June

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  “Whatever you need,” Tate replied in a clipped voice.

  They confirmed that, yes, they were Tate Montgomery and Cassandra Danvers, and that they were both okay with sharing their private medical information with the people present.

  “Just so you know,” Madison McKenzie said, “I’ve run the results a couple of times. What I’m finding is consistent. To remind you, I took multiple swabs from both of you. Just to be sure there were plenty of samples to crosscheck.”

  This was interesting; Madison McKenzie was covering her ass.

  She cleared her throat. “From these tests, there’s a zero percent chance that Tate Montgomery and Cassandra Danvers are related.”

  Disappointment. Relief? Maybe, but mostly disappointment. The triumphant look on Tate’s face wasn’t helping matters.

  Nick was all business. “So you’re saying,” he confirmed, “that Cassie is not Jack’s granddaughter.”

  “Well”—Cassie tasted a note of excitement in the woman’s voice—“you’ll remember that I also took a swab from Esmerelda Hernandez. Just to be sure to determine paternity with Jack Montgomery, since Ms. Montgomery and Mrs. Hernandez are his daughters, and you didn’t have a sample of Mr. Montgomery’s DNA.”

  Tate frowned and shook her head. She was not interested in this line of inquiry. Obviously, they’d already gotten what they needed.

  “Mrs. Hernandez, do I have your permission to share the results of your DNA test with this group?”

  Elda’s grin had come back, and it was bigger than ever. She sat forward, joining the huddle over the phone. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

  “Well then, as I’ve said,” Madison McKenzie said, “I’ve run this test a number of times.” She held a juicy, dramatic pause. “And every time, it indicates there is a zero percent chance that Ms. Montgomery and Mrs. Hernandez are related.”

  Tate cackled, loud and mean and triumphant.

  But Madison McKenzie wasn’t done. “Here’s where it gets interesting. There is a ninety-one point nine percent chance—the highest percentage you could hope for in an avuncular test between an aunt and a niece—that Mrs. Hernandez and Ms. Danvers are. Related, that is.”

  There was a silence then, a horrible, chilling silence, ended only by Tate’s question: “What does that mean?”

  Madison McKenzie cleared her voice. “I’m not supposed to interpret the data,” she said meekly.

  “What does it mean?” Tate cried, her voice violent with need.

  “In layman’s terms,” the girl’s voice replied after a sharp intake of breath, “Mrs. Esmerelda Hernandez is Ms. Cassandra Danvers’s aunt, and Ms. Tate Montgomery isn’t.”

  It roared up again, that sudden, shocking sensation as Two Oaks flustered to life around them, just as it had on the day Nick first arrived. Only this time—Cassie could tell—Nick felt it too; his eyes widened, his hands gripped the corners of his chair. The air inside the parlors and the foyer suddenly thickened with everyone who had come before, everyone who had cared about and thought of and wandered into and polished and hammered and shined and worried about Two Oaks for all the many years it had stood, long before Cassie and Nick had come here, long before they were even twinkles in their fathers’ eyes. The experience of all those beings together, so close—and yet unseen—reminded Cassie of a room filling with natural gas, the burner unlit, tightening toward a dangerous ignition point.

  Tate was standing over the telephone, voice shaking, eyes wild. “Did you just fucking tell me I’m not Jack Montgomery’s child? He fathered Elda, and he fathered fucking Adelbert, but I’m the bastard?”

  “I can run the tests again,” the poor woman said. “And I encourage you to get a second opinion.”

  Tate picked up Nick’s phone and flung it as hard as she could against the far wall. It smashed into a million pieces, scattering all over the floor of the back parlor. Then Tate strode across the foyer and up the stairs, snapping her fingers at Hank and Nick to follow, but only Hank obliged.

  “Well holy shit and hallelujah,” Elda purred.

  Could Elda not feel the house alive and breathing around her? In contrast, Nick was a send-up of a man in a state of shock—mouth open, eyes darting to the same spots where Cassie could hear the whispers and scuttlings and speculation that seemed to fill the space—and Elda was cool as a cucumber.

