by Vivian Barz
How is your heart, Ed? she wanted to ask. Instead, she said, “I was only trying to help.”
“Here’s the thing: The FBI don’t need your help. They’ve got about a dozen agents working here in Perrick, including the head honcho himself, Howell. They’ve got dogs and forensics—and even a botanist, I heard—out in the field and everything else they could ever possibly need.” Ed sat back in his chair, his voice scolding but soft. “I know you’re only trying to do some good; I understand that, but the last thing they need is another chef in the kitchen. And believe me when I tell you that any new information you might think you have about Gerald and his neighbors—they’ve already got it. They’re the FBI , for Christ’s sake! Their reach is a lot longer than ours; they have resources we can’t even dream of.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” Susan said quietly, her voice quaking.
Sorry that Ed was under stress, sure, and sorry that he felt emasculated by the FBI’s presence, but not sorry for trying to do her job.
She was having a hard time letting go, and the reason for that was because she felt as if she shouldn’t have to. Not with it being her case to begin with. She pushed just a little more. “It’s just with the kid disappearing right next door . . .” She sat back in her chair, shook her head. “Doesn’t it seem like a massive coincidence?”
Ed sighed, but not unkindly, his expression now pitying. “I’ve said it a thousand times to other officers in the station, just as I’ve already said it to you, and I’m going to repeat myself now: It’s always tough when kids are involved. And it never gets easier.”
Susan felt almost dizzy from the emotional roller coaster she was being forced to ride on Ed’s behalf. Was he pissed off or sympathetic to her plight? And what did the bit about cases involving kids being difficult have to do with the price of tea in China?
Susan opened her mouth to speak, and Ed held up a hand to silence her.
He continued. “But that doesn’t mean that you should lose your head whenever a case involves one.”
A rod of indignation heated up at Susan’s core. She resented the implication that she was somehow being hysterical by sticking to her guns, following through with her investigative work. “I hardly think I’m losing my head , Chief. I was simply trying to relay information that a witness provided. It pertains to a current case.”
“How does Mary Nichol’s alleged”—alleged again like bullshit —“murdering of her husband pertain to the case?”
“Well, not that part. I’m talking about the missing neighbor kid, Overalls Boy.”
“You don’t even know if the neighbor is Overalls Boy! In fact, there’s a greater chance that it isn’t than it is.”
Susan folded her arms across her chest. “How’s that?”
“Look, it’s probably hard for you to imagine, having grown up with modern parenting.” Ed took a sip from the coffee cup steaming on his desk. “Now, I can see you’re getting offended, Susan, but I mean nothing by it. All I’m trying to say is that kids weren’t coddled in the sixties like they are now. Parents did things back then that would probably land them in jail now—hell, I remember my own dad sitting me on his lap in our truck to let me steer through downtown. I thought it was a hoot! I got smiled and waved at by other drivers. My point is that it was a different time. Kids were left alone at a very young age, and if they had a slightly older sibling, hey, great, that meant babysitter. Usually, things were all right, but not always.”
Susan sat forward on her chair. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that a kid disappearing back then was not as uncommon as you think. Now, I’m not saying it was unsafe for kids in a predatory way, but more in an environmental way. You think Perrick is ‘country’ now; you should have seen it back then. Everywhere you looked, there were fields—fields for miles and miles—and just as many wooded areas. Kids sometimes got lost in them and were attacked by animals or froze to death before they were found. People also had these giant pits behind their houses that they used to throw all kinds of stuff in—old tires, refrigerators, rotten wood. They were deep, like swimming pools, and they became like swimming pools after it rained, with the sides all slippery. Sometimes kids would fall in one of those, not be able to climb back out. They’d drown in the mud.”
“Jesus.”
“So you see now why you should just forget what Mary told you. I don’t want the FBI sent on a wild-goose chase because of something that woman thinks she knows.” Ed took another sip of coffee, cracked his neck. “And I can’t have you going around the station convoluting the facts with gossip and false leads. The biggest way you can help out on the case is to not help out.”
