by Lisa Unger
“I have to tell you.” He drained his cup. “I didn’t think we’d still be trying to figure this out, more than ten years later.”
That’s the difference between me and Boz. He’s still trying to solve the puzzle, figure out how all the pieces fit together—who took that money, how it connects to what happened to my family, where the money is now. Who was the fourth man there that night, the one Seth saw waiting outside? For him, it’s about the unanswered questions. Those things don’t matter to me as much. I know who was in my house that night; I know what they did. Even if the evidence isn’t there, my body knew Didion.
The Red Hunter only wants one thing.
nineteen
When Heather Drake came home with the groceries, she saw his truck in the drive. She felt it, that mutinous little lift in her heart, that tug on the corners of her mouth. She brought her car to a stop. There was a rattling sound when she turned the ignition off. What could that be? she wondered. And how much was it going to cost to fix it? She tried not to do that thing she did, where she thought about how much money was in the account, what she still had to buy, and what was due. There was always too much ahead, and not enough to cover. She tried to make the numbers work and couldn’t, and now this weird rattle. But it was always something, wasn’t it?
She climbed out into the air cool, growing cold. The trees punched gold against the gloaming. The windows in the house glowed orange. Home. She knew inside that everything was neat and orderly. The laundry was done; there was a stew in the crock-pot. Every surface was clean; every bed made.
He climbed out and walked toward her. She gave a wave and went to pop the trunk so that she could retrieve the groceries. He was by her side, lifting out the heaviest bag, planting a kiss on her cheek.
“Hey, there,” Paul said. Just the smell of him.
“Hey,” she said, easy. “What are you doing here?”
He frowned. “Chad called,” he said. “Said he needed to talk. I figured he meant here.”
“He didn’t tell me,” she said. No surprise there.
“Where’s Zoey?”
She looked up the drive. “Should be home soon. She had art, Blaire’s mom is driving car pool tonight.”
Which Heather didn’t love. She loved being the carpool mom, the one with the car full of chattering, laughing teenage girls. But she didn’t like being the one waiting, watching the drive. She was good at feigning nonchalance, though. Mothers of only children had a bad rap: too overprotective, hovering, nervous. It wasn’t because Zoey was her only one; she would have been like that about all of them, if things had gone the way she planned. But it didn’t.
“You look—” he started. She thought he was going to say tired, stressed, worried. She was all of those things. “Radiant.”
And then she was looking into his eyes. “You’re sweet,” she heard herself say.
His gaze lingered too long, and she moved ahead of him pushing into the house, balancing the groceries on one hip. The house smelled heavenly, stew cooking.
“I hope we’re eating here,” he said, putting down the bags.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He told me he wouldn’t be home for dinner.”
“And you didn’t ask why?”
She shrugged. “Wife of a cop for nearly twenty years,” she said. “I don’t ask questions much. If he was going to miss beef stew night, I figured he had his reasons. His shift is over at eight. He said he was going to grab something at Burgers and Brew.”
She didn’t say that it was a relief when Chad didn’t make it home for dinner, that there were no screaming matches between him and Zoey to referee, no trying to coax out news about the day, wondering why he always looked so worried, so tired. Sometimes when he came home, he brought a kind of pall with him and draped it over the house. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him. She did.
Paul helped her put away the groceries. He knew the kitchen as well as if he lived there. He always helped with meals when he was there, somehow managing not to get in her way. Chad never came near the kitchen; when he wanted to give her a night off from cooking, they went out or carried in.
“So what’s up?” he said. “Why would he ask me to come and not tell you?”
It was odd. “I don’t know.”
A fissure of worry opened in the back of her mind, just a hairline crack, one that would widen when she lay down at the end of the day. Was there something wrong? His health? Something else?
“How have you been?” he asked. He moved in closer, too close. She stepped away, to put the milk in the fridge. He was the only one who ever asked her that. She and Chad were in communication all day—about all the minutiae of their shared existence: Did you call the plumber? Can you pick up some milk? How did Zoey do on her quiz?—calls, texts, email. He never asked her how she was because he knew, better than anyone.
“You know,” she said. What could she say? That her life revolved around Zoey and Chad, that lately she’d been thinking she never should have stopped working, that she wasn’t unhappy but that she wasn’t happy exactly either. “Same old.”
There was the slam of the car door outside, then the sound of Zoey’s running feet. She must have seen the truck, burst in the door a few seconds later and straight into Paul’s big embrace. He lifted her off the ground, gave her a spin. How’s my girl?
Then it was the Paul and Zoey Show. Belly laughs and high fives and inside jokes. When Heather watched them together, it was as if something heavy was lifted off of her. She felt a big smile spread across her face. With Chad and Zoey, Heather always wondered who was going to draw first blood.
“Hey, Mom.” Zoey leaned in for a kiss; Heather gave her one and a pat on the bottom.
“How was your quiz?”
“I did okay, I think.”
She didn’t worry about Zoey, her straight-A student, driven like her father, maybe because of him, because nothing was ever quite good enough.
“I’m sure you did fine,” she said. And he thought she was too easy. These kids, they’re overpraised. Wait until they find themselves out in the real world. No one’s handing out participation trophies there.
