Knickers in a Twist

by Kim Hunt Harris

  I ran my thumb along his lower lip. I didn't care for the sound of unsolvable problems. I swallowed. “I don't know. But there's a reason we talk about taking one day at a time so much in the program.”

  We held each other for a while, and finally he said, “Well, this is one day. And you're here. I'd like you to stay here, for this one day.”

  I felt something inside me unclench, and I smiled. “Me too.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  What’s in a Name?

  Later that night, after I felt reconnected to Tony—somehow safer—I felt better able to ask him what I'd come to ask. I couldn't do it while looking at him, though. I lay in his arms, my face against his chest, and said, “I do have to ask you something, though, Tony.”

  He went very still. “Yes?”

  I swallowed. “Do you still struggle with forgiving me? Or did it just—” I swept a flattened hand through the air. “Did it just go?”

  He shifted, rolling toward me so that I lay on his arm, but I had to face him.

  “Of course, I still struggle, Salem. Of course, I do. Sometimes I think about—about all that—and I want to just—just throttle you. Slam you against the wall. I want you to be broken and sobbing and—and I want you to feel how much you hurt me. And be sorry for it.”

  “I am sorry for it!” Tears sprang to my eyes and my chest caved.

  “I know! And knowing that is what takes all the fire out of my anger. Seeing how broken you are...” He reached out and gently pushed my hair back from my face. “I think I want you to hurt, until I see how much you are hurt, and then I can't take it. It makes me see the whole thing for what it is. Just...pain that causes more pain. And the only thing I can think to do is hold you and try to make the pain go away, for both of us.”

  “You know if I could undo the past ten years, I would. In a heartbeat.”

  “I know that, Love.” He kissed my forehead.

  “Do you really think we can do this, Tony? Really? The fight the other day...it was so ugly.”

  He nodded. “Yes. It was.”

  Not the reassurance I had hoped for, but I couldn't fault him.

  “I don't want that to happen again.”

  “Me either. But I'm not sure how we can learn to live together again without a few hard knocks.” He slid his hand down my arm and gripped my hand.

  I felt the blood thunder in my ears. “So...what does that mean?”

  He gripped my hand tighter. “We're married, Salem. You and me. We're married. I don't intend for that to change. Not now, not ever. But...I wonder if maybe I was moving too fast.” His mouth tilted crookedly. “I know you probably feel pressured to give up your place. I love having you here. I'd love to have you here all the time. But after the other day...I think maybe we just need to keep things at this level for a while longer. A couple of nights a week here, and you keep your place for a while.”

  The relief that flooded through me was almost palpable. He must have felt it, because he smiled.

  “I do need to keep my trailer,” I said. “For a while. Not to drink. Just to...”

  “Just to relax. I know. I get that.” He shrugged. “I relax when you're not here. I miss you. But I'm comfortable. You need to have space to feel comfortable, too.”

  I kissed him and snuggled back against his chest.

  I must have dozed into the in-between land where I wasn't quite asleep, but my mind was already dreaming. I thought about Jacob becoming Israel.

  “I want a new name,” I said. I woke myself up saying it, actually.

  “A new name?”

  I came fully awake and started to pass it off as talking in my sleep. But I realized what half-asleep me had said was true.

  “Yes. You know how, in the Bible, God gives people a new name when they go through big life changes. Saul became Paul. Abram became Abraham. Sarai became Sarah. I was reading about how Jacob—whichh means heel-grabber, by the way, did you know that?—became Israel. The devotional said that means “God contended.” Because he fought with God. The others sound similar, but, from Jacob to Israel? That's like—a whole new thing. No more heel-grabber. Now you're a contender.”

  “Gotta admit, the guy had guts,” Tony said. “Wrestling all night with an angel. That's pretty brave.”

  “Or brazen. At any rate, he knew what he wanted. I keep wondering what effect that would have on a person to be called 'heel-grabber' all your life.”

  Tony shrugged. “I guess everyone's name meant something back then.”

  “I guess. But it would have to have an effect, don't you think? Everyone knows you're a heel-grabber, so they treat you like a heel-grabber. 'Hey, here comes the heel-grabber, hide your stuff.' I mean, is it really surprising that he stole his brother's birthright? He thinks of himself as a thief.”

  Tony nodded and shifted his arm around me. “And how do you see yourself? What kind of name do you carry?”

  I shrugged. “I don't dislike my name, but...remember Mom's friend Susan? She said that Mom named me after her first love—menthol cigarettes. I don't know if that's true or not, but I guess I always did kind of think of myself as...well, in the “bad stuff” category. I mean, not the really bad stuff, like bubonic plague or something like that.”

  “I hope not,” he laughed.

  “But I kind of always thought of myself in the category of the bad stuff that's still part of everyday life. You know, alcohol, smoking, foul language, maybe a little trash-talking other people. That kind of thing. And me.”

  I raised up and looked at him. He looked confused.

  “I'm not sure I'm following you.”

  “I'm probably not making sense. It's not like anyone ever said anything like that to me – ‘Salem, you remind me of all that is white trash.’ It's just a sense of how I saw myself. Not one of the good people. One of the bad people.”

