by C. D. Reiss
“You’ll forget her, Jon,” I said. “And you won’t be like me. You’ll find someone else.”
“I don’t want to.” He held up his glass for a toast. “Here’s to me being like you.”
“I’ll toast to you being you.” I completed the toast and drank before he could object.
It would be close to a year before he collapsed into his girlfriend’s arms at an art show. A year of the status quo wearing memories into harmless spheres with no jagged edges. Until one ball bearing hit another and they broke into heart-shredding shards. Jonathan’s heart was bad and no one had told him his father had died of an overdose but might have lived if it wasn’t for a heart that didn’t work quite right.
Almost a year later, everything flipped. I was in the hospital, thinking of Jon as the son I’d lost, not the brother I’d had.
5
2015
For years at a time, I referred to myself as a childless single woman, even when looking in the mirror. I observed my flat stomach and thought, “Well that’s because you’ve never had any children.”
Funny how the mind works.
And when I ran into Will Santon, my head of investigations, and his four-year-old in the line for coffee, I thought, “I don’t have one of those.”
I guess I hadn’t had one of those. I’d had a brother.
Right. Maybe my mind’s tricks were somersaults into truth.
I hired Will to do the things I wasn’t supposed to do. Unsanctioned information gathering. Tough interviews. Covert recordings. Spy shit. He had a good touch and was so smart I sometimes called him just to talk out a problem.
“Miss Margie!” she cried.
“Hannah,” Will said, “it’s Ms. Drazen.”
Will was in his late thirties, looked late twenties, and had the mind of a man who had seen eighty years’ worth of suffering.
“It’s nice to see you, Hannah,” I said.
Her eyes were the same gray as her dad’s, and her skin was the rich brown of a mixed-race girl. She hugged her father’s leg, twisting her head until her face was smushed.
“Have I ever told you how much I like your name?”
“It was her mother’s mother’s name,” her dad said. The US Army had made him a widower when Hannah was just a baby. He was handsome and strong. We’d had a few tumbles in bed. It was fine. Great, even. But I didn’t do emotions and he didn’t do commitments, so we stopped fucking before either became necessary.
“I like it.”
“She’s going to hate it someday,” he said, picking her up.
“Why?”
We moved up in the line.
“Evergreen name. That’s what Wanda called it.”
“Evergreen?” I said. “That’s code for what?”
“Old lady.” When he smiled, his face got less rugged, less angular and hard.
“As the proud owner of an evergreen name, I assure you, it never stopped me from being young.”
An unmarried, childless woman in her late forties is the constant recipient of a certain look. Not pity. Not understanding. Sometimes curiosity. Often bitterness tinged with accusation. Maybe a lick of condescension. I constantly fell into the twist of a conversation, in the dark corners around what’s unsaid. Saying I was young once opened me up to that look, and under normal circumstances, I would have regretted saying it.
But not with Will. He never made me feel like a spinster. He looked me in the eyes when he said, “I bet it didn’t.”
I leaned close to Hannah and said softly, pretending Will didn’t hear everything, “Have you ever tried the snowman cookies?”
She shook her head.
“Would you like to?”
She looked at her father, who raised an eyebrow and said, “Not before lunch.”
“I didn’t ask you, Delta.”
He kept his eyes on mine for a half a second. They flicked over my body, then back to my face. His jaw worked into a smile that never found his lips, a readjustment at the joint, a relaxing of the chin. Even past the short, dark beard, I could see every muscle. I wondered what his neck tasted like.
“We aren’t in the office,” he said. “You’re not the boss.”
“Of course I am.”
“You’re lucky Hannah’s with me.”
“I felt pretty lucky when I got up this morning.” My smile took on a life of its own. Resisting it was making my entire face twitch.
“Next guest please!” The call dripped with cheerful impatience.
“Three snowman cookies,” I said. “Two large coffees.”
“Three?” Will asked.
“So she doesn’t have to share.”
That was the benefit of being a childless, unmarried, middle-aged woman. I got to write my own fucking rules.
“She didn’t eat her vegetables last night,” Will scolded.
“Nanette gave no treat!” Hannah complained about her au pair. “Daddy was out with Brian’s mommy and there was no treat.”
“Daddy was out with Brian’s mommy?” I raised my eyebrow at Hannah.
“From my school. She’s really pretty. Her name means angel.”
Will shrugged.
I smiled. “You can have my cookie, Hannah.” My phone rang. I would have ignored it, but it was passed through a cloaked number I used for emergencies. “Hello?”
I handed Hannah the bag with the treats, and Will took his coffee.
“What do you say?” Will asked his daughter.
“Is this Margaret Drazen?” asked the woman on the phone.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, spilling crumbs on her father’s jacket.
“Yes,” I said, then mouthed the girl a, “You’re welcome.”
“This is Sequoia Hospital.”
The color must have drained from my face, because Will let Hannah slide to her feet and watched me as if he thought he would have to catch me.
“What is it?” I snapped as if I were impatient for bad news.
The woman answered. “Are you the emergency contact for Jonathan Drazen?”
