One by One

by Sarah Cain

  Kevin didn’t know if Danny had done them a favor by paying her tuition to Penn Charter, the Quaker prep school down the road. They could just have afforded sending her to Hallahan, the Catholic high school in town, but Jean had been adamant. Kelly needed to be pushed, and Penn Charter was closer, just a couple of miles from home. Kelly loved it.

  Danny had paid her tuition. He’d donated to the school’s annual fund. People recognized him at events and milled around him. It wasn’t that he tried to stand out; it was just his kind of crowd. Jean said it was because they actually read newspapers and cared about the world, and in some ways, Kevin was grateful. It relieved him of some of the burden of having to make awkward conversation. Not that anyone was ever unpleasant; he just never seemed to get his footing.

  When Danny set up education funds for all the kids, Kevin was left struggling for a way to cope with his guilt. He needed the money but hated owing his brother. Danny had only shrugged and said, “Kevin, I have more money than I need. I don’t have any kids. Why not set up funds for yours? I owe you.”

  Kevin didn’t understand Danny’s sense of obligation. He did understand that the money took a huge burden off Jean and him. In the last year, his wife had lost some of that anxious, tight look that always seemed to constrict her mouth into a permanent frown. They’d been able to take a family vacation for the first time in years. Danny of the Open Wallet was a popular guy in his family, especially with Kevin’s daughter.

  “Uncle Dan!” Kelly was saying. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  “If your dad says it’s okay,” Danny said.

  She looked at Kevin. “He is staying, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did Mom tell you I’m going to Costa Rica at the end of June?”

  Danny shook his head. “No she didn’t. That’s pretty great though.”

  “It’s a school trip for my Spanish class. Dad doesn’t want me to go. He thinks I’ll be stripping and posting the pictures on ‘The Google.’” She held up her fingers to make quotation marks.

  To his credit, Danny said nothing, though the corners of his mouth twitched. Kevin shook his head.

  There was no real discussion to be had. Jean already wanted Kelly to go on this trip, so she was going. Danny would slip her extra cash, and everyone but Kevin would be happy. Worse, he’d be the bad guy because he worried about his daughter’s safety. Bad shit happened out there. He saw it every day. Kelly was smart, but even smart girls got in trouble.

  Somehow he always ended up being the asshole these days. Danny should also realize how easy it was to die, but knowing and believing were two different things.

  *

  Kelly Ryan glanced around at the pink-and-white checked wallpaper and the flouncy white bedspread and sighed. Her stuffies still collected dust on the shelf above her bed. She should gather them up and toss them. After all, she was too old for that nonsense, and yet she couldn’t quite force herself to toss the furry collection, especially Boo Bear. She kept Boo stashed under her pillow so no one would see him.

  What is wrong with me?

  She dumped her shopping bags on the bed and surveyed the tiny orange bikini she planned to wear to the end-of-class pool party. It would drive her dad up the wall if he saw it. Maybe she could talk Uncle Dan into taking her. He’d fit in so much better with the collective parents. Kelly loved her dad, but he always looked like he was sizing everyone up.

  Guys talked to her all the time, and she’d even had a sort of boyfriend. For a while. Until he’d met her dad.

  Of course, everyone was afraid of her dad. She loved him, but she wished he was a little more like Uncle Dan.

  20

  “Do you remember Barb Capozzi?” Danny said to Jean. The kids had scattered, and he sat with Jean and Kevin at the dining room table after dinner. He could always count on Jean to feed him some comforting family dinner. Grilled steaks, roasted potatoes with plenty of dill, green beans, salad, and homemade blueberry pie for dessert. It wasn’t fancy. It was homey, and with four kids under her roof plus Kevin, that was her specialty.

  Jean had settled into middle age well. She’d never been glamorous. She wore her light brown hair short and never worried about the latest fashions. But her smile was warm and her eyes intelligent. Danny liked the way she’d rest her hand on Kevin’s arm and he’d place his big hand over hers. It was always a brief intimacy, but it made Danny’s chest tighten.

