“Her parents?”
Austin shook his head. “Her parents do not know or care where she is. I want to talk to the Hansens.”
Jason pushed away from the door. “Nope.”
What? Why? Austin’s pulse stuttered. He couldn’t accept a no. Not about this. “I only want to talk to them. And you know I won’t antagonize anyone. I just proved that to you.”
Jason tugged open the door and headed inside. The heat bundled around them as Austin followed him down a Spartan corridor under fluorescent lights. He had to convince Jason before they reached the man’s office, where he could shut a physical door on Austin as well as a metaphorical one.
“Please, sir.”
“You proved to me that you’ve got good instincts when you’re dealing with strangers.”
Oh. Jason’s strides were on a mission, and Austin lengthened his. “Knowing Violet doesn’t change anything.”
Jason spun to face him. A glare eclipsed the calm. “Knowing her changes everything, kid.”
Agent Tisdale approached, coming from the office. With a glance at Jason, Tisdale sidestepped both of them, and one of his Hulk-sized shoulders brushed the white wall. Jason didn’t return his acknowledging nod.
Austin dug his heels into the carpet. “Sir, I don’t want to lose anyone, whether it’s a suspect or a missing person or whoever. I want to be better than that.”
The professional calm melted from Jason’s face like wax. His arms crossed over his chest, and whatever partnership might have stretched between them shattered against the flint in his eyes.
Oh crap.
“I, um, I wasn’t talking about …” About the escape of a suspect on your watch. Or so went the rumors from some morons on the squad. “About anything in particular.”
The next moment, maybe two, blurred. Then Austin stood with his back pressed to the cold wall, and Jason stood inches from him. No need for Jason to poke a finger in his face. The tone of his voice accomplished that.
“You do not lie to me, Agent Delvecchio. Ever.”
“I’m not.”
“Own it. Own your inappropriate, hardly subtle comment.”
Get out of my face. His pulse ratcheted up while Jason waited for a response. While Jason loomed in his space and looked ready to grab him by the shoulders and shake the words out of him. Don’t do that. Or he was going to hit a Constabulary agent while standing in the administrative office. No. He wouldn’t hit Jason. He wouldn’t freak out. This was his boss, a good man. Jason didn’t throw kids into walls.
Austin licked his lips. Had to answer him. Only way to make him back off.
“I wasn’t deliberately referencing Marcus Brenner, Jason. But I get how it sounded. Sorry.”
The moment refused to end. Jason didn’t move. The cock of his head measured Austin’s sincerity. Couldn’t blame him. If Austin had made the allusion on purpose, it would be a low blow.
Okay, good. Focusing on thoughts besides the obvious one (back-off-don’t-grab-me-don’t-push-me-don’t-hit-me) was bringing Austin’s heart rate down. Jason stepped back several feet and nodded. And continued down the hall.
He didn’t seem to notice that Austin was following until they reached his office. He spoke without turning. “You stay away from Clay Hansen.”
5
She should have known Belinda would expect her to eat. The woman incorporated food into everything. Around the dining room table, Belinda had set plates and silverware and cloth napkins, settings for four. The center held chips and two kinds of dip, fruit, and a berry pie, all of it dwarfed by the length of the table.
A gentle hand nudged Lee’s shoulder, and Violet whispered from behind her. “I didn’t know about the food, I promise.”
She shouldn’t have come here. She should leave. Now.
“Sit anywhere.” Something, maybe their reason for meeting, softened Belinda’s Southern twang. “Lee, I hope you like three-cheese dip. I made it this morning.”
As Violet took the chair beside Lee, their glances met, and Violet’s frown deepened. Lee arched her eyebrows: You can stop with the unnecessary concern. With a quick blush, Violet averted her eyes.
