The image of Claire’s teenage daughter was branded into Jessica’s brain.
Oh, my God.
Oh my God, oh my God.
Claire and her husband were both blond.
Eden was a brunette.
Claire’s disdain for Jonathan was palpable. But she always had a good word for Cal.
Claire continued her quiet conversation as Jessica’s brain whirled.
“She’s a Hitchcock blonde.” “Too clever by half.” He could deny it all he wanted, but their admiration was mutual.
Claire hung up and reached over to put the car into drive.
“Did you have your daughter before or after you met Jonathan?” Jessica asked.
Claire’s hand froze on the gearshift. “That’s an odd question.”
“I didn’t know if…I mean…forget it.”
Claire sent her a look so icy Jessica nearly shivered.
“I just—the way you talk about Cal sometimes, I just—I wondered if, maybe…” She trailed off. Looked out the window and shrugged.
Claire grasped Jessica’s chin in her hand and forced her to look at her. “Eden’s dark hair comes from her grandmother. Cal was on another continent when she was conceived. Would you like the details of that night, or does that satisfy you?”
Jessica wrenched herself free. “Ow,” she whispered.
Claire yanked the car into drive and peeled away from the curb. Jessica clutched the side of the door.
A tense, five-minute silence followed.
“Does Cal know you want kids?” Claire asked quietly.
“We haven’t talked about it yet.”
“Do you have any conversations?”
Something sharp and tough calcified in Jessica’s throat. The only way to dissolve it was to lash out. “Yes. I know all about Brandy.”
“I’m certain that’s not true.”
“I know she looked like the dancing woman from the Gap ads.”
“What?”
“Brandy.”
“Is it possible,” Claire said, teeth clenched, “that you mean Audrey Hepburn?”
“Yes. Right.”
“You think of her as ‘the dancing woman from the Gap ads’?”
“Well, obviously she’s from other things like movies, I know who she is, but that’s what I first saw her in, okay? That’s just how I think of her first or whatever. I don’t have her IMDb page memorized, sorry.”
“Unbelievable,” Claire muttered. She slapped on her sunglasses even though the sun had retreated behind the mountains.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica implored. “I just—I’m just trying to know him, and I’m in the house all day by myself, and I’m going stir-crazy. It was a fucked-up thing to say to you.”
No response.
Claire’s silence infuriated her. Would you give me something? “But, I mean, it’s not that crazy to think. I saw the video, okay? So, I know you’ve been with him, and…”
Claire opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again.
She didn’t say another word until they reached her house forty-five minutes later. The drive back was endless. They hit every red light, found themselves in every slow lane. It seemed impossible that they had laughed with each other in the car earlier. They weren’t just back to Square One, they were at negative numbers. And wasn’t that the reason Claire had offered to take her shopping in the first place? As a do-over?
She shouldn’t have watched the tape, and she definitely shouldn’t have thrown it in Claire’s face, especially not after Claire had spent a fortune on Jessica’s dress and taken her out to nice places all day.
Sitting in Claire’s driveway at long last, Jessica turned to Claire to apologize again. She was filled with shame, would’ve said whatever was necessary to make Claire understand. But Claire was faster. Her voice sounded different from before; it wavered erratically.
“I don’t know what you saw—and I don’t want to know—but there’s more to Brandy than what’s on those videotapes. And more to me.”
“Of course,” said Jessica. “That’s true of anyone.”
She’d succeeded in provoking Claire’s high voice. It didn’t feel like a victory.
“I suppose I’ll see you next weekend,” said Claire unhappily. The Magician of the Year competition was on Saturday, with Cal’s premiere party the following Monday.
“Okay,” said Jessica tremulously.
“I’m sure you’ll look stunning.”
Tears gathered in Jessica’s eyes. “You too.”
Claire retrieved her garment bag and purse and shut the car door firmly behind her. When she passed by Jessica’s open window on her way inside the house, Jessica blurted out, “Were you in love with Cal?”
Claire returned to the car. She looked furious. “I didn’t love him. I didn’t love her,” she said quietly. “I loved them. I wanted to be a part of them, as a unit. The three of us. And that’s more than you deserve on that subject.”
Jessica’s heart beat so rapidly in her chest she thought it might lift her off the ground. “Could you ever feel that way about me?” she faltered. “Me and Cal?”
Claire gave her a lengthy once-over, peeling away every protective layer Jessica had amassed in her life.
“No.”
Kaimi
Kaimi knocked back two shots of soju before making the call. Sweet and crisp, it was the first type of alcohol she’d tried as a kid; she was twelve, living in LA. One of her Korean friends (whose parents were first generation) kept boxes of it in the fridge. As in, itty-bitty, innocent-looking juice boxes that wouldn’t be out of place in a Powerpuff Girls lunch box. The day before her family moved to Hawaii, she dared her friend to bring some to school, and they got smashed during lunchtime, which was pretty impressive since by then the juice boxes were room temperature and tasted like nail polish remover. Tonight she purchased her soju in bottle form, froze it for ten minutes, and shook it vigorously before pouring.
Ahh. Clean, smooth, cold, perfection.