  Jean seemed more relaxed these days. Danny knew it came partially from not having to worry about how to pay for the kids’ schooling, and it pleased him that he could help out with that. Setting up education accounts for Kevin and Jean’s kids had been one his brighter ideas.

  He owed Kevin.

  Danny knew Kevin couldn’t get that fact through his head, but Danny didn’t care. Their relationship had never been quite normal, but it was getting better.

  “Barb Capozzi?” Jean frowned and took a sip of her coffee. “Barb Capozzi. Oh, wait. I remember. Cheerleader, right? The tall redhead? She’d have been a year behind me. We didn’t exactly hang in the same circles.” She laughed a little. “I wasn’t very glam.”

  “She’s not hanging in any circles now,” Danny said. “She’s in the ICU. Anaphylactic shock.”

  “How horrible.”

  “Do you remember anything about her?”

  Jean thought for a moment. “It was so long ago, and she wasn’t in my year. I just remember she was a cheerleader, and she dated the quarterback.” She looked at Kevin. “You must remember her.”

  “I remember the red hair,” Kevin said. “She dated Greg Moss. It was my senior year, and he mostly rode the bench.”

  Jean smiled and patted Kevin’s hand. “You were a star, darling.”

  Danny watched Kevin’s fingers curl into a fist and knew he was remembering the old man’s taunts: “Ya big dumb ox. They’re gonna give you a scholarship? You’re too stupid to get through school.”

  The old man wouldn’t give Kevin any shred of self-respect because Junior had never been scouted. Junior had been a quarterback and a good one, just not a great one. He never did break through the thousands of kids slaving and sweating for a spot. Kevin, a lowly offensive tackle, had happily lifted weights and run. He’d done agility training and strength training and worked for hours mastering the playbook. Kevin had been a beast.

  Kevin wasn’t a dumb ox, either. He’d been fine at subjects like science and math, passable at Spanish, but lost at history and English. Though he was three years younger, Danny would correct his homework and rewrite his papers because he’d already read most of Kevin’s assigned reading. They had come to a silent agreement when Kevin turned sixteen. By then Junior had moved out, and the old man had started coming home so late from the Shamrock that he’d pass out on the sofa in the living room.

  “Don’t make it too smart,” Kevin would say. “I just need a C average to stay on the team.”

  Now Danny looked at Kevin, who seemed more tired than he had in years, like Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. The past left scars that faded but never disappeared. They seared your soul, and you felt them bumping against you when you were at your most vulnerable. Danny sighed. His brother’s scars, like his own, ran deep and ugly. They were just harder to see.

  “Kevin was awesome,” he said. “Still is.”

  Jean smiled. “I fell in love with him in high school. He was so handsome in his uniform. He just never noticed me.”

  “That’s not true. I figured you wouldn’t be interested in a dumb jock like me.”

  Danny smiled. Kevin and Jean had already had this conversation or a variation on it many times. It was as close to a real love story as he’d ever seen, and he figured Kevin deserved it.

  “You were a great player,” Danny said.

  “It was a long time ago,” Kevin said. “Today those defensive guys would run right over me.”

  Danny knew that wasn’t true, but he said nothing. He just looked at Jean, who shook h
er head.

  Later, Danny walked with Kevin out to his car. The night was warm, and he was full and content. But he still had questions.

  “I wish I could remember Greg Moss, but I really don’t,” Kevin said. “The QB when I was there was a guy named Termaine Olander. Projects kid. He had talent but got arrested senior year on an armed robbery rap. Ended up doing ten years.”

  “Termaine Olander?”

  “Don’t bother trying to look him up. He got killed a few years back tryin’ to pull another armed robbery at a Vietnamese joint near the Italian Market. Owner put two shotgun slugs into Termaine.” Kevin shook his head remembering. “He had a hell of an arm. We had a great offense that year. No goddamn defense but one hell of an offense.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the old man to fuck off and just go to Penn State or wherever?”

