Dangerous Habits

by Susan Hunter

  She turned slowly around her cubicle and patted papers on her desk like a horse pawing the ground. After shifting a few issues of the Himmel Times, lifting a couple of flyers and picking up a stray box from Amazon.com, she gave a small whinny of happiness. Then she faced me, holding a large manila envelope in her hand.

  “Here you go!”

  My name was neatly written across the front in Courtnee’s carefully rounded handwriting. I grabbed the envelope wordlessly and headed back to my desk.

  “You’re welcome!” she said in a reproachful tone as I closed the door behind me.

  The newsroom was still empty. I sat down and tore open the sealed flap, reached in and pulled out the contents, a paperback edition of Echo Park by Michael Connelly, with a sticky note attached to the cover.

  Leah—sorry I missed you. I need to talk with you about something as soon as possible. It’s quite important, and I’d rather do it in person. Please give me a call to let me know when we can meet—M

  P.S. Here’s the book I told you about.

  I went back to the front desk.

  “Courtnee, what day did Sister Mattea stop by?” She looked up from opening her box of Milk Duds and took a couple before answering.

  “This week or last week?” she asked, her voice a little muffled by the need to talk around the sticky caramel.

  “She was here last week?”

  “Mmmph,” she said nodding, then swallowed her candy.

  “She was looking at the bound volumes, and I made some copies for her.”

  “What was she looking for?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Some old stories about the school the Sisters run for criminal kids, you know, Dumbass Academy?”

  “It’s DeMoss Academy,” I said coldly. “She didn’t say anything about me or wanting to see me?”

  “It’s not all about you, Leah, you know,” she said. “We had a really good talk about my cousin Andrew. He just got busted for weed, and now my Uncle Don thinks he’s a drug addict. Sister Mattea was really nice. She said Uncle Don might be over-reacting, but at least he cares. Most of the kids at Dum—DeMoss Academy, their parents are just a waste of space, my dad says.” Clearly Courtnee had forgotten that my sister Lacey had spent time at DeMoss, but there was no point in pointing that out.

  “She said not everybody is cut out to be a mom or dad. And then I told her about Max. How he’s a great dad to Alex, even though he’s like so old. And crabby. It’s kinda cute, him and Ellie. But it’s probably good she already had her own baby when they got married, because I mean like, could Max even, well, you know, have sex? I mean you’d always be thinking is he having a heart attack? What if he, like, dies right on top of me! Then I thought, whoops, maybe I shouldn’t be talking about that to a nun—”

  “You think, Courtnee?” I shuddered at the thought of Sister Mattea subjected to Courtnee’s oversharing about Max’s love life. Though it was a nice story. Max and his first wife Joyce never had children, and he was so lonely after she died. Then he met Ellie on a trip to Ohio. It was a love-at-first-sight romance. At age 50, he became a newlywed with a toddler and a whole new, happier life. A lot of people had a lot to say about the 20-year age difference, but it didn’t seem to matter to them.

  “I don’t really need a line by line of your chat, Courtnee, just the essentials. So, Sister Mattea left, and she didn’t say anything about wanting to see me. Then she came back on Monday, and she wanted to see me, but I wasn’t here, so she left the book and the note for me. Is that right?”

  “Well, I have to think, Leah. I don’t keep everything, like, right at the top of my head.” She tilted said head to the right and squeezed her big blue eyes to narrow slits.

  “Courtnee?”

  She batted her hand at me, lest I further disturb her concentration, then began speaking, her eyes half-closed like a psychic in a trance.

  “It wasn’t Monday, because the day she came in we were real busy. Mrs. Barry was yelling at me because I mixed up the numbers on her classified and everybody that called got a phone sex message. It wasn’t my fault. My mom says I have undiagnosed dyslexia and—”

  “Right, Courtnee. This was what, Tuesday?”