  “And how do you see yourself now? No longer one of the bad things of life, I hope.”

  I shook my head. “That's just it. I'm getting a sense that this—this labeling as essentially good or essentially bad—is basically groundless. I mean, it all comes down to choices, right? You can see yourself as a good person who continually makes bad choices, and the good is really just all in your own estimation. There's nothing behind it except maybe pedigree, or how others treat you, but it doesn't make your bad choices good. I'm starting to see everyone—myself included, which is nice—as more of a blank slate, and how our choices fill in the picture.”

  He nodded. “What would you like your new name to be?”

  “No idea. I keep thinking about that. Where do I fit? What are my gifts? I wonder if there's a Hebrew word for 'at least she tried.'“

  Tony laughed. “We can look that one up.”

  “I don't even know what my greatest fear is. Do you?”

  “Why would I know what your greatest fear is?”

  I poked him in the side. “Not mine. Yours. What's your greatest fear?”

  He shrugged. “I don't know. I have a bunch of smaller fears, I guess. That something will happen and I won't know what to do. I won't be prepared for it.”

  “Something will happen to what?”

  “Just...anything, basically. Something will go wrong with my business. Mom or Dad will get sick. Or one of the sisters or the nieces or nephews. And I won't be able to help them. So I'm always looking for what could go wrong so I can figure out how to take care of it if and when it happens. Whatever that is.”

  “You realize that all falls under the umbrella of loss of control, right?”

  The corners of his mouth tipped up. “I have been called a control freak from time to time.”

  I snuggled back into the crook of his arm. My sleepy brain kept mulling over the problem. Finally, just before I dropped off, I said, “I have two greatest fears. One is that I will never figure out God's plan for me. That I live my entire life searching, starting and stopping all these different things, but that I never find my purpose. There's a specific plan for me, but that I n
ever figure out what it is.”

  “And what's the other?”

  “That there is no plan.”

  In the middle of the night, my bladder reminded me that it was fully functional, and I slipped out from under Tony's heavy arm. I went to the bathroom down the hall instead of the one in his bedroom, because I didn't want to wake him. Or take a chance on him hearing me pee.

  I was in mid-stream, not even bothering to keep my sleepy eyes open, when my brain made one of those connections it can only make when it's not busy doing anything else.

  The laughing man in that picture on the cart—the one surrounded by family at Christmas. I had seen that picture before, but I hadn't recognized it at first because the context changed the entire tone. With his family, laughing, a Christmas tree in the background, he'd looked joyful. With that laughing face cropped out and imposed over the rubble of devastation, that same smile had looked devious—evil, even.

  It was David Baucum.

  And the other guy, the younger one holding the fish. He was also in the Christmas picture, still with that same wide grin.

  And now, maybe six or eight years on from that—he worked for Eagle construction and drove a white pickup.

  I came wide awake, of course.

  Was he the guy Viv had almost bumped into in the elevator that afternoon, leaving the Alzheimer's unit?

  I was pretty sure it was.

  It was him. I was positive. Almost.

  What did this mean?

  I washed my hands and thought.

  Nothing. It meant nothing.

  I stood in Tony's hallway but couldn't bring myself to go back to bed. Something was off.

  The Eagle Construction guy was David Baucum's half brother. That stuff I'd read last week said David's mother remarried and had another son after Donald Jr. died. He must be the other son. What was his name? I didn't remember seeing a name, just that she'd had another son.

  He hadn't said anything about being related to David Baucum. Why hadn't he said anything about it when we talked to him that day in the Eagle parking lot?

  Why would he? We'd been talking about Peter Browning. We'd mentioned nothing about David Baucum or the school collapse.

  Or had we?

  I racked my brain, but my one and only eureka moment had been spent on making the connection of the people.

  He was at the finding of Peter Browning's body. Killers always return to the scene of the crime.

  I thought about what Imogene had said. I said his mother lived here, and she did. She is being moved to another facility.

  Viv and I had seen him and the woman getting into his pickup, filled with boxes.

  With the closing of Baucum Engineering, there weren't enough funds to keep her here, in the best Alzheimer's facility for hundreds of miles.

  He'd moved his mother to a less expensive facility. He'd been coming back to get her remaining possessions.

  It was definitely him. I was sure of it now. I felt a chill in the pit of my stomach.

  I thought about Misty Monahan, unable to leave town and facing an obstruction charge. It was not difficult to imagine that morphing into a murder charge. A good prosecutor could turn the circumstances—her affair, Peter's rebuff of her, his chance for a better job while she's left to deal with her unplanned pregnancy alone—into a decent case against her. But this—this seemed to change the landscape. Didn't it?

  Should I call Bobby? No, I would wake him and make him mad again.

  Should I call Viv? I checked the clock. It was only 1:30 am. Viv didn't sleep much, and it was conceivable that she would be up.

  I decided to text her instead, in case she was asleep.

  “That guy who almost ran over you in the Belle Court parking lot is David Baucum's half brother. He was in the elevator today, too.”

  I hit send and chewed my lip, thinking. Why did this seem like such a big deal?

  The phone rang almost immediately.

