She nodded gratefully back. “And you never married, never had any of your family join you here?”
“I’ve met some fine individuals along the way, but some lives demand more solitude than others. I’ve no wish to be a hermit, though I will admit I’m quite fond of the quiet days and nights I enjoy.”
“I’m still surprised you’ve never wanted to go back to Europe. Even to visit, I mean.” Careful now.
“Few pleasant memories await me there. My childhood was disagreeable, mostly due to my father. He was not a kind man, you understand. His loves were for the bottle and the belt. Of course, I cannot ignore those days entirely. Pain is impervious to erasure in total. As it should be, for therein lies growth. Consequently, the past should not be forgotten, but mastered. I have done so, and in time, you will too.”
He gave her a reassuring smile and carried their plates to the sink.
Francine joined him with their empty glasses. “I’m doing the dishes, no arguments. You can dry.”
She wrapped Roland’s apron around her Halloween blouse to make sure the microphone wouldn’t get wet and flipped on the faucet.
Using his long knife, Roland scraped the apple cores from the cutting board into the garbage can. “There are no conversational requirements in this house, but should you wish to speak of your marriage again, you are welcome to do so.”
Francine picked at a spot of dried cheese on one of the plates as she tried to think of a way out of that particular topic. She wasn’t worried about whether Roland would have worthwhile responses. She was worried about how much she wanted to hear them. But to seem natural, she had to be honest. So it was time for Francine’s Divorce Radio Hour. Eat your hi-fi heart out, Bruno.
“My ex-husband, lied a lot. Little things at first. Things that didn’t matter. He’d steal five bucks from my purse or buy a new shirt and then claim it was one he’d owned for years. It was almost a game between us. I’d catch him in a lie and give him shit for it. Then wedding rings went on fingers, and his lies got more…ambitious. Things that mattered. Things that hurt. After a while it wasn’t much fun to play the game anymore.”
Roland was silent, but attentive.
“Pretty soon, he was working late a couple nights a week. That old chestnut. I’d try to wait for him to get home so we could eat together, but eventually I started to go to bed without him, waiting for the sound of the front door hours later. And he always had an excuse that made sense, maybe because he was good at lying, or maybe because I wanted to believe him. Eventually the excuses stopped, because I stopped asking.”
Roland frowned, forcefully toweling the inside of a glass. “The heart can be ruthless in its selections. You believe an indiscretion occurred more than once?”
“Eight times. At least, that’s how many second chances I gave him. And the craziest part was, he’s the one who ended it. He got to say ‘don’t go’ so many times. I got to say it once, and it didn’t even work. He denied everything, of course. Said I was crazy, that I was letting my imagination get the best of me. If he’d just admitted what was happening, it would’ve made the hell he put me in a little more bearable.”
Roland cursed in German, startling Ajax. “The bastard. I knew it would not have been your fault, but hardly would I have imagined this level of baseness.”
He turned off the faucet and took Francine’s still-wet hands in his own, his eyes sharp and lively.
“Listen to me closely. When life is good, the bad news is, things change. When life is bad, the good news is, things change. You’re due for good news, my dear. You just have to hold out until the change. And I know you will.”
Francine blinked away a tear and nearly hugged him, remembering only at the last second the transmitter and microphone attached to her body. She course-corrected and pecked his cheek instead. “Thank you, Roland. I appreciate it.”
Roland nodded and took off his foggy tortoiseshell spectacles, wiping the lenses, then the bridge in between.
Chapter 26
I have never been in trouble because of my sexual behavior.
[ ] TRUE [ x ] FALSE
Francine was so numb with excitement, she practically floated home. She couldn’t wait to share the news with Bruno.
Yes, the glasses polishing was a notch against her Roland-is-innocent campaign, and they hadn’t gotten it on tape, but a piece of Bruno’s research had worked in concert with her field observations. They’d detected something, and holy shit had she missed the feeling of exhilaration that registered somewhere between first kiss and second dessert.
Breezing into Ellie and Pete’s kitchen, she took off the microphone and transmitter, and was about to pick up the phone when she saw a moving cloud of cigarette smoke on the cement patio out back.
“Bruno?” Francine opened the screen door and he stopped pacing, newly-bought headphones still around his neck. “Are you okay? I thought we said I should call afterward?”
He looked at her uncertainly.
“I…I didn’t know you went through all that with your ex-husband.”
“Oh.”
“Hearing you talk about it made me…I’ve been trying not to feel…”
He stepped forward and kissed her.
Francine softened, melting for an instant before her rational mind yanked her out of the kiss. She slapped Bruno across the face.
He staggered a half-step, then straightened up like he’d just come out of hypnosis.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“You listen to me tell Roland my ex-husband cheated on me and your response is to try and do the same thing to your…whoever?”
“Francine.”
“Get out of here, Bruno.”
“Please—”
“Go.”
Bruno hesitated a moment longer, then did what she asked.
