Forbidden Things
Marcia Muller
Marcia Muller is finally getting her long-deserved recognition as the true creator of the modern female private detective.
In such memorable novels as There's Something in a Sunday and Wolf in the Shadows, Muller shows us how serious—and truly entertaining—the modern mystery story can be.
The following story, by turns melancholy, amusing, and suspenseful, tells of a southern California woman— one Ashley Heikkinen, no less—who tries to go home again.

All the years that I was growing up in a poor suburb of Los Angeles, my mother would tell me stories of the days I couldn't remember when we lived with my father on the wild north coast. She'd tell of a gray, misty land suddenly made brilliant by quicksilver flashes off the sea; of white-sand beaches that would disappear in a storm, then emerge strewn with driftwood and treasures from foreign shores; of a deeply forested ridge of hills where, so the Pomo Indians claimed, spirits walked by night.
Our cabin nestled on that ridge, high above the little town of Camel Rock and the humpbacked offshore mass that inspired its name. The cabin, built to last by my handyman father, was of local redwood, its foundation sunk deep in bedrock. There was a woodstove and home-woven curtains. There were stained-glass windows and a sleeping loft; there was...
Although I had no recollection of the place we'd left when I was two, it somehow seemed more real to me than our shabby pink bungalow with the cracked sidewalk out front and the packed-dirt yard out back. I'd lie in bed late at night feeling the heat from the woodstove, watching the light as it filtered through the stained-glass panels, listening to the wind buffet our secure aerie. I was sure I could smell my mother's baking bread, hear the deep rumble of my father's voice. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not call up the image of my father's face, even though a stiff and formal studio portrait of him sat on our coffee table.
When I asked my mother why she and I had left a place of quicksilver days and night-walking spirits, she'd grow quiet. When I asked where my father was now, she'd turn away. As I grew older I realized there were shadows over our departure— shadows in which forbidden things stood still and silent.
Is it any wonder that when my mother died—young, at forty-nine, but life hadn't been kind to her and heart trouble ran in the family—is it any wonder that I packed everything I cared about and went back to the place of my birth to confront those forbidden things?
I'd located Camel Rock on the map when I was nine, tracing the coast highway with my finger until it reached a jutting point of land north of Fort Bragg. Once this had been logging country— hardy men working the crosscut saw and jackscrew in the forests, bull teams dragging their heavy loads to the coast, fresh-cut logs thundering down the chutes to schooners that lay at anchor in the coves below. But by the time I was born, lumbering was an endangered industry. Today, I knew, the voice of the chain saw was stilled and few logging trucks rumbled along the highway. Legislation to protect the environment, coupled with a severe construction slump, had all but killed the old economy. Instead new enterprises had sprung up: wineries; mushroom, garlic, and herb farms; tourist shops and bed-and-breakfasts. These were only marginally profitable, however; the north coast was financially strapped.
I decided to go anyway.
It was a good time for me to leave southern California. Two failed attempts at college, a ruined love affair, a series of slip-ping-down jobs—all argued for radical change. I'd had no family except my mother; even my cat had died the previous October. As I gave notice at the coffee shop where I'd been waitressing, disposed of the contents of the bungalow, and turned the keys back to the landlord, I said no goodbyes. Yet I left with hope of a welcome. Maybe there would be a place for me in Camel Rock. Maybe someone would even remember my family and fill in the gaps in my early life.
I know now that I was really hoping for a reunion with my father.

Mist blanketed the coast the afternoon I drove my old Pinto over the bridge spanning the mouth of the Deer River and into Camel Rock. Beyond sandstone cliffs the sea lay flat and seemingly motionless. The town—a strip of buildings on either side of the highway, with dirt lanes straggling up toward the hills—looked deserted. A few drifting columns of wood smoke, some lighted signs in shop windows, a hunched and bundled figure walking along the shoulder—these were the only signs of life. I drove slowly, taking it all in: a supermarket, some bars, a little mall full of tourist shops. Post office, laundromat, defunct real estate agency, old sagging hotel that looked to be the only lodging Place. When I'd gone four blocks and passed the last gas station and the cable TV company, I ran out of town; I U-turned, went back to the hotel, and parked my car between two pickups out front.
For a moment I sat behind the wheel, feeling flat. The town didn't look like the magical place my mother had described; if anything, it was seedier than the suburb I'd left yesterday. I had to force myself to get out, and when I did, I stood beside the Pinto, staring up at the hotel. Pale green with once white trim, all of it blasted and faded by the elements. An inscription above its front door gave the date it was built—1879, the height of last century's logging boom. Neon beer signs flashed in its lower windows; gulls perched along the peak of its roof, their droppings splashed over the steps and front porch. I watched as one soared in for a landing, crying shrilly. Sea breeze ruffled my short blond hair, and I smelled fish and brine.
The smell of the sea had always delighted me. Now it triggered a sense of connection to this place. I thought: Home.
The thought lent me the impetus to take out my overnight bag and carried me over the threshold of the hotel. Inside was a dim lobby that smelled of dust and cat. I peered through the gloom but saw no one. Loud voices came from a room to the left, underscored by the clink of glasses and the thump and clatter of dice-rolling; I went over, looked in, and saw an old-fashioned tavern, peopled mainly by men in work clothes. The ship's clock that hung crooked behind the bar said four-twenty. Happy hour got under way early in Camel Rock.
