June (37 page)

It was past midday and the snakes had stopped rattling. Food, then. Cassie pushed her way through the jammed pocket doors, scraping her knee, and went into the kitchen, jumping when her eye caught movement.

“Cheers!” Elda sat at the shaky wooden table, the bottle of Jack before her.

“I thought you got a ride on Tate’s plane.”

“I opted out.” Behind Elda, the windows flashed with another vibrant summer afternoon; soon, Cassie would forget to feel guilty about not making the most of it. Soon she’d be able to spend every moment in the dark, cool caves of this giant house.

“Let’s drink before my cab comes.” Elda held up the bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. So she’d been waiting. Cassie couldn’t see any reason to say no. As she neared the table, Elda rose. Then she nodded toward the only other object on the table—Cassie’s camera. “Out back.”

“Are the paparazzi gone?” Cassie reluctantly picked up her camera and followed Elda through the pantry door, shuttling through the dark, tight pantry and then through the second swinging door into the dining room. The leaded glass of the back door cast rainbows across the room as Elda pulled it open. The compact back porch gleamed white in the sun.

Elda marched down the rickety steps and across the meadowy lawn, and plopped herself down right beside a flower bed. Sure enough, the dwindling swarm of photographers spotted them from the other side of the road. Cassie would never forget the unlikely sound of a dozen telephoto lenses snapping away from that sidewalk. Rattlesnakes—she was pleased with having named them. At least half the horde had followed Tate to the airport. The police had been nice about it; the neighbors midwestern enough to keep to themselves.

“Sit.” Elda poured.

“They’re shooting us.” It occurred to Cassie that her image would start appearing in tabloids now too. She’d have to begin thinking about her hair and her outfits and watching what she said, unless she decided not to care what America thought of her. She’d have to decide once the news broke about her having gotten Jack’s money. Which was probably any day now.

“This is my time to shine.” Elda held up a glass to toast the throng. “I’m aces at bringing the crazy.” The photographers hooted her name. “They’ve tasted Tate’s blood, but I’ll be the one to feed them.”

“So you figure you can get away with anything, now that they’re going after Tate?” Cassie took a swig and coughed.

“I figure she could use my help. I distract them with tarot cards and day drinking, maybe they’re not so hard on her.”

Cassie leaned back on her hands. “I don’t get you.”

“Elda!” one of the photographers called out. “Turn toward us!”

Elda lifted her middle finger. The rattlesnakes went wild. Then she picked up Cassie’s camera and rounded off a dozen pictures of the paparazzi—which they loved—and of Cassie too. Cassie felt shy, but that didn’t stop Elda from shooting her, rapid-fire.

“You act like you hate Tate,” Cassie said. “You taunt her. You say awful things. And then, when you find out for sure she isn’t your sister, that’s when you want to help her out?”

“Weird.” Elda sat back. “I don’t know why. Maybe now that she’s not so perfect it’s easier to be nice?” She took a long slug of whiskey and stared up at the house. “I sure am going to miss this place.”

“Really?”

“The dreams, at least. I keep dreaming about your grandma.”

“Yeah,” Cassie said, because if anyone would, it was Elda.

Elda patted Cassie’s ankle. “You going to be okay, kid?”

Cassie shielded her eyes and surveyed her grandmother’s land. She felt bereft, as though a door leading into her had been torn off its hinges. So June and Jack had screwed. That’s all she knew now, for sure. According to Tate, Jack was a saint; according to Elda, he was a jerk. But who was he, really? How had he felt about her grandmother, and how had she felt about him? Had June been married when she slept with him? If not, why had she married Arthur anyway? Just like Mr. Abernathy had said, she’d never get to know these things. What had really happened between Jack and June had been reduced to money and blood.

Her grandmother’s words from the night of her art opening danced through her mind: “What have you done, Cassandra? That was for us. That was our business, and not for the world to know.” Wasn’t that what she’d say about all this too?

“Hey, take a picture of me,” Elda said, breaking into Cassie’s thoughts.

“Why?” Cassie asked, but she was already calculating the aperture and focus and angle.

Elda grinned. “Because I want you to be able to remember the moment I told you something that knocked your socks off.”

Cassie took the picture, not because she believed Elda—it was the kind of thing Elda said all the time—but to move things along.

“I remember your father,” Elda said. She said it so smoothly that it took a moment to register.

“Wait—what?” Cassie dropped the camera into her lap.

“I met him. Adelbert. When we were little.”

“You met my father?”

“He was two. I was seven. Your grandmother drove him out to Los Angeles. I didn’t know it was them for sure until I saw that picture on Tate’s mantel.”

Cassie was crouched forward now, desperate to know everything. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

Elda topped off their glasses. “You weren’t ready to hear it. And Tate—you know Tate. She would have stolen it for herself, and then it wouldn’t have been ours anymore. She can’t help that, by the way. It’s just how she is.” She patted Cassie. “I knew I’d have a chance to tell you.”

“That’s why you came to St. Jude, isn’t it?”

Elda smiled triumphantly.

“So tell me!”

