But now she knew this wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t something that she could organize her way out of. She was stuck—indefinitely—with a madman in a cheap hotel in the suburban wilderness. Her apartment was trashed. Her sister was dead. The man who’d helped her was dead. The police thought she was nuts. And people were trying to kill her.
That was the situation, and there was no room in it that she could see for picking up her little black suit at the cleaner’s, or prioritizing her to-do list on the Amalgamated case. Her life was in ruins. And so she cried, which so startled and embarrassed Duran that he rushed into the bath room, emerging seconds later with a handful of Kleenex. “It’s going to be okay,” he told her, offering her a tissue. “Don’t cry.” Which only made it worse, because that’s what her mother used to say.
And her real mother—“DeeDee”—had been a disaster.
Pregnant at fifteen. On welfare at sixteen. On heroin at eighteen. Autopsied at twenty-four. Too much of a good thing, according to the medical examiner.
Nikki had been old enough to remember her mother’s last overdose and she’d told Adrienne about it many times—how she, Nikki, had been hysterical at finding her mother lying in a pool of vomit. How she’d run through the house, screaming and crying, while three-year-old Adrienne (and here Nikki would play Adrienne’s role, her face a mask of innocence, eyes round and solemn), three-year-old Adrienne had knocked on the neighbor’s door and said, We need help. My mommy is sick. It’s a ‘mergency.
Adrienne didn’t remember this. In fact, she didn’t remember her mother at all—just the hopeful words, and the sometime proffer of a sweetly scented Kleenex. As for Dad, well…
His full name seemed to be Unknown. That, at least, was the name on the birth certificate, the word they’d put in the slot reserved for Father. She and Nikki used to wonder who he was. For a while, they imagined him as a handsome businessman-inventor with a name like “Charles DeVere,” who lived in one of the rich people’s enclaves in the Brandywine Valley. Entombed in a loveless marriage, he’d fallen for their beautiful, if star-crossed, mother—who, on losing him, had turned to drink and then to drugs. Trapped in a death spiral of self-indulgence fueled by romantic despair, she’d been driven to the slums of Wilmington, where all the trails had gone cold. Even now, their father—and it was always “their” father, whatever the likelihood of multiple sires—even now, DeVere was searching for his lost daughters, placing ads in all the big newspapers and hiring teams of investigators.
“What’s so funny?” Duran asked, sitting on the bed with the telephone clamped between his ear and his shoulder.
The question woke Adrienne from her reverie. She’d been staring out the picture window at the parking lot, and somehow, she’d found reason to giggle. “I was thinking of my father,” she said. And then, noticing that Duran was on the phone, became suddenly suspicious. “Who are you calling?” she demanded, her voice freighted with suspicion.
“Domino’s,” Duran replied.
“Oh.”
“I’m on hold. You want sausage?”
She nodded. “Sausage would be good.”
Then someone came on the line, and Duran started talking into the phone. Adrienne turned back to the parking lot, while a soft rain gusted at the window. Beyond the parking lot, was a pedestrian no-man’s-land of isolated office buildings, motels and strip malls. In a lot of ways, it reminded her of where she grew up.
Which was a few miles outside Wilmington, where she and Nikki had gone to live with their grandmother. She remembered Gram—she really did—but not very well, and mostly, she suspected, from Nikki’s stories. What she remembered best was the smell of Gram’s room, which was pure elixir. A melange of vaguely medicinal odors overlaid with the thin perfume of cosmetics—especially the Lily of the Valley cologne and the loose Coty face powder that rested on the dresser near her bed.
Gram wouldn’t talk about her daughter at all, and had in fact destroyed every photograph of her. As a subject, then, DeeDee Sullivan was verboten. Asking about her always led to tears, so that Adrienne learned to censor her curiosity early on. Not so, Nikki, who was relentless in her efforts to obtain information from Gram, an activity that always ended with Nikki screaming, with Nikki on restrictions, with Nikki getting the silent treatment for days. It was during these stretches that Adrienne was pressed into service as an intermediary, relaying whispered messages between the two combatants: Gram says wash your hands now, it’s time for supper. (Nikki says her hands are clean.)
When Gram died, Adrienne was almost six, Nikki eleven. The first couple of months, they lived with an older couple who took in foster children for the money that was in it. Immediately upon arrival, they were given a scalp-biting, anti-lice shampoo and put to bed at eight. Thereafter, they were allowed to bathe only once a week, and made to pray each night. Nikki was inconsolable about not being able to take a shower or wash her hair, calling their foster mother, Mrs. Dunkirk, a “stingy bitch” to her face.
But where Nikki ranted and charmed, stormed and cajoled, Adrienne did what she was told and asked for nothing, hoping the Dunkirks would see what good girls they were. Then, they’d want to keep them forever, which was a lot better than the alternative—which was unknown and never to be imagined. So Nikki threw everything all over the place, while Adrienne tidied up. She made her own bed, and Nikki’s, with military precision, and did the dishes and set the table without complaint. Meanwhile, Nikki caused trouble, got yelled at, and won the Dunkirk’s heart by making them laugh.
Creeping out to the top of the stairs and listening down, Adrien overheard them talking to the Child Services rep one night.
“The older one’s all right,” her foster mother was saying. “A pain in the behind, but cute as a button. A real spunky little gal. It’s the other one worries me, the younger one. Little Goody Two-shoes. Never let’s you know what she’s thinking—keeps it all inside. A real automaton.”
The next morning, Adrienne asked Nikki, “What’s an automaton?”
And Nikki had answered, “A robot.” Then she’d walked around the room stiff-armed and stiff-legged, making little whirring noises, banging into the wall, thumping it with her rigid arms and legs, going, “Rrrnnn Rrrnnn!” Adrienne had done her best to laugh. She wasn’t about to tell Nikki that Mrs. Dunkirk had called her a robot. That would just make Nikki mad, and Nikki, mad, was trouble.
“They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Duran said as he hung up the phone, “or the pizza’s free.”
Adrienne nodded, still thinking about her sister and their childhood. After the Dunkirks, there were three other foster homes and a series of short stays in a holding facility run by Delaware Child Welfare. Then Deck and Marlena took them in.
Enough, she thought. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, as Duran pointed the universal remote at the television.
The pizza arrived as Adrienne finished getting dressed, her face flushed and glistening from the shower’s hot water. “I’m sorry about before,” she told him, as she came back into the room.
Duran looked at her in surprise.
“My little crying jag,” she explained. “I just… lost it for a second.”
“Oh, that,” he replied, thinking—and this was the real source of his surprise—Migod, she’s beautiful. He’d never really looked at her before, not like this. Her damp hair was the color of old pennies, and framed her face in ringlets. Without thinking, he lifted the lid of the pizza box, and pushed it toward her on the bed, an offering—the best he could do under the circumstances.
“Looks delish,” she said, and taking a slice, carried it to the desk beside the window. There, she sat down and began to make a list, writing on a little tablet next to the telephone.