There was a public phone on the other side of the lobby. I crossed to it and opened the thin county directory, aware that my fingers were trembling. No listing for my father. No listing for anyone with my last name. More disappointed than I had any right to be, I replaced the book and turned away.
Just then a woman came out of a door under the steep staircase. She was perhaps in her early sixties, tall and gaunt, with tightly permed gray curls and a faced lined by weariness. When she saw me, her pale eyes registered surprise. "May I help you?"
I hesitated, the impulse to flee the shabby hotel and drive away from Camel Rock nearly irresistible. Then I thought: Come on, give the place a chance. "Do you have a room available?"
"We've got nothing but available rooms." She smiled wryly and got a card for me to fill out. Lacking any other, I put down my old address and formed the letters of my signature—Ashley Heikkinen—carefully. I'd always hated my last name; it seemed graceless and misshapen beside my first. Now I was glad it was unusual; maybe someone here in town would recognize it. The woman glanced disinterestedly at the card, however, then turned away and studied a rack of keys.
"Front room or back room?"
"Which is more quiet?"
"Well, in front you've got the highway noise, but there's not much traffic at night. In the back you've got the boys"—she motioned at the door to the tavern—"scrapping in the parking lot at closing time."
Just what I wanted—a room above a bar frequented by quarrelsome drunks. "I guess I'll take the front."
The woman must have read my expression. "Oh, honey, don't you worry about them. They're not so bad, but there's nobody as contentious as an out-of-work logger who's had one over his limit."
I smiled and offered my Visa card. She shook her head and pointed to a Cash Only sign. I dug in my wallet and came up with the amount she named. It wasn't much, but I didn't have much to begin with. There had been a small life insurance policy on my mother, but most of it had gone toward burying her. If I was to stay in Camel Rock, I'd need a job.
"Are a lot of people around here out of work?" I asked as the woman wrote up a receipt.
"Loggers, mostly. The type who won't bite the bullet and learn another trade. But the rest of us aren't in much better shape."
"Have you heard of any openings for a waitress or a bartender?"
"For yourself?"
"Yes. If I can find a job, I may settle here."
Her hand paused over the receipt book. "Honey, why on earth would you want to do that?"
"I was born here. Maybe you knew my parents—Melinda and John Heikkinen?"
She shook her head and tore the receipt from the book. "My husband and me, we just moved down here last year from Del Norte County—things're even worse up there, believe me. We bought this hotel because it was cheap and we thought we could make a go of it."
"Have you?"
"Not really. We don't have the wherewithal to fix it up, so we can't compete with the new motels or bed-and-breakfasts. And we made the mistake of giving bar credit to the locals."
"That's too bad," I said. "There must be some jobs available, though. I'm a good waitress, a fair bartender. And I ... like people," I added lamely.
She smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkling kindly. I guessed she'd presented meager credentials a time or two herself. "Well, I suppose you could try over at the mall. I hear Barbie Cannon's been doing real good with her Beachcomber Shop, and the tourist season'll be here before we know it. Maybe she can use some help."
I thanked her and took the room key she offered, but as I picked up my bag I thought of something else. "Is there a newspaper in town?"
"As far as I know, there never has been. There's one of those little county shoppers, but it doesn't have ads for jobs, if that's what you're after."
"Actually, I'm trying to locate ... a family member. I thought if there was a newspaper, I could look through their back issues. What about longtime residents of the town? Is there anybody who's an amateur historian, for instance?"
"Matter of fact, there is. Gus Galick. Lives on his fishing trawler, the Irma, down at the harbor. Comes in here regular."
"How long has he lived here?"
"All his life."
Just the person I wanted to talk with.
The woman added, "Gus is away this week, took a charter party down the coast. I think he said he'd be back next Thursday."
Another disappointment. I swallowed it, told myself the delay would give me time to settle in and get to know the place of my birth. And I'd start by visiting the Beachcomber Shop.

The shop offered exactly the kind of merchandise its name implied: seashells; driftwood; inexpert carvings of gulls, grebes, and sea lions. Postcards and calendars and T-shirts and paperback guidebooks. Shell jewelry, paperweights, ceramic whales and dolphins. Nautical toys and candles and wind chimes. All of it was totally predictable, but the woman who popped up from behind the counter was anything but.
She was very tall, well over six feet, and her black hair stood up in long, stiff spikes. A gold ring pierced her left nostril, and several others hung from either earlobe. She wore a black leather tunic with metal studs, over lacy black tights and calf-high boots. In L.A. I wouldn't have given her a second glance, but this was Camel Rock. Such people weren't supposed to happen here.
The woman watched my reaction, then threw back her head and laughed throatily. I felt a blush begin to creep over my face.
"Hey, don't worry about it," she told me. "You should see how I scare the little bastards who drag their parents in here, whining about how they absolutely have to have a blow-up Willie the Whale."
"Uh, isn't that bad for business?"
"Hell, no. Embarrasses the parents, and they buy twice as much as they would've."
"Oh."
"So—what can I do for you?"
"I'm looking for Barbie Cannon."
"You found her." She flopped onto a stool next to the counter, stretching out her long legs.
"My name's Ashley Heikkinen." I watched her face for some sign of recognition. There wasn't any, but that didn't surprise me; Barbie Cannon was only a few years older than I—perhaps thirty—and too young to remember a family that had left so long ago. Besides, she didn't look as if she'd been born and raised here.
