Jar of Hearts

by Jennifer Hillier

“You could come,” she said, but they both knew it wouldn’t happen. She didn’t want him there, and he sure as shit had no desire to hang out with a bunch of teenagers. He didn’t respond, and when she went to kiss him, he turned his face so she only got his cheek.

  She was three minutes late to cheer practice. The girls were stretching as she ran into the gym, out of breath and slightly disheveled. Tess DeMarco, a fellow cheerleader and a girl who desperately wanted to be Angela’s best friend, gave her the once-over.

  “You’re late,” Tess said. “Again. What is it now, the fourth time?”

  “Shut up, Tess,” Geo said.

  Angela, who was on the floor stretching her hamstrings, looked up. “Don’t tell her to shut up. You are late. And this is the fourth time.”

  The gym went quiet. Bodies stopped moving. The rest of the squad always listened with rapt attention whenever Angela, their cheer captain, spoke.

  “Ang, come on, it’s three minutes.” Geo glanced up at the clock on the gym wall. “I’m here. I’m ready to work.”

  “You’re not even dressed,” Angela said. Geo was still wearing her school uniform. “You might as well have stayed with Calvin. He’s all you give a shit about now, anyway.”

  Geo felt her face redden, painfully aware that the other girls were hanging on every word. Tess in particular wore a vicious smile, enjoying every second of it.

  “Ang, stop it. It’ll take me two minutes to change.”

  “If this is so inconvenient for you, then why do you even want to do this? You clearly think you’re too good for it. For the team. And for me and Kaiser, who, by the way, says you haven’t returned any of his calls in, like, two weeks.”

  “Of course I don’t,” Geo said. This was getting way out of hand, and she was desperate to end the conversation. “You know how much you—”

  “You don’t want to quit? Fine, I’ll do it for you,” Angela snapped, cutting her off. She made a point of addressing the other girls. “Who here wants Georgina off the squad?”

  Tess’s arm shot up, but the other girls looked at each other with wide eyes, completely unsure if this was real or not.

  “Stop it,” Geo said, alarmed. “You can’t—”

  “You’re always late for practice,” Angela said. “And when you’re here, you’re distracted. Our pyramid almost collapsed last week because you didn’t know where your arms were supposed to be. You’re lazy, unreliable, and we all know you don’t want to be here. And, I hate to say it, but you’ve gained weight.”

  Gasps all around.

  “I have not gained weight,” Geo said hotly, and that’s when her best friend smiled. Angela knew she hadn’t gained any weight, but she also knew it would get a rise out of Geo if she said it. She’d done it to be nasty, and to embarrass her in front of the other girls. “You know what? Calvin’s right.” Geo could be nasty, too. “You are a bitch.”

  More gasps. One girl’s hand even flew up to cover her gaping mouth. Nobody at St. Martin’s had ever called Angela Wong a bitch. At least not publicly, and most certainly not to her face. Several of the girls took a step back, away from Geo, as if to distance themselves from the social pariah she had just become.

  “Get out.” Angela’s own face was a deep shade of maroon. She took several breaths but remained calm. “We’ll need your uniform back first thing tomorrow, and your locker cleaned out by lunchtime.”

  Cheerleaders had extra-wide lockers, same as the football players. It was a privilege to have one. Like it was a privilege to be a cheerleader.

  “You heard her,” Tess said, her face filled with triumph. It made her look ugly. “The gym is reserved for cheer practice right now. And you’re not a cheerleader anymore. So get out.”

  Fighting back tears, Geo turned and left the gym, running smack into Kaiser outside the lockers. He was dressed for soccer practice. She pulled back, looked up at him, and then burst into tears.

  “Whoa,” he said, his face filled with alarm, grabbing her shoulders. “Are you okay? What’s the matter? Talk to me.”

  “Leave me alone.” She shook him off and continued down the hallway.

  She was still crying when she paged Calvin from the pay phone outside the cafeteria a moment later.

