The List (35 page)

“Christopher Reeve fell off his horse in Virginia,” said Isabelle. “Did your sister
fall at the same place? Maybe it’s cursed.”

“She didn’t,” I assured Isabelle. “She fell at home.”

“I thought you didn’t like your sister,” said Libby with suspicion creeping into her
voice.

“Well, she’s kind of snooty, but she is family,” I replied. I sounded like I was lying,
I knew I did.

“Horses are demons,” said Julia. “You’re lucky your sister is alive.”

Our parents were under the impression that Payton was treating me to a weekend at
the St. Regis in Mexico City. Considering that just last Christmas Payton was still
devoting a lot of time and energy to emotional abuse, they were elated by her change
of attitude and our sisterly bonding.

“First Payton comes here, all the way here, just to see you. And us, I guess. And
now she’s taking you on a weekend vacation! What a sister you have, Addy,” said my
dad on the morning we were set to fly out. “You two are getting so close. I could
tell last night.”

“Screw last night. Don’t forget the time she made me eat garbage. I sure haven’t.
Never will.” I grabbed a bagel and started scooping out the insides with a serrated
spoon.

“Again?” said my dad. “More garbage? Should I get the ipecac?”

“No, Dad, not again. She just made me eat trash once. Which I think is one too many
times, don’t you? And if you really still have ipecac, please throw it away. It’s
probably fifteen years old.”

My dad laughed and poured me a venti coffee in a ceramic Starbucks cup.

“As is that memory of yours,” he said. “Payton was a lively kid; you should cut her
a break. And she’s taking you to the St. Regis. You love the St. Regis. You can have
dinner on the roof there, you know. On the helicopter landing pad. Your mother and
I did it last year. How about that? Order the tequila-marinated chicken with mole;
it’s delicious.”

Yes, that all sounded absolutely lovely. Too bad we were actually flying to Arizona
to go chase meat-processing-plant workers.

“Oh, Mexico, it sounds so simple I just got to go!” My mother came down the stairs
singing James Taylor and waving her hands in the air. “I love having you girls together
under this roof again. It’s like Christmas every day,” she said, kissing me on the
cheek.

“Except I don’t live under this roof,” I said. “I live under a roof designed to keep
animals warm.”

“That’s because you’re the family’s wild animal!” she said,
moving her feet like a bull ready to stampede. “And plus, that way you get privacy.
You must be saving millions living here with us rather than in Georgetown, so quit
your yapping.”

Millions? I didn’t even make millions of pennies. The only millions I was going to
have were millions of hernias. Millions of mental problems.

“The girls are off to Mexico-co-co-co,” sang my mother. I reminded myself to check
the linen closet for booze when I got home.

My dad dropped Payton and me off at the airport at 5:30
A.M.
This was plenty late for me, but Payton looked like she had been yanked out of bed
and forced to do strenuous field labor. She was wearing huge Chanel sunglasses, holding
two cups of coffee, carrying a cashmere travel throw, and cursing softly in Spanish.

We shooed our father away before he could catch on that we were checking into the
Phoenix flight. Thirty minutes later, we were sitting on the plane.

Safely in the sky and munching on pretzels, I realized that this was the very first
time I had ignored my BlackBerry on a workday since I started at the
List
. It was petrifying, yet so liberating. I didn’t have to put conversations on hold
to check it at five-minute intervals. I didn’t have to tell a friend to hold her tears
because I had to rewrite an article as fast as I could. All I had to do was breathe.

“Planes are amazing,” I said to Payton, who had leaned her head against the wall to
try to sleep. She had bought us first-class tickets, even though the haul wasn’t very
long, which was rather nice. If I had had to pay for the trip, we would be on Greyhound.
She didn’t respond. For the second time in a week I watched her sleep, feeling closer
to her than I had in years. Payton had gotten her way since the forceps gripped her
skull. But I had to admit that on this visit, even though she still acted
like Mussolini in a Gucci minidress, she had softened. She hadn’t poisoned me, or
suggested I try base-jumping off our roof. And she had helped me considerably with
her willingness to push me down avenues I was so hesitant to pursue.

