“No offense, Mr. Rusk,” Alex said with a voice full of offense, “but I’m better handling this on my own. I tried to get help before and it didn’t work. And now Claire’s gone and…you should go.” The kid shrugged. “Please.”
“If you wish. But my door is always open if you need to talk.”
Alex shrugged again.
“I’m sorry if this feels like an intrusion but we care about you and are worried. We want to keep you safe from harm,” Joel said as Alex slipped in his earbuds, not hearing or caring, not acknowledging the mea culpa, and he kept his lids down and his music humming, the bass audible, until Joel let himself out of the room, unsure if he was frustrated or impressed with the child.
Downstairs, he noticed Holly was alone.
“Where’d the girls go?” he asked. Their absence was shocking as he was becoming accustomed to the idea that the women were always around—like overly attentive handmaids.
“Home,” she answered. She’d tucked herself up on a couch in the front room, a blanket over her legs, a book in her lap. She pointed to a plate of tacos and ceviche and invited him to sit. Joel realized then he was ravenous and he sat and took the plate.
“They trust us alone together?” Joel asked semi-jokingly.
Holly raised a teasing eyebrow and lifted a menacing finger. “Don’t worry, we know everything about you. They wouldn’t have left until they got reports back from all your background checks.”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking.
“It’s not what you think,” he teased back with his mouth full of taco.
“It’s always what you think,” Holly answered back. She sighed and looked him in the eye, switching gears. “Did you get anything out of him? It’s okay if you didn’t—”
“He’s tight-lipped,” Joel said, taking another bite of the dinner. “Thank you. For the food, by the way.”
She waved him away. “The girls brought it. You mean, he’s stubborn.”
“Most teens are stubborn.”
Holly let her shoulders fall and she put the book in her lap and gathered up her hair into a bun, holding in there, and then letting it go.
“How worried should I be?” she asked.
Joel didn’t know. He didn’t know because it was the first time he’d dealt with a murdered student and the first time he’d dealt with a death connected to a student expulsion. He stopped chewing the ceviche for a moment, a tiny shrimp between his tongue and his molars, and he waited and thought. What had happened between Claire and Alex? What was that child holding on to?
“I think he knows something about the girl that could help us,” Joel said. “And I think he’s scared.”
“Help, meaning? Help who?” Holly asked. “You and me? The police?”
Joel smiled wearily and rubbed his eyes. “I think I meant help the investigation. But…maybe I can help you with the expulsion hearing and I can continue to try to meet with Alex to talk. I think eventually he’ll be more open to me and that can help us with the court follow-ups.”
He noticed the room was bare—white and crisp and void of personality—and it reminded him of when his parents took him to furniture showrooms to dream of a classier life. A lone picture of what he assumed was Alex as a young child sat framed on the coffee table; it was surrounded by seashells and wire balls and a miniature typewriter. Holly’s life was arranged and calculated. No one used that tiny typewriter, but there it sat, for décor, next to her son’s photo at the beach. A tableau of her safe, rich life was spread out before him, and Joel felt like a bull in a china closet. He wanted to reach in and type on the typewriter, push a button, just to see what it sounded like. Maybe just U, U, U, U, over and over again. He wanted to throw off the decorative pillows and yank her tablecloth askew, and he wanted to see if she followed him around and tidied it all back up.
“You keep saying us.” Holly raised an eyebrow.
“Do I? Oh, I guess, maybe I feel invested. Sure. I don’t know.” He paused. His eyes went back to the framed photo of a toddler on the beach. “I remember that song. I remember being up on stage there with you now. And the fight and then seeing you crying in the craft room—”
“Was I crying?” Holly asked and she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her defenses down. “Sounds like me. High school me. I cried in a lot of bathrooms.” She sniffed. “What do you think he knows?” she asked, changing the subject.
