After image, p.20
After Image, page 20
I picked up her stuffed crocodile and held him against my stomach. The top of his head was worn from Allie rubbing her knuckles across the green plush. “How long have you known?”
Allie reached out and touched the alligator’s snout. “I didn’t know. Not for sure.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Not until yesterday, in his office. When I saw the texts from Zuri.” Suddenly, she shook her head. “Actually, that’s a lie. To be honest, I knew all along.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘all along’? He’s been with Zuri this whole time?”
She shook her head, pressing her lips together. “No. But I knew what he was like. How it would end up.” Her eyes were big and dark.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
She examined her toenail polish like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. “The day I came over here—when I met you, met Elena—I liked you. I liked your place. I thought . . . What if I could be like that?”
“Like what?”
A sheet of dark hair fell across her face, hiding it from view. “Like . . . normal,” she said.
But we weren’t normal, I wanted to shout. A single mom and her kid, that was only half a family.
“And it seemed like he really loved her,” she went on. “So I thought—” She broke off, laughing at herself. “I thought maybe he’d be different this time.” She rested her chin on her knees. “It did seem that way, in the beginning. It did seem like he might.”
After a minute, I reached out and held her hand, and we sat like that for a while, listening to the strains of the argument between Mom and Giles filtering up from the stairwell.
That night, without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I forgave her. For everything. But in the weeks and months that followed, as I watched our lives unravel, I couldn’t help but wonder: What if she had just kept her mouth shut? What would our lives have looked like then?
CHAPTER 43
In the back seat of the car, I shift restlessly. We’re winding through dry, scrubby hills on a road that descends closer and closer to the ocean. In the distance, the sun winks against the water, the glare hurting my eyes. Finally, the driver pulls up in front of Isabel’s house, which sits on a bluff just above the beach. In the bright afternoon light, I have to blink several times before I can make out the details of the house: the low roofline, the large windows.
The driver opens my door for me, and I step out at the end of a long driveway crowded with expensive cars.
“Thanks,” I say. Suddenly, I’m not at all sure about my decision to come here. I’ve taken care to dress nicely, but I know that, once I get inside, I’ll feel hopelessly out of place. I adjust my bag on my shoulder and remind myself that I’m here for Matthew. That’s all. I’ll say my hellos and then leave after a polite length of time.
Picking my way down the driveway, I marvel at the size of the house, which stretches out long on either side of me. I’ve only been here three times, and on each of those occasions, I’d been with Allie. In her presence, distracted by her constant chatter, I had less time to take in the details.
Raising my hand, I knock on the front door. Instantly, a young woman opens it and welcomes me in, then offers to take my coat. She’s wearing khaki pants and a light-colored shirt—apparel that marks her as part of the staff hired for the occasion. With a flush, I realize I’m wearing something very similar: camel-colored slacks, a white blouse. The look I was going for was simple elegance. Instead, I’ve landed on “household staff.”
From the foyer, I walk down two steps into the massive living room. Above me, a ceiling with exposed beams catches the afternoon sun. To my right, a fire crackles in the fireplace—a sight that no one is currently appreciating because all the guests are gathered outside. Through the large windows that look out onto the deck, I see Matthew and Chloe on the far end of the patio, standing near the stairs that lead down to the beach. He has an arm around her shoulders, and the wind blows her hair across her face. Caterers circulate with trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres. As I step outside, I snag a glass of champagne for myself, partly for courage and partly so I won’t be mistaken for one of the staff.
As I slip past clusters of guests, I spot a few familiar faces—the lead actor from Matthew’s latest film, the woman who produced Broken Bones. The others I don’t recognize, but everyone looks comfortable here, as if they’ve spent many hours in this house. One woman lies on her back on one of the built-in benches that runs along the deck, balancing a baby on her stomach. And there’s Sara, Chloe’s daughter, running back and forth through the crowd, playing some game with one of the other kids at the party.
When Sara passes Matthew, he grabs her by the waist and pretends to be about to throw her over the edge of the balcony. Sara squeals until he sets her down and rumples her hair. Chloe is laughing, shaking her head at their antics.
I walk toward them, anticipating the relief I’ll feel once I’m safely among friends. But just then, Isabel turns around from the group of people she’s been talking to. “Natasha, my goodness!” she says.
She’s wearing jeans and a sweater, simple clothes that somehow telegraph immense wealth. “Look at you—don’t you look wonderful!” When she embraces me, I can feel her rib cage against my chest. Since Allie’s disappearance, Isabel’s beauty has become sharper, more fragile.
“How are you?” I ask her, but Isabel is already introducing me to her friends. “Everybody, this is Natasha.”
I shake hands politely with the guests and listen to Isabel say nice things about me, until Matthew comes over to rescue me.
“Excuse me,” I say to Isabel, relieved to get some distance from her. When I look at her now, all I can think of is the conversation Ruiz and I had in the Jeep. Would she really have hurt Allie, perhaps even killed her, just to maintain her reputation? I look at her razor-sharp jawline, the taut skin on her neck. In Pale Heart, her third movie, she’d played an assassin, and the performance had been so electric that it had garnered her an Oscar nomination.
