Girl in the Rearview Mirror Read online

  My toe hit something hard. Glancing down, I saw a patch of green sticking out from under the curtain. I picked it up. A book, bound in old fabric, Call It Courage in gilt letters on the spine. On the front page, someone had inscribed, for James, from Dad. I traced the text, wondering which James Martin had given it to which.

  A clattering noise rose from the deck. The wind had blown one of the chairs into another. The powerful gusts drove rain into the window like handfuls of stones. On the glass, water pocked in droplets that ran together and flowed in ribbons. I followed one as it fell, merging and wending in a crooked path. It ran into another drop and paused, and at that precise spot I noticed a shape on the pane, a mark made from inside the house. A star, a starfish.

  A handprint.

  A chill ran through me, up my spine to the nape of my neck, as if cold fingers pressed my back.

  The handprint was at shoulder height. Not a faint outline, not a smudge—a firm print. The oval fat of the heel, a delicately creased palm, whorled fingerprints. A large hand. Someone must have pressed the glass quite hard as he looked out, as though steadying himself.

  I hovered my palm over it. Outside, I saw the patio, the dance of the chairs in the wind, rainwater spilling into the empty pool. I could see it all.

  I swallowed hard against a sinking, nauseous feeling. I stepped back.

  I dropped the book to the floor and ran.

  I left Arizona that night, my car weighted with the few things I could fit.

  Three hours north, I stopped at a diner. It was midnight, but coffee and eggs were served twenty-four hours. The only other customer was an old man soundly asleep over a plate of brown beans.

  The women behind the counter didn’t look at me twice. One read a magazine, the other balanced her checkbook. They wore kitschy gingham aprons. I might have to find a job in a place like this. Where would I end up? I’d vaguely considered the Northwest, far, far, from the desert.

  The coffee gave me a sour stomach more than it woke me up, but I kept drinking. I was a little calmer now. I’d reached the mountains, lush with evergreens, the air cool with a damp astringent smell, like gin and mildew. In a while I might be able to pull over to the side of the road and get some sleep.

  I waved off a third refill and went to the bathroom. The hallway walls were covered in framed photographs of notable patrons. A familiar face winked at me from the largest frame. I stumbled back, colliding with the bus cart, reaching to steady myself against it.

  Senator Martin smiled out at me. He was sitting at the counter of this very diner with a group of men with slicked-back hair and white collared shirts. Everyone was laughing, mouths wide. The Senator’s hand was lifted above the counter, about to slap it with amusement.

  But something wasn’t quite right, and as I leaned closer I saw it wasn’t the Senator after all. The man’s build was the same, same balding skull and broad forehead. Same charisma. But it wasn’t Jim. A small placard under the picture identified him as the governor, fifteen years ago.

  Washing my hands at the spitting sink, paying my check, I couldn’t stop shaking. The waitress noticed. “You okay, hon?”

  Even back on the highway, I couldn’t get the photograph out of my mind. What a shock it was, when the Senator’s eyes flashed at me. Stared me down, as they had the last time I saw him, when I stood on the driveway in my soaking clothes, talking to the policeman. The Senator had fixed on us, his eagle eyes glinting. As he’d handled the policeman, I’d been grateful to him. I’d thought he was sparing me.

  I still remembered the feeling of his hand against my back, guiding me down the driveway. I don’t want you to think too much about this, he’d said. It doesn’t have anything to do with you.

  I’d thought he meant it as a comfort. Don’t torment myself, blame myself. But he’d meant his words quite literally.

  That afternoon, as they’d argued in the living room, Marina had been on the couch and Philip near the door, leaning on a chair. At first, the Senator had been out of my sight. Then we’d all heard a thump. He’d dropped something, interrupting the argument. He crossed the room, then sat on the couch beside Marina and joined the conversation.

