Charlotte takes the keys from her lap and very carefully rips open the envelope.
Dear Caroline,
I confess it was optimistic of me to think our lunch might transform a lifetime of estrangement into some kind of relationship. I don’t think, however, that it was optimistic to think it could have been some kind of beginning, even if it was the beginning of something meager. A casual hello now and then. An acquaintanceship. But I’ve been trying to reach you for several months. My letters have been returned. What few phone numbers I can find for you are all outdated. I’m not disregarding the possibility of a change of heart, but, for now at least, I’m giving up.
There were things I wanted to tell you that afternoon that I couldn’t bring myself to say. I told myself it was because I expected it to be Me and You, and instead it was Me and You and Lenny. So I found myself in the company of two strangers instead of only one. However, that might have only been an excuse. You are my only child and I was never a father to you. I don’t know how a father is supposed to say heartfelt things or express regret or give a compliment.
So, here it goes, on paper, which feels far less daunting.
I was unaware of your existence when you were born. After I learned about you, I had intentions of being a good father. To put it plainly, your mother made that impossible.
She would not accept my money. She would not consider a friendship. I spent a decade trying to make amends with her but the truth is that I had very little to say. We both had our reasons for what happened that night and in the few weeks that followed. I won’t presume to know hers, but in my defense, I did not make any promises or intentionally lead her on. She had what many people crave, a few minutes in the spotlight on the arm of someone famous. She did not ever know me and I did not ever know her. I would like to think that we each received something we needed in a specific period of time in our lives, but I fear that your mother’s reaction to my repeated gestures spoke otherwise.
It may seem unfair of me to speak this way of a woman who is no longer in this world to defend herself. I don’t wish to be cruel. Another thing I wanted to do (but didn’t) was offer you my condolences. And I wanted to say that I know what it’s like to be an orphan. It’s possible that you feel alone in the world. I know a little bit about that, too. I suppose I thought we might bond over our specific tragedies, but instead I told you about my dogs and the weather, and you stared at your eggs and never touched them.
You are my only child. I wanted you to know a few things about me. It is true that I always wear a cowboy hat, but I am not the stoic, humorless man that I so often played. I try my best to enjoy life. I enjoy hiking through the hills behind my home. I have loved deeply, but had hopes of a different kind of love.
There is a bank account in your name at the Northern West Credit Union. Please visit them and ask for Terrence Webber. He will give you access to the account. If you do not want the money, please give it to Ava. It may seem crass to give you so much. Please don’t think of it as an attempt to buy your love or forgiveness. Despite the idealistic notion that money is of little importance, money can open doors. I hope, my daughter (if you’ll allow me to call you that this once), that doors will open for you all your life.
My regards,
Clyde
“So you were right,” Charlotte says. “Caroline Maddox was his daughter.”
“What tragedy,” I say.
“So bitter,” Charlotte says.
“So regretful.”
Charlotte nods. “It’s like he wants to tell her everything but it hardly adds up to anything.”
“I know. I wear cowboy hats? I enjoy hiking?” I pick up the letter again. His handwriting is careful and shaky and everything is neat, like he wrote multiple drafts. “Who’s Lenny? Who’s Ava?”
Charlotte shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
At the end of the block, a couple men step out of a liquor store, shouting into the night. They laugh, slide into their car, pull away.
“He didn’t even know that she died,” I say.
We head back to the studio to pick up my car, and then we caravan to Toby’s apartment, where our parents told us we could stay again tonight, and where we intend to stay for as long as Toby’s away.
Driving alone, I can’t but help thinking of how today is just so sad. Toby’s gone, Morgan doesn’t love me, Clyde Jones had a daughter named Caroline who tended Frank and Edie’s garden and had problems with men and drugs and never got her father’s letter or all that money that might have helped her.
And I was sure that all of this would mean something for me, too. That something had to come of wandering through Clyde’s house, of our accidental discovery. But now it’s just something else that has come to an end.
And it’s only later, after watching Lowlands, with the warm breeze coming through the kitchen door and our glasses half full of Toby’s Ethiopian tea, that Charlotte says, “What was it Edie said? The drugs and the men and that baby? Could Ava be Clyde’s granddaughter?”
Chapter Three
Charlotte and I are perched on benches in the high school courtyard in our short shorts and tank tops, tapped into the school wireless connection, searching for Ava.
We start by trying to find Caroline’s obituary, because we don’t know Ava’s last name, or even if Ava is really Caroline’s daughter. But we search the Los Angeles Times’s online archive, and the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s, and neither of them go back as far as the nineties.
“Let’s just look up Ava Maddox,” I say.
It doesn’t seem like Caroline was married, and from what Edie said—all those men—it doesn’t seem like she was in a serious relationship either.
Charlotte types in the name, and a moment later we find that there are nine Ava Maddoxes listed in the country, one of whom happens to live in Los Angeles, on Waring Avenue, which is not super close but not too far either. Maybe a twenty-minute drive northeast across the city.
“Should we drive out there?” I ask.
She clicks on an icon that promises to tell us more about Ava, only to find that they want to charge us for it.
“Forty dollars?” I say. “No thanks. Let’s just go.”
“Okay,” Charlotte says. We stand up and she slips her laptop back into its case and then into her bag. We agree to meet back at my car after we’re finished with our respective finals—the last of the semester, the last of our high school lives.
On the way to my math class for the last time, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around to see Laura Presley handing me her yearbook.
“Sign it?” she asks, all flirty and cute and kind of nervous.
I force a smile and say sure.