by Toby Neal
“I know he lives outside of Boston. In a cabin on a big piece of land with a barn. His mother lives in another cabin on the land.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you called him?”
“Of course. The number’s disconnected.”
I can tell Rafe’s getting interested in spite of himself. “What else do you know about him?”
“He’s clean and sober. He drives a motorcycle. He carries a gun.”
Rafe glances quickly at me. “What kind?”
“I don’t know. It was black metal.” I trace the boxy shape. “When I asked him why he carried it, he said it was for protection. He didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Interesting.” Rafe slaps his thighs, gets up. “Sometimes we need to get information for the business, so I know a private investigator. I’ll check with him when we get back to Boston. But I warn you, Pearl. Go sticking your nose where it isn’t wanted, and you might not like what you find.”
He walks to the front of the plane, and leaves me to stew on that.
Mom looks older. That’s the first thing I notice when I see her, walking behind Jade, who’s running to meet us on the tarmac of the small landing strip in Eureka. Mom’s auburn hair is in a braid, as usual, but it’s got more silver in it than before and the weight she lost after Dad died has stayed off. She was always a sturdy woman, but she looks stooped now, as if bent over by worries, and though she’s smiling widely and reaching out her arms to take the baby from Ruby, I feel the weight of her cares. And I know one of them has been me.
Jade, on the other hand, has grown taller in the ten months since we packed up the house on Saint Thomas and moved in different directions. She’s filled out, grown into a long-legged, lithe beauty. Ruby tells me she’s an avid ballet dancer, and I see grace in the way she moves.
I hug Jade. Holding her feels good. Looking into her dark green eyes smiling at me through her thick glasses, I feel really bad for shucking them off like I did. More to feel bad about—and I never did that well.
“When’re you getting some contacts, Jade?” I ask. “You should let those pretty eyes shine.”
Jade doesn’t answer, and turns away. Either she doesn’t want contacts, or there’s some reason she can’t have them. Ruby squints at me and mouths, “Be nice.”
Finally, Mom hands the baby reluctantly back to Ruby and turns to me. Her hazel eyes well up, and so do mine.
“Mom.” I fall into her arms and squeeze tight. Being in her arms, I feel the best I’ve felt since Magnus left. She loves me. I feel it to my bones. I want her to feel my love too.
“You’re all over the place in the magazines,” she whispers in my ear. “My beautiful Pearl.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so awful, Mom. I know I was terrible to you when Dad died.” As I say it, I suddenly know why. I wanted Mom to protect me from the Carvers. To somehow know what had happened to me that night, and rescue me. In some weird way, I even blamed her for Dad’s death, because if she’d kept me away from them he’d never have seen what he did, a sight so shocking it killed him.
It all makes no sense, and I know it, and yet I know it also to be true. That’s why I was so horrible to her, so defiant and angry. If I’d told her about that night, that I knew I was raped but not how it happened, or who exactly had done it, instead of believing the boys’ version—things might be very different for all of us.
The thought makes me tighten my arms around her, pressing my face into her neck. It’s not her fault I didn’t tell her. “I love you, Mom.”
Rafe and Jade are unloading our bags with the pilot’s help while Ruby joggles baby Peter, giving Mom and me our moment.
We pick up a rental car. Jade piles in with us, and she and I sit on either side of Peter’s car seat, gazing down at him.
“I can’t believe I’m an aunt,” Jade says. I study her face. Now that I am so tuned into faces, how they look, what they show, I notice Jade’s beauty. She has a longer face, olive skin, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and sweet, full red lips. I wonder how she’d photograph with auburn hair like Mom’s loose around her face, no glasses, and a little mascara bringing out her amazing eyes.
“So how’s Eureka?” I ask.
“It’s okay.” She’s still withdrawn from me, after I said that stupid thing about the glasses. I bet Mom can’t afford them.
“Listen, I’m sorry for what I said about the glasses. Let me buy you some contacts. I owe you a birthday present,” I say.
