by A. G. Riddle
“It’s a mystery,” Edward Yancey, the Library System administrator said. “But we sure aren’t trying to solve it. Lord knows we could use the money, and we’re just thankful to have it.”
Desmond smiled. He had expected the small farm to bring more, but it was done, and the money had made its way to the right place. Agnes and the library system had been there for him during one of the darkest chapters of his life. He hoped the money would help ensure that it was there for the next person who needed it.
One Wednesday morning, Desmond arrived at work to find a group of xTV employees crowded around the front door. Nearly everyone was either on their cell phones or whispering to each other.
Desmond assumed there had been a fire. Or an accident. Or a gas leak.
It was none of those things.
The company had run out of money. The landlord had finally locked them out of their headquarters. The venture capitalists who had funded the venture were in control, and they were selling everything that wasn’t nailed down: the servers, desks, routers. Even the xTV sweatshirts were donated to a local homeless shelter for a tax write-off.
Desmond’s options were worthless. He couldn’t even get inside to his desk to get his personal effects.
Things changed after that. Without a job—a purpose—Desmond felt lost. He watched three more of the companies he held options for fold. Each one was like a punch in the gut.
“It’s not over yet, Des,” Peyton told him.
He and Peyton began spending more time together. He helped her cram for her exams, and she helped him sort through a few job opportunities.
In May, when the school year was over, he helped her move from her dorm room into a one-bedroom apartment in Menlo Park. Most undergrads at Stanford lived on campus and moved back home for the summer or got a short-term rental. Peyton signed a one-year lease.
She got a summer internship at SRI doing genetics research, and she seemed to really enjoy it. That made him happy.
By July, he was sleeping at her place most of the time. It was comfortable. He liked being around her. But he felt a deep guilt about it. There was something wrong with him, and he couldn’t figure out how to tell her.
Peyton had never asked him about the scars—or his past, for that matter. And she rarely asked him for anything. That changed one Saturday night.
“Will you do something for me?”
“Anything,” he answered.
“My mom and sister and my sister’s husband are coming for lunch tomorrow. Join us.”
He said nothing.
“They won’t bite, Des.”
Her mother’s name was Lin. She had an MD and a PhD and was the daughter of a German father and Chinese mother. He could see a strong resemblance between the two women. Peyton was Lin Shaw’s younger daughter, Madison the older.
Lin was a researcher at Stanford and an adjunct professor. Madison worked for a nonprofit concerned with the preservation of wildlife. Desmond made a mental note not to mention how many deer, wild hogs, turkeys, and elk he had killed.
Madison’s husband, Derrick, was an investment banker in San Francisco. He had an MBA from Wharton, a place Desmond had never heard of, and seemed to take himself rather seriously. He was also the principal interrogator at lunch. Desmond figured he was just being protective, trying to play the role of father figure since Peyton’s own father had passed away.
“What’s your alma mater, Desmond?” Derrick asked.
“Noble High School.”
“You didn’t go to college?”
“Didn’t need to.”
Derrick didn’t like that answer, though Peyton smiled.
The man pressed on.
“What do your parents do?”
“They owned a ranch in Australia.”
His eyes lit up.
“Before they died.”
“You don’t sound Australian, dear,” Lin said.
“I moved here when I was young.”
“To the Bay Area?”
“Oklahoma.”
“Oklahoma…” Derrick turned the word over in his mouth like a bone he’d unexpectedly found in his soup.
Back at Peyton’s apartment, Desmond stood in the kitchen. “They hated me.”
“They loved you.”
“I’m a country boy, but I’m not stupid. They don’t think I’m good enough for you, Peyton.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“And so will your family.”
“Maybe, but they don’t make my decisions for me. I do. And I don’t care if you don’t have a college degree.” Before he could speak, she added, “All I want is you, Desmond.”
Desmond opened his eyes. The helicopter was vibrating even more. Avery was pushing it to its limits. Peyton’s head still rested on his shoulder. She was out cold. He desperately wanted to wake her, to ask what had happened to them, how they had lost what he felt all those years ago. Somehow, he knew he was nearing the end of the memories he could access, like a faraway signpost he could just make out through a fog. He wondered if the programmer, Byron, had been right on the ship: had Desmond made these memories of his youth and his years with Peyton available via cues? The cold in Berlin. The cell in the barn. The picture of Orville. Seeing Peyton again, touching her skin. Each seemed to have opened the door to a chapter of his past.
But he sensed that his most crucial memories would not be so easily retrieved—especially the location of Rendition. That secret was the reason for his amnesia in the first place—the reason he had built this labyrinth.
That’s it: the Labyrinth Reality app. It’s the key.
His breadcrumbs had led him to the app; he was now more certain than ever that it would unlock the rest of his past. He needed to get a phone and re-download the app.
