by R. J. Jacobs
“She wasn’t cruel,” I say to Ms. Parsons, a week later. “She was afraid.”
I understand her fear.
I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. That’s really nonsense. Sometimes the chance to have had a family when you’re growing up has passed.
“When I think about what it must have been like for Finch to be given what she always wanted, then watch Shelly try to throw it away, my heart breaks for her,” I tell Ms. Parsons.
No, Finch wasn’t cruel—she got angry and lost control. She tried for years to keep the family together—I know because I heard her myself when I was eavesdropping outside a dressing room. I could hear the desperation in her voice, even then. I think of her protectiveness when she thought Andre and Malik were taking pictures behind her home.
Ms. Parsons rubs the arm of her chair. Her throat moves as she swallows. “Finch sat beside you that night, right after she’d left the woods,” she says, and looks at me like, How do you feel about Finch considering that?
Would I have handled things differently if I’d been in her shoes? If I’d been given what I’d dreamed about, then watched as it was destroyed from the inside out?
Maybe.
Yes.
I can live without.
But most people can’t.
* * *
Two months have passed since everything happened, but I still call Detective Marion, Detective Marion. He tells me I don’t have to, that I can call him Jason, but I keep on, and now he smiles when I say it. He says he doesn’t mind being formal and that it actually feels good to be reminded he was a detective because he’s working at a desk for a few months. It’s a kind of punishment for having run away. He says he doesn’t mind the pace of the work for the time being and that he feels lucky to still have a job.
Detective Marion and I text almost every day and get together a few times a week. Today, we’re meeting at a diner near where I live that smells like baked bread and burnt butter and coffee. He sits on one side of the booth and I sit on the other. The waitress pours coffee and smiles at him. He stirs sugar into his coffee with an old-looking spoon that clinks against the sides of the cup. The edge of it reflects a little of the pink in the neon sign that says OPEN.
“I kind of like this,” he says, meaning me and him sitting together.
“It’s nice,” I say. Sometimes, when I’m with Detective Marion, I smile until my face feels sore. I don’t want to tell him that I’ve never been taken out to breakfast before, but I think he can tell, as I probably act confused about how to do everything.
He sips his coffee, makes a too-hot face, then blows a little on the surface.
“I mean, a person can’t live on strawberry Pop-Tarts alone.”
Actually, they can, I think, but I know what he means.
I wonder about everything from earlier this summer, sometimes a little too much. We hardly ever talk about what happened. I want to put that time behind me, but I also have a thousand questions. Today, I need to ask just a few.
Detective Marion keeps his voice low when I bring it up. “Ask away, I guess. I’ll tell you what I can. I wasn’t there, of course, so I can only tell you what I’ve heard.”
I ask about when they started to suspect Finch.
“What your counselor told you was right. Finch wasn’t a suspect before your conversation with Owen,” he says. “The detectives listening in believed your story enough to trick her a little. Detective Allen asked her if she’d noticed any scratches on your uniform when you picked her up on the side of the road. She started to tell him, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to have seen you. It unraveled pretty quickly from there on. The police scheduled another interview. Their family attorney was present, of course. Owen was in denial, or maybe he felt guilty about his part in Finch’s rage. He made the mistake that night of telling Finch, not only that his relationship with Shelly was ending, but exactly why. Losing her family and her boyfriend all at once was more than she could take.”
“And the man on top of the hill?”
“That was Sean, you were right. He probably looks just like his father at that distance, so at a glance, in the dark, it would have been hard to tell. He was the one who made the anonymous call about Shelly. He saw you drive away and called the police on the phone Shelly and he used to communicate, then destroyed it immediately afterward. When the police found her burner phone, the numbers matched the one he had used.”
When I imagine Sean being questioned, I hear a catch in his voice, like he’s on the verge of crying. I know he likes to act tough, so I picture him hiding it with a cough. I imagine him telling the police that the relationship went further than he had intended. I wonder what he and Shelly felt for each other, even if their relationship was wrong.
I can’t help but think of Owen—the unbelievable enormity of his loss. No wonder he was in denial about Finch’s role. Who could absorb that kind of shock?
A while after we’ve ordered, the waitress comes by and sets two plates on the table. Detective Marion’s has eggs and bacon and grits. Mine has three pancakes and four strips of bacon. I’ve never had so much food on my own plate. He thanks the waitress and puts his paper napkin in his lap. I do the same with mine.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he says. “Do you remember me saying that I wanted to help get your tooth fixed? The one that chipped at the concert?”
