by Lou Berney
“Who?”
“Your ex-husband.”
The silence lasted so long that Wyatt thought he’d lost her. “Candace?” he said.
“He’s here?” she said. “Brandon is in Oklahoma City?”
“I’ll explain. I’m almost there.”
The Plaza District at lunchtime was buzzing. Wyatt didn’t see anyplace to park on the street.
“We have to call the police,” she said. There was something in Candace’s voice, a rawness, he’d never heard before. “He’s a bad person, Wyatt.”
“I know,” Wyatt said. “And I know. Believe me.”
A silver SUV pulled out of a space directly in front of the tattoo parlor Dallas lived above, but—as luck would have it—not until just after Wyatt had already passed by. He nosed slowly along for another block, then gave up trying to park on Sixteenth. He turned down the next side street.
“I’ve got his address,” he told Candace. “And when he’ll be there later. We’ll give all that to the police.”
“Wyatt.”
He pulled to the curb. “I’ll be right up.”
He glanced at the rearview mirror to make sure he wasn’t blocking a driveway. The silver SUV that had pulled out behind him turned onto the side street, too. Wyatt had a fraction of a second to register that, to put the pieces together, and then the silver SUV was accelerating, veering, smashing into the driver’s door of his Altima. The impact of the crash slammed Wyatt sideways as the side air bag exploded. His shoulder strap snapped him back hard, and his head felt like it had come off his neck. He couldn’t see—everything went black, then blazed white, then went black again.
He heard the passenger door of his car open. He didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been days, weeks. Chip leaned in. Smiling at Wyatt.
“Oh, my God, Mr. Rivers!” he said. “Are you okay? I’ll call an ambulance.”
Wyatt felt Chip’s hand groping him, patting Wyatt’s legs, his chest.
“What are you doing?” Wyatt said. He tried to say. “You fucker.”
“I’m not stupid, you know. I could tell you were lying on the phone. Not right away, but pretty quick.” Chip found the cell phone in the inside pocket of Wyatt’s suit coat. “I’ll take this, if you don’t mind.”
Wyatt’s left arm was pinned between the crushed panel of the door and his seat. He reached across and tried to unclip his seat belt with his bandaged right hand. Chip grabbed his wrist and pounded Wyatt’s hand against the steering wheel. Wyatt felt the stitches in his palm pop. His hand burned.
“And I thought you might be coming here,” Chip said. “This was just bad timing for you, Mr. Rivers, wasn’t it? Wrong place, wrong time. No hard feelings, okay? Even though you stabbed me with a pen.”
“Brandon.”
“Had to run to get to Chipotle before you did. So you wouldn’t see me limp in.”
“Brandon.” Wyatt fought the dizziness. It felt like he was still moving, like he had never stopped, like he was trapped forever in the instant when Chip’s SUV slammed into him. “You won’t get away with this, Brandon. The police know about you.”
Chip held up a knife so Wyatt could see it. A hunting knife with a five-inch blade, flared and beautifully faceted, the tip whipped like meringue into a cheerful point. The edge of the blade looked sharp enough to move through matter without touching it.
Chip angled the knife toward the light and admired the way the metal shimmered and turned liquid, colorless.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I only need to get away with it for like two more minutes. I don’t care what happens after that.”
“No,” Wyatt said. “You don’t want to hurt Candace. You don’t want to hurt your daughter.”
Chip nodded. “You’re right. I really don’t. That’s what makes this so sad.”
“Then why?” Wyatt said. He knew he had to keep Chip talking. “Why hurt them if you don’t want to?”
“That’s a great question. I wish I had time to explain.”
“Talk all the time you need.”
“You’re trying to stall me, Mr. Rivers, aren’t you? You’re sneaky!”
“Why hurt them if you don’t want to?”
“Because a family should be happy together, not apart.”
“You mean you don’t want them to be happy without you.”
“This way we’ll all be happy.”