"I'm looking for a job," I went on, "and the woman at the hotel said you might need some help in the shop."
She glanced around at the merchandise that was heaped haphazardly on the shelves and spilled over onto the floor here and there. "Well, Penny's right—I probably do." Then she looked back at me. "You're not local."
"I just came up from L.A."
"Me too, about a year ago. There're a fair number of us transplants, and the division between us and the locals is pretty clear-cut."
"How so?"
"A lot of the natives are down on their luck, resentful of the newcomers, especially ones like me, who're doing well. Oh, some of them're all right; they understand that the only way for the area to survive is to restructure the economy. But most of them are just sitting around the bars mumbling about how the spotted owl ruined their lives and hoping the timber industry'll make a comeback—and that ain't gonna happen. So why're you here?"
"I was born in Camel Rock. And I'm sick of southern California."
"So you decided to get back to your roots."
"In a way."
"You alone?"
I nodded.
"Got a place to stay?"
"The hotel, for now."
"Well, it's not so bad, and Penny'll extend credit if you run short. As for a job . .." She paused, looking around again. "You know, I came up here thinking I'd work on my photography. The next Ansel Adams and all that." She grinned self-mockingly. "Trouble is, I got to be such a successful businesswoman that I don't even have time to load my camera. Tell you what—why don't we go over to the hotel tavern, tilt a few, talk it over?"
"Why not?" I said.

Mist hugged the tops of the sequoias and curled in tendrils around their trunks. The mossy ground under my feet was damp and slick. I hugged my hooded sweatshirt against the chill and moved cautiously up the incline from where I'd left the car on an overgrown logging road. My soles began to slip, and I crouched, catching at a stump for balance. The wet fronds of a fern brushed my cheek.
I'd been tramping through the hills for over two hours, searching every lane and dirt track for the burned-out cabin that Barbie Cannon had photographed shortly after her arrival in Camel Rock last year. Barbie had invited me to her place for dinner the night before after we'd agreed on the terms of my new part-time job, and in the course of the evening she'd shown me her portfolio of photographs. One, a grainy black-and-white image of a ruin, so strongly affected me that I'd barely been able to sleep. This morning I'd dropped by the shop and gotten Barbie to draw me a map of where she'd found it, but her recollection was so vague that I might as well have had no map at all.
I pushed back to my feet and continued climbing. The top of the rise was covered by a dense stand of sumac and bay laurel; the spicy scent of the laurel leaves mixed with stronger odors of redwood and eucalyptus. The mixed bouquet triggered the same sense of connection that I'd felt as I stood in front of the hotel the previous afternoon. I breathed deeply, then elbowed through the dense branches.
From the other side of the thicket I looked down on a sloping meadow splashed with the brilliant yellow-orange of California poppies. More sequoias crowned the ridge on its far side, and through their branches I caught a glimpse of the flat, leaden sea. A stronger feeling of familiarity stole over me. I remembered my mother saying, "In the spring, the meadow was full of poppies, and you could see the ocean from our front steps... ."
The mist was beginning to break up overhead. I watched a hawk circle against a patch of blue high above the meadow, then wheel and flap away toward the inland hills. He passed over my head, and I could feel the beating of his great wings. I turned, my gaze following his flight path—
And then I spotted the cabin, overgrown and wrapped in shadow, only yards away. Built into the downward slope of the hill, its moss-covered foundations were anchored in bedrock, as I'd been told. But the rest was only blackened and broken timbers, a collapsed roof on whose shakes vegetation had taken root, a rusted stove chimney about to topple, empty windows and doors.
I drew in my breath and held it for a long moment. Then I slowly moved forward.
Stone steps, four of them. I counted as I climbed. Yes, you could still see the Pacific from here, the meadow too. And this opening was where the door had been. Beyond it, nothing but a concrete slab covered with debris. Plenty of evidence that picnickers had been here.
I stepped over the threshold.
One big empty room. Nothing left, not even the mammoth iron woodstove. Vines growing through the timbers, running across the floor. And at the far side, a collapsed heap of burned lumber—the sleeping loft?
Something crunched under my foot. I looked down, squatted, poked at it gingerly with my fingertip. Glass, green glass. It could have come from a picnicker's wine bottle. Or it could have come from a broken stained-glass window.
I stood, coldness upon my scalp and shoulder blades. Coldness that had nothing to do with the sea wind that bore the mist from the coast. I closed my eyes against the shadows and the ruin. Once again I could smell my mother's baking bread, hear my father's voice. Once again I thought: Home.
But when I opened my eyes, the warmth and light vanished. Now all I saw was the scene of a terrible tragedy.

"Barbie," I said, "what do you know about the Northcoast Lumber Company?"
She looked up from the box of wind chimes she was unpacking. "Used to be the big employer around here."
"Where do they have their offices? I couldn't find a listing in the county phone book."
"I hear they went bust in the eighties."
"Then why would they still own land up in the hills?"
"Don't know. Why?"
I hesitated. Yesterday, the day after I'd found the cabin, I'd driven down to the county offices at Fort Bragg and spent the entire afternoon poring over the land plats for this area. The place where the ruin stood appeared to belong to the lumber company. There was no reason I shouldn't confide in Barbie about my search, but something held me back. After a moment I said, "Oh, I saw some acreage that I might be interested in buying."
