‘How long will this visit last?’

‘Wendy said about an hour, unless River makes it clear he’s done, and then it would be best to leave. We don’t want to make him uncomfortable.’

When I tell Reid what I learned from Wendy yesterday concerning River’s muteness, his periodic nightmares, and some of the details about his adoptive parents, he mutters, ‘Shit,’ and stares out of the passenger window for several minutes.

Two years ago, River’s adoptive father died in a tragic car accident. I vaguely recall him, out of all the prospective adoptive parents Kathryn and I sifted through that summer. Blond, handsome, mid-thirties. Financially sound. What I remember best is something he wrote at the end of his prospective adoptive parent statement: I hope to be the same loving, wonderful father to my child that my dad was to me. That sentence was the tipping point for my choice of them over another couple.

His father is deceased, his mother is in her seventies and living in a retirement home.

River’s adoptive mother had been estranged from her parents for years, and they were unwilling to consider caring for River, whom they didn’t regard as a grandchild. Soon after her husband’s death, she’d sunk into an addiction she was unwilling or unable to abandon, even though it meant losing her child – a little boy who had no one else to depend on in the world.

Except for me.

‘What are we supposed to say to a kid who doesn’t talk?’ Reid asks, finally, all hints of his earlier levity gone.

‘He can understand what we say. And I brought the Life Book – it’s on the seat behind you.’

He turns to snatch the scrapbook we started when he was here earlier in the week, leafing through the pages as I spot the exit up ahead. ‘This is great, Brooke,’ he murmurs.

‘When I was six or so, Kathryn made me a scrapbook of my own. I was jealous of Kylie and Kelley having books of their baby photos and stories about their first few years of life.’

‘Your mom didn’t make you one?’ he asks, and I glance at him like Really? ‘Guess that’s not much of a surprise.’

Sharla making a scrapbook? Definitely not. ‘Kathryn told me to bring a few photos the next time I came over. Over the next few weeks, I pocketed snapshots of myself that I found in drawers or boxes at home. There weren’t many, even though I was basically an only child. Kathryn bought a handmade journal at some craft fair, stuck glittery pink adhesive letters on the front that spelled out Brooke’s Book, and composed the story of me.’

I haven’t thought of that thing in years. I’d forgotten about it until just now.

‘Do you still have it? My mom’s definitely not crafty, but she kept photo albums of my childhood. Up until I was ten, anyway.’

I bite my lip until it goes numb. ‘No. I don’t have it. I made the mistake of taking it home. Sharla found it. She was furious. Ripped the pages out and tore up all the pictures.’

‘Holy shit, Brooke.’ He stares at me. ‘That’s fucked up.’

‘Yeah. What a great role model for a mom, huh?’

His hand clenches into a fist on the console between us. ‘Your role model is Kathryn, not Sharla. You know that, right?’

I did know that, somewhere in my head. I’d just never acknowledged it consciously.

‘Yeah. You’re right.’

I turn down a street of analogous one-storey homes, all of them small, each with a big front yard, a driveway on the right-hand side and a cyclone fence. A few pecan trees and crepe myrtles dot the landscape here and there, but this flat stretch of acreage was probably reclaimed farmland when the subdivision was built, so there were no old oaks, like those surrounding Kathryn and Glenn’s place.

‘This is it,’ I whisper, spotting the mailbox house number, which is surrounded by a hand-painted swirling heart motif. My heart thumps so hard that I feel each beat like someone is pounding on my chest from the inside, trying to escape. My hands grow cold, though it’s a beautiful late-winter day, the temperature in Austin within a degree or two of LA.

As we walk up the long, cracked sidewalk, I alternate between examining the chalked pictures and inscriptions decorating the concrete and staring at the quiet little house I recognize from the photo Bethany Shank brought to me not even two months ago. Reid, silent and following me, takes my hand as we reach the front door. He removes his sunglasses and I remove mine, and for a moment we stare at each other. I’ve never seen him look so resolute.

‘Here we go,’ he says, pushing the doorbell. At the echo of chimes inside the house, my heart rate surges. Reid squeezes my hand and says, ‘It’s all good, Brooke. We can do this.’

I can’t let go of him.

And then the door opens, and the middle-aged woman I recognize from the background of my only photo of River stands there, a faint smile wreathing her face. Her hazel eyes are clear and kind.

‘Brooke and Reid, I presume?’ she says, and we both nod. She pulls her arm gently from behind her, her hand attached to a little boy who appears slowly on the right side of her hip. All I see are dark blue eyes, impossibly huge in his small face. ‘This is River.’

DORI

Shayma has nudged me at least ten times this morning – whenever I’m not paying attention and someone asks me a question about operating the washers and dryers, how many tokens are allowed per person, or where the nearest public bathroom is located. After my last space-out, she says, ‘Girl. Where is your head this morning?’

