“I could never leave,” I said. “Eddie’d kill me if I did.”
“You don’t think I’d protect you? I’d die for you, Olivia.”
It was a slap, and I backed away. “Olivia?”
“Delia, ” he backpedaled. He reached for me, but I shook away.
“It’s not the first time that’s happened. What is she, your wife?”
A shadow crossed the angles of his face before he answered. “No, she’s not. I told you, what happened with her … it was just …” His thick eyebrows furrowed as he tried to find the words, but he couldn’t. “It was a long time ago. I’m so sorry, Delia. Please … just look at me.”
I knew I’d be done for if I did, but I couldn’t help it. His eyes drew me in, and what I saw there was raw and scarred … but it didn’t lie. He was telling the truth, and the truth was more awful than he could say.
“I don’t know what she did to you.” I sighed, letting him fold me back into his arms. “But if I ever see that girl, I’ll kill her.”
He didn’t answer. He just gave me that melancholy smile, then placed his hand on my cheek and looked at me like he was memorizing my face. I got chills as he leaned in close and kissed me.…
I sat up, dazed and disoriented. The television screamed turkey-basting directions at me, and reality settled in: my room. My bed. The Food Network.
I grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. It had all been just a dream, but it felt so real. And the guy, the piano player … it was the man from my pictures. I could still feel his lips on mine as if I actually knew their touch, and part of me longed to close my eyes and slip back into the fantasy, but the sun streaming through my window wouldn’t let me fall back to sleep.
Instead I padded to my computer and turned on the monitor. There he was, staring right at me. It was the same image that had terrified me last night, but I felt none of that now. I enlarged the picture, zooming in on his eyes.
“I wish you could see yourself the way I see you,” he had said in my dream, and I looked deeper and deeper into those dark, magnetic pools as if I really could see myself there, just as he imagined me.…
Until I burst out laughing. What was wrong with me? Suddenly I had become Rayna: One vivid dream and I was living a fantasy.
Reality check: Dreams were the brain’s way of sorting out things left unsettled in our waking lives. A phantom stalker was about as unsettling as it could get, so my brain cast him as my star-crossed lover in the middle of the Roaring Twenties to make him less scary. And it worked—I wasn’t afraid of him anymore, which meant I could start approaching the pictures logically.
For starters, I had to take anything paranormal off the table. That was the one area where I was more like my mom. Dad may have been a scientist, but he loved to contemplate things “beyond human understanding.” He funded some of the world’s most ridiculous wild-goose chases, and would rave about the game-changing potential of a real life Fountain of Youth, or Healing Caves, or undiscovered ancient creatures that still lived and could unlock the secret to long-term survival.
Through these projects, Dad was actually responsible for some interesting archaeological finds, but when the New Age fanboys choked the Internet with chatter about their cosmic, transcendental significance, Mom and I had to tune out. We knew the truth: There was no such thing as “beyond human understanding.” With enough information, anything could be explained. The images on my camera may have seemed impossible, but that was only because I didn’t have the right information to comprehend them … yet.
My heart jumped as I heard clanking and clanging downstairs, but I quickly relaxed. It was Piri. For years she had been like a crazy Hungarian grandmother, doting on me with equal parts rich traditional desserts (strudels and tortes), and rich traditional superstitions (always sit when you visit a baby, or you’ll take away its dreams).
Mom and I rolled our eyes at those, but Dad of course ate them up, writing them down and cataloging them in his studio with all his other research on ancient and modern mythologies.
Since Dad’s death, I’d tried not to spend a lot of time around Piri. It sounds absurd to say, but she seemed to be taking it harder than any of us. Her head bowed whenever she touched anything of his, her eyes welled up with tears, and the house reverberated with her heavy sighs. It made me angry sometimes, the way she was allowed to indulge in mourning when the rest of us had to move on. Most of the time I ignored it, though. I just kept busy and out of her way.
Her arrival now was a great excuse to get out of the house. I also needed a break to clear my mind. Plus I was hungry. I peeked at my watch and saw it was well after noon. No wonder I was hungry—I’d slept longer than I had in ages.
I picked up the phone and called Ben. “Dalt’s in sixty?” I asked.
“Done,” he said. “You want to bring the board?”
“Depends … you okay with humiliation?”
“Bring the board.”
“See you soon.”
