“Albert—the lawyer—he’s met her maybe twice, more than ten years ago,” she said. “If I say you’re her, I’m the one who would know. I don’t have any other close relatives. Dave’s never met her. There’s almost zero chance that you’ll get caught. But there is a risk. It’s fifty thousand dollars and it’s not really your money.”
I poured the developer into the dye and shook the bottle. “And no one knows she’s dead? She’ll be in the city records as Rachel Vawhatever?”
“Rachel Vreeland,” she said. “Yes. No one knows except me, I’m pretty sure. She was living under the other name since she moved to Las Vegas, I think.”
I put on the plastic gloves and lifted the bottle to my hairline.
“How did you end up in Vegas?” Leslie asked, watching me spread the dye along my scalp.
I hesitated. “A boy,” I said at last, dragging out the second word. “He lived out here. A little older than me. He helped me move and everything, set me up in his apartment. It didn’t work out, but it sure was nice while it lasted.” I made it sound more romantic than it was so that Leslie wouldn’t think I was a sucker.
“Where were you from before?”
“My folks are in Texas. Outside Dallas. I don’t talk to them now. They didn’t much like me running off to Vegas for a guy.” I sucked in air through my teeth as I spread more dye across the back of my head. “Gosh, this stings! I didn’t know it was gonna hurt.” I looked in the mirror, at Leslie behind me, her broad shoulders and long pale face. There was a funny flat spot just at the bridge of her nose. “Come on, distract me,” I said. “Tell me something about you. Something Robin would know.”
Her forehead twitched, and she leaned against the damp sand-colored tiles, folding her arms. “My middle name’s Elizabeth. After my grandmother.”
“Aww,” I said, scrunching my fingers in my hair. “Were y’all close?”
Leslie shook her head.
“How about you and Robin?” I said. “You made it seem like she didn’t like you much. You were the older one, right?”
“Four years,” Leslie said, seeming to shrink against the wall. “When we were really little, I guess we were close. We shared a room and everything. Then when I was in middle school she got her own room and suddenly she hated me.”
“Wow,” I said. “Like, for no reason?”
Leslie lifted a shoulder. “I never really thought about it. She was just a kid. You can’t blame kids for things.”
I finished scrunching dye into my hair and came over to crouch on the tile floor. After a minute, Leslie slid down the wall next to me. “I gotta wait on this stuff,” I said. “Twenty minutes. Tell me more. How did your parents meet?”
Leslie’s shoulder brushed against mine, and a little more color came into her voice. “He was older. He was forty-four when they met and she was twenty-six. He was a lawyer, so he didn’t really have time to date. He met my mom at a restaurant where the department store she worked at was having a Christmas party. He said when she used to tell the story, she said she almost didn’t go to the party because she was getting over the flu. She sat in the corner and coughed and coughed, and he brought her a glass of water, and then he asked her out. She said she would go out with him if she was well by New Year’s. He had a care package of cough medicine and Kleenex and soup delivered to her store. So then she had to go out with him.” She smiled, crooked tooth on display.
“That’s adorable.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to your mom?”
The smile disappeared. “She died,” Leslie said. “When I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“When did your dad die?”
“A few months ago. It wasn’t a surprise. He had thyroid cancer. He couldn’t do much for the last seven years or so.”
I itched at my scalp. Leslie watched me do it. She had pale eyes, as unsaturated as the rest of her coloring, so that against the vanilla tiles she could have been part of the motel décor.
After a while she said, “I think that was part of why Robin ran away. She didn’t want to deal with it.”
I stayed quiet, squatting next to her.
“Daddy and I, we didn’t know where she was for the first few years. We kept thinking she’d come back…Then we thought we’d never see her again. When she was nineteen she called and asked for money to go to business school in Florida. Daddy was thrilled. He sent her the money right away. Then we didn’t hear from her for a couple months, so I called the school and asked them to check on her. They said she’d never been enrolled. After a while a creditor in Louisiana got in touch with us about some debt she’d run up. She called from New Orleans a few times after that, asking for money, which he gave to her, of course. Then saying she was thinking about getting married and wanted his blessing. She was planning to bring the guy home to meet us. But she never showed up. When I got married she left a message for me with Daddy’s home nurse. It didn’t make any sense. The nurse said she sounded drunk. Then we didn’t hear anything from her anymore.”
I picked through my hair, moving locks aside so I could make sure I hadn’t missed a spot. “You don’t sound mad at her.”
Leslie was silent, hands braced on her knees. Finally she said, “She’s dead. It’s useless to be mad at her now.” She looked over at me. “I should let you rinse that out.”
* * *
—
It took almost ten minutes before the water was clear of dye, and even after the second round of chemicals it still felt like sticks. Leslie peered around the door just as I started finger-combing the ends in the mirror.
Her expression went all funny when she saw me.
“What do you think?” I said. “It’s kind of yellowy, but maybe that’ll go away when it’s dry.”
She blinked. “Mary, you…It really looks like her.”
“Robin,” I said. “You should call me Robin.”
“You’re right,” she said, but she didn’t correct herself, just hung there in the half-open doorway. “We should…practice, I guess.”
“Go ahead,” I said, making eye contact with her in the mirror. “I don’t want to slip up later.”
Leslie’s face was pale. “You mean start right now?”
“Hi, Leslie,” I replied, imitating her flat New Mexican accent. “It’s me, Robin.”