Relentless

by Mike McCrary

  “Why can’t you work here, again?” she asks. “You do it all the time, too.”

  Davis resets, knowing he has to go deeper with this. He can see it in her eyes that she’s not going to simply cave on this.

  “This new client,” he says.

  “The potential LA one?”

  “Yes,” he says, feeling the twist in his gut. “They want all new slides. New reporting. They’re going to be a high-maintenance pain in the—” He stops himself and plays the final word to the girls. “Butt.”

  They giggle off the pure joy that comes from the word butt. Nothing funnier than a good butt joke at their age.

  Hattie smiles, shaking her head while watching her daughters enjoy the show. Davis takes a beat and looks over his family. He can’t help but let the idea of losing this slip into his mind. The idea that Justin could infect their lives and turn this all to stone. All this could be over, taken away. Davis knows Todd is right. He has to do this, get out of town for few days. If he can get Hattie to go along with the cabin idea, then he can buy some time and this can still all work. It doesn’t have to end in doomsday. They can still be rid of Justin, all of it. He can put LA behind him forever. He can still hold on to what’s good.

  Moisture floods the corners of his eyes as watches their faces.

  Can one mistake undo a lifetime of good?

  He turns to Hattie. Takes a deep breath.

  “If I can get this right,” Davis continues, “if I can turn this around, we can be good. Things can be okay.”

  Hattie sees the emotion all over her husband’s face. This means something to him. Not sure why, but there’s something going on inside her husband. This sudden trip to the lake, for whatever reason, means an awful lot to him.

  Davis keeps his eyes on hers, hopes she’ll write it off as his passion for the business.

  “Okay,” she says, holding his hand. “Let’s go to the lake, I guess.”

  The girls almost explode from the floor, dancing like little crazy people.

  Davis smiles, exhales, squeezes her hand.

  The dog barks, dancing along with the girls.

  “The dog comes too,” Hattie says.

  Davis tries to counter.

  She puts up a hand. “Nonnegotiable.”

  23

  The sun has just begun the process of lighting up the day.

  Davis drives the winding back roads, cutting through the countryside heading to Lake Oswego, leaving the Portland suburbs in the rearview mirror. The girls have calmed down since they left Beaverton. It took a while, but they’ve retreated deep into their tablets. Hattie and Davis both wish they didn’t spend as much time with their faces buried in the abyss of the screens, but they don’t know what to do about it. They monitor the time the best they can, try to teach good habits, but they know small screens aren’t going away. Not anytime soon. Parenting in today’s world is a constant evolution, not an exact science by any stretch.

  The dog barks like a bastard.

  Davis’s teeth grind.

  Hattie laughs. She loves it when the dog gets on his nerves. Davis secretly loves it too. He loves the game of acting like he hates the dog, but they both know he loves the damn, dumb fur bag. Once the dog lets it go, Hattie holds Davis’s hand, letting her fingers loosely lock with his. He smiles, gives them a gentle squeeze.

  The drive itself is oddly relaxing. Calming.

  A chance to get out of his own head.

  Davis and Hattie spend a nice moment with the radio off letting only the sound of the tires gripping the road fill the car. The kids have their headphones on so the two of them can simply sit, holding hands, watching the gorgeous trees and countryside fill their vision. A quiet moment of affection. Something that gets missed too easily during the chaos of life.

  This is as relaxed as Davis has been in days. At least since before LA.

  He hasn’t thought about Justin, the pictures, what Todd is doing, or any of it for a solid hour and it feels pretty nice. He turns to Hattie, catching a quick glance without her noticing. She’s holding his hand while resting her head on the coolness of the window, watching the world roll by with an ever-so-slight grin on her face. There’s such a look of peacefulness on her pretty face. A face he’s known since college. A woman he’s spent most of his life loving.

  “I’m glad we’re doing this,” she says, barely above a whisper.

  “Me too.”

