The Nightmare Girl

by Jonathan Janz

  Joe pondered it for a few moments. He was about to let it go when he remembered something Gentry had said the day Joe fired him. “Did Gentry mention anything else?”

  “Like what? His thoughts on the Middle East?”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff about children or getting revenge on me or anything like that?”

  Copeland gazed at him closely. “Whose children?”

  “No one’s in particular. He just said some things the day we had our fight.”

  “I thought you said he attacked you.”

  “He did. But when he was leaving…ah, never mind.”

  Copeland glanced at his watch. “I better go. I’m supposed to watch for speeders on Carrolton. I swear, the people in your neighborhood think I’ve got nothing else to do all day but sit by the side of the road with my radar gun.”

  He ambled toward the door.

  “Hey, Copeland?”

  Copeland turned in the doorway.

  “What book was it? The one you came back to the station for?”

  Copeland’s look went stony. He shifted uneasily on his big brown loafers. “Just some light reading. I’m between biographies right now.”

  “You didn’t answer the question.”

  “That’s because you’ll be an asshole about it.”

  “Try me.”

  Copeland’s eyes widened. “I’ll have you know I’m currently reading a book by Nicholas Sparks.”

  “Oh yeah?” The corners of Joe’s mouth twitched.

  “Message in a Bottle,” Copeland said.

  Joe nodded, his chest beginning to shake.

  Copeland nodded too. “And you can go fuck yourself.”

  Joe couldn’t suppress it any longer. “Hey, man, don’t go. It’s okay.”

  “Dickhead,” Copeland muttered on his way out.

  Joe followed, laughing harder. “Seriously, Darrell, there’s nothing wrong with Nicholas Sparks. You want, we can watch A Walk to Remember together, do each other’s nails, swap recipes…”

  “Shut your dumb ass up,” Copeland growled as he stalked toward the stairwell. “I take care of that idiot Gentry for you, and how do you repay me? By makin’ fun of my book choice.”

  “Aw, man, don’t leave like that. There’s nothing wrong with a heartfelt love story.”

  Copeland raised a middle finger and disappeared down the stairs.

  Joe watched after him, smiling. Maybe he’d give Copeland twenty percent off on his basement.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Joe decided to knock off early so he and Lily could play with trains. Now their basement carpet was crisscrossed with wooden tracks, hills, and various other Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia. Michelle had been trying to get Lily interested in Barbies and other girly toys, but thus far, trains and Matchbox cars were her obsessions.

  Joe was lying on his side, reflecting on what an asshole Kevin Gentry was when Lily thrust a big blue train in his face. “Talk to Gordon, Daddy.”

  That was Lily-speak for become Gordon the Train. Joe switched over to his arrogant Gordon voice. “I’m the fastest train on Sodor. Everyone should bow to my greatness.”

  Lily grabbed a green train and situated it nose-to-nose with Gordon. “Talk to Henry, Daddy.”

  Joe put on his easy country drawl. “You might be the fastest, Gordon, but I care more about being useful.”

  “Uh-oh!” Lily said. “Here comes Cranky!” Only the way she said it, the Rs became Ws.

  Joe helped her crank the magnet down and attach it to Gordon’s front end.

  “They’re buffering up!” Lily said.

  “My chain aches,” Joe said, shifting into his surly Cranky the Crane voice.

  Lily was up and bouncing on her knees. “Oh no, the wind!” And she pushed Cranky over.

  Joe leaned in, tickled his daughter’s sides. She squealed with laughter and tumbled toward him. Smiling, Joe wrapped her up and wrestled her amidst the wrecked tracks and the overturned trains. They were both laughing when something made his muscles tense, an unexpected texture on his fingertips. Lily continued to thrash in his arms and squeal with delight, but Joe’s good spirits had vanished. He was staring down at his fingertips with dread.

  Gray dust.

  Ashes.

  “Lily?”

  “Tickle me, Daddy!” she said.

