Angie downshifted the gear into first. She had almost driven by Will’s house. She pulled over to the curb, parking across the street, in front of a fire hydrant.
Will lived in a bungalow that used to be a crack house and was probably worth half a million bucks by now, if only for the land. The inside was meticulously restored, decorated entirely in neutrals. His desk was pushed up against a wall in the living room. A pinball machine took pride of place in the dining room. The spare room was full of all the books he had read with his painstaking slowness, determined to get through the classics because he thought that’s what normal people did.
In the summer, he mowed the lawn every other weekend. He cleaned the gutters twice a year. Every five years, he painted the trim around the windows. He pressure washed the decks and porches. He planted flowers in the little garden outside the front door. He was a regular suburban dad except that he didn’t live in the suburbs and he didn’t have a kid.
At least not as far as he knew.
The driveway was empty, as usual. Will spent most of his free time at Sara’s. Angie couldn’t get past the security system in Sara’s building without spending some serious money, but she had found old photos of the apartment archived on a real estate site. Chef’s kitchen. Two bedrooms. An office. Master bath with soaking tub and a shower with ten body jets.
Apparently, she liked to keep the body jets to herself.
I took a page from Mama’s book, Sara had written three weeks ago. I had the painters tackle the guest bathroom while we were at work. I changed out the towels to match. Will was so pleased to have his own bathroom in my apartment, but honestly, I was going to kill him if I had to keep sharing.
Angie wondered if Will was stupid enough to fall for the trick. She assumed he was. He fell for a lot of Sara’s crap. He probably had a T-shirt that said happy wife, happy life.
She smiled, because the only way Sara could marry Will was if she pried him away from Angie’s cold, dead hands.
If for that reason alone, Angie would survive tomorrow.
She checked for curious neighbors before walking around the side of the house. With any other owner, the back gate would squeak, but Will kept everything well oiled. Angie found the spare key over the doorframe. She slipped it into the lock. She opened the door and found two greyhounds staring back at her.
They were curled into a sleepy pile. They blinked in the faint light, looking more surprised than scared. Angie wasn’t afraid. The dogs knew her.
“Come on,” she whispered, clicking her tongue. “Good boys,” she coaxed, petting them as they stood and stretched. She held open the door. They went outside.
Betty barked.
Will’s dog was standing in the kitchen doorway, protecting her territory.
Angie scooped up the mutt with one hand, clamped her mouth shut with the other, and tossed her outside. She had the door closed before Betty could get her bearings. The little asshole tried to get back in through the dog door, but Angie blocked it with her foot until she could put a chair in front of it.
Betty barked again. Then again. Then there was silence.
Angie looked around the kitchen.
Dogs meant people.
Will and Sara were here. They must have walked from her apartment. They walked all the time, even in the summer heat, like cars had never been invented.
Angie took a moment to consider what she had done. What she was still doing. This was a little crazy stalker, a little more dangerous than usual.
Was she dangerous?
She had locked her purse in the car. The gun was still unloaded. Something had told her to leave the clip out, make herself walk through those extra steps—jam in the clip, pull back the slide, load a bullet into the chamber, curl her finger around the trigger—before she did something that she couldn’t get out of.
Angie looked down at her foot. The toes were up, heel down, about to take a step. She rocked back and forth. Leave? Go? Stay here until someone woke up?
He drinks hot chocolate in the morning, Sara had written to Tessa. It’s like kissing a Hershey bar when I wake up.
The iPad was in Angie’s trunk, too. She had told herself on the drive over that she was going to hand over the movie to Will. His golden ticket back into the Marcus Rippy rape charge. He would be ecstatic. So why had Angie left the iPad locked in her trunk if the plan was to give it to Will?
She looked down at her foot. Toes still raised, undecided.
In all honesty, Angie never knew exactly what she wanted to give Will. A good time. A hard time. A bad time when Sara came into the kitchen, expecting to suck chocolate off his lips and found Angie instead.
She smiled at the thought.
The clock on the stove read five in the morning. Will would wake up for his run in half an hour. He had an internal alarm that you couldn’t silence no matter what you did to entice him into staying in bed.
Angie’s toes pressed to the floor. Her heel raised up. Her toes went down again. She was walking. She was in the dining room. She was in the living room. She was in the bathroom. She was in the hall. She was standing outside Will’s bedroom.
The door was cracked open.
Will was on his back. His eyes were closed. A sliver of light played across his face. His shirt was off. He never slept with his shirt off. He was ashamed of the scars, the burns, the damage. Apparently, that had changed. The reason why was between his legs. Long auburn hair. Milky white skin. Sara was propped up on her elbow. She was using her hand with her mouth. It was her other hand that Angie couldn’t stop looking at. Will’s fingers were laced through Sara’s. Not gripping the back of her head. Not forcing her to go deeper.
He was holding her fucking hand.
Angie pressed her fist to her mouth. She wanted to scream. She was going to scream. She turned around, forcing herself into an unnatural silence. She was in the living room, the kitchen, the backyard, the driveway, her car. It wasn’t until she was locked inside her car that she let it out. Angie opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could. She yelled so long that she tasted blood in her mouth. She banged her fists on the steering wheel. She was crying, aching so bad that every bone in her body felt charred with rage.
