The Drowning Game (14 page)

“When I was seven years old I fell in a window well and split my arm open from my wrist to my elbow. Dad sewed it up with catgut.”

I pulled my arm away and she pointed to the bump on my left shoulder. “How about this one?”

“Scar tissue,” I said, and scratched it.

She didn't say anything, but helped me into the ratty old bathrobe then read the dye directions.

“According the National Weather Ser­vice,” said the DJ on the radio, “a thunderstorm cell is picking up power over the central part of the state. We're watching out for you at KQLA.”

After Roxanne brushed my hair, she put on plastic gloves and opened a bottle, squeezing a tube into it before shaking the mixture up. Then she squeezed the goo onto my head and the smell was overwhelming. I held the towel to my face but it didn't help.

“Dekker says you never learned how to drive.”

“No,” I said.

“How come?”

“I'm pretty sure it's because Dad didn't want me to escape, but we were in a serious car accident when I was about thirteen. We both walked away without a scratch, but the truck was completely destroyed. He decided in addition to everything else, cars were just too dangerous for me to ride in, much less drive.”

Roxanne looked up, her eyes alight. “If you were going to stay a ­couple of days, I'd totally take you out on the country roads and teach you to drive—­that's the only way to do it.”

She tied my hair up in a little clear plastic hood and clipped it, then peeled off the gooey gloves and stuffed them in the dye box. “Let's put the goo on Dekker and then we can all go downstairs while it processes,” she said.

“You go ahead,” I said. “I'll be in the kitchen.”

I cursed myself for letting them talk me into the whole hair-­dyeing thing. I ran down the stairs, clutching my bra knife through the robe, and looked out the front windows, scanning the road for police cars or a red Ram pickup.

 

Chapter 16

“M
AYBE WE SHOULD
dig into the loot you stole from Dooley's office while we're waiting,” Curt said. “Might answer some questions.”

Did I want to share my stuff with these ­people? They'd opened their home to me, their lives, and the truth was I didn't want to have to wait to look at the stuff, however briefly. I went upstairs and brought down the letters and the photo album. I left the envelope and the laptop in my suitcase.

“Let's go in the dining room so we can spread some stuff out,” Curt said.

“There's also this,” I said, pulling the silver chain from the neck of the robe and holding out the little silver box on it.

Curt walked right up to me and took the silver box in his hand. He was so close I could smell him. I felt dizzy and breathless with him this near. Even my own dad had never invaded my personal space the way Curt and Roxanne did. They thought nothing of it.

“So beautiful,” Roxanne said, her arms around her dad's neck from behind him. He turned the box over and then closed his fist around it, looking into my eyes with his bright blue ones.

“Your mom's, you suppose?” he said.

I nodded.

“What's in it?”

“I don't know,” I said. “We've been kind of busy.”

“Let's find out,” he said.

I nodded, holding my breath. What if there was nothing in there? I knew I'd be disappointed.

He opened the lid and turned the box upside down. A tiny zigzag of folded paper tumbled into his palm.

“May I?” Curt said.

I nodded again and he unrolled the paper and held it up. “Wow. We might need a microscope.” He handed it to me.

I read the miniature text out loud. “ ‘But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.' ”

“This is magic,” he said. “This is treasure. It's good luck.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

He smiled at me then sat at the dining table, looking around at the stuff from the box.

“I have to see these pictures your dad didn't want you to see,” Curt said. “But you first.”

I pulled the album toward me and opened it. My head felt fuzzy, my breathing was so shallow. Old photos, the colors faded, the clothes like something out of the
Mad Men
promos I saw on TV—­cat-­eye glasses and short poufy hair with side curls on the women, polyester shirts and sideburns on the men. There was everyone from infants to elderly folks. I looked closely at the ­people in the photos but I didn't recognize anyone. I thought my heart would pop out of my mouth, my chest felt so tight.

I guessed that these ­people must be my extended family, that or Mr. Dooley had put a decoy box up in the hall. I turned a few more pages and it was a completely different family, but the same time period. I got halfway through and decided to start at the beginning again. Some of the ­people in the photos had started to look familiar. I couldn't figure out if this was because I'd just moments before looked at the photos or if I truly recognized them. Then I came upon a photo of a little boy with the skinniest arms and legs and this hilariously proud look on his face. I knew that face, and it filled me with joy.