A slow breath, in and out, and Lee was ready. She could manage a few bites. She could endure the company for an hour or so; courtesy didn’t require longer, and an hour should achieve her purpose in coming. Tonight she would sit in this chair carved by his hands and open her own hands and let his memory spill out of them like the first handful of dirt over a coffin. A coffin he wouldn’t have. When this night was over, she would once again control herself, mind and body. She would deal with loss and move on, like everyone else who faced the death of someone who mattered. She could have moved on sooner if she’d done this sooner, dedicated one night to his memory so that it could fade.
She should have realized it was necessary. Wasn’t that the purpose of a funeral, after all? Lee served herself a slice of the pie and ignored Violet’s lingering look.
Across the table, Belinda’s smile beamed. “There you go, sugar. Pie always helps my hurts.”
Only the clinking of silverware kept silence at bay as Chuck piled his plate with a sampling of everything at the table, as Violet spooned herself a generous helping of cheese dip and scooped two handfuls of chips onto her plate. Belinda chose fruit, caramel dip, and a slice of pie.
Lee forked a bite, slightly more tart than sweet, chewed until she could keep it down, and swallowed. Look, she was perfectly able to do this.
“So, Pearl,” Chuck said, using his wife’s nickname. “You want to explain what we’re doing tonight?”
As if any of them didn’t understand their purpose here.
“First off, we decided to sit at this table because it’s his. Marcus’s. Made all this with his hands. And I guess that’s the first thing I’d like to tell you about him—he made good furniture. None of his stuff’s ever broken, or—or …”
Belinda’s eyes glistened, and Chuck nodded to her as if accepting a baton in a relay race. “Lee and Violet, we thought, since it’s a memorial, we should remember. So we’re going to do that—talk a little about what we remember, about Marcus.”
Lee’s pulse quickened. Of course, they would want to talk about him. This aspect of the night was as predictable as the food. She should have anticipated it.
“So.” Chuck finished off his bunch of grapes. “I’d like to say that we knew him almost two years. A friend of ours recommended his work, that’s how we met him. And it was the best recommendation I’ve gotten. With his business, he was always fair, never did me false. Not in any way.”
He nodded as if to emphasize his words, or signal that he was finished. As if his words summarized the whole of a man who not only built him furniture but also fought the Constabulary with him; ate his food and drank his coffee; showed up here with bloodshot eyes in the early morning hours, fugitives in need trailing behind him.
Chuck twirled the stem of his grapes and looked away, then back to them. “And I’d like to say that he was a good man. A frustrating, stubborn good man and my friend.”
“That he was,” Belinda said.
The silence had started to choke the room when Violet shifted in her chair and spoke.
“I barely knew … Marcus.” Her voice hushed on his name, and her gaze found Lee’s, then flitted to Belinda, then to Chuck. “But I can say a few things. And the first thing is that he cared a lot.”
True. Violet couldn’t know how much.
“And the second thing is, I wish I could thank him. For letting me go when he didn’t want to and for giving me a Bible and … I owe him a lot.”
Lee’s heart hammered her ribs as Chuck and Belinda turned as one to her. She couldn’t speak.
“You knew him best,” Belinda said quietly.
Yes. She knew him. Had known him. Verb tense shouldn’t faze her, not after four mo
nths, not after her mind had already moved him to past tense, yet every word they spoke ripped into her composure like bullets into flesh. She set her fork on her plate, and the clank was too loud. She flinched, and they saw it.
“Could you maybe tell us something, sugar, something we don’t know? A story, maybe?”
A story. Of Marcus.
How he’d stood on Kirk’s porch, twenty-three years old, eager to do his job until she stood on the other side of the screen door and wouldn’t unlock it. He refused to leave when she slammed it in his face with a twenty-year-old’s ire and fear. He ran around the house to the only open window and started yelling at her.
“I’m calling the police, Marcus Whoever-You-Claim-to-Be.”
“Brenner. I’m supposed to be here, I’m the contractor—heck, put the phone down.”
“Lee?”
A story of Marcus. The hurt in his brown eyes when she said she wouldn’t date him if he were the last man on earth—he should’ve known she was lying, clichés weren’t her style—and the fury that replaced it when she forced the truth into the air between them.
