known her my whole life.”
Mary shrugged, jostling Patty, who squeaked in protest. “It wasn’t her business. I paid her to pick us up, that’s all.”
“I guess some people aren’t for sale, even for your money.”
“Garvey, listen to me,” Lucy implored. “There’s nothing—has never been anything—with Hal.”
“Think hard before you say anything else,” Mary snapped at her. “Hal’s just a dumb kid. Everyone will understand what happened between you and him. You didn’t mean anything to him. He’ll have forgotten you by his twentieth birthday. But if you try to convince people that Garvey...”
Lucy looked from one sibling to the other: Mary calculating and cold, Garvey’s face contorted in anguish. It was all she could do to stop herself from crawling to him, begging him to listen. “But I never—”
Mary cut her off. “You want to keep this baby, that’s your choice. But before you say one more word, understand this. If you insist on telling some crazy story about you and Garvey, if you bring a baby back to Lone Pine and say it’s his, he stands to lose everything. The age of consent in this state is eighteen—he could go to jail. You think I can’t prove how old you are, Lucy? I’ve known since the day you came. It’s in your papers, Leo was just too dumb to ever read them. And all I need to do is tell the lawyer.”
The room was silent except for the baby’s whimpering. “Garvey,” Lucy whispered, pleading.
“Is it true?” he demanded. “Just tell me that—only that.”
Lucy could read the hurt, the uncertainty in his eyes, and longed to tell him it would be all right. They could stay here in the city, the law would never pursue them this far. They could turn their back on the motel, the house, the inheritance, and be a family—the two of them and the baby.
As soon as the beautiful fantasy flickered to life it was snuffed out. She and Garvey had been dealt harsh hands. They were broken—he couldn’t even walk the stairs to this room on his own. He couldn’t ride a streetcar or go up a flight of steps. He’d never find work. And every stranger who saw her face recoiled. They would never survive here together.
She blinked back tears, and her fingers twitched with longing to reach for him, to touch him. But at the last minute she twisted her hands into fists, and got to her feet. She turned her back on him before she spoke.
“It’s true. I’m sorry, Garvey. The baby’s Hal’s.”
“I don’t believe you.” His voice, cracked and broken.
Lucy took Patty from Mary and buried her face in the baby’s warm neck, already as familiar as her own skin. “Believe what you want, but Hal and I... It just happened.”
Mary waited, quiet for once, the amusement wiped from her expression. The baby suckled air, whimpering, her small and perfect mouth brushing against Lucy’s cheek.
“Come get me, boy,” Garvey demanded, and the young man stirred from the corner of the room. “Get me the hell out of this place.”
Lucy kept her face pressed to the baby, her eyes shut tight, to give him this last bit of dignity.
There was nothing else she could give.
35
San Francisco
Friday, June 9, 1978
By five-thirty, the police station had emptied out dramatically, and Patty had to fight a sense of panic that her mother was going to end up spending the night in jail. Or wherever they were keeping her.
Patty and Jay had been drinking coffee from a machine and sharing a packet of cheese–peanut butter crackers when the attorney came out to the waiting room to give them the news that the case had been dropped.
“There’ll be paperwork,” he said, tugging his tie loose, “but essentially that’s it.”
“I don’t understand,” Jay said. Relief made Patty feel a little dizzy, but she forced herself to stay composed. She hadn’t told Jay about going to see Van Dorn. She’d given him a condensed version of what her mother had told her about Manzanar, leaving out the part about the abuse her grandmother had suffered, about the man she had killed. Talking about it in the police waiting area felt like tempting the Fates, and Patty told herself she would share the whole story later, when she and Jay had some privacy. But as the attorney explained that Forrest’s death was going to be ruled a suicide, Patty wondered if it would be better just to try to forget the whole horrible story. She thought about the albums