While my roommate is one of the few people with confirmed knowledge about Reid and me, I’ve never been a big fan of sharing too much information with anyone, even trusted friends. I love Aimee and Kayla, but I’m pretty darn sure they’ve told every living soul at UCLA that they’re friends with Reid Alexander’s girlfriend. Shayma knows we’re going out, and that we met when I supervised him (or rather, tried to supervise him) at Habitat. She also knows I don’t publicize our relationship, so neither does she – which places her in a select class of friends.

Occasionally, she surprises me with facetious questions like, ‘So … is Reid Alexander a good kisser?’ or ‘I’ll bet Reid Alexander is RAWR in bed, isn’t he?’ I’m glad she hasn’t yet discovered my glowing, telltale ears. The wide-eyed look on my face is indicative enough of my discomfiture, I’m sure.

‘How do you deal with all the making out your boyfriend does in those movies?’ she asks now in her naturally discreet voice (thank goodness), after handing a stack of washer/dryer tokens to a guy who probably hasn’t washed any of his clothes in months. The smell makes my eyes water involuntarily until he shuffles over to a machine with an armful of grubby laundry and the small box of donated detergent I just handed him. I suspect he’ll need more than the one box.

‘And the rumours with ex-girlfriends or not-girlfriends. That alone would drive me batshit crazy. My mawmaw – the self-proclaimed seer? – is a practising Cajun Voodoo Queen. She’d be happy to whip up a little gris-gris for you.’

At the word voodoo, I arch a brow. ‘I’m afraid to ask what a gris-gris is …’

‘It’s a protection amulet. Sometimes for luck, but usually to ward off evil. I imagine ex-girlfriends qualify. Also, I figured you might not want to follow the still-practised but ethically-murky voodoo superstition to make a man stay faithful.’

‘Now I’m really afraid to ask.’

She leans closer and whispers, ‘You put a drop of your blood in his coffee.’

‘Ugh!’ I look down at the latte in my hand, appalled.

‘Right?’ she chuckles. ‘I overheard Mawmaw telling my momma to do that to Daddy when I was little. And my ordinarily sane legal-secretary mother was listening. I never asked her if she did it … If she did – it didn’t work. If she didn’t – well, who’d want to keep a guy that way anyhow?’

‘But using an amulet is a-okay,’ I laugh.

She shrugs and smiles. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh in a few days.’ When I pin my lips together and sigh, she says, ‘Amulets are about warding off bad stuff, not binding people to do things they might not otherwise do. But I’m with you. If and when I get a guy I’m interested in keeping around, I want him to stay because he wants to stay. Not because I poked a voodoo doll of him in the junk with a pin.’

During a show we were watching online last night, an ad for the MTV Movie Awards popped up, which is on next month. Reid and his School Pride co-star, Emma Pierce, have been nominated for Best Kiss. As the clip played, Shayma gave me a sidelong glance, but didn’t say a word. An unwelcome mental image of the two of them re-enacting the lip-lock that made every girl I know swoon (Claudia excepted) at the upcoming awards show made me feel temporarily homicidal.

‘Maybe I should tell Mawmaw to make a gris-gris for Emma Pierce,’ Shayma suggests now, and I suppress an actual growl. ‘Though supposedly, she and Graham Douglas have been a legit couple for months. They went to the Vancouver Film Festival together last fall, and she popped up for a romantic weekend in Dublin a couple of months ago, when he was filming there. They’re spotted together all the time – alone or with friends, sometimes with his daughter. In particular near NYU, where they’re rumoured to be condo-shopping.’

I narrow my eyes. ‘You looked all of that up last night, didn’t you?’

‘No! I looked it up this morning.’ Shrugging, she counts out tokens to a tired woman with two small children in tow, all three of them holding a basket of clothes, and I plop a trial-sized box of detergent in each of their baskets. ‘You looked like you might go postal when that ad came on, is all. A little abnormal for such a peaceful girl, if you ask me.’

Rats. My non-existent poker face betrays me again.

24

REID

River doesn’t speak a word during the visit, of course, but he seems curious enough that he doesn’t signal an end to our stay. The first hour is spent under Wendy’s supervision, and he never ranges far from her. Brooke and I sit side by side on the worn sofa, our legs wedged behind a coffee table that – while smelling of wood polish – has been crayoned and scratched and generally battered to hell. Propped next to his foster mother’s chair, River leans his thin frame against her as though her bodily support is necessary to his ability to remain upright.

‘We made a book for River to keep – well, Brooke made most of it.’ I remove the book from Brooke’s lap and lean over the table to put it into Wendy’s hands. River inclines closer, eyes a little wider and head angled to study the cover, which depicts a beach view of the western horizon over the Pacific at sunrise. ‘It has some pictures of Los Angeles, where we live – parks and other cool places. And a few pics of us.’

I reach over and squeeze Brooke’s cold hand as Wendy turns the pages, reading the descriptions to River, who doesn’t take his eyes from the book until she’s done. And then he reaches over, turns back to page one, and looks at her expectantly until she begins to read it again. Brooke clutches my hand as if she is hanging over a deep gorge, her eyes never moving from him.