“No,” I say, then turn to him. I unbuckle my belt. “Right now, I just want this.” I lean over and kiss him, which is so unlike me it’s as if I’m watching a movie. He’s surprised, his mouth stiff, but after a second, he kisses me back, powerfully, his lips full, his mouth taking in mine. A wave of heat washes over me, much hotter and stronger than what’s coming through the air vents. It’s dizzying and doubles the impact of the drinks in my system. His lips are the first I’ve tasted since Riley’s, and the first in a long time where I feel actual passion. A connection. Maybe even a future.
I finish the kiss as quickly as I started it, leaning back in my seat and steadying myself.
“That was unexpected,” he said. “And amazing.”
I say what I’m thinking, without filtering any words. “I needed to prove to myself I can still get what I want.”
“So you kissed me on a bet with yourself?”
I look over, then place my left hand on his arm. “Kind of. But it’s what I wanted. I hope it’s what you wanted, too.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“Good.” I stroke his arm for a moment. “My mind is all over the place, so I think I’m going to call it a night. And I left Max over at his cousin’s house, which he wasn’t crazy about, and I don’t want him over there too long.”
“You okay to drive?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, not knowing if it’s the truth or not. I’m still a little dizzy, but I’m not sure that’s the alcohol.
“I’d like to see you again.”
“You will.” I reach forward for a last, light kiss, breathing him in just enough to unsteady myself all over again. I open the door, tell him good night, and get out of the car. The night is cool and crisp, swallowing me.
No, I tell the night. You don’t swallow me.
I suck in a deep breath, bringing the cold and dark into my lungs, filling me up. Then I release the air back into the night, a part of me forever attached to it.
I swallow you.
Thirty-Seven
An intricate fall wreath adorns the door of my sister’s house. Woven branches festooned with fiery-red and muted-yellow leaves, and it’s even large enough to accommodate four miniature pumpkins. Cora loves to decorate for holidays, if for nothing other than to showcase on social media. This is one of her Thanksgiving decorations, and many more are inside. Artificial cheer.
I knock, and when no one hears me, I walk in.
I had a sitter lined up who canceled at the last moment, so I asked Cora if Max could hang out with Willow for a few hours. I almost canceled plans with Alec rather than rely on Cora but then figured it would be good to make another attempt, a soft approach at establishing some kind of normal family relations.
Though I’m still not sure that’s even what I want.
I call out at half volume.
“Hello?”
No answer. There’s something alluring about them not knowing I’m here, as if I might see Cora and her family in their natural habitat and not hidden behind plastic smiles and ceramic cornucopias. I walk into the empty kitchen. The book Max brought over is on the counter, a two-hundred pager I’d never heard of before but is a collection of short nonfiction stories about famous criminals. Al Capone, John Dillinger, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the like. It’s written for a young audience, and he told me he wanted to know more about criminal cases since I was a mystery writer, so I allowed it.
I stop and listen, hearing some faint noises upstairs. I head up without announcing myself, lightly grasping the cold and black stair railing. At the top, I hear the noise again, and it sounds like someone talking. Maybe it’s Cora and Peter, or just a television, but in this moment, all I can think of is that scene twenty-two years ago when Caleb Benner burst from Cora’s room, bloodied and desperate, stumbling down the hallway toward me.
The master bedroom door at the end of this hallway is closed. I take a few more steps and pass Willow’s bedroom on the right. Her door is open, light on. No one’s inside, and the room is a maelstrom of dirty clothes, rumpled sheets and blankets, makeup supplies, and schoolwork papers. Curiously, her walls are nearly bare—just two mirrors and a poster. The poster catches my eye because it looks so out of place in a teenage girl’s room. I step inside to get a better look.
I’m utterly chilled as the image comes into better focus. It’s a line drawing, quite well done, of a woman sitting at the bottom of a staircase. Her face is severe, her expression a controlled rage, ink-black hair pulled tightly back into a bun. She’s wearing a black, puritanical dress buttoned to the neck, white collar circling her neck. I think Hester Prynne, but I know that’s not right. I know because Hester Prynne wasn’t known for clutching a hatchet in her hands, which this woman is doing. There’s a single word in bold type at the bottom of the poster: Lizzie.
Jesus Christ. My niece has only one poster on her bedroom walls, and it’s a drawing of Lizzie Borden?
I’m now less intrigued by snooping in this house and am much more concerned about finding Max. I leave Willow’s room and walk quickly down the hallway to the master bedroom. I’m about to knock on the door when I pause and listen a moment.
The sounds from behind the door leave no doubt as to what I’m listening to: sex. Either Peter and Cora are in there together or someone is watching porn. My immediate discomfort is quickly supplanted by anger; I leave Max for a few hours with my family, and instead of spending time with him, they disappear to screw? I look at my watch. It’s not even eight thirty.
I don’t knock. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Not yet at least.
I turn and head back downstairs.
Living room. No one. Same goes for family room. Basement. Laundry room and even the garage.
