Kieran stood on the vinyl chair and leaned over the kitchen sink, wincing and complaining as Lila rinsed shampoo out of her hair and wrung it out with a dish towel. “You’re pulling it, Delilah!”
“It was full of cobwebs.”
She pulled her head to the side, her eyes wide with fear. “Black widows in my hair?!”
“Just dust and stuff. Hold still. We’re almost done.”
Elisabeth ignored this scene and moved the length of the room, opening cupboard doors and slamming them shut until she reached the cupboard next to the fridge where the cans and boxes of pasta were kept. “I need a little nibble. Something with protein.” She pulled out a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup and set it on the counter. “Where do you keep the can opener?”
“Second drawer.”
“You’re ripping out my hair!”
“Just stay still and it’ll be over quicker.”
“I don’t see it in here.” Elisabeth rooted through the jumble of scissors, extra keys, unraveled twine, and breath mints. “I can’t believe he lives like this.”
“At the back. The red plastic thing next to the garlic press.”
Elisabeth found it and set about attaching it to the lid of the can. “The lawyer was appalled that your father was able to get away with this for so long. He said even though things have changed, there’s still this belief that an abducted child isn’t in real danger if she’s with a parent. Makes for a whole lot of foot dragging and red tape, he said.” She repositioned the can opener and tried to puncture the lid. “But the worst part is what it does to the left-behind parent. Which was no surprise to me, that’s for certain. There’s nothing more devastating you can do to a person. It’s the parent left waiting and wondering who suffers the most.”
Lila didn’t look up. “It’s also the child.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Elisabeth slammed the can down on the tiles. “This can opener isn’t even sharp enough to bite into the metal.”
It had been just under two hours and still no word from the police about Victor and his whereabouts. He’d been gone at least three hours now. He could be down on Sunset, lapping up cappuccinos at a cozy café. Then again, he could be lying in a ditch someplace, injured, confused, waiting for help.
Elisabeth realigned the can opener and attempted to pierce the lid from a new angle. “I’ve been meaning to tell
you, I spoke to your teacher the other day. That Lichtenstein person.”
Lila spun around, her hands dripping wet and covered in conditioner. “You called Lichty? Why? There’s no arguing for the scholarship. Or my job.”
“Nothing to do with you.” Elisabeth raised her brows in reprimand. “I went into his studio to ask him to schedule me in, like we discussed. It would be good for his students, and quite frankly I need the money. Finn’s become something else. Started dating this young girl, spends all his time with her. Not only that but he raised my rent. I tell you, I never thought he was so talented. He’s dreaming if he thinks he’s going to make it in anything other than property management.”
Lila wasn’t listening. The thought of Lichty at the paint-splattered sinks listening, incredulous, as the woman wearing his bracelet sashayed in to ask him for a favor, even without the slightest chance of Lila seeing him again, ever, in her entire life—it was beyond mortifying. “Mum. There are other art programs in this city.”
Elisabeth rolled her eyes, still fussing with the can. “That was pretty much your teacher’s reply. Said he was ‘all booked up.’ Which is fine. I don’t need a place like L.A. Arts—such a pompous name. Who’s even heard of it? I’ll try UCLA, I think. They probably attract a much higher caliber of student anyway. And if they say no, well, I guess I’ll book our tickets home.” She banged the can onto the counter again. “This can opener is a piece of junk.” She opened the cupboard under the sink and hurled it into the trash can.
Lila stared at the way the plastic bag had crumpled over, unprepared for such force, then reached in and pulled the little red can opener out again, so irritated she could barely
speak. She stood upright and stared at Elisabeth. “Did you ever think I might happen to love this thing?” Lila opened the can in one motion and handed it to her mother.
“Well.” Elisabeth paused for a moment, confused, then laughed and poured the soup into a pot on the stove. “I guess I know what not to get you for Christmas.” When Lila didn’t answer, she added, “I’m sure your dad just went for a long walk. He’s probably spying on the house, waiting for me to leave so he can come home and watch TV.”
The phone rang and Lila jumped for it, her hands dripping water all over the floor. “Yes?”
