She called her office, and Gowecki, the only one ever in at such an ungodly hour, unfortunately answered. She explained that she needed to reassess a house in Pico Rivera, that she’d lost some paperwork, which was why she was driving there so very, very early.
Then she apologized a few more times for goofing up, then she drove to Whittier instead.
As Ray Jackson had said, the Hubbels still lived on Franklin Street in their white mansion with the red tile roof and the palm trees. Their home looked as wonderful as it had in her childhood. Across the street, her old house looked about the same, a ramshackle two-story with white wood siding.
The friendly old wooden fence that had sat at the top of the driveway of her old home had been replaced by a mean-looking chain-link. A Rhodesian ridgeback’s nose poked past the metal as he watched her nervously, although silently. There had been a couple of owners since their mother, and the place today would be worth maybe fifty times what her grandfather had paid. He had owned the place before leaving it to Ma. He had paid twenty grand. Too bad Ma had sold it and burned through the profits far too fast at a nursing home.
Kat climbed the steps to the oversized plank door of Leigh’s childhood home and saw the wrought-iron peephole where Leigh’s mother always checked first. Now, an educated adult, she recognized that this house had been built in the thirties. They had paid it off long ago, no doubt. She thought that today it would be worth maybe a million five, more if they had ever put a pool into the backyard, but she hadn’t looked at comps for the area, so she could be off. And of course, some depended on whether they had upgraded the kitchen and bathrooms.
“Why, Kat!” Rebecca Hubbel appeared surprised and delighted to see her.
“Hi. I was in the neighborhood.” She was pulled in, kicking off her sandals at the threshold. The Hubbels had been watching the Nature Channel from behind TV trays full of eggs and steaming mugs. Rebecca Hubbel wore a sleeveless blouse and walking shorts. There were a lot of veins in her legs Kat didn’t remember, but otherwise she looked just the same, glasses, untidy hair, sweet face.
Leigh’s father, James Hubbel, sat back down in his red leather chair. The TV was a plasma screen hung above the massive fireplace, which Kat had never seen producing a fire. Lit by windows flooding with morning sun that showed the sheen of the polished wood floor and its silk area rugs, the double-height room with its formal staircase had lost none of its beauty. Leigh’s father muted the sound but let the sharks on the screen roam free. He had gotten very paunchy in the six years since Tom’s funeral, but he still had the long arms and barrel chest she remembered.
Kat was invited to sit down in a Queen Anne recliner covered in soft green chenille upholstery with curved legs and a doily protecting the headrest. She remembered the chair. What was it like, living with the same chair-partner-for so many years you finished each other’s sentences and corrected each other without getting mad?
Surprised at her sudden reappearance in their lives after so many years of silence, the Hubbels traded a few cautious pleasantries. Rebecca Hubbel said she was still feeling weak after a bout of diverticulitis. The people who lived in the Tinsleys’ old house were Hurricane Katrina survivors who had given up on New Orleans. Kat told them about Jacki’s marriage and pregnancy. They offered her coffee. When she refused it, a cold Snapple appeared in her hand.
“I’m looking for Leigh,” Kat said.
They deflated like bad inner tubes. “Then you don’t know where she is, either?” said James. “I guess when we saw you, we thought maybe…”
“I went to her home and her husband told me she’s taking some time away. But it’s been days since anyone saw her-”
“Six days!” Rebecca interjected.
“-and she hasn’t been in touch at her office either.”
“Or with us.” They spoke together.
Leigh’s father said, “I put some LAPD buddies on it-they’ve got a missing persons unit-but to tell you the truth, Topanga’s not their jurisdiction; it’s the sheriff’s. They have more limited resources. With an adult, they have to be convinced something’s wrong: she’s disabled, in danger, sick, a crime victim, impaired…We can’t prove anything. The sheriff says not to panic. Wait a few more days, a week at the outside. If we don’t hear from her by then, everybody gets involved.”
“You think that her husband-”
“What can we think? You don’t go off like that, take an overnight bag, leaving everything without a damn good reason, and she didn’t have any reason. If she had a fight with Ray she knew she had her room upstairs, and we could have kept Ray away if she wanted. Why not come home to the room she left years ago, that we’ve kept for her, or for her children-”
“How often would you talk before she, uh, went away?”
“Every day, almost,” said Rebecca. “I just don’t understand. Ray seems like such a good young man. We were so happy when they decided to get married. And he encouraged her to do exactly what she always wanted to do. Helped her set up a business. She’s very successful, you know.”
“I have heard that.”
“We missed you at the wedding. She missed you,” Hubbel said.
“Yes, well, I was still getting over Tom’s death and I-”
“I wish she had stayed with your brother, now,” Hubbel interrupted, focused on his own problems. “Maybe she would be here with us.”
Rebecca Hubbel had teared up. Her husband handed her a clean handkerchief, and she dabbed at her eyes. “Did you know Leigh saw a counselor for almost a year after the-incident?”
Maybe if Kat had seen a counselor, she wouldn’t be sitting in this house on Franklin Street again, getting singed by burning memories. “No,” she said. “Did it help?”
“Some. But she could have used a friend.”
“Don’t make Kat feel bad, Jim,” Rebecca said.
“It’s all right,” Kat muttered. She remembered playing dolls in this room with Leigh, how they had turned that painted cabinet in the corner into a miniature house with curtains, windows painted on with markers, even adding a patio alongside on the coffee table. Leigh’s father, young then, had helped enthusiastically. Her mother bought toy furniture for the project.
What would they think, if they had known the stories she and Leigh dreamed up? In their fantasies, men played a peripheral role. Male dolls were so ugly. Their doll world featured Junoesque women who bore and raised children alone, with men as fleeting presences, available only when required.
She wondered at her memories, how they influenced the present. Did she want a man literally to come and go?
Had Leigh?
They swung side by side in the swings in the old swing set in Kat’s backyard. Fifth grade. “I wish I had your parents,” Kat said, kicking hard to get up higher.
“Are you crazy?” Leigh asked. Her legs dangled lazily, and she pushed off each time on only one foot. “I think you must be.”
“They do a lot for you! Barbies are expensive. You have five of them.”
“No,” Leigh had said. “They buy me stuff but they pay way too much attention. My dad follows me around warning me about bogeymen on every corner. He goes bananas if I’m ten minutes late home.”
“He’s a cop, right? That’s his job.”
“You guys have so much fun.”
“Oh, yeah, my great family. We’re broke. They take us to Vegas to blow their money and then we don’t get any new clothes for school. They yell at each other.”
“Hey, at least it’s not all quiet at night with two people breathing down your neck about whether you did your homework and on you about whether you brushed your teeth and warning you that too much television rots your brain. You and Tommy and Jacki watch all the television you want.”