CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Anything to Declare?
It was nearly noon by the time we left the hotel, worn out but content. We took the car the studio had rented for Nick, a convertible Jaguar in gunmetal grey. I whistled when the valet brought it around to the front of the hotel. “I know, right?” said Nick. I’d come a long way from my old, beat-up Honda Civic.
We drove out of Vancouver with the top down, enjoying the clear sky and clean air. As we passed snow-capped mountains, dense forests, and shimmering waterways I thought about how different it was from Los Angeles, so peaceful and green. I’d moved around a lot as a kid, but I’d lived in L.A. for all of my adult life and I still marveled at the way other big cities filled their empty spaces with things other than palm trees, billboards, and traffic-crammed boulevards.
The drive took closer to three hours with the wait at the border. I suspected he had low-balled the estimate to get me on board with this excursion. As we were crossing back into the U.S. I caught the border patrol officer’s double take when he recognized Nick, and possibly me too, but he sent us on our way without comment. Nick and I didn’t talk much during the drive. My thoughts drifted, but they kept coming back to Sophie. Would she like me? What were seven-year-olds into? Princesses? Ponies? I didn’t have a lot of experience around kids, though I’d always liked them. Or the idea of them. I should have brought her a present or something. Maybe I could ask Nick to stop somewhere on the way.
When we reached Seattle, Nick gave me a tour of his old Beacon Hill neighborhood, a suburb on the south side of the city. We parked in front of the house where he grew up, a small, white Craftsman bungalow on a street lined with cedar trees. There was nothing special about it on the outside, but it held a childhood’s worth of memories for Nick. His mom had raised him there by herself on a librarian’s salary. He’d told me once in a rare candid moment that his father had left them when he was still a baby. He’d never met him, never spoke to him, never gotten so much as a birthday card from the man. That could only have compounded his guilt about sending Sophie away. Did his father follow his career? Was he proud of him? Nick probably wondered the same thing, though he’d never said it out loud.
“Who lives here now?” I asked, rolling down my window to get a better look.
“No idea. I bought my mom a condo on Bainbridge Island years ago.” He said it as if buying million-dollar homes for other people was something everyone did.
I asked him if he wanted to see her while we were there. I was already going to meet Nick’s daughter and her grandparents, what was one more momentous introduction?
“That would be difficult,” he said with a wistful smile. “She got remarried last winter and moved to Florida.”
He took me by his old school and the movie theater where he’d worked as a teenager. As we watched the moviegoers head inside, he told me a story about how he’d once got caught sneaking his friends in through the exit door. The manager liked him, though, and instead of firing him he’d made Nick clean the popcorn machine every night for a month.
“You know, this would be great material for the piece,” I said, after Nick pointed out the basketball court where he used to play with his friends. He told me he was the shortest, and the worst player by far, but they still included him. All of these formative experiences had shaped him into the kind, humble person he was. I thought they were worth sharing. “Do you think I could include some of it?”
He glanced at me for a second, then turned his eyes back to the road. “Is that all this is to you?” he said, in mock offense. “A research trip for your article?” It was a relief that we could joke about it now.
“I think it would show how grounded you are,” I said. “That’s kind of the theme of the piece.”
“Oh, so I’m not like all the other actors you’ve known after all?”
I leaned across the seat and kissed him on the cheek. “Not even a little bit.”
The Kittridges lived in Mount Baker, not far from Beacon Hill but swankier. As we got closer to Lake Washington the houses became larger and further apart, the landscapes more manicured. Their home was a two-story Tudor set back a bit from the road. There was a sprawling lawn in front, bordered by trimmed hedges. It was imposing as hell.
“It’s going to be fine,” Nick reassured, sensing my edginess as we pulled into the long driveway alongside the house. That was pretty generous considering these people had hired someone to dig up dirt on him. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re here to vet them, not the other way around.”
I wrung my hands together as we walked up the driveway toward the house. He put his arm around my waist, instinctively knowing I needed steadying. We knocked on the front door and waited.
A middle-aged woman with a sleek, sand-colored bob answered and greeted us warmly. I took this to be Helen. She was dressed in a flowing top, a modern take on hippie chic, and wore oversized jewelry. I was expecting someone older, more matronly, someone less accessorized.
She let us in and showed us to a room off the front entryway, an open space with a floral couch and windows facing the front lawn. In the old days it might have been called a parlor. The house was spacious and comfortable, rustic in a contrived sort of way. The room was paneled in dark wood and the walls were lined with books. On the far wall there was a gallery of family portraits. I recognized Sophie from a photo Nick had shown me. I didn’t see him in any of them.
“Helen, this is Kate,” Nick said, gesturing between us.
“Nice to meet you,” I said, holding out my hand. She shook it, but instead of letting go after the customary length of time, she hugged it to her chest and patted it. Her smile reminded me of the way our old neighbor Mrs. Charles had looked at me the time I found her lost cat — appreciative, but distrusting. I waited an uncomfortably long time for her to let go of my hand. At the sound of footsteps in the hall she finally gave it back. “Oh, and here’s Reed.”
Mr. Kittridge wasn’t anything like I’d pictured either, but while Helen was more intimidating in person, he was much less so. He looked like he’d just stepped off the golf course, in a pastel blue polo and tan shorts revealing knobby knees. What was left of his caramel-colored hair hadn’t turned completely white yet, but it was getting there.
“I’m afraid we owe you an apology,” Helen said, standing next to Reed. He put his arm around her shoulder. “It was our lawyer’s idea to hire the detective. We want you to know we don’t think any less of you because of . . . well, you know.”
“To tell you the truth,” Reed said, nearly cutting off his wife. “We were relieved that was all he could find!” He guffawed as if he’d made a great joke. We didn’t join in.