Then, as I’m in the garage, I notice a glow through the glass of the door leading from the garage to the back patio. I thread my way along the wall until I reach the door, and as I peer through, I see Max.
Max and Willow. They’re sitting in chairs on the back patio, each of the kids bundled in a fleece blanket. Their backs face me and they’re hunching toward the flames rising from a large stone firepit in the center of the patio. After my eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the dark, I recognize what they’re doing. Roasting marshmallows.
For a moment, my body warms as if I were sitting next to them, facing the flames. This sullen teen with the Lizzie Borden poster is hanging out with Max on a Friday night, roasting marshmallows. Improbable as I would have thought, perhaps she’s the most redeeming one of the family.
I watch from the darkness of the garage, my boy hanging out with his cousin. They’re talking but I can’t make out their words.
For a moment, this feels like a normal family.
After I moved away for college, it would have been forgivable for someone with my history to have never spoken to their family again. Forgivable, understandable, and probably what I should have done. But there’s that tiny ember that never quite leaves you, that minuscule source of heat that burns inside, telling you that, no matter who your family is, they are special and shouldn’t be cut from your life like some malignant tumor. Nothing is more important than family. That’s what my father said the night Caleb Benner bled in our house. Without family, we have nothing. It’s so easy to dismiss such clichéd phrases, but clichés only exist because of the truth on which they’re based. In all my years away from Bury, all the years with Riley, a small part of me always missed my family. It’s so messed up. Borderline Stockholm syndrome. But without that tiny ember smoldering inside me, I don’t think I ever would have come back here. But now, watching my son and niece, I see it for what it is. I didn’t come back here just for my father’s financial support. I came here because of an illogical desire to be with my family. To be a Yates, grotesque, cancerous warts and all.
And seeing these two, roasting marshmallows, it’s almost a validation of that desire. T
hat maybe we can share a closeness that’s always been just out of reach.
I crack the garage door open, not necessarily trying to remain silent but not announcing myself either. I want to hear a bit of their conversation, mostly because I love hearing Max talk when he doesn’t know I’m around. Observing him in the wild.
“—you mean by that?”
His voice. He sounds anxious. Not what I was expecting.
“It’s true,” Willow says. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that already. It’s a good thing I’m here to tell you.”
“It’s not true.”
I know that voice. Max is stressing out. My instinct is to go to him, but I resist. I want to know what exactly she’s telling him.
“My mom told me everything, and she knows because your mom told her. Sisters, you know. They share everything.”
“You’re lying.”
I grip the door handle, my stomach clenching. Nausea rising. Whatever Willow is talking about, it’s clear she’s already told him, so interrupting her now wouldn’t do any good. Max has already heard something I’m sure I didn’t want him to hear.
So I listen, fingers squeezing the cold door handle, heart in my throat.
“But my mom didn’t do anything,” Max says.
“That’s not what the cops think.” Willow’s voice is calm, coy, and the perfect pitch to extract maximum pain. Now I understand why she has that poster on her wall. Lizzie Borden isn’t some kind of ironic fuck-you to Willow’s parents. She’s Willow’s idol. “They think she killed your dad.”
“Shut up.”
“What happened that night?” she asks. “What really happened? I mean, you were there. Were your parents fighting? Was it a normal night?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“It’s okay, Max. You can tell me. You can trust me.”
My body heat rises a few degrees, fueled by anger.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
She shrugs, as if the subject isn’t important. “Fine, we don’t have to.” She pauses a few seconds, then adds, “They’ll take her away for a long time. Then you won’t have any parents left, and you’ll probably have to live with Grandpa.”
It’s all I can do not to race over and whisk Max into my arms, but I want to see his reaction. He says only one more thing. Mutters it in a monotone voice, free from tears.
“She didn’t do anything.”
“Okay,” Willow says, her voice still chipper. Then they fall into a silence, and I realize if this were the moment in which I eavesdropped, I would have been warmed by their bonding.
A minute passes and I open the door.
“There you are,” I say.
Both heads snap toward me. Max drops his marshmallow stick into the fire and rushes at me, hugging me tight.
“Well, good to see you, too,” I say, hugging him back and kissing the top of his head. The heat from the fire on his clothes radiates into me, and I melt into my son.
“I thought you were going to be back later,” he says. His voice has a crack of emotion in it.
“I missed you, so I came back early.” I tussle his hair. “Now go into the house and get your book and anything else you brought over. I’ll meet you in the car in a moment.”
“You’re not coming now?”
“I want to warm up by the fire for a second.”
He pulls back and gives me a look of confusion, but I tell him, “Go.” He obeys, walking around the porch and back into the house through the back door.
Willow looks up at me from her chair, the firelight moving across her face.
“How was your date?” she asks.
I’m certain she means this as some kind of barb, but I answer truthfully. “Unexpected. Nice. And needed.”
