Grace's red Porsche was parked in my driveway when I came home, and Grace was leaning against it. A quiet alarm went off inside me. I hadn't seen her in almost a year-an occasional phone call was all she had offered. Even though the night was humid and warm, she stood bundled inside a parka with fur around the collar, her shoulders bunched, her head set down into the fur, her hands in the pockets.
Amber had claimed Grace from the start-seized her, appropriated her, removed her. From before the start, in fact: Amber was five months pregnant before she told me. I had first seen Grace when she was two weeks old, then not again until two years later. Amber had taken her to Paris. Amber had taken her to Rome. To New York, Rio, London, St. Barts, Kitts, and Thomas. Grace said her first words to me when she was four. She said, demurely offering her cheek for a kiss, "How nice to meet you, Russell." It was one of the strangest, strongest moments in my life, stooping to kiss that face so much like mine, turned in profile while her long-lashed brown eyes contemplate the sky with supreme control, supreme boredom. I believe that I felt a little part of my heart die in that moment. She referred to me as Russell, never once as Father or Dad or Pop ever since.
Later that same night-the night when Grace was four-Amber and I had walked up into the hills behind Laguna and had the centerpiece battle of our lives. It was the kind of wild escalating fight where both parties are truly eager. My position was that Amber had stolen my daughter, and I demanded that she be at least partially returned. How naive I was, at twenty six, to think that such a return could come from anyone but Grace herself, if ever, if at all. I had no instruments then to measure the distance she had gone. Amber said that I had no more claim to Grace than a flower had to a bee, that I had only supplied the pollen. She actually used those words: "supplied the pollen." We each drew blood that night, though I will say that Amber struck first. The moon was full and ice-bright over the rocky path, and I can still remember the wet black shine of the stone she used.
I saw neither Amber nor Grace again for almost five year:
"Grace," I said, getting out of my car.
"Russell," she said back. She came toward me across the driveway, her heels resonant on the asphalt. She proferred her cheek as she had done those fourteen years ago. Her skin was cold, and she smelled very strongly-a woman's scent cut with nerves and perfume. Grace was a large woman, nearly five fee ten, with an athletic strength to her body and a lovely face. She had her mother's dark wavy hair.
"Sorry to just appear. I must seem like a ghost."
"Is everything okay?"
"Of course not, Russ."
"Come in."
"Thank you."
I left Grace in my study and went upstairs to check on Isabella. She was deep in sleep. I stood there for a moment and looked at her face buried down in the pillow. The crook of her cane was visible where it stood beside the bed, and I wondered for the millionth time why the Good Shepherd had abandoned it to her. Isabella would not be happy if Grace was to be here in the morning: She believed that both Amber and my daughter were the worst kind of manipulators, and she was always irritated-even during five years of marriage-when I mentioned either of them. I learned it was easier not to.
Grace was looking at my bookcase when I went back into the study. In the clean incandescent light, I could see she was a little pale and clammy. A dew of perspiration marked her temples and upper lip with a very slight shine.
"Be a nice place to open a bar," she said.
"What'll it be?"
"Dry vermouth on the rocks, if you have it. A twist."
I made two and brought them back. She had unzipped her parka but hadn't taken it off. I studied her as she came across the room for her drink, feeling as always the astonishment at seeing a part of me in her. She was a beautiful young woman-eighteen years of age, strong, composed. She had gotten Amber's face-with just a touch of my Monroe width to it. She had Amber's fine jaw and full, relaxed mouth, her straight and narrow nose. But some things in her were mine: the heavy, inexpressive brow, the readable brown eyes that could seem at times so undefended. And these features had kept Grace free of Amber's most powerful characteristic-her guile-the very quality, I might add, that had put Amber's face on so many magazine covers and TV screens. Amber could suggest anything from lust to innocence to betrayal to heartache-and plausibly connect them to a certain shampoo, makeup, bra. But just beneath all these "emotions," there was always the guile, i willingness to conspire, the sense that there were only two people in this world: Amber and whomever she was looking back at. It was a wholly private and exclusive contract. Grace, for all her loveliness, could never fake that arrangement. And Amber, I thought, never would again. The terrible vision of desecrated face came to me as I looked at our daughter.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Two men, Russell, have been following me. One is with big ears, and the other one is slender, with short hair, I’ve seen them outside my condo, at my work, in a red pickup truck following me. They seem to be everywhere."
