I listen for Maya outside the office, and creep to the door to see if I can spy her. She’s sitting on the side of the pool, her feet in the water, talking on the phone to someone. Gently, I close the heavy door and dial Trudy, Meadow’s boss at the Buccaneer. She answers with a scratchy voice. “Hello.”
“Hi, Trudy. This is Norah Rivera, the woman you spoke with a couple of days ago about Tina Sullivan.”
“You found her last name! Good for you.”
“Yes. I was wondering if you remember the exact year she started at the Buccaneer?”
She lets go of a heavy sigh. “Let’s see. I was still with my ex-husband at the time, and I kicked him out on Fourth of July, 1988, so before that—’87 somewhere, I’d guess.”
“That’s great, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. You should come by and pick up some zucchini this week. I’m going to have enough to feed the whole of Estonia.”
I laugh at the colorful hyperbole. “I’ll try.”
Okay, so maybe she left when her stepfather died. Nothing much to keep her in the town, with both her mom and stepdad dead. Presumably the baby’s father wanted nothing to do with Rory or he never knew, and maybe best to let sleeping dogs lie at this point, considering how wealthy Meadow has become.
Tapping my finger on the glass, I peer out the window toward the horizon, thinking. Thinking. What else?
So often with research, you don’t know what you don’t know. I have to just keep looking at things, reading.
I start with the yearbooks from Thunder Bluff High School, which I find online at a paid service. I pay the fee and call up the years Tina was there, or I think she was there. I check my dates again, and she was born in ’69, so she must have started high school around ’83 or ’84. I hit the jackpot in ’83, where a classic black-and-white photo shows freshman Tina Sullivan. She’s not fallen prey to the horrific bangs of the period, and she’s already beautiful. Luminous, really, with wide eyes and long hair. It pierces me to see her so young. Rory looks quite like her.
In ’84/’85, she was a cheerleader. It surprises me to see her on the squad, with a tiny skirt and a sweater that shows off her curves. She’s a knockout, and somebody liked shooting her photo—there are over a dozen of her, all credited to the same L. Newton. She’s manning a bake sale with her hair pulled back in a very long ponytail, and staring dolefully out of a window, and in midair in a jump. The photographer already has a flair, and the pictures give me a strong visual of who she was.
I write the name down and look him up in the class photos. Leslie Newton is not the nerd I was expecting, but a sturdy youth with black hair, a strong jaw, and penetrating eyes. I run a check for other photos of him, and two show up—one of him on a debate team trip, hair longer than in the class photo, and another with a girlfriend, head to head. The caption is telling. Lovebirds Leslie Newton and Tina Sullivan share a moment.
Is this Rory’s dad? The timing would be right.
Except . . . how did she have the parchment-white Rory with a boy so dark?
I click through to the next year, ’85/’86. There’s a class photo of Tina, but only that photo. She looks almost exactly the same, so it was taken before she was pregnant, or she hid it very well. I look for photos by or of L. Newton and there’s nothing, which stumps me until I realize he was a senior the year before. He probably headed off to college.
Or to work. His photos are so good I hope he found a way to continue.
I pause and stretch my shoulders, and realize I need to pee. Padding out of the room, carrying my coffee cup, I realize I feel as good as I have in months, as if things are on the right keel at last. I stick the cup in the Keurig and drop a fresh pod in, feeling the same guilt I always feel, which isn’t enough to stop me using such a radically perfect machine. At least Augustus ordered compostable pods.
While it brews, I duck into the bathroom on this level, and when I come back, Maya is standing in front of the fridge, chewing her lip. When she sees me, she straightens and closes the door. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” she says, and rubs her arms. “I’m so restless today.”
“If you think of anything, let me know.” I stir cream into the coffee, and wait for a minute. “Maya, I am so grateful for this, I can’t even tell you.”
“Oh please. You’re like my voodoo to keep Meadow in her own house.”
“Ah. Ulterior motive. Still, it’s really nice.” I take a tiny sip of coffee. “It just seems like she’s worried about you.”