"I used to be famous."
Trina pauses and picks up the cigarette that's been smoking in the ashtray. She places it to the plastic button that's strapped around her neck and inhales through the hole that was cut into her throat to help her breathe. Her eyes never leave the reporter sitting in the chair across from her, watching for the usual flinch.
"Those were the days. Red carpet. Photographers. People yelling my name."
Her voice is raspy from years of smoking. She sets the cigarette down again and picks up the glass on the walnut veneered side table, taking a sip. The familiar taste of gin fills her mouth and nostrils as she swallows the liquid down.
"Nothing happened for me until daddy died. I was pretty much just another Hollywood wild child doing nothing with her life. Then everything fell in place. The offers started pouring in. No one cared when I was the daughter of a box office darling but when I became the daughter of a murderer…they loved me then."
Trina glances around her. Her eyes run over the wood paneling, the yellow shag carpet, and for just a moment she feels a deep stab of shame over how far she'd come since her days of parties with the beautiful people, living in hotel suites and mansions. Not a doublewide in a trailer park.
"What about your Golden Globe?" the reporter asks, leaning forward as she writes a few notes on the pad of paper she's balancing on her knee.
"Oh, I have it somewhere." Trina lies, her mouth watering for another sip of gin. She'll deny herself just a little longer. She thinks about the statue, how it had felt so heavy in her hand the night it was handed to her from some flavor of the moment actress whose name she can't remember. She thinks about how proud she'd been of it and how she'd had more than a twinge of guilt the day she sold it just to get some more junk.
She never talks about what happened when the money ran out and offers for parts stopped coming in. No one wants to hear that story. She never talks about track marks or skin popping, how sick you feel when you withdraw, what you'll do to keep from getting that sick.
She never tells them exactly how far she went. She doesn't even tell that story to herself.
"What about your dad?"
Trina doesn't answer. She picks up the cigarette and takes another drag. She runs a free hand through her brassy red hair, carefully brushed for the interview. She'd wanted to look her best.
"What about the bastard?"
"He was executed."
Trina looks away from the reporters face and out the window that is just feet away from her neighbor. She can still see him, strapped onto the gurney, professing his regret over what happened, trying for that Oscar winning performance all the way to the last moment. She can still see the way his eyelids fluttered shut and his jaw went slack. She can still see the signal from the man standing next to him, the little wave of his hand that told the room full of spectators that Aaron Echolls was dead.
She can still feel the ache in her chest the day she lost her daddy.
That's another story she'll never tell.
"Well, he was a killer, wasn't he?" Trina asks as she grabs the glass and takes another sip. "Didn't he deserve to die?"
The reporter looks at her and silence hangs between them. She writes something down then opens her mouth and says the one thing that will unravel the careful confidence Trina is trying to project.
"Yes, he was a murderer. But he was your dad too."
Daddy.
Trina feels the fine tremor start in her hands and her heart ratchets up ten additional beats per minute. She swallows, fighting to keep the tears that are forming in the corner of her eyes from spilling onto her cheeks.
She finally manages to say it, the line she's been giving the entire world about her father for the last twenty years. The only thing she can say that covers everything he did to Lilly Kane and Veronica Mars and to his own children.
"He's a bastard."
The reporter notices the present tense and Trina doesn't bother to tell her that Aaron Echolls will never stop being a bastard. He'll never stop stealing away the only thing Trina thought was stable in her life. Even from the grave he has a grip on her, a daily reminder that Trina Echolls is entirely unloved in this world.
"But…"
It's in reporters' natures to ask questions, push boundaries. Trina knows this and she doesn't fault the woman for doing her job. She also knows a little bit about how to control an interview.
"That's all I'm going to say. Unless you want this interview to end now, that's all you're going to ask."
Trina slouches back into the camel colored velour lounger and watches the reporter consider her words, knowing that she'll make the choice to continue the interview. Trina has won this round.
"What about Logan?"
Fuck.
"Logan?" Trina blinks, suprised. She shouldn't be. It's a natural line of questioning.
