I should say that Bonnie was not to blame. Her only crime was her infectious excitement; later it would be made clear to me that she saw me as an abstract, my unbelievable story taking place so far out of the bounds of her limited suburban existence that I might as well have been a character in a book. She saw no consequence in her advice and I drank up the attention. Bonnie was my adoring fan, my follower, the reader who can't put the book down, and she was guilty only of pushing me forward, of revealing more of the story. I was the one who acted - all she did was give me the idea.
I didn't get around to snooping until Wednesday afternoon. It took me until Tuesday night to get used to the idea of violating Russell's privacy, and another half a day to steel myself against the blow-up that should occur if I was caught. I had been the target of two barely-provoked verbal attacks, and I hated to think what he would do or say if he caught me at something that was so far out of the way of acceptable that even I ought to know better. But Bonnie was right. I deserved to know about Emily and I deserved to know about Russell, and why against all reason he had taken me in and given me something of a home - naturally he forfeited his secrets when I walked in the door.
One thing I had noticed was that Russell never talked about himself. His father had died when he was still a teenager: This he had told me. He had been divorced twice before, the second time very recently (though I didn't know how recently, or what the circumstances were, or what role those circumstances were to play later on). He was thirty-six and would be thirty-seven within a couple of weeks. He had ties to Montana. But there was little else. Though I guarded my past so carefully, as his ward and friend I thought I deserved the sort of information that I denied him.
Wednesday afternoon came with what I had been assured was a perfectly seasonable injection warmth, and on the walk home I shed my jacket. The sun had returned from its absence and breathed gently down on the peninsula again, bringing with it brightness and energy and Vitamin D. It inspired adventure. And hope. I turned down my street and slipped in the front door, deposited my backpack on the couch, kicked my shoes off and went down the hall to Russell's office.
I had planned all this out in advance, of course. I still cleaned the house when Russell wasn't home, and had stayed out of his bedroom and office, but the doors were always ajar, and I knew what they looked like, where he was likely to keep important papers, where his photo albums would probably be, if he had any. I had a couple of hours before he got home. I started on his bedroom first, looking under his bed, in his nightstand. The real treasures, of course, were in his office.
Before I found the fire safe, I located a book on runaway and homeless youth, sitting on his desk beneath a pile of bills. It had been paged through and marked in places - profiles, stories. Advice on trust in particular, which Russell was trying to earn while I was busy violating his. I looked in the index to see if there was an entry for guilt, and there were several, but I put it back before I could read about it. I wouldn't cheat and read his strategy guide; it was enough to know that he was spending time trying to figure me out. I wished I had a manual for him.
I don't know why I didn't notice the fire safe first. I guess I assumed that the important stuff would just be sitting out for some reason, but after ten more minutes of searching I stumbled across it and turned the key that had been placed in the lock, and everything was clear.
Emily was his daughter. He had a daughter. A real one.
This was not the revelation it should have been. I had suspected, when he'd told me that's what my name was - here was her birth certificate, citing a birthdate of July 13th, 1994, her mother, Camille Elizabeth Dunn, her father, Theodore Russell Dunn, and their respective birthdates, and the hospital, maiden names, doctor's signatures. I wondered what had happened to her, and found out as I dug further into the safe: Divorce papers. Orders for child support. Official letters. It was like the story was being told right before my eyes, and there was heartbreak there that was so far beyond what I needed or deserved to know that I didn't want to see anymore.
I stopped reading. I put everything back into the fire safe carefully, and turned the key and replaced it in its closet. When I turned around, Russell was standing in the doorway.
The first thing I noticed about him was the smudge across his forehead. The second thing was the look on his face. It wasn't betrayal - not even close. It was as if he had expected to come home and find me here, had been expecting that for awhile, and was trying to decide how to react now that it had happened.
"How much did you read?" he said. He was calm. It was worse than being shouted at.
"She was your daughter," I said, and then, guessing, "and you lost her."
"You didn't read everything."
"Somewhat too late," I said, "I realized that it was none of my business."
Russell sighed and closed his eyes. I waited, sitting on the floor, for him to say something. He came into the room and sat down in his office chair.
"You're not mad," I said.
"Oh, no, I'm mad. I'm fucking pissed. But I'm not surprised. Except I thought you'd hold out a little longer."
I didn't say anything.
"You didn't get the whole story, did you? From those papers."
I looked up at him. "I don't know."
"I was twenty-one. And married. It was the stupidest goddamn thing I'd ever done. And she wanted a kid. And I didn't."
"Oh." I understood who I was to Russell now, that I was a stand-in for his daughter, who was my age, who was growing up somewhere else. This wasn't about me at all. This was about fulfilling a debt to someone else. All things that I could have guessed at. "'I'm sorry' is pretty insufficient, huh?"
"You think?" Out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at me. He wasn't blameless either. He had left the key there - he had expected me to snoop, and he was angry at me for proving him right. Only my desire to keep on living in his house kept me from pointing this out.
I ran my fingers over the carpet. "I just wanted to know why."
"I know."
"I wanted to know more about you."
"Yeah."
Silence. Then I said, "You have dirt on your forehead."
"Yeah,
I know. It's Ash Wednesday. That's why I'm home early." He said
it like it should make
sense but the only thing I knew for sure was
that he looked kind of ridiculous with a smudge of dirt across his
forehead.
"You're not yelling at me," I observed.
"No." He put his face in his hands and rubbed his forehead. "No, there's no fucking point."
I couldn't argue with that. "I won't do it again."
Russell laughed mirthlessly. "Peanut, I don't care if you do it again. About the only thing you have left in there to find is my army discharge papers."
I hadn't known he was in the army, but this didn't seem like the time to make that observation.
"If you have any questions you had better ask them now."
"I don't," I said.
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
He got up. "Mia is going to be here in a couple hours."
I nodded.
"Hazel?"
I looked at him.
"You owe me."
I didn't know what I owed him, but I agreed that I did. I got up and followed him to the kitchen, and though it was Ash Wednesday, though we should have had a fileted salmon with lemon wedges, he showed me how to make meatloaf, and I sailed through the evening on numbness and humility.
