“Your colleague, Dom Roachford. Was there something else you needed to ask about Cherry?”
Of course someone else has been here. Any decent reporter in the area would have been here already. She scolds herself.
“Yes.” She won’t break the smile. “We just needed a couple of extra details for our story.”
His eyes skitter around her face, checking for cracks.
“We just hope that getting the word out there will encourage anyone who knows anything to come forward.”
It feels cheap—truly cheap—lying to a bereaved father. But, she hurriedly reminds herself, this is the only way she is going to get what she needs. And it is for a good cause. It’s for Cheryl.
“Come on in.” He nods over his shoulder, toward the front door. “We just want to catch whoever did this.”
Tragedy has snatched all warmth from the house. There are people on the couch, drinking tea, their eyes ringed with red. Others are gathered in the kitchen, mouths turned downward, hair done nicely.
In the living room, condolence cards line the mantelpiece. There’s an overspill of lilies in a thick glass vase, their stamens drooping so low that orange pollen has begun to collect on the carpet. There are ornaments on the shelves, little ceramic animals that Elsie’s mother used to collect, too. Family photos hang on the walls. The tasseled cushions have been plumped especially for today’s guests. The householdcertainly doesn’t look, Elsie thinks, like the sort that would have links to a dangerous gang like the Kings.
She eyes the lilies. She received flowers—just one bunch, freesias—when Albert had been arrested. No note. She’d thought it odd. What on earth was she supposed to do with flowers? As the petals wilted, she had denied the authorities and the journalists nothing. Not because she was charitable, like Mr. Herrera, but because she hadn’t had the strength to say no. She sat in her living room as they took over her house, her lips tentatively forming but never quite releasing the words she didn’t feel she deserved to say:Get out.
Mr. Herrera offers her a cup of coffee. She declines, wondering where Cheryl’s mother is, knowing it’s entirely possible that she is behind the closed bedroom door.
“That’s Cherry’s room, right there.” Mr. Herrera gestures to another door, which is propped open. There is a nameplate on its outside, sneakers and stars scrawled in lurid felt-tip pen. Elsie swallows. She had forgotten that Cheryl was only a few years out of high school.
Beyond the doorway, the room has a time-capsule quality about it, a strange, nostalgic glow—the kind that only rooms of the deceased can have.
“You can look if you like. I’d just ask that you don’t touch anything.” Cheryl’s father glances at his feet.
She could wait, tell him that she wouldn’t want to disturb his daughter’s things, that it would be improper of her to snoop around. They could just talk here, on the couch, by the lilies. Instead, she rises and crosses to the room, called in by half-used cosmetics, by the wardrobe door left open, an avalanche of clothes bulging from inside. An old Chatty Cathy doll sits slumped on the windowsill, next to a forgotten ant farm. Its soil is dry, but a few insects still beaver away, oblivious to the somberness outside their glass. On the floor, a pair of purple socks lies wrinkled. Cheryl must have slipped them off, kickedthem aside when she got too hot. Elsie takes care to step around them, not to touch anything—to leave the room just as it was when Cheryl was last here.
The walls are covered in certificates, Elsie sees. Medals dangle in thick clutches, hanging from nails wedged into the wall. She moves closer to try to read some of the details.
“She was about to go to state finals.”
Elsie startles.
Mr. Herrera steps into the room and takes a bunch of medals down from a nail, loops the ribbons tightly around his palm, holds the disks out for her to inspect.
“She just hadit,” he says. “She was a superstar, Daddy’s little princess.”
Elsie watches his face, searches for something unsaid behind the words. She has a journalist’s mind, and she knows a journalist’s first impulse is to try to pin down details. Sometimes it’s the father. She has to consider that possibility.
“She was clearly talented.” Elsie brushes her fingertips across embossed gold. “You must have been proud. Was there anyone she ran track with who—”
“She would have made it senior year,” he cuts her off, “but she got mono, was laid up sick—lost ten pounds of muscle.”
Elsie imagines him weighing his daughter, invested in her routine, her performance, wanting her to reach her potential. Did it anger him when she didn’t?
“She was going to be homecoming queen that year, too.” He hangs the medals carefully back on the wall. “She cried herself to sleep. Her mother had even made the dress, bright blue. She looked so beautiful in it. Too beautiful.” His laugh is hollow. “Too grown-up. I almost didn’t let her go.”
Elsie flinches as a memory daggers in. Her own father, the day ofher homecoming, the strike of his arm across her face, the way her mother apologized for him, said he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t control himself. He’d been through so much. They’d covered the bruise with makeup. The dress she wore was yellow. Albert had called her a sunflower as he grasped the silk in his fist, pulled it tight, just as Mr. Herrera had done with the ribbons.
“When she came down with mono she took it out on me. Typical teenager.” He pulls at his chin as if the memory of it hurts him. “She said I was happy that she was stuck in the house. But I was never happy when she was ill. I never liked seeing Cherry like that.”
“I’m sure any girl who missed out would have acted the same,” Elsie consoles.
He nods, exhales. “You got kids?”
“Never happened for us.” It’s only half a lie. He doesn’t have to know that she is relieved, every day, that she never had kids with Albert, that she never wanted them.
