Things You Won't Say

by Sarah Pekkanen

  “He’s gross,” Emily said, crinkling her nose. “Can I go eat in front of the TV?”

  “Take it easy,” Jamie said to Sam. “Did a piece of hot dog go down the wrong way? Have a sip of water . . . there, that’s good . . . Emily, come back here. You need to eat at the table.”

  Jamie turned to Lou. “She keeps trying to watch Pitch Perfect because it’s on HBO now, but it’s way too old for her.”

  “Annabelle saw it,” Emily protested.

  “Who’s Annabelle?” Lou asked.

  “She’s in Emily’s grade,” Jamie said, before whispering to Lou, “Annabelle also wears shorts that barely cover her butt.”

  “Why do they even make clothes like that for kids?” Lou asked, and Jamie shrugged. “You got me. But all it takes is one queen bee wearing them and you’ve got a trend.”

  Lou watched as Jamie walked over to the refrigerator, grabbed a bottle of white wine, and poured a few inches into a glass.

  Jamie glanced at the kids, then moved a few feet away and lowered her voice again. “I’m nervous,” she confided. “I don’t know why . . . I saw Ritchie a dozen times in the hospital . . . It’s not like rehab is going to be that different.”

  “Auntie Lou, can I sit on your lap?” Eloise asked.

  “Let me talk to your mom first, okay? You guys finish dinner and then we’ll play,” Lou said. “Go on, eat! But don’t choke like Sam. Chew your food, like elephants do.”

  “I didn’t know elephants had teeth,” Sam said.

  “Twenty-four pearly white chompers,” Lou said. “Actually they’re kind of yellow. Elephants don’t brush enough. Obviously your mom didn’t give them a bedtime list.”

  She winked at the kids, then turned back to her sister and, following Jamie’s lead, kept her voice low. “He’s still the same guy,” Lou said.

  “But he isn’t, exactly,” Jamie said.

  Lou didn’t know what else to say. She wasn’t nearly as good as her sister at providing comfort. So she just tucked a handful of Kisses in Jamie’s purse, which was stuffed almost to bursting, even though it was the size of the carry-on bag Lou took on airplanes. Lou found purses bizarre and unnecessary encumbrances. She kept her driver’s license and a credit card tucked into her iPhone’s case in one pocket, and her keys in another.

  “Thanks,” Jamie said. She unwrapped a Kiss and slipped it into her mouth, keeping her actions covert so the kids didn’t see. That was the Jamie that Lou remembered. “I’m armed with wine and chocolate,” Jamie said. “What more could I need?”

  “How does Mike feel about it?” Lou asked. “Is he upstairs chugging a beer and smoking a cigar?”

  Jamie smiled, which had been Lou’s intention. “He’s getting out of the shower. He went for a long run again today.”

  Lou nodded. Jamie didn’t look so good, even though she was dressed up—well, dressed up for Jamie, which meant a simple khaki skirt and blue sleeveless top, but for Lou that would’ve been practically black tie. Jamie’s face was strained, with smudges of purple beneath her eyes, and she was twirling a lock of her hair around her index finger. That was a nervous habit dating back to her childhood. Once Jamie’s hair had gotten so ensnarled that their mother couldn’t remove the knots and had to cut out a chunk. Jamie had cried, and her mother had done something to make her feel better. “What was it?” Lou had asked. “I can’t remember,” Jamie had said. “Did she make a face? Sing a silly song?” Lou had pressed, but Jamie had just shaken her head and shrugged. The memory seemed a fingertip beyond Lou’s reach, and the more she strained, the faster it slipped away, like a dream that began to fade the instant one awoke. A few sharp fragments were all Lou could cling to: the smell of something sweet—fresh flowers in a vase? or that perfume?—and the pink headband Jamie had worn for weeks to disguise her missing chunk of hair.

  “Mike hasn’t been sleeping,” Jamie was saying. She took another big sip of wine. “And at work they tried to pair him with a new guy, who talks all the time and drives Mike crazy.”

