by E. A. Barres
And Cessy hated it.
She hated the forced formality, the uneasiness.
She drummed her fingers on her thigh.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of keeping in touch,” Cessy said. “I should have.”
“Maybe.”
“No, I should have.”
Chris shrugged. “I was lonely after you left.”
Sorrow stirred in Cessy at Chris’s words, at the way he pretended nonchalance despite pain. “Were you?”
“Well, you were gone. Mom was gone. And I was so angry about what happened to her.” He paused. “I took my anger out on a lot of people.”
Cessy didn’t pursue that.
“But I get why you left,” Chris continued. “That wasn’t you.”
And then Cessy admitted something she never had, something moored deep inside her.
“I left because maybe it was me.”
She and Chris stared hard at Smith and Harris’s shadowed heads, unwilling to look at each other.
She could hear Chris breathing.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“I could never do what you did. I never could. But something in me understands why you did it. Even worse, something in me doesn’t blame you for it.”
“Really?”
“Yo también la amaba.”
The front passenger door of the car they were watching opened; either Smith or Harris emerged; she couldn’t be sure from this distance and darkness. Whoever it was leaned into the car, said something, closed the door. The man started walking away as the car’s taillights briefly gleamed, and the car pulled out of the space and drove off.
Despite her earlier desire to talk, Cessy was happy with the chance to end the conversation. None of this was anything she felt comfortable discussing.
“Let’s go,” Cessy said.
CHAPTER
28
THE MOMENT DEB walked into Ruth’s Chris Steak House and saw Agent Levi Price waiting for her, wearing tan slacks and a white button-down under a navy sports jacket, she wondered:
Is this a date? Should I have dressed better?
Wait, is this a date?
Nicole had assumed it was.
“He’s taking you out for steak?” she’d asked, earlier that day. “At Ruth’s Chris? Of course it’s a date. Are you ready for that?”
“Not even remotely.” Deb frowned. “He has to know that, right?”
“I mean, he’s a guy. So, no.”
If there was a misinterpretation, Deb wondered if it came from her. The idea for dinner had come right after Maria’s friend had left her house. In her confusion and concern, Deb had decided to call Levi.
“Yeah?”
His brusque tone had thrown her off. “Oh, hi. Levi?”
“Ms. Thomas. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just …” Her words faltered. “Do you have time to talk?” Deb tried to clear her mind from the woman’s visit and Levi’s hurried tone.
“Not now,” she added, assuming he was busy. “Maybe tonight?”
Now he sounded uncertain. “You mean in person?”
“Okay.”
“Well, I have wanted a dinner out,” Levi said. Deb wondered if he meant with her. “How about six? Do you like Ruth’s Chris?”
Levi still sounded uncertain when he said goodbye, as did she. Their halting conversation would make the perfect meet-cute, Deb thought, if he wasn’t an FBI agent investigating her husband’s murder and if she had even the remotest interest in dating.
Levi walked up to Deb at the entrance, as if to embrace her or kiss her, then stopped awkwardly.
“You look nice,” he said.
It’s not a date, she reminded herself.
A host led them to their table. Deb wore black pants with a thin olive sweater and low, blocky heels, and noticed the other women in the restaurant all wore high heels and dresses or skirts. Men dressed as they always did—the older ones in suits, the young yuppies in a mix of business casual, the dads who were too tired to care in jeans.
“I love this place,” Levi told her after they’d been seated. “Especially the view.”
Deb wasn’t sure if this was a clumsy flirt or if Levi actually meant the view, but decided on the latter.
“I like it too,” she said. The restaurant was in Crystal City, a Northern Virginia city seemingly comprised only of office buildings and apartments, gray concrete and gray businesses. Ruth’s Chris overlooked DC’s monuments and Ronald Reagan National Airport, providing a look at the planes constantly gliding in and out of the city.
Then again, Deb remembered how it was years ago, right after the attacks on 9/11, when planes sailing overhead took on a dark new meaning. When everything seemed to hold a shade of something menacing—airplanes, traffic jams, people, the breaking news chyron on the bottom of the television. Until then, the news, regardless of its severity and reach, had always seemed to have a removed, sensational distance. Clinton and Lewinsky, O.J. Simpson, the unremarkable aftereffects of Y2K. Now, like those planes overhead, there was no distance anymore. The world had seemed to irreparably change. Deb couldn’t imagine that ever happening again.
Grant had been at the Pentagon that day. A few years out of college, he was working for a government financial contractor and spent half his work week at the Pentagon. He and Deb were engaged, in the midst of planning their wedding for the following spring. She’d turned on the television prior to heading to her own job, a marketing assistant for a temp agency, and suddenly found herself sitting on the floor. The towers were falling, the Pentagon was reeling. There was potential, the panicked media reported, that thousands in DC were dead.
She called Grant’s cell phone.
The call didn’t go through.
“Do you want wine?” Levi asked.
“I’ll just stick with water.”
