by Amy Brent
“Why would you do that?”
I pushed up my eyebrows and frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You said it yourself,” Quinn said, head shaking. “Bethany’s dead. You guys were pretty much over months ago. Why does it matter who she was sleeping with?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t want to know?”
“I’m telling you that you need to move on,” he said, giving me a stern look. He picked up his cup and shook his head again. “No good can come of this, Ryder. Just let it go.”
“Again, are you telling me you would just let it go?” I cocked my head at him, already knowing the answer. “You’d track the guy down and gut him like a deer just on principle. Tell me you wouldn’t.”
“This isn’t about me,” Quinn said quietly. “It’s about you and your son. Don’t do anything stupid that’s going to jeopardize your time with Cody. It’s just not worth it.”
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I said, draining the coffee cup and setting it aside. “But I have to know the truth, regardless of who gets hurt.”
Chapter Nineteen: Ryder
I arranged to have a car hauler meet me at the police department tow yard to pick up Bethany’s car. I found a scrap yard in Arlington that would haul it away for free and give me three hundred bucks for the wreck. Before the car went anywhere, however, I wanted to go through it and pull out anything personal Bethany left behind.
I went into the small office just inside the gate and handed the guy my ID. He had me sign a form, then gave me a sealed plastic bag containing Bethany’s purse, the $400 black Coach I had gotten her three Christmases ago. She was so fucking proud of the damn thing that she practically jumped my bones right there under the tree. At the time, I thought it was the best $400 I’d ever spent.
I set the purse on the counter and opened it up and rummaged my hand around inside. Her wallet was there, containing her driver’s license, credit cards, and thirty-six dollars in cash. I took out her driver’s license and stared at it for a moment. The photo was a couple of years old. In it, Bethany’s hair was longer. Her eyes were bright. She was smiling. She looked happy. I wondered if Cody would want me to keep it so he could have it someday. I stuck it back in the wallet and set it aside. There was the usual assortment of crap women keep in their purses: makeup, lip balm, hand lotion, Target receipts, tissues (new and used), but no cell phone.
“Okay, sir, just follow me,” the lot manager said as he came around the counter to lead the way. I followed him out of the office with the purse tucked under my arm, down a long row of cars, most towed in for parking violations and DUIs, he said. He chattered away as we walked, though I wasn’t paying much attention until he said, “We keep the wrecks back here. I gotta tell you, I’ve seen a lot of cars that hit trees in my time, but this one might be the worst. Almost like a freak accident, you know?”
I frowned as a feeling of dread washed over me. The realization that I was about to see the car Bethany died in hit me like a ton of bricks. I started sweating and a wave of nausea started bubbling up in my throat. I asked, “Why is it the worst you’ve ever seen?”
“See for yourself,” he said, stopping at what was left of Bethany’s charcoal gray Maxima. He spread out his hands like he was presenting me with a gift. “She must have been doing eighty or ninety when she went over the side of the road.” He demonstrated how the wreck happened with his greasy hands. “The embankment was pretty steep, so she was probably airborne for a few seconds. According to the wrecker driver who brought it in, she must’ve hit the tree twenty or thirty feet up from its trunk. And when the front end smashed into the tree, the force threw the top of the car up and forward into the tree, then it nose-dived straight down.”
I held my breath as I watched his hands go through the motions.
“When the driver got there, he said the car was on its nose, the roof leaning against the tree. See the mud and shit caking the front there. And that deep dent running all down the center of the roof?”
I nodded. I could taste vomit in the back of my throat.
“Was one hell of an impact, got it from the front and the top. Anyway, I’ll go let the car hauler in the gate and give you time to clean it out. Do you need a bag or something?”
“No, thanks, I’ll use the purse,” I said quietly, taking deep breaths, trying not to puke on my shoes. As he walked away, I mustered the courage to let my eyes go over the wreck fully for the first time. The front of the Maxima was smashed in nearly to the shattered windshield, the hood buckled, the fenders gone, the engine pushed partially back into the interior compartment. There was mud and grass and pine needles caked into every crease and dent. The roof was caved in at the center from the impact with the tree, a deep vee ran along the center from front to back. The sides were scraped and dented. The tires were all flat and hanging off the rims. There was a swipe of white on the driver’s side rear fender, probably from the car being dragged back up the embankment.
I could see the deflated airbag draped over the steering wheel. When I walked around to peer inside the broken driver’s side window, I saw that the white airbag was covered in dark brown blood. Bethany’s blood. I could actually see the imprint of her face in blood on the bag.
My stomach erupted into my throat. I had seen a lot of death and destruction in my time and none of it had ever made me the least bit nauseous. I was trained to deal with that shit. Men, women and children with arms and legs and heads blown off. Bodies riddled with bullet holes or hacked to death my machetes, crushed beneath tanks and trucks, body parts littered along the sides of the road like trash on a Texas highway.
None of it affected me, at least not after I got used to it. But this… this… I ran behind the car and clutched my knees and puked until there was nothing left to give.