“It’s Detective Jorgen, LAPD. Is this Lila?”
“Did you find him? Is he hurt?”
“You are Lila Mack?”
“Yes, yes. Where’s my father? Is he okay?”
“He’s…Well, I think you’d better come down to the station and see for yourself.”
Lila pressed her face between the dirty iron bars and watched him, sitting in profile, forearms resting on thighs, staring at the opposite wall with no more concern than if the bus he was waiting for were running a few minutes late. Beside him was a stainless-steel toilet with no seat and a graffitied message: jankowitz can suck my dick. Victor’s jaw muscle balled up and relaxed, balled up and relaxed, as he chewed contentedly on a piece of gum. Funny. She’d never known her father to chew gum before.
Even though he’d turned himself in, the sergeant had explained, they couldn’t release him. Not until they could get him before a judge at an arraignment hearing. Of course, judges weren’t like plumbers. You couldn’t offer them double-time to work Sundays. Victor would have to wait until Monday morning.
It was Saturday night.
“Dad.”
He looked up, smiled. “Mouse.”
“I’d have come earlier but—”
“I’m never coming to this place again. The food’s just terrible. Do you know they served me egg salad? I haven’t eaten egg salad in thirty years. I told the waiter to shove it up his ass.”
“You’re in the police station, Mister. And if you talk like that they may not feed you at all.”
He looked around his cell, his gaze resting at the gaping mouth of the toilet beside him. “Well, the place is disgusting.”
“You didn’t have to do this. You weren’t coherent when you turned yourself in. I’ll call a lawyer.”
He shook his head.
“We’ll get you out. I don’t even know if Mum will follow through. Maybe I can convince her to drop the charges.”
“Your mother tried to turn me in?”
“Don’t worry, you beat her to it.”
He set his hands on his belly, pleased. “Good. And don’t you go calling any lawyers. I knew exactly what I was doing when I checked in.”
“You’re in a holding cell at a police station, Dad. You’re not at the Chateau Marmont.”
“Don’t tell me where I am!”
“And they’ll put you in real jail.”
“They won’t put a sorry old crust of bread like me in regular jail. I’ve taken certain steps.”
“What steps?”
He tried to suppress a grin. “I’m not out of my head just yet. Headed there, but just managed to squeak in a little
something to protect myself. There are special places for the likes of me. My doctor confirmed it.”
So it was true. The Alzheimer’s. It shouldn’t have hit her so hard. She knew. She
knew
. But doctors confirming it took her breath away.
Her chest ached for him. For her. He was slipping further and further away. And even if they managed to slow the disease’s progression, sooner or later his physical self would be all she’d have left.
Then, far too young, he would be gone.
She cleared her throat. “So it’s true? It’s Alzheimer’s?”
“Seems they can’t get a definitive diagnosis until I’m dead, but yes, all signs point toward it. Strangely enough, it isn’t connected to your grandma. I don’t have the familial gene, which means you should be okay.”
“Dad.”
“Plus you take much better care of yourself than I did myself.”
“I don’t care about me right now.”
“Well, I do, Mouse. I definitely do.”
“And this is the reason you finally got yourself tested? So you could get diagnosed and put into some kind of psych lockdown?”
“It’s the reason I did a few things that might have seemed…out of the ordinary. Couldn’t afford to take any chances.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You faked this memory loss?”
“No, no. But I might have amped things up a bit once or twice. So I appear sufficiently far along. Stealing that little dog was never really going to hurt anyone. I took excellent care of her, did I not?”
She was nearly too stunned to speak. “You stole her
on purpose? What about the Prius? And the pug owner’s car?”
He pushed his hair off his forehead, confused. After a few moments, he grunted. “If I touched that hippie bastard’s car, he damned well deserved it. The way he parks—like he owns the whole canyon!”
“Oh God…”
“Believe me, I plan to pay.”
“You think it’s going to be much better than prison? It’s going to be terrible to be locked up—and you’ll still be locked up. Let me call a lawyer and explain. There were extenuating circumstances…”
“I will not be fighting anything. Can’t undo what I did, but I do plan to repent.”
