“You said you’d have an answer for me, Mom. Can I come home?”
“Sweetie, I have to call you back, okay? In fact, just sit tight. I’ll be there in a bit.”
She heard him start to protest. “I love you, Oliver. Just sit tight.”
She hung up with a twinge of guilt. Another text came through, pinging several times, but she stuffed the phone in her pocket. She only had to answer calls from her mom and her kids. Everyone else would have to wait.
“As you know, Geneva Markson was allegedly blackmailing Erik Tucker,” said Detective Crowe, snapping Selena back to the moment. “He bought Geneva a car to keep her quiet about the affair.”
“Okay.” Selena knew this but still couldn’t process it. Sweet, helpful Geneva. Now, the Naughty Nanny.
“What about you?” asked Detective Crowe. “Are there any large sums of money missing from your accounts? Any purchases your husband made that you didn’t understand?”
Selena almost laughed. She had always been the one to manage all their finances, set the budgets, meet with the advisors, schedule all their savings for college and retirement. Graham never wanted anything to do with it. All their various purchases popped up in their accounting program. That was a lesson she’d learned from her mother: never be the woman who doesn’t understand money.
If Geneva wanted to blackmail Graham, she’d have been out of luck. “No. Nothing like that.”
“You have knowledge of and access to all accounts.”
“Yes,” she said. But what other secrets was he keeping? What other lies had he told? “If Graham has other money, or other cards, I’m not aware.”
Crowe had his eyes on her, watchful but not unkind.
“Are we done here?” she asked.
“I have to be honest,” he said. “I’m getting the feeling that there’s still something you’re not telling me.”
“And I have the feeling there’s something you’re not telling me,” she shot back.
“See, that’s the difference between us,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you everything.”
She wished that she could just sink into the soft folds of the couch, just disappear into chenille oblivion.
“I didn’t hurt Geneva, if that’s what you’re getting at,” she said. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve never even been rude to anyone. And that’s not Graham in the photo, or anyone else I recognize. So maybe you should be looking elsewhere for what happened to Geneva. Obviously there were a number of people who wished her harm.”
He stared at her a moment, and she held his gaze. She remembered something about herself in that moment, something that it was easy to forget. She was a fighter; she didn’t back down—not from bullies on the playground, not from mean girls in college, not from backstabbers at work. Marisol used to cry when people picked on her. Selena got mad—or she got even. She wasn’t afraid of Detective Crowe. He lowered his eyes to the floor, then rose.
“We’re not done, Mrs. Murphy,” he said. “But we’re done for now. Stay easy to find.”
She nodded but didn’t get up. Fuck you, Detective, she thought but didn’t say. She didn’t rise to show him out, just listened to his footfalls on the hardwood, the door open and close.
She felt her phone buzz and pulled it from her pocket, stared at the screen.
Great seeing you last night.
I think we need to talk, don’t you?
It’s Martha, by the way.
From the train.
Now it read like a dare, like a taunt. Selena felt the cold finger of dread press into her belly. Selena’s truth was all over the news. And Martha likely knew everything, and knew that Selena had lied about Graham. But everyone knew that now, even the police.
Those images, that person on the street with Geneva. Was that Martha? What had she said during that first encounter on the 7:45?
Maybe she’ll disappear. And you can just pretend it never happened.
And now Geneva had disappeared.
Bad things happen all the time.
One thing was certain, the woman from the train wanted something from Selena. What was it? Who was this woman? And did she know something about what had happened to Geneva?
Was it just last night that she’d called herself a solution architect?
Beneath the dread was a current of hope. Who was she? What did she want?
Selena sent her response.
TWENTY-SIX
Pearl
She’d been sleeping. She didn’t know for how long. This drive. It seemed like they had been on the road for months. They’d changed cars twice, and now they were in an old Dodge minivan that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and something else—something sickly sweet like spilled soda. She’d been vaguely ill since they’d left Indianapolis, nauseated and weak. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten anything but saltines and ginger ale.
Pearl stayed still even after she opened her eyes, listening. She could tell what kind of mood Pop was in before he even opened his mouth, just by the way he breathed. He’d been in a bad place the last couple of days, quiet and moody, snappish. They were on the run. The Bridget thing.
“Did I ever tell you about my father?” he asked. He must have sensed that she was awake.
“Some,” she said. She shifted out of the awkward position she was in, head at a weird angle against the car door. Rubbing at her sore shoulders, she cracked her neck. Pop reached over and put a hand on her back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About everything.”
“It’s okay,” she said.
“The place we’re going now,” he said. “It’s ours. It’s home. And we’ll be safe there. We’ll settle down.”
They had been driving east to this promised place. A pretty house in the woods, not some ticky-tacky suburb home that they would have to leave again. It had been two years since she had become Anne and started calling Charlie Pop. She had graduated online high school. She was about to turn eighteen. What’s next for you? he wanted to know. What will you do now that you’re nearly of age? She thought maybe college. Pop thought that was the biggest con of all. You’re already smarter and have read more, know more, than most people with advanced degrees.
Stella was always big on college. It wasn’t a question of if Pearl would go, but where. Pearl had the grades, the brain, the work ethic, the test scores. She had some money, since Pop had split all of his scores with her. She wondered: Could you just show up at the bursar’s office with a big bag of cash?
They’d closed out all of their accounts. Pop was anxious about how much they were holding. All of it. All of their money was in two suitcases in the back seat.
“Tell me about your dad,” she said. “You said he was a drunk and a con. That he died in prison.”
Pearl had seen a picture. Pop had a single photo album among his few belongings. She’d flipped through it a couple of times. Her favorite was a picture of his parents on their wedding day running down the steps of a church, the air full of rose petals—everyone smiling. And there was a black and white of Pop in his father’s arms in front of a Brooklyn brownstone. Pop’s face looked the same—earnest with big blue eyes. His father, balding, with eyebrows like caterpillars, wiry in a wifebeater T-shirt, looked away. He wore a scowl, had a blurry tattoo on his arm that Pop said was a mermaid.