I wrapped an arm around her waist to support her, but she cried out when she tried to push to standing. “I was making sure all the windows were locked, but I missed a step as I came down.”
I texted the detective and asked him to come up.
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” She said the words as if to negate my fears. But I didn’t believe her. And what concerned me most was her hand. It was clutching her chest.
The detective came in through the door, took one look at her, and pulled out his phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
* * *
They wouldn’t let me ride with Mrs. Harper, but the detective took me to the hospital so I could be with her. I called her daughter as we drove.
At the hospital, they whisked her away from us for X-rays. I stayed until her daughter came, and then the detective took me home.
I was still shaky from all that had happened, but my mind was hard at work. “I’ve been thinking about the break-in. Whether it was that package delivery guy or not, anybody who spent any time at all watching the house would know Mrs. Harper never used the basement apartment. Never entered or exited by that back door. They would know those spaces were mine.”
He grunted.
“So whoever it was had either been looking for a way to get inside and up into the house undetected, or they had been looking for me.” Waiting for me.
“Agreed.”
“Can we say this person was the owner of the handprint?”
“And the one who knocked over the flowers? I really want to.”
Inherent in his answer, however, was the obvious. We couldn’t. Not until we had more information.
The detective stopped at Home Depot on the way back. I was happy to accompany him on his errands. I would have gone with him anywhere. It left less time for me to be alone, back at my apartment.
I followed him to the locks and fasteners section.
“Your lock was just begging for someone to pick it. Unless you have something more secure, it’s as good as having nothing at all.”
“Wait—we’re here for me?”
He swiveled his head from a lock he was examining to me. “Yeah. I wouldn’t sleep well knowing you’re at risk. I don’t know how you would manage to sleep at all. So I’m going to fix it.”
It had been so long since someone had taken care of me that I might have broken down and cried right there between the keyed locks and the combination locks. I forced myself to pick up a package and start reading the fine print. Fine print was a specialty of mine.
“Whitney?”
“Hmm?” I was still blinking away tears.
“I don’t suppose you have a drill?”
“What?”
“A drill? Do you have one?”
I shook my head. Sniffled.
“You alright?”
No. “I’m fine.”
We went to the power tools aisle. He’d grabbed a box before I realized what he was doing. I put a hand to his to stop him. “Mrs. Harper might have one.”
“Do we really want to spend time looking for it?”
No. We didn’t.
He went over to the garden section and grabbed a few pots and a smallish bag of soil, piling it all into a cart.
My dad called while we were waiting to check out.
“I know it’s late, but I need to give you a new address, sweetie.”
New address? “For what?”
“For where I live.”
I tried to make sense of what he was saying, but I couldn’t do it. “Where you live?”
“I’ve sold the house.”
“You’ve—what?”
“I’ve sold the house. I had to. Your mother lived for six months after she got diagnosed, but the medical bills we racked up? It’s going on six years now that I’ve been paying interest on them.”
My mind struggled to switch gears between the house and the bills. “I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t want you to. There was no need.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Every time I talked to him, I knew where he was calling me from. I could picture him sitting in his chair in the family room, feet propped up on the coffee table. Without the house, without him living the life I’d once known, he didn’t have any context.
“You couldn’t say anything I haven’t thought, but I can’t hold on to it anymore. I tried. I took out a second mortgage on it when your mom got sick. But I just can’t make the payments. I’ve declared bankruptcy.”
What? “I’m sorry, Dad. You should have told me.”
“I tried to do the honorable thing. I’ve tried to pay off that debt. I gave everything I had to get rid of it, but it wasn’t enough. How long am I required to drag it around? If we’re talking money-back guarantees, then I want my money back because it didn’t work. In the end, your mother died anyway.”
The memory of her reverberated between us for a few long moments. An echo of her laugh rose in my mind. And then I let her go. “When do you move?”
“Already did.”
Already? I forced myself to breathe. Forced myself to let go of what I had no ability to save. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. Smaller. But then, it’s just me. Closer to work. Just a couple blocks from that burger joint you always liked.”
“The one that has fifty different flavors of shakes?”
“That’s the one.”
There was silence again. It stretched taut. Became brittle. I broke it. I wished him the best in his new place, wrote down the address, and then said good-bye.
Things happen. Or we make choices.
Either way, money comes into it eventually. My father’s problem was that it took money for my mother to die. My problem? It took money for me to live. People might have castigated us both for not having money when we needed it. But I was starting to think that might not be the problem. The problem was that you could spend your life doing all the right things, and then something unexpected, something unforeseen, could wipe out all your resources. It wasn’t anyone’s fault and yet there was no recourse.
You have a modest but happy life. You have everything you ever wanted, the savings everyone said you need.
Then you don’t.