“Do you understand what that means? It might not be jail, but you won’t be able to change your mind. You’d be living there for a long time. Maybe forever—I don’t know.”
He stretched his arms behind his head, leaned back against the dirty wall. “Sounds about right.”
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see the balding guard had returned. “I’m sorry, miss. It’s time to go.”
Lila nodded, then pushed her face through the bars. “Dad? I have to leave now.” When he didn’t react, she said, “You’re sleeping here tonight. I’ll come check on you in the morning.”
He stood and unzipped his fly, turning to face the lidless toilet.
“Okay!” Lila spun around. “You have a good night, Dad.”
The sound of an urgent stream hitting smooth metal followed by a contented sigh. “Nighty-night, Mouse.”
Tears pricked her eyes as she followed the guard out into the main office. “You’ll take good care of him?”
He smiled. “We will.”
“Sometimes he has trouble sleeping. You know, if it’s noisy.”
“Can’t control the noise on a Saturday night in here, miss. That’s our busiest night.”
“With the dementia, if he doesn’t sleep, it can get worse. I just don’t want him to wake up in the morning—all disoriented—and panic, you know? He might forget this afternoon ever happened.”
“I’ll tell you what. If it looks like he’s having trouble, I have a white-noise machine in my bedroom. I live nearby. I don’t mind popping home on my dinner break to pick it up.”
For the first time in memory, Lila reached out to another adult and hugged him.
O
N THE
WAY home, Lila pulled the rental car into the parking lot of the drugstore on La Cienega, wandered inside, and located the hair product aisle. Her fingers trailed along the boxes, across the perfect faces of contented models, and stopped when she came to a woman with dirty-blond waves.
She couldn’t get out of the store and get up to the cabin fast enough. If she had to spend one more day as a coppery redhead, she’d cut off all her hair. Lila marched toward the door with the package of hair dye in hand, slapped down a ten-dollar bill for the confused cashier, and left.
Lila couldn’t say what made her sit up at dawn and look about her room from the unfamiliar vantage point of the lower bunk. Or what made her pull on jeans, Wellies, and an oatmeal sweater, wake up her sister, bundle her up, and sneak out into the steely light of a morning that was still only made of skittering birds and dew.
It was an adventure, she told the sleepy Kieran, who’d been loathe to appear outdoors without the dignity of her pleated skirt. It was the change in Lila’s appearance, the return to her natural dark blond, that made Kieran sit up. The younger girl, who had gone to bed with one sister and woken up with another, was content to head out onto the trails as siblings who now looked astonishingly alike, and insisted upon bundling herself in jeans and a shrunken sweater of Lila’s to match.
Ditching the uniform, if only this once, had to be a good sign.
We’re going out for breakfast, Lila told her. Granola bars and water at the tippy top of the city with the sun creeping up their backs to warm their hair. They slipped out the door to find Elisabeth, zipped up in a windbreaker, squatting on the steps and enjoying a coffee and cigarette.
“Mummy!” Kieran ran across the porch and wrapped herself around their mother.
“Sweetie.” Elisabeth’s eyes widened when Lila sat down next to her. “Delilah. Your hair.”
“Time for a change.”
Elisabeth ran her fingers through it, enthralled. “You look like my girl again. My beautiful girl.”
Lila stood up, irritated by her mother’s touch. She’d slept very little. Kieran made for a sweaty, thrashing top-bunk mate. But squirming aside, Lila had lain awake for hours trying to decide what to do about Elisabeth. It was too late for Lila, but Kieran still had a shot at childhood. “We were just heading out for a hike. Can you do rough terrain in those shoes?”
Elisabeth looked down at her slip-ons and laughed. “Anything for my children.” She stood up and dusted off her sunny skirt. “Where are we headed?”
Lila reached for Kieran’s hand. “Any ideas, Kieran Scarlett?”
Turned out the child was plenty nimble, leaping from rock to rock, stick to stick, in Lila’s old rain boots. As they traversed the back of a shaded rise and worked their way up to where the tips of the grass were tinged with morning, Lila purposely slowed to allow Kieran to run ahead.
