I don’t know how I must look right then, but it’s obviously pretty bad. “Mila?” Gus says. “I didn’t want to tell you. Are you okay?”
What I really want to do is to get up and run out of the prison as fast as I can, to leave Gus Silva and his awful reality in the dust. Forever. But I remember how I felt after I told Ethan what my father did to me. Then I think of how Ethan followed me and told me I was beautiful, and how he made me believe it. Made me know it. The least I can do for the universe is to return the favor.
“Of course I’m okay,” I say, willing my eyes to meet his. Willing myself to act like I hear stuff like this every day. I pop a piece of gum in my mouth and shrug. “I figured it was something like that.”
Then I reach into my purse and pull out the most tattered, cried-upon, folded, thrown-away, and pulled-out-of-the-trash birthday card in existence.
Gus studies it for a long moment. “Was this the last card your mother sent you?”
“You could say that. I got it on my sixteenth birthday, Gus.”
“But that’s not possible.”
Then before he can point out that the card’s not even signed, I tell him the truth. “I saw her Gus. I talked to her.”
“Mila, your—”
I raise my voice above his and continue. “Yesterday in Wellfleet. She called me and—”
“Your mother’s dead, Mila. I was the first one at the crime scene, remember?”
“Let me finish, because if I don’t get this out now, I might never have the courage to say it again. Ava’s alive. She faked her death so she could get away from the Bug; then she let you take the blame. She’s gone on with her life all these years while you sat in jail. That’s who she is. And I’m her daughter.”
By then my eyes are so full of watery grief and guilt and misery that I can’t see Gus at all. Since he isn’t saying anything, I don’t know what he thinks—or even if he believes me. He can’t touch me, but he reaches out and puts his palm against the glass the way he did when he saw Hallie for the first time.
“It’s not your fault, Mila. Whatever she did, whatever your father did, none of it was your fault. And I wasn’t to blame for what happened to my mother, either. We were kids. Little kids who should have been dreaming of furry blue monsters, not dealing with real ones.” And somehow, in forgiving me, I think Gus finally forgives himself.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my free hand. Gus still looks doubtful, so I plow on. “I tried to tell Hallie, but she didn’t believe me. Not that I blame her. I wasn’t completely convinced myself—until I saw her in person. She was as close to me as you are now, Gus. She told me she always called you Father even though she wasn’t a believer.”
It’s the smallest little detail, but it hits him. “I asked her to call me Gus, but she never would,” he recalls. “She insisted on Father. Father Gus. How could you know that, Mila? How could you possibly know that?”
“She told me, Gus. She sat at a table, drinking coffee at the Purple Oyster, alive as you and me, and she told me.”
For the longest moment in history Gus just stares at me. Then he runs his hands through his hair, which has gotten kind of long since I saw him last. “Holy shit,” he mutters. Then he stands up and yells it out loud. He doesn’t care that the guards are obviously on alert. “Holy shit! What are you telling me here, Mila?”
“The truth. The horrible, disgusting, amazing, holy shit truth.”
He walks a small circle as the two men in uniform walk toward him. “Time’s up, Silva,” one guard says, roughly seizing his elbow. “This visit’s over.”
Gus and I just stare at each other because goodbye is way too inadequate. I make no effort to move as Gus walks away. Just before he disappears, he frees himself from the guard’s hold and turns around. I read his lips: What does this mean, Mila?
“Not as much as it should. Not yet, anyway,” I say, though he can’t hear me. Then, finally knowing what I have to do, I get up and run out of the suffocating room, tripping on my long skirt like a clumsy colt. I keep running until one of the guards feels sorry for me and walks me out.
“Sometimes I wonder why kids like you come here,” he says. “You probably love your dad and all, but people like that—well, put it this way, he’s here for a reason.”
That stops me, and I turn around. I don’t even bother explaining that he’s not my dad. “Actually, he’s not here for a reason. He went through all of this for no reason at all.”
