Page 50 of The Newcomer
“Yes,” she said.
“Oh my God,” Isabelle said slowly. “That’s why I keep thinking Maya looks so familiar. Why you look vaguely familiar.” She studied Letty’s face. “She was taller, and her hair was red. Your hair is darker, and you’ve got brown eyes. Different mouth, too.”
“We’re half sisters,” Letty said. “Irish twins, my mom used to like to say. She split from my dad right after I was born, and got involved and pregnant, with Tanya’s dad on the rebound. They never actually married, which was just as well, so she just gave Tanya my dad’s name. It was easier that way. For her.”
“Oh my God,” Isabelle repeated. “Tanya was your sister. Maya’s mother. I can’t believe it. Does my mom know? Does Joe?”
“No!” Letty said. She gave Isabelle a pleading look. “Are you going to tell them?”
“No. But will you tell me what’s going on? Why you’re here?”
Letty folded and unfolded a top sheet, trying to make up her mind. She desperately wanted to confide in someone. Maybe saying Tanya’s name wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was the universe’s way of letting her know it was okay to trust.
“You have to swear not to tell anybody,” she said, her voice stern. “You can’t tell anyone. Not your mom or Joe or any of your friends. I mean it. My life depends on it, Isabelle. Maya’s too.”
The girl’s eyes grew wide. She crossed her heart. “Holy shit! I won’t. I swear it, Letty. I won’t tell a soul. I can’t believe it. Is Tanya really dead? Are you guys really in trouble? From who?”
“Yes,” Letty said. “It’s a long story, but it’s true. Tanya’s ex-boyfriend killed her. He’d been fighting her in court, trying to get custody of Maya, but she was determined not to let that happen. She told me, about a month before… she said if anything bad ever happened to her, it would be Evan. Tanya begged me—she made me promise, if anything happened, that I would take Maya and get as far away from Evan as possible. So that’s what I did.”
She told Isabelle a condensed version of the story. About how she’d worked for Evan, and how Tanya became involved with him, and the details of their bitter breakup.
Letty recounted the day her sister showed her the canvas tote bag she’d hidden in a boot in her closet, her “getaway stash” with the enormous diamond ring push present and the magazine article about the Murmuring Surf.
She left out only one detail—the amount of cash in Tanya’s go-bag.
Letty had been thinking about the money, nineteen thousand dollars, ever since she’d learned about Tanya’s involvement in Rooney’s gold-and-silver-buying scam. Knowing her sister, she’d been naïve to believe her story about “saving” money.
“So that’s why you came here? Because of that magazine article?” Isabelle said. “She never told you about living here at the Surf, or about what happened here?”
“Oh, Isabelle,” Letty said, with a long sigh. “I’m not sure I can explain my sister, because I’m just now realizing how little I really knew about her. Tanya was… complicated. All her life, she had secrets. Big ones and little ones. And I know this sounds terrible, talking about my dead sister like this, but she wasn’t always truthful. For instance, five years ago, she called me out of the blue. She said she’d been living in Atlanta and that her ‘boyfriend’—Rooney—had stolen all her clothes and money and abandoned her. She was crying and so pathetic. She asked if she could come stay with me in New York, to get a fresh start.”
“But that part was a lie,” Isabelle said. “She was right here. On Treasure Island. At the Murmuring Surf.”
“So it seems.”
“And they weren’t really married after all?”
“I can’t find a record that they were married in Florida,” Letty said. “But maybe they got married somewhere else.” She hesitated. “There’s more, though. Almost as soon as Tanya moved to the city, while she was still living with me, she got involved with Evan. At the time, I worked for him. And we were… sort of dating.”
“She stole your boyfriend?” Isabelle said indignantly. “Wow. That’s cold.”
Letty allowed herself a sad smile. “The next thing I knew, theywere living together. And then Tanya got pregnant. Maya was born seven months later.”
“Wait,” Isabelle said, doing the math in her head. “Oh my God. Maya’s eyes. They’re just like Rooney’s. That dark blue. And her eyelashes. Oh my God!” She pounded the top of the folding table. “Rooney is Maya’s father. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out earlier.”
“I only figured it out myself after your brother told me Sunday about the scammers who’d been living here at the Surf. He mentioned a man named Rooney, and I remembered that was the name of Tanya’s boyfriend. The one who ripped her off. The only other time she ever mentioned him to me was when I was asking her how she always got involved with losers. And she said he had deep blue eyes—like a mountain lake you wanted to dive naked into.”
Isabelle absorbed that piece of information. “But Tanya told Evan he was Maya’s father.”
“I’m sure that in Tanya’s mind, it all made sense. She was pregnant, Rooney was gone. Evan was available, sort of, and he was rich. Why not let him think he was her baby’s daddy?”
“And even after they broke up, she didn’t tell him Maya wasn’t his?” Isabelle asked. “Even when he was trying to get custody of a kid that wasn’t his, she still kept it a secret? Why?”
“Money, for one thing,” Letty said. “As long as Evan believed Maya was his daughter, he’d support them both, even if they weren’t married. Even after things got really, really ugly between them, she never hinted to me that he wasn’t Maya’s father. Typical Tanya.”
“I can’t believe Tanya is dead,” Isabelle repeated, blinking back tears. “I’m so sorry, Letty. I really liked her. Everybody here liked her, even the Feldmans, and they don’t like anyone.”
“Yeah,” Letty said, nodding. “That sounds like my sister. Our mom used to say Tanya could charm the birds out of the trees.”
