“Well, you need to take another look at this.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“But I just told you—”
“Let me walk you through it,” Paul interrupts. “Jeremy was sick. I watched that kid grow up and if he wasn’t fighting himself, he was fighting his father. Arthur stopped at nothing to keep him alive—and I get it—but it ruined their relationship. Soon as Jeremy turned eighteen, he was gone unless he needed money. I went through the whole thing in real time. After Jeremy’s grandma died, he got a 25K inheritance. It was the last Art heard from him until he joined The Unity Project.”
“And then what?”
“By all accounts, he was thriving. Worked in youth mentorship. Loved Lev Warren, like they all do. Arthur resented it. Jeremy wanted to reconnect with him through The Project, and his father’s pride got in the way. That was the nail in the coffin between them.”
“But what Jeremy said before he jumped—”
“He’d say a lot of things when he was going through an episode.”
“Arthur said he had nothing in his savings when he died—”
“He gave willingly to The Project. His inheritance is probably doing more good than it would have otherwise.” Paul scrubs a tired hand over his eyes and for the briefest second, I see pain on his face and suddenly realize how much Jeremy might have mattered to him too. “Look, you saw something pretty traumatic, Denham. When an event this senseless happens it’s natural, it’s very human, to want to assign meaning and reason—and in Arthur’s case—blame, even at the expense of the truth, just so we can sit with it a little easier at the end of the day. But that’s not what I’m here to do and that’s not why you want to work for me.” He sighs. “And I hope, eventually, Art can forgive me for it. But The Project’s clean and that’s that.”
But what about the girl in the photographs?
What about the girl in the photographs with my last name, whispering in Jeremy’s ear?
If Paul’s not asking me about her, he didn’t dig deep enough.
“Anything else?” he asks. I shake my head. He clears his throat and turns back to his screen in earnest this time. “Good, because I have a lot of work to get through on account of sending my assistant home for the day. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I say, standing. “I got it.”
* * *
By the time I make the walk to my apartment above Fraites’ Funeral Home, every thought I’ve had since leaving SVO has taken root inside my head. More thoughts than space to contain them.
I trudge the two flights up and let myself inside. There’s not a lot to the place I live. A kitchen that stretches into some kind of living area, two doors next to each other to the right, one leading to my bedroom, the other, the bathroom. It’s fine; functional. Patty helped me pick it out.
They sent a card when she died last fall. It was like they could sense the question of whether or not I needed to reach out and let Bea know and then suddenly, in the mail: Deepest Sympathies, The Unity Project. Message received. Bea was all of them, they were all of her, and I was not a part of any of it.
I take my shoes and jacket off, leaving them at the door, fingers flicking the light switch, washing the room in a cold LED glow. I toss a frozen meal into the microwave and head into the bathroom, where I study my face in the mirrored cabinet above the sink. It’s been a long day and I look it; my dark brown hair a mess from the rain and my eyes as bloodshot as my white face is bloodless. No one would notice these things if they were looking directly at me, though. What they’d notice is the thick puckered scar on the left side of my face, running from the top of my eyebrow and following the path of my cheek down, missing my mouth by a few lucky inches before finally coming to an abrupt halt. It’s what I see every single day.
Some days, it’s the only thing I see.
I reach out, pressing my palm flat against that side of my reflection.
“You’re Lo,” I say softly to it.
2011
Gloria.
Gloria. Latin. Glory.
When Lo began to babble, Bea so badly wanted her name to be the first real word to come out of Lo’s mouth. Mama and Dada, she insisted, didn’t count. She’d taken to hovering over Lo’s crib during her nap, hoping to inspire the greeting as soon as Lo opened her eyes. Bea tried every other thing she could think of: the dull, arduous process of repeating her name over and over again—Bea, Bea, Bea, Bea—followed by an equally repetitive line of questioning: Who am I? What’s my name? Can you say my name, Lo?
The first time Lo said Bea’s name was the same day Bea had given up on the possibility. A beautiful afternoon outside. Dad was stretched out on the grass with Lo in his arms, dozing in the sun, and Bea was on the swing and she had a mission: she was going to pump her legs until her feet touched the sky. She’d always wanted to try for it but Mom and Dad told her she had to take it easy on the swing because the tree was so old. The tree might have been old, but Bea knew in her heart it was strong.
She started out careful, a gentle pace, determined not to call too much attention to her secret ambition, then she picked up speed, fast and faster still, which made her go high, higher and even higher than that—higher than she’d ever been.
Settle down, Buzz, Dad called, before she could kiss the clouds, and that caught Lo’s attention. Her baby head swiveled in Bea’s direction, eyes widening, and then—
Bea!
Beatrice. Italian; Latin. Bringer of Joy.
Bea never forgot how Lo said it. Not greeting nor exclamation—but a plea, as though Lo somehow understood Bea’s intention was to take off and she was desperate not to be left behind.
They weren’t raised to believe in God. As Bea grew, her lack of faith grew comfortably alongside her; it was simply a fact of herself and her world as she knew it. Belief required proof, proof of God was absent and religion struck her as a sort of magic show, the success of which was entirely dependent on an audience’s willingness to pretend a trick could be so much more than it really was. But that was before she’d stood at the foot of Lo’s hospital bed, wiping the tears from her eyes as the doctor left the room, his departing words echoing inside her head.
A miracle. This is nothing short of a miracle.
Her still-breathing sister on the right side of the divide.
All because of him.
Lev. Hebrew; Russian. Heart; Lion.
* * *
Bea shivers.
The air on the Garrett Farm is cold and she’s as far from the hospital as she’s ever been since the accident. Lo is on the cusp of awareness after so much time kept beyond the borders of herself from trauma and drugs. Bea wants to be there when Lo opens her eyes, but Lev wants her here, to see what he sees, to know what he knows. She’d refused the first time he asked. The thought of being anywhere but next to her sister was so unbearable to Bea it hurt. Lev told her he understood but he’d also said, It’s the only thing I’m asking of you. It overwhelmed Bea with shame; how could she deny him, after all he’d done?
The next time he asked, she didn’t.
Now Bea aches for Lo and is trying so hard not to show it. She’s been put in Casey’s charge and Casey, Bea realizes, is someone very important to Lev. There’s a way she carries herself—so graceful and so assured—that Bea would one day like to emulate but for now she’s awkward and small beside Casey, nervous under her watchful gaze.