“You seem to like art, Veronica,” Miguel said, appearing a few feet deeper into the studio.
Veronica smiled. “I do, very much. And I love your work. This one is a bit different from the rest,” she said, indicating the one she had been looking at, with the woman and elderly man. “Less movement.”
Miguel gave a nod. “That’s true. My feeling with that one has always been one of tension rather than movement. And I think… well I originally conceived of the woman rising from her chair. I was going to put the movement in that gesture. But I just couldn’t make it work.”
Veronica wondered if there was significance to this. Maybe Miguel couldn’t face his mother really leaving his father. She couldn’t blame him. What he was going through certainly wasn’t easy.
“How are things going?” she asked. “Are we going to take another crack at finding the deed today?”
Miguel shook his head. “I’d rather focus on finding Ariana,” he said. “My mother’s so upset about the grave robbery she’s been a mess. I don’t think she’s going to do anything about the deed for a while.” He grimaced. “That sounds pretty cold, huh?”
Veronica shrugged, unsure what he meant.
“I just—I’m really upset about the grave robbery, of course. That’s why I want to focus on that. But I made it sound like I wouldn’t if I thought my mother was going to get her fake deed in before we found the real one. I would, but—” He sighed. “I don’t know. I just have to try to keep my father’s interests in mind, as well as my sister’s, I guess.”
Veronica gave a soft, nervous laugh. “I’m not here to judge you, Miguel,” she said. “What I see is a family that’s been going through a really hard time. If there’s anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.”
Miguel nodded, his eyes weary. “Okay. Come with me.”
Veronica followed him through the studio, noticing two more new paintings. There was one she really wanted to approach: it had a track runner leaping a hurdle. Something about it called to her. But she forced herself to pass it by, going with Miguel to the desk against the back wall.
On the desk was a shoebox with an assortment of items in it. Miguel took the box and offered it to Veronica.
“These things all belonged to Ariana. I thought maybe if you touched them…”
Veronica nodded but didn’t take the box. She looked around and saw a folding chair against a nearby corner. She set it up beside the desk and gestured for Miguel to sit in the office chair nearby. He did so, and Veronica reached into the box, which he’d set on the table. Before she lowered her fingers to catch hold of an item, she took a few deep breaths. She closed her eyes and grasped an object.
From the feel of it, it was a watch. Veronica didn’t open her eyes. She ran her fingers over the edge of the watch face, along the leather wristband, to the buckle. She heard faint echoes: a child’s laughter. She opened her eyes and looked at the watch. Minnie Mouse held her arms at eleven and two.
“I’m not getting much from this.”
Miguel gave a half-laugh. “I’m not surprised. She almost never wore it.”
Veronica dropped the watch back into the box. She closed her eyes again and grabbed something. It was smooth on one side, with a metal piece on a hinge: some sort of large barrette.
~~~
She was looking in a tall, mahogany framed mirror, but the face opposite hers was a young Ariana, perhaps ten years old. Before her on the dark red, polished wood of the vanity at which she sat were a dozen little porcelain figurines: ballerinas, unicorns, cats, fairies. She held a hair brush in her right hand and the barrette in the other. Behind her, her mother crossed the room.
“I want you to wear your brown dress,” Dolores said. “Ariana, are you listening to me?”
Ariana turned around and faced her mother, her heart beating hard in her chest. “Mama, I want to tell you something,” she said.
Dolores, who was sorting through clothes hanging in the closet, stopped what she was doing and frowned at her daughter. “What is it?” she asked, her tone serious.
“Mama, I—” Ariana began, but stopped short, her face flushing hot. Her fingers curled tightly around the handle of the brush and the barrette. The metal bar of the barrette dug into her palm.
“Ariana?” Dolores said, her eyebrows drawn together. She approached, holding out a hand to her daughter. “What is it? Are you alright?”
“Mama,” Ariana said, and Veronica felt her throat squeeze tightly, and tears sting her eyes. “I want to tell you, but I’m scared,” she whispered.
Dolores grabbed Ariana’s right hand and freed the brush from it, wrapping her two hands around it. She crouched so she was eye-level with Ariana. “Baby, you can tell me anything. I’ve noticed something’s been wrong. Tell me what happened.”
Ariana began to cry, then, her shoulders shaking, her face twisted. Her words came out warped by her grief, hard to understand. “Oh Mama,” she said. “I didn’t want it to be real, but I can’t stop thinking about it. What he did.”
“What he did? What who did?” Dolores demanded, squeezing Ariana’s hand.
“Daddy’s friend,” Ariana whispered, sobs washing through her and making further speech impossible.
“Which friend? What did he do?” Dolores asked, but Ariana only collapsed against her, weeping.
There was movement in the corner of her eye, and Ariana turned with a jerk, to see her father standing in the doorway.
“What’s wrong now?” he demanded. “We don’t have time for this. She’s not even dressed.”
“Hector—” Dolores began.
He cut her off. “I won’t have another night like Swan Lake. They’re expecting us in twenty minutes. Get her dressed!”
Veronica felt Ariana’s eyes grow wide as she stared at her father, her body tense, her jaw tight. Dolores rubbed her daughter’s back.
