thirty-nine.
Brom’s place was about ten blocks from Evergreen.
She’d left Jude behind at the garden center, in that fragrant, semi-secret workroom, petals crushed onto his skin and fire still lit in his eyes as she made herself step away and out the door. The floor had been covered with a wild sprawl of flowers and stems, the layers of blossoms and leaves that they’d sent scattering across the room as they’d lost themselves in each other. Her lips still thrummed; she could still taste him there.
Later. She would let herself think about him again later.
Marsden jogged back to her bike, still in the alley behind Seconds. She wheeled it out to the sidewalk and turned it in the direction of the address she’d written on Brom’s face. She rode past buildings bleached pale with sun and dust, and the heat burned its way into her brain until she was nearly light-headed.
Four grand.
The amount kept flashing behind her eyes, was nearly a visceral flavor in her mouth for how real it was beginning to seem. Four grand, when she’d always thought two would be enough to get her and Wynn away from Glory for good.
Was it also the price her father paid to end up in the cold, muddy waters of the Indigo?
When she reached the house, Marsden got off her bike and leaned it against the tree in the front yard. The place was a duplex, what might have been a cookie-cutter copy of her family’s old place, except that it wasn’t run-down at all and neither was it very old. The neighborhood was also one of Glory’s better ones. Brom was doing well enough.
The outside of the building had been painted a putty shade, tasteful and discreet. A trail of small paved stones split the dandelion-dotted rectangular lawn in two. Brom’s half needed a cut, but the whole thing was dried out and crispy from the sun. A pair of large picture windows faced the street—Brom’s was covered with a plain blind from the inside, while the other had long patterned curtains.
Marsden walked up his front steps, her hands skimming the black painted banisters that lined them. She had the vague memory of her own house once having the same kind, but that they’d been splotched with rust. She looked at her hands and was almost surprised there was no powdery orange residue on them. Just as she was almost surprised they didn’t smell of metal.
She knocked at the door, questions already on her tongue:
Did you follow my father that night?
What did you see?
What did you do?
But no one answered, and Marsden hesitated, uncertain what came next. If she waited even just a couple of hours, she would find Brom at the boardinghouse. His reservation always lasted at least a couple of weeks, and she was sure he’d only checked in days ago.
But then Shine would be there, shielding him, picking him over her daughters again. Marsden would find out nothing—even worse, if Brom were involved, he would then know she knew. And then what?
Unable to just walk away now that she was here, she circled around until she was at the rear of the house.
The backyard was a wide swath of wheat-like grass, and Brom’s half here needed a cut, too. The other side was strewn with water guns and overturned flip-flops and the occasional patch of grass burned even lighter by dog pee. An empty wading pool sat deflated and dejected near the center, a rawhide dog bone alongside it.
She went to Brom’s back door and knocked. Silence from this end, too. Wherever he was, it wasn’t here.
She turned to go and saw a little boy watching her from the side of the house. His thumb was in his mouth, and he had a bad sunburn.
“Hi,” she said. “I guess you live here?”
He didn’t move, and then a woman appeared around the corner. She was holding a baby in one arm, a bag of groceries in the other, and looked about done in for the day. A dog bounded onto the lawn, panting and running in circles, the tag on his collar jangling.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Um. I was looking for Brom. He lives here.”
Her eyes got wide. “Oh, you must be his daughter! Funny, I always thought you’d be younger. Are you here for a visit?”
Marsden felt herself nodding along, even as her head spun. Brom had a daughter? Did her mother even know that?
“Yes,” she said. “A surprise visit.” Her own words shocked her. What was she thinking? What was she getting herself into?
“I thought he was out of town again, the place has been so quiet,” the woman said.
“No, I’m here to see him. But, uh, I forgot my key.”
The woman slung the baby over her shoulder, set her bag of groceries on the ground, and began to fish around in her purse. “Here—your dad asked me to hold on to one just in case. You can just give it back to him when he gets home.”
“Thanks.” Marsden took the proffered key. Well, now she’d done it, she thought as the woman watched her unlock the back door. She had no choice but to go inside.
Blinds all pulled—the walls glowed like a sunset, all ochres and oranges. The air smelled musty, unused and staid. So Brom wasn’t even coming home during the days. The boardinghouse—and Shine—had become his life. Until his next week off from his bank job, anyhow, a couple of months from now.
She stood there for a moment, guilt leaving her unable to move. What was she doing? Could she slip away yet without the neighbor noticing?
Her curiosity grew as she debated, and soon she was walking around, inspecting, gathering. She didn’t know what she was looking for, specifically, or that she was even really looking for anything. Just being there was the closest she’d come to dissecting this man, who now wanted in on her mother’s life, without being protectively filtered through Shine’s desperation.
The place was small, but tidy; not dull but not interesting, either—basic kitchen, front room, short hall leading to bedrooms and bathroom. Perfectly fine, just like Brom.
Would her mother be living here soon with Wynn? While Marsden stayed with Nina, paying down a debt passed on to her as much as the covert would be one day?
She went to the main bedroom—people slept close to what they most wanted to stay hidden. She would know. And if Brom had secrets going back eight years, he wouldn’t let them stray.
The space was sparse and spare: a bed, a chest of drawers, a nightstand—nothing strange, nothing incriminating.
In the drawer of the nightstand, she found blank envelopes, some late bills, receipts. A Michener paperback, the kind sold on racks by the checkouts in grocery stores, reminding her of Jude and his admittance of struggling through Gibson, the mix of pride and sheepishness on his face. Her hand touched a box of condoms, which reminded her of Jude again, but this time of his mouth and fingers. With her pulse uneven and a slight flush climbing up her neck, she slid the box out of the way.
Tucked in the very back was a small pile of notebooks. All identical, the covers faux brown leather, the kind people carried around to jot down lists. She pulled one out and opened it.
Names and numbers, in neat columns down the page:
02/12/87–02/25/87
Rm3 0938174 Citi
Rm4 1370322 WM
Rm11 038611 Union
Rm13 275891 BoA
Confused, she took out another book from deeper in the pile. Flipped it open.
06/03/85–06/13/85
Rm4 127890 BoA
Rm5 788994 GWB
Rm6 241417 HSBC
Rm12 080411 WM
Marsden had no clue what any of it meant. She thought Rm might mean “room” and that some of the shorthand at the end of each row might have been banks—Brom was in banking, after all—but she wasn’t sure.
She placed the notebooks back into the drawer, changed her mind a second later, and tucked one into her pocket. There were so many of them—one being misplaced wasn’t impossible. And she felt better having it—as proof, or insurance, she supposed, in case she ever needed it.
There was one last thing inside the drawer. A small stack of photos, held together by a rubber band.
She slipped the band off with fingers suddenly gone shaky and began to flip through the stack.
And felt her heart go small and withered at what she saw. She recalled with a kind of dull, pathetic insistence that she’d always known Wynn had inherited Shine’s jawline, cheekbones, nose, hair. How she would have gotten the shape of her eyes, her slightly clefted chin, her paler coloring from her father.
She’d been right.
But Wynn’s father wasn’t Grant Eldridge, as she’d assumed.
Because he was Brom Innes.