“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“No, but I understand what you’re insinuating,” she said, her words hard and cold. She sat back in the sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “Of course it was easier to walk away with someone like Jon. But I’d already decided to leave. I don’t give a shit whether or not you believe that.”
“And he doesn’t know?” I asked.
“I’ve never said a word to him,” she said, her eyes slipping away from mine again.
“Did Meredith know?” I asked.
Her expression changed to something I couldn’t read. She looked down at her hands, as if the answer might be written on her fingers. Her fingers clamped tighter to her knees. “Yes. She found out.”
SIXTY-FIVE
“Some asshole at her school,” Olivia Jordan said, the words coming out of her mouth as if they were made of acid. “She came home and confronted me.”
We’d sat in silence for about five minutes after she told me that Meredith had discovered her secret. Anxiety squeezed her face and I kept waiting for her to cry. But the tears never came.
“A kid at Coronado told her,” I repeated.
She nodded. “I was outside, planting flowers. I heard her car pull up in the drive. She got out of her car, walked right up to me and said ‘You were a hooker.’ Just like you did.”
“Was she upset?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “Not really. I think she was happy to have something to hold over me.”
“Who told her?”
“She never said. But she had details that were about right, so someone did.”
I wondered now if it was someone other than a classmate. “What details?”
She snorted. “That I fucked men for money. Again, just about what you said to me.”
I couldn’t tell whether she wanted me to feel guilty or whether she was just stating fact. I didn’t care. “You told me you were working at The Zenith when you met Jordan.”
“I was.”
“In what capacity?”
She sighed, but it carried more irritation than weary. “In the capacity you’d think.”
“So that was bullshit about how you met.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d appreciate the nuance of prostitution when you asked me the first time,” she said, then waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Yes, I used to work in the hotel. I met him in the bar when I was having a drink.”
“When you were getting out of the business,” I said.
Her cheeks flushed. “No matter what you think, Mr. Tyler, I was getting out. But it’s not like you can just walk away.”
“Why not?”
“Because there are others involved.”
“Pimps?”
“With the level of clientele I serviced, we called them managers,” she said.
“Sure. So, what? Your manager didn’t want you to leave?”
“Of course not,” she said, frowning. “I was a good earner.” She immediately closed her mouth and the color returned to her cheeks as she realized what she was saying. “My clients paid a good amount of money for my time. I was a strong asset.”
It was clear to me through the vocabulary that she was using that she had completely re-imagined, maybe even dressed up, what she had been. I didn’t know what her circumstances were back then and it was none of my business, but listening to her attempt to dignify her work, I was embarrassed for her.
“Did Meredith threaten to go to her father?” I asked.
Something flashed through Olivia Jordan’s eyes and was followed quickly by anger. “Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”
“You obviously didn’t want her to.”
“How very astute of you.”
“You bribe her? Threaten her?”
I expected an immediate denial, but got a moment of silence instead.
“Yes. I threatened to tell her father about her relationship with Derek. The truth about it. That she was sexually active.”
“He knew she was having sex,” I said. “He told me that himself. You talked to him about getting Meredith birth control.”
She nodded. “Yes. But he didn't know that she was dumb enough to pick up an STD. Jon would've freaked out and she knew that. I told her I'd tell him.”
I didn't say anything.
“You have to understand something about Meredith,” she finally said, the lines deepening on her forehead. “About the relationship I have with her. It isn’t the greatest.”
“That’s not what you told me the first time we talked.”
She hiked her shoulders as if that was ancient history. “I answered your questions.”
“I asked if you had a good relationship with your daughter and you said you did,” I reminded her.
“What I said was that I liked to think so,” she said.
My stomach tightened. I had misread Olivia Jordan after my initial visit with her. She had carefully chosen each word she’d spoken to me, in case it came back on her. It had and she was prepared.
“Tell me exactly what that means,” I said through clenched teeth.
“It means, Mr. Tyler, that my daughter can be a serious pain in the ass and that we don’t always get along,” she explained. “She’s a teenager. She doesn’t like her parents very much.”
“Her father has the same problems with her then?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
I took a deep breath. “So basically everything you told me the first time we spoke was a load of crap? The happy family, the great daughter. All of that?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Do you even want to find your daughter?” I finally asked.
She made a face as if I’d defecated on the rug. “What kind of question is that?”
“You don’t seem to miss her,” I said, watching her. “You weren’t terribly worried the first time I came here and today you seem as if you don’t really care whether you see her again.” I paused. “Either you don’t care or you know where she is.”
I hoped she would respond to the last part, but she didn’t. If she knew where her daughter was, she was doing an excellent job of hiding it. What she couldn’t hide, though, was what a hateful human being she was.
“I don’t want to lose this, alright?” she said, leaning forward. “Any of this. I worked extremely hard to leave my old life behind and I’m not giving any of this up.”
She was veering off course, but I didn’t interrupt her.
“She wants to run away and hide, fine,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Go. Be gone. But there’s no way I’ll let her destroy my marriage.”
“You think she ran away?”
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, her jaw tightening. “I don’t know where she is. But as long as she’s not here, she can’t tell Jon the truth.”
“Lovely,” I said, wanting to vomit. “That’s a beautiful sentiment.”
She sat back in the sofa and sneered at me. “It is what it is. Every time I see her, I remember how far I’ve come. I’m not going back.”
