“When you ID’d Joey, do you remember which thigh her tattoo was on?” McKinley asks. “I don’t have it here in my notes from the night of the fire…”
The police detective is still speaking, but Drew can’t hear her anymore. The buzzing in his head is too loud. His mother has flipped to the final page of the Jimmy Peralta tribute article. There, in a box at the bottom, is a wedding photo of the comedian and his fifth wife. Drew slides the magazine toward himself and turns it around.
Jimmy Peralta is in a tux, his bride in a simple white dress. They’re on the beach, holding hands, and the caption at the bottom reads, Paris Peralta is wearing an off-the-rack wedding gown from Vera Wang, purchased from Nordstrom.
He stares at Paris Peralta. Her black hair is in a simple updo, a few stray strands blowing around her face, a pink flower pinned over one ear. A younger Ruby Reyes stares back, but it’s a version of Ruby without the sharp angles and hard edges, without the arrogance and cynicism and self-entitlement. This version of Ruby is fuller, softer, with a sweeter smile, her eyes alight with genuine love and affection for the man at her side.
It looks like Ruby, but it’s not Ruby at all.
And it’s not Mae, either. Mae is not the one who disappeared nineteen years ago and somehow ended up married to Jimmy Peralta.
It’s Joey.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
PART THREE
That night in Toronto with its checkerboard floors
—THE TRAGICALLY HIP
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Some mothers send birthday cards with sweet greetings. Paris’s mother sends blackmail letters with threats.
Ruby Reyes is the only person in the world who knows her daughter did not die in that house fire in Toronto nineteen years ago, and if Paris doesn’t pay her the money, the rest of the world will know it, too. It won’t matter what her explanation is. She faked her death and assumed a new identity, and the ashes in the urn with Joey Reyes’s name on it aren’t hers. And now here she is, just like Ruby, about to be on trial for the murder of a wealthy older white man.
The irony isn’t lost on her.
She’s certain another letter will arrive any day now, especially since the latest issue of People is featuring Jimmy. Since she can’t exactly pop out to the CVS down the street to buy a copy without being followed and photographed, she asked the concierge at the Emerald Hotel to do it for her. She wouldn’t even have known the magazine had done a tribute if Henry hadn’t told her.
The magazine chose a headshot of Jimmy from the nineties to grace the cover. Crinkled blue eyes, LA tan, still-dark hair, trademark smart-ass grin. It was taken at the height of his fame during the last season of The Prince of Poughkeepsie, which was also when he was the biggest asshole. At least according to Jimmy himself.
“There’s no magic secret to reinventing yourself,” Jimmy said to her once, shortly after they met. “You pick who you want to be, and then you start acting like it. It just takes time. A shitload of money doesn’t hurt, either.”
She understood the concept of reinvention better than he realized.
The People article doesn’t mention Paris until the very end, and the short paragraph only gives three details: she and Jimmy met in a yoga class; they were married a year later in Hawaii; she’s been charged with his murder.
Only two of these three things are accurate. Paris and Jimmy didn’t meet in a yoga class; that’s just the story they’d agreed to tell everyone. While it wasn’t quite a lie, it wasn’t exactly the truth.
Ocean Breath had just moved into its new location, and Paris didn’t recognize Jimmy Peralta when he first walked in. Nobody did. In the dim lights of the hot yoga room, he looked like any other student arriving for class, dressed in a pair of loose shorts and tank top, a rolled-up mat tucked under his arm, Mariners ball cap pulled low.
Midway through the class, she noticed that her new student was struggling. The hot room is kept at 108 degrees, and the key to getting through the hour-long class is hydration. Jimmy’s water bottle was empty. Concerned he might pass out, she approached him to see if he was okay.
Up close and face-to-face in the darkened room, her heart stopped when she realized who he was. And it wasn’t because he was famous. It was because they’d met before. Back in a different life, when she was twenty, and a dancer at the Golden Cherry. He was in Toronto shooting a movie. They’d spent a couple of hours together, and then she never saw him again.
If Jimmy remembered her, he didn’t let on. He accepted the fresh bottle of water she offered him, and she helped him with his postures while managing to avoid eye contact. After class, he thanked her at the reception desk where she was standing next to Henry, who finally recognized him and started fanboying.