“Payton,” I whispered. She didn’t budge. I lifted her sunglasses off her face, and
she stared at me like she was about to spit in my face.

“Thank you for coming with me,” I said. “For coming home and doing all this with me.
I don’t know where I would be on this story without you. I definitely wouldn’t be
on a plane headed to Arizona.”

Payton rolled her eyes so far that I could only see the whites, which started shaking
from the strain. “Shut up,” she said, putting her glasses back on. “I’m not doing
this for you,” she said groggily. “I’m doing this for me. I can’t spend all my time
with Buck and horses and our overly attentive staff. Buck has some terrible habits.
Like shooting everything in sight or eating twelve eggs at one time. Isn’t that disgusting?
Twelve eggs, yolks and everything.” I looked at her, too accustomed to her attitude
to really be upset by her reaction. “I’m not doing you any favors. Coddling you has
never been an interest of mine. But meddling in the affairs of others always has been.”
And those were the last words she spoke on the plane.

When we landed in Phoenix, the air was thick with nervous energy. My nervous energy.

“I shouldn’t have had that coffee on the plane,” I said to Payton.

She looked me up and down like a man selecting a stripper. “I don’t think the caffeine
is your problem.
Es la culpabilidad
.”

“Guilt. Yes, that might be it,” I said.

“You’re not doing anything wrong,” said Payton, studying my anxious face. “You haven’t
done anything but kiss Sandro, which was stupid, but not as bad as sleeping with Senator
Stanton.”

Right. That was one way to look at it. I hadn’t broken too many moral codes. But I
still felt like the hangman.

“This is what you do, isn’t it? You’re a reporter. It says so on that horrible ID
you have to wear around your neck.”

“But I’m a features writer. I work in Style. I write articles that make people happy,
not articles that destroy careers. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“Says who?” replied Payton angrily. “Don’t let those old men dictate what you can
and can’t do. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting in the back and people will happily call
you mediocre for the rest of your life. You’ve been letting me do it since birth,
and it’s pathetic.”

“Mediocre” was an upgrade from what she usually called me, which was “unfit to breathe.”

“And finally, you make this big move to the
Capitolist,
and now you’re going to let those egomaniacal bosses decide what you’re capable of
accomplishing. Why don’t
you
decide?”

I pointed to a dark green Jeep Patriot in the rental lot, clicked the car open, grabbed
my sister, and hugged her until I actually thought she was going to throw up on my
shoulder.

“You’re right, Payton. I appreciate the pep talk. I really do. I haven’t felt this
empowered since I beat Jessica Van Mark in junior hunters and jumpers in Culpepper
fifteen years ago.”

“You really should be such a better rider than you are,” said Payton, reminding me
that hugging her until her insides hurt was not going to change thirty years of unpleasant
behavior. “And now that you love me so much,” she said, “can we get a more upscale
car?”

“No,” I said. “We’re trying to blend in. We can’t exactly cruise around in a DeLorean.”

When we got onto the long stretch of Highway 85, we fell silent. I realized that in
the last two weeks, Payton and I had
spoken to each other more than we had in the last two years. My father had told me
all through my childhood that Payton was my only sister so I better learn to like
her. It took a few decades, but I was starting to understand his point.

“So whoever this Drew Reader was, he died in a meatpacking plant owned by the Stanton
family,” said Payton, taking notes in a small book. I looked over at the cover. It
was definitely made of an exotic animal skin. Probably something illegal. Probably
white rhino. “And he had a little girl named Olivia and a wife who was left almost
penniless. The wife offs herself a few years later, and the girl has no parents left.
Probably has to be raised by grandparents or a smelly aunt or something.”

“Well, I’m not sure on the offs-herself part. Let’s not jump the gun and just say
she died.”

“Okay, fine,” said Payton. “Either way, if that Olivia is
the
Olivia, that’s a lot to have happen to you at a young age. You can see why she would
be a little intense.”