The word for doing something without thinking about it … Instinctively, I find the chipped place with the tip of my tongue.
“Yes, but you really don’t have to. It wasn’t your fault. I’m used to it now.”
That isn’t true, exactly, I’m not sure I would ever get used to it, but I don’t want him to feel bad. The chip is always there, as a reminder. It can be hard to forgive yourself when you do something bad, the thing you regret most.
He taps the spoon on the side of his cup and sets it on the napkin.
“I know that,” he says. “I’m not offering because I have to. I want to help get it fixed because it feels right.”
I don’t know what to say. His offering reminds me of Ms. Parsons and the overtime session feeling, except that she is my counselor and Detective Marion is my I-don’t-know-what.
My friend.
I watch the waitress pass by and smile at him again.
“I set up an appointment for you with my dentist two weeks from today. He’ll have to touch your mouth, though. There’s really no way around that. But he said the work probably wouldn’t take long and that it would be no big deal.”
Detective Marion is wrong, though. His help is actually a very big deal.
“You can think about it, Jessie.”
“No,” I say, swallowing. “I don’t have to.”
* * *
I need to do something else that makes my heart speed up in a different way. It feels like a risk, although I tell myself I’m really just accepting an invitation. I find my phone, which was returned to me in the same barely functional condition in which it had been found, and scroll my finger carefully over the cracked screen until I find Malik’s number.
I type and erase the beginning of a message several times.
Hi Malik, it’s Jessie …
Malik, I’m out of jail and …
Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you …
But then I stop typing, take a deep breath, and begin a call. I pace my tiny porch as I listen to it ring, taking in slow, deep breaths of air freshened by the summer rain. The ring sounds distant somehow, like an echo in a cave. I decide I’ve missed my chance and that I won’t leave a voice mail, when he answers.
“Jessie?” he asks cautiously, like he’s not sure it’s really me calling.
I clear my throat. I find my voice.
“Hi,” I say, “It’s me.”
“I thought I might not hear from you again. I’m so glad you called.”
“I was wondering … if you still want to have coffee.
”
The word for wanting to do or have something very much; I wonder if he hears the eagerness in my voice.
A small, yellow bird lands on the railing, right beside me, the very moment he says, “Yes.”
* * *
Light.
Everything is so bright I see red when I close my eyes. Above me, the light moves close to my face, then holds in place. I lie nearly flat, my heart pounding because there is so much light and because I know I am about to be touched. My stomach feels sick, but not completely kitchen cabinet. I tell myself a good thing is happening. I draw in a breath until my lungs are full. When I let it out, I feel calmer.
Detective Marion’s voice is at my shoulder. The dentist has allowed him to sit beside me because Marion told him I don’t like being touched. He knows the right distance to stay from me.
“Jessie, there’s going to be a tiny pain in your gum that will only last a second. Then you won’t feel anything. Right, doc?”
“That’s right, just keep your mouth open nice and wide for me, okay?” the voice above me says. He leans over me, blocking part of the light.
I nod “okay”. A drop of sweat from under my arm feels cold as it runs down my side. I close my eyes and try to hold still as the pain stings my mouth—sharp but fast, like Detective Marion said. With both hands, I grip the sides of the chair.
“You’re doing great, Jessie,” Detective Marion says.
From the corner of my eye, I can see the tiny scar I put on his forearm, thin and milky, like a spiderweb. The cut is completely healed, and the mark is barely visible, unless you know just where to look. What I do next must be a reflex, another instinct. It’s nothing I’ve ever done before, but it feels right. I reach my hand toward Detective Marion, meaning for him to hold it. It hangs in the air for a second. I imagine him hesitating. And then I feel his fingers against mine, his rough skin and gentle squeeze. “Jessie, you okay?”
I squeeze his hand a little tighter, then make a thumbs-up.
“We’re almost done now,” the voice above me says. “Not too bad, right?”
“You’re doing great, Jessie,” says Detective Marion.
And I am.
I’m doing great.
ALSO AVAILABLE BY R. J. JACOBS
And Then You Were Gone
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
R. J. Jacobs Lives in Nashville, where he maintains a private practice as a psychologist. Since completing his post-doctoral residency at Vanderbilt University, he has taught Abnormal Psychology, presented at numerous conferences, and routinely performs PTSD evaluations for veterans. He lives with his wife and two children.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Robert Jacobs
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-300-0
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-321-5
Cover design by Melanie Sun
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
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New York, NY 10001
First Edition: August 2020
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