by Joe Hill
Before he reaches the door, Lonergan considers a run down to the basement. When the kids came to live with them, he made a point of locking up his Smith & Wesson SD9 so his granddaughter would never stumble upon it.
But Lonergan figures by the time he finds the keys, goes downstairs, unlocks the closet, unlocks the safe, unlocks the trigger lock, whoever’s out front will have woken the entire house, maybe even broken down the damn door. So he continues on.
• • •
Peering through the one-way wide angle viewer, Lonergan sees that he’s guessed right. It’s the son-in-law.
Son-in-law is wearing shorts, a polo shirt, tennis shoes with no socks. Does he think he’s in the Bahamas instead of upstate Pennsylvania in the middle of February? Granted, it’s been a relatively mild winter up here in the mountains. But that doesn’t mean you should dress to go yachting.
Lonergan hesitates for a minute, hand on the doorknob, steeling himself for whatever bullshit is about to fly out of the boyfriend’s mouth—though he is morbidly curious about what the boyfriend might say after all this time. He flips the lock no problem, but his dumb rubber hands have a hard time grasping the doorknob. By the time he finally manages to open the door with both hands he’s already annoyed.
Son-in-law looks down at Lonergan like he’s anticipating a fight.
“Mr. Lonergan, I want to see my son.”
“Isaiah, it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
“I really need to see him now.”
Lonergan spots a late-model Dodge Charger idling in the driveway, light gray exhaust chugging out of the tailpipe. He didn’t even turn his car off? What, does the son-in-law assume Lonergan will hurry back into the house, dart into the spare bedroom, scoop up the baby and then just hand him over? With maybe some gas money and a hot coffee for the road?
Son-in-law takes Lonergan’s hesitation as an invitation. He steps forward as if to scoot right past him. Lonergan shifts his body to block him.
“Here’s what I need,” Lonergan says. “I need you to turn around and drive the fuck home.”
“You can’t keep me from my son.”
“Maybe not, but I can kick you off my property.”
“I have to see him.”
“Not tonight you don’t.”
Isaiah takes another step forward. Lonergan places a hand on Isaiah’s chest and gives him a firm push back. This should tell him: you’ve gone far enough.
But the son-in-law holds his ground, sensing that maybe he has the advantage. People have underestimated Lonergan since high school—he’s only five seven. And Isaiah is a gangly six four.
“Go home, Isaiah,” Lonergan says. “Before I call the police.”
Lonergan plans on calling the police anyway. As much as Lonergan would like to pound Isaiah Edwards into raw hamburger on the front porch, he knows Isaiah would just hire some fancy lawyer and they’d be in danger of losing the kids.
No, it would be much better if his daughter’s widower turned around, climbed back into his expensive car and drove back to Philadelphia. There’s only one route he can take: I-476, the northeast extension of the turnpike. The state troopers will have plenty of time to pick up Isaiah during his two-hour haul back to the city.
“I don’t have any problems with the police,” Isaiah mutters, but his eyes say the exact opposite.
“Isaiah, don’t bullshit me at three in the morning. You’ve been on the run for two months. You missed your Daria’s funeral.”
“I couldn’t get back home in time. But I’m here now.”
“Don’t give a shit.”
“Just let me hold him.”
“Not tonight.”
“I was stuck in China on business!”
“Good night,” Lonergan says, then pushes on Isaiah’s chest with his fingertips.
For a moment Isaiah allows himself to be pushed. But then he plants a foot behind him, grabs Lonergan’s hand, and twists.
Fourth of July fireworks blast up Lonergan’s arm and down his spine. He falls to his knees in his own doorway, not even aware that he is screaming. Crushing waves of dizziness wash over him.
But Isaiah doesn’t let go of his hand. He twists, and twists, and twists.