"What do they want?"
"How on earth would I know?"
"Have you called the police?"
"No. I came here instead, hoping for maybe one night peaceful sleep."
"How long have they been following you?"
"I don't know. I noticed a few days ago."
"They've never approached?"
Grace studied me with a peculiarly lucid expression, as if she'd found something in my face she'd never noticed before. "No. I've spent some time with a boyfriend the last two days. but I don't believe he's capable of… protecting me."
"Who?"
"His name is Brent."
"Brent have a last name?"
"Sides. He's a bartender, but he wants to write movie
"What bar?"
"Sorrento's-up in the Orange hills."
Grace finished her drink, put the glass on the coffee table and sat on the couch. She looked down at the floor, her loose dark curls falling forward and hiding her face. "He's got a crush on me. But as I said, Russell, he's only a boy. He keeps showering me with gifts."
She looked up at me, her eyes a little wet.
"I hear you were at Amber's last night. I thought you two were still hardly speaking."
Grace blinked, then furrowed the brow that reminded me so much of my own. She studied me for a long, very strange moment, during which I felt as if I were being contemplated by my own eyes. She shook her head slowly and looked away. "I didn't see Mom last night," she said.
"Marty Parish said he saw you there, coming out at eleven-thirty."
"Well, I'm telling you he didn't."
"He was positive-last night. Your red Porsche."
"I don't know what to say, Russ, but I wasn't there. Martin drinks too much to be positive about anything, doesn't he? The last time I saw Martin, he was unconscious on Mom's sofa. That was a long time ago. Last night, I was with Brent."
She studied me again. Her expression wasn't locked, but open-an expression that offered as much as it took in. There was no cunning in it-not to my eyes, at least. But there was confusion and curiosity, and a small amount of what I can only describe as hopefulness. "What's going on, Russ? Have you been seeing Mother again?"
"No. I talked to Marty today. That's when he said he saw you, coming out of Amber's last night."
"Then Marty's been seeing her again."
I nodded.
"I've never understood how she turns you all into such grovelers."
"Brent Sides could probably enlighten you."
Grace's brown eyes steadied on my face. "That was never my intention."
"Amber would say it was never hers, either."
"It's like you crave the heartache. Does it really feel the good?"
"Only when you're young."
"Like me."
"Like you. It's the way of the world. So Jah seh."
She looked up at me again, then stood. If the phrase startled her, she gave no hint that it did. She looked out a window for a moment and shook back her dark hair. "So God says. Russ, look, I'll be honest with you. Can I just stay here one night? I'm tired of being harassed, and I'm exhausted. I know Isabella isn't wild about me, but I'll be out early."
"Sure, the guest bed's made up."
"The couch here would be fine."
"Suit yourself, Grace."
She held up her glass. "Have a nightcap with me? Something a little stronger than vermouth would be nice."
I made two stout whiskeys and brought them back. We sat on the couch, at what seemed a proper distance. I told her about Isabella and my work; she told me about hers. The conversation was oddly formal and tentative, like that of an old friendship held together only by some strained honoring of what used to be. But for us, there was no used to be. Still, I couldn’t keep the feelings down, the great, tender, protective urges that a man feels for his daughter. I felt them spreading inside me until they reached some invisible barrier where they eddied settled, pooled. It was just as it had always been-nothing for them to have, nowhere for them to go. There she was, my girl sitting on my couch, two proper feet away, telling me about selling clothes, and all I could do was sit there. Of the severe injuries that Amber's annexation of Grace had caused me, these were the worst: that she had torn away the object of my love and stolen from my daughter and me the one thing that could never be returned-time.