  “Can’t he switch?” Lou asked. She reached into a kitchen cupboard for a glass and filled it with water from the Brita pitcher on the counter; she was as familiar with Jamie’s kitchen as she was with her own.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said. “But I’m not sure that will solve the problem. I think partnering with anyone who isn’t Ritchie is going to be difficult for Mike. It would be like having your beloved husband leave you, then having a new guy move into your house the next day. Can you imagine how strange that would feel?”

  “Probably not the best analogy for me to relate to,” Lou joked.

  “I’m sorry—” Jamie began, but Lou waved away the apology. Why did people, even her own sister, automatically assume she wanted to get married and have kids? Children didn’t sleep nearly as much as animals, and they were a lot louder.

  “So how bad is Mike’s insomnia?” Lou asked.

  “Awful. He watches TV most nights and dozes on the couch,” Jamie said. “Or if he starts out in our bed, he comes downstairs for a snack at three A.M. He’s just . . . I don’t know if it’s depression. Maybe the beginnings of it. The other day he was staring out the window and Emily was trying to get his attention and she had to call out, ‘Dad!’ three times.”

  “Maybe he needs a little more time off,” Lou suggested.

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said. “I’m thinking the opposite. That he needs to stay busy. And having other cops around who know what he’s going through might help.”

  Lou started to say something, but she heard footsteps approaching. When she turned around, there was her brother-in-law, his broad shoulders filling the doorway to the kitchen.

  He reached out and gave her a hug, like he always did. He smelled of soap and felt like a brick wall. Lou adored Mike. He was just easy; he put his feet up on tables and drank beer straight from the bottle and didn’t feel the need to make constant conversation—all traits Lou shared.

  “Steroids, huh?” she joked, squeezing Mike’s huge biceps, and was rewarded with a grin.

  “Kids, thanks for babysitting Lou for us tonight,” Mike said.

  “We’re going to make you pee before bedtime!” Sam yelled.

  “Don’t ask,” Lou told Mike.

  “Not sure I want to know,” he joked as he reached into the refrigerator to grab a Red Bull.

  “I’m finished,” Sam said. “Do I get my candy now?”

  “Dishes in the sink first,” Jamie said. “Don’t forget your silverware . . . you, too, Emily. Lou, you’ve got my cell number if you need it, right?”

  Lou furrowed her brow. “You mean that thing you call me on all the time?”

  Jamie rolled her eyes and gave Lou a quick hug. “I love you, you know.”

  Mike was reaching into his pocket and frowning. He checked his other pocket, then looked at the kitchen counter.

  “What’re you missing?” Lou asked.

  “My keys,” Mike said.

  “Did you leave them on the hook by the door?” Jamie asked.

  Mike shrugged and went to look. Lou followed him with her eyes, feeling a tinge of worry. When she’d first glimpsed Mike in the kitchen doorway, she’d noticed his sheen of good health—he was tan and fit, his hair still damp from the shower, his black thin-knit shirt straining across his chest. But then he’d moved closer, and she’d noticed the dull exhaustion in his eyes, and the lines in his forehead that seemed to be permanently etched. How many of those caffeinated beverages was he drinking a day? she suddenly wondered.

  “I’ll go help Mike look,” Jamie said.

  Lou turned her attention back to the kids, and eventually Jamie found a spare set of keys and they headed out. It wasn’t until the kids were asleep and Lou was reaching into the refrigerator to find a snack that she solved the mystery.

  On the middle shelf, next to the eggs, were Mike’s keys.<
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  •••

  “Say a wife suspects her husband is cheating,” Elroy said as he dipped a French fry into a pool of ketchup and ate it as daintily as a cat. The fries looked incredible—crisp and plump and golden brown. They’d probably been deep-fried in a hot bucket of fat. But Christie’s scale had betrayed her again this morning, inching up another pound for no good reason, so she’d just shaken her head when Elroy offered to share.

