by Rachel Ford
She smiled at him and took a long sip. “Thanks, Uncle Jason.” Then, she studied me as I worked over the range.
I smiled and tried to think of something to say. It had been a long time since I’d been nine years old. I couldn’t remember what I liked then. “How do you, uh, like your eggs?”
She stared blankly.
“Over easy?” I prompted.
She went on staring, more confused it seemed than before.
“With a hard yolk,” Jason volunteered. “None of that runny business.”
This last bit seemed to be directed at her, because she made a disgusted face and agreed that she didn’t want runny yolks. “Runny eggs are gross.”
“Alright. Over hard it is then.”
I plated two pancakes and put eggs in the pan. She set to work on the pancakes, and I focused on the eggs.
“These are really good, Uncle Owen.”
“You want to know the secret?”
She nodded, grinning.
“The box says to use water. I used milk and an egg instead.”
She considered this for a moment. “Why?”
“It adds protein and flavor. Makes them a little richer.”
She nodded. “Daddy said you were a better cook than he was.”
“Did he?”
She nodded again. “He said you used to make the meals when you lived with your grandma.”
I smiled, but not fondly. “Yeah, I did. Grandma wasn’t much of a cook.”
“Daddy said she was sick.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Really?”
“Yes.” Her face got very serious. “Just like he was sick, until Jesus cured him.”
“Oh.” I tried not to grimace. It was a gross understatement to put years of alcoholism and child abuse down to sickness. But that was an argument Andy and I had had plenty of times. Not something Maisie needed to be a part of. “Yeah.”
“Mommy says that sickness runs in our family.”
“Does she?” I asked.
Jason refilled her glass. “We don’t need to talk about that, Maisie.”
She nodded and went back to her pancakes. I took her eggs out of the pan and brought them over. She confirmed the yolks were hard and smiled.
“Uncle Owen?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think daddy’s in heaven?”
I blinked. “Um.”
“Of course he’s in heaven,” Jason said. “He’s one of the angels now.”
She was staring at me, so I smiled. “I’m sure he is.”
Ben came down next and pulled himself into the tall chair. He wanted no eggs and a hundred pancakes, he told me. I said he’d get two. He looked like he might start to cry, until Jason intervened.
“What Uncle Owen means is, he’ll give you a hundred pancakes if you can eat them.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You gotta eat these ones first. Okay?”
He nodded, and Maisie rolled her eyes.
Daniel came down last. He surveyed the scene quizzically, then pulled up a seat. “Can I get some pancakes, Uncle Owen?”
“You bet. You want eggs with them?”
He nodded. He liked his with runny yolks, he told me. “The runnier the better.”
Maisie shivered, and he snickered. I had the impression his taste was probably cultivated in part at least because of his sister’s revulsion.
Ah the joys of childhood.
Megan joined us a little later, seeming surprised by what she found, though pleasantly. Jason made a point of framing it as a joint effort. We thought we’d make breakfast, and so on. She smiled and thanked him.
She took a seat and sat quietly while the kids wrapped up and I got her food. Then Maisie got to her feet.
“Uh,” her mother said, “where are you going?”
“To get ready for school?”
“No school today. And you’re not going anywhere until the dishes are done. Remember?”
Maisie scowled, and Ben sniggered.
“I got ‘em,” I said.
“No,” Megan said. “Maisie’s going to do them. She’s going to learn that there are consequences for sassing her mother. Aren’t you, Maisie Ryder?”
Maisie said nothing. She went on scowling.
“Aren’t you, Maisie Ryder?”
“Aren’t you, Maisie Ryder?” Ben repeated, a little too smugly for his mother to miss.
“You be quiet, Benjamin, or you’ll be joining her.”
“Actually,” I said, “I was thinking Ben could help me clean the SUV. If you didn’t mind, I mean.”
That seemed to surprise her. “What?”