"Logan Echolls, your half brother. Aaron's son from his second marriage with Lynn…."
She hasn't heard from Logan for years. There was one time. About ten years ago. He showed up at the door of the latest seedy motel she was crashed at after a garbled phone call where she asked him for help.
Trina always asked for help but rarely took it.
He'd stood in the doorway, his face covered with stubble, eyes bloodshot. She smelled booze on his breath. That was the first time she managed to clean up, got onto methadone, started getting her life back. She was back on the streets in two months.
"He gave an interview to Vanity Fair a few months ago." The reporter says, tapping her pencil on the pad of paper, waiting for an answer from Trina.
"I know. I read it."
She'd read it about ten times, greedy for information about the last living relative she had. Greedy to hear about her brother.
"He talked about his childhood, about being abused. Did you…"
"Did I see it?" Trina interrupts the questions she's been dreading. "Did I see the marks from the belt, the cigarette burns, the beatings?"
She'd seen everything. The way Logan cowered when Aaron was around. The way he walked around the house in sock feet so he wouldn't bother daddy dearest. The way he flinched when Trina touched his back some days. She'd seen it all.
"No." Trina lies. "I never saw it."
"So Logan Echolls is lying."
Trina can't give the knife the final twist. She can't complete the lie. She picks up the glass again and takes another sip. She lifts the cigarette and takes another drag. She looks out the window one more time.
"I just said I never saw it." She finally says, her eyes not meeting the reporter's.
"And what about now? Are you close?"
They had never been close and Aaron being accused of murder had driven them even further apart. Trina had stood by her dad's side, insisting that he was innocent even though she knew it was a lie. She dressed in her most demure outfits and sat behind him each day of the trail. He would turn around occasionally and smile at her, squeezing her hand. Especially when he knew the cameras where on him.
Logan didn't understand. He yelled and swore at her after the town car dropped them off at the front door of the darkened house each day of the trial. He didn't see that Trina just didn't want to lose her daddy.
Logan had hated her every since.
"He's married." Trina says, shrugging her shoulders, hiding what she does know about her brother behind a vague answer. She knows that he used to drink too much. That he had terrible nightmares. That one night she had to pull the gun from his hand as he cried, his shoulders jerking up and down with each sob.
"Veronica Mars. The girl who discovered it was your father who killed Lilly Kane."
Veronica. Once Trina had hope they might be friends. She was half kidding the day at the hotel when she said they should get together. But Veronica had a way about her, a habit of looking at you and knowing your deepest secrets. Maybe that's why Logan never got over her.
"I know." Trina sighs. "I was invited to the wedding."
She hadn't gone. She stayed home, sitting in her lounger with a tattered robe wrapped around her. She'd gone through an entire bottle of gin that day until she was sick over and over, head hanging in the toilet. That was five years ago. She hadn't heard from him since.
Logan.
Trina feels the tears start to spill over.
"I think I've said enough." She says.
"I only have a few more questions."
The reporter stares at her, challenges her to keep talking, to give her more information for the article she's going to write that will end up being unflattering, a portrayal of how far down a person can sink, an example of failure.
Trina's eyes narrow.
"Get the fuck out."
The reporter stands up and smoothes her skirt. She thanks Trina for the interview and tells her it will be published in next month's issue of the magazine. Trina tells her to show herself out. She stays in the chair the rest of the night, smoking one cigarette after another, sipping her gin until she slowly drifts to sleep, her head lolling to one side, her lit cigarette dangling from her fingertips until it drops and a tiny stream of smoke wisps up from the floor.
Daughter of Killer Dies in House Fire
By Jennifer Hanson
NEPTUNE TIMES
Trina Echolls, the daughter of Aaron Echolls who was convicted and executed for the murder of software billionaire and local philanthropist Jake Kane's daughter died last night after she was trapped in her trailer home by a fire. Ms. Echolls was sleeping when the fire broke out and was unable to be rescued. Officials say there is no foul play involved. She is survived by her brother, Logan Echolls, of Neptune and his wife, Veronica Mars-Echolls.
The End