Landon picked up on the fourth ring. “What do you want?” he demanded. “You’re off the case.”
She cleared her throat. “I have something important to tell you.”
His voice was gruff, not his usual late-night-DJ purr. “What?”
“It’s better if we meet in person.”
“Why? So you can try to rip me off again? No thanks.”
“It has nothing to do with the Erdnase papers.”
Another long pause. “I’m waiting.”
“Not on the phone. In person.”
He laughed nastily. “Good luck with that.”
“You’re going to want to hear this.”
“Well, I don’t trust you,” he hissed. It was the first time she’d ever heard him lose his composure, and her heart ached knowing she was the cause.
She bit her lip and released it, tasting blood. “Turns out, you’re not an only child.”
He hung up.
She poured another shot and waited for him to call back.
Fifteen minutes later, her phone lit up. Her heart leapt and she fumbled to answer.
“Hi.”
“You know where I live,” he said, and hung up again.
Too tipsy to drive, Kaimi hired an Uber, and on the way to Landon’s she sent a text, trusting the recipient would read it right away and follow its instructions.
Landon waited for her on the porch swing. “Stay where you are. Talk.”
“Okay,” she said, standing awkwardly in front of him. “Where should I start?”
“Tell me why you needed the money so badly you were going to steal it from me. And then maybe I’ll let you come in and tell me about this supposed sibling I have.”
“And if I refuse?” Kaimi asked.
“Then go home. Wherever that is.”
She sat on the porch step, feeling like an exposed wound and grateful for the soju-infused bandage around her heart. A deep breath and she was off and running with the CliffsNotes version of h
er downfall.
“I was working toward my master’s in art history at the University of Hawaii, with a job lined up at a private auction house. My parents’ intervention when I was a teenager worked; I hadn’t stolen so much as a sticker from the Hello Kitty store in years. There was this guy—he sort of swept me off my feet. For, like, the dumbest reason. See, Benji and I—my little nephew—we were at Manoa Valley Park and he spilled the ice cream bowl I’d gotten him, and for I swear, a full five minutes, he was sobbing his eyes out. Nothing I did or said would calm him down. Here’s a tip for your seminar. If you want a sure bet, go up to any chick with a kid, preferably not her own, and be super nice to the kid. She’ll melt right into your arms. True story.”
“Everyone’s sweet to kids,” Landon said. “Especially if they think it will earn them brownie points with moms.”
“Or aunties. Trust me, I know that now. Anyway, he was sobbing, and Cole stopped the game he was in and came over from the baseball field, looking all toned and surfer-hot, and said, ‘We’ve all spilled things. Don’t worry about it. You know my friends and I are playing baseball over there. You want to be our rookie?’ And the rest of the afternoon, he played catch with Benji and had him run around the bases, cheering for him and giving him high fives, all the kinds of stuff my brother-in-law didn’t have much time for. He was so patient and so kind, and I fell for him within, like, five minutes. I was such an idiot.”
Landon’s expression remained passive, giving nothing away, but his eyes crinkled in sympathy. “What happened?”
“We had a good couple of months. At least, I assume we did; he might have been cheating for all I know. He was definitely dealing coke. Grace, my sister, she figured him out right away and told me to ditch him. But I was completely blind.” She shook her head, wishing she had something else to drink. Sobriety crept up on her from all sides. “That’s not true, though. Part of me knew he was up to something, and I liked that about him. As long as I didn’t know the details, I could pretend it was okay. But one day when I was in class, he a hid a bunch of cocaine in my apartment, and when he got busted, to save himself he told them where it was and let me take the fall. I was lucky, in a lot of ways. The judge went easy on me because it was my first offense and I was in grad school and everything, but I had to go to rehab, and my parents had to pay for it out of their retirement fund. All the money they’d saved for so many years and earmarked for an active seniors’ place went toward this long, expensive treatment I didn’t even need. And now they have to live with Grace and my brother-in-law and Benji, in this tiny one-bedroom place, and Grace is pregnant with another kid, and there’s no room for everyone.
“The auction house job I mentioned, the one I had lined up for after graduation, cut me dead, which was of course the least of my worries. With a criminal record, an incomplete transcript, and no thesis, I’m basically unemployable. No gallery, museum, or brokerage firm will go near me. Even the antiques store I cashiered for one summer won’t return my calls. But the worst part, the worst, is my sister. She forebade me from seeing Benji anymore, because of my ‘drug habit.’”
Landon was stunned. “Even though it wasn’t true?”
She nodded. “I used to pick him up from kindergarten once a week, take him to the park.” She felt her eyes mist up at the memory of the day she had to tell Benji she wouldn’t be seeing him for a while. “I know that’s not really the reason; she knows I never sold drugs. She’s punishing me for hurting our parents. She thinks they’ve rescued me enough times. She and her husband and Benji all share the master bed, and my parents sleep on the foldout. It’s not good for them. It’s not good for anyone, and I need to make things right.”
Landon made room on the swing and patted the spot beside him. Kaimi stood from the steps, her legs sore, and sat by him.