“I don’t remember much; I was only a kid, after all. I just remember that it was my weekend with Dad. Diane was somewhere else. She was usually somewhere else; they didn’t like each other even then. Anyway, Dad said he wanted me to meet a couple special friends.” She smiled wryly. “Wildly inappropriate, of course, but that was him at his best. We drove out to the Santa Monica Pier. June and your father were waiting on the beach. Dad swung him up into the air and carried him on his hip to the boardwalk. I remember being jealous. Your father had these big, fat cheeks—I pinched one until he cried, because he was adorable and, well, because I was jealous.” The memory cracked her up. “We went on the rides. A photographer grabbed a couple pictures of the four of us together, and Dad yelled at him first, then paid him for the roll of film. It was a lot easier in those days to keep what you wanted out of the press.”

She was looking off into the middle distance, toward the Victorian with the nosy neighbor. It was a beautiful profile. Cassie snapped the picture.

“We watched the sunset from the beach. Your father fell asleep in Dad’s arms, and I remember thinking I was in the way, keeping Dad and this woman who was his friend from saying what they wanted to say. But maybe that’s why he brought me along.”

They sat in silence. The rattlesnakes had died down, nothing new to see. The sun was a press of hope upon Cassie’s back. “How did you know he was your brother?”

“The way Dad looked at him.” Elda’s voice dripped with envy. “He called him ‘my boy.’ Your grandmother shushed him. Also, he had my father’s secret name, the one he’d given up before he became my father. I remember thinking you only name a kid Adelbert if that’s what they call his daddy.” She chuckled then, and Cassie had to laugh too.

Elda looked up at Two Oaks and whistled. “For an empty house, sure is full of a lot of people.”

The thought of Elda getting on an airplane made Cassie pour another drink. The edges of the day had softened, but they’d still be there tomorrow, sharp as ever, waiting for her alone.

Lindie hardly slept after returning from Columbus, but she was due on set at first light. In the darkness of the kitchen, she fumbled for the sugar bowl. In an instant, she sensed a form, a man, standing just on the other side of the cabinets. She screamed. She switched on the light. It was only her father.

“We’re moving,” he said.

“Good one,” Lindie cracked. Heart still pounding, she opened the icebox, searching for leftover rice.

“Chicago sounds good, don’t you think?” The sorrow in Eben’s voice made her check him again. He was unshaven, unsteady on his feet. He moved his head from the shadows. There was a bruise around his eye, and a cut above it.

“Daddy, what happened?” Lindie’s heart sank at the sight of him. Without the particulars, she already knew—Clyde.

She reached for a cloth to wet, but Eben brushed it aside. There was a wild look in his eye that she hadn’t seen there since the days after Lorraine left. Lindie had forgotten all about this hollowness. Now that it was back in the room, she wanted to wrap her arms around her daddy, but he grabbed her wrists instead. “I promised we’d be gone by the holiday. Gives us five days to pack the house.”

She wrested her arms back. “Daddy, you’re scaring me.”

“He says he’ll let us go with no trouble.”

“Who, Daddy?”

“Ripvogle’s out.” Eben slurred the contractor’s name. So he was a little drunk, an encouraging revelation. Maybe their lot would improve with the light of day. “Clyde lost money. A lot of money. He blames me. Says I went to the governor and tattled. Says he’s going to kill me unless we leave.”

“Daddy, Uncle Clyde’s your best friend.”

“He’s not your uncle anymore.”

Lindie’s mind was a tangle of everything she knew: Clyde’s anger, his threats, how he’d grabbed her at the party, how he’d told Ripvogle he was planning to tear down Two Oaks, what he knew about Thomas’s parents. He was capable of such destruction.

Her voice trembled as she asked, “But you didn’t go to the governor, did you, Daddy? You didn’t tell on Clyde?” Clyde Danvers held nothing so high as his reputation; she hoped her father hadn’t dared to tarnish that.

But questions made Eben angry. “Go pack your room.” He swayed against the kitchen cabinets. Maybe Apatha had been right; maybe it was a more personal reason—Lorraine—that two grown men were fighting like little boys. Lindie couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“I have to work today, Daddy.”

“No more sneaking out,” he boomed. “We pack this house now.”

“Okay,” she said, placating him. “Okay, Daddy.” She started to grasp what he was proposing: leaving everything they knew. Fleeing like criminals. Making a new life in an enormous city full of strangers. The thought of it fluttered inside her like a robin with a broken wing.

“We have until Sunday, when he burns this whole thing to the ground,” he mumbled. Was he speaking literally? Lindie took him under one arm and helped him into the dining room. There, on the table, sat her father’s ledgers, which were usually locked up in Lemon’s safe in the office at Two Oaks. She was surprised to see them splayed open in the daylight; Eben usually kept such careful track of them. He wobbled against her. She supported him into their small front room, depositing him in the rocking chair. She covered him with the ratty blanket that had been there forever. Everything in the room seemed wrong, as though she was seeing it through a pane of mottled glass. Even her father had been transformed. She rubbed his head as if he was a pet dog; he was snoring in five minutes flat.