2
The pain started a couple of years ago, and like a typical guy Lonergan ignored it for as long as possible. But at the start of last summer, it got to the point that he couldn’t hold a hammer properly. Diagnosis: carpal tunnel, which meant the thumb and first two fingers of each hand would go numb, tingle, or ache at random intervals.
The doctor whom Lonergan had been seeing as infrequently as possible for the past 20 years said it was simple: he needed surgery. Lonergan told the doc his insurance wouldn’t cover it. The doc looked up his plan and agreed: Lonergan’s insurance wouldn’t cover it. But Lonergan needed surgery nonetheless. They went round and round like this for a while.
Finally the doc agreed to prescribe pain pills, which helped a little. Before, it felt like razor blades were grinding away at the inside of his knuckles. With the pills, it felt like butter knives. The pills did nothing, however, for the bouts of numbness. You need surgery for that, the doctor reminded him. Lonergan reminded the doc that so-called affordable care, in this case, would bankrupt them.
He tried to work through the pain, but the side effects of those pills included exhaustion, dizziness and nausea. These are not symptoms you want to deal with while building someone a full deck off the back of their house.
So Lonergan’s only option was to take time off work and pray that his hands would heal themselves. Or at least get him back to the point where he could hold his tools. Jovie still had her job at the Woodlands, even though her feet ached all the time, and Lonergan was convinced she was going to need surgery, too. They were the perfect couple. Between the two of them, they had exactly one set of functional appendages.
Had Daria told her boyfriend about Lonergan’s hands? It’s very likely. Lonergan made some of the furniture sitting in their house back in Fishtown. At some point Daria must have told him that her father built those bookcases and that entertainment center with his own two hands, and now he couldn’t work because of those hands. If Isaiah knew, that means he came up here with a plan in mind.
• • •
Lonergan doesn’t pass out completely, but for an indeterminate amount of time his brain stops recording. Sad thing is, this is probably the best sleep he’s had in months.
When he finally snaps awake he has no idea why he’s sprawled out on his own porch in the freezing cold. Then he remembers the knocking. The boyfriend. The baby . . . oh God the baby.
Lonergan makes a pair of fists, not giving a damn about the razor blades in his knuckles. He presses them against the wooden slats of the porch. He pushes himself up. The ground feels like jelly. He leans against the doorway and takes some deep breaths to clear his head. Then he marches back into his house.
Because now Isaiah Edwards is trespassing.
Lonergan’s rage gives him all of the strength he needs. He is already relishing the idea of standing at his kitchen sink and washing Isaiah’s blood off his knuckles.
The living room is empty. Inside the hearth, the dying embers of last evening’s fire wink at him. Isaiah couldn’t have come and gone already; the Charger is still humming outside. That means he’s in the baby’s room. Lonergan charges toward the hallway like a bulldozer, anticipating the worst.
But he only makes it three steps. Isaiah is in the hallway, face-down, arms and legs spread out as if he was attempting a high dive. The back of his head is wet and contorted.
And Jovie, practically naked, is standing over him with a dented can of baby formula in her right hand.
3 TWO MONTHS AGO
Life as they knew it came to an end in mid-December. Lonergan had been clearing the supper dishes when Jovie’s cell went off. She hopped up from the kitchen table to find it.
Lonergan had been looking forward to spending the rest of the night wit
h some bourbon. Jovie had been working on a bottle of red since before dinner. He’d taken pain pills with his meal, so he was good on the hands front. Sure, he shouldn’t mix pills and bourbon. But it was Tuesday night and he hasn’t had to get up for work for seven months, so what difference did it make?
Lonergan was rinsing turkey gravy from a bowl when he heard this horrible choking gasp. He’ll never forget the look in her eyes. It was like someone buried a steak knife in her back all the way to the hilt. Lonergan thought she was going to fall over. The plate slipped out of his hands and shattered in the sink.
He ran over to her with dripping hands and held her up with his forearms, still no idea what was going on. Her cell phone slipped away and hit the ground; later they’d discover that the screen had cracked.
