The Isle of Youth: Stories by Laura van den Berg Read Free Book Online Page B

defrauded a whole retirement home full of seniors last winter. They showed one of our father’s victims, a hunched old man named Reginald. He was leaning into a walker, a tiny white dog at his feet. The program offered a list of tips for elders: Don’t give out personal information over the phone. Be suspicious if someone says you’ve won a fabulous prize. Get-rich-quick schemes never make you rich. Do background checks on everyone you meet. Julia pointed out that it sounded like the elderly were in need of private detectives. I nodded. I hoped Reginald was watching the same thing we were.
    Later, while Julia was in the shower, I realized that after our father was arrested, the postcards had stopped coming. I decided they hadn’t been from my husband at all, and was surprised by my disappointment. I didn’t say anything to my sister at first. I stood by the closed bathroom door and listened to the water. I took a beer from the fridge and drank it standing up. When Julia emerged from the shower, I suggested we watch a movie. I picked up the remote and started clicking through the channels. Beverly Hills Cop was on. All night, I kept my secret.
    On the third night, I couldn’t stop myself from telling Julia about my theory. My husband hadn’t sent the cards. It had been our father all along.
    “It makes sense,” I said. “A bunch were postmarked in Nevada.”
    “I should have known.” Julia was on the couch in a long T-shirt and socks. “A typewriter didn’t seem like your husband’s style. Too romantic.”
    I sat next to her. The news was on. Julia turned down the volume. The cards were stacked on the coffee table. He knew where we lived. He had kept track of us. Was it out of love, or a calculation, keeping tabs on his family in case he ran out of strangers to con? More questions we couldn’t answer. I wondered if he knew about my divorce and Julia’s stint in jail, if he had seen Mr. Defonte on the news and knew it had to do with us.
    “I think this one goes here.” Julia picked up the image of the gorge and placed it in the middle of the table. We put the sky and the clouds above it. The river to the left, the ledge to the right. We played with the positioning of the cards, tried to complete the sentence that began with WISH YOU .
    “Wish you well?” I said.
    “Wish you luck?”
    “Wish you were here?”
    Julia looked at me. “If that’s what it says, I’m glad we’re not.”
    In the end, the puzzle didn’t tell us much. We still didn’t have enough pieces to know what it was for sure. We could tell it was a big dusty valley of some kind. Someplace out west, we figured. That part of the country was foreign to us.
    “The Grand Canyon?” I suggested.
    “Is it rocky enough?” Julia leaned over the coffee table, her head tilted. “What about Death Valley? That’s in Nevada, right?”
    I remembered hearing about the salt flats in Death Valley on TV. Badwater, they were called. The only animal that could survive there was some kind of snail. “Or the Mojave, in California? Do deserts have riverbeds?”
    Julia scooped up the cards and stacked them on the table.
    Years ago, when we were kids, we often played in the woods behind our childhood home. Somehow these nights had the same feeling as our games. At a certain point, Julia would always drop whatever we were doing and bolt into the woods. I would chase her, call after her, but she would just run and run. Finally I would climb the oak in our backyard and search for the peak of her head moving through the trees. I hardly ever found her. Usually I had to wait until she was ready to come out. Sometimes that took minutes; other times, hours.
    My sister stared at the TV. I heard sirens. At first it sounded like they were right outside, but after a while, they began to fade.
    “Here’s a story,” she said. “About two little girls who tried to make something out of nothing.”
    *   *   *
    By Monday, Julia had reached her limit. That night