“It’s okay, baby, don’t worry about him,” Dolores said when Hector walked away. “Just tell me the rest.”
But Ariana wouldn’t speak at all, no matter how Dolores tried to cajole her. Ariana broke away from her mother’s comforting hands and stalked to the closet, where she began yanking out every item she could grab, throwing it on the floor. Dolores’s pleas grew louder but Ariana was deaf to them. Finally she crumbled into a heap among the dresses on the floor, not crying anymore, just still.
~~~
Veronica shuddered as she came back to herself. She still held the barrette, but used her left hand to rub the top of her right. Her fingers had gone icy cold.
She couldn’t look at Miguel, though she felt his eyes on her. He said nothing—he must have known that she was upset by what she saw. He waited in silence.
Finally, after rubbing the fingers of her hand into the palm of her left for so long they finally started to warm, she took a deep breath. “Miguel,” she said. “Did you ever hear about Ariana suffering from some kind of… abuse?”
She cut her eyes to his face then, to see its expression.
He looked startled, his eyes a bit wide, his eyebrows raised, his lips parted.
“Abuse?”
“At the hands of some friend of your father’s?” Veronica said.
His eyebrows drew slowly together then. “No.”
Veronica sucking in her top lip, chewing it a little.
“Is that what you saw?” Miguel asked, his voice shaky.
Veronica let her lip go and shook her head. “I saw her try to tell your mother about it. Your father interrupted, though. I don’t know if she ever identified who did it, or said exactly what happened.” And I hope she never decides to show me exactly what happened, Veronica added mentally.
Miguel pressed a hand to his mouth, looking out into the distance.
“Your mom never said anything?”
Miguel shook his head.
“She was—Ariana was… I think about ten,” Veronica said. “I mean, when she talked to your mother. Your mother said she’d noticed something was wrong.”
“That’s when it started,” Miguel said, his eyes widening. “Oh my god.”
“What?”
“Ariana—that’s when she started—when the problems started,” Miguel said. “She started showing signs of—well, eventually they said it was bipolar disorder. I just remember she was really sad, and she wanted to be alone. She would go for weeks without really sleeping, or then sometimes she was doing crazy things, like throwing herself out of our tree house at our old place in Oakland, saying maybe she could learn to fly.”
Veronica listened but said nothing, watching Miguel as he put the pieces of his memory together.
“She was—god, she was trying to cope with what happened to her!” he exclaimed. He stood and walked a few paces in one direction, then stopped and turned back to Veronica. “When she was twelve, I caught her drinking Dad’s brandy. Then later it was drugs. She would refuse to get out of bed and go to school—Mama would shout at her and try to drag her out. But then she’d be okay a month or two later, and she’d do all kinds of good things like joining the soccer team and getting all As. Then she’d fall apart again.”
Miguel dug his fingers into his hair.
“Veronica, I never even questioned why. Not once. I never asked myself if maybe there was a reason. She was just my crazy sister, who made us all miserable. My mother and father would be so terrified, when she’d run away. They’d be obsessed—any time the phone would ring, my mother would drop whatever she was doing and tear across the house, and when it didn’t have anything to do with Ariana, she’d just start to cry. I hated Ariana for doing that to her.”
Miguel’s eyes were full of tears. Veronica didn’t know what to do. She stayed still in her seat, though she wondered if Miguel would want her to get up and put an arm around him or something. But somehow she didn’t think that would help at all. She just wished she could do something.
“I hated my sister for being sick,” Miguel said, his voice losing volume until it was a soft whisper. “I hated the nights she’d stay up and play music in her room. It kept me up. She started cutting herself when she was fifteen, and my mom found out, and it was this big awful thing for weeks. I hated her for that. Not once. Not once did I ever ask her why. I never wondered why. I just thought she was crazy, that she wanted attention.”
Miguel hung his head, his hands still buried in his hair.
“Ariana, I’m sorry,” he moaned.
Ariana, now would be a fantastic time to show up and talk to your brother, Veronica thought with some force.
A shimmer of red formed a few feet away from Veronica, toward the back door of the studio. She looked at it in disbelief. It would be pretty amazing if she’d managed to summon Ariana like that.
However, as Miguel wept, Veronica watched the shimmer resolve into the shape of an old friend—not Ariana at all, but the ghost of a man, one she’d met in a 7-11, who joined those that followed her.
“Oh, hello,” she said to him. Miguel stiffened and looked at her. She could feel his eyes, but she kept hers fixed on the ghost.
Always a pleasure.
“Well, likewise. Why have you come?”
“Is it Ariana?” Miguel demanded, his voice tight.
Veronica shook her head. “He’s a spirit I’ve talked to a few times. Sometimes he helps me.”
“What does he want?” Miguel asked.
Veronica tilted her face to the side a bit and smiled at the spirit. “He’ll tell me in a moment. It’s not easy for them to show themselves to me. Give him a minute.”
Tell him, she’s in a good place.
Veronica took a deep breath and turned to Miguel. “He wants you to know Ariana’s in a good place.”
Miguel frowned. “Heaven?”
