“It runs in my mother’s side of the family.” She looks pointedly at Julia.
An awkward pause. “Oh . . . she was your half sister,” says Julia.
“My father wasn’t a huge believer in morality. He thought that it was simply a lesser vehicle for social construct through tribalism, war, and politics. The greater vehicle was through the pure rationality of science, free from dogma, superstition, or emotion.”
Julia traces a finger along the edge of a page. “Doesn’t sound like a warm family to grow up in.”
“I didn’t notice. I suppose I’m very much like him in that way.”
Julia turns another page in the journal, trying to feign disinterest. There’s a sketch of a very basic tent, just a bamboo pole with fabric tied to a slightly raised platform.
“Well, I don’t know how I could possibly help,” says Julia. “I’m just a journalist. Was a journalist.”
“Exactly. You have a nose for when people aren’t telling the truth.”
“Maybe,” says Julia with an ironic smile. “Not always.”
“I did a little research on you myself. Your series on the use of toxic soil for park development in low-income neighborhoods was impressive. All I need is for you to connect with someone who is, mercifully, allowing me to disinter Irene and bury her in the family cemetery. Ask the right questions.”
Sounds a little too easy. “You just want me to call this person?”
“No, I want you to go there. To the island, Kapu.”
Julia almost starts to laugh, but she quickly realizes Aunt Liddy is serious. “Go there. This mysterious person doesn’t have a phone?”
“He—the Reverend—leads a small, isolated Christian colony. No interest in the corrupt trappings of modernity and all that.”
“Well, that’s even better. So you want me to go to an island I’ve never heard of, where your sister died under mysterious circumstances, and by the way there’s no phone service and a religious cult. Can’t see why I’d turn that down.”
“Don’t be so dramatic—they’re no more a cult than the Pennsylvania Dutch are. And to help support themselves, they run a small, and very exclusive, luxury eco-resort for those who can afford their outrageous prices and withstand a complete break from technology.”
“And why would any tourist want that?”
“The romance of ‘getting away from it all,’ and all that nonsense.”
Julia knows the type—in the days of Ethan, there were always one or two waifish women settled into a corner at a cocktail party, going on and on about their latest excursion to a place no one had heard of, where they earnestly gave up protein or gluten or electricity as some kind of purification rite, or tried their hand at coffee picking with locals, weaving baskets from palm fronds. Always within the thick, protective padding that wealth provided.
“I think I’d prefer the cult,” Julia says.
Aunt Liddy smiles thinly. “Of course, we’ll give you a satellite phone.”
“That’s really not my main issue. And . . . why me? Why not Bailey?”
“He won’t release her remains to anyone except a family member, in person. It took more than seventy years to get even this concession, and I . . . well, I am obviously in no condition to travel.”
“And I’m the only family you have left.”
Aunt Liddy places both hands in her lap, one over the other. It’s a prim, yet defensive gesture—she’s trying to hide how important this is to her, and failing.
It gives Julia the confidence to press. “Isn’t it sentimental to want to bury your sister? Didn’t you say sentimentality was . . . anathema?”
Her great-aunt slaps the armrest on her wheelchair. “Now you’re thinking like a Greer. Look through the journal until you find the red flower.”
Julia arches an eyebrow, but does as she’s told.
“She went to Paris, of course. Do you draw?”
“A little. Not well.” Finally Julia finds the red bloom. It too is labeled with a question mark, kupapa ‘u flower written underneath. The flower looks like a large orchid, with black dots leading into its center.
“She said this one smelled like a rotting corpse. That’s what kupapa ‘u means in Hawaiian, corpse. By the time the specimen arrived, it had no smell anymore, and had blackened into a thick pulp. But I planted it in the greenhouse anyway, thinking maybe the roots would sprout a new plant. They didn’t. A scientist gets used to failure, so I didn’t think much more about it.”
“That’s all very interesting,” says Julia, closing the journal. “But I don’t see what it has to do with Irene’s death.”