  Now I knew what he’d been doing, those moments before I could see him. He’d been standing at the window, holding an old book of his, or his first son’s, the better son, the lost son. He looked out over the yard. Behind him, Philip and Marina bickered and sniped, but he didn’t register their words. He’d had a shock, learning what they’d hidden from him. Of anything they might have done, this was the worst the Senator could fathom. Lying about family, about his own flesh and blood.

  Philip was remorseless and dismissive, waving away his father’s concerns like they were meaningless. Philip had never understood what it meant to be a Martin. Time and time again, he floundered, and his father fixed it, and received nothing but disdain for his trouble.

  This time, the Senator felt defeated. The election weighed on him, his constituents abandoning him after decades of service, and now this . . . betrayal, there was no other word for it. He’d been lied to, by his own son, and, once again, he alone would have to bear the consequences.

  He looked out at the clear sunny day. The valley that had been his home his whole life; the city he’d seen surge and grow through boom years, rebound from tough times. Had it ever been stronger than at this moment? Would no one acknowledge what a miracle this was, this metropolis on the sand? Nothing should flourish here, yet there wasn’t a better place to live in the world. He’d always believed that. He still did.

  To his surprise, the little girl came outside alone. She wore her swimming suit. She marched down to the pool, slipping through the gate with a sneaky wriggle. She was always so tiringly willful.

  The Senator had a clear view of the pool. He watched as the girl wrestled an inflatable shark from the shed. On her own. Where was the nanny?

  Amabel kicked off her sandals without anticipating the terrible, scalding heat of the pavement. She hopped unsteadily from one foot to the other, wrestling with the shark, taller than her, and ungainly.

  The Senator’s hand flew to the glass, instinctive, reaching out as if to warn her.

  She lost her balance on the patio. Fell into the water.

  The book fell from his fingers. It thumped loudly on the floor.

  Marina and Philip turned, alarmed.

  The Senator dropped his hand from the window, his blood racing, and turned. In the space of a heartbeat, an idea slipped into his head, like a paper airplane snatched from the air. Possibility. He unfolded it, pressed out its creases in his mind.

  The girl would be gone. A terrible accident. Sweeping away the scandal of her hidden birth as if it had never happened. Banishing the threat of these other people, Iris and Clint, this scum who’d been bound up in the Martin name by his son’s carelessness.

  Marina and Philip watched him, worried. “Wait a minute,” he said, a little breathless. “Just wait, now.” He felt an easing, as though a finger that had been pressing into his chest had lifted.

  He glanced around the room. His son was annoyed, Marina concerned. He spotted me, a sliver of my face at the door.

  Marina began to stand.

  “No, don’t get up.” His voice was firm, maybe a little gravelly. He sank stiffly onto the couch. A cold sweat prickled his scalp. He shook out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

  He needed to start an argument. Keep them occupied. He reached with shaky fingers to the pin on his lapel, toyed with the familiar, reassuring shape, worn so many years. He remembered suddenly a phrase he’d used on James, sweet James, and Philip. He almost smiled.

  “You’re acting like children.”

  44

  Clint was easy. No one would look too closely at his death.

  Iris got what she wanted, money, and fled. She wouldn’t come back.

  I was the last loose end. They’d tried to pay me, but I wasn’t leaving it alone. I was in Verde, in Florence; I was flinging accusatio
ns at Philip and Bryant, at the police. So the Senator dredged up my past. Easily poisoned Bryant against me. And if I hadn’t gotten lucky and found the jewelry, I might be arrested by now, my fingers black with ink, my denials laughed off.

  I drove until my eyes burned with exhaustion, the road as blurry as if my windshield had been smeared with Vaseline. I crossed through New Mexico, into Colorado. I was still in the mountains. Here and there, an unpaved road split off from the highway. Escape routes for runaway trucks, slanting uphill and ending in deep beds of gravel. I pulled into one, until the highway was out of sight. Pines towered around me, their branches thickly furred. I shut off my headlights and the trees vanished in a pool of darkness. The stars were so close up here, as if I could walk up into them.