  “I’m trying to tell you.” Her eyes flew open in exasperation. “I was telling Sister Mattea you weren’t here, and she asked could she leave you this book and a note and blah, blah, blah. Then Mrs. Barry busted in and started yelling. I handed Sister Mattea a Post-it, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Max coming in, and I didn’t want Mrs. Barry telling him all about my mistake. So, I sorta pushed Sister Mattea off to him, and Brad came in to fill the Coke machine.

  “Then the phone rang, and I accidentally knocked my water over onto my keyboard, and Brad jumps over the counter—he’s really sweet—and he helps me.” She paused for me to celebrate Brad’s heroic action, but the look on my face got her back on track.

  “Well, then Mrs. Barry starts again, so I gave her a refund and a free ad for next week to get her to leave. Then both lines start ringing, and, like I’ve told Max before, I can’t do everything. And I look over to see if he’ll help, but he’s walking out the door again without even helping me, and Sister Mattea hands me the book, and she leaves, and then after she’s gone, I notice—”

  “Courtnee! What. Day. Was. It. That’s all I want to know.”

  “Well. Pardon me for trying to give some context.” She pouted for a few seconds as I stared at her and briefly wondered where she’d picked up that phrase. Then she continued in an injured tone, as though waiting for me to beg forgiveness. That would not be happening.

  “I told you. It was Tuesday. Brad always fills the Coke machine on Tuesdays. Why does it matter when she came in anyway?”

  “Because, Courtnee, she asked me to call her, and two days went by and I didn’t. And now she’s dead, and I never will.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter then, right? Like you said, she’s dead.”

  “Find your silence, Courtnee. Please.”

  I stepped back into the newsroom, closed the door, and sighed. Courtnee had a point. Sister Mattea was dead and whatever was on her mind didn’t matter anymore. Still, her note bothered me. Why did she want me to call?

  I’d met her briefly when I first got back to town. Then I ran into her again at the bookstore a few weeks ago. She was buying a Michael Connelly paperback, and I kidded her that Connelly didn’t seem like typical nun fare. She laughed and said she loved the way he wrote about LA. Then she offered to lend me one of her favorites. But time went by, and I assumed she’d forgotten, like people do.

  I picked up Echo Park and started leafing through it. Something fluttered from between the pages to the floor. I grabbed it, unfolded it, smoothed it straight. It was a two-sided copy of a page from the Himmel Times. A photo in the lower left caught my eye—Max, Ellie and Alex grinning above a cutline naming them St. Stephen’s Family of the Year.

  Above that was a story about water line replacement on Main Street, a grip and grin check-passing photo of some Rotary Club donation, an ad for Bendel’s Ford. Typical page two copy. I flipped it over and read the front page headline. The air rushed out of my lungs as though I’d been punched in the gut.

  Missing Teen’s Death Ruled Accident

  By Mike Sutfin, Times Staff Writer

  Himmel, WI – The death of Himmel teenager Lacey Nash has been ruled accidental, according to Grantland County District Attorney Cliff Timmins, speaking at a press conference on Wednesday. Nash, 17, disappeared last November from DeMoss Academy, a residential facility for troubled youth run by the Daughters of St. Catherine of Alexandria. Her body was discovered two weeks ago in a ravine on the 300-acre estate owned by the nuns.

  “The autopsy indicated cause of death was a head injury sustained in a fall. The sheriff’s department has re-interviewed witnesses, and its findings, coupled with the autopsy results, have led us to conclude the death was accidental,” said Timmins in a prepared statement. There will be no inquest.

/>   Nash had been a resident of DeMoss Academy for approximately 6 months at the time of her disappearance. She was reported missing the morning of November 2 by a representative of the school. At the time authorities believed that Nash, a student with a history as a runaway, had left on her own. An undisclosed sum of money was also reported missing at the time.

  Timmins declined further comment, but turned the press conference over to Sheriff Lester Dillingham.

  “Now, I want to make this clear. In no way did we not do a professional, thorough investigation of Lacey Nash’s disappearance. At the time, we had every reason to believe she had run off like she did other times,” Dillingham said. However, a witness, who had previously not made a full statement, came forward after the body was discovered.

