Instead of confronting Rory when I see him, I wait until the next day. This gives me a chance to see if there is anything I missed, anything I should know before having this conversation with him.
His room is messy, as always, except for his desk. It is almost obsessive-compulsive but not officially, because he isn’t particular about anything else. He doesn’t care if his clothes are piled up or his books are all over the floor, but his desk is always orderly. Maybe because he never uses it.
Normally, I would never search through his room. I have never done it before. But then, I’ve never seen him sneak out before. My son has secrets, and, in my book, that warrants a search.
Rory is at school. He has his phone with him, and he is not allowed to keep a computer in his room, so my search takes place in the analog world. The nightstand comes first, then his desk, the dresser, and the closet. I even look under the bed, under the dresser, and in the back of his sock drawer.
It is the most disappointing search.
No porn, because he looks at it online. No notes from girls, because they text. No pictures, because they are on his phone. No drugs or alcohol, because if he is using them he isn’t stupid enough to hide them in his room. That’s something, I suppose. My son is not an idiot.
I do not tell Millicent, because she has enough to do.
She does not know. If she did, Rory would already be grounded for life. But she doesn’t know because she would never hear him. Millicent sleeps like a rock. I am not even sure the fire alarm would wake her up.
It’s almost lunchtime when I’m done with that pointless search, so I head to the school. The office administrator sends a text to his teacher, who sends him to the office. Even though Rory and Jenna attend a private school, uniforms aren’t required. They do have a dress code, so every day Rory wears khakis and a button-up. Today the shirt is white. His backpack hangs on one shoulder, and his red hair needs to be trimmed. As soon as he sees me, he brushes the bangs off his forehead.
“Everything okay?” he says.
“Everything’s great. Just thought we might spend the afternoon together.”
His eyebrows lift, but he does not argue. For now, being with me is still better than his afternoon classes.
Lunch is at Rory’s favorite restaurant, where he orders the steak Millicent never cooks for him. He does not question it until the waitress brings a soda, which we do not keep in the house. He knows something is up, so it is no surprise when he says, “What’s up, Dad?” But it is a shock when he follows it up with, “Are you and Mom getting divorced?”
“Divorced? Why would you even ask such a thing?”
He shrugs. “Because this is the kind of thing you do when you have to say something like that.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah.” He says this like everyone knows it.
“Your mother and I are not getting a divorce.”
“Okay.”
“Really, we’re not.”
“I heard you.”
I take a long sip of my iced tea, and he does the same with his soda. He says nothing else, forcing me to begin.
“How is everything?”
“Fine, Dad. How is everything with you?”
“It’s great. Anything new going on?”
Rory hesitates. Our food arrives, giving him more time to think about what I am really asking.
When the waitress leaves, he shakes his head a little. “Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Dad.”
“Hmmm?” I take a bite of my steak.
“Just tell me why we’re here.”
“I just want to know what new and exciting things are going on in your life,” I say. “Because it must be new and exciting if it’s dragging you out of the house in the middle of the night.”
Rory’s hands freeze midway through cutting his steak. I can almost see the options running through his mind.
“It was just once,” he says.
I say nothing.
Rory sighs and puts down his silverware. “Daniel and I both did it. We wanted to see if we could get away with it.”
“Did he?”
“As far as I know.”
“And what did you two do?”
“Nothing, really. Went down to the field, kicked around a soccer ball. Wandered around.”
Plausible. At fourteen, it was thrilling just to be out of the house at midnight. But that didn’t look like the first time he had climbed up to the window.
* * *
• • •
HE DOES NOT sneak out that night or the next. Not surprising now that he has been caught. But I am not only paying attention at night; I am paying attention to everything that has been ignored.
In the evening, I watch him when he is texting, when his phone vibrates and he checks to see who it is, and when he is on the computer. On movie night, I watch as he keeps his phone hidden but checks it a lot. One time, it rings, but the sound isn’t rock music or a video-game beep. It is a song I do not recognize, but the voice is a raspy female, who sings as if she is standing on the edge of a cliff.
When picking the kids up from school, I get there early enough for a front-row view of the doors. This is when I see the girl who is obviously driving my son crazy.
She is a tiny blonde with rosy lips, milky skin, and hair that falls straight to her chin. She pushes it back while they talk and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. The girl is as nervous as he is.
How long, I wonder. How long has he had this girlfriend, or this almost-girlfriend? If I had not caught him the other night, I would have missed it altogether. Maybe I would have lived my whole life without knowing about this little blond girl that my son likes.
Have there been other girls—blondes or brunettes or redheads—who have made my son as crazy as this girl has? Did I miss the first, the second, and the third? At this point, I have no way of knowing. He would not tell me if I asked. He did not even tell me about the current one.
And I did not notice, didn’t have a clue, until I made the effort. Otherwise, it would have slipped right past me.