Matthew hugs me, as does Chloe.
“Natasha, so good to see you,” she says.
Chloe has always accepted my position in Matthew’s life as a kind of honorary niece.
“Sara, come say hi,” she calls to her daughter, but Sara is already off and running to the other side of the porch. “Sorry,” Chloe says, rolling her eyes. “She’s so hyper today.” She nudges Matthew. “Your fault. You keep riling her up.”
“She looks like she’s having a great time,” I say.
“Matthew,” someone calls out, and I turn to see Giles approaching us. He startles when he recognizes me. “Natasha. I didn’t know you’d be here.” He doesn’t quite know how to greet me, so he settles for giving me a dry kiss on the cheek.
The last time I saw him in person had been at the memorial service for Allie, held a year after she disappeared. He looks exactly the same. Same crisp button-down shirt, same wire-rimmed spectacles. Allie always claimed he didn’t really need the glasses, that he just wore them to make himself look smarter.
“How is Elena?” he asks. “Well, I hope.”
If I were Allie, I’d have a snarky reply at the ready. But all I manage to say is: “Good. She’s good.”
His expression is affable, relaxed. It would be easy to forget he ever looked the way he had the night he yelled at Allie across the dinner table, his face contorted with rage.
As he turns to talk to Matthew, I suddenly remember a moment the day after that terrible dinner, when I was in my bedroom, putting away my folded laundry. Giles had passed by in the hall, heading toward Allie’s room.
“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” I heard him say as he stood in her doorway.
Silently, I stepped closer to my door, staying out of sight. I could see the edge of Giles’s shirtsleeve, the fingers of his hand wrapped around the doorjamb.
“What’s the matter, Pops?” Allie asked lightly.
“I think you’ll find it doesn’t pay to poke your nose in other people’s business like that.”
I held my breath, willing for Allie not to provoke him, for him not to fly into a rage.
“Imagine what else I could say,” said Allie, her voice cool. “If I felt like it. I think people would find it interesting how you got the idea for Alchemy. How it was originally Liam’s idea. How you took it, after he died.”
There was a long silence. Then Giles said, “I don’t know what you’re—”
“What? You think Matthew doesn’t talk about that? When he’s drunk, he’s very chatty. Very gossipy.”
From where I was standing, I saw Giles move forward. He stepped into Allie’s room and closed the door behind him.
Now I draw in a deep breath, filling my lungs with ocean air. I don’t know what Giles and Allie talked about that day, but after that conversation, I noticed Allie didn’t make any more pointed remarks about his career, his poor book sales.
Chloe and Matthew are rattling on about their house search, about how long it took them to find the right place.
“When we saw the one on Miradero, we just knew,” Chloe says, leaning against Matthew, her cheek resting against his sweater.
Giles plucks a lobster toast from a caterer’s tray. “So, you’re selling the Venice place?”
Matthew nods. “It’s time, I think.”
Giles takes a bite of the toast, a fleck of lobster sticking to his lip. And I think: He doesn’t have a solid alibi for the night Allie went missing. Is it possible he could’ve hurt Allie? If Allie had done something to anger him? To betray his secrets?
“And what about the cabin in Crestline?” Giles asks. “Will you be giving that up too?”
“What cabin?” Chloe asks, looking at Matthew.
He sips his sparkling water. “Oh, just a little place I bought back in the day. For fishing.”
“And writing,” Giles reminds him. “Matthew had big dreams of writing the great American novel out there. ‘The Hideout,’ he called that place. I believe at one time there might even have been a plaque over the door.”
“Well,” Matthew says with a laugh, looking a little uncomfortable. “Clearly, that was another time.”
After they’d collaborated on adapting Giles’s novel Alchemy for the screen, Matthew never wrote anything else that sold. Despite his success with directing, this remains a sore point for Matthew, one that Giles doesn’t mind pressing every once in a while.
The heat lamps on the patio are attempting to fend off the chill in the air, but the wind from the ocean cuts right through their warmth.
“You still go up there?” Giles asks Matthew.
Matthew glances over his shoulder at the beach. “Haven’t been in years. God knows what kind of condition it’s in now. The place is more of a headache than it’s worth, really.”
I’m suddenly sorry that I came to the party. I have nothing to contribute to this conversation about the difficulty of owning multiple homes.
“Didn’t it get broken into a couple times?” Giles said. “During that string of burglaries up there in 2012?”
Matthew sighs. “Yes. What a pain. The local police were no help, so I ended up putting in an alarm sys—”
Sara comes running over, interrupting him. “Can we go down to the beach?” she begs. She really is a beautiful kid. Dark eyes, flushed cheeks. Small, perfect teeth.
“Maybe in a little bit,” he says.
“But I’m bored.” She widens her eyes as if the boredom is about to kill her.
“Hey, chief,” he says, crouching down to her level. “I have a mission for you. Are you ready?”
Immediately, she perks up. “Yeah.”
“You see those little lobster things on the trays?”
She looks over her shoulder at the latest tray being carried around by the caterers. “Uh-huh.”
“They are the only thing worth eating at this party. Get us as many of those as you can get your hands on, okay?”