Susan raised her hands so that her palms were facing her boss. “Okay, okay,” she said, doing her best to sound amiable. Like she was simply going to let things go, give up the search for answers. “Request received loud and clear.”
“That wasn’t a request; that was an order.”
But giving up had never been Susan’s strong point.
CHAPTER 16
Eric was pulling into the garage when his cell phone vibrated in the cupholder. He scowled when he saw the caller ID. “Oh, fantastic. Just what I need.”
He took a breath and then tapped answer.
She was off before he said hello. “Eric? Is that you?”
“Yes, Maggie, it’s Eric.” He tried not to sound condescending, but the way she said his name in that skeptical tone had wound him up even back when they’d been together. What did she think, that he had hired an imposter to field his calls for the occasions she rang? If only. “Is there something wrong with the papers I sent? Because if there is, you should really talk to the mediator—”
“What are you doing right now?”
Eric cut the engine and hit the clicker on the rearview mirror, closing the garage door behind him. He placed a hand on the door handle but then pulled it away quickly, as if the metal were hot, opting to stay inside the vehicle until their exchange was over. He didn’t want to bring poisons from the past into his home, even if it was only a phone conversation. Thus far, his house had remained Maggie-free, and he intended to keep it that way.
He would have avoided talking to her altogether, but there was still the matter of the divorce. To move the process along faster and cheaper and to save themselves a trip to court, they’d hired a mediator at Eric’s suggestion. He was hoping now that this wasn’t a mistake.
“Actually, I’ve just pulled in from my new job.” He’d said from my new job with such contempt that he could have added and fuck you for being the reason I had to take it and achieved the same level of vitriol. Sighing, he pressed the heel of his palm into his left eye socket and gave it a couple of grinding twists. His migraine from earlier was back with interest. “I haven’t had the best day, so—”
“I lost the baby.”
Eric curled his free hand around the steering wheel. “What baby?” he said, just to say something. As if he didn’t know.
“My baby!” she shrieked, the subtext being How are you such a goddamn idiot?
“Oh.” He paused to let the information sink in. “Okay.” He wasn’t sure how he felt about the news—no, the truth was that he didn’t want to know how he felt about the news, because he suspected a trifling part of him might feel more than a little joyful about it. He cleared his throat, stalling, formulating what to say next. “So . . . thanks for telling me.”
Maggie exhaled sharply, and Eric could just see her face scrunching up into an ugly twist of fury. They hadn’t been married long, but he knew her well enough. “Is that all you’ve got—‘Thanks for telling me’?”
He was tempted to remind her, Hey, you’re the one who called me, toots , but he let it slide. He could hear her crying. She was doing it softly but right into the phone so that he’d know. Soothe me. Say all the right things and make ME feel better. It’s all about me. Me. ME! So typical Maggie.
Eric unclenched his jaw. “Maggie, I’m so sorry this has happened to you—”
(Liar, liar, pants on fire.)
“—but I really don’t know what to say.”
“How about a little sympathy, you robot!”
Eardrum ringing, Eric pulled the phone away and gave his ear canal a quick swirl with his pinkie. He returned the phone to his cheek and said with strained calmness, “You can’t be serious. You were pregnant with my brother’s baby.”
She sniffed. “How can you be so cruel?”
Eric’s hand tightened around the steering wheel, choking it. He could sense that he was taking her bait, being manipulated like a doofy little puppet. Maggie always knew exactly which strings to pull—and how to pull them fast for maximum frustration.
“H-how can I be so cruel?” he sputtered, and then he was off, brittle scabs ripped clean from his emotional wounds in one fell swoop. “Do you actually hear yourself right now? You were mine! Mine! Not his! You vowed to love and honor me , honor our marriage! What I can’t figure out is why you even bothered staying married to me when half the time Jim was . . .”