Aunt Liddy watches her for a moment. Appraising.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. When they sent me Irene’s things, they also sent me a funeral keepsake, a brooch made out of her hair. An old-fashioned idea, making jewelry out of hair, or teeth, or the bone of a loved one. I compared a few strands to a sample of hair from a brush Irene had left behind. They did seem to match, although that didn’t prove much beyond the fact that she’d been there. So I carefully froze both samples. I was certain that one day we’d have processes that could reveal more than my primitive microscope.”
There’s no emotion as she says this, Julia notes. Not a single hint of sadness, or loss.
“As soon as we had the technology, I ran a genetic and chemical analysis of her hair, hoping to find what other factors were in play. There was a high level of neuromodulators in the sample taken from the brooch—puzzling, because they’re usually only present when there’s a neurological disorder. Which she didn’t suffer from, at least not when she left for Kapu.”
Julia knows she must listen very, very carefully to what Aunt Liddy says next, because everything else has been constructed to lead her to this moment.
“And then, not too long ago, six months, seven, I noticed a strange red bloom in the greenhouse. It gave off the smell of a rotting corpse. Excited, I found its match in Irene’s notebook, and immediately took a sample. The center released pollen when I touched it. Then I ran some tests. It wasn’t a flower at all—it was a fungus in disguise. The sample of Irene’s hair from the brooch and the fungus contained an identical gene. I ran the tests on her hair from the brush, pre-visit. No such gene was present. It’s possible there had been some kind of cross-contamination between the samples—it’s not unheard of. I would have taken a fresh sample from the flower, but that very night there was a break-in.”
Julia sits very, very still. She knows that every blink, every breath is being observed. “Someone took it.”
Aunt Liddy nods.
Not just a sentimental mission, then, to collect the remains of a dearly departed sister. Julia wonders what her mother exchanged for those braces, because she senses there is not a single cell of compassion in her great-aunt’s body. She is one hundred percent shark.
“Why is it so special?”
“I have theories only, and you’re better off not knowing too much. But if it wasn’t cross-contamination, well . . . let’s just say it’s the kind of discovery that could land one a Nobel Prize. And a much vaster fortune.”
There she is again, dangling the carrot of the grand potential inheritance. Julia chooses to ignore it. “Any idea who broke in?”
“Again, theories. We conducted a thorough security investigation after it was stolen. Discovered surveillance bugs in the house, malware on the computers—even the cell phones had been hacked. Not the efforts of an amateur.”
“So it’s that dangerous?”
A slight pause. “I will, of course, compensate you very well.”
Not an answer, a deflection.
“But if all you need is the flower, you could send someone with more expertise, a scientist at least. They could pretend to be a tourist.”
“I need the body and the flower. There was precious little DNA in the few follicles I was able to preserve. I need more. Even a partial skeleton would be nice.”
Even a partial skeleton would be nice.
Julia can’t imagine a world where she’d ever say that about someone she’d loved. Maybe the Greer side of the family isn’t capable of love—maybe that’s the real reason her great-grandmother severed all ties.
If she wasn’t desperate, she would too.
Instead, Julia says nothing, trying to be completely inscrutable. She remembers Ethan in the car lot, after they’d gotten two grand off the sticker price of the Jaguar. A strained silence is always your best negotiation tool.
Her great-aunt rushes to fill it. “All the tourists have returned raving about how wonderful the unspoiled paradise is. But there may be some in the mix who, like you, are on a similar mission. How far they’d go is uncertain. You’d need to be careful. Discreet.” The tremor in her hand develops into a shake. “And think what a story it would be. I know a very powerful literary agent who’d be perfect. I’ve already planted some seeds and she’s intrigued, to say the least.”
So. There it is. Money, a career-launching story, and danger. But for Julia, her own safety is of little concern. The first few weeks after Evie was gone, she’d walked to the beach at dawn every morning, having suffered sleepless night after sleepless night. Toyed with the urge to enter the water, fully clothed. She imagined her skin underwater, pale as the moon, the feel of the current lifting her hair, bubbles percolating from her mouth, eyes open. Would she have had the will to keep walking as her lungs burned? Maybe. Maybe not. She just wanted to be subsumed by something else. To not be trapped in the prison of what had happened to her.
