“Casey said, don’t feel bad, Mom, you didn’t really hate him. Brock said John would have died whether I’d stopped to curse him or not. They look at me differently, Belle. More curiosity. They’re asking more questions about their dad. And me. It’s like the article freed us somehow—John and me. Made us more … real? The boys’ socials have been lighting up with this. Everybody’s got an opinion about me.”
“I saw Casey last week but we didn’t talk. How is he?”
“Tied up with a woman I don’t much like. She’s using him.”
“Let me guess. For his good looks, talent, and sweet heart? And Brock? How is your dark missionary?”
“Driven as always.”
“It’s so strange that Brock got his grandfather Mike’s religious pep, not Casey. Maybe something to do with him almost dying, like his dad did.”
“I’ve thought about that. Casey wants to believe. Brock wants to be believed.”
“What about you? Since almost drowning?”
“Religious pep? No. None for me. I’m just a protect-and-serve kind of girl—because of Dad.”
“Such good boys. Do they still call you Momster behind your back?”
“Face to face now. I take it as a compliment.”
The women stop to watch the waves crash in at Rockpile.
“Where we first saw him,” says Jen.
“We were lucky, Jen. But John was, too.”
Heading back for the fortune-telling table, Belle has a customer waiting. He’s a cool-looking surf dude with a board propped in the sand and a leashed Malinois sitting attentively at his feet.
Belle stops and whirls and gives Jen an exaggerated, big-eyed racoon stare. Fusses with her hair.
“How do I look?”
“Convincing.”
Jen kisses her cheek.
“I’m still up on Castle Rock in the canyon, Belle, if you ever want to shower or crash awhile.”
Not for the first time, Jen takes an awful gut punch at the idea of Belle and John in her bed at home on Castle Rock. Will probably never ask that. The truth may set you free, but right now she doesn’t want to be that free.
“Careful what you wish for, Jen.”
“I mean it.”
As if on cue, they both look back at the John painting on the sea wall.
“I’ll be seeing you around, Belle.”
“You’re awesome, Jen. John said that all the time.”
42
Late that afternoon Casey and Bette sit in the backyard of his Dodge City cottage on Woodland. Mae lies at their feet under the bistro table near the tangerine tree.
The waning day is clear but cool. Even this far into fall, the tangerine tree blossoms sweetly and the plumeria throws off a spicy scent. The birds-of-paradise stand proudly orange and blue, and the bougainvillea is a purple wall.
He shoots some pictures of the flowers, posts them as a CaseyGram along with a haiku that just popped into his mind:
Bougainvillea bracts
White stars in the middle, like,
A purple riot
Ms. Paige up at Thurston Middle School taught his class the 5–7–5 formula, and Casey really dug how cool the rhythm was, though the best he could get out of seventh-grade English was a C-plus because he was such a slow reader and spent class time sketching waves.
This is the sixth afternoon in a row they’ve been here. Bette wears Casey’s heavy Navajo-print robe and fleece slippers, as she has all week. That first day back from Mavericks, she slept for twenty-plus hours in the guest room, aided by a space heater and her pain pills. Casey sat bedside, guzzling coffee, waking her up every few hours to Bette’s woozy annoyance.
Of these six days, Detective Pittman has been here four long mornings, with his questions and voice recorder and video camera. He’s methodical and patient, asking the same questions again and again, checking dates and times, exact locations, exact words spoken, expressions, tones of voice, background, background, and more background.
Casey waits on them like good customers in his bar, checking on their coffees and drinks, making them snacks, eavesdropping. In between Bette’s recorded conversations with her father, Mr. Fang, and other principals in King Jim Seafood, Casey overhears “unindicted coconspirator,” “plea bargain,” “immunity from prosecution,” “testimony,” and “court time.” He also hears Bette tell the detective that she’s thinking of “getting as far away from him as I can get when this is over.”
“He’ll be in prison when this is over,” said the detective.
Now in the dimming light Casey considers the stitches in Bette Wu’s eyebrow. And the plum-purple bruises around her eyes, fading to orange. The bruises on her cheeks are lighter, too. The two small stitches keeping the edges of her lips aligned as they heal—taken by Casey’s surfing doctor friend in Half Moon Bay—should be ready to remove in two days.
They sit side by side to view the sunset. Bette drinks wine through a straw; Casey a virgin version of the Barrel Scorpion, heavy on his seedless tangerine juice, which he uses instead of orange juice. Her phone is on the table and she keeps looking at it.