6
The last time I’d been at Sequoia for Jonathan, he’d almost died. It took me seconds to decide this wasn’t as serious. He was thirty-two. Divorced already, with an ex dying to get her hands on his money. A grown man with an empire of his own and a girlfriend he had actual feelings for. He’d collapsed in front of her at an art show. It was probably exhaustion or a virus. Dehydration. Whatever. Healthy men in their early thirties rarely collapse from something that’ll kill them, but they don’t collapse over nothing.
Trust me on that.
I’d convinced myself, before I even put the car in park, that it wasn’t suicide again. For a malcontent, Jon seemed pretty happy. He was going to win this latest battle with his ex. His business was finally separated from our father’s. The girlfriend seemed devoted enough, and because I’d had to fix this latest mess with his ex-wife, I’d learned she shared his unusual sexual proclivities. He trusted me that much.
I was told he wasn’t in the ER anymore. They’d moved him upstairs to the ICU.
Still convinced it was nothing, I made my way upstairs.
As I watched the elevator lights blink, my eyes fell on the red button at the bottom of the panel. It was a circle with the word ALARM next to it, and braille raised underneath. The paint was scraped off the first A and the RM, leaving LA.
Leaving LA.
Drew rode this elevator with me in 1999. The city had been less crowded and the night had been darker. Jonathan had been no more than an elephant in the room.
I’d been so fierce then.
And now?
The doors opened on my floor before I defined what fierceness had turned into.
* * *
The girlfriend was already sitting on a mauve chair in a beige waiting room. Monica. She was five-ten, brown eyes, long dark hair falling out of an up-do. She was still in heels and a party dress.
“I think he was poisoned.” Her voice usually had a throaty ton
e, but exhaustion and tears had made it worse. She twisted one of Jonathan’s linen handkerchiefs.
She was distraught enough for both of us, which worked because I wasn’t upset at all. Between a serious illness and foul play, I’d give about even odds. Throw in the possibility of indigestion or exhaustion and the odds of the other two shrank to mathematical irrelevance.
“Poisoned,” I repeated so she could see how silly it sounded. “By whom?”
“Jessica. Maybe?”
“His ex-wife isn’t that bright.”
Her eyes darted around the corners and settled in her lap. Monica wasn’t a shy woman, but she was holding something back, and her discretion could be easily confused for bashfulness.
“Your father was there. At the museum.” A quick glance. A hardened jaw. “But he’s not here.”
“He went to get our mother.”
She leveled her gaze on me. “Jonathan doesn’t trust him.”
The sentence had a weight that implied layers of meaning under Jonathan’s well-earned distrust.
“Jonathan wasn’t poisoned,” I said. “This is probably nothing, and if you say what I think you’re going to say, it will put me in an awkward position. I’m too old for awkward positions.”
She blinked. “You’re right. I’m a little stressed.”
I put my hand on hers. “Trust me. You guys are going to be doing… whatever it is you do in no time.”
It helped, in those moments, to think of Jonathan as my brother. These days, I rarely thought of him as anything else.
My phone beeped with a text. It was Will Santon.
—Is everything all right?—
—Ducky—
—I have people on Theresa. Does she need to know what happened?—
Right. Theresa was her own problem. She’d taken off with a mobster, trying to erase a lifetime of goody-two-shoes behavior. It was my job to hover in the background to make sure she didn’t get into trouble.
—Not yet. Don’t think it’s a big deal—
After verifying that my brother wasn’t in a life-or-death situation, Will called on the secure line. He’d only call if he had something he didn’t want to text. I excused myself and went into the hallway to pick up.
“How much time do you have?” he asked.
“Five minutes. Give me the bullet points.” I approached the coffee vending machine and got out a card.
“Do you know a South African named Deacon Bruce?”
I hadn’t heard that name in years, but I’d never forget it.
“Define ‘know.’”
I made my beverage choice. Hot and black. My hands were cold.
“If he was extradited back here to face criminal charges, would he have anything to say about you?”
Deacon was my sister Fiona’s ex-something. I’d had one interaction with him, and it involved tying her rapist to a tree. My first fix. Soon after I’d turned my back on Drew.
“What kind of charges?”
“I have no idea.” He sighed as if he needed a moment to consider what he was going to tell me. “I overheard a phone conversation last night.”
The machine rumbled. A paper cup dropped into the slot.
“You were on a date last night.”
“Yeah. My brothers are paranoid. They found out my date is a federal agent who’s on the Drazens.”
There was always someone on the Drazens. They had a dossier on us the size of an unabridged dictionary.
“Way to pick ‘em,” I said.
“Can you answer the question?”
Hot black liquid flowed into the cup with a gurgle and a hiss. I remembered that year. It was ages ago, but in California, there was no statute of limitations on attempted murder. The coffee was a solid line. It looked still, but it flowed on and on.
“They’ll never extradite him unless he wants to be extradited. Are you sure you don’t know what they’re looking for?”
“I don’t. Do you?”
Had I been sloppy? Did I know something now that I hadn’t known then?
Two men had loved Fiona. I’d used both of them, Jonathan, and others to avenge her rape by Warren Chilton. Deacon had wanted to kill him. I’d talked him out of it.