She got out of the car. She opened the trunk. She grabbed her purse. She found her gun. The clip was out. She shoved it back in. She started to pull back on the slide, to put a bullet into the chamber, but her hands were too slick with sweat.
She looked at the gun. The Glock had been a gift to herself when she got the job with Kip. She should’ve cleaned it better. The metal looked dry. Will used to oil her gun for her. He used to make sure her car had enough gas, that her transmission wasn’t leaking like a sieve, that she had enough money in her bank account, that she wasn’t out there in the world alone.
He was doing those things for Sara now.
Angie got back into her car. She tossed the gun onto the dashboard. This wasn’t right. She was trying to do good, to help Jo, to help Will with his case against Marcus Rippy, to risk her fucking life to save her daughter. This was the thanks she got? She could already have a target on her back. Dale was clearly suspicious. He knew more than he was letting on. Angie thought she was playing them, but maybe they were playing her. Or Jo could be the weak link. Fuck not showing up outside Rippy’s house tomorrow night. Jo could’ve already told Reuben what was going on. Chain reaction. Reuben would tell Kip, Kip would tap Laslo, and Angie would have a knife sticking out of her chest by the time Jo bonded out of jail.
Let Will identify her body. Let him see the knife in her heart. Let him experience the horror that came from realizing he had failed her just like every other time he had let her down. Let him hold her lifeless, bloody hand while he cried.
And let that cunt Sara Linton see all of it.
Angie found a notebook in her purse, clicked her pen. She started writing in big, capital letters:
You fucking piece of—
Angie stared at the words. The pen had torn through
the paper. Her heart was pounding so hard that she felt it pushing into her throat. She tore the page out of the notebook. She tried to regulate her breathing, to stop her hand from shaking, to calm the hell down. This had to be done right. She couldn’t hurt Will with her words if she didn’t sharpen her tongue with a razor.
Angie pressed the pen to the blank sheet of paper. Cursive. Crooked, sloping lines. Not for Will, but for Sara.
Hey, baby. If someone is reading this to you, then I am dead.
She filled the page front and back. She felt like a dam had broken inside of her. Thirty years of having his back. Taking care of his problems. Comforting him. Letting him fuck her. Fucking him back. Will might not find the letter soon, but he would find it eventually. Either Angie would be dead or Sara would nag him into finally making a break. Will would go to the bank. He would find Angie’s post office box. And instead of finding a way to track her down, he would find this letter.
“Fuck you,” Angie mumbled. “Fuck you, and fuck your girlfriend, and fuck her sister and her fucking family and her fucking—”
She heard a door close.
Will stood on his front porch. He was dressed in his running gear. He stretched up his arms, leaned one way, then the other. His five-thirty run. One thing that would never change. Angie waited for him to see her car, but instead of looking out into the street, he knelt down on the front walk and plucked a flower from the garden. He went back into the house. Almost a full minute passed before he returned to the porch, hands empty, smile on his face.
Angie could take care of his silly grin. She got out of her car. She stared at him, waiting for him to see her.
At first, he didn’t. He stretched his legs. He checked the water bottle that fit into the small of his back. He retied his shoes. Finally, he looked up.
His mouth gaped open.
Angie glared at him. Her fingernails itched to claw out his eyes. She wanted to kick him in the face.
He said, “Angie?”
She got into the car. She slammed the door closed. She cranked the engine. She pulled away from the curb.
“Wait!” Will called. He was running after her, arms pumping, muscles straining. “Angie!”
She could see him in her rear-view mirror. Getting closer. Still screaming her name. Angie slammed on the brakes. She grabbed the gun off her dash. She got out of the car and pointed the weapon at his head.
Will’s hands shot into the air. He was fifteen feet away. Close enough to catch up to her. Close enough to take a bullet to the heart.
He said, “I just want to talk to you.”
Angie’s finger was resting just above the trigger. Then it was not. Then she felt the safety lever under the pad of her finger, then the trigger, and then she pulled back hard.
Click.
Will flinched.
The bullet didn’t come.
Dry fire. The chamber was empty. Angie’s hands had been too slick to pull back on the slide.
Will said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
She stared at her husband. Everything was so familiar, but different. The lean cut of his legs. The tight abdomen under his T-shirt. The long sleeves that covered the scar on his arm. The mouth that had kissed her. The hands that had touched her. That touched Sara now. That held her fucking hand.
She said, “You’ve changed.”
Will didn’t deny it. “I need to talk to you.”
“There’s nothing to say,” she told him. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
He held out his arms. “This is what I look like when I’m in love.”
Angie felt the cold metal of the gun against her leg. The air had left her body. Acid ripped apart her stomach.
Pull the slide. Load the bullet into the chamber. Press the trigger. Make the problem disappear. Make Sara a widow again. Erase the last thirty years because they didn’t matter. They never mattered. At least they didn’t to Will.