It took Lonergan a while to get it out of her, and when she finally told, all the blood drained out of his head. Nothing looked right, nothing sounded right. He didn’t know what world he was living in. Pretty sure at that moment Jovie was holding Lonergan up just as much as he was holding her.
They left for Philadelphia not too long after. There wasn’t time to cry; no time to think at all, really. The babies were alone with the police. The sun had already set and the drive would take at least two hours. The cops promised someone would stay with the kids until they arrived.
“I’m driving,” Jovie said.
Lonergan said, “I really don’t think you should be behind the wheel right now.”
“You told me it hurts to drive.”
It was true. Usually his carpal tunnel meant that clutching a steering wheel was a bit of an ordeal after an hour, but he didn’t care about that right now.
“Please, let me do this for you.”
“I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have something to focus on.”
“You had a few glasses of wine.”
“Yeah, and right now I don’t feel a thing.”
So she drove. He knew it was useless to argue when she’d made up her mind about something.
• • •
They had made the trip from Bear Creek to Philly quite a bit over the past two years—Jovie more than Lonergan. It’s a leisurely, two-hour descent from bucolic mountains straight into the bowels of urban hell. With every passing mile, everything beautiful about Pennsylvania slowly turns to shit.
Some people love Philadelphia. Some get a flutter in the heart when they see trash and busted-up houses and homeless people eyeing you from every corner. Could be that some people enjoy the thrill of possibly getting mugged at knifepoint. Or they like living with everyone piled on top of them, next to them, under them. But Lonergan hated the city, and couldn’t believe Daria had ever moved down there in the first place.
“Did the cops say if the son-in-law is on his way?” Lonergan asked.
“They said the kids were alone,” Jovie said. “How could that bastard leave them all alone for so long?”
“Is he on another business trip?”
“That’s no excuse.”
“I’m not saying that it is. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Lonergan played out the rest of the conversation in his mind like a little chess game and realized that it would inevitably lead them to the part where he asks Jovie about the last time she talked to their daughter. So he shut up and looked off to the horizon.
Lonergan and Jovie made it to Daria’s house a little after nine. A bunch of cops were standing outside. One of them broke from the pack.
“You the parents?”
The cop who approached them was about Lonergan’s age. Latino, buzz cut, with the nameplate SEGURA. His face tried to project some kind of empathy, but his eyes said that he’d done this dozens of times before.
Jovie suddenly couldn’t find the words—something about the question flipped a switch in her brain. Lonergan stepped in.
“We’re her parents.”
Segura extended his hand for a shake, but Lonergan couldn’t do that, so he gave him a fist bump, hoping he’d get it. Cop probably thought Lonergan was a germaphobe. Whatever. Segura led the way into the house.
The first thing to hit Lonergan was the stench—like someone had been sick recently. The startled look on Jovie’s face told him she smelled it, too. The weird thing was, the house was spotless. Other than a few toys scattered around the floor, it looked as normal as their own home.
“Come on upstairs. Officer Walczak is there with the kids.”
In the master bedroom, a young female cop with full-sleeve tattoos sat on a mattress and rocked the baby. Across from her was Hailee, who was sitting on the floor and was playing a game on an iPhone.
“Hailee, sweetie, can you introduce me to your grandparents?”
Hailee didn’t respond at first.
“Hailee, honey?” Jovie said.
The girl looked up at her Nana, and a microsecond later she started bawling. Jovie scooped her up and hugged her tight, trying to keep it together herself. Hailee whispered something to Jovie, who promptly carried her into the bathroom.
At this point the police didn’t know the particulars, only that it had happened sometime last night, and it wasn’t until the next afternoon that Hailee finally called 911 and told them that her little brother was crying and her mommy wouldn’t wake up.
“She tried to do CPR on her mom,” Walczak said. “That’s what she told me, anyway.”
Walczak carefully handed Lonergan the baby.
“I changed him,” she said. “I’ve got a little one at home, so I know the drill. He was a little . . . messy.”