It didn’t seem right.
Chapter 19
My mother died when I was getting my master’s. It was a sudden diagnosis with a tragically steep descent to death. She was fine when I went home for Christmas. By the time spring semester was done, I was attending her funeral. She tried every treatment doctors thought might help—or might at least delay the inevitable.
She’d been our center, the one our family rotated around. I don’t think my dad and I realized it until she was gone.
I talked to my father every day. It started, I think, because I needed to know he was still there. It continued because we were all we had left.
Until I started dating my ex.
All kinds of things went wrong when that happened. My relationship with my father was one of them. It’s not that my ex didn’t want me to talk to him; it’s that he consumed me. First, by devouring anything that wasn’t focused solely on him. And then, by devouring my soul.
Our dating began with a whirlwind of DC fundraisers and charity balls. It was either too early to call my father before we left for an event or too late to call after we returned. And even when the timing was right, it was inconvenient, because my ex needed me for something or wanted to go somewhere.
Can’t you just call your father later?
I did at first. But then I fell out of the habit. And after several weeks, a month or two, I found there wasn’t much to say. I hadn’t told him I was dating anyone, and the longer I left it, the more awkward it had become to announce it. And then my ex decided we should move in together and I realized I needed to tell my father something. But I never actually made that call.
It was one more reason to hate myself. But since I’d broken things off with my ex, I talked to him every day.
“Hey.” He paused, probably noticing I was trailing. He turned around to fall into step with me. “Everything okay?”
“It was just my dad.”
“It can just be your dad and still everything can be not okay.”
A corner of my mouth tipped up in appreciation. Emotional perception had not been one of my ex’s strengths. At least, not in terms of my emotions. He was always extremely in touch with his.
“Yeah. He just sold the house.”
“Sounds like it’s time to celebrate. Houses can be hard to sell.”
“I didn’t even know he’d put it on the market.”
He put his arm around my shoulders. Gave me a sympathetic squeeze.
I wanted to burrow right into him and stay there. But that was crazy. I’d only known him for a few days. I didn’t want to embarrass him; he was just trying to be nice. But when he let me go, I was sorry. The warmth, the sympathy he’d provided, evaporated.
Once again, it was me, alone, against the world.
“When’s the last time you saw your dad?”
“Summer before last. I’ve been hoping to go back again at Christmas.” Even if it was just a couple days. Surely even a big law firm wouldn’t begrudge a first-year associate Christmas Day. And, hopefully, Christmas Eve. I’d make my best argument. “My mom died six years ago. It’s just the two of us.” My throat was closing around a sob. “It was really tough on him.” I swallowed it. Cleared my throat. “He’s worked for the transit authority ever since he graduated from high school. He and my mom were so proud of me for getting into an Ivy.”
“Any parent would be.”
“But they had been planning on me going to the state school, half an hour down the road.” In-state tuition was doable. I’d already lined up some scholarships from my father’s union and some of the local community organizations. But most importantly, I’d only be a short drive away if I needed them. “It took some convincing for them to let me go to school on the other side of the country. They were terrified that someone would take advantage of my face blindness. It took a lot of trust on their part, a lot of promises on mine.” And I kept them all until I met my ex. Then I’d broken every one. And everything they feared had happened. They’d been right; I’d been wrong. “Turns out the world is just as scary, just as terrible as they always feared it could be.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How do I tell him any of this? How do I tell him I am literally starving from debt, when he’s so certain I’m already a success? How do I tell him I’m afraid I might not pass the bar exam? That really, the only thing for certain at the moment is that I live in someone’s basement? Oh—and that I’m a barista, clocking an hourly wage. How do I tell him that?”
My ex would have told me to stop whining. Would have ordered me to change my emotions the way you order a dog to heel. But the detective only said, “He wouldn’t care. You should tell him.”
“I can’t. I just can’t.” Why could I not stop talking? “I’ve lived my life trying not to disappoint anyone. I try to avoid everyone because they might feel bad when I don’t recognize them. That way I won’t hurt anyone’s feelings.”
He reached down and pulled his key fob from his pocket and beeped his car open.
“I just want to pass the bar. I just need to pass it.” I said the words to myself more than I said them to him. And I needed to get a job. And figure out who had murdered Cade.
He put his hand to the small of my back as he helped me into the front seat, then he loaded the bags and we returned to Arlington.
As we drove, the weight of Cade’s death increased. I don’t want to drag you into this, but you mentioned something once to me when we were on the Hill. I think it might be really important. What had he meant? Once we got back to the apartment, I’d dig out the journal from my time on the Hill. We’d talked—often—but it was general conversation. Which representatives seemed like they were supportive of our congressman’s work. Which would actually come through for him, on the record, when it mattered. Gossip we’d heard from other staffers. Predictions for the next election.