  “Are you serious!?” It was Viv, of course. “It's him! He's the one who killed Peter Browning!”

  “I think so, too, but why? Why do I think that? It wasn't publicized much, but after Donald Jr. died, his wife remarried and had another son. It's not a secret.”

  “He was secretive, though.”

  “Was he? I keep going through the different interactions we had with him, trying to find a time when he should obviously have spoken up.”

  “What about the other day at Memorial Garden? We were right there, talking about Donald Baucum.”

  “That's right, we were.”

  “His mother said her father-in-law was a war hero, and he denied it! He flat denied it!”

  I remembered that tiniest of head shakes. Was that denial? Why would he deny his grandfather was a war hero when we were standing in the middle of the memorial built specifically for him? That was secretive. But why?

  I sighed. “I don't know. I need to think some more. I'm looking at everything from a different angle, and I can't be sure it all adds up to treachery or just...weirdness.”

  “We have to talk to him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. But in my head I was thinking, no way is Tony going to be okay with me interviewing someone I suspect of murder. That would not fall under the “Be Safe” umbrella.

  “Let's go back out to Eagle tomorrow and lean on him a little,” Viv said. “See what pops out.”

  “Gross,” I said. “Listen, I don't think I can do that.”

  “Frank can watch Stump.”

  “No, it's not that. It's...it's Tony.”

  “Tony can watch Stump.”

  “No. Listen. Tony really doesn't like me doing this.”

  “So?”

  “So, he's my husband. And I want to take his wishes into consideration when I do things.”

  “Well, you could...” She trailed off, though, coming to the same conclusion I did.

  We could not interview the half brother, whatever his name was.

  “I'll call Bobby tomorrow and tell him what I've found out. He's right, you know. He's the detective, not us. It's his job to take care of things like this. He's trained and everything.”

  “Yes. And if this turns out to be the guy, he will get all the glory. You know that, right?”

  “I know that rubs you the wrong way.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “But, that's just, you know, the way things will have to be.”

  She was silent for a long time. “What does this mean, Salem? Are we closing the agency?”

  “We don't have an agency,” I reminded her.

  “We have cards. Plus, I was going to send in for a certificate.”

  “What kind of certificate?”

  “Well, you just get it printed on this fancy paper. But I was going to frame it.”

  “Viv, the thing is, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to do these investigations anymore. Not and keep my marriage—which I want to do, by the way. I mean, in case that sounded like I was undecided. But that doesn't mean we can't still hang out. Do other stuff together.”

  “What other stuff could we possibly do?”

  “I don't know.” Suddenly tears welled in my eyes and my throat closed. This was so silly! What was I doing? Crying over giving up something that I wasn't even very good at. Something that was dangerous. “We have to find something, though.” I didn't say it, but the thought of Viv finding another partner to solve crimes with made me feel bereft.

  “I suppose we really could give gardening a shot. I look awful in overalls, though.”

  “We could be high society arts patrons, then,” I said. “Although I am going to have a hard time pulling that one off. And we'll definitely have to use your money.”

  “The wardrobe will be better, but it still sounds boring. How does your husband feel about high-stakes illegal gambling?”

  “Well, I could ask. But no. He will not feel good about that.”

  Viv sighed.

  I sniffed back tears and reached for the box of tissues o
n the table. “We have to think of something. Because I can't lose Tony again. I have to respect what he's asked of me.”

  “Do you? I mean, has he respected what you asked of him?”

  It was my turn to sigh. “He forgave me for leaving him and sleeping with other men.”

  “Oh.”

  See? There was really nothing that could be said to that. Nothing at all.

  “Well, let's just go to bed and talk about it tomorrow. Things always look worse in the middle of the night than they really are.”

  “That's what Les says, too. I'll call Bobby tomorrow and give him the information, and then we'll be out of this case.”

  “Good night, Salem.”

  “Good night.” I hung up and sat on the sofa, chiding myself for feeling like I'd lost something. I hadn't lost anything. Viv and I would still be friends. We would find something to do. And if she moved on, well, I had Tony. I had Stump. I had my actual job that I was paid to do. I had a lot to be grateful for.

  I sniffed back more tears and blew my nose.

  “Are you okay?”

  I jumped and spun to see Tony standing in the doorway.

  “You scared me!” I said with a shaky laugh, sniffing (softly, I hoped) and standing. “Yes, I'm fine. I just woke up to go to the bathroom.” And now I was in the living room.

  He looked at the phone in my hand.

  I started to tell him I'd had a nightmare and that's why I was crying, but I couldn't bring myself to lie, not outright like that. He would be concerned and might even want to know what I'd dreamed about.

  But I didn't want him to think I'd been talking to someone in the middle of the night, either. Even though I had. “I knew it was probably a mistake to get a smart phone,” I said, tossing it onto the sofa. “Here it is the middle of the night and I've got it in my hand like a pacifier or something.”

  He smiled and put an arm around me. “Let's go back to bed.”

  Tony was already gone by the time I woke up the next morning. He had left half a pot of coffee, though, and a note that said, “Breakfast muffins in the freezer. Help yourself,” with a little heart underneath.