The guard chuckles. “Just like everyone else here. Not a guilty man in the whole place, to hear them tell it—”
But before he can complete his spiel, I reach the door where I reclaim the change and jewelry I shed so I could pass through the metal detector. With any luck, it’s a ritual I will never have to repeat.
I expect to wait a while for Ethan to show up, but he’s already there, parked across the street from the spot where he let me off. Hunkered down over a book, he really does look like a car thief. When I get closer I can see that he’s eating a Boston creme doughnut.
I fling the door open. “Let’s get out of here.” It sounds like I’m talking to some kind of getaway driver or something. Then I land in the car, my skirt flouncing, my shawl on crooked, mascara smeared on my cheeks. I drop the jewelry and change I’m clutching on the floor. All Ethan does is look at me, book in one hand, doughnut in the other, glasses stuck on the ridge of his nose.
“What are you waiting for?” I snap. “Drive!”
Have I mentioned that one thing I really love about Ethan Washburne is that he never says or does the obvious thing. For instance, he doesn’t ask, “What’s the matter?” or “What the hell happened in there?” or any of the other questions that nearly any other human being would raise in this situation. Instead, he passes me the squishy doughnut, then points at a line in the book before handing that over, too.
“I was right there,” he says. “The writer had just brought up a really salient point. You’ll have to read the rest of the chapter out loud. Where we headed, anyway—home?”
“The police station in Ptown. Right away!”
So, sitting there in Ethan’s careening car, a vision of a crudely cut black heart with the letter X in the center before my eyes, I read at least seven pages without ever knowing what the book was about. When I came to the end of the chapter, Ethan pulls over in a rest area and gently takes the book from my hand, tosses the doughnut in the backseat with the rest of the detritus from Lori Washburne’s life, and cleans up the crumbs it left behind. Then he takes off his glasses and allows me to look straight into his naked eyes. They are the color of the ocean at dusk.
“Two things,” he says. “Since this is starting to feel something like a chase scene in a movie, and I’m not sure what or who we’re trying to outrun, maybe you should drive.”
I change seats with him, and am just about to pull out when I stop. “You said you wanted to tell me two things; that was only one.”
“It wasn’t important,” Ethan responds. It’s not till we’re on the highway that he speaks again, obviously making his best effort to sound casual. “I was just going to tell you I love you, that’s all.”
So there I am, flying down the highway toward the most dramatic moment in my life, when I will turn Ava in to the police—the lying, treacherous, negligent woman who is still my mother—and dammit, Ethan picks this time to say he loves me?
All I can think of is the words Gus said in the prison: Holy shit!
Chapter 42
While I was in the prison with Gus, Jack said he would meet Hallie. I picture them sitting in a formica booth in Quissett Pizza and Mexican, drinking a beer. I see Hallie turning pale as she hears the truth about how I kept my suspicions to myself while Gus sat in prison. I’m sure she argues with Jack at first, refusing to believe that the girl she treated like a daughter is the ultimate traitor. The enemy who weaseled her way in for breakfast and never left. I cringe when I think of him relaying the part no one can deny: my meeting with Av
a at the Purple Oyster. I cry out like I stepped on something sharp when I ponder the moment when he tells her how I let Ava go. And with her, Gus’s chance for a new trial.
The priest has promised to do his best to help Hallie understand. But even Jack, with his halo of white hair, his pure blue eyes and his book of spells, can’t perform miracles.
They’re already at the police station when Ethan and I get there. But in spite of everything, I finally feel like the absolutely fearless girl I once pretended to be. I hold Ethan’s hand and stand really straight like Gus always does as I walk into the station on Shankpainter Road and tell the whole crazy, mangled truth as straightforwardly as I possibly can. When I’m finished I feel like the last girl standing in the national spelling bee.
I don’t break until Jack steps forward to hug me. That’s when I notice that while I was nailing the spelling bee, Hallie has slipped out the door.