Levi gave the wine menu back to the waiter.
Deb had thought Grant was dead. It was easy to believe, easier than believing he’d somehow survived. Deb wanted that, of course, but automatically prepared for the worst, as if her heart was aware of something her mind had yet to process. She tried calling Grant repeatedly, called his friends, his family, but no one had heard from him. No one knew anything. She stayed in her Arlington apartment, stared at the news, avoided the window and the black smoke filling the sky in the near distance.
It was just after one when the phone rang. Grant told her he was safe. He hadn’t been near the impacted area. He’d spent the morning helping victims, and cell phones were overwhelmed and not working. And she’d cried and laughed and never—not before and not after—felt such joy.
“Are you okay?” Levi asked.
“Not really,” Deb admitted. “It’s all so much. The truth about Grant. What happened to Maria. The idea that Kim or I could be in some danger.” Deb rubbed her eyes. “She went out tonight with a friend, and I know you said we should be safe, but I’m still scared.”
Levi was quiet for a few moments. “Here’s the thing, though. You are safe. This is over for you.”
The waiter returned. Deb hadn’t looked at the menu, but she scanned it while Levi ordered. She picked an expensive filet mignon but privately decided to pay for her own meal. She hated spending that much money but, after everything over the past few weeks, wanted to treat herself. And she still held that old-fashioned belief that if a man paid, it was considered a date. Not just a friendly gesture.
Was it old-fashioned? Deb wasn’t sure. It’d been so long since she’d been on a date.
Not a date, she reminded herself.
“One of Maria’s friends came by my house today,” she told Levi.
“What?”
Several nearby diners turned. Levi glanced around, lowered his voice.
“What?” he asked again.
Deb nodded. “I don’t know what her name was, but—”
“What’d she say?” Levi interrupted her.
“She told me to watch out for her
pimps. And that she was scared, and leaving tomorrow.”
“That’s it?”
“And she gave me some names. Smith and Harris? I don’t know who they are.”
“Smith and Harris.” Levi stared at her intently, as if he was in the process of memorizing their names. “Did she say anything else?”
“No.”
“How’d she find your address?”
“She said she used Google.”
Levi made a quick face, and then Deb imagined how much more difficult technology had made his job. After a moment, he sighed.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I mean, sorry you had to go through that. Was Kim home?”
“No, thank God. Nicole was there. But she didn’t see her.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said Nicole was there? Your friend?”
“Right. She didn’t see her, though. Nicole stayed in the kitchen.”
“She did? That seems … unusual for her.”
Deb thought about it. “Good point.”
“How long have you known Nicole?” Levi asked.
“Since college. She was close to both me and Grant.”
“She was? To him too?”
“Yeah. Hey, I wanted to say thank-you for talking with me about this, for keeping me informed about everything. I know you don’t have to, but it helps.”
He smiled uncertainly.
Deb wondered if all FBI agents were awkward when it came to receiving praise.
“Were you ever married?” she asked, and immediately regretted the question. It came out like a first-date question. What type of music do you like? What do you do on weekends? What’s your favorite TV show?
“No,” Levi said, and he seemed relieved for the subject change, the chance to talk about something other than work. “Never. I mean, not yet.”
“Haven’t met the right person?”
“Haven’t really looked. The job makes it hard.”
They talked for a few more minutes, staying on familiar topics to preserve the atmosphere. Their work. Where they had lived. Family.
“So you said you grew up down South?” Levi asked.
“Roanoke. About a four-hour drive from here.”
“There’s not a big Asian population in Roanoke, is there?”
Deb laughed. “Well, I moved away. So I think that’s all of us.”
He laughed with her. “Really?”
“It wasn’t that bad. But there weren’t many of us. It was definitely lonely.”
Levi didn’t press, and Deb appreciated that because she didn’t want to elaborate. It was hard to explain that distance, the sense of closeness she felt to other people who weren’t white. Grant had never understood that concept when she tried to explain it to him, and he even once told her that her attitude was offensive. Borderline racist.
But Kim understood.
There was an ostracizing element Deb had always felt growing up with her white friends, a sense that they were free to do and say whatever they wanted, and it played into a type of superiority. Deb never felt allowed to be that superior … or even that such a feeling was right. She was always coming across some stereotype or slur about Asians, in conversation, in books or television or movies, that seemed intended to put her in her place, to make sure she understood the distance between her and white people.
It hadn’t been until she’d gone to college and met other Asian students that she’d realized she wasn’t alone in feeling that way.
And that was a lovely, life-changing thing to realize. To know that you’re not alone.
That your experiences are shared.
“How’d you end up in Virginia, from Vietnam?”
“My mom went through a Catholic adoption agency that worked in Vietnam. I was born there, and they brought me here.”
“Have you ever tried to find your real parents?”
