau was helping you. ”
“He is,” I say, defensive for both of us. “I’m just tired.” I ran out of moisturizer two days ago and haven’t been sleeping well. I know I’m not looking my best. But thanks, Arthur, for noticing.
“You’ll eat. It’ll do you good.” He hands me a stemless wineglass and clinks it with his own. “So nice to have you here. You sure you must sell?”
“My bank account is definitely sure.”
“Ahh,” he sighs. “But we’re too old for new neighbors. What if they’re young people who play terrible music and don’t tend to their yard?”
“Papa, Ophelia is a young person who plays terrible music and doesn’t tend to her yard,” Beau says as he walks into the kitchen and digs in the fridge for a beer. But he winks at me, and something about that intimacy makes my stomach flutter.
“Hey,” I say as Arthur chuckles.
“We can forgive you everything, ma puce . But I can hold a grudge against squatters who take over your home.” Arthur grins.
It’s strange to see that Beau has grown up to look so much like Arthur; he favored Lani as a kid. But now, Beau’s a mix of both—with Arthur’s height, jawline, and bad vision, and Lani’s gorgeous tan and thick hair.
Lani follows Beau into the kitchen and greets me with a fierce hug. She pulls back, and I lean over to pick up the item I brought along. “I finished going through everything.” I slide a heavy leather case onto the counter. “And I want you to have these.”
“Oh, Ophelia,” Lani sighs. “We couldn’t.”
Arthur leans in, opening the latch and lifting the lid to reveal rainbow rows of ceramic poker chips. “But Henry taught you to play with this set.”
“You both taught me to play. Besides, you need the practice more than me now.”
Arthur gasps and then chuckles. “Ah, ma puce .” His eyes go glassy as he looks at my dad’s heirloom set. “If we accept these, you must promise to come home to play with us. Maybe for your birthdays—we can have a tournament like old times.” He glances from me to Beau and back.
Beau and I look to each other at the same time—our gazes locked. The thing is, Beau and I share the same birthday. He was born promptly at 8:00 a.m., and I came screaming into the world at 8:00 p.m. Dad used to say that the fact we were born under the same sign proved astrology was bullshit.
We celebrated together throughout our childhood.
We visited the San Diego Zoo when we turned five, Disneyland at ten, and SeaWorld at twelve.
But we’d always come back here for a poker tournament and cake.
Separate cakes because Beau’s preferred flavor was the wrong one.
Who the hell likes carrot cake? He still hasn’t forgiven me for blowing out his candles when we turned nine.
But he was lagging, and I was ready to kick ass in Texas Hold’em.
Arthur wraps an arm around my waist and kisses my temple as Lani squeezes my hand.
It sounds so tempting—something to look forward to at the end of the summer—but Beau says, “Not possible. The semester starts that Monday, and I’ll have to be home by then.
” Just when I think the ice is thawing between us, he freezes me out.
Lani flashes him a scowl for killing the moment before saying, “Dinner is almost ready. Just waiting on the rice.”
“Phe, can I borrow you for a minute?” Beau says from behind me.