by E. A. Barres
Zack sat at their small kitchen table, his arms tightly crossed. “Where is she?”
“Ambulance took her,” Chris said. “I don’t know why. She has no face.”
“Can I pay my respects?” Zack asked. He took an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.
Chris didn’t pick up the envelope.
Zack clapped his hands to his knees and started to stand.
“Who did this to her?” Chris asked. “One of her regulars?”
“I’m not sure. But trust me, I’ll find out.”
Chris didn’t trust him. “Some of those clients were bad.”
“I always made sure those men were okay. Never wanted anything to happen to her. You know I always took care of her.”
“Sure,” Chris replied.
“Sad as hell, though,” Zack went on. “Your mother worked her ass off for me. But at least you and your sister are of age to take care of yourselves now. Cessy’s over eighteen, right?”
“She’s a year older than me. Twenty-one.” Chris stood and walked over to the front door.
“She working? Because I was thinking …”
“Couple of years ago,” Chris said, “Mom brought home this guy. A lawyer.”
Zack pulled his ring finger until a knuckle popped. “I don’t remember him.”
“I was supposed to be out,” Chris went on. “Leave the house to her. But I got the times screwed up, showed up while they were still here. While the lawyer was hurting our mom.”
“I never would have let that happen,” Zack declared.
Chris ignored him. “I heard her begging. Heard him smacking her. I wanted to go in right away, but thought maybe this was just some kink they were doing. Mom always told us to wait outside. But then she screamed.”
He could hear Zack breathing.
“What’d you do?” Zack asked, his voice small.
“Buried him out back.”
Zack paled.
Chris walked behind Zack. “I don’t think you ever cared about our mom. I don’t think you were anything more than her pimp.”
Zack’s hand dove into his pocket, and he pulled out a folding knife. He tried to unfold it, but Chris ripped the knife out of his hand.
He shoved the knife up Zack’s neck.
Then pulled it out and shoved it up deeper.
Walked around, stared into Zack’s eyes. Listened to Zack gasp, hands around his own throat like he was strangling himself, blood running through his fingers.
Watched the light fade away.
“Aw, dang it,” Chris said.
* * *
Chris wandered down the hospital hallway. Saw an open door, peered inside at an elderly woman breathing mechanically through a ventilator. No one was with her, no family, no medical staff.
Something about the machine’s rhythm and the isolation made Chris want to turn the ventilator off.
Chris hadn’t been inside a hospital for years, had forgotten how quiet and lonely they were at night. He’d gone as a child for standard kid injuries—chicken pox, a broken arm, a fall where a front tooth had been knocked out—but hadn’t returned to a hospital as an adult until Cessy insisted.
After Zack.
* * *
When Cessy came home, eyes wide with grief, Chris was trying to wrap Zack in plastic garbage bags.
Cessy stared at the dead man on the floor, the knife handle still jutting out from under his chin.
“He pulled the knife first,” Chris told Cessy.
“Did he?” she asked softly.
Chris nodded. “But who cares? You know what they did. They killed mom.”
“They?”
Chris ignored her, went to work on the plastic bags and the masking tape.
“Who’s ‘they,’ Chris?”
He cut open another bag, wrapped it around Zack’s legs.
“Have there been others?” Cessy asked.
After a moment:
“Chris?”
Chris wouldn’t look at her when he spoke.
“They were all guilty.”
His voice sounded like it was coming from far away, from the inside of a deep cave.
“Oh,” Cessy said.
Later that night, between three and four in the morning, Cessy helped her brother bury Zack’s body behind the double wide.
He was careful to make sure they didn’t accidentally dig up one of the other bodies. Best that Cessy not see them.
But she knew, even if she didn’t want to know. The same way their mother didn’t want to know.
Knowing, but not absorbing.
Hearing, but not acting.
* * *
Chris stood next to the sleeping elderly lady, stared down at her, tried to figure out why she was in the hospital. She had liver spots, but no visible bruises, no bandages or wraps that indicated why she was here. No chart hanging at the foot of her bed that described her illness, like in television shows.
Chris remembered the rabbit he’d found at work months ago. He’d been spreading rocks on some family’s yard, scooping them out of the truck and laying them on plastic tarp. His shovel had hit something soft, something that sounded different than the rough shriek of metal scraping stone, even through his ear plugs.
He’d set the shovel aside, reached into the rocks, pulled out the body of a small jackrabbit.
Despite being buried under hundreds of pounds of stone, the rabbit’s dead body was intact. Limp in his hand, eyes narrowed but open. One ear bent at an improbable angle, like an “L.” But otherwise unharmed.
The old lady seemed the same to Chris. Her body unbroken.
Like him, after he and Cessy had buried Zack, when Cessy insisted Chris go to the hospital or a doctor, or find someone to talk to him.
Either that or she’d go to the cops.
So Chris had gone to see a doc a few days later, hung out in the parking lot for an hour, idly threw rocks at cacti. Did the bare minimum to make her happy, make himself honest.