Chip backed out of Wyatt’s car. Wyatt hit the center of the steering wheel with his bleeding hand and kept it pressed there. The horn blared. Chip leaned back in, half in the car and half out. Wyatt saw the knife flashing toward him and twisted hard to his left. The blade skipped off his collarbone and slid smoothly into the seam between Wyatt’s sternum and shoulder. There was no pain at first and then what seemed like all the pain in the history of humankind, concentrated in that one spot. Wyatt felt like he was underwater. The whole world seemed to warp and ripple.
Before Chip could pull the knife out and strike again, Wyatt hooked his right arm around Chip’s neck and yanked him close. He finally managed to free his pinned left arm. He hit the horn again, with his elbow.
Chip tried to jerk away, but Wyatt held tight. The horn blared and blared. All expression was gone from Chip’s face. He was so close that Wyatt could smell the wintergreen on his breath.
Chip punched Wyatt in the head with his other hand. He punched him again. Wyatt was upside down now, tumbling through time and space. He felt Chip fling off his arm. He felt the blade slide from his flesh. Chip, still without expression, raised the knife again.
A shadow rippled across the dash. Wyatt caught a glimpse of Candace, behind Chip, as she used both hands to slam the passenger door shut on Chip’s legs. He grunted, with pain and surprise. He turned. She slammed the door again.
“You bitch,” he said.
The knife turned when Chip did, the blade melting as light from the windshield caught it. Wyatt grabbed Chip’s hand and drove the knife forward, drove it down. Chip turned back toward Wyatt at the same instant, and the blade buried itself deep, almost to the hilt, in the hollow at the base of Chip’s throat. Chip opened his mouth. His mouth was empty one moment, and then in the next moment it was full of blood, a cup about to spill. His expression, no expression, never changed.
Wyatt tried to let go of Chip’s hand, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have the strength. The light began to fade. Wyatt was surprised to discover it really did that. He could feel the grudging pump of his heart. Like a cranky old man trudging up a flight of stairs. I’m sick of this shit. This is the last time. Wyatt thought he heard a voice, voices, but too faint to understand what they were saying. The light continued to fade. It was taking its sweet fucking time. The voices went silent. The pain eased. Finally all that was left was the darkness, the stillness, and the hot, coppery smell of everybody’s blood.
Julianna
CHAPTER 27
The guy she’d stitched up looked at his cupcake as if someone had slipped it onto his plate while he wasn’t paying attention.
“My uncle stopped drinking and joined AA the day after the bombing downtown,” he said. “His wife was supposed to be at the Murrah Building that morning but wasn’t.”
Julianna thought of their cousin Mercy, who lived in Tulsa. Their father’s sister’s daughter, ten years older than Genevieve and fifteen years older than Julianna. They saw her only once a year, on Christmas Eve, when she would drive down to visit friends and family in Oklahoma City and parade before them another year of her sobriety. Genevieve said Mercy chose Christmas Eve in order to cast the maximum pall.
“Our cousin was in AA. My sister used to make fun of it, all the slogans they had.” Julianna tried to remember. “Instead of ‘Let go and let God,’ she’d say, ‘Let go, God! You’re hurting me!’ ”
And whenever Mercy preached the necessity of livin
g life one day at a time, Genevieve would break loudly into the dumb, cheerful theme song to the TV sitcom of the same name. It made Mercy furious.
“Have a nice day,” the guy said.
When Julianna looked up, a beat late as usual, he was already standing, already moving away.
“You, too,” she said.
Do you remember that security guard at the apartment complex, Genni? The one who tried to kick us out of the pool? He was so young. He probably wasn’t much older than you, but he thought he was such hot stuff. Do you remember his T-shirt? Oh, my God. How did I forget that? A dark blue T-shirt with a gold badge that was just an iron-on decal. He called us ‘Ladies.’ He said, ‘Ladies, the pool is closed. You are in violation of the rules.’ Oh, Genni. You loved when guys thought they were hot stuff.