  I dreamed I’d kept driving, lost the road, crashed into a stand of trees. I dreamed of a hand reaching through my window. I dreamed I was awake in the car, listening with paralyzing dread to someone breathing in the backseat.

  My eyes snapped open. It was dawn. Someone was outside, creeping at the tree line. I sat forward so fast my seat belt locked and I fell back.

  Only a deer. At my movement, it leaped into the trees. Then it was just me, and bird cries in the thin air, and my skin buzzing with dread.

  After that, I slept during the day, in rest stops or parking lots. At night, I drove, and when I was too exhausted to go on, I went to twenty-four-hour places, usually Walmarts. I’d wander the aisles, the unnatural white light overhead belonging to neither day nor night.

  I saw dozens of black sedans. Parked at rest stops; idling behind me at gas stations; lurking in my blind spot outside an anonymous mountain city. My stomach twisted whenever I saw them, though the license plates were never from Arizona. I tried to tell myself that they couldn’t know where I was.

  One night, somewhere in Wyoming, I saw Philip and Marina again. I was reading the Arizona Republic homepage in the electronics department of a Walmart. They were the lead story: martin family makes first public appearance since tragedy.

  Marina and Philip waved from a stage. The Senator stood between them. His smile was craggy and triumphant. Our Senator! His lead in the polls had never been stronger.

  He stood particularly close to Philip, gripping his son’s shoulder.

  Were they still plotting Philip’s next six years, next decades? Schmoozing at parties, attending meetings, pressing flesh. Things Philip had grown good at. Things which, if he kept doing them, he might forget he hated, and only feel a gnawing, subterranean sense of loathing—for himself.

  I bought a thick manila envelope, the kind that had held the Martins’ cash. I wondered how much Iris had left. I had almost nothing, but my credit card still went through, town after town.

  I took everything I had, the yearbook pages and articles and photographs of pregnant Stacy, and sent them to my brother Caleb, who was good-natured and loyal and not particularly curious. Hang on to this for me, I wrote him. It wouldn’t prove anything, but it was a comfort to think of it elsewhere. Safe.

  My next letter took much longer.

  Dear Philip, I began. Please don’t stop reading. I wouldn’t write if it weren’t important.

  I’ve always been a coward. I never told anyone about the boating accident, about turning the lights out to see the stars. Worse was what I’d done to Amabel. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone knowing. Especially Philip. Philip, who I’d always thought was like me.

  If I told him only what his father had done, he wouldn’t believe me. He’d think I was being spiteful, making up a story.

  But if I told him my part, too—confessed my worst—he might believe me. He needed to know I’d listened at the living room door, ignoring Amabel. He needed to remember the afternoon himself, and realize my account was accurate. His father had stood at the window, dropped his book, kept them from getting up.

  I told him about the handprint, though it would be gone by now, erased with a casual spritz of cleaning liquid and the neat flick of Eva’s palm.

  The Senator stood there, at the window. He saw her. He let her go.

  He sacrificed Ammy for his career, I wrote. His reputation. He cares more about his name than his family. He might get what he wants—from everything I’ve seen, he’ll probably win. But you don’t have to stand by him, or follow him, to keep the Martin legacy alive. He’s sacrificed enough for that. Don’t let him sacrifice you, too.

  I mailed the letter from a small town in South Dakota. I paid for rush delivery, and watched the postal worker toss the envelope into a bin like yesterday’s newspaper.

  I wound up in a stern, stony landscape. Cattle graze behind low post fences, their smell wafting for miles. People still ride horses here, meandering across the open fields, the way Amabel imagined she was riding: free, even as her pony made his circumscribed journey around the paddock. I see Ammy often, in the swing of a girl’s hair as she runs to the playground, in the bossy intonation of a toddler’s voice, in my dreams. I found a job in a restaurant, nothing like Philip’s. I work the fryer, dropping in frozen breaded chicken breasts, watching the roiling cloudy oil. My hours are irregular, afternoon until past midnight, and I sleep in. That leaves me without much time to myself, which is the point.

