“How did he die?”
“Car accident in Tiburon. I was eleven.”
My heart pulls a lurch. “Where?”
Tiburon.
Eve’s seventeen.
I do the math.
She shrugs: It’s an unimportant detail. “Paradise Road, the back road to Tiburon. It’s a twisty, two-lane… well, you know that.”
Yes. I know.
Pieces fall into place. Pieces I never suspected.
My history with Eve goes much further and deeper than I know.
So that’s why Terra Spiker took me in: guilt.
Her husband killed my parents.
Six years ago on a foggy night, someone tried to pass my parents’ car. The driver must have seen oncoming traffic, because he suddenly swerved back and hit my parents, knocking their car over the side of the embankment.
The two cars crashed down through trees and rock, spraying dirt in every direction, the passengers smashing again and again against the dashboards and the steering wheels and roofs until they were all dead.
At least, that’s how I see it sometimes, in my nightmares.
There was no way to know if the guy trying to pass my parents was drunk. The vehicles caught fire and burned for hours before anyone noticed and called 911. They identified my parents from dental records.
Terra never said a word. No one did. Maybe I would have pieced things together, if I’d read the accident reports, done some digging.
But I didn’t want to know anything. One moment, my parents were alive. The next, they were gone.
I shut down. Shut off the world.
“That’s a dangerous road,” I say.
Then I find some other part of the room to be in.
I pace by one of the grimy windows, thinking things through. All I have to do is make everything on the flash drive public. Once that’s done, we’re home safe.
Just one problem: We’re stuck in a big warehouse full of massive statues and no Wi-Fi. There’s no Internet of any kind.
Our phones all have connections, of course, but I have no way to get the files from the flash drive to the phone. I need a computer. A somewhat old-fashioned one, in fact, so that I can plug into a USB, then upload the files.
Damn.
I’m going to need a public library or a FedEx office or something. But it’s 4:30 in the morning.
Nothing to do but sleep.
I’m weary. The adrenaline’s worn off. I still feel bruised and battered, although I’m much better off than I should be. Poor Aislin’s probably still feeling a lot worse.
“I guess we should try to sleep,” I say.
There’s a sagging couch, a cot, and a chair in one corner. A TV, too. I switch it on, but while someone is paying the electricity bill, no one has paid cable. I fiddle around a bit and get the local broadcast channels. There’s nothing on, but the cold light is comforting, somehow.
“I’ve got the chair,” Aislin says. “And I also have the couch. You two will have to share the cot. Oh, and I’m a very heavy sleeper. You guys could make all kinds of noise and I wouldn’t even notice.”
“Cute,” Eve says. “I’ll take the chair. I’m the smallest.”
I stretch out on the couch. A couple of hours ago I was kissing Eve. I was sure I was madly in love with her.
I
But. But something’s changed. I’m here in the studio of the man who killed my parents. Eve’s father. Terra Spiker’s husband.
Terra, who’s done horrible things. To Eve, to me, to a whole lot of others.
There’s too much history. There are way too many complications.
What did I think was going to happen after I revealed the truth? This isn’t exactly a happily-ever-after kind of setup.
“I can’t sleep,” Eve says softly. I’m not sure if she’s talking to Aislin or to me. To anyone. “I keep seeing… the girl.”
No one asks who she means. We know.
“I wish you’d never shown me,” Eve says, and now I’m sure she’s talking to me.
I sit up on my elbows. “So you could live in blissful ignorance?” I ask. “I did you a favor, Eve.”
“A favor?”
“She’s your mother. You have a right to know. An obligation.”
“Just because I’m her daughter doesn’t make me responsible for what she’s done,” Eve says. “Are you responsible for your parents?”
I let it sit, and a moment later I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Solo. I forgot. I’m so tired, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just, she’s my mother. You think you know someone, know what someone’s capable of, and then —”
“Yeah, life’s full of surprises,” I say. I lie back, exhale loudly.
Then I rest the crook of my elbow on my eyes and pretend to fall asleep.
– 30 –
I open my eyes.
I see something. It’s a picture. It’s a picture I know. It was already in my brain before I ever saw it. Now the sight of that picture resonates.
It’s a girl.
The picture slowly cross-fades to a different picture. Same girl. This time she’s at poolside with another girl.
This picture in turn cross-fades to the original girl, and her name pops into my head.
Evening. Her name is Evening.
I’m sitting upright in a chair.
I’m staring at a monitor.
Why? When did I move to this chair? How did I get here? Where was I before?
I reach a tentative hand to my head. There’s a tight band, and I can feel wires, dozens of them trailing out and away.
Is this normal? I have thousands of images of people. None of them have a band with wires.
Yet another picture of Evening.
I love Evening.
How do I know that? It’s obvious. It’s true. I have to love her. She made me. I have the pictures in my head, moving and still, of Evening at a console making the decisions that would soon define me.
I see myself through her eyes, unformed, partial, incomplete. I see that she chose my hair and my face. I know that she sculpted my chest. That she had the vision to create perfect, muscular legs.
I am perfect. I’m Adam.