“Mum. We need to talk.”
Elisabeth slipped her arm through Lila’s. “Sounds yummy.”
“This is serious.”
“Now you’re making me nervous.”
“It’s too late for me. I don’t even want to talk about that, other than to say I get it now.”
“Get what?”
“The whole Dad taking me and everything. Mum, he was scared. Doesn’t make it right, but he did what he thought he had to do.” She looked at her mother. “I know about the accident. The bike.”
Kieran came racing back along the path and handed them each a purple wildflower. She giggled and raced off again.
“This is so good for her,” said Elisabeth. “Nice fresh air. Early-morning exercise.”
“Mum, I know about you accusing him.”
Elisabeth walked along in silence, then reached into her pocket and lit a cigarette. “It’s funny. Just last night I was thinking about the accident.”
“What happened, exactly? I know I was on my bike…”
“Of course, I wasn’t there. But it seems you were playing around on the driveway. Went over a jump or something, typical kid stuff. Anyway, I figured out that that moment changed my entire life. If that moment had been different, none of this would have happened.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“I also made a decision not to dwell on the past anymore. What’s done is done. Justice is finally being served, no matter who went to the police first. Much healthier for all of us to look forward. Stay positive.”
“Looking forward is what we need to discuss. For Kieran.”
“Kieran?”
“She’s young. She needs more order. She needs to feel secure enough to be a child. It’s why she’s trying so hard to be grown up. She wants attention from the adults around her—and, believe me, I’m just as guilty for ignoring her.”
“You’re saying I ignore Kieran?”
“I’m saying she doesn’t feel protected. Look at the way she grew up, surrounded by the overwhelming issue of me. The feeling that life isn’t safe. Then you’re so ready to trust her to any stranger who seems kind of cool or has a few bucks.”
“I am very careful about who is around Kieran.”
“That Finn guy? Come on, Mum.”
Elisabeth began to nod, her eyes narrowing in the angled sunlight. “I see what’s happened here. Your father’s poisoned you. Delilah, listen to me: It is vital to trust the good in people. To never give in to this paranoia the media feed us. That sort of fear is the end of community. There is love all around us, do you see that? And look—the person who kidnapped you wasn’t a stranger or one of my friends. It was your own father.”
Lila kept walking. She’d had enough of her mother’s moral stance. It was hugely flawed and only served to magnetize what Lila already knew: neither of her parents was what they appeared.
“I have never left Kieran in any danger. Not for a second.”
“Mum.”
Elisabeth waved her hand, turned away. “No. I spend a lifetime trying to find you and this is how you treat me?”
“This is about what’s best for Kieran. Nothing more.”
“Now you’re saying I’m not what’s best?”
“Mum
.”
“I am a good mother. Nobody can tell me I don’t love my girls.” Her chest heaved up and down now.
Why did Elisabeth have to be so delicate? So frail? Surely it would have been easier to confront a woman with big wide shoulders and a commanding bosom. But Elisabeth, she was nothing but a kid herself. This mother, whom Lila had dreamed about all these years—had imagined into a near-mythical being made of nothing but breast milk and kisses and squishy maternal selflessness, whose only flaw was the odd fleck of paint beneath her fingernails—was in reality a self-absorbed child, cunning and insecure and too bewitching for her own good. And, right now, on the verge of tears.
Up ahead, Kieran stood on a small rise and pointed up a crest, her face agape with horror. “Look, a wolf.”
Lila left Elisabeth and jogged closer. It wasn’t a wolf; it was Slash, lying on his side in a small clearing, exhausted, wild-eyed, and panting in the morning light.
“I know that animal.” She started to crawl up through the grass.
Elisabeth called, “Come back here, Delilah! That thing could have rabies.”
But Lila was already scrabbling up the slope. As she got closer, she could see the glint of metal around his thick ruff. Snare. A camouflaged loop of wire placed level with a coyote’s head. Typically, animals walked into it unknowingly. It was a savage, archaic method of trapping, not only indiscriminate in terms of catching a particular coyote, but could easily trap a family dog or young deer. Death by snare was a slow, agonizing death.