  “She needs proof, right? Because if she confronts him he’s gonna say no. Or maybe she already has, and he’s got excuses. Too many excuses. His BlackBerry is for work and if she asks him for the password all of a sudden, he’ll know she’s onto him and he’ll delete all the messages. She can’t follow him around without being spotted. She’s picking something up, something she can’t quite prove but she knows is real. That’s when she comes to me. It’s like when birds sense a storm is coming and they suddenly strip a bush clean of its berries. Who knows how they know? Maybe an invisible change in the air. But they’re always right.”

  Christie nodded as Elroy nibbled on another fry. She’d never seen a guy eat so slowly; most men she knew wolfed down their food. The combination of his soft voice with the hint of a southern accent and his deliberate movements was oddly hypnotic.

  “Some of the time they’ll have another woman in mind. A co-worker, a neighbor, an old girlfriend—someone who gives off weird vibes. I tell you, bloodhounds got nothing on women when it comes to sniffing this stuff out. So they want us to follow hubby and see if he’s up to no good. But maybe he only sees the other woman once every week or two. That’s a whole lot of money to be paying for stakeouts; my rate’s a hundred an hour plus expenses. Most of them can’t afford it for too long, and their husbands would notice if thousands suddenly disappeared from the bank account.”

  This was fascinating stuff, better than watching soap operas. Not that she did that. Regularly, anyway. Christie leaned in closer, which meant she got a mouthwatering whiff of the fries. She cursed the sadist who’d invented carbs and tried to breathe through her mouth.

  “So what do they do next?” she asked. “The wives, I mean.”

  “That’s where you come in,” Elroy said. He used his napkin to wipe each of his fingertips in turn, then he took a small sip of water and pushed away his mostly full plate, which meant it was that much nearer to Christie.

  “In my experience, a guy who’s already cheating isn’t going to turn down another opportunity, if you get my drift,” he said, giving her a meaningful look.

  “You’re not that subtle,” Christie said.

  Elroy smiled. “The thing is, you gotta walk a careful line. A girl like you—if you throw yourself at a guy, he’s going to say yes, unless he’s the Pope.”

  A girl like you. Christie soaked in the compliment like a hot bath. Simon hadn’t called last night, and when she’d called him at 10:00 P.M.—the three glasses of wine she’d drunk had been coconspirators, urging her to do it—her call had gone straight to voice mail. She’d waited up, but he hadn’t phoned back. Then this morning, a bouquet of flowers had arrived with a note typed by the florist: Sorry I missed you.

  It wasn’t even an extravagant bouquet. There was baby’s breath filling a lot of spaces. What was it Elroy had said? A change in the air.

  “So what do I need to do?” Christie asked, shoving the fries back toward Elroy.

  “We trail the guy,” Elroy said. “Find a place for you to bump into him. An elevator, a sidewalk. Maybe you drop your purse to give him an excuse to help you pick it up. You send out signals—nothing too flashy, but you’ll let him know you might be interested—and see if he responds.”

  “Isn’t that entrapment?” Christie asked. She was proud of herself for remembering the word; she’d heard it on a recent episode of CSI.

  “Nope,” Elroy said. “We’re not arresting anyone here.”

  “Okay,” Christie said. “So if he responds, then what? Exactly how far do I take this?”

  She fixed her eyes on Elroy and folded her arms over her chest. He’d better not expect her to actually fool around with a mark. She liked her new identity as a businesswoman, someone smart and strong and capable. Someone who didn’t get screwed by men physically or emotionally.

  “You say you’re in town for a few days on business. Maybe he wants to meet you at your hotel for a drink. You set a time for him to come by and I get to the hotel first to set up my camera and recording equipment. You meet him in the room, get him to talk about what he wants to do to you—”

  At Christie’s expression he hurriedly continued, “Just talking, no touching—then I knock on the door and call out ‘Room service.’ You tell him to sit back and relax, that you ordered champagne. Then you open the door and boom! You’re gone.”

  Christie turned the plan over in her mind. “How do you know when to knock?”

  “I listen in on the recording equipment. I’ve got a good hotel in mind; there’s a coffee shop next door. After the job we wait there. Or I wait there, because you’re done, so you can take a cab home. When the dude’s gone I gather my stuff and write up a report for wifey.”