I wonder if this is what happened with my parents. They never made an effort, and I slipped right by them.
Forty-seven
DURING DINNER, ALL of our phones are lined up on the counter behind Millicent. We are eating mushroom risotto, with leeks and baby carrots on the side, when my phone honks like a horn.
Breaking news.
Millicent reaches behind her and silences my phone.
“Sorry,” I say. “Sports app.”
She gives me a hard look. Phones are supposed to be silenced during dinner.
The breaking news could be anything, but I know it isn’t. My news app is filtered for Naomi’s name and Owen Oliver and the words body has been found. Technology is an amazing thing.
It is also a horrible thing, because now I have to sit through dinner until I can know more. This is worse than being completely ignorant for twenty minutes.
When we are finally done, I grab my phone as the kids clear the table.
BODY OF WOMAN FOUND
I look up at Millicent. She is standing in front of the sink, wearing an old sweatshirt and black leggings and a pair of my socks. I catch her eye, pointing at my phone.
She gives me a tiny nod with a smile.
* * *
• • •
I DO NOT see the rest of the story until the dishes are done and the kids sit down to watch TV. At that point, I go upstairs, into the bathroom, and watch the news.
It is perfect.
Naomi’s body was found inside a Dumpster behind the Lancaster Hotel. She was last seen in that parking lot, not far from the same Dumpster, after she got off work on that Friday the 13th. The last image of Naomi was on a security camera as she walked
across the lot to her car. The cameras only covered part of the lot. Naomi’s car and the Dumpster were both in blind spots.
Josh is standing across the street from the hotel, right where I used to park and watch Naomi. He looks buzzed on caffeine or adrenaline or both, and it’s good to see him like this again. The Jane Doe women, especially the second one, seemed to depress him.
Now, he is energetic, all full of innuendo and speculation, because not many real facts have been released. All we really know is that a dead woman who looks like the missing Naomi was found in the Dumpster when it was being emptied by a waste disposal company. The police were called, the whole area was blocked off, and a press conference may or may not happen tonight, but he thinks it will.
The one thing that does not come up is Naomi’s past. Now that she is dead instead of missing, it would be unkind to say bad things about her.
Josh does note that it has been weeks since he last heard from Owen Oliver Riley.
I smile.
The letter is addressed to the TV station, and it is marked Personal and Confidential for Josh. I imagine that when it arrives, the look on his face will be orgasmic, though he will not be happy to learn that this is his final letter from Owen. The letters have made Josh a star, at least locally, and there is a rumor he has been approached by a cable station. He would do well on a station like that. He is so serious and earnest it is hard not to believe him.
Josh is one of the few who will have a better life because of this.
Trista will not.
Poor, dead Trista will never even be recognized as a victim. And she was, even if she did take her own life. I do feel bad about her, mainly because she felt so bad about the others. It is hard to dislike someone so empathetic.
The best we can do now is to prevent it from happening again.
I go downstairs, where the kids are arguing about what to watch next. Millicent threatens to send them upstairs to read if they don’t agree on something, and suddenly the room goes quiet. The opening music of a teenage drama starts; it’s Jenna’s favorite, and somehow Rory manages not to groan. I suspect this is also because of the little blonde. She probably watches the same shows as Jenna.
Millicent motions to me, and we walk through the kitchen, into the formal dining room that we use only for holidays and dinner parties.
“They found her?” she whispers.
I nod. “They did. Waiting for official confirmation.”
“Now you—”
“I’ll mail it tomorrow.”
“Perfect.”
I smile. She kisses me on the tip of my nose.
We go back into the family room and join the kids, but since we are watching live TV, we cannot help but hear about Naomi. The news is announced during a commercial break, and it is so quick there is no time to turn the channel.
Rory’s phone lights up. He picks it up and starts texting.
Jenna does not react. She stares at the TV as if she were still watching her show, not news about a dead woman.
“Who wants ice cream?” Millicent says.
Rory raises a finger. “Me.”
“Jenna?”
“Sure.”
“One scoop?”
“Three.”
“Sure, honey,” I say, getting up from the couch.
Millicent raises her eyebrow at me and follows me into the kitchen. I get four bowls, and everyone gets three scoops. She starts to say something, and I cut her off.
“Let’s not talk about sugar content tonight. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” And it’s true. Naomi will be on the news every night, and they will go over every detail of how she was found and how she was killed. It will get even worse when Josh receives my letter, because then they will spend hours debating if Owen is really gone or if he is just waiting for all of us to get complacent again.
Eventually, it will fade. Something else will take its place, and Owen will be gone for good.
But until then, three scoops of ice cream.
We go back into the family room, and the teenage drama has ended. Rory changes the channel, and we watch the end of one show in anticipation of the next. In between, there is a newsbreak. Before Millicent has a chance to grab the remote, Josh is on our TV. He repeats the same information we heard on the other channel.