  “What have you been into?” he asked. Drawing away from her, he saw the hair around her shoulders was dusted with the stuff. And now that he noticed the ashes on his fingers and in her hair, the acrid scent of it became overwhelming. Hissing between clenched teeth, Joe spun his daughter around and inspected the back of her hair. It was as though someone had turned her upside down and dragged her head through an extinguished campfire.

  “Daddy? What’s wrong?”

  “What have you been—how did you get this stuff in your hair?” Joe realized his voice had risen several notches—apparently loud enough to attract Michelle’s attention, judging from the rapid thump of footsteps down the carpeted basement steps—but he couldn’t quell his escalating terror.

  “Daddy…” Lily said, pushing away from him, “…don’t!”

  Without realizing it, Joe had clutched her slender arms harder than he’d intended. “I’m sorry, honey, but where—”

  “What’s happening down here?” Michelle asked, her eyes fierce.

  Joe tamped down the flare of anger her expression enkindled in him. Christ, like he was abusing their daughter or something. “She has ashes all over her hair,” he said, as Lily broke away. “What were you two doing earlier?”

  Michelle swept their toddler into her arms. “What do you mean, ‘What were we doing?’ What do we always do in the afternoon, Joe. Lily napped and I worked on the computer.”

  “That sounds rough.”

  Michelle’s mouth fell open. “What does that mean?”

  Just shut up, a voice in Joe’s head commanded. You’re already in a hole. Don’t dig any deeper. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “How else can I take a statement like that? ‘Sounds rough.’ You act like I do nothing all day. I’m selling clothes on EBay, and that’s after I’ve done all the dishes, cleaned the—”

  “I know honey, I shouldn’t have—”

  “—house, done all your laundry. Gone to the grocery store, changed Lily’s—”

  “—I’m an idiot, honey. I really don’t know what I was—”

  “—diapers. Why do you—” She broke off, and Joe saw with horror that her eyes were brimming.

  “God, honey, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry. But would you look at her hair?”

  He took a step toward his wife, but she shrank from him, her lips thin.

  Joe felt his shoulders slump. “I have no idea what came over me. I just—would you please look at her hair for me?”

  Michelle’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean—”

  “There’re ashes in it,” he explained. “In the back part.”

  Michelle examined Lily’s long black hair, her fingers combing the glossy locks. “It’s fine,” she said. “A little oily maybe, but tonight’s a bath night.” Her expression hardened. “Or is every other night not good enough for you now? Maybe I’ve been slacking again.”

  “Honey, you never slack. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.”

  “Damn right it was.”

  He took a step toward them. “But you’re sure…you mean you don’t even smell any—”

  “Ashes? Why on earth would she have ashes in her hair, Joe? You think I let her play in the fireplace when I want to surf the computer?”

  Joe massaged his forehead. “What can I say, honey? I wish I could take it back.”

  “I wish you could too.” She turned away, Lily clinging to her and watching Joe
with big, frightened eyes.

  “Please, honey.”

  Without turning, Michelle said, “No sex for you this week.”

  “All week?”

  She mounted the steps. “Maybe a month. Depends on how mad I decide to be.”

  “I want Cranky!” Lily called.

  “Let Daddy bring him upstairs,” Michelle said. “He needs to dig himself out of the hole he’s in.”

  Joe watched after them, his stomach roiling and his throat aflame. He was about to follow them up the stairs, maybe do a little damage control, when the memory of the ashes returned to him. He’d smelled them—of that he was certain. Hell, he’d seen them, felt the fine grit between his thumb and fingertips. It wasn’t his imagination.

  But where would Lily have gotten into ashes? Theirs was a gas log fireplace, not a wood-burning one. At least not since he’d converted it three years ago. He supposed Lily could’ve gotten into the little fire pit he’d made on the back hill, but that didn’t seem likely either. Michelle watched her too closely for her to play around with that, and Joe sure as hell wasn’t going to quiz her about it now. She might not have sex with him for a year.

