“No,” she whispered. “My job is here. My life is here.”
“What life? Me? Zephenaya? You’ll have that life anywhere.”
“You want me to give up my life to go to Ohio to live with my childhood best friend?” she asked.
Tony shoved his stool away from the counter. The wooden feet screeched across the floor. “Jesus Christ, Jamie.”
“Jesus Christ, what?”
“You’re so rigid, Jamie.”
“Rigid? What are you talking about?”
“You’re rigid!” he shouted. “Stubborn, mulish, hard-headed, dense.”
“I know what the word means, Tony. But why am I rigid?” She tried to focus on the idea that he wanted her in Ohio, that maybe he was trying to ask her to come with him. It was so frustrating—that he’d been thinking she would come. Hadn’t she been thinking of asking him to stay? Why hadn’t she done that? Because it wasn’t her business. But how was it his business to ask her to uproot her life? “I’m rigid because I won’t move to Ohio?” she asked softly.
“Not only that.”
“What, then?” Jamie asked.
“Because everything is set in stone with you. Even us. You’re stuck in some idea you had of us when we were kids. That we’re children. Like brother and sister.”
The breath left her chest.
“It doesn’t have to be like that, Jamie. We could be… more.”
“More?” she whispered.
“Like a family,” he said. “A real family.”
She took a step back. “Us? Together?”
His expression stiffened. “Never mind.”
“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—”
“Forget it, Jamie. You’ve made yourself perfectly clear.” He passed her on the way to his bedroom.
“Wait! Don’t you walk away, Tony Galen,” she called after him. “This conversation isn’t done. You drop a bomb like that and then walk away? How am I supposed to treat you like an adult when you’re acting like a fucking child?”
Tony was halfway across the room when the front door burst open.
Zephenaya dropped his backpack and threw his baseball bag down. His shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched. His baseball hat was pulled low, hiding his eyes.
“Not that you care,” he said, “but I could hear you all the way down the damn street.”
“Don’t swear,” Jamie barked out of habit.
“Where the hell have you been?” Tony demanded.
“What have you been doing for the last two hours?” Jamie chimed in. “And how did you get home?”
“What is this—bad cop, bad cop?”
“Watch the attitude, Z,” Tony said, the warning clear in his voice. “And you better start talking. We know you didn’t get a ride with your friends.”
“Friends…?” Z’s cap shifted.
Jamie spotted a shadow under the bill. She stepped forward and yanked the hat off his head. His left eye was bruised and swollen. Dried blood was smeared into his sideburns. It might have come from the cut on his cheekbone, but what struck her most was the hard glint in his eye that she’d never seen before. “Is that bruise from today?”
Z shrugged away from her.
“You got into a fight?” yelled Tony. “What the hell’s gotten into you, Z? And shut the damn door!”
Z spun around and kicked the door shut. The side window exploded. Glass rained across the entry floor.
Jamie jumped, her heart pounding. Z tore past them, taking the stairs in twos. He slammed his bedroom door closed, sending stuttering tremors down the stairs.
Jamie and Tony stood in silence among Z’s discarded bags and broken glass.
Tony’s face was white. “What was that about?”
Jamie shook her head, her thoughts on what might have triggered that kind of rage in her son.
“He was in a fight,” Tony hissed. “A fight.”
Jamie’s mind was still going. There was the blood in Sondra Borden’s Mercedes. Zephenaya’s blood type. But that was yesterday. That was not relevant. “That had to have happened today, right?” she asked.
Tony said nothing.
“You saw him last night,” she pressed. “I’m sure you would’ve noticed that.”
“Actually, I didn’t really see him,” Tony admitted.
Jamie took a silent swallow of air, but it was thin and insignificant, insufficient to fill her lungs.
“Z came in from practice, but I was working,” Tony said. “When I went to check on him, he was asleep.”
Both Jamie and Tony watched the stairs as though Z might emerge to explain his bizarre behavior. No answer came.