“Sophie’s just so young and so impressionable, you understand,” Helen added. “And you know what Los Angeles is like. We want to give her a positive, healthy environment to grow up in.”
“Of course,” I said, choosing to ignore everything after the word “apology.” I knew plenty of well-adjusted people who’d grown up in L.A., and just as many screwed up people who hadn’t.
“But we couldn’t find so much as a parking ticket on this guy.” Reed clapped Nick on the back. I got the impression they were a little disappointed the search had come up empty.
“Speaking of Sophie,” Nick said, bristling. I could see the strain in his neck muscles and knew he was struggling to keep his opinions to himself. “Where is she?”
“She’s out back,” Helen said, oblivious.
“We’re going to go find her,” he said, taking my hand. Without further discussion he led me through the house to the kitchen and finally to a sliding glass door. Beyond it was a large covered patio surrounded by a field of grass. Helen and Reed caught up with us in the kitchen.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” Helen asked me. “We don’t have any alcohol, but I have some lemonade.”
Nick, standing behind her, rolled his eyes. I had to bite my lip to keep from reacting. “Lemonade is fine. Thank you,” I said.
“We’ll let you three talk,” Reed said, and disappeared the way we came.
Sophie didn’t notice us come out from the house right away. She was playing catch in the yard with a yellow lab. Her hair was in braids and she wore a ruffled denim skirt with a pair of pink high-tops. Her shirt was pink too, with a white Spider-Man face on it. I smirked when I saw it.
Nick noticed my reaction and made the connection. “She likes Spider-Man too,” he said.
She hopped and ran around the yard, throwing a tennis ball and clapping when the dog brought it back to her. “Well that clinches it,” I said. “She’s clearly awesome.”
“She takes after her mother.” Nick kicked at some smooth rocks in the flower bed surrounding the patio, turning a few over with his feet. He was retreating into the shadows of his mind, where I didn’t know how to reach him.
Sophie rescued us both. She spotted us from across the yard and dropped the ball in front of the dog, who flopped down and started gnawing on it. In a burst of energy she bounded towards us, nearly knocking Nick over as she flew into his arms, shouting, “Daddy!”
He swung her around in his arms, sending her braids in spiral arcs. “Heya kiddo!”
“Daddy, guess what! Spike had puppies!”
“Cool!” he said, setting her down. I loved seeing this side of Nick. Sophie had an illuminating effect on him.
“But we had to give them all away.” She thrust her lower lip out in an adorable pout that reminded me so much of Nick.
“Spike?” I asked, chuckling.
“Her birthday present last year.” Nick nodded his head towards the dog, who was still working away at the now-slobbery tennis ball. “She already had the name picked out.”
“Hey, Spike is a good name for a girl,” she said with conviction. I liked her style.
“Spike is a great name for a girl,“ he agreed. He ruffled the top of her head and crouched down to her eye level. “Soph, this is my friend Kate. The one I was telling you about.”
She wasn’t shy. She didn’t hide behind her father or turn away. She fixed her eyes on me and said, “Hello.”
“Hi Sophie,“ I said. I put my hand out and she shook it once, hard for a kid. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Nick was right, she did take after her mother. Though I’d only seen a few pictures of Dana I could tell she had the same auburn hair, the same freckles and fine features, except for her eyes. They weren’t her mother’s melancholy green, or even her father’s beckoning brown, but hazel with flecks of blue. They were her own eyes, intelligent and curious, and they regarded me carefully.
“I like your shirt,” I told her, shameless in my attempt to win her over. “Spider-Man is my favorite.”
“It’s not Spider-Man,” she said. “It’s Spider-Gwen.”
Now that she mentioned it, the face on her shirt did look like a girl’s. I’d never heard of Spider-Gwen, but I made a mental note to look into her as soon as possible. If someone had told me six months ago my new goal in life would be to convince a seven-year-old girl I was cool, I’d never have believed it. But there it was.
“My dad says you’re a writer,” she said.
“That’s right.” I didn’t know how much Nick had told Sophie about me, or about us, so I kept it simple.
“That’s what I want to be. Actually, I want to write and draw comics. I have this one I’m working on right now. It’s about a ninja ballerina. I call it Ninjarina. You wanna see?”
“That sounds amazing. I’d love to.” She beamed, a point in my favor. Her smile was more natural and carefree than Nick’s, but no less stunning in its own way.
“Why don’t you go get your comic and we’ll meet you inside,” Nick said, his hand on her shoulder like a real dad. Which he was, of course. It would take some getting used to. “I have to talk to Kate for a second, okay?”
“Okay. Nice to meet you,” Sophie said. It sounded like she meant it. She skipped back into the house and I let out a breath. It felt like I’d been holding it in since we left Vancouver.
When she was gone, Nick turned to me. He started to speak, but I cut him off. “Yes,” I said.
“Yes to what?” He was confused by the lack of context, but hopeful. I don’t think he was surprised by what came next.
“Yes, I’d move up here with you.” A slow grin worked its way up to his eyes. I could tell he liked the idea, had already thought about it.
“There’s still a lot of things to work out. A lot of contingencies.”
“Do you want me to? You never asked, you know.”
He folded me into his arms. “Katelyn Ferris, will you move to Vancouver with me?”
“Forget it, I changed my mind,” I said, though I didn’t pull away. We both laughed.
“So unpredictable. I’ve always liked that about you.”
I kissed him and he held me close as the sun set over the yard. The sky was tinted with color, not the garish, saturated hues of a Southern California sunset, but the cotton candy pink and lavender of the Pacific Northwest. After the sun disappeared Nick took my hand and we walked together, side-by-side, back to the house.