by Laura Drewry
She’d expected him to be happy, to jump at the chance to end this charade they’d been playing at for the last three weeks, but the muscles in his jaw just clenched tighter.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the emails?”
“The emails? Because you’re not the lead investigator; Tory is. All contact, all information, all everything is supposed to go through her or the watch command—”
“This isn’t a goddamn game, Ellie!”
His sudden burst made her jump; then it just pissed her off.
“That’s exactly what it is! It’s Kurt’s game, and we’re all playing along. The only difference is, he doesn’t give a shit about the rule book, and we do—we have to! I’m the one who screwed up, I’m the one who ignored the rules, and I’m sorry, okay? All I’m trying to do now is make it right and follow the playbook you laid out for me when this started.”
“Oh, I get it.” He snorted quietly and shook his head. “So I’m the asshole again?”
“What? No!” This wasn’t going the way she’d hoped. Not even close. “None of this is on you; I’m just trying to make it right again. Tory has her job, you have your job, and I have mine. So far as I can tell, the two of you have managed your parts perfectly, but I didn’t. This is what happens when you live a lie for too long: you start to believe it’s real.”
She wasn’t going to sit there waiting for him to say something, because that would only make it worse, so she fired up the truck again and headed back toward town.
“North or south on the highway?” she asked, doing a damn fine job of keeping her voice even, despite the fact that her throat burned and her jaw kept wanting to quiver. Oh no, she wasn’t having any of that shit. At least not while she was anywhere near him.
None of this had been his doing, and she wasn’t about to have him feeling guilty about any of it.
“Ell.”
“Please don’t call me that. Call me Ellie, Elleanor if you must, or Miss Palmer like Tory does, but not Ell.”
“Seriously?”
“Damn right.” Ell was way too personal. No one else had ever called her that, only him. “Now, which way are we going?”
With his elbow resting on the armrest, he lifted his hand in surrender. “I don’t care. South.”
Of course, she mused. Everything else seemed to be heading that way.
For the next hour she did everything she was instructed to do, signaled, made her way through two four-way stops, a roundabout, and an obstacle course of bright orange cones. She even parallel parked on Main Street without using his backup camera.
And not once in the entire time they were out did he have to mention her speed. She kept a very close eye on that speedometer, and even though it almost drove her crazy on the straight stretches down the highway, she maintained the speed limits everywhere she went.
When they got back to her house, she hopped out and rounded the front of the truck as he came around from the passenger side.
She didn’t touch him, didn’t so much as kiss him on the cheek as she moved past him, but she smiled. Oh yes, she smiled. Because if there was one thing she was getting really good at, it was lying, and that smile was the biggest lie yet.
“See you at the game tomorrow. Field five, remember.”
She didn’t wait to hear what he had to say to that, if anything at all; she had one goal, and that was to get to the pint of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Ellie!”
“What are you…ohmygod, is that Buck?!”
Spinning back around, Ellie squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she possibly could and slapped her hands over her ears, desperate to unsee what she had already seen and to unhear the sounds still hanging in her living room.
Her mom’s iPad crashed to the floor as Gail made a frantic grab for her discarded bathrobe while Buck’s startled shouts kept coming from the speaker on the now upside-down tablet.
“Gail, honey, what happened? Are you okay? Should I call 911? Oh Jesus, where are my pants?”
“Oh my God!” Ellie cried. “Shut it off! Hang up! Do something!”
“I’m trying,” Gail yelled back. “If you’d stop screaming and let me think for two seconds.”
“Gail?” Buck’s voice grew louder when Gail finally managed to retrieve him from the floor. “What the hell was that? Why are you dressed?”
“Ellie’s here, Buck. I have to go.”
“What? Hang on, I need to find my hearing aid.”
“I swear to God, Mom, make him stop!”
“Give me a second! Buck? Buck!”
Gail’s voice and footsteps got farther and farther away, but Ellie kept her eyes shut until she was sure both her parents and the tablet were all upstairs. There wasn’t enough therapy or pizza in the world to get her through what she’d just witnessed. No child wants to even think that her parents might have ever had sex, but to see them…like that…over Skype…with Gail on the couch and…and…what the hell kind of noises had Buck been making anyway?
When she finally dared open her eyes, she kept them to narrow slits—just enough to see her way to the kitchen, where she guzzled a full two glasses of water and got halfway through the pint of ice cream before draping a wet dishcloth over her face.
It was while she was sitting at the table, head thrown back, the cloth dripping down her cheeks, that Gail came back downstairs and cleared her throat.
“Obviously, we weren’t expecting you to be home so soon.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Even under the cloth, Ellie closed her eyes again, as though that would help. It didn’t.
“It’s just so hot upstairs…”
“It’s not the house, Mom.”
“I don’t think I broke my tablet, but maybe next time I’ll…”
“Mom!”
Gail clicked her tongue and yanked the cloth off Ellie’s face with one quick whoosh. “For goodness sake, it’s just sex.”
“Ugh.” How was it even possible that Ellie was part of this family? “Gabbie told me you were using the tablet for online dating sites.”
