I frown. But is Meadow motherless? Why do I think that?
Holding the book in my lap, I let the thought rise. Why did I draw this conclusion, even without realizing it?
The main reason is simple: What girl leaves her mother when she has a new baby daughter?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Maya
The next morning, I’m scrambling eggs in the kitchen that is finally all mine, when the police stop by. “Hold on!” I call to the knock. They’ve come to the back, pulling around into the driveway, so I can see them through the window. It’s not unusual, given the swoop of the driveway. Two cops in uniforms, one tall man with short black hair, and a woman who is slight but wiry, her hair pulled back into a sleek, no-nonsense bun.
I pour the eggs onto the plate and dash over to the door. My stomach is growling and annoyed, and I want to get my food in there. “Can I help you?”
“Maya Beauvais?”
“Yes.”
“Can we come in and talk with you about your father?”
For a moment, I don’t respond, giving myself a beat of time. Why are they here? “Is there something wrong?”
“Mostly routine.”
Mostly. Huh. “I need to eat the breakfast I just made, so if you can talk while I eat, sure.”
They follow me into the room. Sunlight pours through the banks of windows facing southwest, gilding the Spanish tiles of the floor and illuminating the golden wood. The man whistles. “Some place you’ve got here.”
I slide behind the counter, pick up my fork. I wish my hair weren’t still wet. “What can I help you with?”
The woman says, “I’m Detective Love, and this is my partner, Detective Vaca.”
“I don’t know how much help I’ll be. We’d barely spoken in years.”
“Why were you estranged?” she asks. In her hand is a small notebook, and she has a tiny pen to go with it. So cute. I should find one for Rory to use in her Zentangle habit.
I take a bite of cheesy eggs, and they’re so delicious I almost moan. It’s like my taste buds have been dead for years and I can taste every molecule of everything. I swallow. “He was a player. He deserted my mother, and then he broke Meadow’s heart, and I’d just had it.”
“Maybe he broke your heart, too, huh?” she asks. She has bright black eyes that reflect light like a mirror.
“Sure.” I take another bite, lift a shoulder. “I mean, I was in my twenties by the time he fucked up his marriage, so it wasn’t like I was some little kid. I was just . . . over it.”
“Did you have a good relationship with him as a child?”
“I did.” This is the hard part of it all. When he wasn’t awful, he was wonderful. “I always knew he loved me, and he was fun to be around. When he was around. Mostly, he worked.”
She inclines her head. “Didn’t he abandon you with your mother—your biological mother—when he met Meadow?”
I meet her probing gaze, feeling anger snap and crackle along the bones of my spine. “Abandoned is a pretty strong word,” I say. “She was my mother and he left her.”
“But when she died you were trapped in the apartment for several days, isn’t that right?”
I hate it when this comes up. It’s so intensely, painfully personal, and yet it was all over the news of the time. Carefully, I place my fork on the plate and press my hands to my thighs. More flame edges along my ribs. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just seems like a crappy thing to happen.”
“It was. But even if I’d somehow harbored revenge fantasies about killing my dad over that, I was in rehab the night he died.”
“Your dad paid for the rehab, is that correct?”
“Yes, I think he and Meadow paid together. Again, what difference does that make?”
“We’re just trying to get a feeling for what was going on in his life when he died.”
I incline my head. “So he didn’t die of a heart attack?”
“Maybe not.”
“So what killed him, then?”
“We don’t know enough to say yet. We do want to rule out poison.”
I choke on toast crumbs. “Poison?” I frown. “Really?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Can’t you test for that?”
“Some things. Not all of them,” Vaca says. “Doesn’t your stepmother make herbal concoctions at her farm?”
I roll my eyes. “Meadow didn’t poison him, trust me. She loved him.”