She raised her eyebrows; the extravagant white eye shadow and bright-red lipstick that she wore today made her look like an astonished clown. "On what I'm paying you for part-time work, you're buying land?"
"I've got some savings from my mom's life insurance." That much was true, but the small amount wouldn't buy even a square foot of land.
"Huh." She went back to her unpacking. "Well, I don't know for a fact that Northcoast did go bust. Penny told me that the owner's widow is still alive. Used to live on a big estate near here, but a long time ago she moved down the coast to that fancy retirement community at Timber Point. Maybe she could tell you about this acreage."
"What's her name, do you know?"
"No, but you could ask Penny. She and Gene bought the hotel from her."
"Madeline Carmichael," Penny said. "Lady in her late fifties. She and her husband used to own a lot of property around here."
"You know her, then."
"Nope, never met her. Our dealings were through a realtor and her lawyer."
"She lives down at Timber Point?"
"Uh-huh. The realtor told us she's a recluse, never leaves her house and has everything she needs delivered."
"Why, do you suppose?"
"Why not? She can afford it. Oh, the realtor hinted that there's some tragedy in her past, but I don't put much stock in that. I'll tell you"—her tired eyes swept the dingy hotel lobby—"if I had a beautiful home and all that money, I'd never go out, either."

Madeline Carmichael's phone number and address were unlisted. When I drove down to Timber Point the next day, I found high grape-stake fences and a gatehouse; the guard told me that Mrs. Carmichael would see no one who wasn't on her visitors list. When I asked him to call her, he refused. "If she was expecting you," he said, "she'd have sent your name down."
Penny had given me the name of the realtor who handled the sale of the hotel. He put me in touch with Mrs. Carmichael's lawyer in Fort Bragg. The attorney told me he'd check about the ownership of the land and get back to me. When he did, his reply was terse: The land was part of the original Carmichael estate; title was held by the nearly defunct lumber company; it was not for sale.
So why had my parents built their cabin on the Carmichael estate? Were my strong feelings of connection to the burned-out ruin in the hills false?
Maybe, I told myself, it was time to stop chasing memories and start building a life for myself here in Camel Rock. Maybe it was best to leave the past alone.

The following weekend brought the kind of quicksilver days my mother had told me about, and in turn they lured tourists in record numbers. We couldn't restock the Beachcomber Shop's shelves fast enough. On the next Wednesday—Barbie's photography day—I was unpacking fresh merchandise and filling in where necessary while waiting for the woman Barbie bought her drift-wood sculptures from to make a delivery. Business was slack in the late-afternoon hours; I moved slowly, my mind on what to wear to a dinner party being given that evening by some new acquaintances who ran an herb farm. When the bell over the door jangled, I started.
It was Mrs. Fleming, the driftwood lady. I recognized her by the big plastic wash basket of sculptures that she toted. A tiny white-haired woman, she seemed too frail for such a load. I moved to take it from her.
She resisted, surprisingly strong. Her eyes narrowed, and she asked, "Where's Barbie?"
"Wednesday's her day off."
"And who are you?"
"Ashley Heikkinen. I'm Barbie's part-time—"
"What did you say?"
"My name is Ashley Heikkinen. I just started here last week."
Mrs. Fleming set the basket on the counter and regarded me sternly, spots of red appearing on her cheeks. "Just what are you up to, young woman?"
"I don't understand."
"Why are you using that name?"
"Using . .. ? It's my name."
"It most certainly is not! This is a very cruel joke."
The woman had to be unbalanced. Patiently I said, "Look, my name really is Ashley Heikkinen. I was born in Camel Rock but moved away when I was two. I grew up outside Los Angeles, and when my mother died I decided to come back here."
Mrs. Fleming shook her head, her lips compressed, eyes glittering with anger.
"I can prove who I am," I added, reaching under the counter for my purse. "Here's my identification."
"Of course you'd have identification. Everyone knows how to obtain that under the circumstances."
"What circumstances?"
She turned and moved toward the door. "I can't imagine what you possibly expect to gain by this charade, young woman, but you can be sure I'll speak to Barbie about you."
"Please, wait!"
She pushed through the door, and the bell above it jangled harshly as it slammed shut. I hurried to the window and watched her cross the parking lot in a vigorous stride that belied her trail appearance. As she turned at the highway, I looked down and saw I had my wallet out, prepared to prove my identity.
Why, I wondered, did I feel compelled to justify my existence to this obviously deranged stranger?

The dinner party that evening was pleasant, and I returned to the hotel at a little after midnight with the fledgling sense of belonging that making friends in a strange place brings. The fog was in thick, drawn by hot inland temperatures. It put a gritty sheen on my face, and when I touched my tongue to my lips, I tasted the sea. I locked the Pinto and started across the rutted parking lot to the rear entrance. Heavy footsteps came up behind me.
Conditioned by my years in L.A., I already held my car key in my right hand, tip out as a weapon. I glanced back and saw a stocky, bearded man bearing down on me. When I sidestepped and turned, he stopped, and his gaze moved to the key. He'd been drinking—beer, and plenty of it.
From the tavern, I thought. Probably came out to the parking lot because the rest room's in use and he couldn't wait. "After you," I said, opening the door for him.