Eventually she’d realized, though, that Evie would be truly lost then, and Ethan would truly win. Not much of a reason to live, but enough.
Is she willing to risk the only thing she has left, though: her life?
But her great-aunt has all that money, more than enough to finally put her on even footing with Ethan.
And the best part—the very, very best part—is the son of a bitch will never see it coming.
CHAPTER 5
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOW, Aunt Liddy proves true to her word, and Julia has to physically stop herself from checking her bank balance every few hours. It can’t be real. It just can’t be real. But it is. She packed up the few clothes that seemed halfway decent and checked into a hotel in Santa Monica with an ocean view, fully functional electricity, a television (with cable!), and unlimited toilet paper. That first night she stood for nearly a half hour in front of the air conditioner, enjoying cool air for the first time in weeks. She was finally able to pay off her cell phone bill, her car insurance that was again on the brink of cancellation, the remainder of her rent after she gave notice to her landlord.
And food. Now she’s surrounded by food, and she can afford it, from the overpriced candy bars in the mini-fridge to the room service menu. Yes, she’ll take a latte with that. No, please put the vinaigrette on the side. She’s already on a first-name basis with the room service waiters, Don and Michelle; they smile and make a fuss about uncovering the dishes, with pleases and thank-yous and gratitude for the tips she hands them before they edge out the door. A part of her, though, still clocks the plates with food scraps in the hallway when she leaves for her morning run. Like it all might be taken away from her again.
It’s frightening, the realization of how thin the razor edge of her life had become. Waiting in line at the food pantry for soft potatoes and pinto beans that had to be examined for mold. Curled up on the floor with a high fever, too scared to go to the emergency room because she’d never be able to afford the bill. Even a parking ticket was enough to potentially ruin her. No room for a single mistake, no buffer. Waking up every day to a new and immediate crisis—a lien on her checking account, a three-day pay-or-quit notice—which would only be followed by another crisis. Never an end in sight.
Things she’d taken for granted before the divorce now seem like small miracles. Orange juice. Clothes washed in a machine, not the bathtub. Toilet paper instead of napkins pilfered from Starbucks. Health insurance. It’s like being reborn, becoming human again.
And there’s progress on other fronts. Her newly retained lawyer—a referral from Aunt Liddy—is currently looking through all the unopened envelopes from Ethan’s attorney. Just yesterday, her great-aunt cosigned a month-to-month lease for a small, two-bedroom house in Santa Monica within walking distance of the beach, which costs a heart-stopping four thousand dollars a month, and to which Julia will move to after she returns. It’s important to live in a good neighborhood, with good schools, her new lawyer said, so we can prove Evie will have a decent quality of life here. Even her initial call with the literary agent went well—it looks like proper representation might be in the works.
And yet.
Yeah. Standing in the hotel room, a glass of merlot in her hand—real merlot, forty-five dollars a bottle, a splurge, but she deserves it after the hell she’s been through—with her boarding pass and itinerary for the morning flight printed, and her suitcase almost completely packed, she feels . . . dread. The same bottomless pit in her stomach she’d felt right before walking into court, alone and unrepresented.
It’s all happened so fast. Maybe it’s too much, too soon. Maybe she went from being terminally naive to being terminally skeptical.