* * *
The driver’s door had been pried open by the jaws-of-life. It was hanging precariously on the bent hinges. I grabbed it at the top and gave it a hard tug. I fell back as the door creaked open, metal scraping metal. I paused for a moment, unable to keep my eyes off the bloodied airbag. It was hot as fuck outside, even though the sky was rolling with rain clouds. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand and let out a long breath.
The car hauler driver was watching me now, frowning, tapping his watch. I held up a hand, took a deep breath, and leaned inside. Like the airbag, the front seat was covered in blood. The seatbelt was still buckled, caked in blood that had died dark brown. The straps had been cut in two at the shoulder harness and lap belt by the paramedics.
“Fuck,” I sighed, trying not to picture Bethany laying there, bleeding out with her neck broken, waiting for paramedics to make it down the steep embankment to rescue her. I wondered what the last thoughts were that went through her mind. Surely, she thought of Cody. Maybe she thought of me. She must have thought about the baby dying in her stomach and the man who put it there. I wondered if she even knew that she was pregnant. I wiped tears from my eyes and shook off the feeling that somehow this was all my fault.
I bent down and peered inside the car. A cloud of dusty heat rolled over my face. It reminded me of the “death clouds” that floated out of Humvees or tanks when you opened the door after it had been destroyed by a bomb. Hot, musty, stale air, wreaking of blood and shit and death. I waved it away, held my breath, and leaned inside.
There was nothing in the seat, so I leaned down and felt around the floorboard, being careful not to cut up my fingertips from the shards of broken glass. Lodged behind the gas pedal, thrown there during impact, was Bethany’s cell phone.
“Hey man, you about done?” the car hauler called as I pulled back from inside the car. “I need to get this thing out of here.”
“Yeah, one second,” I shot back. Cody’s car seat was still strapped in the back and looked none the worse for wear, but I didn’t bother pulling it out. Call me superstitious, but I didn’t want anything to do with this car or the stuf
f inside it. I had what I’d come for. I had everything I needed.
“All yours,” I said as I walked past the driver with the phone clutched in my hand.
“Don’t you want your check?” he asked, holding up an envelope that contained the check from the salvage yard.
I shook my head and kept going. “You keep it,” I said. “I have what I came for.”
* * *
I felt like I’d just survived a firefight with Al Qaida assholes by the time I climbed into the Range Rover and cranked up the air. I sat with the purse in my lap and my head on the rest, eyes closed, breathing deeply. My t-shirt stuck to me like a second skin. I was covered in an oily film of sweat and dust. I could feel sweat streaking down the sides of my face and neck. My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. I wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel and forced my pulse to slow down.
I picked up the cellphone and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. The screen was cracked, but I thought the battery might just be dead. It was an iPhone, just like mine. I plugged it into the car charger and held my breath as the phone booted up.
“Okay, Bethany,” I said. “Let’s see who you’ve been talking and texting with.”
It took less than thirty seconds for the mystery to unravel.
I recognized the phone number of the man she’d been fucking immediately. There were over a dozen calls back and forth on the day she died, dozens more in the days before that. The GPS tracker on the phone showed me the places where they had met. My house. A motel on the highway. A hotel in DC.
The text messages bragged about things they had done to one another.
I love the feel of your pussy on my cock…
I love having your cock in my mouth…
I love fucking you in the ass…
I love it when you fuck me from behind…
I tossed the phone in the passenger seat and picked up my own.
I didn’t have to dial the number to reach Bethany’s lover.
It was already in my phone. I’d called it dozens of times.
When he answered, I forced a smile to my face and said, “Hey, it’s me. Where are you right now? I have something you need to see. Okay. Stay there. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
Chapter Twenty: Lolita
I had no idea how much little fun kids could be. I’d seen some real brats in my day, especially waitressing at Applebee’s on the weekends, where parents dragged in their snot-nosed kids and strapped them into high chairs and tried to pacify them with crackers while they screamed like banshees and threw shit on the carpet. I swear, you should see the carpet after those little shit heads leave. There are crumbs and crap everywhere, like the bottom of a fucking guinea pig’s cage or something.
But Cody was different, probably because I was falling hard for his daddy. That’s right, it had only been a couple of days, but Ryder and I had developed a bond that ran deeper than just great sex. They say when you meet your soulmate, you just know it. Well, I think I knew it, though I wasn’t sure how he felt. I wasn’t going to say anything, of course. When you’re a younger woman involved with an older man, you had to be very careful how quickly you let yourself fall. Your emotions could be blamed on your lack of experience and immaturity. Fuck that. I knew what I was feeling and I knew that it was real. Still, I wouldn’t say anything unless Ryder did, but I knew in my heart, I was falling fast.
Oh, back to Cody…
He was just the sweetest little boy. When I walked in and Ryder introduced me as his nanny, Cody gave me a hard look, then squealed and threw his little arms around my neck and gave me a tight squeeze when I told him I liked Legos and Barney, even though I had no idea who Barney was. We hit it off immediately. He called me “Lolo” and patted my cheeks between his hands and give me a slobbery peck on the nose.