She fed them. They sat to dinner like a family, big bowls of stew and fresh bread from the bakery. She had a glass of wine, felt herself go loose the way she did when Paul was around. Everyone was more relaxed when Paul was at the table, even Chad. It was like his stepbrother brought out everything that was good about him. And there was so much; there really was.
After dinner, Zoey had to go do her homework and Paul looked at his phone.
“He wants me to meet him in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Burgers and Brew, just like you said.”
“Should I be worried?” asked Heather.
He waved a hand at her. “Nah,” he said easily. “Just work stuff probably. Maybe he just wants to talk through a case.”
But there was a frown behind his eyes. He reached for her hand, and it lingered there too long. She let it. He seemed about to say something and then didn’t. She heard Zoey’s voice upstairs, on the phone, chattering happy and high pitched. At the sound of it, he got up and started clearing the dishes.
It was just one night. And it was so long ago, a million years ago it seemed. It was a mistake buried under the debris of years. It could have been so easily forgotten—if he’d ever married, had kids of his own—except that he didn’t and it wasn’t. She never forgot it. How could she?
“Leave it,” she said. “I’ll get it.”
He ignored her, helped her load the dishwasher, wipe down the table. She walked him out to his truck.
“I’m glad you came by,” she said.
He looked back up at the house, and then into the sky. Then he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her close. She glanced back around her to Zoey’s window, which looked out onto the front of the house.
“Don’t.”
“I never stop thinking about you,” he said, his voice thick. Why this night? Was it just because they
were never alone without Chad and Zoey?
“Paul,” she said. But she wasn’t resisting him. His thigh against hers, the strength of his arm around her back, her hand on his wide shoulder.
When Chad had been away, some fishing trip she hadn’t wanted him to take, a weekend of drunken stupidity that would leave him wrecked for a week, Paul had come. She’d seen his car pull up, watched him walk up the drive. She’d come out to stand on the porch. Neither of them said a word as they moved inside, locked the door. She dissolved into him, disappeared. He took her on the staircase, then on the landing in front of the bedroom. Later in the bed she shared with Chad. Again, downstairs in the kitchen. His scent, the feel of his lips, the gentle, powerful way he held her, the way he moaned, deep and desperate, as if he’d never known pleasure—God, it stayed with her. She’d never made love like that with Chad. Never once.
The thing was that Heather and Chad were never not going to be together. He was her first everything. They met in high school, were married before they graduated college. He went on to the police academy; she got her master’s in education. Paul was older, already gone to the city while they were still in high school. Paul, Chad’s stepbrother, best friend. To her, he was someone mysterious, just out of reach, like the coywolf she sometimes saw on their property lately. Eventually he became her friend, too, later their best man. When had it changed?
It was Christmas. She and Chad had been married a couple of years, they were trying to have a baby. Had been trying for over a year—and it was starting to become a thing. They were stressed about it (he didn’t really want kids, did he?) and arguing a lot. She was cooking that holiday. Again. For his family and hers, for friends who had been dropping by all day. The house was crowded, overwarm.
Finally, with the walls closing in on her and the sound of the television and everybody talking at once, she went out back and hid behind the shed where Chad snuck his cigarettes (did he think she didn’t know?). She just started crying. It was cold; she was shivering in the thin red cardigan, her breath pluming out with each sob. The sky threatened snow, gray-white above her. Even her feet were cold.
“Hey.” Paul came up behind her. “What’s up?”
She wiped her eyes, embarrassed. “Nothing,” she said. “Just. Everything.”
He held her. That was it. Chad would be talking, talking, talking, trying to help, to comfort, to explain why she shouldn’t be upset. He’d be telling her to relax, to not take so much on, everything didn’t have to be perfect. But Paul didn’t say anything, just let her cry until it passed, his arms tight around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just—”
She couldn’t go on, and anyway he held up a hand. “That’s what I’m here for.”
His face, angular, icy eyes that were wrinkled with kindness. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
“Let’s go back into the fray.”
On the way back, his arm around her, they bumped into Chad, who had come out looking for her.
“Sneaking out behind the shed with my wife?” he said when he saw them.
“What can I say, brother?” said Paul. “Women just want me. And you’ve got to give the ladies what they want.”
Paul shifted away from her. But Chad wasn’t jealous, not in the least. He was so sure of her, of Paul.
“I hear you, man,” he said, dropping his arm around Heather. “You okay, babe?”
“Just—stressed.”
He squeezed her. “Everything’s perfect. Just relax.”
That was the day when she started thinking about Paul in ways that she shouldn’t. And then that night with Chad off fishing—barely a word spoken between them, just the blessed release of all the tension she’d barely acknowledged. Neither of them ever thought it could be more; there was no discussion about what happened next. There was no torrid affair. Just that one moment in time, separate from the rest of the universe, from who they were outside that moment. Chad’s wife, his best friend and brother. Those people didn’t exist.
Paul left about an hour before the sun came up, kissing her long at the door.
A month later, she was pregnant with Zoey.
• • •
“YOU’LL TELL ME,” HEATHER SAID to Paul now. “If there’s something I need to worry about.”