What he didn’t know was whether he was ready to know exactly what he had done—and exactly what kind of man he was.
There was one memory left that he could reach now, and he closed his eyes, willing it to come.
Chapter 67
After what Desmond considered to be a disastrous lunch with Peyton’s family, he didn’t see them much.
He interviewed at half a dozen startups, but he found himself with a new problem: he was gun-shy, afraid to commit. What if it was another xTV? He didn’t want to make the same mistake.
Another startup he had options in failed that week. He would be out of money for the trailer park rent within a month. He needed to take one of the job offers soon.
Christmas was a week away. He was terrified Peyton was going to ask him to come home with her. She didn’t. She seemed to instinctively know his boundaries.
“Just so you don’t get carried away and buy me an island or something for Christmas, let’s set some ground rules,” she said.
“All right.”
“We can each spend ten dollars on each other.”
“Okay.”
“And the gift has to reveal something about each of us.”
That confused him.
“I want to know something about you, Desmond. It has to reveal something about your past. An experience that shaped you somehow. Understand?”
He did. And he had no idea what to give her. He obsessed in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
He also turned over the job offers. Yet another company he had options in failed. His stack of lottery tickets was slowly migrating to the trash can, as fate took the numbered balls out of the hopper and more startups closed.
He drove his truck to Portola Redwoods State Park one night, hiked in, and cut down a small redwood, then cut the limbs away.
He brought it home, whittled away at it for a few days, checked the local events calendar, and found what he needed.
Two days before Christmas, in her apartment, Peyton set her gift on the coffee table. It was wrapped immaculately. Desmond hadn’t wrapped his. He felt nervous instantly.
He tore off the wrapping paper, revealing a cardboard box. He opened it and found a map lying on top
of another box, also wrapped. He picked up the map and unfolded it. Cities were highlighted in yellow: London, England. Heidelberg, Germany. Hong Kong. Two small towns in Scotland, one in Ireland, and another in southern China.
“Yellow is where my family is from,” Peyton said. “Parents. Grandparents.”
Desmond studied the rest of the map. There were two dozen green marks.
“Green is all the places I’d like to go with you, Des. Someday.”
He swallowed and fell silent, staring at it like he was reading a judge’s death sentence. She had plans for them. And she’d been thinking about them for a while.
“Open the next one,” she said, excited, oblivious to his anxiety.
The next box contained a miniature figure of a mermaid on a small spring. The base was emblazoned with the words “Palo Alto.”
“Closest I could get,” she said. She stared at him expectantly. “Any guesses?”
“Uh…”
“Come on.”
“Your favorite movie is The Little Mermaid?”
She socked him hard in the shoulder.
“No. I was on the swim team. In high school.”
“Oh. Of course. How could I have missed it? It’s so obvious now.”
Beneath the mermaid was a third box. She didn’t encourage him to open this one. In fact, she seemed nervous about it, as if she had changed her mind. She looked away as Desmond tore the wrapping paper.
The object inside the last box was small. His fingers wrapped around it, lifted it out.
It was a glass object, heart-shaped, red.
“I love you, Des,” she said.
He tucked it in his pocket, leaned forward, and kissed her.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone before,” he said.
She smiled quickly, clearly disappointed, but rolled her eyes, trying to seem playful, unbothered. “Jeez, what are you, a lawyer now?”
“I mean it.” He held up the glass heart. “But I’m not like you. My heart isn’t like yours.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your heart, Desmond.” She stared at him.
With increasing frequency, he had wondered if that was true.
“Okay, what did you get me?” she asked, eager.
He dug into this backpack, drew the item out, and handed it to her.
She held the carved wooden object, examining it. “It’s… the Eiffel Tower? You’re… you want to go to France?”
“No.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I mean, maybe. I would. But it’s an oil rig.”
“Oh.” She studied it again. “I thought they were shaped like hammers. You know, going up and down into the ground.”
“You’re talking about the walking beam and horse head. This is the rig. The thing that drills the well.”
She nodded. “So…”
“It’s what I used to work on.”
“Oh.”
“In Oklahoma. It’s part of where I got the scars.”
Her eyes widened. She held the carved wooden object with more care. “Thank you, Des. I love it. It’s perfect.”
“It’s not all.”
Her face lit up.
“The second part wouldn’t fit in a box.”
They loaded up in his truck, which she had gradually become less scared of, and drove up the 101 to 92 and over to Half Moon Bay.
They could see the roaring bonfire before they reached the beach. Desmond wrapped his coat around her, took a bundle from the back seat, and led her in silence toward the blaze. He laid the thick blanket out on the sand and unscrewed the cap on the cheap wine, and they sat together, the fire warming them, her in front of him, facing it, tipping the bottle up every few minutes. Desmond estimated there were only about fifty people there, mostly around their age, couples and some groups, talking, drinking, and laughing.