Lonergan mumbled his thanks and took little Brandon, trying to keep his hands still as possible. He’d never been comfortable holding babies, even back when his hands worked properly.
He couldn’t help but wonder: how long had his daughter and grandchildren been alone in this house?
Brandon was fussing so Lonergan walked around the house a little. From all outward appearances, the place looked okay. Daria was like her mother. Even when things were at their worst and practically spiraling out of control, she kept a tidy place. Lonergan used to joke that Jovie would crawl out of her deathbed to make sure all of the laundry was done before she expired. That joke didn’t seem so funny anymore.
Lonergan made his way down to the kitchen because the little guy was amping up his fussing. Maybe he could find a pacifier down here. He opened cabinet doors at random until he found three plastic milk jugs filled with vomit.
4 NOW
Lonergan and Jovie can’t quite bring themselves to make eye contact, so they stare down at the corpse. Blood is still dripping out of Isaiah’s head and splattering onto the hardwood floor.
“Huh,” Lonergan says.
Jovie is wearing what she usually sleeps in, even on the coldest nights: a pair of silk panties. Dark blood is streaked across her arms and décolletage. The same blood that, until very recently, had been pumping through Isaiah’s veins.
“The way you screamed, I thought he killed you,” Jovie says.
“He surprised me.”
“Are you okay?”
Lonergan has been downplaying how badly his hands hurt and now isn’t exactly the time to come clean. “Let’s worry about me later.”
“Is he dead?” Lonergan asks.
“Do you want me to check him for a pulse?”
He isn’t sure if she means that as a joke or what. When the tears come, he understands.
“Oh god, Lonny. What are we going to do? I just killed him. I just killed the father of one of our grandbabies.”
Lonergan shakes his head. “No, that was self-defense. He trespassed, he was going to hurt the kids, he could have easily hurt you . . .”
But a troubled expression washes over Jovie’s face.
“What?” Lonergan asks. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t self-defense.”
“Of course it was.”
“Listen to me. I heard you get out of bed so I followed you. I waited in the living room
. I heard you talking. Then I heard you scream.”
“Jovie, stop it.”
“But it wasn’t just the scream. I knew he’d come here for the baby. And there was no way he was taking him. So I grabbed the heaviest thing I could find and I walked up behind him and killed him. I don’t even think he heard me coming. So it’s my fault. I’ll tell the police what happened, I’ll confess . . .”
“You’re not going to confess to anything.”
Lonergan really wishes he had gone down to the basement for his gun. It would have been easy. Isaiah would have opened his big dumb mouth. Lonergan would have showed him the gun. Isaiah would have been on his way. The cops would have scooped him up on the turnpike. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, as Hailee likes to say.
But no, Isaiah had to fuck with Lonergan’s hands and force his way into the house and put all of them in this predicament.
“Lonny, even if we convince the police that this was self-defense, they’re going to take the babies.”
Jovie calls her husband “Lonny,” short for Lonergan, because he hates his first name and has forbidden anyone to speak it in his presence.
“They won’t do that,” Lonergan says.
“Oh yes they will. Think about it from their point of view. Why take a chance on leaving two innocent children with a couple of killers?”
Lonergan is no lawyer, but what Jovie is saying makes a lot of sense. The babies have no other living relatives. If Jovie’s right, then the kids would be headed straight into the foster system. That is not going to happen. Lonergan is more certain of that than anything else in his life.
“Get cleaned up,” Lonergan says, “I’ll take care of this.”
Jovie starts to open her mouth, but before she can say anything Lonergan steps over the corpse and puts his arms around her. She pulls away at first, nodding down to the blood on her body. Lonergan doesn’t care. He holds her tight against him. They’re the exact same height; when Jovie wears heels, she definitely has the size advantage.
“I know what I’m doing,” Lonergan whispers, and he knew she knew what he meant. Nothing more needed to be said.