Angie got back into the car. The gun went back onto the dash. She pressed the gas all the way to the floor. Her body hurt. Her soul ached. She felt like Will had beaten her. She wished that he had. Bloodied her mouth. Bruised her eyes shut. Kicked her bones to pieces. Railed against her, screamed at her, seethed with rage—
Anything that would prove that he still loved her.
SUNDAY—11:49 PM
Angie fired up a joint. The moon was full overhead, almost like a spotlight. She looked in her rearview mirror. Clear. It wasn’t yet time for Jo to leave the party. They had settled on midnight because it seemed like as good a time as any. LaDonna’s party had started at nine. No one who mattered showed up until ten. Two hours to mingle. Two hours for Jo to extract herself from Reuben. Or to take the coward’s way out and stay with her husband.
Midnight.
Jo would either turn into a pumpkin or she would turn into Angie’s daughter.
Angie blew on the tip of the joint. She honestly had no idea what Jo would do. The stark truth was that she did not know Jo Figaroa. Angie was here because she had made a promise to herself that she would see this through. What happened next was up to Jo. The only certain outcome was that Angie was going to leave town either way.
She looked down at the yellow plastic ring on her finger. The sunflower leaves had been crushed in her purse. All of her purses. Angie changed out her bag every other day, but she always transferred the ring because—why?
Because it meant something?
A child’s toy, bought from a bubble gum machine to signify a relationship that had begun almost thirty years before. Angie always pretended that she didn’t remember that first time with Will. Mrs. Flannigan’s stuffy basement. Mouse shit on the floor. The stained futon mattress. The smell of spunk. He had been so vulnerable.
Too vulnerable.
Like fear, vulnerability was contagious. That day, Will had been distraught, but Angie was the one who felt inconsolable. She had shown him a side of herself that no one else had seen before or since. She had told him about her mother’s pimp. She had told him about what came after. Will had never looked at Angie the same way again. He took on the job of savior. Of superhero. He risked his life to protect her. He constantly bailed her out of trouble. He gave her money. He gave her safety.
What did he want in return?
Nothing that Angie could see. This was not the kind of transaction she could live with. In many ways, it would’ve been better if Will had held it over her head or punished her. A feeling of pity was his only reward. Will never asked her for the things that he knew other men had paid for. He clearly wanted it. He wasn’t a saint. But there was too much knowledge, too much of a clear-eyed understanding of the pain that had bonded them together in that dank, lonely basement.
Angie was ten years old when Deidre Polaski stuck a needle in her own arm and took a three decades long nap. For weeks, Angie sat beside the woman’s comatose body and watched soap operas and slept and bathed Deidre and combed her hair. There was a roll of cash in a Sanka jar behind the radiator. Angie used the money for pizza and junk food. The cash ran out before Angie could. Deidre’s pimp came knocking on her door, looking for his piece. Angie told him there was nothing left, so he took a piece of her instead.
Her mouth. Her hands.
Not her body.
Dale Harding knew better than to shit where another man would pay to eat.
Everyone always said Dale was a bad cop. No one ever figured out how bad. They thought it was booze and gambling. They didn’t know that he had a stable of underage girls supplementing his paycheck from the city. That he took pictures. That he sold the pictures to other men. That he sold the girls. That he used the girls for himself.
He had tricked out Delilah, his own daughter. He had tricked out Deidre, his own sister. He had tricked out Angie, his own niece.
Thirty-four years ago, Dale was the one who knocked at the door. Angie’s uncle. Her savior. Her pimp.
This was how Angie knew about the bricks of cash Dale kept under the spare tire in
his trunk. Escape money, he always called it, for the time when the detectives he was working with turned their detecting his way. They never figured him out, and meanwhile, Dale had earned and gambled away fortunes. There were always more abandoned girls to exploit. There was always more cash to be made. And there was always Angie on the periphery, waiting for him to notice her.
He was the closest thing to a father that she had ever had.
Every home the state placed her in, no matter how good or bad, Angie always found a way back to Dale. She became a cop for him. She took care of his problems. She looked after Delilah when most of the time all she could think about was wrapping a bag around the girl’s head and watching her suffocate.
Will had no idea that a cop had pimped Angie out. He was as good as Dale Harding was bad. Will did things the right way. He followed the rules. But he also had that same feral, animal side to him that Angie did. Will could dress in a suit and keep his hair cut over his collar, but she saw through the disguise. She knew how to push that button that brought out the beast. Over the years, Angie had toyed with telling him about Dale. There was a time when Will would’ve tracked Dale down, put a bullet in his gut, if he found out what the man had done to Angie.
She wondered what he would do if he found out now. Probably talk to Sara. Discuss how tragic Angie’s life was. Then they’d go out to dinner. Then they would go home and make love.
That’s what bothered Angie the most. Not the blow job, not even the hand-holding, but the ease between them. The sensation had permeated the room.
Happiness. Contentment. Love.
Angie couldn’t remember ever having that with Will.
She should let him go. Give him permission to have the normalcy that he had yearned for his entire life. Unfortunately, Angie never did the right thing when she felt wounded. Her inclination was to lash out. Her inclination was to keep hurting Will until he finally hurt her back.