on his hand. She said they had stopped in a town called Starbridge (Dan was pretty sure she meant Sturbridge) and left the turnpike there, moving along the secondary roads toward the bright blip of her consciousness. Later on they had stopped at a roadside café for lunch, not hurrying, making the final leg of the trip last. They knew where she was going now, and were perfectly willing to let her get there, because Cloud Gap was isolated. They thought she was making their job easier, and that was fine, but this was delicate work, a kind of telepathic laser surgery.
There had been one unsettling moment when a pornographic image filled Dan’s mind—some kind of group sex by a pool—but it had been gone almost at once. He supposed he had gotten a peek into her undermind, where—if you believed Dr. Freud—all sorts of primal images lurked. This was an assumption he would come to regret, although never to blame himself for; he had taught himself not to snoop into people’s most private things.
Dan held the Riv’s steering-yoke with one hand. The other was on the mangy stuffed bunny in his lap. Deep woods, now starting to flame with serious color, flowed by on both sides. In the right-hand seat—the so-called conductor’s seat—Dave rambled on, telling his daughter family stories and dancing at least one family skeleton out of the closet.
“When your mom called yesterday morning, she told me there’s a trunk stored in the basement of Momo’s building. It’s marked Alessandra. You know who that is, don’t you?”
“Gramma Sandy,” Dan said. Christ, even his voice sounded higher. Younger.
“Right you are. Now here’s something you might not know, and if that’s the case, you didn’t hear it from me. Right?”
“No, Daddy.” Dan felt his lips curve up as, some miles away, Abra smiled down at her current collection of Scrabble tiles: S P O N D L A.
“Your Gramma Sandy graduated from SUNY Albany—the State University of New York—and was doing her student teaching at a prep school, okay? Vermont, Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, I forget which. Halfway through her eight weeks, she up and quit. But she hung around for awhile, maybe picking up some part-time work, waitressing or something, for sure going to a lot of concerts and parties. She was . . .”
5
(a good-time girl)
That made Abra think of the three sex maniacs by the pool, smooching and gobbling to oldtime disco music. Uck. Some people had very strange ideas of what was a good time.
“Abra?” That was Mrs. Deane. “It’s your turn, honey.”
If she had to keep this up for long, she’d have a nervous breakdown. It would have been so much easier at home, by herself. She had even floated the idea to her father, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Not even with Mr. Freeman watching over her.
She used a U on the board to make POUND.
“Thanks, Abba-Doofus, I was going there,” Emma said. She turned the board and began to study it with beady-eyed final-exam concentration that would go on for another five minutes, at least. Maybe even ten. Then she would make something totally lame, like RAP or PAD.
Abra returned to the Riv. What her father was saying was sort of interesting, although she knew more about it than he thought she did.
(Abby? Are you)
6
“Abby? Are you listening?”
“Sure,” Dan said. I just had to take a little time-out to play a word. “This is interesting.”
“Anyway, Momo was living in Manhattan at that time, and when Alessandra came to see her that June, she was pregnant.”
“Pregnant with Mom?”
“That’s right, Abba-Doo.”
“So Mom was born out of wedlock?”
Total surprise, and maybe the tiniest bit overdone. Dan, in the peculiar position of both participating and eavesdropping on the discussion, now realized something he found touching and sweetly comic: Abra knew perfectly well that her mother was illegitimate. Lucy had told her the year before. What Abra was doing now, strange but true, was protecting her father’s innocence.
“That’s right, honey. But it’s no crime. Sometimes people get . . . I don’t know . . . confused. Family trees can grow strange branches, and there’s no reason for you not to know that.”
“Gramma Sandy died a couple of months after Mom was born, right? In a car wreck.”
“That’s right. Momo was babysitting Lucy for the afternoon, and ended up raising her. That’s the reason they’re so close, and why Momo getting old and sick has been so hard on your mom.”