Even in the perilously partisan halls of Congress, none of that was particularly damning. And Congressman Thorpe had been a dream to work for compared to most. He was charming, relatively easygoing. One of the rare congressmen who was respected by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
But Cade had been worried about something. And now that worry had attached itself to me. I closed my eyes to try to clear my head.
Big mistake.
I saw my friend lying in the alley, with blood leaking out of his head.
The detective spoke. “So you’re studying for the bar. You want to be a lawyer.”
My eyes flew open. “That’s the plan.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why lawyer?”
“Because the barracuda is my favorite fish and I like eating small children for breakfast.”
He laughed.
“It’s because I want to do something I’m good at. I got tired of disappointing people who were counting on me to recognize them. Logic doesn’t depend on gaining friends or influencing people. It doesn’t depend on me either. It just is. And the measure of my success is only how well I can articulate it.”
He said nothing.
“Why did you want to be a policeman?”
“It was the closest I could get to being a superhero without having to wear the spandex and the cape. It’s not the best look for me.”
I smiled. Just a tiny bit.
“So when do you take the exam?”
“At the end of the month.”
“What are you going to do after?”
“Results don’t get released until October. I’ll have to keep myself busy until then.”
“You worried?”
“Constantly.”
“Is it really that difficult?”
“Difficult enough that I can’t treat it as a sure thing.” A tendril of worry wrapped around my heart and then spiraled down into my stomach.
If I did pass the bar, one thing I knew for certain: I wouldn’t tell a prospective employer about my face blindness. There were no advantages in that for them. It’s not classified as a disability. They wouldn’t get extra points, extra anything if they hired me. I just had to convince someone to give me a chance—on my merits, in spite of that deficit. I had to be a lawyer. No backing out.
It’s what I’d chosen. But money was power. If I wanted to get cryptocurrency into the hands of people who had neither, then at least I would learn how the system worked. After that maybe I would know more about how to change it. That’s what I really wanted to work on. I reined in my anxiety. I had an interview on Monday. I would allow myself to worry about jobs then.
The detective stopped for some takeout on the way home.
I told him I couldn’t eat anything. “Really, Detective Baroni. Don’t worry about me.”
“Cut it with the Detective Baroni. I know I’m a detective; you know I’m a detective. Just call me Leo.”
I nodded.
“And I don’t care whether you can eat or whether you can’t. You’re going to.”
My brows peaked.
“That’s what my grandmother would have said.”
“I thought grandmothers were supposed to be nice.”
“She was Italian.”
Back at the apartment, after we’d eaten, Leo took his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves. I went to hang it up in my closet. The gesture was a reflex. My ex had been very particular about his clothes. But I’d forgotten that all my hangers were bent and twisted. I brought it back out and laid it over the couch.
Then I found my journal.
In the meantime, in the fast-falling twilight, Leo had gone to work pulling the old lock out of the door. My ex had always hired someone to do what he
called “the dirty work” for him. Leo didn’t seem to think twice about doing something that wasn’t part of his job description. He opened the mini tool kit he’d bought, took the new lock out of the packaging, and laid out the parts on the floor by the door.
He seemed to know what he was doing. But he was stuck in the threshold between the humid air that had pooled in the stairwell and the cool air of the basement. Perspiration wet his brow. As he gripped a screwdriver, he pushed his bangs out of his face with the back of his hand.
I got him a glass of water. Set it beside him, on the carpet.
He set the screwdriver down and took a drink. “Thanks.”
While he was finishing, I repotted my plants. Of all the things that had been destroyed, the plants were the most disturbing. It seemed, somehow, just a little too personal.
Leo came over to the bar to join me after he was done. He took up a plastic cup I was using as a watering can and poured some water into one of the pots.
As he was doing that, his phone rang. He walked over to the couch where his jacket was lying and pulled it from the pocket. “Detective Baroni.” He listened for a moment. “Yeah. The Burdell case. That’s right.” He turned slightly toward me. Paused. Turned away.
What was happening?
“Sure. Yes.” Another pause from Leo. He sat down on the couch. “So we’re transferring it to you then? You’re taking jurisdiction?” He gestured for me to come join him.
I walked over. Stood beside him.
“Can I ask why?” As he listened, he gestured with an open hand to the cushion beside him.
I sat.
“My notes? Sure. I don’t have them with me now, but I can go over them with you.” He paused again, listening. “I have her contact information, but I could just pass the phone to her if you want. I’m with her.” He wrapped his palm around the speaking end of his phone and turned to me. “The case has been transferred to the FBI. We’ll be working with them, but they’re taking the lead.”
“The FBI?”
“I’ll explain later. But they want to talk to you.” He offered me his phone.
I took it. “Hello?”
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