Ghost Flower (13 page)

Then she looked directly at me, mirth and malice vying for the upper hand in her smile, and I wondered if this was why Althea let me into the family so easily—to use as a lever against the others. Or maybe this was her version of revenge against the granddaughter who had stayed away. Either way it seemed deliberately cold and cruel.

The air turned oppressive, almost sultry, as though we’d been shut into a greenhouse. Uncle Thom appeared next to me, making me jump. “We should go. Our appointment at Tucson PD is in half an hour.”

I said goodbye to everyone, and we’d reached the door when Aunt Claire called out, “Oh, Ro. You know your grandmother got rid of all the horses, but Thom and I have a lovely new yearling. A bit feisty. Feel free to come over anytime and ride.”

It was a test, I knew. “Aurora had a way with wild things,” Bridgette had said. “Maybe because she was so wild herself.”

“So she was a horse whisperer?” I’d asked. And maybe my tone had been a bit incredulous, but Bridgette had responded vehemently.

“This isn’t a joke. Aurora had—a special gift. She didn’t tame wild things; it was more like calming them. She could harness their energy. Especially horses. She could do things no one else could. And she loved them. She’d
never
say no to the chance to ride.”

By offering me her yearling, Aunt Claire was challenging me to prove I was Aurora by showing I could ride a challenging horse.

Of course, I couldn’t do that. But I also couldn’t say no without raising any red flags. From what Bain and Bridgette had said, even a hurt hand wouldn’t have stopped her.

Against the wall I sensed rather than saw Bridgette and Bain tense. Studiously avoiding looking at them, I gave Aunt Claire a small, sad smile. “Thank you but I—I’m not
comfortable
on horses
anymore,” I said falling back on a technique I’d used successfully in the past, injecting enough hesitation into it to imply that something really horrible had happened so no one would ask for details. It might not satisfy her, but it would at least not inflame doubts about my authenticity.

It worked. Aunt Claire’s eyes widened as much as the Botox would allow, and her hand went to her throat. “I see. Say no more.”

I chanced a look in Bain and Bridgette’s direction. Bridgette was studying her nails, but Bain glanced at me. I hadn’t realized, until Bain shot me a wink, that I’d been holding my breath.

D
espite that success, my nerves were rattled, and I had to work to pay attention to Uncle Thom as we rolled away from the House in his 1962 red Jaguar.

He coaxed it into gear gently, the way you’d calm a jittery horse and said with a sigh, “Your grandmother should have gone into the theater. She loves staging plays.”

“You don’t seem concerned.”

He laughed. “It’s just money.” He said it the way only someone with plenty of it could. Maybe the rumors about Aunt Claire losing her fortune weren’t true. “So you really don’t remember anything?” he asked.

“I really don’t.”

He grinned. “Must be strange.”

“It is.”

As we descended down the winding road from the Silverton compound, we passed other large houses, masses of steel and rock and glass jutting out of flat ground. They didn’t look like places to live, more like places of worship, monoliths from some strange religion, being carefully tended by acolytes in cargo shorts, wraparound
sunglasses, and pastel polo shirts with words like Bob’s Pool and Sonoran Landscape Specialists and Hollywood Home Theaters embroidered over their hearts. I imagined Aurora being friends with girls who lived in houses like that, imagined walking down corridors with lights that automatically sensed our presence to home theaters with black leather-covered chairs where we’d watch movies and eat Pop-Tarts and drink vodka.

Uncle Thom was humming a little to himself, tapping the wheel with one finger, like he was enjoying the ride. “I tried to get the police to put this questioning off, but they wanted to take your statement right away.”

“It’s okay, I’d rather get it over with.” I had been telling stories all my life; I knew what I was doing. And yet as we got closer to the police station, I began to feel nervous.

For some reason everything I said seemed to amuse Uncle Thom. “I’m sure you would.” He gave a little laugh. “By the way, if they try to introduce any extraneous matters, I will object, but you can also just refuse to answer.”

That got my attention. “What kind of extraneous matters?”

“Family things. Especially now with Bridger running for office, there are plenty of people who would like to muckrake.”

“Is there muck to rake?” I asked.

He laughed some more and downshifted into second gear. “You’re funnier than the old Aurora,” he said, adding, with a wink, “You might want to watch that. Could make people suspicious.”