He stepped inside the narrow, dim hallway. I let him get a ways ahead, then followed. The door stuck, and I turned to give it a tug. The man reversed, came up swiftly, and grasped my shoulder.
"Hey! "I said.
He spun me around and slammed me against the wall. "Lady, what the hell're you after?"
"Let go of me!" I pushed at him.
He pushed back, grabbed my other shoulder, and pinned me there. I stopped struggling, took a deep breath, told myself to remain calm.
"Not going to hurt you, lady," he said. "I just want to know what your game is."
Two lunatics in one day. "What do you mean—game?"
"'My name is Ashley Heikkinen,'" he said in a falsetto, then dropped to his normal pitch. "Who're you trying to fool? And what's in it for you?"
"I don't—"
"Don't give me that! You might be able to stonewall an old lady like my mother—"
"Your mother?"
"Yeah, Janet Fleming. You expect her to believe you, for Christ's sake? What you did, you upset her plenty. She had to take one of the Valiums the doctor gave me for my bad back." "I don't understand what your mother's problem is." "Jesus,  you're   a  cold  bitch!   Her  own  goddaughter,   for Christ's sake, and you expect her to believe you?" "Goddaughter?"
His face was close to mine now; hot beer breath touched my cheeks. "My ma's goddaughter was Ashley Heikkinen."
"That's impossible! I never had a godmother. I never met your mother until this afternoon."
The man shook his head. "I'll tell you what's impossible: Ashley Heikkinen appearing in Camel Rock after all these years. Ashley's dead. She died in a fire when she wasn't even two years old. My ma ought to know—she identified the body."
A chill washed over me from my scalp to my toes. The man stared, apparently recognizing my shock as genuine. After a moment I asked, "Where was the fire?"
He ignored the question, frowning. "Either you're a damned good actress or something weird's going on. Can't have been two people born with that name. Not in Camel Rock."
"Where was the fire?"
He shook his head again, this time as if to clear it. His mouth twisted, and I feared he was going to be sick. Then he let go of me and stumbled through the door to the parking lot. I released my breath in a long sigh and slumped against the wall. A car started outside. When its tires had spun on the gravel and its engine revved on the highway, I pushed myself upright and went along the hall to the empty lobby. A single bulb burned in the fixture above the reception desk, as it did every night. The usual sounds of laughter and conversation came from the tavern.
Everything seemed normal. Nothing was. I ran upstairs to the shelter of my room.
After I'd double-locked the door, I turned on the overhead and crossed to the bureau and leaned across it toward the streaky mirror. My face was drawn and unusually pale.
Ashley Heikkinen dead?
Dead in a fire when she wasn't quite two years old?
I closed my eyes, picturing the blackened ruin in the hills above town. Then I opened them and stared at my frightened face. It was the face of a stranger.
"If Ashley Heikkinen is dead," I said, "then who am I?"

Mrs. Fleming wouldn't talk to me. When I got to her cottage on one of the packed-dirt side streets at a little after nine the next morning, she refused to open the door and threatened to run me off with her dead husband's shotgun. "And don't think I'm not a good markswoman," she added.
She must have gone straight to the phone, because Barbie was hanging up when I walked into the Beachcomber Shop a few minutes later. She frowned at me and said, "I just had the most insane call from Janet Fleming."
"About me?"
"How'd you guess? She was giving me all this stuff about you not being who you say you are and the 'real Ashley Heikkinen' dying in a fire when she was a baby. Must be going around the bend."
I sat down on the stool next to the counter. "Actually, there might be something to what she says." And then I told her all of it: my mother's stories, the forbidden things that went unsaid, the burned-out cabin in the hills, my encounters with Janet Fleming and her son. "I tried to talk with Mrs. Fleming this morning," I finished, "but she threatened me with a shotgun."
"And she's been known to use that gun, too. You must've really upset her."
"Yes. From something she said yesterday afternoon, I gather she thinks I got hold of the other Ashley's birth certificate and created a set of fake ID around it."
"You sound like you believe there was another Ashley."
"I saw that burned-out cabin. Besides, why would Mrs. Fleming make something like that up?"
"But you recognized the cabin, both from my photograph and when you went there. You said it felt like home."
"I recognized it from my mother's stories, that's true. Barbie, I've lived those stories for most of my life. You know how kids sometimes get the notion that they're so special they can't really belong to their parents, that they're a prince or princess who was given to a servant couple to raise?"
"Oh sure, we all went through that stage. Only in my case, I was Mick Jagger's love child, and someday he was going to acknowledge me and give me all his money."
"Well, my mother's stories convinced me that I didn't really belong in a downscale tract in a crappy valley town. They made me special, somebody who came from a magical place. And I dreamed of it every night."
"So you're saying that you only recognized the cabin from the images your mother planted in your mind?"
"It's possible."
Barbie considered. "Okay, I'll buy that. And here's a scenario that might fit: After the fire, your parents moved away. That would explain why your mom didn't want to talk about why they left Camel Rock. And they had another child—you. They gave you Ashley's name and her history. It wasn't right, but grief does crazy things to otherwise sane people."
It worked—but only in part. "That still doesn't explain what happened to my father and why my mother would never talk about him."
"Maybe she was the one who went crazy with grief, and after a while he couldn't take it anymore, so he left."