I hung up and ran to the shower. Thirty minutes later I was out the door, cribbage board in hand.
“Bye, Piri!” I shouted. I was already in my car and pulling away when I saw Piri appear on the threshold, tossing a small cup of water out after me, “so luck would flow like water in my direction.”
Madness.
I turned up the radio and sang loud and off-key as I hit the highway, relishing the ride. Mom had offered to buy me a new car for my last birthday, but I wouldn’t give up my much-loved and battle-scarred Ford Bronco with the funky mint green paint job until it fell apart on me. I’d bought it myself, saving up my earnings until I could afford the ancient beauty. Every shiny rental I drove when I traveled reminded me how much I adored my own car. We knew each other, we worked well together. …
Why would I mess with that?
I saw Ben in the window the minute I pulled into the parking lot. Dalt’s Diner—a twenty-four-hour greasy-spoon pit stop for truckers cruising I-95, or for nearby Connecticut College students desperate for a three a.m. meal—had been around forever. Ben discovered it because the college employed him part-time as an adjunct professor. He gave a couple of lectures a semester, and lived on campus in faculty housing, so he knew all the student haunts.
Dalt’s resembled a train car: one long row of booths pushed against the outside windows, plus a counter by the grill on which they managed to make nearly everything on the menu. I’m fairly certain even the spaghetti was tossed onto the grill before it was served. Dalt’s was pretty much the best restaurant ever.
I yanked on my sunglasses and baseball cap before I left my car. College students loved to approach me and talk politics, medicine, or New Age insanity as if I could actually channel one of my parents for them. It was great that they were so interested, but I wasn’t my parents, and I could never handle the conversations to their satisfaction, so they always walked away disappointed.
“Eager for defeat?” I asked, noting the paper and cards Ben had already set on the table.
“Fascinating comment,” he said as he flipped through the yellow legal pad, “seeing as at last check, you owe me seventy-five cents.”
“A temporary blip,” I conceded, slipping into the bench across from him and setting the cribbage board on the table.
Ben grew up in a family that adored cribbage. I knew nothing about the game when we met, but I felt bad that the computer was his only challenger, so I asked him to teach me. Not surprisingly, Ben’s an excellent teacher, and within a few weeks we were pretty evenly matched. I knew I had arrived in the cribbage world when he proudly presented me with my own board. I was thrilled, and attached a length of braided rope to one end so I could hang the board from a hook in my room—a place of honor.
That’s when we began our ritual marathon games for money—a quarter a game. Twice a year we paid up: once on my birthday, once on his. The most either of us ever had to pay was a dollar, but it wasn’t about the money, it was about bragging rights. It was also about tradition: We always used my board, and Ben’s cards and yellow legal pad. It was sheer blasphemy to even consider changing any of those elements.
But cribbage was for afterward. “What’s going on with Alissa?” I asked.
“Alissa is a very popular woman,” Ben said, pulling a leather notebook binder from his canvas satchel.
I laughed. Alissa was me.
It was Rayna’s idea. Since I was a kid, I’d loved the idea of being a photojournalist. I always put aside my best pictures for my “portfolio,” which I hid under my bed.
Only Rayna knew my plan; that way no one would ask me about it, and I wouldn’t have to tell anyone if I failed. I waited until I was sixteen, then sent my portfolio everyplace I admired: magazines, newspapers, e-zines, TV news … everywhere. I spent the next weeks so anxious I could barely put a sentence together. I’d agonized over every picture in the portfolio, and I thought it was really strong.
Finally the responses poured in … every single one a rejection. A hundred different versions of Thanks, but this is a serious publication. We don’t hire celebrity children for vanity projects.
I was completely mortified. I buried the portfolio in the attic and swore I’d never show anyone my pictures again.
Rayna didn’t give up so easily. She exhumed the portfolio and sent it out under the pseudonym “Alissa Grande.” She later told me that the name was her inside joke: Alissa means “truth,” Grande “large,” so while the name was a lie, it was in support of a “greater truth”: an honest opinion of my skills.
A week after she sent out the portfolios, I received my first assignment, and they haven’t stopped coming since. It’s not like I make a ton of money or anything, but I get to take pictures that matter, and share them with the world, which I love.
While I was in Europe with Rayna, Ben had manned Alissa Grande’s e-mail, voice mail, and P.O. box for me.