“Well, there’s ice cream on the seat, and fries in the carpet.” I didn’t mention that Ben had been the one to put them there. That seemed unnecessary for its sheer obviousness.
“Oh. Well, maybe Jason can help with that. That’d probably be better.”
“Yeah, no problem, dude,” the young man said. “I’ll meet you out there after breakfast.”
So it was settled. We finished eating. Maisie did dishes, quietly and without making much eye contact. Jason disappeared out to the garage. Daniel and Ben headed off to play videogames.
Megan didn’t say much until the boys left. Then she asked, “Did you see the news? About that judge? Danbridge or whatever?”
“Dandridge,” I said. “Did they confirm she was the fatality?”
“Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anyway, the news said they tried to contact her, and couldn’t.” She shook her head. “He got someone else. Right after Andy, too.”
I nodded. “Listen, Megan – there were a few things I was wondering about. I was wondering if maybe you had the answers?”
She stared at me blankly but nodded. “I don’t know if I do. But I’ll help if I can.”
So I asked her my questions. I asked if she knew when, exactly, Andy had gone missing.
“He missed a meeting with Charlie Rydel, the foodbank president. They are working on a city-wide food drive initiative.” She reconsidered the statement, eyes welling. “Were working on it, anyway.”
“So he – what? Just didn’t show up?”
Megan nodded. She’d gone through Andy’s entire calendar, she told me, checking in with everyone he was supposed to meet with during the day. Before lunch, he’d had a pastoral counseling session with one of the young couples in their congregation. “Marital problems. Infidelity, on his part. But there’s a new baby involved.” She shook her head. “A real mess.”
“And he made that?”
“Oh yes. Both of them agree he was there, and they had their session. Then they left, and the church secretary – that’s Ace – saw him leave for lunch.”
“Saw Andy leave?”
She nodded. “They even talked. The meeting didn’t go well, I guess. Ace didn’t say more than that, but he wouldn’t. Pastoral sessions are confidential.”
How confidential they could be when the church secretary knew the outcome, I couldn’t say. But I nodded anyway. “Did Andy say he was getting lunch.”
“Yes. At least…” She frowned. “I think that’s what Ace said. To be honest, I was kind of a mess that day. I was trying to figure out when twenty-four hours would be. You know, to file the report: the cops wouldn’t do anything until Andy had been gone for a full day.
“So I tried again at noon, since he never came back after lunch. But they said that didn’t count. He was at work, and I couldn’t say for sure that his plans hadn’t changed.
“They thought I was being hysterical. I know they did. But I knew – I knew Andy wouldn’t just wander off without telling me. I knew it.”
I didn’t get much more of use out of her than that. She cried for a while, and I held her. But when we got back to my questions she confirmed that Andy had missed his one o’clock with Charlie Rydel. She hadn’t confirmed the rest of his afternoon schedule. She hadn’t seen the point.
I suspected she wa
s right, but I figured I’d check with Detective Clark just in case anyone had seen him later in the afternoon. I didn’t want to be looking for an abduction between noon and one when it had happened much later.
As for the morning sessions, well, the last one in particular piqued my interest. On any given day, nearly three American women would be killed by a husband, lover, or ex. And sometimes, those husbands, lovers and exes didn’t stop there.
Sometimes they killed police officers who showed up to protect the victims. Sometimes they killed their ex’s divorce attorneys, or the family’s custody judge, or the kids themselves. And sometimes they killed a marital counselor who didn’t save their failing marriage.
And though those numbers dwarfed the victims of female-on-male domestic partner homicides, the latter still accounted for a solid five percent of male homicides a year. A woman scorned was nothing to underestimate.
I assumed both partners remained alive and well, but that didn’t change my interest. The same motivation that could prompt someone to kill a partner could potentially bleed into their interactions with someone tasked with saving their marriage.
But Megan wouldn’t give me the names of the couple involved. “I can’t, Owen. That wouldn’t be ethical. I didn’t even want to tell Detective Clark.
