Page 146 of Just One Look

And him. With no answers yet and his third month out coming to a close, Webster on a “holiday” at Marko and Nyree’s house, being tormented by an extremely small cat, and him on his own so-called holiday, taking a few days off from the physio. Past Whangarei, driving the winding road to the Tutukaka Coast in the midst of another storm. The wipers slapping over the windscreen during every subtropical downpour, which would break overhead like water spilling from a tap, then turn off just as abruptly. He could feel the push and pull of the wind even through the tonnes of steel, and now, he glanced at Elle before focusing on the road again.

She said, “You realize I can tell what you’re doing.”

“What?” he said. “Driving?”

“Checking to see whether I’m going to go crazy again. Or, rather, whether I’m about to suffer a severe panic attack. It’sraining.I do not have a rain phobia. I have afloodphobia, possibly, but that’s it. Besides, I’m doing better since the panic attack. Because of the panic attack. Whatever.”

That had all been pretty breezy. He said cautiously, “You mean your mum.”

“Yes. Able to think about her, or whatever.” She looked out of her window at nothing but streaks of water on glass, and he reached a hand out and grasped hers for a moment. “Lauren asked me about her when we had lunch last week,” she said, when his hands were on the wheel again.

“Yeh?”Careful here,he told himself. The bird was eating from his hand now, but she was still poised to fly away at any sudden movement. You couldn’t startle a bird like that. Which was why he hadn’t said anything, despite the twelve or twenty or sixty-two times it had occurred to him, about her leaving. Or about her staying.

“It was nice,” she said, “remembering the little things, since the little things are mainly what I do remember. How she pushed me on the swings at the playground and taught me to pump my legs so we could swing together. How she’d always buy me a chocolate ice-cream cone when we went downtown, even though my dad had told her not to give me dessert. Lauren asked me …”

Another long pause. He waited. It was something about being in the car, he reckoned. The hypnotic effect of windscreen wipers, of the windows silvered by rain, of the way your world contracted to only this. The two of you, warm and cozy against the storm outside, hurtling through space.

She finally said, “She asked me if I had anything of hers. I don’t. A photo album Memaw gave me, but that’s all.” She looked out her window some more. “I’m not exactly a hoarder, and I don’t think her taste was mine—it would probably be more of the Scary Dolls or whatever—but I’d like to have had something.”

“What happened to all of it?” he asked.

She shrugged and still didn’t look at him. “The housekeeper packed up her clothes and things right away, and took them somewhere. Who knows. Donation, maybe? Which makes sense, of course. What would you be keeping them for? I remember standing there in my PJs, though, asking, ‘Why are you throwing away my mama’s pretties?’ She had a dressing table with perfume and makeup and her jewelry box on it, and that’s what she called them. ‘My pretties.’ She wasn’t a sophisticated woman. She was a country girl from the most redneck part of South Carolina, but she seemed sophisticated to me. The table had drawers and was fancy, and it had a fancy mirror, too, and she’d sit in front of it in her silky flowered robe and look so beautiful, like a picture of a glamorous lady. I wonder if that’s why I never bought perfume. Because that was my association with it. It was a happy memory, but I haven’t really been able to … access those.”

“And now you can,” he said. “That means something, surely. Could be something else about all that, too.”

“What?” she asked.

“Simple, really. Your dad likes pretty women. Your mum, Lauren. But he doesn’t want to like them. Makes him feel weak. So he tells himself they’re silly, and the things they like are ...”

“Frivolous,” Elizabeth said. “Wow. That’s extremely insightful. Who knew? So he hates beautiful women because he loves them? And since, as we know, I’m the living embodiment of the Baxter Wolcott mythos …”

“You can’t be a pretty woman,” he finished. “You’re a serious woman.”

“Ha,” she said. “Serious android, more like.” But she laughed.

He said, “You could ask your dad for that table, maybe. He hasn’t married again, right? He can’t be using it.”

Another pause, and then she said, “He doesn’t have it anymore. I don’t know when it went away. I never went into his bedroom until Lauren came, and it wasn’t there then.” She stirred herself. “Never mind. We must be almost there. I wish it weren’t raining. I’d like to see this looking as beautiful as I remember it.”

“Soon pass over,” he said. “When it does, I’ll take you out there.” Now, his hands were tightening on the wheel, and he was questioning himself again. He didn’t bring girls home. Why was he doing it this time? It had better not be to impress her, because this wasn’t going to be impressive.

“Hey,” she said, and, when he glanced at her, said, “It’s going to be all right. The Bad Family Club has many members, and there’s safety in numbers. But before we get there, there’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you before.”