“It’s not because of you.”
“Why, then?”
“Marcus, I … When I was eighteen years old, I was raped.”
“Pearl, if she doesn’t want to talk, then …”
A story of Marcus. How he laughed at silent movies. How he devoured every dish she’d ever cooked for him and practically salivated over her beef stroganoff. How he grinned like a little boy when she threw a Frisbee so poorly it curved over like a boomerang. How his voice trembled over the phone when he needed help to fight the desire for whiskey. How he would have done anything to prevent the damage in her past and anything to protect her in the present. Her fortress, always giving, longing to hold her in his arms and staying with her though she couldn’t even reach out and hold his hand.
His hand.
No. Violet’s. Resting on Lee’s wrist under the table, invisible to the others. “Lee.”
“No.” The word ruptured something deep. Beating. Rushing. The room blurred.
“You don’t have to talk, sugar, it’s fine. So it’s my turn, then. I remember how Marcus loved my coffee. He’d drink it any old way, but hazelnut creamer was his favorite. Sometimes, with all that went on around here, I was … you know, just the old Southern woman in the housecoat, nothing much to offer in a fight. Until Marcus came in and asked for my coffee like it was the most important part of winning the day.”
A story of Marcus, and another and another—Lee couldn’t shield herself from the inner barrage, as if every word he’d ever spoken to her, every moment they’d shared in ten years tore through her all at once. Every time they’d wounded each other, every time they’d trusted each other, every time she’d wondered—could she learn to be touched if the hands belonged to him?
“I remember how Marcus—”
“No.”
The room blinked back into focus. Three faces stared up at her. She’d pushed her chair back from the table and stood. Her hands balled at her sides, nails digging into her palms. Her pulse raced.
Violet stood too. “If we need to go …”
Which meant her emotions were visible. Lee breathed in. Calm. Cope. Seal the cracks inside, lock the vault. Whatever that beating, rushing was inside her, it spurted now like an artery. Lee backed away from the table.
“Yes,” she said. “Violet, we need to go.”
“But, sugar, you got here not thirty minutes—”
“Lee’s probably right, Belinda. I’ve got studying to do. It’s okay. Thanks for the food. Your cheese dip is awesome.”
Blur again. Steps through the foyer, the front door, outside. The car. Keys. But her purse was … Oh. Hooked over Violet’s arm. Violet dug through it and clicked the remote.
“Passenger side, Lee.”
“I’m capable of driving.”
Violet huffed or laughed. “I know your panic-attack thing even when you hide it. I’m a better driver than you are right now, guaranteed.”
“You shouldn’t be seen driving my car.” Though at the moment, her brain couldn’t process why.
“I’m going to pray for an angel to follow us home with an invisibility shield. I don’t think that’s in the Bible, but God can do anything. Get in the car, come on.”
Lee slid into the passenger seat. They drove for several minutes, but the night around them refused to focus. Lee’s lungs refused to relax. She pressed her back into the seat and tilted her head up.
“You going to throw up?” Violet said quietly.
“I’ll be …” Her stomach turned. “Yes. Pull over. Please.”
A little while later, they sat parked in an empty Kroger parking lot, several yards away from the former contents of Lee’s stomach. She palmed the sweat from her forehead and let her arm drop to her side. Weakness trembled in her limbs, but breathing was easy again.
The quiet was easy as well, almost soft. She closed her eyes and allowed herself a minute of fortification. Her behavior required an explanation, though.
“I apologize.”
After another minute, Violet shifted against the driver’s seat, a brush of sound against the upholstery. “I pretty much expected this when you all of a sudden announced you were coming.”
Lee slit an eye open. “It will not happen again.”
Violet’s thumb rubbed her wrist. “Are you serious? You can’t promise me that, especially when I don’t think you know why this is happening to you.”