  The sensation of all the dream people filling the house ratcheted up, tighter and tighter. The whispers grew louder, the heat of curiosity and judgment and blame became more intense—and Cassie tried to wade through the ruckus to understand what had just been revealed:

  Cassie’s father, Adelbert, had been Jack’s son.

  But Tate was not Jack’s daughter.

  Cassie was going to inherit Jack’s money, his houses, his fortune.

  And all that Tate had built her life upon was a lie.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Cassie mumbled, although the house was making her sick. She felt dizzy, nauseated. She finally knew, for sure, that June had slept with Jack. That Elda was her aunt. And Tate was…what? Poor Tate, poor Tate. Cassie kept coming around to Tate, bereft of everything that mattered to her.

  Just then, from above, came a startling, deafening crash. Next Nick and Cassie and Elda ran up the stairs, which had filled with dust and a damp, moldy smell that Cassie couldn’t name. As Cassie took the steps two at a time—was it a gun? Had Tate thrown something?—she heard Tate sobbing, and the sound of Hank’s shriek, a lament that quaked over them—over the dream people too; they were parting for her, and, as they parted, dissipating, as though suddenly disinterested.

  But Cassie didn’t have time to consider the dream people’s whereabouts or intentions, not as she mounted the last stair and launched into the upstairs hall and discovered what she thought was white smoke pouring from her bedroom. A fire? An explosion? Behind her, Nick and Elda gathered. In front of her, Tate was sobbing, moaning, and Hank looked terrified. Cassie peeked into her bedroom. The place where her bed had once been was now a dusty mess of floorboards and plaster, roofing and beams.

  “What the fuck?” Tate was screaming now. “What the fuck?” She was raging, untamable, her hands bare and aggressive. Hank tried to get her arms around her, but the girl was like a toothpick caught in a hurricane.

  “Ceiling collapsed,” Elda noted placidly. Cassie realized that, yes, that was exactly what had happened—she felt a surge of gratitude that Elda had put a name to it—but Elda’s sanctimony only churned Tate up. It was hard to understand what she was saying, although Tate was actually now startlingly close to her, alarmingly, unnaturally close. Cassie’s ears rang from the high decibels of Tate’s cries.

  Nick put himself between them, shielding Cassie from Tate’s fists, which had started to pound Cassie’s shoulders and chest.

  “No,” Nick said sternly. “No.” But there was something gentle about the way he treated Tate, something Cassie admired, a firm kindness that effectively managed Tate almost at once, that soothed her fury. Nick pushed back against her, leading her into the master bedroom, where he shut the door behind them. Cassie stepped into what was left of her bedroom and looked up through the hole in her house. She saw sky.

  Sitting on the floor of Lemon Gray Neely’s office, surrounded by unread mail, Cassie listened for the sound of the cameras; she knew they’d snap to life as soon as Tate stepped out the door to leave St. Jude for good. The lace curtains furrowed in the grass-bitten breeze. Light flirted across the ceiling. Any minute. Cassie counted to ten, and then she counted to ten again.

  A knock.

  She watched as Nick’s hand squeezed between the rounded pocket doors. He did his best to push one open—enough, at least, to squeeze through and still give some semblance of privacy. He looked a wreck. “I have to go.”

  “So go.”

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was raspy, real.

  “She didn’t hurt me.”

  He tugged at the door he’d come through, trying to close it behind him. Then he lo
oked up at the ceiling with a nervous grimace. “Should you be in here?” She’d left her bedroom, directly above, just as it was, covered in all the pieces of the house that had fallen down. But she couldn’t imagine that everything that was up there would fall another floor; that seemed an indignity even Two Oaks wouldn’t muster. She shrugged.

  “And I don’t mean I’m sorry about Tate,” he said. “Obviously, that insanity was inexcusable. But I mean about us.”

  She waited for more, but it didn’t come.

  She sat up. “Hank stole my pictures.”

  Nick shifted uneasily.

  “Hank leaked the story.”