Maybe the entire thing had been too complicated to cover.
“Yes. I know.” The spigot squeezed closed and the plastic door unlocked. Wincing from the heat, I took my coffee. “Before we met. 1999. You’re clear.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
Pressing my hands against the hot sides of the cup, I wove back to where I’d started. “That’s noble. But I am. You have a daughter.”
“I won’t let you get put away.”
“Dear Lord,” I prayed out loud, stopping in the middle of a wide, empty hallway that echoed, “I enjoy working with Will. Don’t let him trust me too much.”
“Your prayers are answered, sweetheart. I’ll trust you until I can’t.”
No one else would have dared call me sweetheart. Will could get away with a lot. He was the only friend I had.
I backtracked down another hall and turned at a Monet print I recognized. “Good, because I can’t replace you, but neither can Hannah.”
I wound up back in the waiting room. Monica was standing with her hands folded in front of her, talking to two men in lab coats. Doctors.
“I won’t argue with that,” Will said.
“Your three hundred seconds are up.” I softened my voice. Something in my brother’s girlfriend’s demeanor rubbed my hard edges smooth. “Really, I have to go.”
I hung up and stood next to Monica. “What’s going on?”
She pointed at the doctors, her face twisted into something crushingly sad. “I know him.”
She was going to break into tears. He must be an old boyfriend or some shit. Nothing she should be getting her knickers in a twist about.
I took her by the biceps. “Keep it together.”
She sucked her lips in her teeth and clamped her eyes shut. Took a big, gunky swallow. “He’s a cardiologist.”
The doctors, tired of waiting, came to us. Monica tried to keep her shit in a sock, but it didn’t work. She sniffed hard. Real messy crier. Maybe this wasn’t an ex-boyfriend. Maybe an ex-husband. Maybe a long-lost lover. Jesus, I’d cry too.
“Monica,” the blond one said.
“Hi, Brad.”
No love. No sexual tension.
“I’m sorry to meet under these circumstances. This is Dr.—”
He was talking. Telling the other doctor how he knew Monica.
Neighbors. They were neighbors.
I fell into a hairline crack of time.
He’s a cardiologist.
She was upset because he was a cardiologist.
Why would a cardiologist be coming into the waiting room to talk about my brother’s indigestion/exhaustion?
Strat had a heart problem.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”
Brad held out his hand. “I’m sorry, you’re the patient’s…?” He paused to let me fill in the blank.
“I’m his…” Mother.
“Sister,” Monica interjected when the word fell back down my throat.
I was his mother, and my son’s father had had a genetic heart defect that killed him when he overdosed. I was his failed mother who’d never fought for him because reasons. Because fear. Because I was just a kid.
Brad was talking far, far away.
Why would a 31 year-old man have a heart attack?
There must be ancillary problems. A genetic defect, maybe.
I was a smart person.
I was not emotional or hysterical.
He was saying something about staying calm. About the best cardiac unit in the country, but I couldn’t hear it because reasons. Because I couldn’t. Because hearing it might hurt too much. Because I’d had rock music in my head and drugs in my blood.
Because I’d loved both of them and I had nothing left for my own child.
> Who I loved.
Who I loved, and who was in serious trouble.
“Can I have some water?” I croaked. “I think I need to sit down.”
Monica led me to a chair, and there, for a crack of time that was indefinable, I fell down an abyss I recognized. But this time, there was no Drew to tell me to breathe.
They needed to know. For his sake, they needed to know.
My mouth opened and the secret hovered in the back of my throat, crouched and afraid of the light.
My hand closed around a cold cup. Water would wash the secret down or lubricate its journey. I gulped. It chilled my insides, mouth to sternum.
“Are you all right?” Monica asked, eyes big with worry.
“Yeah.” My head was more clear. “Where are the doctors?”
Monica pointed at the other side of the room where they sat across from Mom, speaking in hushed voices. She had her coat and bag. Her hair was a mess. She must have just arrived.
I couldn’t hear them, and I thought for a second that if I used the same hushed voice, they wouldn’t actually hear the secret.
I got up and stood next to my mother. She took my hand as if it were a lifeline. I’d never felt more isolated than when she reached out to me. If I had to tell, I wouldn’t do it in front of her. Daddy could break it to her if she’d even speak to him long enough to hear it.
“We were just telling your mother what we told you,” Dr. Thorensen said.
What had they told me? I’d lost it in guilt and confusion.
“Go on,” I replied.
“It’s unusual for a man his age to present with a heart attack, but it’s not unheard of. We’re checking for blockages, heart defects, and the like. Until then—”
“So if there’s a defect, you’ll see it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What if it’s genetic?” I asked. “Will that make a difference?”
Dr. Emerson answered, “Only for his children. He’ll have to keep on top of them.”
“His father’s heart’s perfect,” Mom said. “And mine too.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Thorensen said. “Defects can skip multiple generations. Bottom line, if he needs a bypass, he’ll get it once he’s stable. This cardiac unit is the best in California and one of the top five in the nation. He’s going to get all the care he needs. Just leave it to us.”