  The witness, whom Dillingham refused to identify citing her status as a minor, told investigators that she and Nash had both attended a party at the abandoned Lancaster farm adjacent to the nuns’ property. The site is popular with underage drinkers, Dillingham said.

  “We can’t be everywhere. We patrol that area as much as we can, but kids do gather there to drink; it’s a fact. Our witness said Lacey became highly intoxicated and belligerent and said that she was leaving that night and never coming back.”

  Nash left the party, and the witness assumed that she had made good on her threats. She didn’t come forward at the time out of fear that she would get herself in trouble, and she believed that Nash had run away, Dillingham said.

  “It’s a sad story, but you get a kid with some booze and drugs inside her—it’d be easy to get disoriented in those woods at night. Then she trips, falls down the gully, hits her head on a rock, and that’s all she wrote.”

  The sheriff confirmed that an empty liquor bottle was found near the body. An unlabeled bottle containing several hydrocodone tablets, better known by the trademarked name Vicodin, was found in Nash’s purse. However, the autopsy report does not indicate Nash was intoxicated.

  “Well, I don’t want to be crude, but a body exposed to the elements for better than six months, you’ve got your accelerated decomposition to deal with. And out in the woods, you’ve got your animal factor. Let’s just say there wasn’t much left for testing and leave it there.”

  Sister Julianna Bennett, director of DeMoss Academy, issued a formal statement. “We are saddened at the loss of Lacey, and our hearts go out to her family. She remains in our thoughts and in our prayers.” Representatives of the order refused any further comment.

  The funeral for Lacey Nash will be held May 5 at St. Stephen’s. (See Nash obituary, p. 10)

  After I finished, I took a deep breath that ended on a ragged note. Why did Sister Mattea have this clip about my sister Lacey tucked in the book she gave me? Was that what she wanted to talk to me about in person? Did she want to tell me something about her, or how she died?

  When Lacey disappeared, she and I were barely speaking. But it wasn’t always that way. Lacey wasn’t even a year old when Annie, our middle sister, died. I was 10. Not long after that, Dad left. He just couldn’t deal with the sadness, Mom said. But my mother pulled it together, and we survived. Her parenting style was closer to Roseanne Connor with an English degree than to Carol Brady, but it worked for us.

  Lacey used to dissolve in giggles that gave her the hiccups, when Mom would belt out “I Am Woman” and point to us to come in on the chorus. Mom said we were the three Nash women, and we could take on the world. Only it turned out after Lacey turned 14, we couldn’t.

  I had just taken a job at the Green Bay Press-Gazette, after spending the first year out of college working at the Himmel Times. It was only a few hours away, but a small daily that’s short on staff doesn’t leave a new reporter much free time. Lacey and I emailed and talked a lot on the phone, but she was as busy with school and her activities as I was with mine. The next year when I took a position at the Grand Rapids Press, a mid-size daily in Michigan, Lacey and I had an even harder time connecting.

  By then I was caught up in my first serious relationship. So caught up that it took a while before I realized, that when I did call, Lacey didn’t always call me back. When I asked her about it, she brushed me off. But then things got worse. Lacey started lying about where she’d been, staying out past her curfew, skipping school, hanging out with kids she never used to like.

  It was as though someone had taken our Lacey and dropped a demon child in her place. Her behavior escalated for almost three years—drinking, smoking weed, doing other drugs. She stole, she ran away, she blew off the counseling sessions Mom set up for her. And lying. She was always, always lying.

  When I questioned her, she was evasive. When I talked to her, she was sullen. When I yelled at her, she was defiant. Nothing I did could reach her. She caused Mom a hundred sleepless nights and me a hundred furious days. It just kept getting worse. I dreaded answering the phone or opening my email, because there was always some fresh crisis that I couldn’t seem to fix. When she was 17, she stole my credit card, took my mother’s car, and headed for parts unknown with her boyfriend. That was it. I was done. I had to be. Trying to save her was killing me.

  She was headed for juvenile detention, but my mother’s parish priest, Father Lindstrom, intervened. He got her into DeMoss Academy, a residential school for hard case kids run by an order of nuns outside of Himmel. I didn’t care where she went as long as it was out of the house.

