Here, too, the swamp cooler was blasting away, but the windows only had thin paper shades, so it felt much brighter than the other house. The furniture looked newer, too, although still plain — a couch and chair covered in plain brown canvas, Navajo rugs on the floor.
Actually, it reminded me of Marie’s house, although much smaller, of course. Maybe those two really had been meant to be together.
Thinking of that just made me uncomfortable, though, because it reminded me of how artificial my father’s relationship with my mother actually had been. He’d said he’d come to care for her, but how much of that feeling was good old-fashioned guilt?
I paused, standing in the middle of the living room.
“Some more water?” my father asked.
“No, thanks.” Now that we were alone together, I began to wonder if this had been such a good idea. The tension between us seemed thick enough that it lay as heavy as the heat outside on my skin. I pulled in a breath, then said, “What did you fight about?”
“Excuse me?”
Since I’d asked the question out of nowhere, I supposed his look of bewilderment was understandable. “We talked with Linda Sanderson, the woman who lived next door to you in Newport Beach back when you were…with my mother. She said you two had a huge fight a few days before I was born, and that you drove off and didn’t come back. So what was the fight about?”
He pushed up his sleeves, a nervous gesture, since they weren’t in any danger of sliding back down past his elbows. “Linda. I hadn’t thought about her in years. She’s still in the same house?”
“Yes. I got the address of the place you and my mother were renting from my birth certificate. Connor and I drove out there, looking for answers.”
Like me, my father was sort of hovering in the middle of the room, ignoring the couches and chair as if they weren’t even there. At last he said, “We fought because your mother found out about Marie.”
“So my mother didn’t know anything? Who did she think you were?” What lies did you tell her? was my unspoken question, and from the twist of my father’s mouth, I got the impression he’d picked up on the unvoiced query loud and clear.
“She thought I was one of the Santiagos.”
“Because that’s what you told her.”
“Yes.”
“And none of the real Santiagos figured out that there was a Wilcox living in their midst?”
The hazel eyes, so similar in shape to my own, were full of anguish. “Things are bad now in California, but they were bad then, too. So many witches and warlocks coming there without permission, and the Santiagos trying to police them all — well, let’s just say I slipped in under the radar. Of course I knew better than to use my powers, do anything to attract attention. Lawrence had seen your mother going to Newport Beach, and that’s where I found her. She was standing on the sand, watching the sunset. Most of the other girls on the beach were wearing bikinis or tank tops and shorts, but Sonya, she had on a pale blue sundress and her hair was blowing in the breeze.” He paused then, obviously attempting to choose the right words. “I guess I hadn’t expected her to be that pretty.”
So she had been, at least from the few photos I’d seen of her. Had he looked at her, that day on the beach so long ago, and thought perhaps the duty he’d been tasked with carrying out wouldn’t be quite as bad as he feared?
“So you…hooked up.”
A frown touched his mouth. “Well, that’s not what people called it back then, but…yes. Not that she needed much persuading. It was as if she’d gone there determined to lose her virginity at the earliest opportunity.”
As much as I really didn’t want to think that about my mother, I knew it was only the truth. The best way to avoid bonding with her consort and becoming prima was to throw away that virginity as soon as she could. No one in Jerome or Cottonwood or Clarkdale would have touched her, knowing what was at stake, but a handsome stranger she met on a beach in California was a completely different story.
“And so….”
“And so…we were together. She was staying in a little motel down on the peninsula. We spent a few weeks there, and then we thought we’d try renting a house together.”
“Her idea or yours?” I asked, knowing the question had come out more sharply than I’d intended.
He didn’t blink. “Mine. To be honest, I don’t think she had a real plan. She’d gotten away, gotten out, and made damn sure she wouldn’t be the McAllisters’ newest prima. Maybe in her head she’d thought she would just go back to Jerome after that. But she was having fun in Newport and decided she might as well stay for a while. And then….” The words died away, but I knew what he’d been about to say.