Chris didn’t need someone to tell him what everyone else told him—that he was just a little off. He could work and function and live just fine.
If anything bothered him, it was the memory of some man years ago, doing things Chris didn’t want. Those flashes of memory—his small pants around his ankles, a giant hand over his own, leading him to a bedroom—sent him to a new space, a place inside his mind where Chris was safe; a funny, disjointed place inside him, where everything was detached. Where nothing was real.
After a while, he stayed there.
But when Cessy found out Chris hadn’t actually gone inside the doctor’s office, she was furious.
Even so, she hadn’t gone to the cops.
She’d just left.
* * *
“Ay niño,” Octavia, Chris and Cessy’s mother, said one rough morning as she emerged from her bedroom. She delicately lowered herself to the couch, picked up an open bottle of warm beer from the small end table. Drank deeply.
“¿Puedes traer la bolsa de hielo?”
Chris barely spoke any Spanish, but he understood it. He walked over to their little freezer. Gave the blue ice pack to his mother.
Octavia rested it on her abdomen. “Gracias, mi amor.”
“De nada.”
Another long drink. Octavia set the empty bottle on the floor. “¿Dónde está Cassandra? ¿Escuela o trabajo?”
“She’s going to school, then work.”
“Ah.” Octavia grimaced as she shifted her weight. “¿Y cómo están tus clases?”
“Good.”
Octavia glanced at Chris, closed her eyes, and nodded.
He hadn’t been back to Pima Community College for at least a year.
His mother knew but didn’t want to know.
* * *
“Can I help you?”
A voice behind Chris. His hand moved away from the ventilator. He turned toward the hospital room door.
“I’m okay.”
A nurse watched him. “Do
you know her?”
“She reminds me of my mom.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t look like her. Just reminds me of her.”
The nurse seemed like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. “You can’t be here.”
* * *
“¿Mi amor, me puedes conseguir otra?”
Chris pulled a cold beer from the fridge. Opened it and gave it to Octavia.
She drank, patted the couch next to her. “Siéntate conmigo.”
Chris did. His mother leaned into him, rested her head on his shoulder.
“No vi a Cassandra esta mañana.”
“Me neither.”
Octavia started to say something, stopped. She and Cessy shared a strained relationship. Apart from formalities—helloes, goodbyes, how hot Phoenix was that day—they barely spoke.
“Dile que la ensalada de papas en el refrigerador es para ella.”
“Okay.”
Octavia finished her beer.
Silence.
“It’s hot today,” Chris said.
* * *
Chris woke, had no idea he’d been asleep, no idea how long he’d been slouched in this uncomfortable hospital chair. He was sweating, his forehead and chest and armpits slick.
He looked over at Cessy’s room, saw it was empty of everyone but his sister. A cop stood at the other end of the hall, staring into a vending machine.
Cessy had sounded so worried over the phone, something about a group or gang after her. Chris couldn’t quite understand the voice message, but he could tell she was scared.
Something moved out of the corner of the eye. He looked up, saw the cop reach into the machine, take a bag of chips and saunter around the corner.
When the cop was gone, Chris walked to her room.
Cessy was lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling, tears making a trail down the side of her face. The breathing tube was out, the sensors gone. The IV still attached to her arm.
“They all died,” she said, her voice weak, an out-of-tune instrument. “Everybody in the house.”
Chris nodded.
Cessy wiped her eyes, smeared tears. “I’m glad you’re here.”
CHAPTER
24
“THERE ARE THINGS I need to tell you about your father,” Deb said.
Kim was slouched on the couch, wearing a T-shirt and yoga pants, staring at a cooking show on television.
“Like what?” Kim asked without looking away.
Deb sat next to her, her legs folded under herself. “He may not have always been honest with us.”
“What do you mean?”
Deb hadn’t planned what she was going to say. After what Levi Price had told her about Maria, Deb knew she had to tell Kim the truth, or at least some of it. But she hadn’t decided how much to reveal.
“The man that we had dinner with the other night? Levi Price?”
“The kind of cute guy?”
“I guess.” Deb paused. “The truth is, he works with the FBI. That’s how we met. He’s looking into what happened to your father.”
Kim muted the television. Deb ruefully wondered what kind of news it would take for Kim to turn the television completely off.
“What did he tell you about Dad?”
Deb repositioned herself, rested her chin on her raised knee. “Someone was after men. A bunch of men were killed the same way. The ATM holdup may not have been random.”
“This Levi guy thinks it was on purpose? Why? What did Dad do?”
Kim looked so worried that all of Deb’s resolve wilted. The mother in her surged.
“Nothing, sweetie. I’m just telling you what I learned. It was probably mistaken identity.”
Kim didn’t seem to believe that. “Someone was killing men? Only men?”
Deb thought about Maria, remembered what Grant had told her. How Maria’s murder had been different, less deliberate.
“Bludgeoned to death,” he’d called it.