“Sure,” I said. “Maybe not quite as intense as Olivia Campo is, but yes, the death
of both your parents is a lot to handle. But Olivia isn’t such a strange name. It’s
not Emily or Sarah, but still. It could be nothing but a coincidence. It probably
is.”

“The phone call in Middleburg wasn’t a coincidence,” said Payton, still scribbling
notes. “It probably seemed a little crazy then, but look how right you were.”

We drove past a police car and a yellow road sign that read “high intensity enforcement
area” and both looked at each other nervously.

“It’s definitely possible,” I said. “Okay, even if she is the same person, how does
it fit into the immigration scenario? I mean, look at where we are. She’s from a border
area, too. She and Sandro were devoted to the cause of immigration reform for years,
and Sandro is certainly still involved. So maybe she decided to
take it to the next level, without telling Sandro she was going to extremes, and she
got close to the man pulling the strings on border control legislation.”

“Okay,” agreed Payton. “But the sex can’t be a footnote. That’s what this whole thing
is about, remember? Hot nights in Middleburg, Virginia.”

“Or maybe she just fell for him,” I suggested after a few minutes. “Maybe I just haven’t
been able to see that since I’m salivating over her husband and can’t believe she
isn’t, too.”

“Maybe,” said Payton.

Tall, thin cactuses lined the sides of the road, and we blasted the air-conditioning
to save us from the dry heat outside. Payton’s notebook paper fluttered from the burst
of air. She took a hair clip out of her purse and pinched the pages together.

“Let’s talk about Olivia and the love of your life,” said Payton, switching gears.
“They got married to keep him in the country, and they stayed in Texas, right?”

“Yes,” I said. We passed yet another yellow sign about immigration patrols. “She worked
at the
Corpus Christi Caller Times
right after college for two years, so they must have stayed there. And then after
that she was at the
El Paso Times
for almost two more years before coming to Washington three months after the
List
was launched.”

“El Paso,” said Payton, doodling the lone star of Texas onto her notes. “Do you think
she was still involved with immigration reform when she lived there?”

“Well,” I said, “Sandro worked for a nonprofit immigrants’ rights group there called
the Border Community for Human Rights. It was a very by-the-book nonprofit, nothing
extreme. Olivia could have worked with them, too, or with another group, but she couldn’t
do it openly. Neutral journalism and all that. I imagine immigration is an especially
touchy issue in Texas. She
couldn’t have been associated with anything publicly. I looked up her work for those
papers, and she wrote about immigration, but probably not any more or less than other
state reporters in Texas. No red flags.”

“Let’s just assume that she stayed involved and that Sandro stayed involved,” said
Payton, scribbling again.

“So eventually she hears about this paper being launched and she lands a job there,”
I said. “It seems like a pretty big step up from the
El Paso Times,
but there are a few reporters like that at the
List,
people coming from practically nowhere, and it was early days, so I’m not reading
into her move too much. She’s good at her job, and let’s just say the
List
recognized that. So she comes to Washington, a place she’s always dreamed of living,
with Sandro in tow.”

“Okay,” said Payton. “And they just happen to live in a huge town house in Dupont?”

“I think they pay her pretty damn well at the
List
. They love her. Like six figures love her, so she could pay for it, even without
a lot of help from Sandro.”

“What does Sandro do at OAS?”

“I don’t know. There’s no bio or title listed on the site. Just his name and a few
committee assignments.”

“And you think he’s still involved in immigration reform?”

“In one way or another, yes,” I said. “He told me his entire family is still in Mexico.”

I stepped on the breaks as a small rodent scurried across the road, and both of our
bodies were jerked forward.

“Let’s try not to die today,” said Payton dryly as she readjusted her seat belt. The
GPS signaled that we were only thirty miles away from Ajo. “So where do we go from
here,” Payton murmured, looking at her notes.

I shook my head and kept on driving. I had no idea.

As the scenery turned from highway to town, Payton pointed out a building coming up
on our left.

It was a huge white stucco church. We pulled up next to it and looked at the sign.
“Immaculate Conception Catholic Church,” read Payton, looking up at the cross on top.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” I said. It looked like a building that belonged underneath
a sunset in Italy. “I would never have guessed.”