“My mom was my real parent,” Deb responded sharply.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean …”
Deb exhaled. “It’s okay. I just get that a lot, this idea that my mother wasn’t a mom. She was.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Deb took a quick drink of water. “But, no, I’ve never looked into trying to find my biological parents. I know there are organizations dedicated to matching Vietnamese adoptees with their biological families, but I never contacted them. I think it would have bothered my mom if I had.”
“But you wouldn’t do it even now? Even just for medical information?”
Deb thought about it. “I kind of feel like if something was going to happen to me, it would have happened.”
They talked on, and Deb kept having to remind herself that Grant wasn’t alive, and not just in the sense that she kept feeling like she had to keep this dinner a secret. She wanted to share it with Grant, to tell him about Levi and his work, about the restaurant, the evening. As upset as the revelations about Grant and Maria made her, she still had those instinctual tugs to him, those reactions that had become as natural as breathing. A longing to tell him about her day.
The food arrived, long sizzling steaks on dangerously hot plates, side dishes spread out over the table.
“That’s a lot of food,” Levi remarked, staring at the layout.
“Grant used to eat everything I made,” Deb said, “and then bitch that he was getting fat. But then, why eat it, Grant, right? Sorry, that’s the most married thing I’ve ever said.”
“Ha.”
Deb wondered if she was talking about Grant too much.
The conversation quieted as they ate.
“Thanks again for talking to me,” Deb said when she was halfway through her steak, debating on whether she should save or eat the rest. “I feel like I’ve been all over the place since Grant died. First it was nothing but grief; then I had this desperate urge to find out what happened, and then it was fear. And it seems like lately it’s all sadness.”
Levi ate his last piece of steak, dabbed his mouth with a napkin, swallowed. “Fear turns into despair. The more you’re afraid, the more hopeless you feel.”
Deb thought about that. “I guess that’s true. It doesn’t help with everything I’m learning. Finding out so much of what I thought was true was really a lie.” She paused. “Sometimes I just want to grieve, not grieve and question.”
“It doesn’t sound,” Levi replied cautiously, “like Grant was that bad a guy. I know he was with Maria, but it seems like he was good in many other ways.”
But that one way invalidates all the others.
Deb didn’t say her thought out loud.
Instead, she said, “Yeah.”
Levi smiled a small smile. “I’m sorry. I’m doing that guy thing, where I try and solve problems or make you feel better instead of just trying to understand what you’re saying, right?”
He was, but Deb kept that to herself. “I appreciate you listening. You’ve been nice through all this. And I know you put your job on the line just so I could get even more answers. It means the world to me.”
He reached out and patted her hand.
His hand stayed on hers.
She watched her hand turn, her fingers slip between his.
Then she let go, and they both withdrew.
“Sorry,” he said, and she said, “It’s okay,” nearly at the same time.
An awkward silence ensued. Deb tried not to let expression show on her face. She didn’t want him to think she was entertaining anything.
Even if, briefly, his touch did feel nice.
“You really think Kim and I are safe?” Deb asked.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you about anything in this investigation. Even when I knew something would be painful, I’ve shared it, right?”
“Yes.”
“If I thought you and your daughter were in danger, I’d tell you. I wouldn’t risk it.”
“Okay.”
But now Levi seemed uncom
fortable. “There is one thing I need to tell you. And I’m not sure how to say it.”
Deb’s heart sank. “Is it about Grant? Did he actually sleep with other prostitutes?”
“I can’t tell you here.” He glanced around. “It’s about the case. I normally wouldn’t share this, but I don’t want to see you worried. And this is something you need to know. About someone close to you.”
“What is it?” Deb asked again.
“Like I said, I can’t tell you here.”
“Then let’s go.”
CHAPTER
29
JAMES SMITH PULLED into a parking space at the far end of his apartment building’s lot, turned off the engine, closed his eyes. Rubbed his forehead. He’d been working long days and hadn’t slept much at night, driving back and forth through the hellacious traffic between his apartment in Rockville and the hospital in Baltimore.
Waiting for Cessy Castillo to get out of the ER.
Just so he could put her in the morgue.
Everything felt heavy: the pull of sleep, the seatbelt crossed over his body, his worry like a giant’s boot flattening him to the earth. He hadn’t even set the fire at the safe house, but still felt nervous whenever he saw a story about it on TV.
And Cessy’s pictures didn’t help.
After all, James hadn’t been raised as a criminal. Had grown up in Catonsville, outside Baltimore. Middle class. Went to a decent high school.
And then his dad was arrested for beating their mom, and he never saw him again.
The case was public—not national news or anything, but his father’s position on the city council made him a statewide figure. Everyone knew what had happened. Other kids in James’s high school started avoiding him, the way kids do when something happens that they can’t handle or understand. Like James had done something wrong.
That’s when he felt hate.
He hadn’t felt it when his father hit his mother. Hadn’t felt it when his father was taken away. But when those kids at high school made him feel that way, like he’d messed up and they needed to distance themselves, that’s when his anger first emerged.