Chapter 7
Late the next morning, we settle into Beau’s Subaru hatchback with our bags shoved in the back, my laptop at my feet, and his miserable indie bullshit playing at a monotonous volume.
Lani packed three grocery bags full of snacks— li hing mui , teriyaki seaweed, macadamia nut cookies, mango slices, and kettle chips.
She hovered and cooed about how adorable it was that we were taking a road trip.
“It’s for work, Mom,” Beau had grumbled.
But Lani was undeterred and stood in the driveway to send us off with as much vigor as wedding guests waving to the newlyweds.
“So, what’re the sleeping arrangements on this trip?” I ask, about a day later than I should have.
Beau casts me a wary glance. “You’ll have your own room at each stop.”
“Are you worried I’ll use a Sharpie on your face while you’re asleep again? Because I promise I learned my lesson.” I laugh.
“It took me a week to wash that off, you know. It looked like I had a flower tattoo on my cheek.”
I swallow another laugh, because it sounds like he’s still holding a grudge.
“Yeah, well, you superglued my eye shut while playing doctor,” I say. “Which will take a lifetime to forget.”
“You know I felt terrible about that. And you were the one who told me it was Visine.”
“So you’ve claimed. But that’s not how I remember it.”
I dig into the li hing mui as Beau slips into the second lane on the 5. He darts his focus to me and wrinkles his nose. “Remember, those are prunes covered in salt,” he offers. “Don’t expect me to pull over every ten minutes when you get the runs.”
“Don’t expect me to hold you when this depressing music makes you cry.”
He turns up the volume with an impatient flick of his wrist.
“Much better!” I shout over it. “It will drown out the sound of your tears.”
He shakes his head at me. “It’s mellow, not depressing.”
I pick up his phone, where the song title scrolls across the screen. “This song is literally called ‘Sorrow.’”
“I like this band.”
“And I like music that doesn’t make me question my existence. I don’t need a soundtrack to do that.”
He fights a smile. “Fine. But I reserve the right to drop you at a bus stop if you play bubblegum pop.”
I scroll through his phone and settle on a playlist of acoustic singer-songwriters. Just shy of Top 40, skirting indie. He watches me, and his brows pinch together, the well-worn groove between his eyes becoming more prominent. He waits a beat before settling back into the driver’s seat, appeased.
Since we packed up this morning, Beau has been Professor Augustin, determined to establish our new working relationship. As soon as I slid into the car, I entered his office. His anxiety is oozing from him. This is going to be a long trip.
“First crisis averted,” I say. “We got this.”
“We’ve been driving for ten minutes, Ophelia. The fact we’ve had a crisis at all is the noteworthy bit.”
José González is strumming the guitar through the speakers while Beau swerves around a gaggle of rubberneckers who’ve paused to inspect a Prius with a flat tire.
“Who’s our first liar?” I ask.
Beau gives me the side-eye.
“Where’s our first stop?” I inquire instead.
“Barstow.”
“Well, there’s your answer. I would be an asshole, too, if I had to live in Barstow.”
“You’d be an asshole?” he grumbles under his breath.
I ignore him. I am a big person. “You couldn’t find a rich fraud in Malibu or somewhere? There must be a bunch of dishonest people with ski lodges, vineyards, beachfront homes ...”
Beau waves a hand toward the coast as it stretches out beside us. “It’s not too late to drop you off. I’ll even throw in a sleeping bag so you can sleep beachside.”
“Ha!”
“You sure you don’t have things to do here?” he asks.
“Nope.” I’d finished clearing out the house yesterday afternoon and packed up the things I want to keep, storing them in the attic for now.
It’s not much to show for sixty years of existence.
But a life full of lies has a way of washing the nostalgia from the blood.
Clearing out my childhood home after discovering Dad’s deception is the opposite of grocery shopping when famished.
I may live to regret the indiscriminate purge.
But it was therapeutic to toss all the trash he’d hoarded.
I met with the real estate agent, Ronald, at the crack of dawn this morning. He has a contractor who will start renovations immediately. I downgraded his expectations about the improvements I could afford. He downgraded my expectations about my desired sale price.
“You don’t have important things to do in LA?” Beau tries.
“I have a plant. But it’s probably dead by now.”
“That’s rather pathetic, Phe.” He tries to soften the judgment with the endearment, but it cuts too close to the artery.
“Yeah, well ... what’s waiting for you at home?”
“Not much, actually.”
My eyes skitter over his bare ring finger, his tense posture. “Right,” I say, and glance out the window. “You looked perfect together on Insta. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Beau taps his thumbs against the leather-clad steering wheel and squints at the road ahead.
“Well, at least you did the thing. The engagement. The wedding. Met the major heteronormative milestone. My longest relationship was in high school—Matty. And you know how dysfunctional that was.”
“You don’t still talk to that asshole, do you?” There’s a bit of venom in his voice.
“No.” But I don’t want to admit how long our tumultuous relationship persisted after high school.
No doubt Beau would judge me. There was no love lost between them.
“As an adult, my longest relationship was only six months—with a mediocre tattoo artist. Three years if you count friends with benefits, but most people don’t.
” I shrug, looking to Beau, who doesn’t appear to be listening.
“Romantic commitment is a requirement, apparently.”
“Ophelia,” he growls. “Fifteen minutes and you’ve broken two of my boundaries. Controlling the radio and talking endlessly.”
“Fine. I’ll shut up.”
He grabs the phone and launches us into Death Cab for Cutie.
When Beau mentioned a West Coast road trip, I’d pictured palm trees, redwood trees, grapevines, and sandy beaches.
I didn’t anticipate we’d head inland to the brutal desert—to sparsely populated towns where hope came to die.
When we pull into Barstow, the temperature is over 100 degrees.