I sit next to her in Max’s chair and pick his broken tree branch out of the fire. The marshmallow is long scarified, and the end of the branch glows in flame. I blow it out and study the smoldering tip, bringing it close enough to my eyes that they sting from the heat.
“You know,” I say, looking at the stick and not at her. “Most people think, under the right circumstances, anyone could kill. Self-defense, or to save someone they loved. That everyone is capable of taking a life. But it’s not true, you know.” Now I look over and the smug expression on her face hasn’t left, but it’s cooled. “I’ve talked to a lot of cops researching my books, and they say most people, even in those circumstances, still can’t do it. They freeze up out of sheer terror, or their brains simply can’t execute such an extreme command. A lot of people choose to lose their own lives instead of fighting to save them.” I put the stick back in the fire, igniting it. “But this family. Our family. Your family, Willow. We’re fighters. We are absolutely capable of killing.”
She says nothing in the brief silence that follows, and I didn’t expect her to.
“If we feel threatened at a primal level,” I continue. “If someone is trying to fundamentally change our way of life. The Yateses can kill.” I turn one more time to her, and Willow’s face is corpse blank. “And not just me. All of us. You come from a family of killers. It’s important you know that, because someday you might have to save yourself against someone trying to do you harm. Know you have it in you. It’s a terrible, primal thing to have in your blood, Willow. But it’s there. Like a virus. And your mom? There’s a reason she didn’t change her name after marrying. Just like me. She wants to be a Yates forever.”
I drop the stick entirely in the fire, wait long enough to see the flames consume it entirely, then get up and walk back into the darkness of the garage.
Thirty-Eight
In the car, I don’t want to mince words or take time extracting the evening’s events from Max. I need to perform emergency surgery, even if it’s messy.
“I overheard you and Willow,” I tell him.
He looks out his window as we drive the short distance home.
“Max, look at me.”
He doesn’t.
“Look at me.”
He waits a few seconds, then turns his head.
“Everything’s okay,” I tell him.
“But she said the police were talking to you. Is that true?”
“Yes, but there’s nothing to worry about.”
This quiets him for about a block and then he says, “That’s not true.”
“What?”
“That there’s nothing to worry about,” he says. “But they could still put you in jail for something you didn’t do.”
All I want to do is ease the suffering of my boy, but I can’t even do that for myself.
“I’m not going anywhere, Max.”
As soon as the words leave my lips, I picture them permanently seared in his brain as he visits me years later in prison. It’s a horrible image I can’t shake, along with the sound of his forever-eleven voice saying She promised me.
I think I’d rather see him cry than the calculating stare he’s now giving me. He’s trying to see if I’m lying.
“I promise you I’m not going anywhere,” I repeat, deciding to go all-in on the belief. Manifest your future. “You believe me, right?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s drifted to his other world again, the one I can’t penetrate.
As we drive, I don’t repeat my question. Don’t say anything.
Max stares straight through the windshield, his gaze heavy and fixed. It makes me think of that scene from the movie The Shining. Little Danny, staring transfixed into the mirror, just before he starts screaming “Redrum!”
I’m desperate to know how Max will turn out in life. I just want to know he’s going to be okay. That he’ll be a caring, compassionate man who will love and be loved.
That’s all I want to know.
Will he be okay?
As I drive, an
d as he stares, and as my headlight beams sweep along the Bury streets as we make our way back to Rum Hill Road, I just want to know the answer to that one question.
Will Max be okay?
And try as I might, I can’t turn off the little voice that laughs at me. Deep in my brain, deep in my heart.
Laughs and says:
Don’t be silly. He’s just like the rest of you.
Thirty-Nine
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
November 9
Colin’s attention wandered again, as it had been doing all morning. The paperwork felt endless, and he still had to finish his phone-tap warrant request for a suspected meth dealer. He was working several other cases along with Riley McKay’s, and though it was becoming more and more likely there wouldn’t be enough evidence to consider McKay a murder victim, Colin couldn’t get Rose Yates out of his mind.
He’d finished her upcoming book over the weekend.
First thing he did yesterday morning when he got to work was put a call into Chief Sike in Bury. Sike called back this morning, but Colin had missed it. Knowing he had to make a dent in the paperwork for his other cases, Colin vowed not to return the call until he at least got the warrant request done.
It ended up being the fastest he’d ever written one. An hour later, he called Sike and was glad not to get the man’s voicemail.
“Chief Sike.”
“Hi, Chief. Colin Pearson, Milwaukee PD.”
“Hey, Pearson, good to connect.”
“Things busy out there in Bury?”
Sike grumbled. “Yeah, a bit. You know, for a sleepy town anyway.”
“Anything interesting?”
Sike took a couple seconds before answering. “We had a murder yesterday.”
Colin sat up straight in his chair. “A murder?” His mind raced through all the people from Bury he’d met. “Who?”
“Not who. What. A dog.”
“Dog?”
“Poodle. But you know, not the little yippy kind. Big one, like you see in the dog-award shows.”
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