“And it makes no difference, anyway. They had nothing to do with Andy’s death. I’m sure of that.”
I wasn’t, and I would find out for myself. But I’d have to do it by going around Megan. So I nodded and pretended to understand.
And we talked about what we’d do for the rest of the day. Megan needed to call the school, and work things out. I needed to call my boss, and make sure we hadn’t run into problems. She had friends and relatives to reach out to. I had an SUV to clean, and things I had to get done back home. I didn’t elucidate, and she didn’t inquire.
She nodded, and said, “I hope you’ll come back tonight. For dinner, maybe. And I can have the guest room ready for you. I know it means a lot to the kids. And – well, it’s good to know you’re there.”
I promised I would and headed out to the SUV.
Maisie followed me. She’d long finished the dishes and moved on to a book, though she’d been hovering in the hall by the door.
“I’ll help you, Uncle Owen.”
“You don’t have to, Mais.”
She glanced back at the kitchen, where her mother sat at the table holding a mug of coffee with a faraway look. “It’s okay. I want to help. Anyway, I’ll do a better job than Uncle Jason.”
Which I didn’t doubt. So I let her tag along. The driveway and sidewalks were clear. I didn’t know how long that would last, but for the time being anyway, a district judge was a bigger draw than a local preacher.
We grabbed cleaning supplies and a bucket of sudsy water. And I opened the doors and stood back to survey the damage. It was a lot of damage.
Potato had been ground into the carpet. Chocolate soaked into the seatback in a large, dark smear. A dozen long trickles followed the point of initial impact all the way down to puddles on the floor. “Motherfucker.”
Maisie laughed. “You’re not supposed to say that.”
I nodded. I’d forgotten she was there in my initial shock. But I shouldn’t have said it. “Sorry, Mais. Don’t tell your mom, please. She’ll kill me.”
“I won’t. Daddy swore too. He’d pretend to mom that he didn’t, but he did. And you know what?”
“What?”
She lowered her voice until it was a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Mom swears too. I’ve heard her.”
I laughed.
“So does Uncle Jason. He swears a lot.”
That didn’t surprise me, and I said as much. Then I said, “Hey, you want to be my spotter?”
“What’s that?”
“You tell me if I’m missing any of the mess.”
She nodded. “Okay. Can I play the radio while we do it?”
“Sure.” I pressed the ignition sequence that turned on battery power instead of the vehicle itself. She could do what she liked with the radio, but wouldn’t be able to get the car out of park. “Go for it.”
She started flipping through the radio stations. Nothing seemed to suit her. Music and advertisements blasted out as she blitzed through the channels.
My eyes were practically twitching at the noise, but I focused on the floor. There were pieces of fry everywhere. Some had been stomped into the carpet, some had been dropped by Ben’s seat, and others had been flung all over the interior.
Some peeled up easily enough. Others were dry and crusty, and needed to be picked out of the fibers a piece at a time, and the residue scrubbed away.
Maisie cycled through the dial a second time. Hip hop, country, rock and roll, Christian music, loud advertisement jingles: they cascaded out, one after the other in rapid succession.
I loved my niece and nephews. I really did. But spending time with them just reinforced why I was never going to have kids.
“Uncle Owen?” Maisie asked.
The radio was blaring out something about a limited deal on pizza. “Buy two and get the third one free!”
“Yeah?”
“Do you like Uncle Jason?”
I glanced up. “Well…uh…I don’t really know him, Mais. I just met him yesterday.”
“I like him.”
I nodded. “He seems like a nice guy.”
“Daddy didn’t like him.”
“Oh. Well, sometimes people don’t like each other for no very good reason.”
“I know. Dad said that’s why you and mom didn’t like each other. You fought about something silly, and you could never forgive each other.”
“Something like that,” I allowed.
“He thinks Jason is lazy.”
I tried, and failed, to stifle a small laugh. “Well…he is.”
“I still like him.”
“Me too.”