She made it sound so logical and uncomplicated. But I'd known the quality of my mother's silences; there was more to them than Barbie's scenario encompassed.
I bit my lip in frustration. "You know, Mrs. Fleming could shed a lot of light on this, but she refuses to deal with me."
"Then find somebody who will."
"Who?" I asked. And then I thought of Gus Galick, the man Penny had told me about who had lived in Camel Rock all his life. "Barbie, do you know Gus Galick?"
"Sure. He's one of the few old-timers around here that I've really connected with. Gus builds ships in bottles; I sold some on consignment for him last year. He used to be a rumrunner during Prohibition, has some great stories about bringing in cases of Canadian booze to the coves along the coast."
"He must be older than God."
"Older than God and sharp as a tack. I bet he could tell you what you need to know."
"Penny said he was away on some charter trip."
"Was, but he's back now. I saw the Irma in her slip at the harbor when I drove by this morning."
Camel Rock's harbor was a sheltered cove with a bait shack and a few slips for fishing boats. Of them, Gus Galick's Irma was by far the most shipshape, and her captain was equally trim, with a shock of silvery-white hair and leathery tan skin. I didn't give him my name, just identified myself as a friend of Penny and Barbie. Galick seemed to take people at face value, though; he welcomed me on board, took me belowdecks, and poured me a cup of coffee in the cozy wood-paneled cabin. When we were seated on either side of the teak table, I asked my first question.
"Sure, I remember the fire on the old Carmichael estate," he said. "Summer of seventy-one. Both the father and the little girl died."
I gripped the coffee mug tighter. "The father died too?"
"Yeah. Heikkinen, his name was. Norwegian, maybe. I don't recall his first name, or the little girl's."
"John and Ashley."
"These people kin to you?"
"In a way. Mr.  Galick, what happened to Melinda, the mother?"
He thought. "Left town, I guess. I never did see her after the double funeral."
"Where are John and Ashley buried?"
"Graveyard of the Catholic church." He motioned toward the hills, where I'd seen its spire protruding through the trees. "Carmichaels paid for everything, of course. Guilt, I guess."
"Why guilt?"
"The fire started on their land. Was the father's fault—John Heikkinen's, I mean—but still, they'd sacked him, and that was why he was drinking so heavy. Fell asleep with the doors to the woodstove open, and before he could wake up, the place was a furnace."
The free-flowing information was beginning to overwhelm me. "Let me get this straight: John Heikkinen worked for the Carmichaels?"
"Was their caretaker. His wife looked after their house."
"Where was she when the fire started?"
"At the main house, washing up the supper dishes. I heard she saw the flames, run down there, and tried to save her family. The Carmichaels held her back till the volunteer fire department could get there; they knew there wasn't any hope from the beginning."
I set the mug down, gripped the table's edge with icy fingers.
Galick leaned forward, eyes concerned. "Something wrong, miss? Have I upset you?"
I shook my head. "It's just ... a shock, hearing about it after all these years." After a pause, I asked, "Did the Heikkinens have any other children?"
"Only the little girl who died."
I took out a photograph of my mother and passed it over to him. It wasn't a good picture, just a snap of her on the steps of our stucco bungalow down south. "Is this Melinda Heikkinen?"
He took a pair of glasses from a case on the table, put them on, and looked closely at it. Then he shrugged and handed it back to me. "There's some resemblance, but ... She looks like she's had a hard life."
"She did." I replaced the photo in my wallet. "Can you think of anyone who could tell me more about the Heikkinens?"
"Well, there's Janet Fleming. She was Mrs. Heikkinen's aunt and the little girl's godmother. The mother was so broken up that Janet had to identify the bodies, so I guess she'd know everything there is to know about the fire."
"Anyone else?"
"Well, of course there's Madeline Carmichael. But she's living down at Timber Point now, and she never sees anybody."
"Why not?"
"I've got my ideas on that. It started after her husband died. Young man, only in his fifties. Heart attack." Galick grimaced. "Carmichael was one of these pillars of the community; never drank, smoked, or womanized. Keeled over at a church service in seventy-five. Me, I've lived a gaudy life, as they say. Even now I eat and drink all the wrong things, and I like a cigar after dinner. And I just go on and on. Tells you a lot about the randomness of it all."
I didn't want to think about that randomness; it was much too soon after losing my own mother to an untimely death for that. I asked, "About Mrs. Carmichael—it was her husband's death that turned her into a recluse?"
"No, miss." He shook his head firmly. "My idea is that his dying was just the last straw. The seeds were planted when their little girl disappeared three years before that."
"Disappeared?"
"It was in seventy-two, the year after the fire. The little girl was two years old, a change-of-life baby. Abigail, she was called.
Abby, for short. Madeline Carmichael left her in her playpen on the veranda of their house, and she just plain vanished. At first they thought it was a kidnapping; the lumber company was failing, but the family still had plenty of money. But nobody ever made a ransom demand, and they never did find a trace of Abby or the person who took her."
The base of my spine began to tingle. As a child, I'd always been smaller than others of my age. Slower in school too. The way a child might be if she was a year younger than the age shown on her birth certificate.
Abigail Carmichael, I thought. Abby, for short.

