by C. D. Reiss
Will kicked his calf.
“She’s always serious,” Gareth said, swinging around to tap on his keyboard.
“They were gods.” Cooper snapped up the book.
“You were pissing in diapers when they split up,” Gareth said dryly, navigating to Reddit on one screen and a Tor browser on the other. Engrossed in his new inquiry, he continued as if I wasn’t there. “Then it was music production. Heroin. Infighting. Singer died. Cut to commercial before the uplifting denouement.”
“Geniuses. Three guys sounded like a dozen.” Cooper turned to me. “How did you know them?”
“Carnally.”
Gareth turned a subtle shade of red and Cooper pretended he hadn’t heard me. It was adorable. Seeing this, Will blurted out a laugh, then I joined him. The brothers bent over their work as we snickered.
“Let’s leave these Boy Scouts alone,” Will said, waving me into his office.
“Fuck off, man.” Cooper punched a code in one of the room’s doors.
Will closed the office door behind me. He had an expensive maple desk and plants in every corner. Pictures of his wife and daughter. The space had a warmth I rarely saw in the man. I sat on the short couch by the window.
“Water?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He reached into a refrigerator hidden in the bookcase and got two bottles. He sat across from me, putting them on the table between us.
“The walls are soundproofed,” he said, cracking open his bottle.
“You have yet to surprise me.”
“Sorry about my brothers.” He drank then pointed the mouth of the bottle at the door. “They think you’re an old spinster.”
“Oh, thanks. I needed to know that.”
“Just saying I know better.”
“Are you trying to get in my pants, William?”
He smiled and put down his bottle. I had no idea what was on his mind, but I was glad for the distraction.
“You hired me to work on the mess with Carrie,” he said.
“You were so young and so well-connected.”
“Remember when Leanne was held in solitary confinement by the Chinese government?”
“Oh, my God, Delta,” I said through a laugh.
“And her boyfriend came home without her?”
“And you nearly pushed him through a brick wall?”
“Or the time your father found out you were giving Deirdre a stipend?”
“And she was passing it right to a fund for orphans in Congo.”
“And Fiona.”
“Fucking Fiona. You weren’t around for the worst of it.”
He didn’t add our lies about Rachel or Sheila’s anger management. He didn’t mention all the money we’d found hidden by my grandfather to evade prison, or how we’d rerouted it to right as many wrongs as we could. He didn’t know everything, but he knew far more than anyone else.
“We’ve been through a lot,” he said.
“I sense a point coming.”
“All these years, and you never asked me to look for him.”
I cleared my throat, unwinding my legs and recoiling them in the opposite direction, wishing for the distractions of thirty seconds ago. “So?”
“So. I could have found him ten years ago.”
“I didn’t want to find him ten years ago. I didn’t want to find him yesterday. And unless you want to stop cashing my checks, that’s my call.” I thought I was done, but I wasn’t. “I mean, are you implying I didn’t think you had the chops to find him? It wasn’t you or your agency. If I thought you were shit at your job, I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be across town at Brockton Associates, getting my ring kissed at eight hundred an hour plus expenses.”
His hands were between his legs, tented against each other, fingertips touching, then tapping. He was counting. The motherfucker was counting the seconds go by so I’d have enough time to say something I’d regret.
“If I didn’t know any better,” I said, despite my better judgment, “I’d think you were trying to dig into my personal feelings.”
His fingertips only tapped twice before he answered. “Do you want to find McCaffrey now? One hundred percent?”
“For the sake of argument? Let’s say yes.”
He looked at his hands then sat back, leaning his temple on his forefinger. “Then I have to tell you something that will make things uncomfortable.”
“Is this where you tell me you’ve always loved me?”
He laughed. “No. Yes, but no.” He readjusted in his chair as if he couldn’t find the right position.
“Yes, but no?” I crossed my arms.
“Not like that. We had a few great nights.”
“I was there.”
“We stopped at the right time, but we didn’t stop before I started caring about you.”
I hadn’t walked in the door expecting this conversation, and I wasn’t getting trapped in a dialogue about our shared emotional shortcomings.
On the other hand, I cared about him too.
“If you develop feelings for everyone you take to bed, you’re going to need therapy.”
“It’s more of an ‘I want Margie to be happy’ feeling.”
“Great. Same for me. Are we done?”
He kept on going as if I wasn’t already halfway out of my seat. “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to ask me to find McCaffrey. And then a couple of years ago… I stopped waiting.”
He stopped waiting? Meaning it wasn’t on his mind anymore?
Or meaning…
“You already know where he is?”
“Gareth has to get me visual confirmation before I say yes.”
I sank deep into the cushions, looking at the texture of the carpet without really seeing it, listening to the whoosh of the air vents without really hearing it.
All I’d had to do was ask. All this time… years, apparently… Drew was a single degree of separation away. He existed in my world, and my world changed. “Where is he?”