  “Come get me,” she said, sobbing, when he called back a minute later.

  He was out front within ten minutes. She had calmed down by then, her despair turning into anger. She told him what happened, and he listened quietly, nodding, murmuring soothing things, his hand on her thigh, squeezing every so often to comfort her.

  Finally, he said, “Cheer means this much to you, huh?”

  Geo nodded. She did love cheer. She loved being part of a team, wearing the uniform to school on game days, cheering in front of thousands of fans under the Friday night lights. She might have lost some of her focus lately, but that didn’t mean she wanted out. Hell, it was the very thing she and Calvin had almost argued about earlier.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “We’ll fix it.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll fix it,” he said again. “I’ve known girls like that my whole life—self-entitled girls, girls who think the whole world revolves around them because they were born beautiful, something they had no control over, anyway. Give it a few days, then apologize. And when things are a bit better, set something up for the three of us to get together. She resents me because she doesn’t know me. I should let her get to know me. I’ll charm her, and she’ll give you your spot back. Trust me.”

  It was a sensible idea; smart, even. He leaned over and kissed her, gently at first, then passionately, and slowly she felt herself begin to relax. Because she did trust him.

  God help her, she did.

  17

  The room is too dark, the bed too soft, the blankets too warm, the house too quiet. Geo had a routine in prison, specific times of the day when she ate, showered, used the toilet, socialized, cut hair, watched TV, and slept. Rinse, repeat. It will take some time to get used to her new life, which is really her old life, which feels strange and foreign to her now. Things on the outside look the same as they used to, but they don’t feel at all like they used to. It’s strange to not have a routine, to not be told when she can or can’t do something. She feels untethered, and it isn’t as liberating as she’d imagined.

  Sleep won’t come, and she stares up at the ceiling at the glow-in-the-dark stars that have been there since she was five. Her father came home from work one day with several packs of them, in various shapes and sizes, and they spent an hour sticking them on. Her mother had died a month earlier, and she was having awful nightmares. Her father promised her that as long as the stars were shining down on her, nothing bad would ever happen.

  He was wrong, of course.

  A little after ten P.M., she finally gives up on sleep, padding downstairs to the kitchen to make herself some tea. Her father is scheduled to work at the hospital till midnight, and she probably won’t be able to fall asleep until he’s home. It’s weird being in the house alone. After all, she hasn’t been alone in five years.

  On her way to the kitchen, she glances out the front window, and stops. A black car with tinted windows is parked at the curb, its headlights off. But its interior light is on, and she can detect the shape of someone sitting inside. She freezes.

  Then the car door opens and Kaiser Brody steps out. Exhaling, she heads to the front door. She has it open before he even gets to the porch.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks him, her breath trailing her words in a mist of white in the cold night air. The chill doesn’t bother her. She never got to see her breath in prison; the inmates weren’t allowed in the recreation yard at night, when temperatures were the lowest.

  “Hello to you, too,” Kaiser says. “I was about to leave, and I saw the light come on. Can I come in?”

  “How long were you out there?”

  He pauses. “A while.”

  “Why?” she asks.

  “You know why.” Kaiser
looks exhausted, the lines around his eyes and mouth a little deeper than the last time she saw him. He looks older. But then again, she does, too.

  “I haven’t heard from him,” Geo offers. She doesn’t have to say who “him” is. They both know.

  “Okay.” He turns to leave.

  “Wait,” she says, and her voice sounds more desperate than she intends. She doesn’t want him to go. She doesn’t want to be alone. “I was going to make some tea. You’re welcome to join me.”

  He turns back, gives her a tired smile. “Sure. Thanks.”

  He steps inside the house, and she closes the door behind him, locking it with both the dead bolt and the chain. They stand awkwardly for a moment. Like the last time she saw him, she notices how much taller he is now, how different he looks, how different he smells. This version of Kaiser doesn’t jibe with the boy she always pictures in her head.

  This version of Kaiser is a man.