The radio had moved on from pizza to some kind of self-help seminar: still at an ear-splitting volume. “Hey, can you turn that down a little?”
She nodded and turned the radio down. I went back to the potatoes.
“Why do you want to know who daddy was meeting with?” she asked.
I glanced up a second time. She was watching me carefully, with an intelligence far too keen for a nine-year old. Or maybe I’d just forgotten what it was like to be nine. “Were you eavesdropping on your mom and me?”
“No. I heard you anyway.”
I glanced back toward the house. The front door was still shut. So was the garage door. Megan had grief and two boys to keep her busy. I suspected Jason was keeping busy avoiding me, so I’d forget his promise to help clean the car.
Either way, the coast was clear. So I admitted, “I want to help the police. That’s all.”
“Why didn’t mom tell you, then?”
“It’s…it’s complicated, Mais. She’s got to think about her church. People trust her, and part of the reason is because she’ll keep their private information private.” Then, in case she didn’t quite understand, I added, “You know: keep their secrets a secret.”
“It’s not a secret, Uncle Owen. Everyone at church knows.”
“Do they?”
She nodded confidently. “All the grownups. I heard them talking. Even some of the kids were talking about it in Sunday School. Mrs. Mappin told us not to, but we did anyway.”
I wondered for half a second if I’d be the worst kind of fiend if I tried to squeeze information out of my own niece. Would that be crossing a line, somehow?
But she spared me the moral dilemma. “Mr. Taggert is having a baby with a woman who isn’t Mrs. Taggert. But she’s having a baby too.”
“Mrs. Taggert is?”
She nodded again. “Yes. And the other woman didn’t know about Mrs. Taggert, and Mrs. Tagger didn’t know about her.”
“That sounds…quite sordid. I don’t suppose you know Mr. Taggert’s first name? Or Mrs. Taggert’s?”
Maisie didn’t get a chance to respond, though. The garage door opened, and Jason burst through. He was almost running, and he practically skidded to a stop by the SUV. “Owen, there you are.”
“Yeah.” I added, pointedly, “Cleaning the car.”
“Right. Sorry, forgot about that. Anyway, dude, you’re on TV.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The guy with weird hair and the podcast, who was here last night?”
“Wyatt Wagley?”
“Yeah. He got a video of you yelling at him. I guess he uploaded it earlier. The news got a hold of it. And yeah: you’re on TV.”
Chapter Nine
And I was, in full color, clear as anything: threatening to kill the guy. He’d been wearing some kind of camera during our first encounter – the one where I promised to make him the subject of a true crimes documentary if he didn’t get out of Megan’s yard.
“That miserable son-of-a…”
Jason gestured with his eyebrows at Maisie.
“Biscuit,” I finished.
She rolled her eyes. “Great save, Uncle Owen.”
“That can’t be legal,” I said. “Coming into someone’s yard and recording them without their consent?”
“It is,” Jason said. “It’s a single party consent state: as long as a person is party to the conversation or has the consent of a party, they can legally record and divulge the contents of that recording.”
“How the hell do you know that?” I asked.
“Heck,” he corrected, again with the eyebrows in Maisie’s direction. “And never mind how I know. Call it an insurance plan. Saved my posterior once. But, long story short, he’s legally entitled to the video.”
“Fuck.”
“Jesus dude.” Then, he seemed to catch himself, because he flushed. “Uh – sorry, Mais.”
She laughed at both of us. I turned back to the television. The morning news anchor had just returned, after the clip finished. She was describing it as a “heart-wrenching encounter between the brother of the victim, beloved local pastor Andrew Welch, and a true crime podcaster.”
Her sympathy rang a little hollow due to the fact that they’d chosen to air said encounter, but I guess it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
It certainly was better than what was going on in Wyatt Wagley’s feeds. As soon as the local segment ended, I pulled up his socials. And immediately repented the move. Not as much as I regretted not taking a swing at him when I had the chance, though.