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Adrie
His full name seemed to be Unknown. That, at least, was the name on the birth certificate, the word they’d put in the slot reserved for Father. She and Nikki used to wonder who he was. For a while, they imagined him as a handsome businessman-inventor with a name like “Charles DeVere,” who lived in one of the rich people’s enclaves in the Brandywine Valley. Entombed in a loveless marriage, he’d fallen for their beautiful, if star-crossed, mother—who, on losing him, had turned to drink and then to drugs. Trapped in a death spiral of self-indulgence fueled by romantic despair, she’d been driven to the slums of Wilmington, where all the trails had gone cold. Even now, their father—and it was always “their” father, whatever the likelihood of multiple sires—even now, DeVere was searching for his lost daughters, placing ads in all the big newspapers and hiring teams of investigators.
“What’s so fu
The question woke Adrie
“Domino’s,” Duran replied.
“Oh.”
“I’m on hold. You want sausage?”
She nodded. “Sausage would be good.”
Then someone came on the line, and Duran started talking into the phone. Adrie
Which was a few miles outside Wilmington, where she and Nikki had gone to live with their grandmother. She remembered Gram—she really did—but not very well, and mostly, she suspected, from Nikki’s stories. What she remembered best was the smell of Gram’s room, which was pure elixir. A melange of vaguely medicinal odors overlaid with the thin perfume of cosmetics—especially the Lily of the Valley cologne and the loose Coty face powder that rested on the dresser near her bed.
Gram wouldn’t talk about her daughter at all, and had in fact destroyed every photograph of her. As a subject, then, DeeDee Sullivan was verboten. Asking about her always led to tears, so that Adrie
When Gram died, Adrie
But where Nikki ranted and charmed, stormed and cajoled, Adrie
Creeping out to the top of the stairs and listening down, Adrien overheard them talking to the Child Services rep one night.
“The older one’s all right,” her foster mother was saying. “A pain in the behind, but cute as a button. A real spunky little gal. It’s the other one worries me, the younger one. Little Goody Two-shoes. Never let’s you know what she’s thinking—keeps it all inside. A real automaton.”
The next morning, Adrie
And Nikki had answered, “A robot.” Then she’d walked around the room stiff-armed and stiff-legged, making little whirring noises, banging into the wall, thumping it with her rigid arms and legs, going, “Rrr
“They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Duran said as he hung up the phone, “or the pizza’s free.”
Adrie
Enough, she thought. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as Duran pointed the universal remote at the television.
The pizza arrived as Adrie
Duran looked at her in surprise.
“My little crying jag,” she explained. “I just… lost it for a second.”
“Oh, that,” he replied, thinking—and this was the real source of his surprise—Migod, she’s beautiful. He’d never really looked at her before, not like this. Her damp hair was the color of old pe
“Looks delish,” she said, and taking a slice, carried it to the desk beside the window. There, she sat down and began to make a list, writing on a little tablet next to the telephone.
1) Work—
a. Clothes and makeup
b. Call Slough
c. Check Lexis cites in asphalt brief
2) Nikki’s ashes
3) Duran—?
4)
She sat there for a moment, tapping her pencil against the page while Duran watched MTV Finally, she decided there wasn’t any number four. There might be d-e-f-g under Work, but there definitely wasn’t a number four. There was just her job, her sister’s ashes waiting to be scattered, and Duran—who was a whole alphabet in his own right.
“What’s ‘Slough’?” Duran asked, coming to her side and peering at the list.
“My law firm,” she replied. “Now be quiet. I’m thinking.” The fingers of her left hand waggled in the air. Under Duran, she wrote:
a) background—poly
b) patient notes
c) computer
d) patients—#
“I passed the ‘poly,’“ he told her, trying to be helpful, and secretly pleased to find himself so prominently on her to-do list. She looked up at him, and nodded.
“That’s right,” she said. “You did. I wonder how.”
“There wasn’t any mystery to it,” he replied. “I just told the truth.”
“But you didn’t. You’re not Jeffrey Duran—even you know that. You’ve been to the cemetery yourself.”