Something about her inflection … ah. “You insinuate that you know why?”
“I—I think so.”
“Please enlighten me.” Ice encased the words because Violet was being absurd. Lee wasn’t predictable, wasn’t easily read.
“Um.” Violet poked the key ring that hung from the key in the ignition, and it swung back and forth with a quiet jingle. “I’ve been doing some research online. About … um … losing people.”
Lee sat straighter. She was not an invalid, psychologically or otherwise. She did not require assistance from an eighteen-year-old.
“About grief, Lee. I don’t know how close you were. You and … him. But I know you were close. I’m not stupid. And—look, you’ve been throwing up since the night he died. You’ve got to admit, that’s extreme.”
“I—”
“I know, not as often as you did at first, but still. You’re not … You don’t talk about him, you go on with life like you never met him.”
People dealt with loss differently. Violet’s online research should have taught her that. Lee wasn’t Belinda, didn’t need to express herself in words or tears or anything else. Those she lost remained inside her forever. Marcus’s memory was cradled close alongside … the other.
“Lee, the stuff I read … I think the grief’s trying to come out of you, and you won’t let it.”
Absurd. She’d prove it, in fact. She got out of the car and locked her knees to keep them steady. Around the hood, through the headlights’ twin beams, shivering from the chilly air and nothing else. She opened the driver’s door, and Violet’s upward look held desperation. Not necessary.
“I’ll drive from here.”
Violet let her and didn’t speak again.
When they arrived home, Violet left her alone. Lee went to her room and grabbed underwear, heather gray sleep pants, and a size-large sweatshirt. A shower would pound away the tightness in her chest.
“Why?”
The word was out of her mouth before it registered in her thoughts. Who was she asking? The cosmos? No. The Source of the cosmos, Marcus’s God. Marcus’s Christ. The vise gripping her lungs clamped down hard, and her hands curled into the cotton pajamas.
“You can’t possibly claim there is an acceptable reason.”
The answer didn’t matter, wouldn’t right anything. S
he shouldn’t need it, and didn’t she have it already? He was dead because evil was allowed to exist and he chose to fight back.
“He did more than You do. And You have all the power.”
The clothes fell from her hands.
She walked to the window sill and wrapped her hands around the geranium’s clay pot. Hold on. Stay grounded. An all-out panic attack hovered at the edges of her vision along with the border of gray. She bowed over the flower, and its distinct smell eased her lungs. In. Out. Slowly.
Marcus was dead. He was dead, he was dead, he was—
“How could You stand by? You’re disgusting. Your choices are disgusting.”
Her surroundings blurred. She couldn’t live with nothing but blisters of memory raked open, but she had to hold onto them, keep them this raw and vivid for the rest of her life, because these were the only memories she would ever have. Years would pass. She would turn thirty-one, then thirty-two, then thirty-three, and for that year they would be the same age, and then she’d be thirty-four. Older than Marcus. Someday, her hair would go gray. She would hunch over when she stood, and her limbs would creak when she walked. And Marcus would still be muscular and young, with arms that loved to work and legs that loved to run and a heartbeat that had been silenced.
Her nails dug into her palm. No longer wrapped around the pot, her hand was crushing one of the flowers. She opened her hand, and the bloom lay there, a few red petals torn away. Lee sank to the floor with the planter in her lap and dropped the petals into the soil. Cupped the smashed flower and snapped it off the stem. She plucked another petal, then another, then another, until the flower was bare green in her hand and the dirt in the planter was scattered with petals.
6
No way Jason could’ve been following him, not all the way from Elysium on a Sunday afternoon. But a hundred feet after Austin’s turn into the Hansens’ neighborhood, a rotating green light flashed in his rearview mirror. And yes, that was his boss behind the wheel of the gray SUV. Not a Constabulary vehicle, but Jason had slapped on one of those magnet things. Either he kept that handy in his car all the time, or he’d acquired it for his purposes today. One of those options should bother Austin more, if he could think.
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