Back inside the kitchen, Francine wore a new path into the linoleum as she tried to work off the rage boiling inside of her. There was no uncertainty about it: Bruno was certifiably an asshole. She could still taste his kiss as evidence. Ben had blindsided her so badly she’d thought it would’ve been impossible to entertain affection for someone that cruel ever again. How could she have been so stupid?
But what had just happened on the patio didn’t make sense. Something about Bruno was different than everyone else, something important. He’d gotten through to her in ways no one else ever had, and maybe she’d started to reach something inside of him too. This wasn’t just a crush—the two of them shared a frequency no one else was on. It was time to figure out what that meant.
Clover flattened under Francine’s shoes as she passed under the willow and marched up to Bruno’s front door. When he didn’t answer her knock, she let herself in. “Hello?”
There was no one in the kitchen, or the dining room, or the bedroom.
Francine padded down the basement stairs and found him with his head laid on the bar, one hand around the Cutty Sark.
“Bruno?”
He straightened up in surprise, one cheek still red from her slap. “Hey. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Something was on his mind, something beyond what had just happened on the patio. He looked raw and vulnerable, like a hermit crab without its shell. A hermit crab making its way through a glass of scotch with frightening speed.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” she said. “That was wrong.”
“It’s okay.” Bruno took a too-big swallow of booze and coughed.
When he moved to pour more, Francine intercepted, threading the cap back on the bottle. “Why don’t we talk instead?”
He wandered to the edge of the pool table and sat down, his mania settling into a thoughtful daze.
“There’s something I haven’t told you. I wasn’t trying to lie, I just didn’t know how to say it. Years ago in New York, I had a girlfriend. And she was killed.”
Francine’s mouth dried.
“We had a little apartment in Queens. It was pretty shitty, to be
honest, but there was a nice park within walking distance and the rent wasn’t too bad. We liked our shitty little apartment. One day while I was still at work, she came home from a waitressing shift and walked in on someone in our apartment, stealing our mismatched silverware. The cops said whoever was there probably hadn’t come with the intent to kill her. It was just…bad timing.”
He braced his hands on the pool table, chin sinking to his chest. “Everyone just moved on after a while, but I kept trying to find out what had happened, and how I could fix it. When I’m around other people, it’s like they all know something I don’t, or maybe I know something they don’t. The things you said tonight, about your marriage. I recognized something in your voice. Like you knew the same feeling. Does that make any sense?”
Bruno’s eyes met Francine’s, sending an invisible knuckle raking up her spine.
“Yes,” she said.
Nothing about the night had been romantic, but somehow their hearts chose this moment. The world went into soft focus, and they both leaned forward for a kiss. A tickle of desire improved Francine’s posture from hips to head in a welcome sensation she’d forgotten existed. She stepped into Bruno, kissing him again as they climbed up onto the pool table together.
The next kiss was the last distinguishable as desire crested, and clothes couldn’t come off fast enough. She leaned deeper into him, fingers forking through tangles of jet-black hair as the tension in her body soon found release.
Chapter 27
Everything tastes the same.
[ ] TRUE [ x ] FALSE
They lay flat on the pool table, watching smoke from their shared cigarette pool in the billiard lamp above.
“I think maybe we should re-felt the table,” Bruno said. “You know, as a courtesy for the people moving in?”
Francine tapped the cigarette ash into a highball glass. “They’ll have their hands full with the teddy bear wallpaper. So. From the minute you met me?”
Bruno nodded. “I thought you were funny and, I don’t know, mysterious. And when you wore that red bandana…” His voice trailed off and he grinned in embarrassment.
“What?”
“It gave you a kind of Rosie the Riveter vibe. Apparently, Allied propaganda really does it for me.”
Francine laughed and flexed her bicep. “Sure, I’ll take a Rosie comparison. Oh, holy shit!” She jolted up, accidentally dropping the cigarette onto Bruno.
He swatted the embers out of his chest hair. “What’s wrong?”
“I forgot to tell you about Roland’s glasses! He cleaned them at dinner.” She mimed Roland’s routine. “First lens, second lens, bridge.”
“Holy shit,” Bruno repeated their company motto. “Lischka did that.”
“Yep.”
“Francine. Nice work. This could really be something.”
They both lay back down, enjoying their small victory as they silently watched the smoke swirl languidly overhead.
“You started this kind of work because of your girlfriend, didn’t you?” Francine asked, after a while. “That’s the thing Ida helped you through.”
Bruno nodded. “I figured if I couldn’t get answers for myself, maybe I could get them for other people. It’d be nice to get an answer for Ida. She deserves to know if Lischka’s still walking the earth, unpunished.”
“You’re a great, dinged-up train, Bruno.”
“A what?”
“Nothing.”
She skied her fingers around his chest, playing with the thin gold necklace that dipped into the scoops of his clavicle.
“I didn’t take you for the jewelry type.”
“Ida made it for me. I promised to wear it as a talisman for the duration of the investigation. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got something too.”
“You told her about me?”
“Of course.”
Francine put the cigarette out in the highball glass, and as she did so, her wedding ring clinked lightly against the edge. It might have just been the summer heat swelling her finger, but the piece of metal had begun to feel more uncomfortable and less necessary than ever before.