She glanced up at the window to Zoey’s room; the light inside glowed orange.
“I’ll make sure he tells you,” said Paul. “If there is. But I’m sure it’s nothing.”
It was still there, all these years later. He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, then pulled away quickly and got in his truck.
twenty
Claudia sat and waited, hearing the horn of the train blowing mournfully in the distance.
I want to come home.
The text had come in from Raven at eleven, just as Claudia had finished her final stubborn attempt to get that goddamn wallpaper down.
I’m on the last train.
She hadn’t tracked Raven all night. When Raven was with Ayers, Claudia never worried. But there she was, her little blue dot floating on a faint purple line marked Erie Lackawanna.
She dialed Ayers but just got voicemail. She hung up and texted him.
What happened?
She tried Raven, but the call just went to voicemail. Service on the train was always spotty. After about an hour, she got in the car and went to the station.
I want to come home. The phrase filled her with a kind of strange happiness. Claudia knew she didn’t mean the ramshackle old house in Nowhere, New Jersey. It was Claudia, her mother, that was Raven’s home. As much as her daughter railed and raged, she still needed her mom.
The train pulled in to the station, and Claudia climbed out of the car. A stunning young woman all in black, followed by a tall young man with a mass of blond curls, exited from the last car. It took her a full second to recognize her own daughter and her daughter’s lifelong friend Troy.
When Raven saw Claudia, she broke into an awkward run in boots that Claudia had never seen. Troy was carrying Raven’s pack and her jacket.
“What happened?” Claudia asked when Raven fell into her arms.
“Hey, Ms. Bishop,” said Troy.
“Troy,” said Claudia. “Does your mom know where you are?”
He nodded. “She said it was okay if I brought Raven home and stayed with you.”
Lydia was a free-range parent. She treated Troy as if he were a twenty-year-old, and always had. Maybe that’s why he acted as if he were so much older, wiser than his years—thoughtful, responsible, just sweet. Or maybe Lydia just got lucky.
In the car, Raven spilled it—how she’d lied, what she’d done. Claudia breathed through it; she didn’t want to freak out and have the whole thing turn into a screaming match. But her heart was revving; she could feel the blood rushing through her body, heat coming to her cheeks.
“Raven,” she said. They were pulling off the road onto the drive to the house. “What possessed you? To seek him out, the son of the man who—raped me?”
She had to pull the car to a stop, her breath coming sharp and fast. She actually felt dizzy. She rested her head on the steering wheel. She felt Troy’s hand on her shoulder from the backseat, and Raven moved in close.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. “I didn’t think of it like that. I was just looking for the place—where I belong.”
She looked at her daughter, whose eyes were wide and filled with tears. “It’s right here, with me,” Claudia said. “Why don’t you get that?”
“I do,” said Raven. “I get it. He was so—dark inside. So angry. But he said, ‘Why do you think where you come from has anything to do with who you are?’ It made sense to me.”
Claudia bit back the rise of frustration, exasperation.
“I’ve said that a thousand times,” said Claudia.
“Me, too,” said Troy from the backseat.
“We raised you,” said Claudia. “We love you. You belong
with us.”
Raven sobbed.
“You lied to me and to your father,” said Claudia. “You snuck out to some club to meet this kid. What if he’d been dangerous like his father? What if he’d hurt you?”
“That’s why I brought Troy.”
She saw Troy’s curls and his round glasses in the rearview mirror. He was still the eight-year-old who skinned his knee in the park and cried quietly while she cleaned and bandaged it. The one who used to sleep in his X-Men sleeping bag on her living room couch, Raven on the other couch in her pink monogrammed one. It was so much easier then. They were always right there, a few steps away.
“Give me those fake IDs, please.”
She heard Troy shuffling in the backseat, then he handed them over.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Bishop,” said Troy. He didn’t follow it with any excuses. She slid the IDs into her bag, took a deep breath, and kept driving.
“Wow,” said Troy. “It’s really dark here. Look at all those stars.”
Normally, Raven would take this opportunity to make some quip about the town or the misery of living in the country, but she just stayed silent, looking out the window, her arms wrapped around her middle.
The windows in the house glowed golden. She must have left every light on.
“How close is the next house?” asked Troy.
“About a mile,” said Claudia.
“Wow,” said Troy.
“No one can hear me screaming,” said Raven under her breath.
Claudia couldn’t even muster the energy to respond.
• • •
“THE PLACE IS REALLY STARTING to come together,” Troy said.
He’d carried his and Raven’s packs in from the car and placed them by the door. The foyer was starting to shape up, and the living room to the right. There was a reclaimed oak table in the dining room, with a mix-match of chairs she’d found online and at various shops in town. The restored chandelier, which Ayers had helped her to hang, was lovely and twinkly. The walls had been painted since Troy’s last visit.
In the kitchen, it was a different story. Even though Josh had told her to leave the wallpaper until Monday, she just couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t admit defeat. She’d cleaned up everything that was on the floor and bagged it. But there were still huge pieces hanging from the walls, every gash a different color or another layer of wall paper underneath.