  Hattie leans back over toward his side of the car and rests her head on his shoulder as he drives. Davis feels a light flutter in his chest like he did back when they were younger. It surprises him a bit. After all these years, she can still do that to him.

  Tilley’s face streaks across his mind.

  The pictures.

  He imagines her scream ringing out.

  Davis’s shoulder tenses up. He shakes his head, trying to remove the unwanted thoughts and images from his head. Hattie jerks her head from his shoulder, giving him a confused look, then leans back toward the window. He wants to reach out and tell her that it’s not her. She’s done nothing wrong, nothing to earn any of this.

  There’s nothing for him to say.

  The tires roll as silence fills the car again.

  This time, only a little colder than before.

  Once they reach the cabin, Davis begins unpacking the car while Hattie and the girls run toward the lake house. It’s an older place that’s been kept up nice over the years by Hattie’s family. They’ve done well for themselves and share the house with Hattie and her sisters whenever they can. They’ve been generous toward Davis and Hattie in particular, with the lake house and other things, helping them out of some tight financial spots.

  Davis often wonders if her family shakes their head at the decisions Hattie has made. Her decision to marry Davis. Their financial rollercoaster. How their little girl could have done better, and how their granddaughters are being raised. The risks he’s taken. Do they think he’s careless, foolish or brave?

  Davis brought her parents up during one of their darker money times. He pushed the conversation to places he shouldn’t have. The pressure had gotten to him and he’d had a couple of beers, said some things he wished he hadn’t.

  She cried, telling him that her family loved him and would never be that petty, but Davis knows different. He could see it on her father’s face when they went to her parents’ house that one Thanksgiving. It was only a flash, but Davis caught it in the look he gave him.

  My little girl deserves more. More than you can give.

  Davis grabs the last bag from the car, setting it on the ground. He does love this house. He just wishes he could provide one of his own for his family. Deep down inside he knows Hattie doesn’t care, that she’s okay with things, but it still bothers him. Hattie makes good money and Davis doesn’t mind, as some men do, but he still has some of that male pride that eats at him from time to time. The ancient idea that he should be the breadwinner. He knows it’s stupid, especially in this modern day, but it’s still there. His mind slips back to the business. Money, always back to the money, then to Todd.

  Then to Justin.

  He’s had his phone on Do Not Disturb the whole ride. He doesn’t want to check it, but knows he has to.

  The girls are already running and screaming like the little crazy people they are. Up and down they race on the long dock that stretches out into the lake like a runway.

  Davis pulls out his phone. A chill rolls up his spine, tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. He knew damn well there would be texts, messages from Justin, but it’s the number of them that’s got him frozen. The volume and velocity is stunning.

  He can hear the thump-thump, pat-pat of his daughters’ feet on the dock. A joyous sound that’s competing with the unwelcome, hard beating in his chest.

  There are over forty texts, all from Justin. Davis scrolls through the messages, scanning the words as they blur past his straining eyes. Not all the words land. His mind steamrolls past the point of ab
sorbing it all. It’s too much to take in. The crushing, crashing characters jamming together to form words designed to intimidate him.

  Constructed to weaken.

  To generate fear.

  Some of the texts are filled with profanity. Packed with hard words and harsh, blunt sentences. Some of them seem carefully crafted by Justin in order to sound friendly, even forgiving, but they’re all variations of the first message. A single underlying theme.

  r u avoiding me?

  The first ten were actually that very same message over and over again.

  r u avoiding me?

  r u avoiding me?

  r u avoiding me?

  Streams and waves of characters saying the same thing, one after another.

  Davis wants to call Todd. Right now. He wants to hear that everything is under control. That he has nothing to worry about, that people are on it, that this will go away soon. He wants a friendly voice to tell him that this is going to end. Davis is out of town, out of physical reach from Justin, but not from the psychological death grip that keeps getting tighter and tighter by the second.

  The sound of the girls running back and forth along the dock snaps him out of it.