  So where did that leave him?

  Cracking up, a voice in his head muttered.

  No I’m not, he thought. But if Michelle hadn’t seen or smelled the ashes, how could he account for them?

  Scowling, Joe bent and began the job of disassembling the railway network he and Lily had created. If he did some extra cleaning, maybe even threw in a couple loads of laundry, Michelle just might take some time off his sentence for good behavior.

  But Michelle was true to her word. Six nights later, she still hadn’t let him touch her, though the rest of their interactions had slowly returned to normal. Joe made it a point to knock off by four o’clock so he could spend extra time with Michelle and Lily, and because of his new workers the renovation of the Baxter house was going smoothly. The Hodge twins, Duane Mincel, and Shaun Peterson made a reliable, if somewhat inexperienced crew. All four worked vigorously and steadily, and if they did ask Joe a heck of a lot of questions, the trade-off was worth it. Where Gentry had been more knowledgeable than his current workers, they all surpassed Gentry in sheer elbow grease. Astoundingly, the renovation was a week ahead of schedule.

  It was a pretty June night, and Michelle had gone to bed early with a headache. Lily had ceased kicking her crib a half hour ago, and full dark had fallen. Joe contemplated giving Copeland a call, seeing if he felt like sitting out on the back porch and drinking a beer or two, but he worried they’d get loud enough to awaken Michelle, and Joe had no desire to undo the good will he’d built up since hurting her feelings that afternoon in the basement. He didn’t particularly feel like reading, and his back ached too much to lift weights in the basement. Besides, he’d already worked out three days in a row and was feeling stronger than he ever had.

  So he decided to drink a beer and check out the ESPN website, see if the Cubs might be worth a shit sometime this century.

  He’d been sitting in the dark of the upstairs office when movement in his periphery caught his eye. He glanced to his left and saw that someone had flicked on a light in the Baxter house. The room was on the second floor, which because of the hill, was slightly higher than his vantage point. A quick calculation suggested it was one of the bathrooms. Of course it was, he realized. He could see the showerhead poking down. They’d need to order a frosted glass window, he reminded himself, so whoever took a shower there had some privacy.

  Joe frowned. At first he thought he or one of the guys had left the light on, and that Joe just hadn’t noticed it until now. Then he realized that, no, the light hadn’t been on next door when Joe had entered the office. He’d have almost certainly noticed something like that by now. The Baxter house had been lightless as long as they’d lived here; Joe would’ve had to be the most unobservant neighbor in the world to miss a change so profound.

  Bridget Martin stepped into view.

  Joe watched her and wondered why she was there. At the Martins’ request, they’d gotten the rest of the utilities hooked up last week, and while he supposed he couldn’t blame Bridget for wanting to check on their progress, there was a territorial part of him that bristled at her intrusion on his work site.

  Relax, he told himself. She’s not intruding. She’s just up from Indianapolis to see her future home. She is the owner, after all.

  That was true enough, he guessed, but why had she come at night? Why not during the day when he could guide her through the house, show her what they’d done and what they hadn’t gotten to yet? It could be dangerous for her, walking around at night like that.

  Bridget twisted on the shower.

  He drummed his fingers, wondering if he should go over there, let her know that without a shower curtain she could soak the exposed sub-floor, do a hell of a lot of damage. As he watched, Bridget extended a hand, let the spray wash over her fingers.

  Joe’s throat constricted. Certainly she wasn’t going to…

  For the first time he wondered if Mitch was with her. Just because Joe hadn’t seen him yet didn’t mean Bridget’s husband wasn’t there. In fact, the more Joe pondered it, Mitch probably was there. He was just in a different part of the house. Goodness knew the place was big enough for Joe not to have spotted him. Nearly six thousand square feet, and that was without the basement. Now that Joe thought about it, it wasn’t a good idea at all for either Bridget or Mitch to go poking around the house at night. Even with all the lights burning—which they weren’t; as far as Joe could tell the bathroom light was the only one on—the place was a hazard. There were power tools, sharp pieces of metal pipe they’d sawed but hadn’t yet removed, holes in the floor they needed to repair. Joe was assaulted with a nightmare vision of Bridget stepping into a hole unwittingly, her foot plunging through the jagged opening, the exposed nails harrowing her flesh—

  He’d just risen to hurry over there when Bridget began unbuttoning her red shirt.