“I got greedy,” she conceded. “I thought, if I can sell the Erdnase papers for the whole amount instead of a commission, I can fix everything right now, and go home a hero. I should’ve worked harder, faster, and smarter, instead of expecting one big score. And I shouldn’t have tried to steal them from you. I hated you when we met, but then I got to know you, and…If it helps, I was having second thoughts the whole time I was in your house.”
They sat next to each other in strangely companionable silence.
“You hated me?” he asked after a while, in mock surprise.
She pinched her forefinger and thumb together. “Just a little bit.”
He stood. “Here’s the thing. Your arrest was in the public records, but I didn’t know the details. I needed someone willing to work outside the law. I can’t exactly be mad you tried to hustle me, considering that’s why I hired you.
“Come on,” he said, and held the door open for her.
“How’d you know I’d break in when I did, though?”
“I didn’t. But I followed you to the valet. That was bizarre, you taking a photo of my keys. So I had my friend Patrick keep his eyes open, watch for you outside my place.”
She was shocked. “He knows about the papers?”
“No, no, I just told him you were crazy.”
“Oh, thank you so much!”
“Yep, crazy jealous Kaimi, my new girlfriend, looking for evidence I was cheating.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered, stifling a laugh.
“He says you marched right in like you lived there and then looked at my bookshelf for damn near an hour.” A booming laugh filled the air. “What kind of person breaks into a house and looks at the books?”
“The kind of person you hired, I guess.”
“Drink?”
She followed him into the kitchen. “Please.”
Beers in hand, they sat in the living room. Landon’s leg bounced up and down. “Now what’s this about me having a brother or sister? Did you say that just to get my attention?”
“It’s a theory I’m working on. I’m ninety-five percent there, I just need a little more info. Tell me about your dad and we’ll see if the pieces fit.”
He exhaled. “Let’s see. Single dad, raised me alone. Worked as a chauffeur, which got him into contact with all sorts of people, you know, flying into and out of LAX. He also worked a lot of high-end parties.”
“How’d he come across the Erdnase papers?”
“No idea. Maybe he overheard something or saw an opportunity at one of the houses and took it.”
“And he knew enough to know they were worth something, so he had a passing interest in magic.”
“Right. Yeah, he did tricks here and there, mostly for poker games. And he taught me a few moves. He’s the one who told me to use it as an icebreaker whenever I felt threatened by kids at school or whatever. He also ran scams. Mostly when we lived in San Francisco.”
Kaimi set her beer down. “What kind of scams?”
“Returning merchandise to Best Buy. Like, we’d pick up some big-box purchase, a flatscreen TV, speakers, microwave, and always pay cash, and then the next day we’d bring the receipt back in—and ask to return it for some reason. But we wouldn’t be returning the one we bought. You feel me? I sometimes helped with that one. We furnished a whole apartment that way.”
“Did he leave behind anything besides the papers for you, when he passed?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s all in that cigar box on the table behind you.”
She opened it and she and Landon went through it together. The first thing Kaimi retrieved was a book called Art Forger’s Handbook.
“Ha. We read this in one of my restoration classes. Was your dad into art fraud?”
“I think he dipped his foot in—but not with paintings. Just decorative objects, small items.”
“Such as…?”
“Just like, tchotchkes,” he told her. “No Fabergé eggs or anything.”
“Jewelry boxes, maybe? What about music boxes?”
Landon’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, the birds! Those singing birds. Claimed they were Frisser somebody.”
“Frisard,” Kaimi
corrected him.
“Sold ’em for ten times what they were worth. What’s this got to do with—”
“I’ll get to that. What’s this?” She handed Landon an envelope.
He lifted the flap and poured the contents into his hand: a card and a small key.
“What do you think it opens?” Kaimi asked.
“Something small.”
“That’s your contribution? The small key opens something small?” she asked drily.
“Well, give me a second. I haven’t thought about it in a while.”
She grinned. They were back to their old sniping, and it felt good. Comfortable.
“Safe-deposit box?” she suggested.
“No, I already took it to the bank and there were no matches.”
The doorbell rang, and Landon stood.
“Wait,” Kaimi said. “Don’t answer it yet. My next question is sort of…delicate.”
He moved to answer the door. “I can handle it.”
“Wait!” She grabbed his arm. “Do you know if your dad had any other families? Not in California, necessarily?”
“No.”
“Does the name Deverell ring a bell?”
In shock, Landon dropped his beer. It spilled out onto the wood floor. “That was an alias he used with marks.”
“I’ll mop up the beer, you get the door,” Kaimi said.
In an apparent daze, Landon did as told.
“Hiya. I brought pizza,” said Jessica. “But why am I here?”
“Who are you?” Landon asked in response.
Kaimi entered from the kitchen, paper towels in hand. “Jessica Clarke. Formerly Deverell,” she explained. “A while back, her dad, whom she’s never met, sent her a music box. I think your key opens it. And I think the other half of the Erdnase papers are inside.”
* * *
Jessica was silent for a long time, mulling things over. Kaimi didn’t think Jessica had a mean bone in her body, but she worried that the shock and stress might manifest in an ugly way. A surprise family member of a different race who had apparently been raised by the man who’d stepped out on her, and…
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