I study his solemn profile, the sleek, shining swath of hair, the blank black T-shirt advertising nothing but him, the worn boot-cut Levi’s and scuffed brown leather boots with the squared-off toe that are either cowboy or biker, I’m not sure which, and decide he’s definitely not from around here. Not only looks-, conversation- and drawl-wise but because yes, what he’s doing for Payton is a big deal. I can’t see Justin putting himself out like that for anybody, much less a grief-stricken stranger.
Hell, I can’t even see me doing it.
“I don’t know how your father shows up for tragic shit like that every day without letting it get to him.” He turns back to me, a shadow in his eyes. “I mean, how do you try like hell to save somebody and then watch him kill himself anyway?”
I gaze back at him, embarrassed to admit that I’ve never really thought about it, that the police stories my father and Vinnie tell are always funny ones of tragedies averted, narrow escapes and chaotic close calls, stories in which the bad guys get caught, the good guys live on and the punch lines always make us laugh . . .
Stories that are nothing like what I actually saw happen on the overpass.
Hmm.
Eli hesitates, and then, as if he can’t help himself, says, “I tried to get Corey to come down before your father got there. He wouldn’t give me the baby, either.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say quietly.
“Yeah, nobody really does. I told your dad about it afterward so I guess it’s in the police report but . . . I don’t know. I feel like I should have done more.” He rubs his chin, toys absently with the patch nestled beneath his lip. “Christ, I can still see it in my mind. One minute they were there, and the next . . . nothing.”
“I know.” His bleak tone makes me shiver.
“Your dad was cool, though. When we got back to headquarters he got me coffee and took the time to sit down and talk with me. I mean besides just taking my statement. I won’t forget that. He reminded me of my—” And then he stops, face tight, and looks away. “Just tell him I said hey and, uh, thanks again for the coffee.” He turns to leave.
“Wait,” I say quickly, thrown by the abrupt change and holding up the dry-cleaning ticket. “I need your phone number.”
“Oh right,” he says distractedly, and rattles it off. “It’s my cell.”
“When do you want your suit back?” I say, glancing past him into the parking lot. I don’t see my mother’s car yet but it’s almost seven and she should be here any minute, and now I’m wondering if he knows about the video or if I should tell him. I wish we had more time. “Tomorrow?”
“No rush,” he says with a shrug. “I only wear it to funerals, so . . .”
“Then how about next Thursday?” I offer, giving it one last halfhearted shot and wondering if he’ll make the connection: Picking up the suit means seeing me again, and a week is a long time to wait. Seven whole, chancy days. Drag your feet that long and anything could happen.
“Yeah, that’s good,” he says, and I feel like kicking something.
“Great,” I say, ripping off the ticket stub a little more vigorously than necessary and handing it to him. “See you then.”
“Okay, thanks,” he says, stuffing it in his pocket and flashing me a small, crooked smile. “So uh, good talking to you, Rowan. Stay dry.”
“You too,” I say, and as soon as he and Daisy disappear into the rain around the side of the building I spring into action, cursing under my breath, oddly near tears while pinning his pieces, searching his pockets, finding a hair tie, a half roll of breath mints and a sad little funeral card decorated with Jesus, angels and lambs for Samuel “Sammy” Well, whose time on this earth totaled a depressing three months and thirteen days.
Terrible.
Thirteen days ago, none of us had ever even heard of Corey Mahoney and Sammy Well. They could have been anybody, random strangers on the street, and now it’s like all roads lead straight back to them and we’re entwined forever, their deaths and our lives tangled up in one big, wretched knot.
I don’t know how my father does it, either.
Maybe it’s time I asked him.
I stick Eli’s things in an envelope and staple it to the ticket, run his stuff back to the bin and then, grabbing the black dress, pin a ticket stub on the label in the neck, unpin the silver baby pin, drop it into an envelope, seal it and staple it to her ticket.
I grab my purse and jacket, turn off the lights and the radio—good night, Smokey Robinson—slip out the door and lock it behind me.
Turn as headlights splash across the wet, gleaming pavement and see my father, not my mother, pull up in his pristine, rain-streaked black Blazer and stop in the fire zone in front of me.
One look at his face tells me all I need to know.
Chapter 4
“Hey, Dad,” I say, opening the SUV door and climbing inside. The air-conditioning is chilling after the humid heat, and the radio is silent.
That’s a bad sign.
“Hey, Row.” His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “How was work?”
“Okay,” I say, reaching for my seat belt because he won’t drive away until it’s buckled and I want to get out of here before he asks me about—
“So where’s Eva?” he says, looking past me into the shadowy dry cleaner’s.
Damn. “Oh, she had to take her car to the shop,” I say casually, and then, to divert him, “Hey, Vinnie stopped in to drop off his uniforms.” Evasive maneuvers are a long shot, because my father has seen it all, but still worth a try. “He had to leave though, because there was an accident on Main Street. With injuries. I don’t know who it was or anything, or how bad.” I shrug and buckle the belt. “Okay, ready. God, I’m starving. What’re we having for supper?”
“Lasagna,” he says absently, glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure there’s no one coming, and then pulls up to the stop sign.