  He follows her to the kitchen, and Geo frowns as she scans the counter. “We used to have a teakettle,” she says, opening cupboard doors one after the other.

  “Use that.” Kaiser points to a machine she hasn’t seen before. It’s sitting beside the fridge, and it looks like a miniature shiny red version of a coffee shop espresso maker. “I’d prefer coffee anyway, if you have decaf.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “It’s a Nespresso,” he says. Seeing the blank look on her face, he points to the table. “Sit. Allow me. We have one of these at the precinct. It’s pretty good, though the coffee in the morgue is better.”

  “The morgue?”

  He chuckles, pulling open the tray underneath the Nespresso machine, which also doubles as a stand. He selects a pod, then opens the fridge and takes out the milk. There’s a foamer sitting beside the coffeemaker, and he appears to know exactly what he’s doing as he makes her a decaf latte. He hands it to her, waits for her to take a sip.

  “Well, shit,” Geo says. “It’s good. I can see why my dad bought one of these.”

  He fixes a cup for himself and takes a seat across from her at the kitchen table. It’s surreal to be in the kitchen with him, the same place they’d spent a lot of time in as teenagers, eating pizza and hot dogs, working on a chemistry project, making Jell-O shots for a party they weren’t supposed to go to using vodka that her father forgot he had. Now it’s only when he smiles that she sees glimmers of the old Kaiser underneath the leather jacket and three-day scruff.

  She wonders what she looks like to him.

  As if reading her mind, he says, “You look good.”

  She looks down at her coffee. “Liar.”

  “No, you do,” he says. “You really look okay. The woman I arrested that day five years ago, I didn’t recognize her. But you, right now? This is a person I remember.”

  “It must be the sweatpants and no makeup,” she says, but he doesn’t laugh. And if she’s being honest with herself, she knows what he means.

  “Are you mad at me?” he asks. Just like that, they’re sixteen again.

  She shakes her head, allowing a small smile. “For what? Doing your job?”

  “Walter hates me.”

  “My dad doesn’t hate anyone. He’s protective. And he blames himself.”

  “For what?” Kaiser looks surprised.

  “For working too much. For not being home a lot.” Geo sighs. “For not knowing I was dating a guy so much older. Mind you, Calvin was only twenty-one. But that was a big age difference back then.”

  “Huge,” he says with a nod. “I never liked him. Calvin, not your dad.”

  “I know. You were a really good friend to me back then, Kai. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you.”

  “At least I know why now,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, I forgive you.”

  “Thank you,” she says. It comes out a whisper. His forgiveness means more to her than she realized.

  Now, if only she could forgive herself. She sighs inwardly. She knows she never will.

  “Did your dad tell you what we found out there the other day?” Kaiser asks, gesturing to the kitchen window. It’s too dark to see anything other than their reflections in the glass, but she knows he’s referring to the woods beyond. His gaze is fixed on her, searching and intense.

  “He didn’t have to. I saw it on the news. I had a TV in my cell.” She sips her coffee. “They said it was a woman and a minor.”

  “The woman was dismembered,” he says. “And the minor was a child. Strangled. A two-year-old boy.”

  Geo’s sharp, sudden intake of breath sounds like a hiss.

  “I need you to look at something,” Kaiser says, pulling out his iPhone. It’s gigantic, like a small tablet, and it looks even bigger in person than it did in the television commercials. Geo hasn’t seen one in real life before. “A picture of the boy.”

  “No.”

  “Please,” he says, tapping on the phone. “It’s important. Just look.”

  He slides his phone across the table toward her, and despite everything inside her that’s screaming don’t look, she looks. He was, indeed, a child. Cheeks and hands still chubby, eyes closed, belly protruding. If not for the mild grayish cast to his skin, he might have been sleeping.

  The heart drawn on his chest looks like blood. Two words are written inside in neat block letters. SEE ME.

  “Jesus Christ,” she says softly, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

  “They were found right there,” Kaiser says, making no move to take back the phone. “Almost in the exact same spot Angela was buried.”