“Give her a little time,” Jack says, following my eyes. “When she gets over the shock, she’s going to be so proud of what you did today.”
After leaving the station, I hike out to the spot where old Dr. Nick’s shack used to stand. It’s just past five and the coffee I picked up at the bakery is cold by the time I reach the place. I had hoped to find Hallie in her usual spot, but there’s no sign of her.
I sit at the ghost shack, drinking my cold coffee, long enough to see the moon rise. Just when I’m about to give up, I see her lonely determined figure heading down the beach.
“Hallie! Over here!” I call. In the diminishing light, her face looks older, prouder, marked by a life I don’t totally understand, and never will.
“Mila. What are you doing here?” After she lets Stella loose to run, she sits down beside me and lights a cigarette. These days, this is the only place she allows herself to smoke.
“Looking for you. What else? I need to talk to you about what happened with my mother. What I did.”
“You mean what you didn’t do.” Hallie looks out at the ocean and exhales.
“Listen, Hallie, I know I should have called the police at the Oyster, but I was in shock—”
She puts up her hand, like she doesn’t want to hear it—or just can’t bear to hear it. Then, abruptly, she gets up, calls the dog, and starts down the beach, hugging her parka around her as if it’s the only thing that’s holding her bones together. “There’s nothing to talk about, Mila,” she says when I follow her. “Not till we find her. If we find her.”
Then she makes a sharp turnaround. “Damn it, Mila. I took you into my home. I treated you like a daughter. How could you let her go?”
I’m about to cry, but then I think of what happened this morning in the prison. I think of Gus. For the rest of my life, the truths we both faced down today will be with me, my totem, my secret strength.
“I know she’s done horrible things, unforgivable things, Hallie, but she’s still my mother! Don’t you understand? I still remember her holding me, singing to me. To this day. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve been clinging to her memory. I thought that the worst thing that could happen would be to forget. Then I’d be totally alone.”
I’m glad I’m on the beach because I’m practically shrieking these words into the wind. “But it wasn’t easy turning on my mother. I’m sorry if you think it should have been, but it wasn’t.”
She studies me as if she’s trying to figure out who I am and why the hell she ever took me in. Without a word, she starts heading toward the road again. At first, she’s marching, moving fast, her arms swinging back and forth, anger shooting from her fingertips with every step. Then she breaks into a run. Poor old Stella is trotting behind to keep up.
I’m not sure if she’s running toward the car—or just away from me.
The hour I spend on the beach after Hallie leaves me has to be the most miserable sixty minutes of my life, and what’s worse, the wind is merciless. Sure, I’ve been through some bad shit before, but this time the bogeyman isn’t the Bug, or Ava, or anyone else. It’s me. I cry when I think about the Victorian with the purple door and the broad front porch. The house I foolishly began to call home.
Maybe I can sleep all night on the beach. Then, in the morning, in the face of a bright sunrise, I will think of what to do. I find shelter behind a dune, drink the last of my coffee and make a pillow of my two hands. I am curled up like that when I open my eyes and see Hallie standing over me, her hands resting on her hips.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She squints at her watch through the darkness. “I’ve been waiting in the car for an hour.”
“You were waiting? But I thought—I thought you hated me. I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
Hallie sighs, then reaches down and pulls me up. “Just because I got mad at you doesn’t mean I’d let you ride that bike home in the dark. Or stop caring about you. It doesn’t even mean I don’t understand why you did it. God, Mila, you really have no idea what it means to be family, do you?”
My face streaked with tears, I shake my head. “Are we really—” I say, and then add the last word, the sacred word, in a teeny tiny voice, “family?”
She gives me a huge hug, what she calls an abraço.
“One thing I want to make clear,” Hallie begins, before stopping abruptly and taking my shoulders. “None of this was your fault. You were as much a victim as Gus was. And what you did—walking into that prison and telling Gus the truth, then reporting your mother to the police—that was incredibly brave. In fact, I think you’re the second-bravest girl I’ve ever met—even if I did get mad. Especially because I did.”