  Kevin didn’t reply for a moment. He stared up at the sky as if the moon would give him an answer. “I’d never have made it in college. Division A? Not with practice and all that. I wasn’t like you. I just never got into books and all that.”

  “You could have made it. You’d have been fine. I could have visited you on weekends and—”

  “And what? Sold dope?”

  Danny’s breath caught at the bite of Kevin’s words. He’d never considered how deep Kevin’s well of bitterness ran. The Ryan Legacy was the poison the old man had sowed in their hearts.

  Kevin sighed and rubbed his mouth, a gesture reminiscent of their father. “What difference does it make now? There’s no good looking back and saying I should’ve done this or that because you can’t go back and change things. There’s no magic doorway, and even if there was, who knows if things wouldn’t be worse?”

  “I’m sorry, Kev.”

  “Not your fault.” Kevin folded his arms.

  “I stopped into the Shamrock the other week.”

  “Yeah. I saw your piece. Eddie Doc called me. He was in tears. ‘Last Call at the Shamrock.’ He wants to give you Tommy Ryan’s official barstool.”

  “Jesus Christ. I don’t want it.”

  Kevin shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have waxed poetic about the loss of that great neighborhood institution.” He pulled out his phone and punched a few buttons. “‘These nebulous strings of circumstance tie us together long after the music has faded and we’ve shared that final pint.’” He slid the phone back into his pocket. “What does that even mean? It was just a fucking tappie our father used to drink himself blind in. Then he’d come home and beat the living shit out of you.”

  Danny shrugged. “I know that.”

  “Do you? Why do you have to always look at things like they reflect the Virgin Mary’s arse? The way you write . . . like the Shamrock—the fucking Shamrock—was some holy place. It wasn’t. It was a bar. Eddie Doc sold it to a developer, so he wasn’t so sentimental about it in the end. You see things the way you want to see them.”

  Is that what he did? Danny wasn’t sure what he had been looking for at the Shamrock. Maybe some tiny key to the puzzle that was his father. He hadn’t found it, of course. All he had found were war stories, and he had fallen in like, if not love, with the ghosts who dwelled at the bar. It had once been a South Philly institution. Now Danny wasn’t sure how he would even begin to describe South Philly. Even the Italian Market was no longer particularly Italian.

  Or maybe he was looking for absolution. The old man used to say, “Once you’ve killed a man, you’re scarred forever. Don’t matter if he’s a bad man or a good man. It changes you. Leaves a black mark on your soul.” If that was true, the old man’s soul was rotted through, but Danny could feel the blackness in his own soul.

  Murder changed a man. Maybe that was part of the Ryan legacy, too.

  In the dim light, shadows played over Kevin’s face, casting darkness over his eyes. His lips compressed into a tight frown.

  “Why are you so angry?” Danny asked at last.

  “Just . . . you gotta look at things rational-like, y’know? Don’t go spinning tales in your head. Some psycho out there maybe has you lumped in with Greg Moss, and whoever he is, he wants you to know it.”

  “Did you hear anything more from Ted Eliot? That tongue . . .”

  “Cut out postmortem, according to the ME. Looks like the killer was trying to send a message.”

  “Don’t talk to reporters?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Poor Greg. He asked me to help.”

  Danny wanted to tell Kevin about the watcher in his backyard, but he couldn’t. If he mentioned what occurred between Alex and him, Kevin just wouldn’t understand. So instead he said, “I had dinner with Barb before the book signing. Do you think that had anything to do with what happened?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my investigation, but I’d say her swallowing that glass of tainted soda probably had more to do with Greg Moss than you. All the same, you better watch yourself.”

  “Everything happens for a reason?”

  Kevin shrugged. “Probably not in the way you’re thinking, but yeah. Things happen for a reason.” Kevin stared up at the sky for a moment. He didn’t look at Danny when he said, “That shouldn’t make you feel better. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Then you’ll be careful.”

  21

  Danny walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital emergency room and looked around. The vast waiting room appeared relatively empty, and Danny collected himself as he approached the front desk to ask for Sam Burton.