“Really?” I say, glancing over at him in surprise. Lasagna is my father’s all-time favorite but it’s still usually an occasion meal in my house, like for Christmas or Sunday dinner, and one my mother only makes when she has extra free time, never on the days she works down at the library. “Why?”
He meets my gaze for a long moment and then looks back at the road, his mustache twitching into a slight smile. “Well, between you and me, I think your mother’s trying to fatten me up so I’m not so irresistible to women.”
I snort a laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it. No, c’mon, Dad, really: What’s going on?”
“Nice. My own daughter throws me under the bus.” He signals, pulls out onto North Main and makes the quick right onto Victory Lane, his hands steady on the wheel. “So anyway, what was wrong with Eva’s car?”
“I don’t know, and who cares?” I say, suddenly impatient with his stall tactics. “C’mon, I’m not a little kid anymore, okay? Stop trying to protect me. I already know about the dashboard video being on the news tonight.” It comes out sharp, accusing even, and the lightness drains from his face, making me immediately feel bad. “Sorry, but seriously, why are they doing this? I mean, it’s a week old. Corey’s dead. There’s no one to arrest. I thought it was done.”
The windshield wipers squeak, sweeping drizzle from the glass.
“So did I, but I guess not,” he says finally as we cruise past the woods. “Word is that the media’s doing a story on the effects of budget cuts to emergency services and whether this whole thing could have been avoided if ERT and the county crisis negotiator had shown up sooner. Hey, hindsight is always twenty/twenty, right?” There’s an edge to his voice. “But that’s okay; let them go to the mayor, the city council and the controller. Interview whoever cuts our budget every year.” He glances across the dark car at me. “The truth is that I don’t think county crisis would have made a difference. Corey’s mind was made up. He wasn’t going to wait.”
“You could tell that just by talking to him?” I ask, reaching out and lowering the air-conditioning. “Th
at he’d definitely decided to kill himself, I mean?”
He sends me an inscrutable glance. “Not at first, no. You never assume anything. That’s the fastest way to miss seeing the truth. You have to question, observe and assess the situation, then stabilize the scene, take control and calm things down so nobody gets hurt. You try to buy time and humanize the hostage.”
“So then how did you know?” I ask, nudging him back on track.
“Instinct. Experience,” he says, flicking on the high beams and slowing to a stop as an opossum waddles across the road in front of us. “I got a bad feeling when he said nobody knew what he was going to do and he didn’t want to talk to any of his people. That’s never good.” He waits until the opossum’s tail disappears into the weeds and then accelerates again.
I think about that a minute. “So he didn’t tell because he didn’t want to be stopped?”
“Right,” my father says, nodding and smoothing his mustache. “When someone threatens suicide, when they tell somebody they’re going to do it beforehand they’re reaching out, hoping someone will stop them. The problem is that people who aren’t depressed don’t always understand that and have a hard time believing it. To them, the idea of killing yourself to end pain is inconceivable. They think it’s nothing but drama or a bid for attention and if they ignore it or reason with them, they’ll come to their senses and life will go back to normal,” he says, slowing the car as our old farmhouse appears on the left and the deserted overpass comes into sight up ahead on the right. “Most times it doesn’t happen that way. The ones who don’t tell anyone beforehand . . .” He shrugs. “They’ve already made their decision and planned it all out to make sure they succeed. We find them after the fact, when it’s too late.” He glances over at me, his gaze hooded and assessing. “Why the sudden interest?”
“Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you think,” I say, because I knew he was going to ask, and then I go on to tell him about Payton’s funeral dress, Eli stopping in to the cleaner’s, what he said and how haunted he looked. “I felt bad for him, especially when he said he should have done more to try and save Sammy. But seriously, what could he really have done?”
“Nothing,” my father says, shaking his head. “I know how he feels but second-guessing yourself is deadly. You can’t beat yourself up afterward. Easier said, of course, than done, but . . .” His mouth tightens. “He’s a good kid and that video airing isn’t going to help matters any. He doesn’t need this mess on top of everything else.”
“Okay, but how do you deal with this kind of stuff over and over?” I say doggedly, because now I really do want to know. “Like when you caught that janitor who killed that first grader or Corey jumping or the time you hurt your back dragging that fat drunk guy out of the burning apartment and got your valor award . . .” My gaze falls to the wristwatch he wears every day, an engraved honorarium given at a commendation ceremony with the valor medal, and in that instant I understand that all those funny police stories he’s told were born of calls more dangerous, sick and frightening than funny, that finding humor in even the scariest situations is just his way of coping and of sharing his day with us. “You’ve seen some really bad things, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” he says with quiet, matter-of-fact resignation. “People don’t call the cops to celebrate; they call us for trauma and disaster and chaos. I’m there at the crisis moments of their lives, trying to stop things from getting worse, and the only way to do my job is to separate myself, step back, and function.” He flips on the signal light even though there’s no one else on the road and turns the car into the driveway, pulling up beside my mother’s white Sebring. “Something like losing Sammy . . . You take it to heart, even though you know you have to get past it and keep going.” He shifts the car into park but doesn’t turn off the engine, just sits staring out through the rain-speckled windshield. “Corey didn’t hate his son. He loved him and he was convinced he was doing the right thing by not leaving him behind. That’s what made him so dangerous.” He shakes his head. “The look in his eyes . . . there was nothing there. No hope, no anything but emptiness. It was like he was done. Used up.”