I paged forward until I saw an image of this face as an older adolescent, and sure enough, it was my dad as a teenager. He had surfer-­guy hair and high-­waisted jeans and a black T-­shirt that said
Scorpions Virgin Killer
on it. Dad was standing by another guy with similar hair and the two of them were obviously laughing really hard. My dad was smiling like I'd never seen him smile, and I wanted to cry. He may have been nuts, he may have been paranoid, but he was the only human being I'd ever had any kind of relationship with, and I missed him.

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve then paged forward to a picture of a teenage girl with braces and skinny legs with long light brown hair and dimples. She was wearing a swimsuit and eating a popsicle that was dripping red down her hand and arm. There were more pictures of the same girl, getting older, looking more and more like me. My mom.

Then the pattern hit me: two pages of Dad's family and then two pages of Mom's, showing them both growing up and finally as a ­couple. I examined all the faces throughout the album again, imagining all of us as the roots of a tree, branching off into infinity, and something clicked inside me. I'd had a family. These ­people and I all had the same blood in our veins. We were connected. I felt a quiet bittersweet happiness at this idea.

I flipped to the last page, and there was an eight-­by-­ten of Mom and Dad in winter jackets, bright sunshine in their eyes, standing in a gazebo frosted with sparkling snow, their smiles looking like they might burst right off of their faces. I was struck with the eerie feeling that someone had replaced the happy, smiling, mischievous man in these photos with the empty, somber Dad I'd known all these years. Did losing Mom in the house fire take all the fire out of his eyes? Was that what had happened?

Stuck in the very back of the album was a wedding invitation with names I didn't know, maybe friends of my parents.

I looked up to see Roxanne, Curt, and Dekker counting the rubber-­banded letters in the stack.

“One hundred forty-­seven,” Dekker said.

“Let's divide them up,” said Roxanne, handing me the top quarter, Curt the second, herself the third, and Dekker the bottom of the stack. I pushed the photo album toward Curt, knowing I'd come back to it again and again, and opened the topmost letter off my stack.

My dearest love,

The first time I saw you, everything changed for me. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't do anything but think about you. I have never felt like this before, and I make this vow to you that every day for the rest of my life, I will love you like no one else on earth ever could. I will spend every day working to deserve you and your love.

All my love,

M

That was a weird way to sign the letter. Why would Dad use his last initial?

Curt studied the pages of the photo album. “So how did you end up in Saw Pole? Usually ­people move away from Kansas, not to it.”

I explained about my mom and the house fire.

“Did your folks vacation in Colorado a lot, or what?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Every one of these pictures was taken in Colorado.” He flipped pages and pointed. “That's Mount Evans right there.” He went forward a few pages. “That's Casa Bonita. And there's Red Rocks. Got to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse there one time, and it was totally kick ass. It was during the . . . which tour would that have been?”

“We're from Detroit,” I said, much louder than I'd intended.

“That may be, but these pictures were taken in Colorado. And your folks got married in Colorado.” He flipped to the back and pointed at a wedding announcement.

I yanked it out of the album.

Mr. and Mrs. Bart I. Davis

request the honor of your presence

at the marriage of their daughter

Marianne T. Davis

to

Michael D. Rhones

son of

Mr. and Mrs. Dwight N. Rhones

on Saturday, July 28, 1990, at seven o'clock in the evening

at Cherry Hills Community Church

Greenwood Village, Colorado.

“No,” I said, my reality suddenly threatened. “It must have been some friends of theirs, because I don't know those names.” I didn't want to consider that Dad had lied to me about . . . everything.

“What were their names?” he said.

“I don't know what Mom's name was,” I said.

Roxanne gasped. “You didn't know what your mom's name was? How could you not—­”

Dekker silenced her.

“Dad's was Charlie Moshen.”

“M-­O-­T-­I-­O-­N?” Curt asked.

“No. M-­O-­S-­H-­E-­N.”

Curt pulled the invitation from my hands and stared at it for so long I wasn't sure if he was still awake, except that his eyes were open. Then they widened. “Rox,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Go get Scrabble, will you?”

Her face lit up, but I didn't understand why. Were we going to play a game? She left the room. Curt's eyes never moved from the invitation. Roxanne appeared with a brick-­colored box, which she put on the table. Curt set the invitation down, opened the box and started pulling letter tiles out and laying them in front of him. When he found all the tiles he wanted, he arranged them so they said CHARLIE MOSHEN.