It is the closest thing to absolution in a dark confessional that I’m likely to get, and I have to fight back tears. “The second-bravest?”
“Next to me when I was your age,” Hallie says.
“Oh yeah? What was so brave about you?”
Hallie looks out at the ocean that glints under a brazen stripe of moonlight. “I used to test my strength by swimming out a little bit farther than I thought I could every day. I liked the feeling I got when my body was telling me I couldn’t go any farther and I had to make it back on sheer willpower.”
“That sounds more stupid than brave to me.”
“It was. I used to call it refusing to fear death, but it was really more like communing with my inner idiot.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Okay, how about this one?” she says, still looking out over the water. “I was brave enough to love a boy who was damaged almost beyond repair from the age of nine. To love him so irrationally and completely that I’ve never been cured of it. And I probably never will be.”
She starts to walk again and I follow slightly behind her, keenly aware that I don’t know Hallie Costa nearly as well as I thought I did. And painfully certain that she is crying.
Chapter 43
The Dismal Kingdom, with its spectacular view of the beach, never looked more desolate than it does the next day when I pay an impulse visit to the Bug. It is nearly nine a.m., but there is no response to my knock at the door or to Stella’s jittery bark. The dog looks up at me, her head cocked to the side, wondering where we are and why. Fortunately, I still have my key to the Castle on my ring.
I figure my father is probably asleep, so I go into the kitchen to make tea. But there, sitting at the island where I stared into the bottom of so many cups of chai, is the Bugman himself. His hair is a mess and he is wearing this velour bathrobe that’s probably as old as his obsession with Ava. Normal people probably wouldn’t believe this, but I’ve never seen my so-called “Dad” just hanging out in a robe, stubble on his face, no expensive cologne covering up the animal scent that I should know by heart but don’t.
As soon as the Bug catches sight of me, he climbs off his stool, looking like a stranger. I almost think I’ve wandered into the wrong Castle. I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I get is an angry-looking Bug, who is apparently put out in a major way by my unannounced appearance. “Mila. Yo
u should have called.”
I feel this weird lump in my throat. “Good to see you, too, Dad.” Sensing the ancient sorrows that fill the room like a gas, Stella begins to bark: Let me out of here!
“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” I add as I rest my backpack on the floor. He eyes it with suspicion, like it might contain a bomb.
I start feeling some of the old anxiety of life in the Castle coming back, so, resorting to a familiar defense, I put on the kettle. It’s almost sad to see that my old Japanese pot is right where I left it. My father returns to his stool as if he, too, has been calmed by my ritual. Once she realizes we’re not going anywhere, Stella curls up on the familiar island of my backpack.
Through a wreath of steam, I look furtively at the hunched-up Bug in his ratty robe. After years of hating him for beating my mother and punishing me for my resemblance to her, I now feel nothing but pity. Not that he isn’t responsible for his actions, but it’s simply the nature of some bugs to be red-fanged and full of venom. You can’t spend your life resenting them for it, can you?
He pours himself some tea from my pot and pronounces it first rate. “I could make you some French toast if you’d like,” he offers. “Or an omelette.”
“No thanks,” I say, startled by this sudden eruption of hospitality. “The tea’s fine.”
But for some reason the Bug suddenly wants to keep me here. Is it possible he’s lonely? “Ava loved omelettes. She used to say I made the fluffiest ones she ever had.”
I shudder visibly and clutch my cup for warmth. Honest to God, I’ve never heard the Bug speak my mother’s actual name to me. Never heard him indulge in an ordinary recollection about their lives together. She liked omelettes. Does that mean they were happy—at least for a little while? I don’t know whether the thought comforts or incenses me.
When he reaches for the omelette pan, I stop him. “Let’s not do this, okay?”
The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel Page 39