Eric clamped his teeth together until the temptation passed. He’d nearly finished with sticking his dick in you , but that sounded vile even to him. Despite the misery Maggie had caused and continued to cause him, he didn’t want to strike her below the belt. He supposed it was because some part of him—a part that dismayed him more than anything else about his character—still loved her. Even after all she’d done, and even though he’d never get back with her no matter how much she begged (though he suspected he’d be rolling snowballs in hell before that happened), some secret, shameful part of him still loved the woman.
A rush of memories: Laughing in the snow, Maggie cupping his fingers under her mouth, warming them with her steaming breath, teasing the tips with her tongue. A lipstick-kissed Post-it Note on the pillow: Gone to work early. Love you more than ice cream! xoxo . Making love in her studio, bright canvases towering above, smudges of orange and yellow paint coloring their skin. Gripping her hand in the doctor’s office, a saltwater fish tank humming softly in the wall behind them; no, there was nothing they could do to help ease the pain in his dying father’s cancer-riddled bones. Maggie rocking him as he sobbed against her breast. “Shhhh-shhh, hush now. It’s all right. We’ll get through this, E. We’ll get through this. Hush, baby, hush . . .”
Still, Eric couldn’t help drifting back in time to the afternoon he’d discovered The Affair. He remembered how he had struggled to relieve himself of his wedding band during the sprint back to the home he and Maggie would never share again, not even for one more goddamn night. Because of the thrashing Eric had administered to Jim, he couldn’t get the ring to wriggle up past his engorged knuckle. After a quick swap of jackets—he’d already traumatized far too many of Philly’s fine citizens during his blood-soaked flight from the Moonflower Café—he hightailed it to the nearest mall, where he had a jeweler cut the ring off his finger with what looked like a miniature version of the Jaws of Life. He wept the whole time.
Later, he wept some more as he sat alone at the kitchen table polishing off the eye-wateringly expensive bottle of champagne they’d been saving for their five-year anniversary, longing with each harsh gulp for Maggie to come skulking through the door, begging for his forgiveness. She never showed. In true coward’s fashion, she stayed away for six whole days. When she finally came around, it was only for short bursts of time and conveniently while Eric was at work so that she could snatch armloads of toiletries and changes of clothes like a cat burglar trying to evade arrest. It hadn’t required much speculation on Eric’s part to gather where she was hiding out.
Eric opened again with “Look, you’ve caught me a little off guard. Like I tried telling you before, now is not the best time for this conversa—”
“Right. Like there ever is a good time for you.” Maggie spat a curt, bitter laugh. “You really do believe that you can avoid dealing with us until the end of time, don’t you?” She did not specify if the us in question related to the two of them and their failed marriage or her and Jim and their upcoming one.
That is the plan, my dear ex-wife.
“Well, you can avoid me all you want—and I hope that isn’t what you want, since I’d like for us to move forward in a positive way, and because I’m here to stay. But you can’t cut Jim out of your life—he’s your blood .” Ah, so it was Maggie-Jim “us.”
Eric was on the brink of saying something constructive when a childish “ha!” beat him to it, projecting from his mouth a fine spray of spittle that settled on his chin hotly. He didn’t bother wiping it away. What he did wipe away were the tears that had begun to sting the corners of his eyes, first with his index finger and then with the back of his hand when he needed something larger to get the job done. He would not shed one drop over Maggie and Jim. Not one . Were they sitting around crying over what they’d done to him? Hell no. Too busy getting pregnant and planning a wedding.
Eric said, “Sure . That explains why Jim hasn’t called once since I kicked the shit out of him. And rightfully so, might I add.”
“I don’t think he really knows what to say,” she said, and Eric thought, Well, that makes two of us .
“Okay, Maggie, I’ll play ball,” Eric said at last. “But first, how about you tell me exactly what it is that you’re hoping to get out of this conversation. Is it: No hard feelings about everything ? Let me know when the wedding is; I’ll send a gift ? No, it isn’t at all creepy and incestuous, you now being with my brother ? Because if that’s what you’re after, I should probably tell you now that it’s never going to happen.”