“I know, I told her to tell you that.” Gail bobbed her head in one sharp indignant nod. “We lied, because I knew this is how you’d react. And you can save that holier-than-thou look, young lady, because you’ve been lying to me since the day I arrived on your doorstep.”
That brought Ellie upright in a hurry.
“That’s right,” Gail went on. “I know all about you and Brett.”
“What?” Ellie tried to look at Gail, but she just couldn’t do it. “What do you know?”
“I know you’re in love with him. I knew it from the first day I got here and you came dragging in all covered with mud, all blushing and nervous, and then you left that poor boy standing out there in the rain like that.”
“Mom, I wasn’t…I’m not—” She grabbed for the ice cream, but Gail snapped it up first and put it back in the freezer.
“And I know you’re going to deny it because he’s leaving soon, but distance doesn’t matter anymore, honey. Gabbie and I can show you how you can still enjoy each other even when you’re far apart. Did you know there are apps for this kind of thing now?”
“I’ll give you ten billion dollars if you stop talking right now.”
“Oh, for goodness sake, are you going to pretend you’ve never enjoyed sex before?”
“No, but any more of this and I might never enjoy it again.” Slumping over the table, she ran one finger along the edge and sighed. “Without giving me any more nightmares than I’m already going to have, would you mind clueing me in on when this all started?”
“Honestly, it started the day I arrived here. He just kept calling, like five or six times a day. This time away has been awful for him; now he understands what I’ve been feeling, and he’s bending over backward—almost literally—to make things better between us, if you know what I mean.”
“Really, Mom? Like I don’t have enough trauma going on
in my head right now? The last thing I need is you stacking more visuals in front of me.”
Gail’s grin wasn’t the least bit embarrassed; it was actually giddy.
“When I left, Ellie, I fully expected your father to contact a lawyer, to hire a cleaning lady, and yes, to be honest, to find someone for companionship, but he didn’t do any of those things.”
“It’s only been a month, Mom. Give him time.”
Gail ignored her. “Do you want to know what he did in that month?”
“Not particularly.”
“He cleared the rest of the garden space to get it ready for this coming season, he painted the upstairs bathroom, and he took a cake up to the hospital.”
“Well, zip-a-dee-doo-dah! You do that stuff all the time.”
“Oh, Ellie, sweetheart. I thought you of all people would understand.” She reached across the table and took Ellie’s hands in hers. “We’re a team, Buck and I. I wasn’t there to do those things, the things I would normally have done, you’re right, so he did them, because that’s how a team works. When one player slips, the other picks up the slack.”
“I don’t know, Mom…”
“There’s more,” Gail said, her grin widening.
“Oh, God, if you tell me you’re pregnant—”
“Honestly.” Gail clicked her tongue as though the idea was preposterous. “Buck came out to see me.”
“He what? When?”
“Last week. He flew in to surprise me when I was at Gabbie’s.”
“Wait, what? Buck flew? In an airplane? Up in the air?”
“Mm-hmm.” Her mom’s eyes sparkled. “He could only get away for a few days, so he couldn’t drive.”
“But he doesn’t fly.”
“He flew for me. Took me out to a fancy restaurant, we walked by the lake for hours and talked like we haven’t talked in years, and then he took me back to his hotel and, well…”
“Yeah, okay,” Ellie groaned. “I get it.”
“Are you angry?”
“No. Mom, come on, why would I be angry?” When Gail tipped her head, Ellie laughed. “If you’re happy—and I mean really happy—then I’m happy.”
“I am.” She didn’t even have to say it; it was in the way her eyes danced, the way she couldn’t stop smiling, and the way her skin seemed to glow with new life, new energy. “I hope you don’t mind that I came back here after leaving Gabbie’s, but I wanted to spend a little more time with you before I went home.”
“Of course not. I’m glad you’re here.” Ellie squeezed her mom’s hand and grinned cheekily. “But exactly how much longer are you planning on staying?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“What? I was kidding!”
“I know, but it’s been booked for a week; I just wanted to make sure you understood this before I left.”
“I do. I would have preferred learning about it some other way,” she added with a wince. “But so long as you’re happy, it’s all good.” Ellie pushed out of her chair and gripped the back of it for support. “So I’m going to go upstairs and have a nice long shower now.”
“But you showered before you left this morning.”
“I know, but this time I’ll be trying to scrub images off my retinas, so you might not see me for a while.”
—
After Ellie left him standing in her driveway, Brett had to force himself to get moving. He still had driving appointments with the other three students, and if he didn’t get his shit together he was liable to let Mrs. G steer them right off the road.
He was only halfway through the lessons with her, and he already knew it wasn’t going to end well. It might have been the hip replacements, it might have been the age, or it might have been a combination, but she couldn’t seem to brake very hard, which made her drive slow to the point of being a hazard. Roundabouts were like a foreign language to her, four-way stops meant stop and go, not stop and wait, and even in her own small car she had trouble judging distance. That afternoon, there wasn’t a curb they didn’t hit or a yellow line they didn’t cross.