  “Who pays for the cab?” Christie wanted to know.

  “The client,” Elroy said. “All your expenses plus sixty an hour, like we talked about. Most jobs will probably take about four hours, start to finish, including your transport time.”

  Christie drummed her nails on the linoleum table. “It sounds too easy,” she said.

  “You’d be the third girl I’ve hired for this job, and none of the others complained.”

  “Why did the other two quit?” she asked.

  “The first one moved away,” he said. “She was with me for three years. The second one married one of the guys we’d set up when his wife divorced him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Elroy shook his head. “Wish I was. She was good at what she did. So, are you with me? We’ll probably work four, five jobs a week.”

  “That many?” Christie asked. Five jobs a week, at four hours per job, and sixty dollars an hour would be . . . let’s see, about . . . Well, it would be a lot of money. Plus expenses!

  “You wouldn’t believe how many more people are having affairs since Facebook,” Elroy said. “The number of folks who hook up with exes . . .”

  Christie suddenly wondered if Simon had a Facebook account. “Do you ever trace people?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like put a tracker on their car.”

  Elroy shook his head. “Nah. But I did put up an ad on Facebook. My clients have doubled since then.”

  He regarded her for a moment. “Any questions? Any moral objections we need to get out of the way?”

  “Are you kidding?” Christie shook her head. “My mother cheated on my stepfather—or make that stepfathers, plural—the whole time I was growing up. Once she and one of the guys took me to the movies. They told me they were going to sit in the back row but I should sit up front, where I could see the screen really well.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that was what they were thinking about. They just didn’t want me to see them pawing each other. I finally told my stepfather when I was twelve.”

  “What happened?” Elroy asked.

  Christie looked down at her Diet Coke and swirled her straw around a few times. She cleared her throat before answering. “He left,” she said.

  “Do you regret telling him?” Elroy asked.

  “I regret not doing it earlier,” she said. He had been the nicest of the many men who’d shared her mother’s bed. He’d bought her a harmonica once after she’d seen a guy on the street playing one and thought it sounded pretty. It was just a cheap toy, but he hadn’t given it to her until her birthday, which was weeks after they’d watched the street performer. She didn’t know what had surprised her more: that he’d remembered how much she liked the sounds
the tiny instrument made, or that he’d noticed her enjoyment in the first place.

  Elroy opened his battered briefcase and pulled out a file. He withdrew a photograph and slid it toward Christie. It was of a nice-looking guy, maybe in his early forties, the sort you’d see tossing a baseball to his kid at the park on a Saturday morning. Christie didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this sandy-haired, smiling guy with freckles on his nose.

  “Say hello to your first client,” Elroy said.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  RITCHIE’S ROOM IN THE rehab facility wasn’t as intimidating as Jamie had expected. She’d thought it would be white and sterile, with sharp edges and high-tech machines—similar to the hospital room where she’d visited him—but it seemed almost homey. This was a space for patients who were here for the long haul, she thought. There were curtains on the window, and family pictures atop the nightstand.

  Ritchie was propped up by pillows in bed. He was holding one of those squishy stress balls and seemed to be struggling to make a fist around it.

  Jamie paused in the doorway, tears rushing into her eyes, memories rushing into her mind: Ritchie racing around his backyard on the Fourth of July, holding a silver sparkler and being chased by all the kids; Ritchie putting his arm around Sandy and kissing the top of her head as she leaned into him one weekend when they’d all gone to the beach together; Ritchie and Mike, side by side, standing straight and proud as they received an official commendation for apprehending an armed robbery suspect.

  “How are you, handsome?” Jamie asked. She walked over to Ritchie and kissed his cheek. Only his brown eyes were the same. His face was still swollen, and a worm-like scar curved around his right ear, cutting into his skin. His hair had been shaved for surgery and hadn’t completely grown back in yet. He’d lost weight, too.

  “Good,” Ritchie said.

  “Old buddy,” Mike said, coming closer and giving his partner a fist bump. “We gotta bust you out of here!”