Джонатан Келлерман: Serpentine

I said, “When did he tell you he was your stepdad?”

“When I was a teenager.”

“How old?” said Milo.

“Fifteen. I wanted to know more about Mom. Up till then I’d never asked. Maybe I was in denial, but it had never been an issue, Dad and me was what I was used to. Then I started being a teenager—questioning everything—and demanded he tell me what he knew. He got a funny look on his face, like he’d been waiting for this moment but dreaded it.”

She gave the bottle another try. Frowned. I loosened the cap for her.

“Thank you, where was I…okay, I demanded. Dad left the room and returned a few moments later with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He said, ‘Sit down, Ellie,’ and then he told me there was going to be a lot to handle, was I sure. I said something like ‘Fuck, yeah.’ Charming, huh?”

Milo said, “Goes with the teen territory.”

“And not liking it went with the dad territory,” she said. “He was pretty cut-and-dried. When he met Mom she had me, he knew nothing beyond that. I didn’t push the bio-dad issue because he already looked pretty stricken and I didn’t want to hurt him. Besides, he was my real father, I had no interest in some guy who’d abandoned me.”

She took a long swallow of water. “The truth was I went from being obnoxious to feeling bad for him. He looked like he was going to cry. I felt like I was going to cry. Then he said, ‘Let’s go out for ice cream,’ so we went to Baskin-Robbins.”

Small smile. “I remember what I had. Jamoca Almond Fudge in a sugar cone. At first I could barely get it down, like there was a lump here.” Tapping a spot above the green necklace. “In retrospect, should I have pushed for more information? Maybe. But he was my dad. It just didn’t seem right.”

Milo took out his pad and pen. “His full name…”

“Stanley Richard Barker. Doctor Stanley R. Barker, he was an optometrist.”

“How old were you when he and your mom met?”

“Not sure. Dad said a baby.”

“And when she died?”

“Not even three, thirty-three months.”

“Is Dr. Barker still alive?”

“I wish, Lieutenant. He passed a while back.”

“How long ago?”

“When I was in college…nineteen years ago.”

“Where was college?”

“Stanford. I did my undergrad there and was planning to enroll in the MBA program. When Dad passed, I was in my sophomore year and spending the summer doing research for a professor. European economic history, bone-dry. After Dad passed, I dropped out and got myself what I thought would be a mindless job, working for a clothing manufacturer in Oakland. The funny thing is, it led to some interesting things.”

“You started your own company.”

She shrugged. “I was lucky.”

I said, “You had a good relationship with your dad and didn’t want to rock the boat. After he died you didn’t need to worry about that.”

Her head bobbed and she winced. As if I’d embedded a hook.

“He wasn’t a whoop-it-up dad,” she said, “but he was a great dad. Quiet, reserved, and incredibly smart. Earned a B.S. in physics from Cornell, came out to California to work for the government then went to optometry school at Berkeley. He was really into optics—not the political cliché, the real thing. He opened up an office in Danville, this upper-crusty place where we ended up living, then a second down in Oakland just so he could service poor people. He probably could’ve been Pearle Vision or LensCrafters but big business didn’t interest him, he just liked helping people see better and made a good living at it. The money he left me helped me bankroll Beterkraft.”

She finished her water. “When I was home, we’d play Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, watch goofy old movies.”

Her mouth twitched. Holding something back.

I said, “When you were home from college?”

Another flash of color spread at the edges of her face, this one intense enough to turn her earlobes scarlet. “Before that. I went to boarding school when I was fifteen. Dad had a lot of patience but I turned incredibly difficult—no need to get into the details, let’s just say I was a pain and he tried his best and when he finally suggested I try living away, I said sure. Actually, I didn’t say it very politely. On one hand, I was thrilled to get away from rules. On the other…” Shrug. “But obviously none of that’s the issue.”

I said, “You asked about your mother when you came home from boarding school.”

She stared at me. “No getting around the emotional probing, huh? Yes. Exactly. Things changed when I was at Milbrook—Milbrook Preparatory Academy for Girls, it’s in Palo Alto, a feeder for Stanford. For all my behavioral issues, my grades had always been good. But now I was living with seventy other girls, and girls can get pushy and nosy. Everyone talking about their family, bragging, wanting to know about yours. I knew so little, obviously I didn’t want to talk about it. But a few of them pushed and pushed and then they started making fun of me—my parents were spies or criminals. Or worse, welfare cheats. I tried to ignore it but eventually it got to me and I struck out. Literally. I ended up smacking one particularly obnoxious little bitch in the nose and got into major trouble.”

She passed the empty bottle from hand to hand. “Two months in and poor Dad has to come and beg the dean to keep me. He convinced her but I saw how much it stressed him, so I promised to keep it together. But by then I’d been tagged as a weirdo loner and everyone avoided me. Which on one hand was good, the questions stopped. But then with the pressure off, I realized the questions were valid. Who was she and how had she died? Who was I ? So on Christmas, the next time I was home, I brought it up. Dad told me she’d died, had been cremated, and he’d scattered the ashes in a park somewhere they used to go.”

The bottle wobbled and nearly fell out of her hands. She managed to hold on to it, placed it gingerly on the table. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job but, again, is all this really necessary?”

Milo said, “The more we know, the better chance we have.”

“Sure but I don’t see why—all right, fine, you’re here to help me, I won’t be obstructive.”

“What happened next?”

“Nothing until Dad passed and I broke down, just went numb, the feeling of aloneness. ”

Biting her lip, she looked away. When she spoke next, her voice was weak, tinged with the vibrato of suffering.

“Stanford assigned a nurse to look after me. They suggested I see a counselor but I blew that off. Eventually, I told myself life sucked, I just had to be strong, didn’t need a babysitter. I know I was privileged—no money worries because Dad’s executor was taking care of me on that level.”

“Who was that?”

“Dad’s lawyer, Lawrence Kagan. I’d known him as a customer—Larry with the Coke-bottle glasses. I knew Dad liked him but had no idea he trusted him that much.”

I said, “Was the trust justified?”

“Totally. Mr. K was honest and lovely to me.” She breathed in deeply. “It’s when he drove down to Palo Alto to read me the will that I saw the adoption form. Dad had decided to do it after Mom died because I was technically attached to no one. That kind of brought everything back—who was I, where had I come from. Larry had no idea—don’t bother contacting him, he’s also gone.”

She smiled. “That day in his office. He put on one of the Coke-bottles Dad had made for him and shuffled papers like someone out of Dickens. When he showed me the adoption form, it choked me up. That Dad had always cared. Then I noticed Mom’s name. Dorothy Swoboda, not Barker, and he explained about no marriage. Which seemed pretty daring for Dad, but maybe it was her idea? Meanwhile, Larry’s reading the will, I’m Dad’s sole heir and there’s a lot of money. It took a while to settle down emotionally. A year or so. That’s when I first began looking for information about her using her actual name. I had no idea where to start but figured California was logical. I learned that a lot of personal documents are county forms so I worked my way down from Contra Costa to Alameda, et cetera, et cetera. It was tedious but strangely exciting. Finally I found the coroner’s report from L.A. County and then an article in the L.A. Times. Confusing because the paper made it sound like a car accident but the report said homicide. That freaked me out. I put the whole thing aside for a long, long time.”