Pearl had enrolled in community college, an institution that she knew was far beneath her intellectually. But she believed that your education was what you made of it. You could learn what you needed to learn anywhere. Fancy degrees from fancy schools, that was just another con—selling you the illusion of status. That’s what Pop said.
Anyway, Pop wasn’t sure that her identity would hold up to very much scrutiny. And those fancy schools, they did tend to check into your pedigree. So some of the bigger institutions, the better ones, to which she aspired, were out of reach. She’d have to settle.
“Do you imagine he cares?” asked Pop, when she brought up her concerns about her father and what questions he’d have for her if they connected. He wasn’t being cruel, just practical. An analysis of the mark—who was he? What did he want?
It was one of the rare nights that she and Pop were home together. Things had changed between them somewhat. She wasn’t an asset to the game anymore. Now that she was an adult, and looked like one, she wasn’t a lure for that vulnerable older woman looking to mother. She was a threat—someone younger, more beautiful, in the way. They lay on the couch, her head on his thigh as he twirled at the length of her hair.
“If he did, don’t you think he’d have—I don’t know—maybe hired someone to find you? Or kept on top of the police.”
She wondered if the police had questioned him when Stella was killed. After all, if Pop could figure out who her father was, couldn’t they? She’d never read anything about him in the news accounts.
“Maybe he did,” she offered, looking up at him. In the firelight, his features were licked by darkness, eyes hollow, valleys on his cheeks.
Pop had a way of creating a silence that made her question her own statements without his saying a word.
“But he probably didn’t,” she said finally, looking toward the flames.
“When Stella died and you disappeared, it was one less bill to pay, one less problem to manage. The guy is obviously emotionally bankrupt.”
Like father, like daughter? Maybe that’s where she got it, the emptiness inside, the absence of feeling.
They’d done their research. Her father was on LinkedIn but not Facebook or Twitter, not Instagram. But from the posts of his daughters, and some family friends, they had a picture of him. A profile they’d developed.
Pop went on. “He has family. A wife. Two daughters. A big job as a bank executive. If you turn up, start making noise, he’ll pay to make you go away. That’s my guess.”
In the few pictures they’d found online, he was stiff, unsmiling. A family portrait where his lovely dark-haired girls sat before him and he draped a possessive arm around his petite, fake-smiling wife—who looked a little like Stella. He was tall, severe with a large forehead and dark eyes, thick eyebrows that formed a perpetual frown. He had the aura of judge, warden, strict principal, someone who could wither with only a glance. The one picture they’d found of him smiling had been with his dog. A Rottweiler who resembled him not a little.
He was certainly not the father of her imagination. The spy. The soldier. She’d always thought of him as svelte, with sandy hair and a ready smile. Someone funny, adventurous, in on the joke of it all. Someone like Pop.
“What if he killed Stella?” Pearl asked.
Pop considered this with a lift of his eyebrows, as if maybe it hadn’t occurred to him.
Which she was certain it had; because he always thought of everything. Or so she believed at the time.
“Unlikely,” he said after a moment. “But if he did, he’ll be even more motivated to make you go away. Maybe he’ll pay up even more.”
“Or.”
“Or?”
“Or he’ll kill me.”
Pop pulled her up and into him. She let him hold her, her arms at her sides. He released her and took her cheeks in his palms. “As long as I’m alive, no one is going to hurt you.”
She smiled; he kissed her on the head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said.
“I always keep my promises. You know that.”
They were quiet a moment.
Then he went on. “I think since he’s made a habit of paying people off, he’ll continue doing that. The best predictor of future behavior—”
“—is past behavior.”
But something about what she said hung between them. The silence swelled.
“Make a soft approach,” he said finally. “Nice and easy. Don’t startle him.”
So she’d sent him an email to the address she’d found on LinkedIn. The subject line read: This is Pearl. In the body, she wrote: Do you know who I am?
She waited. One day. Two days. No response. She went through all the gyrations—wondering if she had the wrong email, if an assistant went through his inbox, maybe it went to the junk folder. Three days. Four. She felt an uncomfortable wanting. But what she wanted precisely she couldn’t say for sure. She didn’t want a father. She didn’t care about the score, not the way Pop did. But still, there was an ache inside her that she couldn’t name.
She took the train to the city, left a note for him at the front desk of his office.
I am Pearl. Do you know who I am?
She left the number of a burner phone she’d picked up. It had been a pretty stupid move, considering the network of security cameras that existed now, a web all over the city. But she didn’t know about that, then. She knew that Pop didn’t like smartphones, said that they were practically tethers. But she didn’t know about the network of home cameras, security cameras, and police-owned surveillance that was just starting to crisscross the world.
She waited. No email. No phone call. Five days. Six.
“Maybe he didn’t get my email,” she agonized to Pop. “Maybe the woman at the desk trashed my note. She looked at me like I was something she wanted to scrape off her shoe.”
“Or maybe he’s just hoping you’ll go away.”
She thought about giving up. There was a pile of homework for her major in psychology—useful in any profession. Her professor was interesting, someone who pushed and challenged. Pearl had even started dating a guy who made her laugh. When she looked back on that moment in her life later, she thought that maybe the doorway to “normal” was open just a crack. She could have walked through possibly. But Pop.
“Time to turn up the heat a little,” he said. “Just a little.”
Her father’s house. It was so—beautiful. It wasn’t that it was so grand. Certainly, there were grander. But the brilliant green of the lawn, the crawl of bougainvillea around the pergola that hugged the garage, the brick stoop, red door, black shutters, white siding. How his BMW glided from the driveway when he left for work, sometimes with his younger daughter （the older already away at college） in the passenger seat. Her glossy black hair, slim body, pretty clothes.
She was lovely. But it was more than that. She was oblivious to the darkness in her life; she only knew the light. Pearl could tell by the smooth innocence on her face, the careless way she walked, and tossed her backpack into the trunk, stared at the phone in her hand. Life for her was easy. Nothing ever broken that couldn’t be fixed. Nothing ever lost that couldn’t be replaced. Her life was so easy that she didn’t even know there was another kind of life—hardscrabble and unpredictable.