Or maybe it’s because she’s starting to realize exactly what she signed on for. Like the suitcase with a false bottom—a special delivery. Julia hadn’t exactly been thrilled with the smuggling part, but Aunt Liddy insisted. We need to stay in touch, daily, and they collect cell phones on the flight over. So along with her new clothes, she has a GPS device her great-aunt called a favor into DARPA for, which also works as a cell phone even without a nearby satellite tower. She had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to get it. It has waypoints programmed into the GPS where Irene’s camp and the corpse flower might be, based on sketches from the notebook, and she can use the built-in camera to navigate the terrain, although she has a printed satellite map as backup. Also packed away are glass specimen jars with some kind of white gel, a knife, alcohol swabs (to sterilize the knife), a vial marked PLANT NUTRIENTS, and latex gloves. None of it on the “approved items to bring to Kapu” list of course. Insect repellent is prohibited; eco-friendly biodegradable sunscreen and shampoo/soap only; no cameras of any kind; no electronics, computers, or tablets; no alcohol or medication not prescribed by a doctor; 100 percent organic snacks in biodegradable packaging allowed (5 max).
Then there’s a medication regimen she’s to start as soon as she lands—small blue pills in an aluminum foil package with the Greer Enterprises slogan, Bringing You Tomorrow, Today. One pill in the morning, one at night—antibiotics, Bailey had said when she asked, a precaution against any number of nasty bacteria that might be lurking on the island. Legionnaires’ disease isn’t uncommon in that part of the world, and you’ll be trekking through some very biodiverse areas.
Julia wasn’t sure if she entirely believed her. A quick Google search hadn’t turned up any pharmaceuticals made by Greer Enterprises—why would they be producing their own antibiotics? And there are so many other things she still doesn’t know, gaps in the narrative.
Bailey made her a copy of Irene’s notebook and the letters, nicely bound, thoughtful extra pages for her own notes. She’s read through it from cover to cover, but can’t shake the feeling she’s missing something important.
Every ink drawing of the vegetation is so meticulous, as if each frond, stalk, or petal had been measured first. The work of a scientist, not an artist. Even Irene’s penmanship is nearly perfect, the strokes carefully considered, with nearly identical loops and a consistent forward slant. Julia traces her finger over some of the names. Aleurites moluccana. Hibiscus tiliaceus. Dicranopteris linearis. A woman, like her, pouring herself into a project, to focus on something besides what a mess her life had become.
But how could a woman so meticulous forget her husband and daughter in a fire, leave them in a burning house? And how did the fire start? It wasn’t too long after the tragedy that Irene, Liddy, Annabell
e, and their father had moved to a ten-bedroom Victorian in Santa Barbara, funded by Charles’s fortune. Online, Julia finds an article referencing an inquest into the fire that had gone nowhere, as far as she can tell.
And she’s pretty sure some pages in the journal are missing. Why isn’t there a sketch of Agnes, or the village, or the Reverend? Along with the ink sketch of Irene’s camp, there’s one of Liddy drawn from memory. A fantastic view from a cliff on Kapu. On closer examination, she found the faintest outlines of what looked like the edge of torn paper close to the spine, picked up by the copier’s scanner. Her old, investigative instincts kicked in, firing up neurons that had atrophied.
She signed up for an online ancestry service, found some extra bits and pieces. A photo, black-and-white, Liddy & Irene written in ballpoint pen at the bottom. In the photo, Aunt Liddy is in a wheelchair, still thin and beaky, although her hair is thick, curling just above her shoulders. Irene stands tall in riding boots and jodhpurs, a necklace with a heart-shaped locket around her neck. She holds the reins of a palomino, and squints in the bright sunlight. There’s a quiver with arrows slung over her shoulder. Something wild and Amazonian about the way she holds herself, like she could be mounted in a flash and charging through a forest, hunting.
Some digging at the historical society revealed more about the Church of Eternal Light, which had gotten its start in Texas and moved to San Bernardino before leaving for the island. She found a sepia-toned photo of Reverend Waldo Palmer and his congregation before they boarded the ship for Kapu, a stern and solemn tribe. Scattered references in academic journals—Palmer had much to say about the increasingly materialistic ambitions of the Protestants, felt that a true relationship with God could only be had in an unspoiled paradise. Bits and pieces of an apocalyptic vision, with only the pure, the chosen (his congregation, of course), surviving. He was fond of the Book of Ezekiel. For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land. . . . Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you.
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