“Lately, he’s been working as a session man in Seattle. Calls himself Trevor Stone. When he went underground, he went deep. Avoided all the celebrity gossip. The entire internet went dark on him.”
He was that committed to never seeing me again.
That wasn’t supposed to hurt. Nothing was supposed to hurt, but when my tower was torn down, it was demolished. Well, fuck him. He was going to have to work harder than that.
“Married?” I asked, rolling the word around my mouth as if it didn’t cut like steel wool and taste like shit.
“No wife, no kids. He moves around a lot.”
Will was pretending to look away, but I caught him gauging my reaction.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Are you?”
“Spit it out.”
“I went to meet him.”
Well, wasn’t that just a blender in the gut.
“Did you just say you met him?”
“I wanted to see what kind of man would leave you. That’s all.”
“That’s all?”
“It’s my job to be curious.”
In pure frustration with his defensiveness and opacity, I growled and held up my fists before banging the table. “Speak! Will Santon, I command you to fucking tell me the whole of it without stopping. Do not wait for me to ask a question. Do not pause respectfully. Do not hesitate so you can soften a blow. Just. Speak.”
“First I need you to understand it was out of friendship.”
“I understand, and if you stall one more time, I’m going to strangle you out of friendship.”
“Okay, okay. More water?” He was smiling, the rat fucker. I was his boss, but he wouldn’t let me boss him around.
“No.”
“Good. Well, it was last year. Seattle, like I said. He’d done a good job of disappearing, but once we found him, we kept on him.”
“We? Your brothers were in on it?”
“You’re not allowed to interrupt if you want me to ke
ep talking.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“I know. And yes. Gareth, Cooper, and sometimes Braden kept tabs on McCaffrey. I couldn’t do it myself without you knowing. You’re up my ass thirty hours a week.”
It was more like fifty according to his billing statements, but I didn’t press for accuracy.
“I just…” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “When your brother got divorced, it bothered you. I don’t care why, so don’t tell me. Actually, when anything happens with him, you have a disproportionate reaction.”
“You’re really stepping over a line here.”
“Fire me then. Because you had us digging up shit on your sister-in-law to help your brother with his divorce. All I could think was there was a guy out there you should have married and this was why you were turning into a lunatic. I had to meet that guy.”
My arms were crossed so tightly they ached. “Under what pretenses?”
“I told him I was a music blogger.”
A laugh shot out my throat. “Did he believe you?”
“No. He said Indy McCaffrey was dead to the music world. He thought you sent me.”
He thought I sent—?
What?
I navigated between warm satisfaction and cold shock. Drew had thought of me. Considered me. Knew I existed in the world. How had I assumed otherwise? Hadn’t I thought of him, even when I forgot him?
“How did he seem?” I asked. “Is he all right?”
Before replying, Will fidgeted with his pinkie ring. “Not…” He looked down as if rearranging his words. “I don’t know him. Maybe he always looks like that.”
“Is he drinking?”
“Not in front of me. I’d say no. He didn’t have that bloated look drinkers get. He looked…” He considered again. “Hungry.”
“Like he didn’t have enough to eat?” I could fix that. I could do it without him even knowing.
“No. Like he didn’t have enough… I don’t know. Something.” He shook his head. “I should have sent Cooper.” He rubbed his fingertips as if to bring that one indefinable thing into existence.
“Are you a PI or a two-bit psychic waiting for me to fill in the blanks for you? Give me something I can work with.”
Nothing was forthcoming, but I knew what he meant by hungry. I had the same emptiness in my heart. It was a pinhole that slow-leaked the possibility of loving anyone else. The pressure sucked my skin tighter over my bones, squeezing my insides until there was no room for sustenance.
“We found him because he spent some time in prison. Eighteen months for negligent vehicular manslaughter.”
He’d killed someone driving drunk? God damn him. I didn’t think I had any softness for Drew left inside me, but when they melted, I knew I’d fooled myself for years. The places in my heart he owned would never fully calcify.
If we’d been together, he would have had a driver. It never would have happened. Not that any of the what-ifs mattered.
What-if and coulda-beens weren’t facts. They were ways to tease out sadness for him and anger at myself. Anger and sadness were pointless, and I knew it. But my mind kept what-ifing and could-beening until I broke the chain with a question.
“What else?”
“He asked about you,” Will said. “I denied I knew who he was talking about. He said, ‘Tell her if she wants to see me, she should just say so.’ I’ve never had my cover blown so quick.”
Drew was always instinctive.
I didn’t believe in fate or soul mates or any of that shit, but strings tied Drew and me together. Just that day, I’d heard his songs and seen him in the faces of other men. I’d blamed the connections on misfiring neurons and triggered memories, but maybe the strings between us were being plucked. Maybe when I thought of him, he smelled cinnamon or saw a girl with red hair at the end of the hall.
My brain didn’t do this kind of thinking. There was reality. It had definable boundaries. Then there was hot fakery of the imagination. It tricked you into thinking it was reality. I could use other people’s illusions to achieve my own ends, but only if I hewed to the real.
