But her mother had been sulking ever since. Not returning phone messages and then, when Pip did reach her, not joyfully ejaculating but making her displeasure known with sighs and silences and monosyllabic answers to Pip’s dutiful questions. Pip had finally gotten angry and stopped calling altogether. She hadn’t even told her mother she’d moved in with Tom and Leila. For a while, living with them, she’d felt vindicated in her belief that she could have been a well-adjusted and effective person if she’d had a pair of parents like these. They’d already done so much to help her that finding her real father had ceased to be a burning priority. But preferring them as parents made her pity her mother, who was alone in Felton and had done her best with the poor resources she had. Pip’s life seemed like a conspiracy to betray every single person in it. And now Tom seemed to have a thing for her, which amounted to yet another betrayal, a betrayal of Leila that Pip hadn’t intended and couldn’t control. It was all making her even more dependent on her nightly textings with Andreas and the self-touching she often did afterward.
Tom was still snoring when she ventured out to the bathroom. From downstairs came a smell of coffee and the faint patter of a keyboard. Pip felt pity for Leila, too. And for Tom, if he was attracted to her. And of course for Andreas, and for Colleen. Apparently pity and betrayal were related.
Back in her bed, she texted Andreas. It was too late at night to expect a reply, and she should have just gone to sleep, but instead she appended further texts.
She was erasing the last message, which she’d typed only as a masturbation aid, when a reply came in from Los Volcanes.
She was surprised. It was four in the morning in Bolivia.
She waited ten minutes, second-guessing herself, for his reply to her temerity. She knew she was behaving badly, trying to keep him interested after having twice rejected him. But right now their texting was the closest thing she had to a sex life. She typed more:
His text was like a sock in the jaw. Her hands jumped away from her device, letting it fall between her legs. Was he jealous of Tom? It seemed important to set the record straight, and so she picked up the device again. She cursed the errors her trembling finger made.
She fell on her side with a whimper and pulled the comforter over her head. She couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong — she’d said she wasn’t interested in Tom. Why was Andreas punishing her now? She writhed under the comforter, trying and failing to make sense of what he’d written, until the comforter became a tormentor. Sweating all over, she threw it off and went downstairs to the dining room, where Leila was working.
“You’re still awake?” Leila said.
Her smile was troubled but not phony. Pip sat down across the table from her. “Can’t sleep.”
“Do you want an Ambien? I have a veritable cornucopia.”
“Will you tell me what you found out in Washington?”
“Let me get you an Ambien.”
“No. Just let me sit here while you work.”
Leila smiled at her again. “I like that you can be honest about what you want. It’s something I still struggle with.”
Her smiles were taking some of the sting off Andreas’s brutal words.
“But let me try it,” Leila said. “I want you to not sit here while I work.”
“Oh,” Pip said, very hurt.
“It makes me self-conscious. If you really don’t mind?”
“No, I’ll leave. It’s just—” Outburst Alert. Outburst Alert. “I don’t know why you’re being so weird to me. I didn’t do anything to you. I would never do anything to hurt you.”
Leila was still smiling, but something was glittering in her eyes, something awfully similar to hatred. “I’d appreciate it if you’d just let me work.”
“Do you think I’m a home-wrecker? Do you think I’d ever in a million years do that to you?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Then why are you being this way, if it’s not my fault?”
“Do you know who your father is?”
“My father?” Pip made an insultingly baffled face and gesture.
“Are you ever curious?”
“What does any of this have to do with my father?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t. I already feel like I walk around in life with this sign hanging from my neck, BEWARE OF DOG, DIDN’T HAVE FATHER. It doesn’t mean I want to have sex with every older man who comes my way.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can pack my things and move out tomorrow. I’ll quit my job, too, if that would help.”
“I don’t want you to do either of those things.”
“Then what? Wear a burka?”
“I’m going to be spending more time with Charles. You and Tom can have the house to yourselves to work out whatever you have to work out.”
“There is nothing to work out.”
“The point is simply—”
“I thought you guys were sane and normal. That’s part of what I love about you. And now it’s like I’m a lab rat you’re leaving alone in a cage with another rat to see what happens.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Sure feels like it.”
“Tom and I are having some trouble. That’s all it is. Can I get you an Ambien?”
Pip took the Ambien and woke up alone in the house. In the windows was a pale gray Colorado morning sky of the sort from which she’d learned not to predict the afternoon weather — it could snow or turn shockingly warm — but she was grateful for the bright overcast; it matched her spirits. She’d been terminated by Andreas but also released; she felt both bruised and cleaner. After reheating and eating some frozen waffles, she went out walking toward downtown Denver.
The air smelled like spring, and the Rockies, behind her, all snowy, were there to remind her that she still had many things to do in life, such as going up to Estes Park and experiencing the mountains from close range. She could do this after she made her confession to Tom and before she returned to California. In the crisp air, she saw clearly that the time to confess had come. As long as she’d had her late-night textings and touchings, she’d had some reason to have planted the spyware and to avoid the awfulness of telling Tom about it: she was bewitched and enslaved by Andreas. Now there was no reason, nor any sense in trying to preserve the life she had going in Denver, however eagerly she’d taken to it. The whole thing was built on lies, and she wanted to come clean.
Her resolve was firm until she arrived at DI and was reminded that she loved the place. The overhead lights were off in the main space, but two journalists were in the conference room and Pip could hear Leila’s pretty telephone voice in her task-lighted work space. Pip hesitated in the corridor, wondering if she could still avoid confessing. Maybe if the spyware disappeared? But whatever was upsetting Leila wasn’t going away. If she was upset about Tom liking Pip too much, a full confession would certainly put an end to that. Pip took the long way around to his office, avoiding Leila.
His door was standing open. As soon as he saw Pip, he reached quickly for his computer mouse.
“Sorry,” she said. “Are you in the middle of something?”
For a moment, he seemed totally guilty. He opened his mouth without saying anything. Then, collecting himself, he told her to come in and shut the door. “We’re in battle mode,” he said. “Or Leila’s in battle mode. I’m in Leila-care mode. Her engine runs hot when she’s afraid of being scooped.”