“Please, baby. That’s a vicious animal. It’s trapped for a reason.”
One of Slash’s paws was wrapped around the wire, inadvertently forcing the noose around his neck even tighter. She approached carefully, inching closer slowly enough that she could dart out of reach if Slash got testy. He didn’t. His sides heaved up and down as he watched her approach.
When she was within a couple of feet, she stopped and dropped down low, murmuring, “It’s okay, boy. Easy now.”
It was clear he was too injured, too exhausted, to attack, so she crawled close and unwound the wire from his foreleg. This left a little slack in the wire, hopefully enough to free him without moving him closer. First she let him sniff her hand, then stroked his shoulder, his head, behind his ear. There was no reaction whatsoever, so she let her fingers travel up the wire into the bloodied fur around his neck where she began to work it loose and cradled his head while she slipped the wire off. He was free.
“Delilah, he’ll kill us all!”
No surprise, Slash didn’t budge.
Lila looked back at Kieran, pointed to the water bottle in her hand. Kieran tossed it. Using one hand as a spout, she poured a trickle of water between the coyote’s teeth. He didn’t react, just let the water pass through his mouth and pool in the dirt beneath his snout.
She continued to dribble water between his teeth until she saw his throat contract. He’d swallowed. It was a good sign. Slowly, sparingly, she offered him water until he was able to lift his head off the ground and lap from her hand, his tongue impossibly soft and gentle. He paused for a moment, looking around and panting, before struggling to his feet. He chanced one more drink, threw her a look that
might have said thank you but probably said, “You’re one of them,” and wandered unsteadily into the vegetation.
Beautiful creature. Free for now.
Whether he was raised in a kitchen or a canyon, whether he mistook the local cats for prey or limited his meals to mice and ground squirrels, it was Slash’s all-knowing admirers, people like the Angels, who’d offered him a taste of what it meant to hang with the humans. It meant a full belly. And way too much trust to keep a safe distance.
There was no turning back for Slash. Anyone who’d lived in Rykert Canyon for any length of time had heard it before: A fed coyote is a dead coyote.
Lila returned to where her mother stood, helpless, shrunken, wringing her hands.
It was time for someone in this threesome to step up and be the adult.
Lila needed it. Elisabeth needed it. And God knows Kieran needed it.
“I thought that beast would kill you. All this time without you and then you’d just be ripped to pieces right before my eyes. It all seemed to fit. I was never meant for the good life.”
Lila wrapped her arms around her mother and smoothed her unruly curls while Elisabeth held herself stiff and aggrieved. After a few moments, the woman softened, loosened, allowed her body to conform to the hug. “It’s okay, Mum. I know how much you love us. And how hard it’s been for you.”
“It was. No one can imagine how hard.”
“I know.”
“And not everyone understood. Some people thought, ‘At least she’s with her father.’ Like it was bad but not as
devastating as it could’ve been. But it was! It was every bit as terrible.”
Lila held her tighter. “It’s over now, Mum. It’s over.”
“I missed your entire childhood.”
“I know.”
“All those birthdays and holidays.”
“We’re going to look forward, right? Just like you said.”
Elisabeth pulled a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her eyes. After drinking in a few deep breaths, she began nodding her head as if to calm herself. “Right. We’ll look forward. It’s the only thing to do.”
She let Lila take her arm and they resumed walking. Ahead of them, Kieran hopped on one foot until her boot fell off, then stepped back into it and hopped again, blissfully unaware of the gravel and dead grass stuck to her sock.
“Still, I’m not going to be able to stay on here much longer,” said Elisabeth. “The rent is just too much. I just…I really don’t want to go home. Not unless you come with us.”
“I won’t leave Dad.”
Elisabeth shielded her eyes from the sun and looked at her. “You always belonged to him, didn’t you?”
Lila watched her flick her cigarette onto the ground, allowed her mother to step ahead on the path before she stamped it into the dirt, then slipped it into her pocket. When she caught up, she wove her arm through Elisabeth’s.
“I have an idea.”