“Don’t you want to violate the rules, too?” Genevieve had asked him. “You know you do.”
Most pools had lights. A light. A glowing green porthole beneath the diving board. That pool didn’t have a light, or the bulb had burned out. To the baby security guard with the iron-on badge, Genevieve and Julianna were just two heads floating on the dark water. He couldn’t see that they were wearing swimsuits. For all the security guard knew, Genevieve and Julianna were as naked as the day they were born.
“Ladies, I will not warn you again,” he warned them again.
And then he turned and fled. Genevieve smiled, sucked in a breath, and slid beneath the water. It started to rain.
On the way home, after the tornado passed and they did or didn’t retrieve their wet clothes from the side of the pool, Genevieve told Julianna to shut the glove box and keep her grubby paws off her cassettes.
“I will not warn you again,” she said.
Julianna left the coffeehouse. She paused to stroke the head of an affable old pit bull mix leashed to one of the iron patio railings. That dumb TV theme song was now stuck in her head. “One Day at a Time.”
She tried to remember the other AA slogans Mercy had tormented Genevieve with. “Easy does it.” “Gratitude is an attitude.” But you had to give Mercy credit. AA had helped her get sober, stay sober, and turn her life around. “From darkness comes light.” “First things first.”
Julianna stood up so suddenly that the old pit bull yipped with surprise and scrambled to its feet.
First things first.
That’s what Genevieve had told Crowley when he asked if she wanted to come inside and party. When she’d turned him down and walked away instead.
“First things first,” Julianna said.
Julianna thought about Genevieve’s diary. Why hadn’t she stopped making entries once their mother stopped snooping? Why had she so thoroughly described the challenges of learning a foreign language and so dutifully noted every class she attended?
Without fanfare, without the low moan of a tornado siren or a flash of lightning, Julianna realized that Genevieve had been in AA. She’d joined AA. When Crowley asked if she wanted to party, Genevieve had turned him down. The first thing—first things first—was staying clean.
Genevieve in AA was such an unlikely possibility that Julianna had never even imagined it. But that explained the diary. That last summer and fall, the diary hadn’t been a goof at all. Genevieve had been keeping track of the time she stayed clean. Staying clean, for Genevieve, was a foreign language.
The classes at the Francis Tuttle Vo-Tech School of Extremely Difficult Languages had been the AA meetings Genevieve attended. Two or three times a week, all through August and into September. And the old Chinese tutor, the private tutor Genevieve wrote about, must have been her— What did they call them in AA? Her sponsor. The person you could call, any hour of the day or night, if you thought you might be about to slip.
Julianna gave the affable pit bull one last pat and stepped slowly onto the sidewalk. She understood why Genevieve had kept her involvement in AA hidden from their mother. Their mother thought AA attracted weak, selfish people who blamed their problems on others and used the program as a way to clear their slates so they could behave badly all over again.
And Genevieve hid it from Julianna, too. Julianna, twelve years old, was too young to understand. Genevieve thought she was oblivious about the drinking and the drugs. She wanted to keep her that way.
The coded entries in the diary were not for their mother. They were for Julianna. Their mother had stopped snooping, but Julianna hadn’t. She snuck peeks at Genevieve’s diary whenever she could.
The police hadn’t investigated the AA connection. They never knew about it.
Julianna’s heart began to pound. Faster and faster, a prisoner of its own momentum. She ran toward the parking lot behind the coffeehouse. The guy whose palm she’d stitched up had said his uncle was in AA, a long-timer. Maybe the uncle would be able to put Julianna in touch with people who’d been in the program back in the eighties.
When she got to the parking lot, though, the guy had already driven off. Julianna didn’t remember his name. The hospital would have his contact information, but she’d burned that bridge, unfortunately.
She took out her phone. Did she know anyone in AA? Did she even know if she knew anyone in AA? Julianna had never seen DeMars touch booze—he always asked for lemonade or Pepsi. That was another bridge burned, though: Julianna’s gift. Their cousin Mercy had moved to Florida, or maybe it was to Arizona. Julianna had lost touch with her long ago.
