Except . . . except then, Adam sets his hand on top of mine. Warm and weighted, exactly how it was on my back. I can’t help but look over at him, but nothing on his face betrays this secret communication between us beneath the table. He’s watching Salem talk to Luís as though it’s his sole focus.
It’s so private.
It’s perfect.
Across from me, Tegan is rapt—her eyes bouncing between Salem’s face and Luís’s, as if she can already sense that today’s interview is going to be so different than yesterday’s.
I don’t move my hand even a little. I want him to keep his right where it is.
“You’re saying, Libby is Charlotte, right?” Luís says.
“Right,” says Salem.
“And the man who paid me to do the painting, that’s Lynton Baltimore?”
Salem takes out her tablet, and after a few quick swipes, slides it across the table to Luís. Even from here I can see it’s the mug shot. Luís looks down at it, squinting.
He shakes his head, and at first I think it’s because he doesn’t recognize the man in the photo. But then I realize the headshaking is more of an accompaniment to a disbelieving laugh, quiet and breathy.
“Man, thatishim.”
Salem’s eyes light in something close to victory. “Okay, great. Can you tell us a bit about him? About his visit here, or about why he had you do this painting?”
Luís is still looking down at Salem’s tablet. He taps a finger against the just-dimmed screen, lighting the photo fully again before he does another laughing headshake. Under the table, Adam’s hand gently squeezes mine, solid and reassuring.
“I guess I should tell you the big thing first,” Luís says. “Which is that this guy”—he slides the phone back across the table—“is apparently my biological father.”
* * *
UNDERthe circumstances—the circumstances being that Salem Durant’s decade-old true crime story about Lynton Baltimore ended up being connected to my own mother—I haven’t listened to a podcast in years. From what I gather, the biggest ones still have the broad strokes of what put Salem on the map: serialized, suspenseful. Not simple, but not so complex that you’ll lose the thread if you drift away for thirty seconds during your commute.
But I don’t really know the details of them anymore; I don’t know their textures. I don’t know if they use more music than Salem did, if they have lots of ads or just a couple, if the episodes are peppered with multiple interviews or if the focus is tighter. I don’t know if the hosts talk a lot or a little, if they make themselves part of the story the way Salem often did, or not.
I don’t know all that, but I still feel certain that Luís Acosta’s story would make for a pretty good podcast episode.
He tells it easily, smoothly—one step at a time, not too overwhelming. He tells us about John Harold Tygart and his fian-cée, Libby Mitchell. Their visit to his mother’s old gift shop, the Sea Spot. John Harold, Luís’s mother had told him, was an old friend who’d kept in touch over the years. She’d said she’d always bragged to him about Luís’s art; she’d said that John Harold was in the area, and wanted to see it for himself.
He says John Harold was so complimentary. Sophisticated. A person who knew a lot about art. Friendly, but not overly so. Nothing suspicious about him.
“I couldn’t believe he asked me to do a portrait of Libby,” he tells us, and then he looks meaningfully at the recording equipment that’s set up in the middle of the table.
“Should I call her Libby, or Charlotte?” he asks, and the nice thing is, he directs the question to me and Tegan.
“Whichever!” says Tegan, totally enthralled, and probably yesterday, I would’ve cleared my throat.
But yesterday, I wasn’t basically holding Adam Hawkins’s hand beneath a table.
Luís looks at me, a question in his eyes, and it’s such a nice thing to do that I simply repeat after my sister. “Whichever is fine.”
Luís nods and goes on.
“I’d been experimenting with portraits in my training that year. I had this whole idea about ‘realistic saturation.’ I wanted the brightness of a Warhol portrait, but the realism of the old masters. Libby loved the ones I showed them. She went on andon.”
She would have, I know. I can practically hear her. She gave the most elaborate compliments for the most mundane things: your outfits, your handwriting, your skill at folding laundry. I can only imagine what she said about something as impressive as Luís’s art.
“So, this John Harold guy, he says they’ll be in town for a week. He tells my mother he’ll pay—” He breaks off, shaking his head again. “This part is probably going to be hard to believe!”
“I doubt it,” says Salem, in a tone I’m sure will sound good on the recording. Weary and knowing. It’ll be comic relief for her listeners, the ones who have the sense that they know her, who feel like they’re on a journey with her.