  He offered a weak smile. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “So you’re not sorry, then. Not enough to believe I didn’t do it. Hank did it, I know she did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know.” And she did—not because she had proof, but because she could feel it in her bones. It didn’t make logical sense; who would sabotage their dream boss? And yet, at Illy’s, she should have seen the truth: Hank was a woman who would do anything to win. “You should believe me.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “What?”

  “Tate—wanted me to ask you something.”

  Cassie crossed her arms and looked up at him defiantly. “Well?” He cleared his throat again. She wanted to scratch out his eyes. “Spit it out,” she said.

  From behind his back, he pulled a silver frame she recognized immediately—it must have been tucked into his waistband. It had been the frame that held the picture of Benny the dog, and Tate and Max, in front of the Great Wall of China, the one Tate had kept on June’s mantel. But it was empty now.

  Nick cast his head down, as though he already knew what he was asking was wrong. It reminded her of how he’d looked the day they met, and she cringed even as she felt a part of herself harden into anger in anticipation of his question: “Do you know where the picture is?”

  “Fuck. You.”

  “It’s my job to ask,” he said, voice drenched in apology. “It’s my job to protect Tate. To believe the most likely scenario and do my best to protect her.”

  “Well, you have a terrible job.”

  “I’ve worked hard to get where I am.”

  “Newsflash: where you are is working for a lunatic. A spoiled tyrant. She’ll only protect you as far as your next mistake.”

  “I’m sorry, Cassie, but I like my job. Yes, it’s a job. Yes, that means I have to sometimes do unpleasant things. But that’s what a job is.”

  “I know what a job is, Mr. Responsible.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Nick sniped, no longer so neutral, “I didn’t know it was a crime to act like an adult. You want some kind of prize for letting your house fall down around you? Apologies for not thinking that’s heroic.”

  She could see it out of the corner of her eye—his hand on the edge of that door. So let him go. Just let him go and she could bury him with the rest of her skeletons, and get along with the business of dreaming in her haunted house.

  But then she saw the uncertain shuffling of his feet, and knew those same feet would soon lead him right out her door. The pain of his suspicion overwhelmed and shocked her; she felt it like a stab wound in her gut. How could he believe she would have leaked those pictures? How could he have touched her with such respect and now just as easily disdain her?

  “I don’t understand,” she said, as he was about to go. “How could you think I’d want those pictures out in the world for everyone to see? I made them. They’re personal. They were mine.” And she knew she was crying, and she hated those tears, hated that he could see them, but they wouldn’t stop.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess I just figured…it seemed like maybe…like it was your pattern or something.”

  “My what?” The question came out angry. He shifted his weight. “If you clear your throat again, I’m going to kill you,” she snarled, cutting him off at the pass.

  “I just mean, like your show,” he said. “That show was raw. It was personal—intimate, even. The Times loved that about it, loved that you re-created every inch of the crash that killed your parents, the way only you remembered it—from the installation you made of the sounds you heard in there, trapped in the darkness, to the real car that people could climb inside with that little mannequin who looked like you in the backseat. The leaking bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the floor, which didn’t show up in the police report but which you, in your spoken word piece that played over the exhibit, remembered being there. You put your family’s biggest secrets right out there. I guess I just thought that was how you do things.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.” But he’d laid the truth bare. That was exactly what she’d done, exactly what she’d made, and it had broken her grandmother’s heart. She’d had nothing to do with selling Tate’s secrets to the tabloids, but what she’d done to June was much worse.

  They stayed there, each in their solitary sorrow. Then Hank called: “Nick?”

  “Coming,” he yelled, without a second’s hesitation. But he stood there watching Cassie instead.

  “Go.”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Go.”

  “Did you feel it too? The house, clenching in around us? That’s what it was like on the day I first came, wasn’t it? All those people…”

  And she had, and she wanted to go to him, to thank him for feeling it too, for knowing her—by knowing, yes, how strange her house was—as no one had known her. But he didn’t deserve that.

  He stood there for three counts to ten. She didn’t look at him and she didn’t get up. Eventually, he pried open the pocket doors and left her.