This morning, I showed up at Ryder’s house just after eight. It would have been so much easier if I had just woken up there, but we knew we had to take things slowly for Cody’s sake. The poor little thing had just lost his mommy and I wasn’t trying to replace her in his life, though maybe someday he wouldn’t mind me sleeping over now and then. I hoped that day would come, but for now, this was perfectly fine with me.
Ryder had a breakfast meeting with his boss and was going to deal with Bethany’s car. I didn’t envy his task. I could only imagine the state the car was in. And to stand there knowing it was the car someone you once loved died in would be a lot to handle. I’d bawl like a baby, but Ryder was a rock. He would probably be bummed when he got home. It would be my job to make him feel better. Luckily, it was a job I was well-qualified to do.
* * *
Cody was in the pool with inflatable floaties around his upper arms. He didn’t know how to swim and was hesitant to get in the pool at first, but once I got him in the water and he realized that he wasn’t going to drown, he started having a ball. I was sitting on the edge of the pool with my feet in the water, watching him paddle around, squealing, laughing. I looked up at the sky. The sun was hidden behind thick, gray clouds, but the air was still hot and humid. A perfect day to hit the pool without worrying too much about a sunburn. I’d slathered Cody in sunscreen anyway, as any good nanny would do. Then, out of the blue, my mother appeared at the kitchen door.
“What are you doing home?” I asked, shielding my eyes with a hand to peer at her like a sailor spotting the shore. “What time is it?”
“It’s lunch time,” she snapped. “And I came home to make sure you weren’t fucking up your life!”
“Excuse me?” I nodded at Cody. “I’m working. Watch your language. What are you talking about?”
“I know what you’re doing, Lolita,” she said, walking toward me with her hands on her hips and a fiery look in her eye. She forced a playful smile and waved at Cody, then sat in the deck chair near me and lowered her voice. “What the fuck are you thinking? Are you crazy? Fucking the guy next door?”
I put on a defensive air and tried to act innocent, something I’d never been good at doing. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “I know what you’ve been doing. He’s lucky I don’t call the police on him!”
“Mother, what the fuck are you talking about?”
She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Kevin told me what happened. So, did Mrs. Crown. What the hell are you thinking?”
“Kevin?” I rolled my eyes. “What did he tell you? And when have you ever believed anything old Mrs. Crown had to say?”
“When Kevin calls me at work and tells me that my nineteen-year-old daughter is fucking the older guy next door, you bet your ass I’m going to listen.” She said it, then waited for me to respond. I could tell by the look in her eyes that no amount of lying was going to put her off, so I tried a diversionary tactic.
“Mom, Kevin showed up here Friday night high as a kite and tried to force his way into the house with a knife,” I said, louder than I should have because Cody stopped paddling his arms and gave me a frightened look. His eyes grew wide and his bottom lip quivered. I slid into the water and took his hands and started pulling him around the shallow end. He made motorboat sounds with his lips, like his daddy does when he’s blowing on my nipples.
“Mrs. Crown called and told me she saw that man come into our house Friday morning and he didn’t leave until it was almost time for me to come home from work. And she said you were in and out of his house all weekend.” She tried to put a sing-song lilt in her voice to keep Cody from freaking out. “I guess she was lying, too?”
“Mrs. Crown and Kevin need to mind their own business,” I said, smiling at Cody, pulling him in a circle. “I can’t believe you’d take their word over mine.”
Mom looked at me for a moment, sitting on the edge of the deck chair with her elbows on her knees, sweating through her silk blouse in the noonday sun. I glanced at her. She didn’t look angry. Christ, what did she have to be angry about? I got to him before she did. What was the big deal. No, she loo
ked… frightened. It was a look I’d never seen on my mother’s face before. I won’t lie. It scared me a little bit.
“Lolita, I know you think you’re grown…”
“I am grown, mother,” I shot back.
“Your body might be, but your heart and your mind…”
“Mom, are you seriously going to lecture me about having sex?” I rolled my eyes and made Cody laugh. “You? Of all people?”
I immediately regretted saying it. A look of deep hurt washed over her pretty face. Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she said quietly. “But I know how it is when you’re a young girl attracted to an older man. You can get hurt so easily, honey. Please, you have to stop this before it goes any further.”
I gave Cody a floating duck and he occupied himself with motorboating it around the shallow end of the pool, the floaties on his arms keeping him buoyant as he kicked his feet. I went to the side of the pool near my mother and watched her wipe tears away with her fingertips.
“How do you know about older men?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I knew why. “It was my father, wasn’t it? You told me you didn’t know who my father was, but that was a lie. He was an older man, wasn’t he?”
She blinked at me a few times and rubbed a knuckle under her nose. She said, “Yes. Your father was an older man.”
“Who was he?”
She bit her bottom lip and set her eyes on Cody, who was slapping the water and giggling when it splashed in his face. She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “His name was Percy Hall,” she said quietly. “He was my high school English teacher.”