  The trim, gray-haired nurse glanced up from her computer, her dark eyes assessing him from behind neat rectangular glasses. She looked familiar. Danny watched her lips compress slightly before she stretched them into a tight smile, and he glanced at her name tag. Rita Perry. His high school girlfriend Michelle’s mother. How was that for nebulous strings of circumstance?

  “Daniel Ryan,” she said in a neutral voice.

  “Mrs. Perry. How are you? Last time I saw you, you were working at Methodist,” he said.

  His father had favored Methodist Hospital because it was in South Philly. Mrs. Perry was on duty in the emergency room at least three times when he’d been brought in. No wonder she hadn’t wanted Michelle anywhere near him.

  “Yes. Well, this is a better position. How are you, Daniel? I read about your family. I’m very sorry.” If her voice got any chillier, it would have brought down the room temperature. Danny didn’t understand it. He hadn’t seen Michelle in years. Why hold a grudge?

  “I’m getting by,” he said. “How’s Michelle?”

  Rita stood and folded her arms. “Michelle is very happily married with a wonderful husband and three lovely children. She doesn’t need you bothering her. Do you understand?”

  Danny took a step back. “I haven’t been in touch with Michelle in over twenty years. She made it pretty clear that she didn’t want to hear from me again.” She’d left for New York not long after senior week, and he’d never heard from her again. He’d written one letter after another, but he’d never gotten a reply.

  “I don’t believe you.” Her cheeks reddened, and her eyes flitted over the desk as if she was looking for something—a pen, a pencil, something sharp—to hurl at him.

  “For God’s sake, I had a wife and son. A life.” I won a goddamn Pulitzer Prize. Danny took a breath when the memories choked him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and waited until his breath slowed. “Look, I have an appointment with Dr. Sam Burton. If you page him, I’ll get out of your way. I had no idea you worked here. Why would you think I was trying to get in touch with Michelle?”

  “Dr. Burton?” She blinked a couple of times. “He’s the head of emergency medicine.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m here to see him.”

  Rita stared at him a moment longer then slumped down in her chair, her face taking on a gray hue. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . Michelle’s been getting text messages. Odd messages.
I just assumed.”

  “You assumed I was sending her messages after twenty years?”

  She shrugged. “Your wife was killed. I don’t know. Seeing you again. I—It brought back memories. I’m sorry.”

  Danny nodded. She didn’t want him around her daughter, but she’d been kind to him. Rita had been the day nurse when he was fighting his way back from the skull fracture. She’d brought him orange Jell-O because he didn’t like green and a lined notebook when he told her liked to write.

  “I hope you’re right handed,” she’d said. “Your left arm’ll be in a cast for a while.”

  “I’m right handed.”

  “Are you sure you got hurt playing with your brothers?” She’d sat on the edge of the bed and leaned toward him, her head tilted a little to the right, and he understood without knowing how that she was trying to show him that she wasn’t a threat. But Danny had learned early that grown-ups spoke in sweet, soft voices when they wanted something from you. Most important, he knew if he told the truth, he’d be lost in the system. He hadn’t been quite sure what that meant, but his brothers had assured him many times that the system was far worse than any punishment the old man ever dished out.

  Now he tilted his head slightly to the right and leaned a little closer. He nodded and gave Rita a sad smile. Of course he understood. He wanted her to talk.

  “She’s getting messages. What kind of messages?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. She wasn’t very clear. Bible quotes mostly.”

  Danny swallowed his anger. “Did she call the police?”

  “I don’t know. She thought it was silly. A prank, but they haven’t stopped.”

  “Tell her to call the police,” Danny said. “I don’t think it’s a prank. Other members of our class have gotten messages. That’s why I’m here today.”

  “Oh, my God.” Rita clasped her hands together.

  “If she doesn’t want to call the police, do you think Michelle would talk to me? We don’t have to meet. We can talk over the phone.”

  Rita hugged her arms against her chest, considering.