The Catholic churchyard sat tucked back against a eucalyptus grove; the trees' leaves caught the sunlight in a subtle shimmer, and their aromatic buds were thick under my feet. An iron fence surrounded the graves, and unpaved paths meandered among the mostly crumbling headstones. I meandered too, shock gradually leaching away to depression. The foundations of my life were as tilted as the oldest grave marker, and I wasn't sure I had the strength to construct new ones.
But I'd come here with a purpose, so finally I got a grip on myself and began covering the cemetery in a grid pattern.
I found them in the last row, where the fence backed up against the eucalyptus. Two small headstones set side by side. John and Ashley. There was room to John's right for another grave, one that now would never be occupied.
I knelt and brushed a curl of bark from Ashley's stone. The carving was simple, only her name and the dates. She'd been born April 6, 1969, and had died February 1, 1971.
I knelt there for a long time. Then I said goodbye and went home.

The old Carmichael house sat at the end of a chained-off drive that I'd earlier taken for a logging road. It was a wonder I hadn't stumbled across it in my search for the cabin. Built of dark timber and stone, with a wide veranda running the length of the lower story, it once might have been imposing. But now its windows were boarded, birds roosted in its eaves, and all around it the forest encroached. I followed a cracked flagstone path through a lawn long gone to weeds and wildflowers, to the broad front steps. Stood at their foot, my hand on the cold wrought-iron railing.
Could a child of two retain memories? I'd believed so before, but mine had turned out to be false, spoon-fed to me by the woman who had taken me from this veranda twenty-four years earlier. All the same, something in this lonely place spoke to me; I felt a sense of peace and safety that I'd never before experienced.
I hadn't known real security; my mother's and my life together had been too uncertain, too difficult, too shadowed by the past. Those circumstances probably accounted for my long string of failures, my inability to make my way in the world. A life built on lies and forbidden things was bound to go nowhere.
And yet it hadn't had to be that way. All this could have been mine, had it not been for a woman unhinged by grief. I could have grown up in this once lovely home, surrounded by my real parents' love. Perhaps if I had, my father would not have died of an untimely heart attack, and my birth mother would not have become a recluse. A sickening wave of anger swept over me, followed by a deep sadness. Tears came to my eyes, and I wiped them away.
I couldn't afford to waste time crying. Too much time had been wasted already.

To prove my real identity, I needed the help of Madeline Carmichael's attorney, and he took a good deal of convincing. I had to provide documentation and witnesses to my years as Ashley Heikkinen before he would consent to check Abigail Carmichael's birth records. Most of the summer went by before he broached the subject to Mrs. Carmichael. But blood composition and the delicate whorls on feet and fingers don't lie; finally, on a bright September afternoon, I arrived at Timber Point—alone, at the invitation of my birth mother.
I was nervous and gripped the Pinto's wheel with damp hands as I followed the guard's directions across a rolling seaside meadow to the Carmichael house. Like the others in this exclusive development, it was of modern design, with a silvery wood exterior that blended with the saw grass and Scotch broom. A glass wall faced the Pacific, reflecting sun glints on the water. Along the shoreline a flock of pelicans flew south in loose formation.
I'd worn my best dress—pink cotton, too light for the season, but it was all I had—and had spent a ridiculous amount of time on my hair and makeup. As I parked the shabby Pinto in the drive, I wished I could make it disappear. My approach to the door was awkward; I stumbled on the umandscaped ground and almost turned my ankle. The uniformed maid who admitted me gave me the kind of glance that once, as a hostess at a coffee shop, I'd reserved for customers without shirt or shoes. She showed me to a living room facing the sea and went away.
I stood in the room's center on an Oriental carpet, unsure whether to sit or stand. Three framed photographs on a grand piano caught my attention; I went over there and looked at them. A man and a woman, middle-aged and handsome. A child, perhaps a year old, in a striped romper. The child had my eyes.
"Yes, that's Abigail." The throaty voice—smoker's voice— came from behind me. I turned to face the woman in the photograph. Older now, but still handsome, with upswept creamy white hair and pale porcelain skin, she wore a long caftan in some sort of soft champagne-colored fabric. No reason for Madeline Carmichael to get dressed; she never left the house.
She came over to me and peered at my face. For a moment her eyes were soft and questioning, then they hardened and looked away. "Please," she said, "sit down over here."
I followed her to two matching brocade settees positioned at right angles to the seaward window. We sat, one on each, with a coffee table between us. Mrs. Carmichael took a cigarette from a silver box on the table and lit it with a matching lighter.
Exhaling and fanning the smoke away, she said, "I have a number of things to say to you that will explain my position in this matter. First, I believe the evidence you've presented. You are my daughter Abigail. Melinda Heikkinen was very bitter toward my husband and me: If we hadn't dismissed her husband, he wouldn't have been passed out from drinking when the fire started. If we hadn't kept her late at her duties that night, she would have been home and able to prevent it. If we hadn't stopped her from plunging into the conflagration, she might have saved her child. That, I suppose, served to justify her taking our child as a replacement."
She paused to smoke. I waited.
"The logic of what happened seems apparent at this remove," Mrs. Carmichael added, "but at the time we didn't think to mention Melinda as a potential suspect. She'd left Camel Rock the year before; even her aunt, Janet Fleming, had heard nothing from her. My husband and I had more or less put her out of our minds. And of course, neither of us was thinking logically at the time."
I was beginning to feel uneasy. She was speaking so analytically and dispassionately—not at all like a mother who had been reunited with her long-lost child.
