We walked around the cathedral construction site. I met one of the security guards, Adam, and Reggie said to call Adam if I ever needed anything. Adam would handle it. I thought maybe I could tell Adam that Nick was getting more and more aggro, and maybe he could maybe get Nick to chill. Then I thought, don’t be a coward, girl, if Nick is dissing you, then get in his face yourself. Inside, he’s a sweet guy, but I frustrate him with the no-sex-until-next-year-when-I’m-fourteen thing. He’s all, what about handjobs? But I’m stubborn and have almost no interest in that with him and I don’t owe Nick anything. I carry my own weight, except he drives everywhere because I’m too young. Which in the papillon van gets us lots of laughs, but some business, too. Half of what we do I pay for, gas included. If Pen knew how much of my allowance I spend on Nick, she might not be too happy.
Pen made me promise no sex until I’m eighteen, but I renegotiated with myself in case I meet someone better than Nick. Someone who makes me feel more that way. I mean, I do feel that way, and if you judge menstruationally, then I’m all grown up. I mean, someone who makes me really, really feel that way. Like an authentic connection. Physical, yes. But a soul thing, too. Soul mates? I don’t know. Out loud it sounds so sappy and dumb.
Inside the construction trailer he showed me the drawings for his new church. We sat on a couch and he spread the plans across our laps. Arms touching. Hmm, I thought. I’d never been that close to him. The architect cost one hundred thousand dollars. It will look very modern, kind of a mash-up of glass and wood and steel with big cables connecting things. Reggie said the architecture was supposed to symbolize the fractionalized world and the cables are Jesus, holding everything together.
Gotta go now!
Penelope gave me a sickened look.
Daley played some of her songs, accompanying herself on guitar. Her voice was a soprano, bell-clear, with a girl’s sweetness in it. She didn’t hold her notes any longer than necessary, giving the lyrics a moving simplicity. The songs were grounded in the wonder of physical things: the ocean, which was new to Daley; seagulls contesting food scraps thrown by a child; the loud power of an Amtrak train rushing north from San Diego to L.A. Her guitar picking was simple and timely.
“She has talent,” I said.
“She didn’t get it from me. Reggie plays beautifully. At least, he used to. So the talent is more circumstantial evidence that he is Daley’s father. Since my eyewitness accounts are not enough.”
“I’ll plod into the truth on my own time,” I said. “That’s just the way I do things.”
She came and sat at the far end of the couch.
“Give me your hand.”
With both our arms extended, our hands met, palm to palm, hers on top.
“I want you to believe me, because what I’ve told you is true,” she said. “I want you to like me in spite of it.”
“I like you very much. You’re smart and funny and easy on the eyes. You brought me some thoughtful gifts that night. And some home nursing. It all meant something to me, Penelope. Really.”
“But you look at me like I’m a pathetic victim,” she said. “An oversexed, low-IQ girl with eyes for a preacher man.”
“No.”
“Then how, exactly, do you see me? I’ll accept nothing but the truth.”
She squeezed my hands. Stronger than I’d have thought.
“You know how to put a man on the spot.”
“We’ll sit here until you answer me.”
I imagined different answers, each true and each leading off the same cliff. “A bright young woman with a troubled heart and a tough problem to solve.”
“How craftily you avoid my past,” she said. “I need you to see it clearly. It’s who I am.”
“Only partially. Once upon a time. Which marches on.”
“Do you believe me or not?”
“I want to believe you.”
The hand squeeze again.
“But if you are proven wrong, would you still like me on a go-forward basis?”
“Okay.”
Penelope Rideout, peering at me through clouds of doubt. Then a gradual change. Subtle but apparent. A thin ray of sunlight. Another. Willpower? Hope? Acceptance?
“Hmmm. Okay? Okay.”
She let go of my hands and aimed the remote.
Daley’s voice filled the room again, no songs, but snippets from her days at Monarch, her first time at Alchemy 101, ups and downs with Nick.
Followed by ruminations on what made Penny so afraid of her own shadow, like every window in every place we ever lived had something bad waiting outside it. When I ask her why, she says don’t be silly. I think it’s probably something to do with Mom and Dad. Like everything is. When I look at pictures of them I don’t feel very much. I hope that doesn’t make me a sociopath. I remember them only a little, and unclearly. Mom was pretty and talkative. Dad was quiet. They both seemed huge. There. I just exhausted my memories of them.
Toward the end of the sixty-minute disc, Daley introduced her new song, “Mansion on the Sand.” It was brief.
We sat in a silence longer than the song. The sickened look came back to Penelope’s face. She wiped a tear and flicked her hand sharply and the tear shot toward the kitchen.
“Fuck, I’m tired of this,” she said. “Can’t you just go get her and bring her back? Then Daley and I can turn around and light out for the territory ahead. Move again. And move again and again, a million more times. Move for fucking ever. And you won’t have to deal with me and my melodramas, or try to figure out what you think about me. I’ll get over you. We’ll send Christmas cards. I was happy running away because it was always away from him. Now I’ve stopped and tried to fight, and I’ve lost her.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I know SNR Security works for him. I know you’re just one man. And you can’t go up against them alone again.”
“Roger that. Don’t lose hope.”
31
The trail leading to Pastor Reggie Atlas’s mansion on the sand wasn’t quite as hard to find as I thought it would be.
It took me most of the next day to pick it up through the labyrinthine IvarDuggans.com “Known Associates” and “Doing Business As” listings for Reggie Atlas and his Four Wheels for Jesus Ministry. A Mexican LLC controlled by six known Atlas associates had formed a real estate investment trust and brought shares to market on the U.S. stock exchange.
The trust was called Sand Mansion Investments, and offered shares in properties in Baja California’s burgeoning East Cape, just north of La Paz. East Cape was serviced by two good airports, one in San José del Cabo, the other in La Paz.
I knew the area. Once a loose necklace of peaceful villages strung along the Gulf of California, East Cape was rapidly developing into a land of luxury hotels, ecotourism, and tony golf resorts.
I’d even worked a case down there, locating and finally helping a careless gringa get back to the U.S. She had gotten herself into some ugly trouble, an impromptu kidnapping attempt that was both amateurish and potentially lethal. She was very happy to finally board her plane out of La Paz. So was I. As American journalist Ambrose Bierce had written to a niece more than a century ago, not long before he disappeared in Mexico, “To be a gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia.” For me, it almost was. For the gringa, too.