The Things We Keep

by Nikki Kincaid

  “Slow.” I stared out the window, watching the houses of my childhood go by, so unchanged in the years since I’d been gone. The sky was pale with heat.

  “And you’re sure you don’t want any help?”

  No. I didn't want help. What I wanted was Chris's comforting presence in that house that felt so foreign without my dad.

  “Maybe,” I said at last. “I’ll let you know.” I rubbed my temples where a ghost of a headache was forming.

  “Have you seen Davis around lately?”

  “Not since the funeral.”

  Chris nodded. It was hard to reconcile the professional beside me with the boy I’d known. A warmth that had nothing to do with the relentless heat curled up inside me.

  “Did you talk to him?” I said.

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “He denied it.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I rubbed my temple. “I hate being back here.” My voice hitched in irritation. "It's just like before."

  Chris looked at me, brows raised.

  “Every day," I said, "I had to sit in class with Davis Dempster staring at me. And every night I would be at my house, knowing he was parked just down the street, watching.” I could feel my blood pressure rising. “I told dad. I told Mitch. And no one did anything.”

  “They couldn’t, Mads,” Chris said, his voice empathetic.

  “Yeah,” I said, clenching my jaw. The remembered feeling of hopelessness washed over me. “I know.”

  Chris shifted in his seat and cleared his throat.

  “What?” I said, “You think I’m being paranoid?”

  “I never said that.”

  We met eyes and Chris looked so utterly…weary that I asked him what was wrong.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “Why?”

  “You look sad or something.”

  Half his mouth lifted, but the smile failed. “It’s just a lot. With your dad and…” He trailed off.

  I knew that he and his wife didn’t have a perfect life—such a thing didn’t exist--but I still found it hard to believe he could have any sort of problem that would make him look so worn out.

  We pulled into Ace Hardware, which had been Fromer’s Hardware when I was growing up. Next to Ace was a grocery store, and next to that, a strip mall of Chinese takeout, a hair salon, and a pawnshop. This was Beacon Falls’ shopping district.

  Chris picked out a battery and carried it to the counter. I couldn’t help but notice the way everyone’s eyes followed us around the store, and granted Chris was in uniform, but it still made me uncomfortable. I was used to the anonymity of a big city, where you could do almost anything without attracting attention.

  The person at the register, a kind-looking old man, recognized me with a start, but said nothing. He scanned the battery then punched some keys.

  “Thirty-five dollars.”

  I stared at him, then looked at Chris. That couldn’t be right. The price on the sticker said fifty-seven.

  “Joe,” Chris said with a frown.

  Joe waived it away. “For you.”

  I took my wallet from my purse but Chris beat me to it. He slid his credit card into the reader.

  “Chris,” I said, “No.”

  But Chris waved me off.

  Transaction complete, Chris thanked Joe and carried the battery out to the cruiser.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, slipping into the passenger seat. I was annoyed and embarrassed, but also relieved.

  Chris adjusted his weapons belt and shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Does he always give you a discount?”

  Chris thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. I can’t remember.”

  The words Adam Najiim had written in the Daily Tribune came back to me then: The cops in this town have always enjoyed a certain status among business owners.

  But this was just one battery sold wholesale. It wasn’t like he got it for free. What harm could that do?

  Chapter 13

  Chris led the way into the police station. I shook out my arms as I went, my fingers tingling with anxiety, memories of the night of dad’s death rushing back. I shot worried glances through the windows of the offices that ran the length of the hall, looking for Ingress.

  “There she is!” Frank Gunderson, the local dispatch, came around a desk where a dual screen computer and an elaborate phone system was set up. Frank was a well-built man in his fifties with a nondescript haircut and the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. He gave me a quick hug before holding me at arm’s length. “You look good.”

  “I put on fifteen pounds, Frank,” I said, and then looking around at the dated furniture of the alcove and the chipped and cracked linoleum surfaces, added “This place hasn’t changed a bit.” The newest thing here was his computer.

  Frank gestured to a small table at the back of the narrow space. “Have a seat. Let me get you something to drink.”

  I accepted a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

  “I’ve got to finish some paperwork,” Chris said. “Be right back.” He disappeared into a window-less room I knew as the Hole, where the officers could prepare their paperwork and reports at a bank of computers.

  When he was gone, Frank glanced through the office window behind him. Mitch was talking animatedly to a couple of suits.

  Frank leaned toward me, his voice dropping, “Mads, you ought to be careful.”

  Dread rippled down my spine. I tried to read Frank’s expression, but Frank had been an officer for a long time. He knew how to mask his thoughts.

  “Why?”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, his dark eyes boring into mine. “Just be careful, okay?”

  I opened my mouth to ask again, but just then the phone rang and Frank ducked back into his seat and pressed a button.

  “Beacon Falls police department.”

  Chris’s footsteps sounded a moment before he reappeared. “Shall we?”