Jade finally looks at me. She frowns. “You think everything is about looks. Some of us care about other things.”
I snort. “You’re fifteen. It’s high school. You need every advantage you can get.”
“Not everyone’s a frickin’ supermodel,” Jade says, and now I see tears in her eyes. “You know how hard it is to be Pearl Michaels’ sister?”
“Hey,” Ruby moderates from the front seat. It feels just like when we were girls together on Saint Thomas, bickering.
“Hey yourself,” I tell Ruby, and turn back to Jade. “I was saying that because you’re really pretty, Jade, and you could be prettier. In fact, I could get you a test shoot if you want to try modeling. I’m not trying to yank your chain, either.”
Jade scoots to the far side of the car and stares out the window. I notice she’s buttoning and unbuttoning her cardigan sweater.
“Leave her alone, Pearl. She’s just fine the way she is,” Rafe rumbles from the front.
“I didn’t mean that she wasn’t. I just wanted to help.” No one’s listening, and I look out at the nondescript buildings of Eureka as we enter the town.
I haven’t really been fair to Eureka. The area is beautiful, with redwoods growing abundantly and the ocean nearby. The ocean’s a deep slate blue, so different from Saint Thomas, or even the greener color of the Atlantic near Boston.
The town of Eureka itself has a grubby utility about it, grown up as it did to serve the lumber trade on the coast, but it also has charming restored areas. My grandpa retired from the lumber mill where he was a foreman, and he and Nana live in a Victorian on the edge of town. I’ve been coming here annually since childhood to visit Mom’s relatives.
Rafe and Ruby got rooms for the three of us at a nearby Holiday Inn, so we drop off our baggage and then drive to the house.
Jade disappears into her room the minute we return, and I wonder if she’s still obsessively washing everything like she did after Dad died. Even as involved with the Carvers as I’d been at the time, I noticed. But she’s avoiding me, so I decide to leave her alone.
It’s just about the dinner hour, so eventually Jade reappears, helping with the food, and we all sit down at the big mahogany table and catch up with Nana and Grandpa and Mom’s doings.
Nana looks like an older version of Mom, with her thick white braid and good bones. Grandpa is stooped, and hard of hearing, and makes heavy-handed conversation with Rafe as Mom tells us about her new business. “I took my experience with our vacation rental management business to managing rentals for the college students in Arcata,” she says. Arcata is the small town one over, where Humboldt State University is located. “The students over there are always moving and needing places. It’s going well.”
“Good for you, Mom.” Ruby glances over at Peter’s carrier, but he’s angelically asleep as usual.
“So, Pearl, tell us about your job.” Mom cuts into her meatloaf. “I understand there’s a lot of traveling? What’s modeling like?”
“It’s really hard work, actually.” I tell them about the long days, the boredom that can happen, the struggle to be able to turn on emotion when I’m tired or down. “I also can’t date. The Melissa Agency is really strict.”
“What?” A huge grin breaks across Mom’s face. “I can’t believe they can do that.”
“Yep. I can’t do anything that will compromise my looks or reputation. So I’ve been on a very short leash between work
and Rafe and Ruby,” I tell her. “But I’m most proud that I have been clean and sober for almost a year.”
A silence falls, and I realize Nana and Grandpa may not have known everything. I look into my grandfather’s uncompromising eyes. “I had some problems in Saint Thomas. That’s why I didn’t come with Mom. I needed to go a different way.”
“Sounds like you found it,” Nana finally says. “Kate said you had behavior problems.”
“I did.” I nod my head. “But that’s all in the past.”
And I honestly think it is.
The visit goes well. We spend a lot of time doing puzzles and playing with baby Peter. Jade and I get past the scratchiness though she never accepts my offer of contacts or a photo shoot, and I notice she still does a lot of tidying and hand washing.
Too soon the week is up, and we’re hugging and saying goodbye and getting on the jet. “We’re going to see you every couple of months, now,” Ruby declares. “We’ll send the jet for you, right, Rafe?”