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in those,” he says. “The woman was killed the same way Angela was, and dismembered the same way she was. With a saw. Head cut off, arms at the shoulders and elbows, legs at the hips and knees, hands, feet. She was buried in a series of shallow graves, her torso in one of them, the rest of her scattered around it. The boy was in a tiny grave about five feet away.”

  He reaches forward, swipes at the phone, changing the picture. Geo closes her eyes.

  “Look,” he says. “For god’s sake, look.”

  She looks down again. It’s a photo of a woman on an autopsy table, same grayish cast to her skin as the boy, hair matted with dirt. Except this image is even more horrific. The woman’s arms and legs aren’t attached to her torso, and her head isn’t attached to her neck. There’s a small gap between each, because she’s in pieces.

  “This is Calvin’s work,” Kaiser says. “You know it, and I know it.”

  Geo’s stomach turns and she’s out of her chair in a flash. She makes it to the powder room just in time, dropping her knees onto the cold tile as the bile comes up her throat. She retches into the toilet until every last trace of her father’s beef stew is gone. When her stomach is empty, she stands up shakily and flushes, dizzy from the exertion.

  She turns to the sink and splashes her face with cold water. As she rinses out her mouth, she tries not to think about the woman in the picture, and how much it all reminds her of Angela. It’s becoming painfully clear that it doesn’t matter how long ago it was, it doesn’t matter how much guilt and remorse she feels, it doesn’t matter how much time and energy she’s spent trying to forget it, or how many years she’s served in prison. What happened to Angela that night will never leave her.

  Something that changes you so profoundly never could. And not only because of how the world sees you, but because of the way you see yourself. It wasn’t just Angela who died that night. Part of Geo did, too, and she’s long suspected it was the best part of her.

  She heads back to the kitchen and takes a seat once again. Kaiser knows exactly what happened in the bathroom, but he looks neither satisfied nor concerned.

  “What do you want from me, Kai?” Geo looks at him through bleary eyes. The sour taste of vomit is still faintly in her mouth, and she takes a long sip of her coffee despite her still-queasy stomach. “I don’t know what I can say or
what I can do. I haven’t had any contact with Calvin since that day in the courtroom. I hope I never do.”

  Kaiser looks at his phone again, and Geo is scared he’s going to make her look at another photo. She’s relieved when he tucks it back into his pocket.

  “Tell me what you know about Shipp Pharmaceuticals’s new cosmetic line,” he says.

  She almost chokes on her coffee. That’s about the last thing she expected him to say. “What?”

  “You worked for Shipp up until five years ago. Now they have a lipstick line. What do you know about it?” He sees the look on her face. “Indulge me, please.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Geo says, confused. “At the time I went away we’d just launched a line of health and hygiene products. Shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, body wash, et cetera. There were no cosmetics then, but they were part of my long-term plan. I was VP of lifestyle and beauty.”

  “Well, they’re doing lipsticks now.”

  She waits for him to elaborate, and when he doesn’t, she says, “Okay. So what? That’s not surprising. That was always the plan I—” She stops herself again. “That was always the direction the brand was going to go. It makes sense to start with lipstick. They can start out with a few shades, see how they’re received, and begin expanding.”

  “There are ten shades so far,” he says. “But the thing is, they’ve only been on sale for a week. And they’re only available in one store in the entire country—Nordstrom’s flagship store in downtown Seattle.”

  “Okay,” Geo says again. She has no idea where he’s going with this. “That’s not uncommon. Both Shipp and Nordstrom are Seattle-based companies, and it’s a good test market. If it sells well at the flagship store, Nordstrom will place it in all their stores.”

  “Do you know how many lipsticks there are in the U.S.? Taking into account all the brands, old and new, and all the shades, current and discontinued?”

  “Millions,” Geo says without hesitation.

  “Want to take a guess on how many Shipp lipsticks were sold at Nordstrom this past week?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know how they well they marketed it.”