Tony used his foot to move the glass toward the wall. “I’ll get someone out to repair the window.”
“I’ll get the dustpan and broom,” she said. They moved gently, calmly, as though Z’s outburst was not deeply disturbing.
Chapter 10
Jamie glanced at her son as she drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. Brooding, Z was more and more a teenager. In the passenger’s seat, he had a single headphone in his left ear. His body was bent away from her, angled to the door. He would have been wearing both headphones if she’d allowed it. She did not.
Jamie didn’t have a clear idea of what had happened last night. Z said it started during scrimmage. He and Paul were on opposite teams. Paul was stealing second and Z made a play, got to the bag first. When the coach called Paul out, he didn’t move off the bag. “He started arguing with Coach,” Z said. “So I gave him a little push and he swung at me.”
“And that happened yesterday?” she asked again. The fifth time at least.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Yes. Yesterday at practice.”
She had to push aside the sensation that he wasn’t telling her everything. His explanation was believable enough. Paul seemed like enough of a punk, and it explained why Z hadn’t gotten a ride home with Paul and Sam. It might explain why the boys would have lied to Tony. Z’s coach had gotten him to the ferry. Z brought out the ticket and a bus transfer to show how he’d gotten from the ferry terminal in Sausalito to the house.
All of it fit, so why was it bothering her? Because it fit? Because her son had pulled the ferry and bus tickets out of his pocket almost as soon as he walked in the door? Like he’d known he’d need proof. Was it how little he’d said about the missing phone? Or was it the fact that his misadventure came on the day after Michael Delman’s alleged assault?
They passed through the toll booth, her FasTrak beeping off another five-dollar toll. She took the Presidio exit and wound through the streets toward City Academy where, thanks to a number of scholarships, Z was a freshman. The fall had been an awkward transition. The majority of kids at City Academy were wealthy—extremely wealthy—and Zephenaya had experienced little of what money could buy.
While the families of his peers owned their own jets, Z had never been on an airplane or a vacation. Their idea of eating out was picking up burritos. The three of them had attended a single Broadway show with special tickets she’d bought through the department. It was around Z’s eleventh birthday.
The show was the Lion King. Z had spent the entire show asking questions about how the animals worked. People on stilts, in costumes, it was all a complete puzzle to him. When he couldn’t figure it out, he’d wanted to leave at intermission.
Many of his first experiences were more confusing than enjoyable. When Tony first served pot pie with peas, Z refused it, saying he’d never had anything green before. Only his hunger finally broke him down. Though he never talked about it, Jamie imagined his situation at City Academy was tougher because of his size. While most of the freshman boys were short and scrawny, Zephenaya was the height of a man with a size twelve foot. He’d missed so much school before living with Jamie, the district held him back a year.
Getting him into fourth grade had been tough, and it had taken them a lot of evenings and weekends to get him caught up. Being a ye
ar older for his class would have been fine if he wasn’t so tall. As it was, he was a freshman who could easily pass for a senior.
Baseball was the one place where Z could be himself. They were a few minutes away from school when she finally said, “I don’t understand how you lost your phone.”
“I told you, I lost track of it. It’s not the same as being lost.” He hunched lower in the seat and folded his arms.
“Did you have it after school?” she asked.
He knew this trick. She was always trying to pinpoint the details. The what, when, and especially who he was with when he got in trouble. Find all the suspects and work them against each other. A smart technique in investigative work. Not as effective with your own children, as she had learned when she’d called the father of one of Z’s classmates in the fall. The man she called was the father of the boy Zephenaya had sworn had the cigarettes they smoked. Z looked Jamie straight in the face and swore it was Jimmy Woods.
It was bound to be an awkward conversation, but not nearly as awkward as it ended up being. Jimmy Woods’ father was a minister and head of the youth ministry in San Rafael, the same town where Jamie and Z lived. Robert Woods had never heard of Zephenaya. When he asked his son, Jimmy told him that Z was in his class but that the two boys had never spoken. They didn’t share a single class.