“You going to have some?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“A promise I made.”
“To whom?”
“Myself.”
She leaned against him, and they both stared at the fire and the water beyond. It was unseasonably warm for December, but there was still a chill in the air. Desmond wrapped the blanket around them, just in case she was cold.
“You cheated,” Peyton said.
“How?”
“Ten dollars was the limit.”
“Then I’m under.”
She turned, looked at him.
“The tree was free. So was the labor to carve it. The wine was $6.68. I figure three dollars in gas round trip is more than enough.”
“You should have been an accountant.”
The crowd thinned out, but the fire burned on. A few couples and stragglers remained, as well as the two park workers managing the event.
The bottle was half empty, and Desmond could tell she was nursing it, wouldn’t finish it. She twisted around, kissed him on the mouth, a hungry, deep kiss that tasted of wine.
He stood, pulled her up, and led her away, past the dunes and the tall grass where the sand ended, to a depression where the moonlight was dim. He spread the blanket out again and lowered her onto it.
When he kissed her, she closed her eyes and let him lead.
On the way home, she asked, “What did it mean?”
“What?”
“The fire. Each gift had to reveal something about its bearer.”
The image of the heart, and her words—I love you—flashed in his mind.
“The fire is how my family died. In Australia.”
He told her how it had happened then, the words spilling like water over a broken levee. He told her about Charlotte, how he had come to America, about living with Orville, Agnes’s death, even Orville’s passing and what happened after, when Dale Epply showed up at the house.
He never could have imagined the release it brought. Telling someone, telling the person he trusted most in the world, having no more secrets with her, it was like a weight was lifted, a weight he hadn’t even known he was carrying. He felt freer and safer than he ever had before.
At her apartment, they made love again, slower this time.
They lay in bed after that, staring at the ceiling, listening to an mp3 playlist on her laptop with songs by Green Day, Weezer, Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, REM, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“I’m so sorry, Des. I had no idea.”
“It got me here. That’s all that matters.”
“Come with me tomorrow.”
His first meeting with her family had been enough for a lifetime, but a part of him wanted to go.
Despite that, he told her he couldn’t, that he wanted to be alone. It was a lie. He desperately wanted to be with her. He and Orville had never celebrated Christmas or birthdays.
He tried to imagine himself at her mother’s house, sitting at the dinner table or by the fire, with her at his side. He couldn’t. It wasn’t just because he was nervous about the prospect; it was because of something else. A problem far larger than he imagined.
He spent Christmas in the Airstream trailer, alone, a can of beans heating on the stove, an electric heater warming the tiny bedroom. He read library books and traded emails with Peyton. The tone in his replies never matched the warmth of her notes. That bothered him. He wrote and rewrote each message, like they were Egyptian hieroglyphics he couldn’t seem to arrange just right.
Email wasn’t his only problem. Money was still tight. His meals consisted of beans and canned meat, just like the early days when he’d gone to live with Orville. He couldn’t help thinking about the grocer who had helped him ration his limited funds and made sure he had enough to eat. Knowing now that Orville had stashed a veritable mountain of cash in the safe inside the old truck out back actually brought a smile to Desmond’s face. The old roughneck was miserly and mean as a snake, but in the end, he’d had a sort of logic to him. Desmond actually missed the man. He also worried that he had squandered every bit of money Orville had so carefully saved all th
ose years.
After Christmas, four more of the companies he owned options in folded. They hadn’t wanted to ruin their employees’ holiday, but they also didn’t want to start the year wasting any more investor money.
Each email was a punch in the gut. He felt the prospect of financial security slipping away. It focused him.
He dug in, tried to figure out why some companies survived and others went up in smoke. It seemed almost arbitrary. He spent hours thinking about it, reading articles, studying books on business history.
The week after Christmas, Peyton insisted that he stop eating canned meat and beans for every meal.
“You’re going to get some weird digestive disease and die, Des. The obituary will say, ‘Desmond Hughes, talented programmer and lover of books, died of pork and beans in an RV park outside Palo Alto.’”
He laughed and relented, letting her cook at least half his meals. They were a lot tastier. He also began staying at her place without exception; another one of her theories was that the electric heater was going to cut out in the night and he would freeze to death in the Airstream. Neither one of them really believed it, but in the days before New Year’s Eve in 1997, they spent every night together, and neither of them was cold.
Chapter 68
In the helicopter, Desmond watched the sun set over the mountains. Peyton was still asleep beside him, her head on his shoulder.
There were so many things he wanted to ask her. Why they hadn’t ended up together—how they had lost what he had felt that night in Half Moon Bay. What had happened to them.
When Peyton stirred, he leaned forward and caught her eye. She seemed to sense the change in him. “What did you remember?”
“Us.”
She looked away, down at Hannah, who lay still, her breathing shallow.