  The sound of the paparazzi rushing toward the car was like that of a hungry wave on a stormy night, chewing up a beach. But no, not quite—that was the feeling of the sound, the urge of it, but the actual sound of it was different. It was brisker than that, and more immediately frightening, the clattering of all those camera shutters, threatening and untamed. As Cassie heard Tate’s engine curl off onto the wind, and listened while the photographers got their shots, she located the name, the idea, the sound, of their cameras clattering together: it was like rattlesnakes.

  It was past midday and the snakes had stopped rattling. Food, then. Cassie pushed her way through the jammed pocket doors, scraping her knee, and went into the kitchen, jumping when her eye caught movement.

  “Cheers!” Elda sat at the shaky wooden table, the bottle of Jack before her.

  “I thought you got a ride on Tate’s plane.”

  “I opted out.” Behind Elda, the windows flashed with another vibrant summer afternoon; soon, Cassie would forget to feel guilty about not making the most of it. Soon she’d be able to spend every moment in the dark, cool caves of this giant house.

  “Let’s drink before my cab comes.” Elda held up the bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. So she’d been waiting. Cassie couldn’t see any reason to say no. As she neared the table, Elda rose. Then she nodded toward the only other object on the table—Cassie’s camera. “Out back.”

  “Are the paparazzi gone?” Cassie reluctantly picked up her camera and followed Elda through the pantry door, shuttling through the dark, tight pantry and then through the second swinging door into the dining room. The leaded glass of the back door cast rainbows across the room as Elda pulled it open. The compact back porch gleamed white in the sun.

  Elda marched down the rickety steps and across the meadowy lawn, and plopped herself down right beside a flower bed. Sure enough, the dwindling swarm of photographers spotted them from the other side of the road. Cassie would never forget the unlikely sound of a dozen telephoto lenses snapping away from that sidewalk. Rattlesnakes—she was pleased with having named them. At least half the horde had followed Tate to the airport. The police had been nice about it; the neighbors midwestern enough to keep to themselves.

  “Sit.” Elda poured.

/>   “They’re shooting us.” It occurred to Cassie that her image would start appearing in tabloids now too. She’d have to begin thinking about her hair and her outfits and watching what she said, unless she decided not to care what America thought of her. She’d have to decide once the news broke about her having gotten Jack’s money. Which was probably any day now.

  “This is my time to shine.” Elda held up a glass to toast the throng. “I’m aces at bringing the crazy.” The photographers hooted her name. “They’ve tasted Tate’s blood, but I’ll be the one to feed them.”

  “So you figure you can get away with anything, now that they’re going after Tate?” Cassie took a swig and coughed.

  “I figure she could use my help. I distract them with tarot cards and day drinking, maybe they’re not so hard on her.”

  Cassie leaned back on her hands. “I don’t get you.”

  “Elda!” one of the photographers called out. “Turn toward us!”

  Elda lifted her middle finger. The rattlesnakes went wild. Then she picked up Cassie’s camera and rounded off a dozen pictures of the paparazzi—which they loved—and of Cassie too. Cassie felt shy, but that didn’t stop Elda from shooting her, rapid-fire.

  “You act like you hate Tate,” Cassie said. “You taunt her. You say awful things. And then, when you find out for sure she isn’t your sister, that’s when you want to help her out?”

  “Weird.” Elda sat back. “I don’t know why. Maybe now that she’s not so perfect it’s easier to be nice?” She took a long slug of whiskey and stared up at the house. “I sure am going to miss this place.”

  “Really?”

  “The dreams, at least. I keep dreaming about your grandma.”

  “Yeah,” Cassie said, because if anyone would, it was Elda.

  Elda patted Cassie’s ankle. “You going to be okay, kid?”

  Cassie shielded her eyes and surveyed her grandmother’s land. She felt bereft, as though a door leading into her had been torn off its hinges. So June and Jack had screwed. That’s all she knew now, for sure. According to Tate, Jack was a saint; according to Elda, he was a jerk. But who was he, really? How had he felt about her grandmother, and how had she felt about him? Had June been married when she slept with him? If not, why had she married Arthur anyway? Just like Mr. Abernathy had said, she’d never get to know these things. What had really happened between Jack and June had been reduced to money and blood.