She made a loud, breathless sound, as if she’d been smacked. “Don’t you talk to me like that! You don’t ever get to talk to me like that!”
There was only one color Eric was seeing, and it was red. Bleeding, violent red. “I mean, Jesus Christ, Maggie! Did it ever occur to you what you were going to tell that poor kid when it grew up? You two are like some kind of Springer episode: ‘Pregnant with My Husband’s Brother’s Baby.’”
“You’re not my husband anymore!” Maggie screamed. “When will you get that through your thick head ?”
(And the hits just keep on a-comin’!)
“You won’t have to worry about changing your last name again once you and Jim get married. So that’s a plus.” When her string of obscenities ended, Eric said, “I’m guessing I was still with you when it happened.”
“When what happened?”
(Are you sure you want to go there? You may not want to know the answer to this one.)
“When he got you pregnant.”
Since learning of the pregnancy, Eric had been telling himself that he’d been out of Maggie’s life long before Jim had made her a mother. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the other grotesque possibility, which was that they’d shared a bed while Jim’s spawn was growing inside her. He’d never confronted her on the subject before today.
Call it morbid curiosity; now Eric had to know. It was a need he felt on such a deep level that it was almost cellular, and if she chose to withhold, he imagined it would feel like something close to torture. “You and I were still living together as husband and wife when Jim got you pregnant.”
Her silence gave him the confirmation he’d been seeking. So she’d been further along in her pregnancy than he’d previously assumed. He started to do the math and then felt too sick to continue.
“I’m so sorry, Eric,” Maggie sobbed. “We never set out to hurt you. If it makes you feel any better—”
“Nothing you have to say, Maggie, could possibly make me feel better. Not about anything. Not now and not ever.”
“Things have been tense with Jim,” she continued. “Since we lost the baby.”
“When did you lose the baby?” Eric asked in a flat tone, not particularly needing to know but asking anyway. The conversation had become like hideous airplane-crash footage he was seeing on the news, and he couldn’t find the will to change the channel.
“About a wee
k and a half ago.”
“A week and a half ago,” he echoed.
“I just . . . I thought I should tell you before you heard it from somebody else.” She sniffed.
Eric opened his mouth to ask her: Who do you think would provide me with such information? Before he could form the words, she was speaking again.
“He’s not like you. Jim. You were always so . . . nice about things. Jim can be . . . he’s just . . . distant .”
“I am not hearing this.” The phone started to quake against his ear, his knuckles going white from how tightly he was gripping the thing. “Are you actually fucking serious right now?”
Sobbing. “I’m so sorry about everything! If I could take it all back!”
Eric took in a long breath before he spoke. “My advice to you, Maggie, is to go on the pill before Jim has a chance to knock you up again.” He was stunned by how smoothly the words had seeped out, like scalding soup dribbling from his lips. Eric knew with absolute certainty that he’d later feel guilty for saying such an awful thing, but damn if it didn’t feel amazing in the moment, when he was positively drunk with outrage.
“And you think Jim’s distant now? Give it a few years,” he powered on. “Let’s see how he’s treating you when you’re no longer a novelty but his newest coeds are. Actually, I bet there already are at least a half dozen pretty young things lined up to take your place. How old are you now, come to think of it?”
Maggie was crying so intensely that her words came out in garbled jags. But Eric understood her, all right. I hate you. As if to clear up any confusion, she shouted down the phone: “I hate you so much right now! ”
“You should consider yourself lucky on that one,” Eric said with a mildness that sounded remarkable even to him. “At least you only have one person to hate. I have to worry about two.”
Click.
“Hello? Hello?” Eric lobbed the phone at the passenger seat with all his might, and incredibly, it bounced back, cracking him square on the chin. “Fuck! ”