On the night in question, in fact, Jimmy Woods was at his father’s parish, leading the high school church group with thirty other kids. It was as ironclad an alibi as Jamie had ever heard.
“You have to find that phone.”
“I didn’t lose it.”
Z had underestimated her last time. He’d thrown her the name of a kid she didn’t know and expected her to swallow it. As a result, Z missed six weeks of his social life; while Jamie made a call to apologize to Father Woods, Zephenaya had to write a letter. When Father Woods called to invite Z to the youth ministry, Jamie made him go every Sunday of his punishment. But when the six weeks ended and Z went back to his regular routine, both Z and Jamie were a little more guarded and Jamie checked his story more often.
“If you didn’t lose it, where it is?” she pressed.
“I’ll get it back today.”
Z shared less than he used to; Jamie had to push more often. She worried about pushing too hard, disrupting the balance that they’d created. He talked to her. He always had. Didn’t that mean he would tell her if something was going on? How hard could she push without pushing him away completely? A little further.
“Z, it feels like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What? What do you want me to say?”
She waited.
“It’s like all of a sudden you’re doubting everything I say. I told you I’d get the phone back and I will. Today. Why ain’t that good enough?”
“Watch the attitude,” she said softly.
“Or what? You’ll send me to Ohio.”
“Is that what’s going on?” she asked. He was afraid of having to move to Ohio.
He crossed his arms. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Have you been thinking about that?”
Z shrugged.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Z said nothing.
“Be good to hear your perspective.”
“Want my perspective, it sucks,” he said. A hair under six feet and one eighty, Z was the size of an adult.
Now, Jamie saw a ten-year-old boy.
“Sucks covers part of it,” she agreed.
“It’s like you guys are getting a divorce, but you’re not married. It’s all kinds of screwed up.”
She took a moment to process that. It wasn’t unlike how she felt. But that wasn’t doing any of them any good. “It’s not like a divorce, Z. We’re family. Tony and I have known each other our whole lives. He’s taking a new job, that’s all.”
“In Ohio.” His voice cracked on the second “o.” To a kid raised in San Francisco, Ohio was the middle of nowhere. The reality was that Tony would be able to afford a lot more there than she could here. There would be the same opportunities for schools and maybe something better. She imagined cornfields and boys playing ball in dirt fields. Who was she kidding? She was no different than Z; Ohio was the middle of nowhere to her, too. Worse, it was a million miles away.
“So?” Z asked as they pulled up to the roundabout in front of his school.
She started to reach over to straighten his tie, but he pulled away and fixed it himself. She purposefully held on to the gearshift to keep herself from reaching out to touch him. “So, what?”
“How will you decide?”
“Decide?”
Z cracked the door and swung his backpack on to his lap. “Yeah, Jamie. How will you and Tony decide who keeps me?”
Jamie opened her mouth, but Z didn’t wait for an answer. He was out of the car, slamming the door, and walking away before she could stop him. Long legs and broad shoulders, hair trimmed short, Z was striking. Jamie wasn’t the only one who thought so, either. As he crossed campus, girls gazed in his direction, giving him looks that they were too young to be giving.
She wasn’t giving him up. Why hadn’t she promised him that? Was some part of her afraid that it was a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep?
*
Sondra Borden answered the door in a white pantsuit. Or, not quite white. Sondra would have a name for this color. Ivory, or alabaster. Or ecru. Sondra paused on the threshold of a room as large as Jamie’s entire downstairs.
“Please.” She put her hand out to invite them in. “We can talk in here. This room gets nice sun.”
And sun it had. Jamie crossed toward one of three large couches upholstered in a light amber fabric that was probably silk, centered around a coffee table made of handblown glass. The four legs were swirled columns of oranges, golds, and hints of blue. It probably cost more than Jamie had made in her entire adult life. She gave it a wide berth. On the far side of the room, the Golden Gate Bridge was visible through the window. Beyond that were the spiky peaks of the Farallon Islands.