Straightening her posture, she gives him a salute. “Aye, aye, sir.” And then she spins around and disappears into the crowd.
Chloe touches Giles’s arm. “So, tell me about this new book you’re working on,” she says. “Matthew tells me there’s already a lot of buzz about it.”
Giles is only too happy to fill her in. “Well, it’s in the early stages, but it’s going to center around a missing persons case. That’s the part the media has really latched on to, of course. They’re all taking it at the most obvious level. But of course, it’s not about Allie. On a deeper level, it’s a look at class and racial divides in this city . . .”
Matthew shifts so he’s standing just outside Giles’s line of sight, then looks at me and pretends to gag. I smother a smile as I take another sip of champagne.
Chloe, wrapped up in the conversation, doesn’t notice any of this. “But how do you even begin to write a novel? I mean, I can’t even wrap my head around it.”
Matthew jerks his head to one side, and I step away to join him at the deck’s edge, where we can see down to the beach below.
“Sorry, am I tearing you away from that riveting monologue?” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Hardly.”
He grins.
“Is it really about a missing persons case?” The champagne I’ve drunk has left a sour aftertaste on my tongue. “His book?”
Matthew drains his glass. “Apparently. He has this elaborate justification for it, how it’s not really about Allie, blah blah blah, but I’d bet dollars to doughnuts his new agent put the idea in his head. How do you think the press already knows about it? His agent knows a marketable idea when she sees one.”
I glance over my shoulder at Giles. Even he wouldn’t sink that low—would he? “I hope he’s not actually going through with it.”
Matthew shrugs. “Hopefully he’ll realize at some point what an asshole he’s being. And if he doesn’t—well, I’m sure Isabel will have something to say about it. And God help him if he tries to go against her.”
A gust of wind whips up from the beach, blowing my hair away from my face.
Isabel is working her way around the party, making sure to give each guest a little arm-squeeze and a snippet of conversation. When she arrives at Matthew and me, she narrows her eyes, feigning suspicion. “And what are you two conspiring about over here?”
Matthew leans back against the railing. “We’re discussing your dear former husband.”
“What’s the problem?” Isabel teases him. “Giles doing too good a job of charming your wife?”
Matthew snorts. “In his dreams.”
Isabel puts an arm around my shoulder. “Matthew, you’ve been holding out on me. You’ve neglected to tell me how gorgeous our Natasha has become.”
She’s a little drunk, I realize. The warmth in her voice is slightly overdone, the weight of her arm across my shoulder too heavy.
“I mean, look at her.” She brushes a strand of hair away from my face. “It’s such a shame you and Peter never ended up working together.”
“Good for you,” Matthew says, winking at me. “Models are an awful bunch.”
“Hey!” Isabel says, slapping his shoulder playfully. “You’re talking to a former model here.”
“I rest my case.”
The two of them remind me of Allie and Greg, needling each other for fun.
“Well,” she says, snagging another glass of wine from a passing caterer. “I seem to remember you very much enjoying the company of models once. What was that girl’s name? Nico?”
Matthew winces. Isabel isn’t playing nice anymore.
The Nico Bissett scandal blew up not long after Matthew and Giles won their Golden Globe, after the press got ahold of some old photographs of Nico in various states of undress. A close examination revealed that the photos had been taken by Matthew—in one of the photos, his image appears in a mirror. Not big news, as far as celebrity scandals went, and the photos were over a decade old. But then someone did the math and figured out that Nico had only been seventeen at the time. Of course, Matthew hadn’t known that. But still, the scandal had been an unpleasant interlude.
“I think maybe you should switch to water,” Matthew murmurs to Isabel.
Isabel laughs as if this is the funniest thing she’s ever heard. “It used to be me saying that to you, remember?”
“Um, excuse me—I’m going to go to the restroom,” I say. I’ve never seen Isabel and Matthew argue, but it seems they’re on the verge of it tonight. For whatever reason.
I slip back through the crowd, overwhelmed by the smell of chargrilled steak and expensive perfume. In the living room, I step close to the fireplace, where a blaze is still crackling for the benefit of no one. On the mantelpiece is a framed photo of Allie, from when she was maybe eleven or twelve. In it, she stares at the camera with a seriousness beyond her years. She’s looking at me now with an expression that seems to say: What the hell are you doing here, Tash?
I don’t know, Als. I don’t want to be here anymore. I can hardly stand to be around Isabel, knowing what I now know about her. She knew about the essay, and she lied to the police about it. But that’s not the only thought making my throat close up.
If Isabel hurt Allie, if she took steps after finding out about Allie and Macnamara, then I have to face the fact that I helped her.
CHAPTER 44
January 2013
A week after the photo shoot with Peter, Isabel arranged to meet me for lunch at the Terrace. She wanted us to look over Peter’s prints together, to discuss which ones might be the best to include in my modeling portfolio.
When I arrived, I followed the waiter to her table, trying not to get distracted by the people we passed. Everyone was beautiful, and some seemed familiar, as if, at some point in my life, I’d seen them on my TV screen. It wasn’t until I sat down at the table across from Isabel, though, that I became aware that people were staring at me. Wondering who I was to be dining with Isabel Andersen.