“Of course,” he says, and kisses her a little longer than he should in front of family. “Whatever my honey wants.”
I still envy what they have, but it’s good to know it exists.
When we get back to Boston, I get cold feet about the investigation into Magnus Thorne.
“Don’t tell me about finding him,” I tell Rafe. “Except if he’s in prison. If he’s in prison, I want to know.”
Rafe’s dark-blue eyes crinkle at the corners. “Glad you thought that could be one of the reasons for his disappearance. All right. I’ll only tell you if he’s in prison.”
And I get back to the whirlwind that’s my life as a supermodel.
International travel. Magazine shoots. Workouts. Seaweed wraps. Fending off gross older men who think they can buy me becomes a regular thing as I get a higher and higher profile, and I’m shocked by some of the things they think will win my affection. On another shoot in Italy, I hold up a gold charm bracelet for Odile to see. Every charm is in the shape of a male anatomy part. “Makes me hot to look at this,” I say. “Ooh. I’m so inspired by these charms.”
Odile laughs. We’re getting along great now, and Melissa has actually hired her to be my personal manager, so she accompanies me on shoots and takes care of everything to make things smooth and easy.
A few months later I track down Rafe in his study. “Is he in prison?” I ask, hands on my hips.
Rafe looks up from his computer. People are using those more and more for business, and he has his own at home. “Not in prison,” he says. “Want to know anything more?”
“No. Just--it’s been eighteen months. Is he going to be back in six months?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I need to know.” I turn and leave, going to my familiar pink bedroom. I could afford my own place now, but I’m home so seldom, and I love being with family when I am.
I flop on the bed, fold my hands over my stomach, and stare at the pale pink ceiling, thinking about Magnus.
It’s been eighteen months with no contact, no news, nothing to treasure but the frayed business card he gave me with his name on it, printed with a disconnected phone number.
If I shut my eyes, I can hear his voice in my ear, talking to me. Knowing that I was trying to hurt myself. Telling me what to do instead.
I think of his cabin, and his mother, and the horse named Onyx.
Maybe I can find it.
It’s a beautiful day, and I don’t have work today or tomorrow. The perfect time for a motorcycle ride.
I jump up and get the leathers and helmet I bought secretly. Rafe and Ruby still let me use the old Beamer when I’m home, so in no time I’m driving to the storage unit in Cambridge where Valley helped me stash my bike.
It’s been something of a disappointment, the whole thing, because I am always working and so seldom get to ride. When Valley was done teaching me, I took the new bike to the Department of Motor Vehicles and took my license test.
Between weather challenges and my schedule, I hardly ever get to take it out, but today’s gorgeous, and I have all day to tool around and try to find the mysterious cabin Magnus took me to so long ago.
I’m not ready to deal with the crap from Rafe and Ruby about safety so I still haven’t told them about the bike, my first big purchase with my modeling money. I change into my stiff new leathers in the storage unit, hot as it is, and take a moment to open a map of Boston and surrounding areas on the floor.
I look at the arteries into and out of the city and shut my eyes, thinking back to that night. The feel of the wind in my face. The swirl of the passing lights. The feel of Magnus in my arms, the smell of his jacket, the roar of the road.
We went across a bridge and out of the city to the north. Using a pencil, I trace what I think is the route. It took us about forty minutes, and that puts me in a suburb outside of Boston.
It’s finding the turnoff to that bumpy dirt road that’s going to be challenging.
I put my helmet on. It’s sleek and black but has a clear face guard. I don’t like looking through a lot of tinting.
I kick down the stand, start the bike, and roll out of the unit, hitting the remote I got with the rental to close the door again.
I feel totally anonymous on the bike. Everything that makes Pearl Michaels, international model, recognizable is hidden--my hair is in a fat braid that touches my butt, tucked inside my jacket. My face is hidden and my body, usually on display in those scraps of lace and silk, buried under the sturdy leathers.
And I feel different, too. More powerful. The mistress of my destiny. I’m finding the man I want, not just sitting around waiting and hoping, having my mogul brother-in-law track him down like a felon.