His eyes grew wider and he looked at me. I didn't understand until he rearranged the tiles.

“Holy shit,” Dekker said. “Check it out, Rox.”

“Oh, my gosh,” she said, picking up the invitation and holding it next to the tiles.

Which now spelled MICHAEL RHONES.

The box I'd taken from Mr. Dooley's office had the initials M R on it.
M R for Michael Rhones.
“The letters are signed ‘M,' ” I said. “M for Michael.” I picked up the wedding invitation and studied it again.

“My mom's name was Marianne,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else. “Why . . . did Dad change his name? I don't understand. And if we weren't from Detroit, why did Dad say we were?”

“Maybe you're in the witness protection program,” Curt said.

Dekker backhanded Curt's shoulder. “That's what I said!”

They high-­fived.

“I don't think you're going to Detroit,” Curt said. “I think you're headed to Denver. Just my two cents.”

“That's great!” Dekker said, his face and voice full of enthusiasm. “That's so much closer than Michigan!”

“You need to find these ­people, the Davises and the Rhoneses,” Curt said. “You may have some family still there.”

“Dad said his parents were dead,” I said, a tingling sensation starting on my scalp and spreading down my arms.

Why had Dad changed his name?

If he'd changed his name . . . did he change mine?

What was
my
real name?

“Your dad also told you he didn't have any siblings, and you can tell that guy standing with him in the pictures is his brother,” Dekker said.

“Maybe they're cousins.”

“I guess my point is that your dad said a lot of stuff which is turning out not to be true. So I think Denver is the place to start. In fact,” Curt said, “what do you say we try to find these folks right now?” He picked up the phone receiver and held it out to me.

I couldn't move. My throat was dry. “Could you do it?” I said in a small voice.

He nodded and punched some numbers on the keypad. “Denver, Colorado,” he said into the phone. “Dwight N. Rhones.” He spelled it out and listened. “Oh? That's a bummer. Can you look up another one for me? Bart I. Davis.” He listened again. “Sure. Give me that one. Do you have the address too? Thanks.” He found a pen and a pad of paper and scribbled a phone number and address on it. “Thank you. Have an awesome day.” He hung up the phone and slid the paper in front of me. “That's Mrs. Bart I. Davis's info right there.”

I stared at it, and the tingling covered my entire body. Was I actually looking at the contact information of my maternal grandmother? It couldn't be. Dad said I didn't have any relatives. I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket.

Curt rubbed his hands together. “Rox, how much longer we got until the timer goes off?”

She craned her neck. “Dekker can wash off now,” she said. “Petty's got fifteen more minutes.” She peeked under my plastic head covering.

Dekker went upstairs and I heard the water turn on.

Roxanne, Curt, and I all continued reading from our stacks of letters. I opened the next letter on my pile, which was a lot like the last one I'd read.

I've never felt this way before. I can't live without you. You're my everything.

“Uh-­oh,” Roxanne said, looking up from the letter she was reading. “They're in a fight. Apparently your mom hasn't spoken to your dad in two whole days, and he's ‘dying' on the inside.”

Curt laughed.

We were all quiet for a while as we read. Dekker came downstairs rubbing his head with a towel, sat back down at his stack and went on reading. Every letter of mine was signed the same way:
M.

When I was a kid, I found a box turtle in the road and I brought it home. I wanted to keep it in the backyard but I didn't want it to run away, so I drilled a hole in the turtle's shell and chained it up. I went to school the next day and came back that night to find the thing cooked in its shell.

I shivered, reading this. That was weird. Who would do something like that? And why was Dad telling Mom this in a love letter?

The timer dinged. I stood and stretched. Roxanne stood too and we went upstairs.

“Get in the shower,” she said once we were back in the bathroom. “Be sure not to get any of the dye in your eyes. Rinse and then use this conditioner.” She handed me a tube.

After my shower, I got dressed in jeans, a T-­shirt, my holster, Baby Glock, and my hoodie. Roxanne beckoned me back into the bathroom and told me to straddle the closed toilet again. Then she used a blow dryer on my hair and a round brush. I kept my eyes closed to keep the hair out of them. When the dryer went off I opened them. My hair was golden blond, full and fluffy and almost glamorous, and while I didn't look like me anymore, I could still see my mother's face in my own.

Roxanne put her hands on my shoulders and set her chin on my head. I couldn't move. It was like having a butterfly land on me. I didn't want to scare her away.