“If they’ve come in person, it must mean they’re scared. If they’re scared—finally, after all this time—it must be because we’re closing in. We’ve always had a critical mass of people signed on to the suit. We’ve always had tons of evidence. So far, they’ve been able to spin it as circumstantial or inadmissible or unreliable or biased or fabricated or ambiguous. So now we must be close to something they know they can’t deny, something they won’t be able to get dismissed. Something that could really hurt them. Point is, they never come in person. They must be worried.”
Nora’s so charged she’s trembling, shimmering at the edges, not so far gone as optimistic, but something’s changed, at least it’s starting to, and it’s been so long since anything has. Maybe they know something we don’t and they’re here to hide it before we find it, but at least that means it exists. Maybe their being here at all is evidence they’re hiding something, the smoking gun she searches for like the Holy Grail.
Pastor Jeff swallows his mouthful and echoes my thoughts. “Maybe.”
She rolls her eyes. “You’re not a Zen priest, you know.”
“I do,” he intones, exactly like a Zen priest.
“You can pass judgment.”
“I could if I had any basis for one.”
“Jesus, Jeff—”
“You’re right, Nora,” he interrupts because he knows it’s time to stop teasing when he’s driven her to blasphemy. “It could be the lawsuit. It could be there’s evidence you’re about to uncover, and they’re here to better bury it. It could be Russell and the firm have got them scared finally. Maybe. But I think it would be prudent not to get your hopes up.”
“I don’t give a shit about prudent, Jeff.”
“I noticed.” He smiles at me from inside his coffee. “Maybe you’re on to something. Or maybe they’re going to find whatever they’re looking for before you do. Or maybe there’s nothing to find.”
“Of course there’s something to find,” Nora scoffs. “We’re not pretending they fucked us. They did fuck us.”
This. This is Nora’s religion. I have solo Saturday mornings. Pastor Jeff has God, the Catholic Church, and any number of other denominations he borrows from liberally in order to meet his congregants’ needs and practices. Nora’s faith is just as fervently held, just as life guiding and path determining, and for the same reason: she believes in her soul it will save her.
And this is her central tenet: They did fuck us. Therefore there must be evidence of this fact somewhere. Therefore she has only to find it. Then justice will be served, the wicked unmasked and punished, the good and faithful rewarded for their patience and fidelity.
Why else do people believe in God?
One
We are not girl detectives. We’re not plucky like that. We can’t hide. Maybe this would be true anyway—there are three of us—but there’s also Mirabel’s inability to walk, Monday’s inability to lie, my inability to go places without them. The lack of places to go. Under our folded clothes, our dresser drawers are all lined with Nancy Drews—Monday likes to keep them there because their spines are yellow—but Nancy’s got skills, resources, and horizons we can only dream of. Suffice it to say, some kind of teen-spies thing where we get wigs and fake mustaches and sit outside the library pretending to read a newspaper （Petra would say “surreptitiously”） is not an option.
Last night, in response to our mother’s mania, Mirabel suggested a fact-finding mission, but it’s not even fact finding. More like information gathering. Situation determining. It doesn’t make sense to think we’ll find the elusive, conclusive proof Mama and Russell have been searching for for entire lifetimes—our entire lifetimes—simply by befriending River Templeton. If her lawyer can’t, what chance do her teenage daughters have? So let’s just say we’re getting there first. Not before anyone else in town—no one will care as much as my mother, and everyone knows it. Getting to the Templetons before the Templetons get to us.
It’s overcast, which makes it seem dark still, dawning, and drizzling hard, almost raining, so it feels closer to floating, or maybe sinking, than riding bikes. Monday and I fly down Baker, the hill steeper than it is on foot and slippery with wet, just the hint of fall in our noses. The wind and rain tease our hair. Snaggled grass whips our legs. Our tires throw up gravel and pebbles like popcorn. We close our eyes for a moment, two, and I could not stop now if I wanted to. If I had to.