I felt frozen. He had as good as told me he thought I was an imposter. I wanted to open the door of the car and run away.

Don’t be a moron,
a voice inside my head said, one that sounded more like Aurora than me.
He doesn’t know anything or he would have blown this for you already. Press him on it. He’ll back down.

I said, “What do you mean?”

His amusement wavered for an instant. “Only that, uh, cops don’t always understand humor,” he said stumbling over the words a little. “You’ll want to keep it straightforward with them.”

Before I could respond, we turned into the parking lot of the police station. The only other cars in the lot were patrol cars, and the tiled foyer of the station was empty when we stepped inside. The space had a lazy feeling, and I wondered if that was because it was Saturday or because there wasn’t much crime in Tucson.

Detective Ainslie, wearing a pair of pinstriped pants and a rust-colored short-sleeved blouse, offered us coffee in Styrofoam cups printed with an Aztec motif and led us to a conference room. There was someone already seated there, a quiet-looking African American woman with close-cropped dark curly hair. From the sensible haircut to the brooch in the shape of a scarab and the grey sweater set she wore, she oozed Mental Health Professional, so I wasn’t surprised when she was introduced as Dr. Ellen Jackson.

Uncle Thom seemed surprised, or at least something about Dr. Jackson’s presence made him uneasy. “I didn’t realize my niece’s mental state is under scrutiny. This isn’t part of what we discussed last night.”

“I’m just here in an advisory capacity,” Dr. Jackson said, not in the fake soothing therapist voice I expected but in a normal one which made me kind of like her. “I’ve had extensive experience with amnesia cases, and Detective Ainslie thought I might be helpful. Unless you object?” She looked at me as she asked the question.

I shook my head. “Anything that will help,” I said, trying to sound eager but not too eager.

Uncle Thom still wasn’t happy. “We’ll agree, with the provision that we can change our mind at any point.” I was surprised by his
reaction—if he thought I was a fake, what better way to break me down than by submitting me to the scrutiny of a professional? I wondered what he thought he was protecting me from.

When we were all seated, Detective Ainslie said, “Why don’t you walk us through what happened the night of your disappearance?”

“I can’t,” I told her, leaning into the table to indicate openness and injecting a note of apology into my voice. “I don’t remember anything.”

Dr. Jackson touched the detective on the sleeve and said, “May I?” Then looked at me. “What is the
first
thing you remember, Aurora?” There was something about her, the way her arms on the table were in the same position as mine maybe, that made her seem trustworthy. Like someone you could confide in.

Be careful.

I looked at my hands in front of me. “About a month ago, I was in Houston brushing my teeth, and suddenly I knew.” I quickly glanced up, giving Dr. Jackson my most earnest gaze. “I can’t describe it. It was just—my name was Aurora Silverton, and I was from Tucson.”

She studied me a moment. “What did you do then?

The hardest thing about lying isn’t making eye contact. It is remembering to blink. I blinked. “I went to the library and did a search for… myself. It was really strange. That’s when I found out what had happened, the disappearance and everything.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch with your family right away?”

I looked back down at my hands. “At first I wasn’t sure. I was afraid. You—you can’t know what it’s like to not remember anything about yourself. I hoped more memories would come back. Some did, distant ones. Not complete. I kept thinking if I waited a little longer there would be more. I was scared. I didn’t know what had happened. The newspapers—they all gave such different stories. Some of them suggested that
someone had tried to
murder
me.” I put feeling into it, glancing around with the shocked expression I had practiced for this moment.

Detective Ainslie pounced. “And you thought that someone might be a member of your family?”

“What? No,” I said, my voice rising sharply.

At the same time, Uncle Thom half-rose from his chair, declaring, “She didn’t say that.”

Dr. Jackson put a hand out in front of Ainslie as though to ease the detective back and kept her eyes on mine. “You were confused, unsure. Shaken. Of course.”

“Right,” I agreed, giving her a grateful smile. “Shaken.”

Detective Ainslie said, “Why did you go to a graduation party instead of coming home to see your family? Were you afraid of a family member?”

“Should I have been?” I asked.

But it hardly mattered because before it was out of my mouth Uncle Thom had risen and was saying, “If this is the line you’re taking, my client and I will be going.”