Joel shifted back to Alex, disappointed that she’d steered him away from nostalgia, from a moment that he wanted to discuss, but he nodded, all business-like. “I don’t know. I really don’t. He seems scared to tell and resolved not to budge. Holly, he doesn’t really know me. He’d be more likely to tell his mother…”
Holly shook her head. “In his own time, not mine. I know my kid and that’s the truth.”
The doorbell rang and Holly braced herself against the couch.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone else,” Holly said. “You think it’s the police?”
Joel didn’t know and he didn’t want to guess, but before either of them could get up to answer the door, the bell rang again—its peal echoing down the hallway and into the night.
Holly started to get up, hesitant, but Joel stood up and put his hand out, motioning for her to stay put.
“I’ll get it,” he said. “I can take care of whoever’s at the door. You stay.” And he walked toward the incessant bell, now restarting every second, the result of an impatient guest.
“Shit, shit,” Holly said behind him and Joel stopped and turned. She was holding her phone in her hand and shaking her head wildly with frustration. “That’s okay, Joel. You don’t have to get it. This is gonna be so awful…okay, I’m actually kinda glad you’re here. Just don’t say anything.” She jumped up and threw off the blanket; he noticed the sweatshirt slipping off her shoulder, exposing her collarbone and the purple band of a sports bra.
“You know who’s here?” he asked and stepped aside as she stormed forward, muttering under her breath.
“I just got the barrage of texts,” Holly said. She paused at the door, took a breath and looked back while he kept his distance a few feet. “It’s my ex-mother-in-law. Xiomara Gamarra. Of Gamarra’s International Makeup?”
He shook his head. He knew about a lot of shit, but makeup wasn’t one of them.
“Well, you’re in for a treat,” Holly whispered with a grimace as she opened the door wide.
Chapter Seven
“I’ve cleared it with Francisco and our lawyers,” Xiomara said, tapping her long French manicure against the table, her accent thick and trembling with the unspoken. “You have eleven days before the expulsion hearing and the child needs a rest after this ordeal. He stayed the night in a jail, Holly. It’s unconscionable to punish him more when he was only trying to help…”
“Xiomara,” Holly said, her voice clear and in command, even her fingers shook in her lap. “He does not get rewarded with a trip after stealing firearms, er, a firearm and taking it to school…”
“Has he talked to you?” the older woman asked with such incredulity that Holly wanted to slap her.
“No,” Holly admitted weakly. “Has he talked to you?”
“Enough, apparently,” Xiomara leveled, “to understand the difference between what behaviors get rewarded and what behaviors get punished and what a child needs when he’s grieving and angry and when the social media torment is loud and unbearable.”
Holly stopped. She knew she should’ve taken away that child’s phone—not as a punishment or consequence, but as a protection. Even in elementary school these days, social media was the cause of some bitter friendship disaster nearly daily.
“Taking him on a vacation looks terrible,” Holly sighed. She could relent that he needed a break from the internet, but she didn’t think that meant he had to leave the country. There was no way Xiomara was getting him to Mexico.
“Baja, one week.”
“I won’t sign off on that,” Holly said and she
crossed her arms over her body and leveled her gaze. “Not a chance in hell. You need my permission and you won’t get it. He’s not leaving the country, Xiomara.” She tried not to say her ex-mother-in-law’s name like a swear word but it tumbled out that way anyway.
“Fine,” the woman rolled her eyes. “It would truly get him to unplug, but fine.”
Joel stayed several feet away, pretending to read a cookbook while the duo battled it out for her son. She could see him trying not to shake and nod his head along with her declarations, but she could see him listening. He’d nodded vigorously as she put her foot down about going to Mexico.
But Xiomara’s presence at her house was the most predictable action of the whole afternoon. She’d even told the Love is Murder ladies that they should stay until the ex-monster-in-law arrived. Fran ran to his mother and sent her to do his bidding—he might have been a powerful businessman, but there was one person who made all the decisions in that family. A Mommy’s boy in marriage and divorce. “You don’t want me to take him out of the country?”