  The basement of the Admin Building served three functions: a locker room for the cops, a temporary depository for the prosecutors’ office, and a jailhouse complete with four cells. The cells were more like a holding station than a jail, used for drunks or those awaiting transport to the larger county jail. In fact, if it weren’t for Mary Trelany, I’d doubt that most of the citizens in Beacon Falls even knew we had a jail.

  It had happened shortly after dad and Mitch were promoted to the newly-formed Vice Squad. The Squad had been created in combination with the county’s sheriff department in response to the increasing drug crimes.

  The Vice Squad’s first bust had been a brothel operating under the guise of a tanning salon out on State Route 5, at the edge of Beacon Falls city limits. They’d known about it for months, but when they finally had enough evidence to shut it down, the town was shocked to learn that a police-issue weapon had been found in one of the girls’ cars. Apparently, the girls had used it for target practice in the field behind the strip mall.

  A Beacon Falls cop named Eric Schwartz eventually took the fall for it, but rumors persisted that he wasn’t the only officer who may have frequented the tanning salon.

  The car where the gun had been found had belonged to Mary Trelany. She later committed suicide in this very jail. Hung herself from the top bar while awaiting transport to County.

  I was in high school, knees-deep in my own self-destruction, and therefore paid little attention to the news coverage. I knew what happened, but never bothered to ask dad about it. In the midst of that dark period, I couldn’t be bothered to look outside myself and wonder what dad must’ve been going through, his tiny jurisdiction persecuted in the papers, his colleague brought up on corruption charges.

  Chris saw me peering into the jail. “They’re all out now,” he said, guessing what I was thinking. “The girls.”

  No need to explain. Since the bust, the girls had come to mean those six young women arrested that day.

  “Do you think—"

  “No.” Chris cut
me off.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “You were going to ask me if I think any of them might have gone after your dad.”

  I frowned. He really did know me well.

  “Most of them don’t even live around here anymore,” he said. “One’s in Cleveland. Another’s in Youngstown. A couple have gone off the radar. Elizabeth Antwerp lives here in town but—”

  “She does?”

  “—she’s got no reason to want your dad dead.”

  “He helped put her away.”

  Chris shook his head. “The real world doesn’t work like that, Mady. Antwerp isn’t interested in revenge.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because,” he was growing irritated, “She’s just gotten off parole. Do you really think she’d risk going back to prison? For killing a cop?”

  I didn’t like that she was back in town, but what Chris said made sense. Why risk something like that when you were free and clear?

  “What about the guy whose gun was found in that girl’s car?”

  Tension settled over Chris’s face. “What about it? He’s old, and last I heard, he was dying. Just leave it, Mady. It happened a long time ago.”

  “What did?”

  We spun around. Mitch was coming down the stairs, his usually-crisp button-down a little disheveled for so early in the morning.

  “Nothing,” we said in unison.

  Mitch gave us a curious look, then led the way into the locker room, “Your dad’s stuff is in here.”

  The locker room smelled of Kevlar, shoe polish, and soap. Two cardboard boxes sat on a bench between the row of lockers, Graves written on the side in Sharpie.

  I felt dizzy.

  “Twenty-five years on the force,” Mitch said, sadly. “Distilled down to two boxes.” He clamped a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “A lesson for all of us.”

  Was it just my imagination or did Chris pale?

  I opened the flaps of one box, glanced through its contents.

  “What was dad working on when he was killed?” I asked.

  Mitch and Chris exchanged looks.

  “Nothing in particular,” Mitch said.

  “Stolen auto parts,” Chris said.

  Mitch’s lips thinned.

  A couple of worn paperbacks sat under some yellowed undershirts and several pairs of socks.

  “Did he find out who did it?”

  “Yeah,” Mitch said, “It was Nate Pohlen.”

  “Has Ingress talked to him?”

  Mitch’s expression took on a father’s gentle reproach. “You know Nate, Mady. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Nate Pohlen was an old timer who ran what was essentially a junkyard, although he called it a transfer station, a name that had always struck me as funny. A Beacon Falls institution, Nate was one of those characters citizens speak about with a smile but avoid like the plague.

  “If dad busted him—"

  “He didn’t,” Mitch said, finality in his voice. “He gave him a warning.”

  For stolen auto parts? If that had happened in Reno, the guy would be in jail. Again, the things I read online flitted through my mind.

  I picked up one of the boxes. “Thanks for putting these together, Mitch.”

  “Let me get the other—" Mitch said, but Chris intercepted.

  “No, Chief, I’ll get it.” He grabbed the second box.

  A dark look passed over Mitch’s face, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.

  Chapter 14

  “God this humidity!” I wiped a sleeve across my brow. “I don’t know how you guys can stand it.”

  Bending over the trunk, Chris slid some road flares out of the way with one hand and set the box down. Then he took the second box from me and squeezed it beside the first.

  The cruiser had been running while we were in the station, which meant the A/C had been cranked as well. I slipped into the passenger seat with a relieved sigh. “Oh that feels amazing.” I turned the vent toward me.

  Frank had refilled my cup of coffee and fitted it with a lid. Despite the heat, I needed the caffeine. I sipped it slowly.