She looked over at Bruno, who’d started to fall asleep.
“Bruno?”
“Mmhmm?”
“Do you still think about her?”
“Ida?”
“No.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“Every day?”
He nodded. “She may not be mine anymore, but I’m hers. In some ways.”
“Doesn’t that scare you?”
“I used to worry I was getting smaller and smaller. Losing pieces of myself I’d never get back. I thought one day I might just wink right out of existence. But I didn’t. I’m still here. And so are you.”
Francine gently laid her head on his chest and drifted off to sleep, listening to the deeply-missed sound of another person’s heartbeat.
Chapter 28
I like to let people know where I stand on things.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
“On the pool table?” Laura Jean squirmed with excitement on a bar stool in Ellie and Pete’s garage. “Thank God the previous owners hated foosball. I knew I liked Michael. How was it?”
“Sit still, or you’re going to have a bald spot, and where we did it is not the important part.” Francine’s scissors flew expertly around Laura Jean’s waterfall of blond, dropping snippets of hair onto the smooth concrete below. “No matter what happens, there’s an expiration date.”
“Summer flings are okay too.”
“I don’t think it’s a summer fling. Not for me, anyway. I’m sure it would freak Bruno out to know I’m thinking about the future already, but it’s not like we have months to court and see what’s what.” Francine eyed one of the ice-cubed glasses of white wine dribbling condensation onto the trunk of Pete’s Volvo. She risked a quick sip.
“Hey, no fair! I’m trapped under this cape of sobriety.”
“All right, settle down.” Francine lifted the other glass to Laura Jean’s lips. “There’s something about him that I never had with Ben, even at our best. Bruno’s just…I get him, and weirdly enough I think he gets me. It’s a fit.”
“Why don’t you guys stay in Hawthorn Woods? I could get used to the free haircuts.”
“He has to go back to New York to prep for the school year, and I have to go back to California.”
“Okay, but it sounds like San Francisco is scorched earth for you. Women have hair on the East Coast too.”
“You think I should go to New York with him?”
“I don’t know how much it matters who goes where. All I’m saying is if the two of you are vat-dipped in affection, which you clearly are, it might be worth considering. You don’t need anyone’s permission. Except mine. Which I freely give.”
Laura Jean poked a wrist out and checked her watch.
“Ooh boy, I gotta get going. Candy for the parade is getting delivered to the barn in half an hour. I might have to ready a fire hose in case any kids get wind of the delivery.”
Francine laughed. “Two seconds. You’re almost done.” She did a final pass with her scissors and handed Laura Jean a mirror. “What do you think, Parade Marshal?”
“With a cut this good I think I could run the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day gig. I love it, thank you.” She kissed Francine on the cheek and started home with the empty wine glasses. “Give the relocation idea a think or two. And I want to hear about any more billiards sessions!”
Francine laughed and waved goodbye.
The idea definitely was worth a think or two. There was little keeping her in San Francisco, other than the inertia of already living there. What if she and Bruno stayed in Hawthorn Woods, or tried New York together?
She brushed off the stool and carried it toward the back corner of the garage, failing to notice what was hiding there until she was practically on top of it.
She dropped the stool and screamed.
✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
Francine stumb
led out of the garage, trying to catch her breath, and nearly ran into Eric Banderwalt, who had raced up the driveway.
“I heard you scream,” he said.
“There’s an animal.” Francine pointed to the corner of the garage.
“Oh. Want me to get it out for you?”
“Yeah, sure. Please, I mean.” She grabbed a pair of yellow work gloves and handed them to Eric. “Don’t get rabies or anything.”
He unslung his BB gun from one shoulder and leaned it against Pete’s Volvo. With casual confidence, he pushed a cardboard box out of the corner. “It’s just a chipmunk. They’re easy.”
The chipmunk chattered wildly as Eric closed in with the gloves.
“It sounds pissed,” Francine worried.
“That’s just ’cause he’s cornered. Cornered things get scared.” He snatched the animal up, and it immediately sank its tiny teeth into the rough work glove. “Then they get mean.”
He walked to the edge of the garage, hesitated, then set the chipmunk onto the lawn. The frightened animal sped across the grass and disappeared under a clump of bushes.
“Thank you,” Francine said.
This could be a golden opportunity to wring some information out of your cagiest suspect, the detective part of her mind piped. It could also just be a chance to show kindness to a wayward kid, a better part added.
Francine decided to split the difference. “You want something to drink?”
“Yeah. Do you have Old Style?”
“Nice try.” She grabbed two cans of root beer out of the small garage fridge and sat on the Volvo’s bumper.
Eric took a sip of his root beer, then turned the tab on top, halving the opening.
“Why do you do that?”
“Bees like the sugar,” he said. “Got one in my mouth once. It wasn’t fun.”
An awkward pause lengthened. Francine examined the BB rifle propped up against the bumper, and was surprised to see the shoulder stock covered in drawings of flowers and butterflies.
Hawthorn Woods Page 15
