The Year Everything Changed Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother sent every year because it was too complicated to send actual presents from Mexico to Arizona.
    “Why don’t I call the airline.” Before she could say anything, he added, “Just to see if they’d let you exchange this for coach and what kind of refund you’d get.”
    Bottom line—whether it was first-class or on a bus, she would go. She had some questions for Jessie Reed. Starting with where the hell he’d been the last twenty-three years.
    That night was the best sex they’d had in weeks. Randy was high on the possibility they’d be back to work on Illegal Alien and as solicitous of Christina as he’d been after she’d agreed to pay all the household bills with a second job so he could put all his time into the final edits. He’d prepared dinner, put candles and flowers he’d filched from the neighbor’s yard on the table, and even insisted on doing the dishes himself while she studied the director’s notes for her upcoming play.
    Later, spent from their sexual gymnastics, Randy put his arm around her and held her close, her head on his shoulder, his chin nestled in her hair. “What kind of memories do you have about your dad?”
    Although sated and languid and seduced by their intimacy, she hesitated in answering. Her memories of her father were like her dreams of flying, intensely private and vulnerable. Awake, she knew she couldn’t hop into the air and flap her arms and disappear into a cloud, but knowing this did nothing to diminish the wonder and freedom she felt when it happened in her dreams. It was the same with her father, or at least the way it had been before today. Thinking about him was like going to a secret place where she felt special and loved. She would close her eyes and feel the warmth of reaching up to put her hand into his, see eyes that radiated joy when he looked down at her, and hear a deep and gentle voice tell her the man in the moon hadn’t smiled until the day she was born. Her life changed after he disappeared. All that was special and tender and forgiving became memory, childhood armor in the hostile world she inhabited without him.
    She’d gone through a time when she doubted her memories of him. At two months shy of her fourth birthday, could what she remembered be real? Was the Jessie Reed she carried in her heart someone she’d made up to make herself feel loved?
    “Memories?” she repeated. “Hardly any.” Facts she would share. “He and my mother divorced when I was two. That’s when she moved back to Mexico to live with my grandparents. I only saw him a few times after that.”
    “And Carmen never talked about him?” He traced the circle of her belly button with his finger, then stopped to tug gently on her navel ring.
    “Never. The little I know is all bad and came from my cousin, Ricky—my Uncle Mario’s oldest boy. He hated me.” She smiled. “With good reason. I was really mean to him when we were growing up. He retaliated by telling me things about my mother and father he knew would hurt me.”
    “Like?”
    “My mother was pregnant when she met my dad. Her father had thrown her out of the house and she was living with Ricky’s family. Ricky said the only reason my dad married her was because no one else would and he felt sorry for her.”
    “Wait a minute. I thought you said Jessie was your real father.”
    “She lost that baby. I was born a year later, after they’d moved to San Diego.”
    Randy propped himself up on his elbows and fixed her with a stare.
    “What are you thinking?” she asked.
    “That he might be richer than we think. If he made it big once . . . well, maybe he did it again. I’ve read about guys like him and your uncle. Having a business go belly-up doesn’t faze them, they just start over. Sometimes even doing it three or four times before they hit on something that sticks.”
    “So?”
    “So what if it’s not guilt he’s feeling but something else? Like not having anyone to leave his money to except some