  Joe’s mouth went dry. He stood there beside the office chair and watched in dim surprise as Bridget peeled the shirt off her shoulders and let it drop. She wore a satiny green bra.

  Of course, Joe thought.

  Looking up at her as he was, Joe was afforded a view all the way to her thighs, and he saw, as she unbuttoned the top of her jeans, that while she was a full-bodied woman, her tummy was firm, her build voluptuous and achingly attractive. Before he knew it, she’d shimmied out of her blue jeans and now stood before the mirror in only her green panties and matching bra.

  Get out of here, Joe, a voice declared.

  He knew this was sage advice, but he found his legs wouldn’t cooperate. Granted, there was a part of him—a very specific part of him—that had responded to the sight of Bridget Martin in her skivvies, but the majority of his brain was flooded with guilt.

  But still…he watched her hands reach toward the back of her bra, undo the clasp. The shoulder straps went slack, the confined breasts sagging a little, but not much at all. She reached up, dragged one strap down a creamy arm. She half-turned in his direction, started to take down the other strap.

  You’re no better than Kevin Gentry.

  Joe jarred to his senses. That had done it. He forced his legs to move this time, compelled his body to stride toward the door, his hand to clutch the knob. He willed his eyes to remain studiously forward, to not glance back over his shoulder. He didn’t need to see Bridget Martin take a shower. Maybe his inner fourteen-year-old wanted to do that, but the part of him that mattered, the husband and father part, reminded him what a terrible idea it was, what an awful thing to do to his family, not to mention Bridget.

  His movements more assured now, Joe opened the door.

  To stare at Michelle.

  His mouth unhinged.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked. “I heard the floorboards creaking up
here, thought you might have taken a fall or something.”

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit, he thought. Could she see around him? Joe was broadly built, but he didn’t know if he could blot out the illuminated window behind him.

  “Joe?” Michelle took a hesitant step forward. “Are you sweating?”

  Swallowing, Joe stepped through the doorway and pulled the door shut behind him.

  “What were you doing in there?” Michelle asked. Her voice was hushed because the nursery was only about ten feet behind her, but her eyes were large and suspicious.

  “Nothing,” he said, but his voice was so thick and froggy he sounded like he’d just done something reprehensible.

  Michelle drew back to scrutinize his face. It was dark in the hallway, but not so dark she wouldn’t notice the way his forehead was dotted with perspiration, the way his breath was coming in feverish heaves.

  “Were you… Joe, were in there watching porn?”

  He let out a high-pitched laugh. He couldn’t help it.

  Her eyebrows drew in. “You were, weren’t you?”

  He began to chuckle—he saw the way it made Michelle glare, but dammit he couldn’t help it. He’d always been like that, giggling like an idiot whenever he absolutely needed to be serious. Growing up, sitting in church with his brother, they’d cracked up at the silliest things. Someone singing off key. A kid saying something inappropriate during the sermon…

  Michelle sighed, shook her head. “I guess it’s not the worst thing you could do, but I do have to say I’m a little annoyed. I mean, it’s only been a few days—”

  “I wasn’t watching porn, honey.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then why are you sweating?”

  Shit, he thought. Maybe he should’ve gone with the porn story.

  “I guess I was just feeling nervous. This Martin renovation and all…”

  “I thought you guys were ahead of schedule.”

  “We are,” he said, doing his best to subtly move away from the closed office door. He prayed she’d follow his lead. “The job’s going well, but it’s the only thing we’ve got going right now. If we mess something up…” He gestured vaguely.