And it might not even be related to Grant.
“Looks like it,” Deb said.
“Do they know why?”
Deb shook her head. “And I need to tell you something else. Your father lost some of our money.”
“During the robbery? They made him take it from the ATM?”
“No. It’s gone from his accounts—savings, retirement. A good deal of what we saved is missing.”
Kim’s expression was more serious than Deb had ever seen it. “What do you mean? Mom, are we broke?”
The maturity in Kim’s face and voice broke something inside Deb; it was the type of maturity brought on by crisis. Deb knew she should be happy to see this reaction in Kim, but she didn’t want to force her daughter to face it.
So again, Deb lied.
“We’re not broke. Things will be okay. I promise.”
Kim watched Deb carefully, as if she didn’t trust what Deb had told her.
“Was Dad mixed up with something bad?” Kim asked.
“I don’t think so.” Deb hoped her voice sounded believable. “Like I said, it was mistaken identity. Wrong place, wrong time. Those other men were probably doing some pretty bad things. And we’ll figure out what happened to his accounts soon. It’ll all get straightened out.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
The hole was being dug deeper. And the lying was difficult; this wasn’t a lie to her daughter, but to another woman. A grown woman who knew not to believe in fairy tales or fate or the innate safety of the world. And still, Deb was lying to her, desperately protecting her. Holding her daughter’s hand and looking into her eyes and murmuring inaudible nothings as men emerged from the shadows all around them.
But she’d do anything to spare Kim this suffering.
Deb remembered when she’d woken this morning, her body tense, already primed for pain, her first thoughts about Grant as they were every morning. When would those relentless thoughts end, Deb wondered? And, despite everything, did she want them to?
And why couldn’t she remember his face?
Deb had so many memories and emotions and circumstances all related to Grant to deal with … but, often, she couldn’t remember what he looked like. As if her mind was protecting her from some sort of deepest grief, intentionally hiding his laugh or sorrow.
And then photos reminded her. Deb would stare at a photo of him somewhere in the house or buried in the thousands of pictures on her phone, and then she’d remember. Sometimes it was like looking at a stranger, seeing his face for the first time.
A man she’d never met.
No, Deb decided. Kim doesn’t need this.
Even if it meant defending Grant.
“You should switch like I did,” Kim said. “Guys are the worst.”
Deb managed a smile despite everything. “Seems complicated.”
“Men are complicated too.”
“Not really. Men are like Occam’s Razor. The answer to whatever question you have about them is usually the simplest answer.”
Occam’s Razor.
Grant fucked Maria to make himself happy.
Because he was unhappy.
“I guess. I just never felt really one hundred percent comfortable with guys, you know?” Kim asked. “I always felt like they were keeping something from me, like they were always holding back. No matter how close I got with them.”
Kim seemed like she wanted to turn the conversation away from her father, toward something relatable, understandable.
Deb let her.
“I don’t feel that way with Rebecca. If anything, it’s nice to be with someone just as honest and intimate and vulnerable as I am. It’s scary, and it’s hard not to have your guard up. But it’s nice.”
Ever since Kim had told her about Rebecca, anything that came up in their lives, no matter what, somehow found its way back to her. Going out to eat? Rebecca liked that restaurant. Something on TV? Rebecca had thoughts about that show.
“Do you two
fight?” Deb asked.
“Not that much. But, I mean, when we do, the arguments never end. They seem like they can go on for weeks. The whole semester, even.”
“That’s what I assumed. Sounds exhausting.”
Kim smiled. “It is. In a good way.”
“When your dad and I argued, he always assumed the end of the argument meant I wasn’t angry anymore.”
“That’s such a guy thing.”
“I know. He was always so angry and confused when I’d bring something back up.”
Forcing herself to sound bemused. For Kim.
And, as much as Deb hated herself for it, for herself.
For some shred to cling to.
“One time,” Deb went on, “your dad said he didn’t like how I looked in a sweater, and every time I wore the sweater after, I felt mad. And since he’d forgotten about the argument, he had no idea why I was irritated.”
“Which sweater?”
“The pink one. The turtleneck. It’s like a cotton candy pink with a bunched neck?”
“It sounds like he might have had a point.”
Deb and Kim laughed.
“I don’t actually have it anymore,” Deb said. “I threw out a bunch of stuff after he passed.”
“See, when you’re with a woman,” Kim said, “there’s so much bullshit you don’t have to deal with. I hear about the guys my friends are dating, and it’s so annoying. I don’t have any of that with Rebecca. I mean, we have our problems and all, but you know what I mean.”
Deb didn’t know what her daughter meant, but she didn’t pursue it.
“Anyway,” Kim said, “I’m sorry that you have to deal with all of this.”
“It’ll be okay.”
But Deb’s mood darkened at Kim’s words. Like the sun died inside her. Questions filled her with shadows.
Why would you lie to me, Grant? Why would you do this to me? How could you risk so much? How could you leave us like this?
CHAPTER