In the real world, there were no strings binding me to an old lover.
There were no fated loves.
None of it.
There was my brother—my son—getting out of surgery in an hour.
I stood. “This was fun.”
“Was it?” Will went to the door.
“Not really.”
He put his hand on the doorknob and stopped himself. “I’m sorry. I overstepped.”
“Your intentions were good. Can you write me up a report on your meeting with him? Bill me.”
“On the house.” He opened the door.
Gareth was gone. Cooper was glued to a computer screen, nodding with headphones. His phone was turned upward on the desk. I’d know the album cover anywhere.
Bullets and Blood. Kentucky Killers.
“Cooper,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“You always listen to that old crap or did I remind you of it?”
“Both. It’s good shit.”
I leaned over his desk and scrolled through the album’s songs. “You should listen to the later stuff. “Taste of Cinnamon” is my favorite.”
I patted his shoulder and left.
9
Jonathan was fine.
Finer than fine. Awake and making eyes at his girlfriend.
Mom, Sheila, Deirdre, and Fiona went to visit him. I went to find Dad in the cafeteria where Mom had banished him. He was a man of great power who could chill the bones of anyone who crossed him. Only Mom could make him look like an excommunicated altar boy at a corner table.
I wondered how Dad would look if our little secret got out. Or if Will’s information meant people with badges and a warrant were on their way.
Would Drew see the news of Jonathan’s collapse? Would he find out? After Will’s revelation, he’d gone from a distant memory to a degree of separation away. I didn’t know whether to be happy about his mental proximity or ashamed at what he’d see from so close.
I stood across the table from my father. “He’s fine. You dodged a bullet there.”
He stood and buttoned his jacket. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“If it had gone south over a genetic defect, it would have been on us.”
We went to the elevator.
“Guilt is unnecessary,” he said. “I’m protecting your mother.”
“She’s barely spoken to you in sixteen years.”
“That doesn’t make her any less mine. If she dies tomorrow, she’s still mine. If she takes one lover or ten, she’s mine. She’s never understood that.”
“She never took a lover. Even in all this time. You cheated on her repeatedly.”
“I was still hers. I was a fool, but hers. Those years are nothing. It’s a blip.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I grumbled.
“You don’t understand because you’ve never had what your mother and I have.”
I almost argued with him. I almost laid out the map of my life with all its roads not taken, all its territories unexplored, all the well-worn doubts of middle age.
The ding of the elevator stopped me. It wasn’t worth it. There was no upside to unfolding that map. He’d file the information and use it later.
We were crowded in the back of the elevator when the doors closed, and in the moment of silence, I folded up my map and went back to the present day’s proceedings.
Drew had asked about me.
He’d looked hungry in a way Will couldn’t describe, but I understood.
I’d chosen my family because I hadn’t had a choice.
The woman in front of me had earbuds in, and I was disappointed that the music she was blasting wasn’t Bullets and Blood, but some woman I’d passed on the radio, singing a song of empowerment. Not even rock. Cin would have had nothing but derision for it. The string between Drew and I was weak. O
r maybe the disappointment in a stranger’s musical taste was the string.
What if…
The doors opened, and Dad and I pushed our way through to the hall.
What if I could go back and choose differently?
Would I be free? Or trapped in another kind of regret?
Before I could sort through the implications, we made it to my family, where my relief over Jonathan was mirrored so brightly, it cast my regrets in shadow.
“He’s okay,” Mom said in my ear when she hugged me. She repeated it as if she needed to say it to believe it.
“He is,” I said. “Better than ever.”
* * *
My house was empty. The chardonnay was chilled. All was well. The worry fell out of me and left a vacuum of emotion.
Nature abhors a vacuum as much as I abhorred uncontrolled emotion. Nature won the battle for the empty space before I even knew a war was going on, opening the gate to things I’d put away while I dealt with practical matters.
What if…
…we’d stayed together?
…I’d chased him?
I coulda…
…found him.
…helped him.
I filled the blanks with guilt and regret until Will’s text came in.
—Gareth left you a file on the ftp server—
“Not a moment’s peace,” I said to the phone as I put it down. “Go to hell.”
I drank my wine while standing in the open space between the kitchen and living room. After a day surrounded by people, I’d wanted to be alone, but a house as huge as mine held an oppressive amount of silence that was only more noticeable with all the sounds inside it. The clock over the stove made a constant low grind. The vents hissed. My throat swallowing was the loudest thing in the room. The house was in a coma even when I was in it.
Will saw Drew.
I sipped the chardonnay and side-eyed my laptop—closed and quiet on my kitchen counter. It had information, but not the answers I needed.
If I’d chosen Strat, would he have lived? Would he have claimed Jonathan and me?
You asked Will to find Drew.
Will had gone to him, and in a way that was his business until he made it mine. But even before that, I’d taken an action in asking him to find Drew. I’d had nothing to gain from that. I must have been delirious. Sick and hallucinating. A flu induced by excavated grief.