  “I hope they wear themselves out,” Hattie says, walking toward him.

  Davis almost drops his phone but manages to pocket it. Quickly he covers his rocketing anxiety. He’s not sure what she’s said in the last few minutes. He hopes she hasn’t noticed his mental distance.

  “What?” he asks.

  “Them. Our children. I hope they burn off some of that car ride energy and wear themselves out.”

  “Oh right, yeah,” Davis says, his mind fumbling. “They don’t wear out.”

  “True.” She hugs her shoulders. “It’s chilly out here. Coffee?”

  “Sure, that sounds good.”

  Hattie nods, grabs a couple of bags, and kisses him on the cheek. Her soft lips feel like a bee sting. Maybe it’s the nerves or perhaps the guilt, but he’s never felt that way before. Never jolted by a kiss from Hattie. Davis tries not to jump back from her, instead finds a forced smile. Hattie walks away toward the house. He hopes she didn’t notice.

  He touches the phone in his pocket, like rubbing a security blanket. He has to call Todd. No way he can keep this up. He simply cannot fake calm for the whole weekend. Quickly he realizes he has to get away for a minute or two, can’t risk any of the conversation with Todd being heard. The house isn’t that big. He knows he has to make the call safely away from his family.

  “I think I’m going to go on a walk,” Davis calls out to Hattie. “Stretch my legs after the drive.”

  Hattie is almost to the front door but turns back toward him. “Now that sounds good. Let’s unpack the car, get the girls settled in and we can take a little walk. By ourselves.”

  “I really want to just clear my head before I get to work,” Davis says. “Get my thoughts together for the deck I need to work on.”

  He sees it on her face. She’s feeling a quick jolt of rejection. Of course she does. She has no idea what’s going on. He’s never turned down the chance to spend a few childless moments with her. He told her they would get away, get out of town for a while, and now he’s telling her to stay away from him. He can tell she’s feeling a distance between them grow.

  He feels it too, and he knows he’s the one making it swell into something he might not be able to fix. He’s letting his mistakes, his failures, create feelings of rejection and suspicion. He’s the one allowing them to take root in the most important relationship in his life. Justin and LA are already driving them apart, and Davis is helping it happen.

  “You know what?” Davis says. “Screw that. Let’s go. Please, would you take a walk with me?”

  Hattie smiles big.

  “Okay,” she says, “but coffee after, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  24

  Davis’s mind twists pretzel-like, wrapping into tight coils of worry while he thinks back to the walk with Hattie.

  As he drives to the store, a fresh hit of self-hate spikes inside of him. A new gut-punch of guilt, regret and disbelief robs him of the clear mind he so desperately seeks. A mindset he hasn’t enjoyed of late. There’s a vibration of anxiety that’s been present ever since he left LA. A layer of anxiety that he didn’t even realize was there until he and his wife started their walk together. He thought it had left him, at least taken a break, but the anxiety came back like a bad penny.

  For a bit, during the drive, he felt like himself. Like normal. Briefly, there was a flicker of normalcy. That walk, what should have been a nice memory for them, was now cold.

  They talked. Well, she talked. He was distant, trapped in his new faraway place. Davis was there physically, right beside her, but a million miles away at the same time. His mind was with people like Todd, Justin, Tilley. Not even remotely present, not even on the same planet as Hattie.

  She held his hand. He barely squeezed it, letting it hang like a loose glove.

  She was sweet, kind, loving. He was a walking shell of her husband.

  She probably feels more rejected than before, he thinks. Everything he does is a mistake. Every instinct is wrong. Davis feels himself slipping away, with no idea of how to stop it all from sliding into nothing.

  This is why he’s in the car again. He’s driving to the store on a bullshit trip to get coffee. There was plenty in the house—two fresh, unopened bags—but Davis got to the pantry before Hattie could see it. He buried the coffee, both bags, in the trash cans outside after they got back from the walk while she went to the bathroom.