She tried a Google search for “Alcoholics Anonymous OKC.” It turned out to be that simple: A link sent her to a page where she could find a meeting, open or closed, by city and date. She selected “Oklahoma City” and “Monday” and clicked SUBMIT.
The screen filled with results. Julianna scrolled down. And down. And down. She was startled there were so many meetings, dozens and dozens of them. And that was just today, just in Oklahoma City.
“God, give me the courage to change the things I can,” their cousin Mercy would say.
God, Genevieve would say, I will accept the change you give me, but no pennies, please.
Julianna counted eleven different locations where the various meetings—Big Book, Step Study, As Bill Sees It—were held over the course of the day. She ruled out all the locations in the south part of town: Genevieve would never have risked running into a friend of their mother’s. That left six places north of downtown. One of them, something called the MacArthur Club, wasn’t far from the Sonic on Meridian where Genevieve had worked in high school. Julianna decided to try there first. A Big Book meeting ended in fifteen minutes.
She drove across town. The Sonic had been replaced, probably years earlier, by an upscale Mediterranean restaurant. The MacArthur Club was a mile farther west on NW Sixty-third, between two strip malls, an unmarked, unremarkable building that, if you noticed it at all, you would think was a tag agency or a State Farm office. As Julianna pulled in to the parking lot, the doors opened and people began to exit the building. Men, women, young, old. They lit cigarettes and tilted their heads back. They breathed great gray sighs of relief into the sky above.
Clusters formed. Laughter rang out. Julianna got out of her car and approached a man who was standing off by himself, examining the tip of his cigarette before and after every drag he took. He was in his fifties, Julianna guessed, maybe older.
“Excuse me,” she said.
He held out his pack of Camels. “Help yourself,” he said.
“No. Thank you. I wondered if I could ask you a question.”
“Ask away.”
Julianna showed him the picture of Genevieve she had on her phone, a scan of a photo their mother had taken on her seventeenth birthday. Genevieve, about to blow out the candles on her cake, was cutting her eyes at Julianna, who sat outside the frame. She was starting to laugh at something Julianna had just said or done. Julianna didn’t remember what.
“Do you happen to
recognize this girl?” she said.
The guy took another drag off his Camel, examined the tip, then looked at Julianna instead of the photo.
“I see you inside just now?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“She’s my sister.”
“They call it Alcoholics Anonymous,” he said, but with a smile. “That’s the whole point.”
“She disappeared twenty-six years ago, about two months after this was taken. She was in AA. She hadn’t been in long. I’m trying to find someone who might have known her.”
He glanced at the photo of Genevieve. He glanced again, and his eyes lingered this time. He shook his head.
“Before my time,” he said. “I’ve only been sober seventeen years. Hold on.”
He walked over to the nearest cluster of smokers. After a minute he brought back two elderly men, dapper in tweed blazers and windowpane-plaid slacks. The men could have been twins, with the same narrow, mournful faces, the same Clark Gable mustaches. They even held their cigarettes the same way, between the first and second knuckles of their fingers.
“This is Chester and Lawrence,” the first man told Julianna. “I explained what you were looking for. They might be able to help.”
He gave Julianna a nod and moved away. Julianna showed the photo of Genevieve to the two elderly men. Each man took out a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses and put them on.
“Oh,” one of the men said. Chester. “Sure.”
“Sure,” Lawrence agreed.
Julianna felt something inside her give way—a minute but resonant pop, like the lead point of a pencil snapping off when you pressed too hard.
“You remember her?” she said.
“I do,” Chester said. “Sure. I don’t think I ever knew her name. Did you?”
“I didn’t,” Lawrence said. “No. We exchanged the occasional cordial hello. At the coffeepot.”
“That was all. Ships passing in the night. She came to meetings for a month or two.”