As I roar through the tunnel on Massachusetts Avenue out of town, I’m glad I had Rafe rule out prison. It could have easily been that, a two-year stint for something, and would I have still wanted Magnus at the end of that?
The answer’s yes.
Yes, I would have. Because as mysterious as Magnus has kept himself, I know the essential him. He’s honorable. He takes his sobriety program seriously, and if something from his using past caught up with him, who am I to judge?
I killed my father.
I roll through the gears and feel that exhilaration that riding brings me surge through my body as I weave in and out of the traffic down the freeway, over the bridge, and out into the suburbs. It’s a glorious day, the sun is shining, the trees are the intense green of recent rains, and I love being alive.
At the forty-minute mark I slow down. The main artery of the road out of Boston has narrowed to a two-lane highway, peppered with mailboxes and driveways heading into leafy forest areas.
I turn down the nearest one, drive down to an unassuming ranch house with a barn, turn and go back.
I do this for several hours before I decide I must have got on the wrong road out of town, but it’s been a great afternoon and I can do it again tomorrow.
The summer winds on into fall. Days off, I search the countryside, but I’ve begun to give up. I don’t know what I’ll say, anyway, if I find the place, I think one afternoon as I ease the bike down yet another potholed dirt road. So I find it. He won’t be there, and his mother wasn’t the most welcoming soul I’ve ever encountered.
There are pine trees leaning in over the road, and broad chuckholes that would be puddles at another time of the year--and suddenly I recognize it, and know where I am even before the weathered gray boards of the huge barn appear, and the two small cabins, run-down in the light of day, with the strip of unpaved road between them.
There are no cars parked anywhere but as I pull the bike up in front of the barn, I hear a neigh from inside.
Onyx.
I turn off the bike, put down the stand, and swing my leg over. Taking my helmet off, I hang it from a handlebar and look around.
The place looks deserted. No smoke coming from either cabin’s chimney, no vehicles parked in view.
I go to t
he barn and push one side of huge swinging double doors open carefully. “Hello?”
My voice startles a flock of doves which fly out with a rush of wings that startles me. I wrinkle my nose at the musty smell of hay, straw, and horse manure that waft over me. Inside, light sifts down in arrows from chinks in the cedar shake roof, illuminating the dusty floor in spots.
Directly ahead of me, draped in a black canvas cover, is a motorcycle.
My heart speeds up. Magnus’s bike, no doubt about it, bigger and heavier than my Superlow. As I walk to it, I trail my fingers across the cover. They are powdered with dust when I get to the hornlike protrusions of the handlebars.
Another neigh. I see Onyx’s handsome head looking at me, his eyes lustrous in the low light.
“Hello, beautiful.” I stroke and pet him, straightening his forelock, scratching under his muzzle. He thrusts his nose at me, whuffling loudly, and I know he smells the apple I stuck in my pocket as a snack.
What the heck. I get the apple out and he takes it delicately off my open palm, crunching it in half and shutting his eyes in bliss as he chews.
I hear barking suddenly, and the barn door opens. Onyx starts back and pulls his head into the stall. Magnus’s dog Whiskey gallops up to me and thrusts his head into my crotch for a good sniff, his tail lashing my legs.
His mother Raven must be home. She enters, and stands silhouetted against the open barn door. “Who’s that?”
Her voice is resonant and deep, a vibration in it that reminds me of Magnus. She’s wearing jeans this time, and moccasins. She still looks too young to be his mother. I dust off my hands and approach her.
“Hi. I met you a while ago. I’m Magnus’s friend, Pearl.” I extend my hand to shake hers.
She doesn’t take it, only looks at my eyes. “How did you come here?”
“I’m looking for Magnus. Where is he?” I decide the direct approach is best.
“If you really were a friend, you would know.” I’m close enough to see that her large, dark eyes, so like his, are hard and wary.
“I know he’s gone for a while. I just want to know when he’ll be back.”