  He pretended he didn’t hear her cry as he slipped back into the house. It was soft, restrained, but he knows the sound. He hates that sound.

  When she got out, Davis told her there wasn’t any coffee in the house and that he needed to run to the store down the road. After the emptiness of the walk, Hattie didn’t even bother to question it or offer to come along. What was the point?

  She did say, half-heartedly, with eyes puffy and red? Something about him not needing to do that. Davis quickly said that it would give him some time to clear his head, to think about the new slide deck. She didn’t fight it. She didn’t care about his reasons.

  Not at all.

  The guilt that was slowly taking up residence inside of Davis has become a permanent fixture now. A tenant that might never leave. Before LA it didn’t exist. A day ago it burned into him upon entry. It wriggled and itched. Now, this guilt is a part of him, like a tumor that cannot be removed. Something that resides inside him, along with any other emotion or vital organ. He’s becoming comfortable with it. Becoming friendly with it. Making friends with guilt.

  My new buddy. A tumor named Justin.

  He smirks, thinking that would make a great self-help group introduction, but knows there’s nothing funny about what he’s becoming. He can feel the seismic shift in his head. Thoughts he’d never entertain in the past are now becoming way too common for him, far too easy to form. Worse, too easy to reconcile, to compartmentalize. The lies. The sectioning off of it all. All of it placed carefully into tiny boxes and shoved into a closet of wrong that he keeps locked in the back of his mind. That closet is bursting at the hinges, however. The knob is turning, and what’s in there wants to come out.

  And it’s in no mood for play.

  Davis grips the wheel tight. This has to end. There needs to be a refresh, a rewind. A way of getting back to good. A cleansing of this guilt-based relationship he’s taken on with his family. One that was once built on much more than that. There has to be a reset button with Hattie. He wants to go back so badly, to roll things back to a few days ago.

  “Back to good,” he whispers to himself.

  Memories of leaving for the airport to head to LA creep in. The girls were sad, their tiny arms offering tight hugs squeezing around his neck. Then they’d slide down and cling to his legs, barely letting him walk to the door. Hattie gave him a nice hug with a sweet kiss
as well. The look in her eyes then was filled with something Davis can’t define. It’s much, much different than the look he received when he left her a few minutes ago to head to the store.

  She used to look at him with love, with affection, with trust. It was standard. No action necessary. No fee to pay.

  Will that look come back? Can it ever return after all of this?

  Davis knows damn well there’s only one way to get it back. He has to earn it. There’s a plan in motion. He’s got to follow through with the plan he and his friend started. It has to work. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he dials up Todd.

  “You at the lake?” Todd barely gets out before Davis jumps in.

  “What’s going on with the detective?”

  “You gotta chill out, man. There are a lot of people looking into a lot of things.”

  “What things?”

  “Davis—"

  “Todd, goddamn it. Tell me what the hell is going on!” Davis realizes he is screaming. His face is hot, the hairs on his arms standing straight up. He’s gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white, and he can barely feel the wheel in his fingers.

  There’s a deafening silence. Only the sound of the tires gripping the road.

  After what seems like hours, Todd finally speaks.

  “Look, I’m glad you are all safe at the lake house, and I know this isn’t easy, but you need to just hang out and do nothing.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “I’ve got people digging into this Justin prick. They’re tracing the charges he made to the cards. We’re firing out calls, emails, texts. We’re out all over the place.”

  “And?”

  Davis hears Todd sigh, can feel his friend collecting his thoughts even over the phone.

  “They can’t find anything about this guy’s company. This JR FUN INC,” Todd says. “They can’t find anything about who he even is.”

  Davis feels himself float. His brain sloshes inside his head, unable to hold onto a clear, stable thought. It’s almost as if he’s watching himself from above, watching himself come apart at the seams and then sink into the ground. He’s become an audience member looking on, watching the show, soaking in the destruction of Davis Briggs.