  No more screaming fights, no more nights driving around looking for her, no more missing cash, no more futile attempts to comfort Mom, no more feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I hated my sister and what she had done to our lives. Or, maybe more truthfully, I hated that she made me realize we’re never safe. Nothing lasts. No matter what dues you think you’ve paid, they’re never enough to keep the next bad thing from happening.

  I drove, and Mom sat tight-lipped but dry-eyed all the way to DeMoss. Lacey lounged in the back with her ear buds in, listening to her music and staring straight ahead. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t anything. I just didn’t care anymore. All I wanted was to get it done.

  There was only one minute when I felt anything at all. After we finished the intake and met the staff, Lacey was her usual self: defiant, angry, sullen. She endured Mom’s goodbye hug and ignored my “See you.”

  I watched her go down the hall with her counselor. She looked so small. She held her body stiff with her shoulders squared and her chin high. She walked that same way the first day of kindergarten, trying not to show how scared she was. Just before they reached the end of the corridor, she half-turned and our eyes met. The lost look I saw there hit me so hard it took my breath away.

  Later, after her body was found, I saw her in my dreams for months—the way she used to be. Running toward me with soft black hair flying, dark blue eyes shining, laughing, holding out a flower or a pretty stone or a butterfly she caught.

  But as she got closer, the flower turned into a phone and she was crying into it, “Lee-Lee, Lee-Lee.” I reached down to pick her up, but she slipped right through my arms. And she kept running. And crying and crying and crying. I would wake up in a cold sweat and know that I was only fooling myself. I never stopped caring about Lacey. In my unguarded dreams, it all came flooding back—the guilt, the anguish, the sorrow, the love.

  That’s why I had to know what Sister Mattea was trying to tell me with that newspaper clip.

  Three

  “Refill?”

  “Definitely.” I was sitting in McClain’s Bar & Grill waiting for Max and Miguel to join me for our usual Thursday night post-deadline drink. I’d already downed one Jameson.

  “Better bring me a hamburger with that, too, please, Sherry.”

  “Are you waiting for Coop?” the waitress asked, casually tucking a strand of curly brown hair behind her ear.

  “No, but Miguel and Max are supposed to be here shortly. Will they do?” Though I knew they wouldn’t. Sherry made it pretty obvious that she had a thing for Coop. We had gone to high school tog
ether. She was a cheerleader and I wasn’t. She still had rosy cheeks and round brown eyes, and she looked good in the bar’s requisite clingy t-shirt and tight black pants—despite two kids and a divorce. I became conscious of my baggy sweater and jeans and my hair jammed up under a red Badgers baseball cap.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something?” she said, then asked without waiting for my assent. “Why are you in town, really? I know you’re filling in for Callie Preston while she’s on maternity leave, and I know your mom’s here and all, but you’ve been back for what, a year? You always said you were getting the hell out of Himmel and never looking back. I heard you were some big shot reporter at a paper in Florida. But here you are, Leah. Back. How come?”

  Ouch. That was surprisingly malicious. And bonus points for the repeated use of “back” to emphasize the direction my life had taken. There was more going on than I had credited behind those big brown eyes. I looked at Sherry with new respect. Dislike, but respect.

  “Two months, Sherry, not a year. I’ve been filling in for two, and I promised Max I’d stick it out for six.” Then I decided to yank her chain a little. “And, besides, it’s been great seeing Coop again. No matter how long it’s been, we always just pick up right where we left off,” I said, with what I hoped was the right touch of innuendo. I wasn’t sure though. I don’t do subtle very well.

  The truth was that Coop and I had a low-maintenance relationship that suited me perfectly—long periods of limited contact, but no recriminations, no apologies, just slipping back into an easy friendship based on shared history but no romance. OK, there was a beer-fueled hook-up once during college that neither of us ever talked about again, but that hardly constituted a romance.

  “Now, if I could have that refill and my burger?” Her color rose, but she just grabbed the empty glass and walked away.