“Please sit down, Mr. Silverton,” Detective Ainslie said. “It is a legitimate question.”

Uncle Thom subsided.

I said, “I’m not sure why I went. I mean, it was my graduation party, wasn’t it? And I guess it was kind of like a test. To see if people recognized me, to make sure I really was Aurora. I was sure, but not—
sure
. It’s hard to explain. And to see if I recognized them.” I felt relieved, back on firm ground. I’d gone over this in my mind.

“Did you?” Dr. Jackson asked.

“Some. Not everyone. With some people it was more like a hazy feeling.”

“Your grandmother? Your home? Your uncle?”

“Them, yes. My room. Not my clothes. Those seemed very three years ago,” I said, trying to make a joke.

No one laughed.

Detective Ainslie looked at Dr. Jackson. She was watching me, not unkindly, but with intense concentration. She said, “And the night of your disappearance. What do you remember about that? Any scrap, any detail could be helpful.”

I shook my head. “That’s exactly what I don’t remember. That and the—years I guess—after that.”

“You said you’d have flashes of memories sometimes,” Dr. Jackson coaxed. “Like what?”

I realized it had been a mistake to say that. “They’re hard to describe.” I racked my mind for what to say. “A pay phone,” I said, seizing on my own dreams. “Night. Um, tires on wet pavement. Someone laughing.” They were eating it up, so I decided to give them more. “And a name. Tom Yaw? I don’t know what it means.”

They loved that. Cops love proper nouns; anything that starts with a capital letter makes them happy. And I have to admit I was sort of curious to see what they’d come up with. Detective Ainslie wrote the name, then looked at it. “Tom Yaw. Is that someone you were with? The person who took you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t picture a face with it, just the name. The letters. Like I said, I can’t remember anything from that night.”

Detective Ainslie had opened the file folder she had in front of her and was consulting something. “You said tires on wet pavement?” I nodded, encouragingly. “It didn’t rain the night you disappeared or for weeks after that.”

“Maybe it’s a memory from another time. I’m just giving you everything I have.” My heart rate began to pick up a little, and I suddenly felt less in control of the interview.

As though she sensed my confidence flagging, Dr. Jackson reached her arm slightly across the table toward me and said, “You’re doing very well, Aurora.”

Detective Ainslie cut in. “You don’t remember anything about the party? Or the mall?”

“Party?” I repeated. Bain and Bridgette hadn’t mentioned a party. Was this some kind of trap? The sense I’d had of losing control of the interview doubled. I felt my heart rate accelerate again, and next to me, Uncle Thom seemed to become fractionally more alert.

“The last place you were seen was at a party in a model home in one of the developments your family owns,” she said. “Sunset Canyon Estates. Do you remember that?”

I shook my head and knit my fingers together to keep them from shaking. What was going on? First them asking about being afraid of my family and now this. “Who was at the party?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded less nervous to them than it did to me.

“Your cousin Bain was the host,” the detective said. “His sister Bridgette was there, and a bunch of their friends. Stuart Carlton, Xandra Michaels, Grant Villa, Roscoe Kim, Jordan North. Do you remember any of them?” She pulled a series of Xeroxes from her folder and arranged them in a line in front of me. None of them, I noted, could have been the guy with the scratched-out face in the photo.

I mentally flipped through the flash cards I’d been drilled on, pulling out names to match the faces. I put my finger on the first photo. “That’s Stuart Carlton, Bridgette’s boyfriend,” I said. I moved to the next, “And that’s Jordan North. I saw her this morning.”

The next photo showed a shaggy white guy with light brown hair I recognized as
Grant Villa
[20, friends with Bridgette, captain of the swim team, lifeguard at Country Club. Open secret that Aurora had had a crush on him since she was eleven. Net
worth: none (attended school on scholarship). Now lived with his older brother in a trailer on the outskirts of Tucson]. After that was a dapper Asian guy,
Roscoe Kim
[20, two years ahead of Aurora in school, gay, $18,000,000 (or more)]. The only one I didn’t recognize was the statuesque white girl with the thick dark hair, which meant she had to be Xandra Michaels. I wondered why there hadn’t been a card for her. But that was secondary to the more major question of why Bain and Bridgette hadn’t mentioned that any of these people had been with Aurora the night she disappeared. Or that they themselves had been among the last people to see her alive.