  I call myself Nat. The sound of the name, insignificant as a fly, pleases me.

  Caleb asks what I’m doing here, if I’m bored out of my mind. For now, I’m fine. The air is clear and cold. I buy a suede jacket at the Salvation Army. It smells like bonfire smoke. The town’s on the lap of a granite mountain, striped with mossy-looking black fissures. On my days off, I sometimes walk for five or six hours and never see another person. Once I saw a dog, large and fringy with a muddy coat, clambering up the rocks. For a moment I thought it was a coyote, but soon a man followed, picking his way with a walking stick.

  The election comes in November, and the only surprise is to see the Senator alone at his victory party. I allow myself a glimmer of hope.

  In January, I get an envelope. There’s no return address, but my name’s on it, and my exact address, down to the apartment number. Finn Hunt. A name from the past.

  Inside, there’s a photograph of a baby. He’s wearing a white onesie. His legs are bent and splayed open, his feet curled. His spiky hair is black, his skin a caramel color. For a moment, I think he’s Bryant’s. I’m confused, hurt, like it’s a postcard from a life I might have had.

  I flip the photograph over, and there’s writing on the back. James Amado Martin. Our fresh start.

  Days later, I see the announcement online. Philip and Marina Martin are happy to announce the adoption of a son.

  The article is breezy. It skims over Amabel’s death—“happy news for the family, whose daughter tragically died in an accident.”

  In the picture, Marina holds James in her lap. She’s beaming. Her fingers enclose his tiny fist. “We’ve given our son two lovely names. James, an old family name. And Amado, to honor our daughter, Amabel.”

  Philip stands behind Marina. Though his hands are on her shoulders, he seems caught in motion, his head turning away from the camera. His faint smile seems private, even sad. His hair is long again, waved back, the shine of it golden. I squint. He’s wearing a flag pin on his lapel.

  The Senator sits in a chair beside Marina, hands planted on his knees. “Nothing heals a family like a new baby. James carries a name that’s been in my family for generations. We welcome him into the fold.” He looks at me—at the camera—defiantly. He doesn’t look happy, exactly. He’s not flashing the smile he wore at his victory party, hands laced together over his head and beating the air. He looks stern, like that ancient snapshot of James Martin the first with his railroad crew. Like a man whose legacy will live on.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to:

  Dan Conaway, my agent, for early belief and support. Your cunning insights made Finn sharper and the story more thrilling.

  Kate Nintzel, my smart, savvy editor. Your edits brought the book to the bes
t place.

  Vicki Mellor, my UK editor, who went above and beyond with brilliant insights.

  Vedika Khanna, Karen Richardson, Leah Carlson-Stanisic, and the teams at William Morrow and Pan Macmillan.

  Maja Nikolic, Taylor Templeton, Andrea Vedder, and the team at Writers House.

  Amy Schiffman at Echo Lake.

  My teachers and classmates at USF and ASU, and especially to Lewis Buzbee, who dispatched pearls of wisdom exactly when I needed to hear them.

  Much gratitude in memory of Lenore Brady, my inspiring mentor.

  My early readers, especially John Flaherty, Leah Nuetzel, Peter Papachronopoulos, and Chris Hanks.

  My family, and especially my parents, avid readers who encouraged my addiction.

  Greg, my husband, for his unstinting support and faith from draft one. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  About the Author

  KELSEY RAE DIMBERG received an MFA from the University of San Francisco and studied at Barrett, the Honors College of Arizona State University, where she was editor in chief of the literary magazine Lux. Girl in the Rearview Mirror is her first novel.

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  Copyright

  Excerpt from all the king's men by Robert Penn Warren. Copyright © 1946 and renewed in 1974 by Robert Penn Warren. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.