When he is done talking about the discovery of Naomi’s body, Rory turns to his sister. “You think she was tortured?”
“Yeah.”
“More or less than the last one?”
“Hey,” I say. Because I do not know what else to say.
“More,” Jenna says.
“Wanna bet?”
She shrugs. They shake on it.
Millicent gets up and leaves the room.
I take my ice-cream bowl into the kitchen. My phone is about to die, and I root through our junk drawer in search of a charger. They’re always lying around, but never when I need one, and there isn’t one in the drawer. Next, I try the pantry, because weird things end up in there. When Jenna was younger, I used to find her stuffed animals sitting around the cookies, protecting them. Now, I find electronic gadgets.
Tonight, I don’t. But on the bottom shelf, behind some cans of soup, I find a small bottle of eye drops.
The kind Millicent is allergic to.
Forty-eight
WHEN I SEE the eye drops, I think of Rory. If Millicent used them to cover up the fact that she was stoned, then surely other teenagers have thought of the same idea. Maybe that’s what he does when he sneaks out at night. Maybe he and his little girlfriend smoke weed.
There are worse things. Much worse things.
The pantry is not a logical place for eye drops, but I imagine he just stashed them there. Perhaps he had come home high and put them in at the last minute. Or maybe he thought no one would look on the bottom shelf behind the soup.
Then again, it could be Jenna. Maybe she’s the one who has been smoking.
No, that doesn’t seem right. Jenna wouldn’t ruin her lungs. Soccer is too important to her for that.
I take the bottle. On my way to the club, I wonder what would cause red eyes other than smoke or dirt or some other irritant. Allergies and fatigue, though neither is something to hide. Maybe hangovers. Maybe some new drug I’ve never even heard of.
When Kekona arrives for her lesson, I am sitting on a bench staring at that bottle of eye drops.
Kekona is so amped on gossip she bounces up and down on the balls of her feet like she is six instead of sixty. As soon as she walks onto the court, she starts talking, because she has to get it all out before leaving town. Every year, Kekona goes back to Hawaii for a month, and her trip is coming up fast. She is afraid of all she will miss, now that Naomi’s body has been found.
“Strangled,” she says. “Like the others.”
“I know.”
“And the torture. All those damn paper cuts.”
My heart skips. “Paper cuts?”
“Police said she was covered with them. They were even on her eyelids.” She shivers like it’s cold outside.
Paper cuts.
I close my eyes, trying not to imagine Millicent doing this. Trying to erase the idea that she has turned our private joke into something so sick.
It is only eleven o’clock in the morning. Earlier, they said her fingerprints had been filed off, but the police had Naomi’s dental records ready. It was her.
“The police said this about the cuts?” I say.
“Not officially. Just unnamed sources,” Kekona says. “But if you ask me, the weird thing is the timing.” She pauses.
So I ask, “What about it?”
“Well, the last woman was held for a year. But Naomi? A month and a half.”
“Maybe Owen got tired of waiting for the police to find him.”
Kekona smiles at me. “Kind of cheeky today, aren’t you?”
I shrug and hold up a tennis ball, indicating that we should play, since that’s what she pays me to do. Kekona stretches a little and swings her racket around.
“If this were a movie, the timing difference would mean something,” she says.
She is right, but for all the wrong reasons. “Aren’t you the one who said life isn’t a horror movie?”
Kekona does not answer.
“Serve,” I say.
She serves the ball twice. I don’t return her serves, because she still doesn’t want to volley. She wants to serve an ace.
“They also said she was burned,” Kekona says.
“Burned?”
“That’s what they said. She had burns all over her, like she had been scalded.”
I cringe at the thought of being scalded on accident. Yet Millicent did it on purpose.
“I know, it makes me sick, too,” Kekona says. She serves again and stops. “This morning, they said he might be re-creating his old crimes. He burned another one of his victims, Bianca or Brianna. Something like that. They showed a picture of her this morning, and she looks a lot like Naomi.”
I missed all of this. Not being able to watch the news at home can be a problem. “That’s odd,” I say. “Serve.”
She does, and I count nine of them before she stops again, except this time she does not talk about Owen.
She talks about Jenna.
“I heard about your daughter,” she says.
It does not surprise me that Kekona heard about the incident at Krav Maga. This used to be exactly the sort of thing we gossiped about. It just didn’t involve my family.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to think of how to explain, how to excuse my daughter for hitting a kid with a rock. She had a bad day, flunked a test, forgot to take her medication? They all sound bad. They all sound like my daughter cannot control herself.
Kekona walks over and pats me on the arm. “Not to worry,” she says. “Your daughter is going to be a badass.”
I laugh. And I hope she is right. I would rather Jenna be a badass than any of the other options.
My Lovely Wife Page 21