“Nice view,” Vich said with his thick Boston accent.
“Thank you.” Sondra perched on the edge of one couch. Her knees touched perfectly as did her feet. Her hands were folded in her lap until she rolled one out in front of her to display the porcelain teapot set on the table. “Can I offer either of you some tea?”
“Thank you, but no,” Vich said.
“I’m fine, too,” Jamie said.
Sondra replaced her hand in her lap and made no move to get more comfortable on her own couch. Jamie sat forward and pulled out her notebook. Vich gave her the small head dip that told her to take the lead.
“Has there been any change to Charlotte’s condition?” Jamie asked.
Sondra stared at her hands, shook her head. Something like emotion crossed her face and was gone. “I made the list of her friends that you requested.” Sondra motioned to an envelope on the corner of the table, and Jamie reached for it gingerly. “The information on our staff is there, too. Aside from Tiffany Greene, we rely on a service. I’ve included their number as well as our account manager’s contact information.”
Jamie opened the thick, expensive envelope and slid out a card with Sondra’s name—Sondra Bishop Borden—printed at the top. In small, neat print was a series of names and phone numbers. Four of them. One was Dr. Steckler’s daughter. Not as many friends as Jamie had expected. Below the girls’ names was “CPS Services.” Beside the company name was Abigail Canterbury and a phone number. Sondra had called Abigail their account manager. It was an odd title for someone who handled cleaning ladies and gardeners.
Jamie slid the card back into the envelope and tucked it inside her notebook. “Can you tell me a little more about Charlotte? What are her interests? What does she like to do?”
“Oh, the same sort of things any sixteen-year-old likes to do.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have a sixteen-year-old, so I wouldn’t know what they
do.” She didn’t mention that she had a fifteen-year-old. “What does Charlotte do?”
“Talks to friends on the phone, texts, listens to music, hangs out, and goes to movies,” Sondra said. “She’s like any teenager. When she’s here, she’s usually working on her schoolwork. She carries her phone everywhere, always on Instagram and Twitter.”
Vich raised an eyebrow at Jamie. Sounded like a normal teenager to her.
“What else?” Jamie asked.
“All that social media stuff, of course, and she spends time with her friends. Really nothing that is out of the ordinary. She gets good grades and works very hard at that. The academics are extremely rigorous at City.”
“What about extracurricular activities?” Jamie asked. “I understand that Charlotte used to play lacrosse.”
“She did. Freshman and sophomore years.”
Jamie made a note. “Why did she quit?”
“Oh, I don’t know. She said it was dull. The practices, the other girls, the coaches. I suspect she realized that she wasn’t all that good at it. At this age, it’s all about appearances.”
Jamie pressed her lips together, thinking about this room, this house, Sondra Borden’s life. What part of that was not about appearances? “So, she didn’t quit lacrosse recently? She decided not to play last year?”
“I’m not sure she was decided at the end of last season. She went to the first couple of practices this year before deciding she had lost interest.”
“When does the lacrosse season start?” Vich asked. “Where I’m from, we’ve got snow into April.”
“I believe it’s late February,” Sondra answered.
Quit lacrosse recently, Jamie wrote in her notebook. “She took some music as well?”
“Yes. Piano and viola from Margaret VanEck. Margaret’s talented, but also very demanding, and Charlotte didn’t have the time to put in. The two sort of agreed to part ways. I hope she will go back to it. She has the fingers for the instruments—long, you know, and lean.” Sondra pressed her lips together. Another wave of emotion perhaps.
“And she and Ms. VanEck parted ways when?”
“Oh, that was earlier this year. January, I think,” Sondra said. Did Sondra recognize how much her daughter’s life had changed over the past few months?
Everything to Lose Page 7