I sit very still, listening, because it’s not that often my father talks to me like this. He’s actually giving me what I asked for and treating me like an equal, not a naïve little kid anymore . . .
And for some reason, that makes me want to cry.
“Yeah, I had a bad feeling about him.” He takes a deep breath, releases it slowly. “I wish I was wrong.”
I sneak a peek at his profile, see the tears glistening in his eyes and feel mine filling, too.
“I see that kid every time I close my eyes.” He looks at me now, the naked pain on his face like a knife in my heart, and I don’t know what to do, what to say to erase it—
The sunporch light blinks and, startled, we both look over.
My mother is standing in the doorway, head cocked and hands raised in question.
My father nods, clears his throat and shuts off the engine. “So that’s the story. I’ve been on the phone with headquarters and my PBA rep ever since the videotape aired, and I’m going in tomorrow for a sit-down with the brass.”
Even I know that a sit-down with the brass is never a good thing. “But—”
“It’s okay,” he says, and the smile he gives me is tired but real. “That’s tomorrow. Tonight your mother worked her butt off making lasagna so we’re going to go in and enjoy it, right?”
I gaze back at him, wishing more than anything that I was little again and could just throw myself at him like I used to, certain he’d make the whole world right.
But I’m not anymore, and he can’t.
“Okay,” I murmur, giving him a weak smile. “And, Dad?” I say, laying my hand on his arm as he starts to open his car door.
“What?” he says, pausing to look back.
But the words that make my throat ache so badly still won’t come and so I just gaze at him hoping he knows, and he must because he smiles in a soft, sweet way I haven’t seen in a long time, and putting his hand over mine he says, “Come on, Rowie. Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”
He’s protecting me again and we both know it, but this time I don’t mind because I want so badly to believe him.
Chapter 5
I arrive at the bus stop the next morning to find I’m a minor celebrity, and not in a good way.
“Hey, I saw the tape of your dad trying to talk that asshole down off the ledge,” some chubby-cheeked freshman says, swiping a hand across his snub nose and trying to sniffle up all the snotty little bats hanging in the cave. “Guy was a loser, man. Should have just shot him and grabbed the kid. Bam! One down. Next?” He flashes a cocky grin at his creepy little clutch of cohorts, who spill forward to high-five each other. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Oh my God. “No, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And that guy with the dog,” a short, pimply kid says, overriding my words and snorting with laughter. “What a wuss. He was frigging useless.”
“Yeah, try saying that to his face,” the gangly one sneers, shoving the pimply kid. “He’d kick your ass.”
“He’s in my third-period gym class,” snotty nose says, punching pimply kid in the arm. “I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
Wait . . . what? Eli goes to East Mills?
“Don’t waste your time, he already knows he blew it,” pimply kid says with a sulky scowl, rubbing his arm and fast losing his bravado. “Ow, that hurt. You’re a dick.”
Gangly, snotty nose and a third twerpy freshman exchange laughing glances, drop their books, jump him and start pummeling.
The bus pulls up and I leave them there, tumbling and yelping like a pile of mangy puppies.
Our crackhead driver gives me a nasty sideways look as I get on and a wave of silence billows in my wake. I plop into an empty seat, pull out my phone and punch out a text to Nadia: did
you see the video?
She answers almost immediately. Yeah. Talk when you get here.
But when I get off the bus she’s leaning against the wall in the courtyard with Danica and Bree, our peripheral friends, and tucked under Brett’s arm. I wave, hoping she’ll detach herself and meet me halfway, but she doesn’t. One senior, two sophomores and a junior try to stop me on my way through the crowd but I just blow them off and keep moving until I finally get there.
“Hey, guys,” I say breathlessly into the sudden silence, smoothing my hair and giving Nadia an expectant look. “God, this place is mobbed. You’d think nobody ever saw a sunny day before.”
Danica smirks. Brett lifts his chin in greeting and tightens his arm around Nadia’s waist. Nadia snuggles closer and shoots me a cautioning Just wait look from under her lashes. Bree does nothing but close her eyes and hold her face up to the brilliant morning sun, apparently working on getting some early color.
And it feels wrong, all of it. Too quiet, too casual, too pregnant with the unspoken. I look at each one of them trying so hard not to look at me and say, “So what did you think of the video?”
Brett loosens his grip on Nadia, shrugs and looks away. “Whatever.” He gives her a gentle shoulder-bump and murmurs something too low for me to hear. “Later,” he says to the rest of us in general, and slips through the crowd to Justin, who is standing over by the steps flirting with some junior girls.
Nadia shoots me an exasperated look. “Thanks, Row. You couldn’t wait five more minutes?”
“No, because this is important and in five minutes the bell’s gonna ring and I’m not going to see you again till lunch and everybody’ll be there and we won’t talk about it then, either,” I say, scowling right back.