“Okay—uh…” He led me to a booth and leaned across one of the seats to open the blinds for me. I blinked as the late-afternoon light hit the varnished table. “We’re still firing up the grill, so it’ll be a half a minute.”
I nodded. He went away, his too-large oxford shirt hanging off his shoulders. I sat down and put my head in my hands.
If I had shown up even a day earlier, she would have been alive.
A different oxford shirt appeared in my peripheral vision. “One glass of water. I’m Sherrod, I’ll be your server today. Can I get you anything else to drink?”
My gaze drifted to the window. Outside, a man in the parking lot got out of his SUV and went around to its rear door, where he lifted out a little white boxer puppy, which he set on the asphalt next to a water bowl. He filled the bowl from a small water bottle and squatted down next to the dog as it drank, stroking its ears.
“Ma’am?”
I jerked to face him, spilling water. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’ll get it.” He lifted my glass and mopped the dripping table with the rag he carried at his side. “Can I get you anything else? Your order should be out shortly.”
“No. Thank you.”
When I looked up again, the waiter was gone.
It had taken me two months to track Robin down. The last number I’d had for her had been picked up by someone named Andre, who said he thought Robin had moved to Las Vegas but he wasn’t sure, and if I found her to tell her to go fuck herself. I’d searched Robin Voigt as well as the fake name she’d been using to avoid her creditors, but found nothing. At last someone had left a message on my father’s answering machine regarding a new credit card registered to my father’s address. The name on the card was Rachel Vreeland. I searched this new name and found an address. The property was part of the SweetHomes rental company. Iker picked up when I called. I need to find my sister, I’d told him. Rachel Vreeland. Our father left her a lot of money in his will. Iker had said, Yes, yes, Ms. Vreeland. Yes, in Henderson.
If I told her I was coming she would only leave town. I said, Can you come with me to her house to wait for her tomorrow? I can’t get her on the phone. I think something might be wrong.
My brain skipped ahead to the body on the bed, the smell of the hot little room.
“All right, here we go.” Sherrod had returned. He set the plate in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said to his back.
The steak lay in front of me, bleeding juice onto the ceramic. Someone had arranged it so that it lay artfully over the bed of potatoes and asparagus. A bloody runnel cut its way through the mashed potatoes, pooling on the rim of the plate.
I picked up my knife and fork. It took me several tries to cut a sliver from the edge of the steak, but at the first bite my hands stopped shaking. I’d been too nervous to eat lunch. Thinking I was going to see Robin for the first time in a decade. I’d practiced talking to her: Daddy died a few months ago. He left us both some money, but you have to come home to do the paperwork.
Why didn’t you tell me? I had imagined her saying, or maybe How much?
I tried to find you. It took me forever.
She was good at reading faces, especially mine. Eerie, with an animal quickness. You weren’t going to tell me at all. You’re only here because you need something from me. What do you need, Leslie?
I’d spun through conversation after conversation in my mind, trying to keep her at bay.
My purse shuddered as my phone buzzed in the outer pocket. I felt my shoulders tighten, but it was my real phone, not the prepaid I’d used to call Iker. I pulled the phone out and hesitated, my finger hovering over the caller ID. Dave.
If I rejected the call he would know I’d sent him to voicemail.
I didn’t do anything. I just sat there, holding the phone, until the ringing stopped. Then I put it back in my purse.
The man with the dog was gone, giving me an unobstructed view of the Target across the street. Farther away, billboards advertising tooth-whitening gels and children’s hospitals flanked the road toward the city. Las Vegas had no firm vanishing point; the heat created a kind of mirage that forced my eyes to focus and refocus. A visual vacuum. I imagined myself driving past the city, toward the Amargosas, reduced to a shimmer in the late-afternoon light.
I imagined myself not going home at all.
“No rush,” Sherrod said, dropping the bill beside my plate. The steak was gone; I’d been holding the knife loosely in one hand for several minutes now, looking out the window.
I put the knife down and paid the bill.
I should go back to Henderson, I thought as I pushed open the doors and went out into the blinding day. I should get Robin’s body.
But the skyline sucked me toward it.
I could have gone anywhere.
I didn’t, because there was someone sitting on my car.
3
Leslie
She was sitting with her ankles crossed, digging for something in the pocket of her oversize utility jacket. As I got closer to my car I saw she was only a kid, maybe twenty-two, with the twice-burned skin that true redheads get in the desert. There were patches of freckles scattered unevenly across her chest and on top of one visible shoulder, where her jacket had fallen to her elbow. She found a lighter in her pocket and lit a cigarette, closing her eyes and leaning back on one hand to inhale. From a distance her features had seemed too large for her face; closer, as her eyelids lifted, I saw that it was an effect of her makeup, which weighted her lower lashes, giving her a gentle, drooping quality. “He-ey,” she said, taking the cigarette out of her mouth as I approached. “What’s up?”
I stopped ten feet away. “That’s my car.”
She frowned and lifted one of her hands from the hood, checking underneath it as if she might have left a print. “Your car, huh?”
“Yes,” I said. “I need to go, please. Can you…” I hesitated, in case she got angry.
She tilted her head; her bun was loose enough to tilt with her. Then her face cleared and she laughed. “Oh my gosh,” she said, scrambling down the hood and brushing herself off. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it was your car. I’m Mary,” she added, extending a dusty hand. “I thought it was my boyfriend’s car. You guys have the same one, I guess.”
“Leslie,” I said, shaking it quickly. She was as tall as I was, but fine-boned, with narrow shoulders and small hands, so that she seemed to take up less space than I did. “I’m just—I need to—” I headed for the driver’s side, then stopped. “Can I have one of those?”