It’s not for me to say. But many care for her.
“He didn’t confirm that,” Veronica said, “but he says ‘many care for her.’”
Miguel made a pained noise and clapped a hand over his mouth.
She came late. She’d been waiting a long time.
Veronica nodded. She thought she understood: Ariana’s spirit had hung around the jail for almost two years.
Very sad. They comfort her. She watches her loved ones, too.
Veronica relayed this to Miguel, who stood frozen.
She is very sad about her father. She says she wanted to help, but now she’s very troubled. The grave.
Veronica nodded again. “We’ll find her remains and we’ll bury her again,” she promised. “If she could just help me find them, that would be great. We do need help finding the deed, too.”
The old man flickered and the edges of him faded, a shimmer passing through the center of him like movement through a projection. Then he was gone. She told Miguel this.
He stood motionless for a few moments, then turned to her. “How do I know any of that was real?” he asked, an edge to his voice.
Veronica’s brow knit. “Uh…”
“How do I know anything you’ve told me is true? Maybe I’ve been kidding myself. You could be a con artist, for all I know. Telling me lies to make me think you’ve spoken to Ariana. And now, conveniently, you don’t see her, you see some guy—”
“Hey, wait a minute.”
“Some guy who doesn’t say anything I don’t already know—that you don’t already know!”
Taking in a deep breath, she prepared to reason with him, remind him she’d found Ariana’s body in the first place.
“These lies about her—how can you say things like that! That she was abused!”
“Miguel—”
“You probably rigged this whole thing!” Miguel exclaimed.
“Miguel!”
“Get out of here!” He pointed to the front of the studio. “Just get out!”
His voice was like the crack of a gun. After a moment of shock, Veronica got to her feet and hurried out of the door, her heart pounding in her chest, her throat closing.
“Get out!” Miguel shouted behind her.
She ran to the car. As she reached for the door, she realized she still held the barrette—it was blue, she noticed for the first time. With a whimper she stuffed it into the pocket of her jacket and yanked the door open. She fumbled the keys as she tried to put one in the ignition. A glance at the door of the studio told her he’d remained inside, but she felt like he was chasing her. She managed to get the key in slot. With a shuddering breath she turned it and pulled away from the curb into traffic without looking. A blaring horn nearly sent her swerving into the sidewalk, but she managed to stop the car before it climbed up the curb. With a sob she looked around, waited for a clear spot in traffic, and pulled out again. She didn’t stop until she’d gone five or six blocks down. Pulling into the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant and killing the engine, she burst into tears.
After crying for a few minutes she tried to calm herself with a few breaths. It wasn’t working. She pulled out her cell, her hand shaking, and stared at it. She wanted to call Daniel, but she knew he was working. She speed-dialed Melanie, instead.
“Hey, V. What’s up?”
Veronica tried to form words, but a sob escaped her, instead.
“Whoa, whoa—are you okay? What’s going on? Veronica, talk to me. You’re freaking me out, hon. That’s not good for my blood pressure, V. Talk to me.”
The thought of Melanie’s blood pressure startled Veronica and she took a deep breath. “I just—Miguel just—he kicked me out of his studio,” she managed.
“What?” Melanie said. “Are you okay? What happened?”
Although she had to stop several times to cry before she succeeded in getting the whole story out, finally she told Melanie everything that happened.
“Aw, man,” Melanie said. “That’s awful.”
“I don’t understand. I mean, this is what I thought would happen when I first went to see him back in July. He believed me then, and then he found her remains, and I just don’t understand why now…”
“Well…” Melanie said softly.
/> “What?”
“Well, you did just reveal to him that Ariana was abused, right? And from what you said, he didn’t take it well. He realized he never even suspected that was why she kind of went off the deep end, right? He must have felt pretty guilty about that.”
Veronica sniffled and began rummaging in her purse for something to wipe her nose with. “Yeah, but—but he didn’t question it—he just got really upset, but it’s not like he said I was lying, not right away, I mean. Then the old man came and he just lost it.”
“I’m betting he got his hopes up it was Ariana you were talking to. Then when he realized you weren’t, he just couldn’t hear what the old man was saying. He wasn’t ready to be comforted, I guess. So he lashed out at you.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. He couldn’t process it. You gave him this awful information that made him feel horribly guilty, and then tried to soothe him, and he lashed out.”
Veronica let out a ragged sigh.
“Listen, hon, why don’t you come over. We can have some tea and watch one of those old movies you like on the classic channel.”
“Mellie, what am I going to do?” Veronica asked.
“About Miguel?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing,” Melanie said. “Maybe he realizes he was a great big jerk, maybe he doesn’t. If he does, he’ll contact you. If he doesn’t, you’re probably not going to get paid for the time you already put in, but at least his problems aren’t your problems anymore.”
Veronica didn’t like that answer. “I can’t just abandon Ariana.”
Melanie let out a loud breath. “Well, if Ariana sees fit to give you a nice, clear vision of where to find her remains and who the person responsible for robbing her grave is, then… I don’t know, just give the police an anonymous tip, alright?”
The Gamble and the Grave (Veronica Barry Book 4) Page 12