I placed my hand over hers and looked at her. She ended a sentence without finishing it, glanced at me, then turned her gaze to the floor again. Her hair fell forward and hid her face. "I'm sorry, Russ. I could've just gotten a hotel or something."
"I'm glad you're here."
For a while, we sat there, hand in hand, letting the touch be. Grace's muscles wouldn't relax, though; she kept her hand in mine by an act of will.
"It's strange," she said. "I've spent my entire life with Mom, having fun. I've been on every continent, lived in ten countries, learned three languages besides my own-but I still can't understand what went wrong. Something's missing, something that isn't there, but I can feel anyway, like a phantom limb. Sometimes I feel like there's a part of me, a big part, that's just now crawling out of the slime for the first time."
I squeezed her hand gently and smiled at her self-awareness, her self-ignorance, her eighteen-year-old's combination of confusion and clarity. "It'll never change, Grace," I said. "You'll be finding out you weren't quite who you thought you were until the day you die."
"Quite a comfort, Russ."
Suddenly, she stood up. I hated the feeling of her hand slipping away. "I should go."
"Don't."
She went to the window and looked down toward Laguna Canyon Road. "I still hate her."
I let that pass for a moment, waiting her out. "You're just seeing her for the first time."
"No. I really like hate her."
The thought came to me that at this moment in time Grace believed her mother was alive. Not "I hated her" but hate her." Marty Parish was lying-Grace had not been inside Amber's house last night. The hair on my arms stood up.
Marty, what could you have done?
"Want to tell me about that?"
"No. Some things you can't elaborate on. I can't say it any clearer than I just did." She turned. "Good night, Russ. Man, I tired."
I hugged her, but she remained erect and unyielding, unoffering. "There's a blanket in the closet," I said.
I lay beside Isabella for a while, holding her close to me, watch over her shoulder as the minutes ticked past on the clock.
At 3:40, I went downstairs with a flashlight, saw my study door shut and the light off, then quietly let myself outside and into the dry stillness of the canyon. The smell of sagebrush settled around me. The canyon road bent far below, twisting: out of sight, unoccupied, barely lighted, peaceful.
I let myself into Grace's car and found the light.
Her glove compartment contained a few CDs, a tire pressure gauge, and the usual registration and insurance documents. It also contained a wallet, in which I found $680 cash, several credit-card receipts-mostly from Sorrento's in the Orange hills, home of writer, bartender, fool-for-love Brent Sides. The three-pack of condoms, I assumed, was probably for those moments when Grace bestowed upon Mr. Sides that most intimate of gifts. The thought of his eighteen-year-old daughter in coitus sits well with no father.
I popped the trunk release, got my flashlight, and climb out. Nothing unusual in the trunk, either: jack and spare, two cans of oil, a squeegee, a small tool kit. Pushed up near the dash was a box of glass cleaner, car polish, silicone tire spray, sponges.
Lying flat against the far side was a box of thirty-three-gallon trash bags.
I ran the flashlight beam across the label: extra heavy duty. I reached into the trunk, brought them out, and checked the price tag for place of purchase, but there was only the bar code. I fished out the ties-plastic, joined together, waiting to be pulled apart-and compared them with the three in my wallet, taken from under Amber's bed.
Same ties.
Same bags?
I finally went to bed just after four. I lay there wondering whether Grace was lying, if so, why, and whether she could possibly have it in her to kill. I did not believe she did. Sometime around five, I drifted into an uneasy sleep, from which I woke in a nonspecific panic less than an hour later.
Downstairs, I found that Grace had gone. She had probably coasted her car down the hill to keep from waking us.
In my study, I found her note:
Thanks, Russ-couldn't sleep much, after all. Find anything juicy in my car? I went to pick up a few things. Be back.
— Grace