“I don’t want you to take him out of the state.”
Xiomara rolled her eyes. “States. Contiguous United States.”
“If he’s needed by the police, I want him available. He was here and he has nothing to hide. He doesn’t leave Oregon.”
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Xiomara said as if the decision was already made. “Brian and my lawyer will bring Alex to the station. He’ll give a statement. We’ll give him all our contact information. We’ll tell the police where we’re going and how long we’ll be gone. Here. Sign it. Please. Give us this week, Holly. You are working…”
Holly didn’t want to tell her she’d called in sick the whole week.
FMLA for Mental Health leave. Her principal encouraged it upon hearing the news of Claire’s death and Alex’s tangential involvement with the girl earlier that day. She’d never taken a sick day in her life and she felt a bit entitled to them; she’d prepared an email argument explaining why sick days should involve days for rest and relaxation when it didn’t matter.
“It feels like an ambush,” Holly said. She looked behind her and saw Alex in the doorway. He knew. He’d been talking to his grandmother but not to her. She felt betrayed and irate, and she knew she could prevent him from going with one swipe of a pen.
Her son had a Minecraft backpack on his shoulder and duffle bag already to go; he waved to his grandma and leaned against the doorframe between the kitchen and the hallway. They made a little triangle, a standoff like in an old spaghetti western. She could hear Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” as the showdown continued. Joel a bystander, distracted but still eavesdropping.
Holly wondered if she could control her rage.
“Now it really feels like an ambush,” she said and sighed, her hands shaking.
With Joel watching, she signed the paperwork and fought back an instant wave of regret. As Xiomara reached out for the consent papers, Holly slapped her palm down on the forms and stopped them from moving any further.
“Your son,” Holly said with as much moxie as she could muster, “was so enraged that I would leave him…despite everything he did to me…he bought a gun. Oh yeah. He did. He never told you that? He told that to my son once. For a moment, because I dared to walk away, he couldn’t live without me. And now that gun made its way to my house. You bring this child back to me in seven days and you bring him back with an understanding of who he is and who he isn’t,” Holly said, every ounce of her trembling. “You and I both know Francisco is a liar. Don’t make my son a liar.” Her voice shook now.
Xiomara tried to pull the form closer, Holly held down tight.
“I’m not done,” she said, tilting her head. She lowered her voice to barely a whisper. “And don’t you dare turn him against me more than you already have,” she said, “or you won’t ever see him again, Xiomara. You won’t.”
She couldn’t fight MiMi’s money. She couldn’t fight MiMi’s power.
“I’m giving you a break,” the woman said. “A break for you and for him. And yes, to reflect. This is his right, to travel with me. He’s fourteen, Holly, but he’s a man and he deserves time with his father.”
Holly cleared her throat. Her baby was not a man.
Xiomara pursed her lips and tried again, “He deserves the time with his father. I didn’t say his father deserved time with him. And I don’t blame you darling for leaving my son, but I’d sure as hell blame you for keeping me from my grandbaby.”
“The timing isn’t insignificant,” Holly said. Tears welled in her eyes, but she fought hard to bite them back. It wasn’t Alex’s fault that his father was an entitled asshole. Deep down she knew this had to do with the damn gun somehow. Somehow. She lifted her hand off the paper and Xiomara snatched it up greedily as if she was going to change her mind.
“No,” she confirmed. “It isn’t. But it wasn’t Francisco who asked.” She launched her head back with a few nods toward Alex, who still remained in the doorway, looking bored in a rehearsed sort of way.
“And when the kid texts, you come running?” Holly asked, feeling defeated. She tried to ignore Joel and he stepped away from the cookbook and stood now between Alex and Xiomara, a sort of human barrier.
Holly shifted and stared at her son.
“You could’ve asked me,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“He’ll be better in a week, Holly. It’s not personal. It’s fourteen-year-old boys and he’ll outgrow it, too, so then you can worry about other things which I’m sure you’ll keep from me.”