“I guess Jeff was right after all, wasn’t he?” She patted Brett’s arm as he helped her out and made sure she had a secure grip on her cane.
Brett hated this. Mrs. G and her husband had helped build this town, the old girl was the sweetest, most generous person he’d ever met, and yet her family treated her like nothing more than a burden. Her grandson Jeff was an idiot, but he was right about her driving.
“It’s okay, dear,” she said. “Not your fault. And to be honest, I don’t really like driving much; I just don’t want Jeff telling me what I can and can’t do.”
Once he had her safely inside, he turned to go, but she called him back.
“Would you be able to get me some of those transfer papers for my car?”
After she’d explained her idea, Brett left there loving Mrs. G even more than he had when he’d picked her up.
It took Junjie a couple of minutes to fully understand what Brett was telling him.
“Miss Goodzen to give me car?”
“That’s right. She can’t use it anymore, so she wants you to have it.”
“But I save for car. The bank is money.”
“I understand, but she wants to give it to someone deserving, and you’re her first choice.”
The poor kid still looked dazed when Brett dropped him off and headed to Angus’s house.
Throughout every lesson that day, as he’d done every other day, Brett remained focused, professional, relaxed. If he wasn’t those things, he couldn’t expect the students to be, so it wasn’t until he’d finished with Angus that he finally let himself exhale.
He’d screwed things up with Ellie, let things push right up against the line, and then he’d made it worse when he couldn’t get out what he’d wanted to say earlier this afternoon. She’d gotten stuff out, though. Boy, had she.
“Don’t go and do something stupid”—that’s what Sarge had told him, and technically, he hadn’t. He’d taken her out, spent time with her, and put on a pretty good show of being her new man. He’d only kissed her twice, and both those times were for the benefit of the case. Okay, they had been for his own benefit as well, but he didn’t have to admit that.
Other than those times, he’d hardly touched her, and if that didn’t prove how dedicated he was to his job, he didn’t know what would. He’d done what Sarge had told him to do. He’d played his part, and he’d played it pretty well, but Ellie was right—when you lived a lie long enough, you started to believe it.
Didn’t make it any less of a lie.
By the time he got to the game the next night, the rest of the team was already warming up, including Ellie, who was as far away from the dugout and him as she could get. She still put on a show, though, waving and flashing him a big smile. If anyone other than him had been looking, they wouldn’t have noticed the slight dimness in her eyes.
That smile might have been big, but it didn’t even come close to reaching her eyes, and it didn’t last more than a second before she turned and started talking to Regan, stretching beside her.
“Hey.” Nick slapped him on the back with his glove. “How’s it?”
“Yeah, good.”
“You ready?”
“Yeah,” he lied. “Let’s do it.”
Out on the field, Ellie was all business. Focused, ready, relaxed, she made every play, called out encouragement to the rest of the team, and laughed with everyone else when the ball dropped right in front of Maya while she was shading her eyes from the sun.
In the dugout, though, she was tense and twitchy. To keep up their lie, she had to at least show some interest in him, so she sat right next to him, her foot bouncing up and down, her fingers tapping her knees.
At one point, he put his hand over hers to try to settle her down, but that only lasted for a couple of seconds before she stood up and walked over to the dugout door, where she stayed for the rest of the inning.
They didn’t win, and neither of them cared. All Brett wanted to do was get the hell out of there. As soon as the game was over, he threw his gear into the truck, gave Ellie a token kiss on the cheek, and took off for home. There, he stood in the middle of his living room staring at the end of the couch where she’d sat a little over a week ago, ogling that skinny goof in her show and somehow, at the same time, pushing Brett just past the line.
It might have started out as a lie, but it wasn’t anymore. Not for him.
“She was right,” he muttered. “You are a dipwad.”
He couldn’t just keep standing there, he needed to do something, so even though his movements were mechanical, almost robotic, he wandered from room to room in his stupid condo, always ending up back in the living room, staring at the couch.
Empty the dishwasher, wander out to the living room. Eat Jayne’s leftovers, standing in the living room. Drink a beer and watch the first episode of The Killing again.
Hell. Where was his phone? Maybe he’d give Nick a call and see if he wanted to meet for a drink. It took some digging, but he finally found the phone inside his equipment bag, tucked inside his jacket pocket. After ignoring the damn thing all day, he had two messages waiting for him, and it looked like Sarge had called a few times.
The first message was from his contact at the Motor Vehicle Branch. The new guy, Drew Something-or-Other, was all set to start, and he wanted Brett to work out shifting some of the driving lessons over to him.
God, yes. Start with Ellie. Get her away from him, at least in that area, so he could learn how to breathe without her again. She’d become a part of his every day, whether it was driving, playing ball, talking about everything—or nothing—or even playing Scrabble in the dark. Everything had been about her, and these last nine days of trying to ignore that were killing him.
So if he could just get her out of his truck, that’d be a start. First thing he’d do is have the whole vehicle detailed so it’d smell like new again, instead of like her. Instead of that goddamn soft scent that smelled like spring—only better. Way better.