Lana hadn’t left Vivien’s side in almost twenty-four hours, since relieving Evangeline on watch duty. In her haze, Vivien had thought she was dreaming that a Hollywood icon was at her bedside, even when Lana turned up and Evangeline hugged her and said, “You can borrow my Chanel anytime.”
“I’m sorry, Lana,” Vivien said. She reached for her cup, and Lana handed it to her. “I should have told you about Walter, and everything else. I wanted to have it all figured out, so I could break it to you gently, be the big sister I should be. Grow up, like you said.”
“No, it’s me who’s sorry.” Lana pulled her plastic chair closer. “The one thing I’ve always had in my life is you—and I wasn’t there when you needed me. And besides, look what you achieved. You solved a mystery that’s eluded police for years—though turns out they had someone on the inside killing every investigation.”
The Fitch cop had told Lana that Keisha Graham was the young police officer Maggie reported her sexual assault to, years ago. Graham had been furious when ordered to drop the case, so she’d joined Maggie. Sweetie later recruited the doctor and nurse who’d examined her after her attack. “They truly thought they were heroes on a mission,” Officer Sheng explained. “And maybe it started out like that, but boy…”
Lana took Vivien’s hand and cradled it. It was warmer now but, like the rest of her, it was thin and pale, the veins protruding.
“Oh, I know how we got our names!” Vivien said.
“Aren’t they old family names?”
“In a sense. I figured it out from Walter’s memoir. He had two unofficial godmothers—close friends of his parents: Vivien Leigh and Lana Turner. He adored them.”
“Seriously?”
“Knowing all this now,” Vivien continued, “it explains so much—about me, but also about you. I read about it. A baby bonds with the person who parents it in those first months. They can adjust, but the trauma has a permanent effect. It’s probably why you were so shy, as a kid. I think part of you has always known, deep down.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Think about it, what books were your favorites as a kid?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Humor me. Favorite books,go.”
“Well,Anne of Green Gables, obviously, and all the sequels.”
“Obsessed.”
“Jane Eyre, The Secret Garden, Matilda, Heidi… Omigod!”
“All orphans, right? And the full cast of Dickens orphans—Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations… You went through all of those in like a month. Plus,The Outsiders,Peter Pan.”
“Tom Sawyer. Pippi Longstocking. Holy shit, Vivi!”
“And don’t get me started on Harry Potter… Not an expert, but I think that’s called processing.”
Processing. Lana had a lot of that to do.
Vivien tried to sit up straighter, forgetting she didn’t have the strength. “I did a lot of reading—you’d be proud of me. There’s a bunch of effects it could have—and they do say the jury’s outon some of them. But they say a sudden, permanent separation changes the structure of the brain, right when it’s going through the biggest development phase of your life. Messes with your perception of safety and trust. Our bodies would have been flooded with stress hormones, and they’d have remained high for ages—the car crash, losing our birth mom, being cared for by strangers until our parents arrived, leaving our home…”
“The car crash. You think we were in it?”
“I found a news article. It was a pile-up on the freeway. We were strapped into our car seats, unharmed. I can’t remember the exact science—my brain’s been switched off for a month, right, so that’s my excuse. But these stress hormones can cause permanent chemical alterations in the brain. ‘Toxic stress,’ they call it. We learned an early lesson that life can’t be trusted, even though we ended up in a good home. This constant threat that everything can be taken away from us at any second. So we struggle to bond with people.”
“We push people away—well, I do, anyway. Shit. I’ve been thinking about that lately, how I get all insecure in relationships.”
“Like how you didn’t really have friends at school, right? Maybe because you couldn’t trust that they would still be there from one day to the next. Honestly, I was looking down this list of the ways it can affect you, and it was tick, tick, tick for me—PTSD, anxiety, depression, substance abuse. Young kids who lose their parents can find it hard to regulate their emotions, their whole lives.”
“Maybe you’re scared of needing people.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“It’s something you said to me once.”
Vivien raised her eyebrows, then winced and lowered them, as if it hurt. “Like your theory that I need to feel like I belong.”