“Your son is a parasite and the thought of him makes me want to vomit,” Holly said. “But it’s not personal that I don’t want to be reminded of him every time you want to see my child. Which is every day.”
Xiomara stood up and walked toward Alex; Joel let her pass by, and he seemed amused that she was unaffected by Holly’s sharpness. Xiomara absorbed Holly’s anger like a champ, brushing off Holly’s barbs with a dusting of her hands.
It was the type of relationship they had cultivated post-divorce.
Holly once tried to woo her mother-in-law with time and gifts and words of encouragement, but Xiomara wasn’t one to be swayed. She never liked Holly and she didn’t have to like her—her boy belonged to her first and foremost, anyway, so liking a mate was a luxury, not a necessity.
“One week,” Holly said to Alex and he pretended not to hear her as he left the house with his grandma.
When the door shut, Holly felt empty and alone. She watched the car drive away from the front window and stood there until she couldn’t see any part of the red-tail lights.
“I’m sorry,” Joel said. He’d come up right next to her and joined her by the glass. He was close enough to touch, to smell. “I didn’t know if you needed my help or…”
“No,” Holly shook her head, eager to tell him that he’d been wise to stay back. “I learned a long time ago that she’s not worth fighting. I might hold all the legal power. She still has money and an inflated idea of the role a grandparent has to play in a child’s life, but he’ll come back in one week and he’ll talk to me. He will.”
“Has this happened before?” he asked.
She shut the curtain and moved back out into her living room. Holly curled up on the couch and tucked her legs up.
“One other time.” She looked at him. “Honestly,” she said, sitting up, “I think letting MiMi take Alex for the week is a blessing in disguise. I hate that she wins, but…I need more time to figure out what the hell happened on my own. Talk to kids, talk to teachers, talk to my police friends…”
“Your police friends?”
“I used to be a dispatcher,” Holly said and shrugged. She missed it, the adrenaline and excitement of each new day. She also didn’t miss the adrenaline and excitement of each new day—there was something to be said for safe and secure. If teaching elementary school these days was safe and secure.
He was still standing, somewhat awkwardly in the middle of her room. He’d been looking at her, studying her and when Holly looked back at him, all the oxygen in her house disappeared and she felt someone sucker-punched her. She knew that look.
It was a look that wavered between undressing her and imagining what she already looked like undressed. Her body was like Venus; every inch of her owned and beautiful, and when she walked, she swung her body forward and around, aware that people watched. Aware that men and women wanted her.
Joel wanted her.
And she wanted him.
He was pure sex. Even the rawness of his desire from across the room caused her to go a little weak and wet, but her brain was somewhere else, lost in an abyss somewhere between her ex-mother-in-law, the dead girl, and her friend’s suspicions that Joel could be a plant from the school to feed information to police. It was a jumbled mess of anxiety and the relentless pursuit of a narrative that worked.
The latter theory seemed suspect but her Love is Murder Social Club group thread blew up with conspiracies surrounding Joel’s sudden interest in her (Maeve and Gloria admitted to feeling a vibe) on the day of her son’s expulsion. But they admitted they’d gone full cynical in the recent years. Nothing surprised them anymore. They were badass bitches and the world was crazy. Their predictions ran the gamut but the consensus was that Joel had to be a crisis actor, not a real counselor, because he was clearly too pretty.
Also, he fucking rear-ended her? Which elicited a long string of anal sex jokes. Primarily from Kristy, who was the dirtiest one of them all.
Holly loved her friends and knew they’d never forgive her for hooking up with a possible plant on day one.
Although, she’d once heard Maeve gossip about a steamy make-out session on top of her then-boyfriend Derek’s giant chessboard, which sounded like it could be an innuendo until you realized—no, his literal giant chessboard.
Joel probably wasn’t a plant. They had wild imaginations, but she had to entertain the idea anyway.
Dispatched Confessions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 2) Page 8