They were filming on a bridge over the canal, north of town. Lindie raced toward set on her bicycle. Her stomach growled. They were already setting up a shot. She dumped the Schwinn at the side of the road and ran toward the encampment of trailers and the crew, brightly lit by the sun. The sky was open and blue; it would be a beautiful day. But she already knew something was wrong, just by the awkward way Ricky looked at her, then away.

Casey stepped into her path.

“Sorry I’m late.” She ducked her head and kicked her foot in an “aw shucks” gesture that usually worked.

But Casey wasn’t biting. “You’re done,” he said, in his superior voice.

“I’m late, I know, but—”

He shook his head one definitive time. “You’re fired.”

Lindie had seen plenty of other folks show up late to set, and she was about to argue just that when he said, “For future reference, this is what happens when you don’t come to work.”

“I’m here,” she shouted impudently.

His lip curled. “Yesterday.”

“But yesterday, Diane—I mean, Miss DeSoto—she spoke to you.” Lindie was sputtering. “You told her I could take the day off work.”

He came as close to laughing as he ever would. “She did no such thing. In fact”—and here he stepped forward so that only Lindie could hear him—“she shared some concerns about you this morning. She fears you’ve grown…attached.”

Fury filled Lindie as she understood how well Diane had played her. “That’s a lie. She’s a liar.”

Casey dismissed her with a grimace. “You have ten minutes before I call the police.”

Lindie loped to her Schwinn. She could feel the eyes of Ricky and who knew how many other crew members on the back of her neck as they observed her humiliating retreat. She restrained herself from a backward glance; although she wanted, more than anything, to soak in the last of that glorious experience, she had her pride.

Almost back to town, she heard a motor purr up behind her. She waved it around, but it stayed right there, on her tail. Irritated, she pulled into the mass of clover and crabgrass at the edge of the road to let it by, but Thomas pulled the Olds up beside her. It was empty, save for him.

“You remember those secrets?” he asked, eyes darting to make sure they were alone in that large, flat country. “About my mother? And maybe who my daddy might be? About me and Louisiana?” She nodded solemnly.

His hands were jumpy on the wheel. “Clyde came to Two Oaks last night. He told Apatha he knows every bit of what we’re hiding, and if he doesn’t get what he rightly deserves, he’s going to ruin us.”

She’d underestimated Clyde. It didn’t matter that Apatha was Lemon’s wife; Clyde would make sure no one in town cared about that. Eben’s laws, Eben’s rules, Eben’s ledgers, none of them would matter if Clyde had scared Apatha off. Once Lemon died, Clyde would find a way to get what he wanted, no matter what he had to do to get it.

“What do you plan to do about it?”

“I plan to run,” he answered, just as plainly.

She couldn’t blame him, though she’d try to get him to stay. “Is Apatha really your mama?”

“By birth I guess,” he said, as if there was any other way. “My auntie raised me. I don’t suppose anyone but Apatha knows who my daddy is. She knew Lemon back then but they weren’t married yet. Then she headed up here for a life of luxury. My auntie only told me the truth when that girl down in Louisiana started telling people I’d been with her.” He raised his hands in innocence. “I never touched that girl, I swear. But it doesn’t matter. I had to get out. I came north. Asked Apatha to take me in. You would have thought I was a stray dog, not someone who’d grown inside her.”

Lindie knew what that felt like, how cold Apatha could be when you didn’t fit through the doorway she’d opened for you. “But why do you think she left you?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” His scowl told her otherwise. “All I know is I’m leaving.”

“If you run, they’ll send the police after you. They’ll send you back to Louisiana.” Clyde had to be stopped, and she wasn’t sure she could do it alone. “Please,” she begged. “Just till the end of the week. We’ll work this out—I know we will. Think of Apatha.”

“I don’t owe her anything.”

“Just your life.”

“She’s living like a queen and she couldn’t share it?” Thomas’s agony filled the car, then spilled out over the clear morning. Lindie didn’t have an answer for why they’d left him in Louisiana, so she told him her mother had left too, in case it made him feel better. He sighed then, and shook his head, and told her he’d give her until Friday morning, but if anything happened before then, he was gone. He pulled a U-ie and headed back to set.

She biked the long way around to Elm Grove Cemetery. It was cool and quiet down there. A person could think. Lindie weeded graves and studied the baby headstones with morbid fascination:
OUR DAUGHTER, LAMB OF GOD, BABY BOY LARSH
. At least when someone died, you got a place to visit.

Round about lunchtime, she strolled down to Lemon’s personal mausoleum, built of yellow brick to match his mansion, with its own stained-glass window to boot. Through the intricate iron gate, she could see that the shelf that held Mae’s coffin had room for him on it too. She wondered if Apatha would get a spot.

Her stomach churned; she hadn’t eaten since the night before. Soon, she told herself, June would arrive. Any minute now, she’d be rounding the drive. She’d be carrying a basket full of Apatha’s biscuits. She’d sit beside Lindie and Lindie would tell her everything. June would have answers. They’d solve it, all of it, together: first do this, then that, on and on until everyone got to be happy.

It was a nice story. Lindie told it to herself for hours.