The news that Dorothy Kitchens was a delusional psychopath who had, for years, imagined herself the chief of a defunct-since-the-seventeenth-century Native American tribe had whipped up quite the media storm. The revelation that I was Dorothy’s birth child, and reports of Doro’s attempt to murder Mom? That news had caused the Kitty Cultists to lose their collective mind.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. After I was finally able to reach the police and they’d taken care of everything else, they’d discovered Esther’s and Laila’s lifeless bodies—torn from shotgun blasts and pushed behind a hot-water heater in a closet in Ambletern’s kitchen. Doro had shot them both. Sometime in the days that followed, I’d been able to talk to Esther’s son on the phone. He’d been quiet, respectful. Then asked me not to come to the funeral.
Billy Kitchens died of cardiac arrest brought on by a snakebite, in the center of the mission ruins. He was lying beside his daughter, the precious daughter he’d raised to think she could do and be anything she wanted. The child he coddled and pampered and protected who grew into an adult—and monster. In a way, he paid for his sins and hers.
The mare was found a couple of feet away from Billy and Doro. The foal was with her. Incredibly, someone had managed to snap a picture of them. When I saw it in the New York Post, I cried uncontrollably.
The fortieth-anniversary edition of Kitten had instantly presold hundreds of thousands of copies. Mom’s people were in a frenzy, talking movie sequels, a cable series, a theme park down in Georgia. “Mom’s people” meaning Asa Bloch. I’d decided to let that one go. I was finding it nearly impossible to hate anyone; I just didn’t have the energy. And also he’d gotten a five-figure book deal for Susan Doucette. So maybe he was okay.
Everyone—from shopgirls to waiters to cabbies to friends—keeps asking how I’m handling it all. I find it hard to express my feelings in any coherent way, so I’ll just say this: any day I don’t come across an in-depth think piece about “The White Savior Syndrome as Represented in Western Pop Culture,” featuring my mother and Doro Kitchens, is a good day.
And there are good days. A lot of that has to do with Koa. He was able to fulfill the promise he’d made to his old friend Neal Baker and tell him that Doro was the one who’d killed his daughter, Kim. I think it made him feel like he’d closed an important chapter in his own life. The night he flew back from Texas to New York, I met him at the airport, and I could see the peace in his face. It was the same night he told me that he loved me.
A couple of minutes after my grand entrance at Bemelmans, the clink of glasses and roar of voices returned to its previous volume. Koa and I pressed our way through the crowd to the bar, where we ran into Aurora. After I hugged my friend and we each fawned over the other’s dress, she nudged my shoulder.
“Your six o’clock,” she murmured.
I turned. In the amber light of the bar, a tall man with carefully coiffed black hair, a long, bent nose, and a face composed of a series of sharp planes lounged against a far wall. He was dressed in a tight, expensively tailored suit and was staring intently at our little group. When I caught his eye, he hunched and rotated away. I faced the bar again.
I would need at least two more drinks to deal with that situation.
Sometime near the end of the evening, the Bemelmans’s pianist plunged into the theme from one of the Kitten movies, a haunting but beautiful piece. I hadn’t meant to, but, spurred on by the music, I found myself searching the room for the tall stranger. I finally located him, standing alone against the whimsically muraled wall. He was watching me, the way he had been earlier. I gave Koa a swift kiss on the cheek and made my way over to him.
“Peter Darnell,” I said.
“That’s right.”
I gazed at him in fascination. His face was dark like mine. My father.
“How did you get in?” I asked.
“I know people.” He gave me a tense smile.
“You know who I am, right?”
“Of course I do. You’re why I came. Megan.” His voice had a hint of a Southern twang to it. We shook hands, and I waited for my fingers to bloom with prickles. They didn’t.
“Megan. Or Aiyana,” I said.
I thought I detected a flush along his neck, just above the blinding-white collar of his shirt. He pulled at his navy tie. He was handsome, but not dazzling. Like an actor you’d cast if you didn’t want to upstage the female lead.
“And the last name,” I went on. “I have my choice of three. Ashley, Kitchens, or Darnell. Depending on which version of the story I believe.”
He smiled again, this time broadly, baring a row of beautiful white teeth. One incisor jutted out, making me think of a feral dog. A wolf.
“Well, we all choose who we are, ultimately. Don’t you agree?”
I upended my whiskey, then set the empty tumbler on the table beside us. A waiter promptly swept it up.
“No. We are who we are, and we either choose to face it or live in denial.” I studied him. “Speaking of which—”
“I’m Egyptian. Half. Adopted by the Darnells.”
I nodded. Half-Egyptian in an otherwise all-white family. We were more alike than I thought.
“Forgive my awkwardness, Megan. I came here expecting . . . hoping to see you. My daughter. But now that you’re here, I find that I’m unprepared. And probably not saying anything the way I practiced it.”
I returned his smile. But I doubted this man, my father, had ever rehearsed a speech. He was a murderer, if Doro had told the truth. He’d been close to her, then turned, toying with her and using her. It sounded crazy, but he might be more of a psychopath than Doro. And yet, I was still standing here.
“You’re lovely,” he said. “And certainly accomplished, I imagine. What I was hoping . . . maybe it’s not possible. But I’d like to think you’re open . . . perhaps . . . to a relationship. Between us.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s hard to say right now.”
Silence fell, and he glanced at Frances, surrounded by a knot of well-wishers.
“Have you met her yet?” I asked.
“No. But I think I’ll wait until another time to introduce myself. I really just want to talk to you.”
I folded my arms. “About what? Kim Baker’s murder?”
His eyes danced over the crowd. “I don’t need to hear the lies Doro told about me. Doro was a troubled woman. A deeply disturbed girl.”
“So that’s your official position? It’s all lies? You didn’t help her kill Kim Baker?”
He sent me a sharp look. A probing one.
“Because you know they haven’t closed the case just yet,” I said. “I understand there are a few more details they’re investigating.”
He fidgeted with the knot in his tie. Smoothed the end of it. “I just want to talk to my daughter right now.”
I looked over at Koa and Aurora, standing at the bar. They were both watching Peter Darnell and me, straight-backed and hawkeyed. Ready to fly to my aid if I gave the signal. My heart surged with love. I turned back to him.
“I’m living here in New York with my mother until she fully recovers. In a month or so, I’ll be moving in with my boyfriend and starting a new job.”
“Congratulations. Where?”
“A nonprofit in town.”
He nodded in an easy way. Doing the father routine.