She went on: "I must tell you about our family. California pioneers on both sides. The Carmichaels were lumber barons. My family were merchant princes engaging in the China trade. Abigail was the last of both lines, born to carry on our tradition. Surely you can understand why this matter is so ... difficult."
She was speaking of Abigail as someone separate from me. "What matter?" I asked.
"That role in life, the one Abigail was born to, takes a certain type of individual. My Abby, the child I would have raised had it not been for Melinda Heikkinen, would not have turned out so—" She bit her lower lip, looked away at the sea. "So what, Mrs. Carmichael?" She shook her head, crushing out her cigarette. A wave of humiliation swept over me. I glanced down at my cheap pink dress, at a chip in the polish on my thumbnail. When I raised my eyes, my birth mother was examining me with faint distaste.
I'd always had a temper; now it rose, and I gave in to it. "So what, Mrs. Carmichael?" I repeated. "So common?" She winced but didn't reply.
I said, "I suppose you think it's your right to judge a person on her appearance or her financial situation. But you should remember that my life hasn't been easy—not like yours. Melinda Heikkinen could never make ends meet. We lived in a valley town east of L.A. She was sick a lot. I had to work from the time I was fourteen. There was trouble with gangs in our neighborhood."
Then I paused, hearing myself. No, I would not do this. I would not whine or beg.
"I wasn't brought up to complain," I continued, "and I'm not complaining now. In spite of working, I graduated high school with honors. I got a small scholarship, and Melinda persuaded me to go to college. She helped out financially when she could. I didn't finish, but that was my own fault. Whatever mistakes I've made are my own doing, not Melinda's. Maybe she told me lies about our life here on the coast, but they gave me something to hang on to. A lot of the time they were all I had, and now they've been taken from me. But I'm still not complaining."
Madeline Carmichael's dispassionate facade cracked. She closed her eyes, compressed her lips. After a moment she said, "How can you defend that woman?"
"For twenty-four years she was the only mother I knew."
Her eyes remained closed. She said, "Please, I will pay you any amount of money if you will go away and pretend this meeting never took place."
For a moment I couldn't speak. Then I exclaimed, "I don't want your money! This is not about money!"
"What, then?"
"What do I want? I thought I wanted my real mother."
"And now that you've met me, you're not sure you do." She opened her eyes, looked directly into mine. "Our feelings aren't really all that different, are they, Abigail?"
I shook my head in confusion.
Madeline Carmichael took a deep breath. "Abigail, you say you lived on Melinda's lies, that they were something to sustain you?"
I nodded.
"I've lived on lies too, and they sustained me. For twenty-three years I've put myself to sleep with dreams of our meeting. I woke to them. No matter what I was doing, they were only a fingertip's reach away. And now they've been taken from me, as yours have. My Abby, the daughter I pictured in those dreams, will never walk into this room and make everything all right. Just as the things you've dreamed of are never going to happen."
I looked around the room—at the grand piano, the Oriental carpets, the antiques and exquisite art objects. Noticed for the first time how stylized and sterile it was, how the cold expanse of glass beside me made the sea blinding and bleak.
"You're right," I said, standing up. "Even if you were to take me in and offer me all this, it wouldn't be the life I wanted."
Mrs. Carmichael extended a staying hand toward me.
I stepped back. "No. And don't worry—I won't bother you again."
As I went out into the quicksilver afternoon and shut the door behind me, I thought that even though Melinda Heikkinen had given me a difficult life, she'd also offered me dreams to soften the hard times and love to ease my passage. My birth mother hadn't even offered me coffee or tea.

On a cold, rainy December evening, Barbie Cannon and I sat at a table near the fireplace in the hotel's tavern, drinking red wine in celebration of my good fortune.
"I can't believe," she said for what must have been the dozenth time, "that old lady Carmichael up and gave you her house in the hills."
"Any more than you can believe I accepted it." "Well, I thought you were too proud to take her money." "Too proud to be bought off, but she offered the house with no strings attached. Besides, it's in such bad shape that I'll probably be fixing it up for the rest of my life."
"And she probably took a big tax write-off on it. No wonder rich people stay rich." Barbie snorted. "By the way, how come you're still calling yourself Ashley Heikkinen?"
I shrugged. "Why not? It's been my name for as long as I can remember. It's a good name."
"You're acting awfully laid back about this whole thing." "You didn't see me when I got back from Timber Point. But I've worked it all through. In a way, I understand how Mrs. Carmichael feels. The house is nice, but anything else she could have given me isn't what I was looking for." "So what were you looking for?"
I stared into the fire. Madeline Carmichael's porcelain face flashed against the background of the flames. Instead of anger I felt a tug of pity for her: a lonely woman waiting her life out, but really as dead and gone as the merchant princes, the lumber barons, the old days on this wild north coast. Then I banished the image and pictured instead the faces of the friends I'd made since coming to Camel Rock: Barbie, Penny and Gene, the couple who ran the herb farm, Gus Galick, and—now—Janet Fleming and her son, Stu. Remembered all the good times: dinners and walks on the beach, Penny and Gene's fortieth wedding anniversary party, Barbie's first photographic exhibit, a fishing trip on Gus's trawler. And thought of all the good times to come.
"What was I looking for?" I said. "Something I found the day I got here."