The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

She’d been driving the whole fantasy.

He’d been following her lead.

Yuki was mortified. Why hadn’t she listened to her mother?

“Be like swan, Yuki- eh. Hold head high. Swim strong and silent.” She had no patience. Instead she’d taken after her father. The tank driver.

“Please, just say it,” Yuki said.

And then he did tell her, his voice halting, the story coming out in bits and pieces on a jagged time line. And although Yuki could hardly grasp what he was saying, her vision narrowed. There was a loud humming in her head.

And then everything went black.

Chapter 91

I SAT IN a wobbly chair across from Yuki and Cindy at Casa Loco, a Mexican joint near Cindy’s apartment specializing in two- star chicken fajitas. It was dark outside, and the windows reflected our colorless images, making us look like ghosts.

Especially Yuki.

Cindy was both propping Yuki up and pumping her for more information when Claire arrived, dropped down in the chair next to me.

“You were right not to go away with him,” Cindy was saying to Yuki. “You can’t make decisions when your head’s been through a blender.”

The teenage waitress removed our plates, and Claire ordered coffee all around. Yuki said, “I keep thinking maybe I should have toughed it out. Just gotten into the car —”

“And if you hadn’t felt better?” Cindy asked her. “What a bloody awful weekend this would’ve been if you’d been stranded in Napa with someone who might have repulsed you.”

“I hate it when you sugarcoat things, Cindy.”

“Well, I’m not wrong, am I?”

“So let me get this straight,” Claire said, bringing herself up to date since talking to Yuki on the phone. “Doc was born with ambiguous genitalia? The doctors didn’t know for sure if he was a boy or a girl?”

Yuki nodded, used a forefinger to wick the tears out from under her eyes.

“They told his parents that if they conditioned him as a girl, he’d never know.”

“They got that wrong,” I said.

Claire said, “It’s a damned tragedy, Yuki. I’m sure the parents were under a lot of pressure to tell people the baby’s sex. Anyway, it was a theory based on practicality. Even if the chromosomes read XY, if the parts looked messed up, they did the surgery. ‘Easier to make a hole than a pole,’ they used to say. Then, they’d advise, treat the kid like a girl. Give her estrogen at adolescence, and by God, she’ll be a girl.”

“They named him Flora Jean,” Yuki sputtered. “Like you said, Claire, they took a baby boy and made him a girl! But he never felt like one, ever — because he wasn’t a girl. Oh my God. It’s so sick!”

“So he reversed the process when he was how old?” Claire asked.

“Started when he was twenty-six. After that, he went through about four or five years of hell.”

“Oh man. That poor guy,” I said.

Yuki lifted her teary eyes to mine. “I’m crazy about Doc, Lindsay. He’s sweet. He’s funny. He’s seen me as a real bitch and as a total wimp. He gets me — but how am I going to stop thinking of him as a guy who used to be a girl?”

“Aw, Yuki. Where did you leave things with him?”

“He said he’d call me over the weekend. That we’d go out to dinner next week and talk.”

“Doc cares about you,” I said. “He’s showing you how much he cares by telling you what happened. Giving you time.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Yuki choked out.