  Chris hit some keys on his MDT—that little computer inside most cop cars.

  Dad had never been any good at computers. One time when I was riding with him after school, he grew so frustrated that he swung the screen toward me and said, “You do it.”

  I punched in the license number, hit a couple buttons, and voila! The car’s information popped up on screen.

  It was one of those moments kids live for—to see the pride on their parent’s face for something that came naturally to them.

  Now, with the A/C blasting my face, waiting for Chris to finish whatever he was doing, I said, “I’m glad you had babies.” I don’t know why I said it, but it was the truth.

  Chris looked at me sharply. “How’d you know I have kids?"

  “You always wanted children.” I nodded at the ring on his left hand. “I figured you’d have them by now.”

  He rubbed the wedding band with his thumb. “I have two. A boy and a girl.”

  I sipped my coffee and pictured him in his backyard, playing baseball with his boy while his girl swung from a swing, going higher and higher.

  “Do you guys live here in town?”

  Something tensed in Chris’s face. He didn’t answer for a long time, concentrating on the MDT. Finally, he said, “I live on Fourteenth. Rachel and the kids live in California.”

  “California? California Street? Where’s that?”

  “No,” he said, “California. The state.”

  I tried to reconcile this new information with the perfect life I’d envisioned. How—or why—would a woman who had won this handsome, sweet man walk away?

  “She took the kids to California?”

  I knew without a doubt that his children would be his heart and soul. To have them taken from him…it was inexcusable.

  Chris wouldn’t look at me. He punched something into the MDT. “We’re having some…difficulties. At the moment.”

  “But why California? Why so far away?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  I glowered at him. “I’ve always hated that response. It’s not all that complicated: your wife is a bitch.”

  Chris shot me a warning look. “Don’t."

  “What kind of mother takes her children away from their father?”

  “Mady, just stop.”

  “No, I’m serious. Children need their fathers and—" a torrent of unexpected emotion rose up and swallowed my words. The sucking hollow wound of my dad’s death widened inside me.

  “Have you changed your mind?” Chris said, forcing his voice back to normal. “About having children?”

  “No.”

  “You would make a good mother.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  ”What?”

  I glared at him. “No one knows what kind of mother they would make.”

  “Not true,” Chris said, “I knew my wife would make a good mother. And she has.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Some mother.”

  When Chris didn’t respond, I looked up and noticed the lines around his eyes, the bits of gray flecked through his hair. He wore an odd expression, his eyebrows lifted.

  “Is that why you didn’t want our child?” he said. “Because your mother left?”

  And just like that I was back underground, buried beneath a thousand hot coals of grief and rage and regret.

  For three years after the procedure I tore my guts out over the decision, reliving every single day the pain of it, the finality. Every thought revolved around the child: what it would have looked like, who it would’ve sounded like—until I felt I might choke on its very absence. It got to the point where I was drinking as soon as I woke up, downing Xanax and Ativan like candy—anything to quell the storm inside me.

  Tears pressed against my eyes. Not from sadness, but from fury. If I hated anything about being a girl, it was the
ever-present threat of tears. Guys fight. Girls cry. Anger. Sadness. Happiness. Frustration. All we do is cry cry cry cry.

  A thousand unsaid words sat between us like a concrete barrier.

  When I told Chris I was pregnant, neither of us knew what to do or what to say. We were just kids, struggling with our own demons and insecurities. How could we be expected to face the kind of responsibility those two little blue lines on the pregnancy test thrust upon us?

  Outside the car, the sound of traffic grew louder as the noon lunch hour drew near.

  “You didn’t want it either," I said.

  Chris went still, a flash of pain across his face. And I was glad. I wanted him to hurt for everything that had happened since that day, to share all my pain and struggle and emotions and regret. It was my body that carried the scars, my body that recoiled from any thought of intimacy that might lead to unendurable decisions.

  “That’s not true,” he said, a growl of anger in his voice.

  “Well, you didn’t stop me.”

  His face paled.

  “You’ve got kids,” I said. “I don’t.”

  With effort, Chris composed himself. “Mady, this isn’t the time—”

  “You’re right,” I said, “It’s not the time. My father was murdered, and you're not doing shit about it."

  Anger had never been a good look on Chris, but now here it was, full force. “At least I’ve been here, Mady.” Fury ringed his words. “Things got hard, and you left.”

  “We weren’t dating anymore, Chris.”

  “You’re right. We weren’t. Because you ended it.”

  “Did you tell your wife?” I said, knowing I was crossing a line and didn’t care. “Before you got married? Or how about when she told you she was pregnant? Did you tell her then?”

  “You know what, Mady? If you need to blame me for what happened, then go ahead. I’ve moved on.” He glowered at me. “You should too.”

  I threw my coffee at his stupid face. It struck his chest and bounced off, brown liquid exploding over the console. “Fuck you.”

  Chapter 15

  I was lucky dad only lived a couple miles from the station, but that didn’t stop my old sneakers from leaving my feet aching and blistered. Not to mention how hot it was. I felt like I was walking through a thick wall of heat.