The panorama is flat and sizzling—sand blankets the shoulder with tufts of cartoonish plants emerging from the plain like a Seussian dystopia.
Stucco homes litter the landscape, set behind treeless streets and chain-link fences.
“How fast can you type?” Beau’s voice is raspy after hours of silence.
“Like lightning,” I say. He casts a skeptical glance my way. “Seriously.”
“Some of our interview subjects are reluctant to be recorded. So taking dictation would be helpful.”
“See, I can be helpful,” I say. “Who’s up first?”
“Natalia Bridgewater,” Beau says, but offers no details.
“How’d you get people to volunteer?” Lies rely on secrecy. Sharing their truth with a stranger so he can bind it into a bestseller is the antithesis of that.
“I have several hundred nameless confessions from people eager to unburden themselves behind the veil of anonymity. But they were short and created more questions than answers. I put a separate call out to folks for in-depth interviews. I’ve done dozens over the phone, but some didn’t feel comfortable giving me their stories unless they could meet me, shake my hand.
I don’t understand their motivations, but I guess we’ll find out. ”
Beau turns onto a short road that dead-ends at a dusty lot, with two boxy homes perched along the same side of the street.
We stop in front of a beige house that blends into the desert backdrop, the lone pop of color a flamingo-pink patio umbrella.
The heat rushes in like a swift tide when I pop out and hoist my backpack to my shoulder.
As I stand, Beau is right there, caging me in behind the open door. “Type quickly. Speak minimally,” he says.
“Sit there and look pretty? How very Mad Men of you, Beauregard.” I brush the wrinkles out of my navy shirtdress. It’s paper thin and sleeveless to help me survive the apocalyptic temperature, but the collar and belt add notes of professionalism.
“This has nothing to do with ... I’m not being ...”
“Sexist?” I finish for him.
He growls. “You volunteered to be my assistant, not my partner. It has nothing to do with you being a woman. But you haven’t done the research or established the relationships with the subjects.”
“If you call them ‘subjects’ to their faces, you might need me to do the talking.”
He folds his arms across his wide chest. I imagine this might intimidate some poor research assistant, but I remember when I made him pee his pants by coming out in full costume to lip-sync Britney Spears’s “... Baby One More Time.” He can pretend to love serious music and be a serious professor with professional standards, but I recall watching soap operas with him in identical mud masks and hair curlers.
“Fine,” I say. “But if you revert to academic snobbery, I’m intervening for your own good.” I reach up to fold the collar of his polo, and he startles at the contact, frowning as he stares at my fingertips.
“What are you—”
“Making you look pretty,” I say. “In case we need to switch roles.” I pat his shoulder and smile before snaking around him toward the house.
He circles my wrist and beckons me back with a gentle tug. “And no judgment.”
I startle at the feel of his warm hand on my wrist but cover it with a chuckle. “I’m not the moral warden in this partnership, Beauregard.”
He grinds his molars and narrows his eyes but ultimately releases me, and we walk side by side toward our first interviewee.
Natalia Bridgewater swings the door open before we step onto the porch, with an outraged Yorkshire terrier at her heels. “Shh, Georgina, shh,” she scolds.
Natalia is not who I expected had I been given time to form an expectation. She must have been a tall woman in her youth, but she’s stooped over a cane, her spine bent like a tree in a storm. Deep grooves stretch across her forehead and make wells down her cheeks.
“Ms. Bridgewater, hello. I’m Beau Augustin.” He extends his hand, a warm smile blooming on his lips. “And this is my assistant—”
“You said it would just be you.” Natalia scans me from head to toe before darting her cloudy gray eyes back to Beau.
“Ophelia will be taking notes. I understand you had reservations about me recording the conversation. Everything will be anonymous.”
Natalia releases a small grunt, and Georgina growls in agreement. “Ophelia? Like that tragic Hamlet character? Do your parents hate you?”
“Jury’s out, actually,” I say, offering a placating smile.
Beau laces his fingers in mine and squeezes. It’s so quick, and his hand is gone before I can reciprocate the gesture. Was it to comfort me or warn me to stay quiet? Either way, it startled me enough to accomplish both.
“Ms. Bridgewater, I can assure you—” Beau begins, but Natalia holds up her hand and opens the door wider as Georgina scuttles back into the dark hallway.
“Well, come in. I don’t want the neighbors to see you lurking.”
I scan the street behind us—it’s so empty that an illusory tumbleweed cartwheels by, but I step through the threshold into the dark, spartan space.
Natalia guides us into a living room with a beige love seat positioned in front of a square window too small for the wall.
She takes a tentative seat in a rocking chair, and Beau and I sit on either side of the love seat.
The cushions are old and plush, so we sink into each other, our thighs pressed together until I clamber to hug the armrest with one elbow.
I lift my laptop from my bag, flipping it open to the empty Word doc with “Liars” typed at the top of the page.
Beau does a double-take, his frown deepening before he reaches across me to hit the backspace with the tenacity of a woodpecker.
All right, no snarky titles. Got it. I retitle the document “Very Important Book.” Beau shakes his head, clears his throat, and turns to Natalia. She has the dog on her lap, who lets out an aggrieved, swallowed bark.
“Thank you for speaking with me. As I mentioned when we spoke on the phone, I am interested in the impact of secrets. I’m not writing a salacious book; instead, I want to uncover how history may have gotten it wrong—especially family histories.”
Natalia says, “Yeah, well. I read On Death’s Door and Homes Withheld . So I get what you’re going for. I like the way you look at things.”
“I am grateful for your trust.” Beau smiles and tips his glasses up his nose before settling back on the sofa. I fall into his side again. “We’re here to listen. So please, begin wherever you feel would be most helpful.”
“The beginning is as good a place as any,” Natalia sighs. “Fifty years ago, I killed a man.”