by Lisa Unger
“I want to understand what happened,” I said. “And why.”
A slow blink, something clicking, registering. Mike saw me. I think he always saw my intention. On some level, I think he always knew what I wanted, even before I did.
“We might never be able to understand,” he said. “Even if we find them.”
“Please,” I said. “Tell me everything. I deserve the truth.”
And he did. He told me everything he knew.
• • •
TRAFFIC WAS HEAVY. I SNAKED along, praying that the car wasn’t going to die on me in the stop-and-start traffic. Seth’s words from last night were still ringing in my ears.
“I’m pretty sure that the fourth man was a cop,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “Why do you think that?”
“First of all, he waited outside,” said Seth. “Maybe he was afraid your dad would recognize him. Or maybe he just didn’t have the stomach for how fucked up it was, didn’t want to get his hands dirty.”
I nodded, considering.
“They got away with it,” said Seth. “I mean, do you know what kind of hell rains down when someone kills a cop? There’s no mercy. Those guys move heaven and earth. Unless. Unless there’s corruption. A cover-up of some kind. Then people get questioned and released, leads mysteriously go cold, the case starts all thunder and lightning, then slows to a drizzle. Then goes cold.”
Seth was, of course, a crazed conspiracy theorist. Which didn’t mean he was wrong. The thought had occurred to me, though neither Mike nor Paul ever suggested it. That other cops might have been involved.
“It was definitely cops that ripped off Whitey Malone,” said Seth. “It was a surgical strike, swift and trained, zero evidence left behind.”
“So cops stole the money,” I said. “And other cops came looking for it?”
“Or people hired by cops,” he said. “Didion, the Beckham brothers, these were bad guys. They were hired guns, promised a cut. If we figured it out, who was probably there that night, why didn’t the police?”
“There was no evidence,” I said. “They were questioned and released.”
“Give me a break,” said Seth. “If they wanted Beckham and Didion, they’d have found a way to hold them. Shit, when the cops want someone for a crime, there’s no stopping them.”
We sat a minute, both of us lost in our own thoughts. I caught him looking at me in that sad, musing way he had.
“Hey, Zoey,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Is there any way you can just—I don’t know—let this go?” Seth said. “Move on. Live a life.”
It wasn’t just my dad standing there now. Didion was there, too. Grim and pale, staring, his front soaked with blood, drip, dripping on the floor. If I’d known what I know now, maybe.
I got up. “It’s too late,” I said.
He stood at the top of the stairs as I jogged down to leave.
“Remember,” he said. “You’re one of the good guys.”
I wasn’t so sure. Anyway, it seems like a pretty outdated concept. Overly simplistic, the idea of the good guys versus the bad guys, Mike’s position on justice versus revenge. I’m not sure anything is so black and white. Does anyone think he’s purely evil? Does anyone ever believe she’s purely good? Even terrorists think they’re the good guys. Did the men who killed my parents intend to commit a heinous act? How did they justify what happened afterward?
Am I evil because I killed John Didion, because I ran him through in cold blood? He was an old man. One I suspected, convicted, and punished without judge or jury. I knew. My body knew him. But did I have the right to exact revenge, deliver a form of justice? I don’t know the answer. It could go either way. Anyway, it’s too late now. Some acts are forever. My point is that I’m not sure that there are any good guys, not in the real world. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t justice, a kind of code.
• • •
I HADN’T BEEN BACK TO the house since that day with Paul. I never claimed our things, the detritus of my parents’ lives. Mr. Bishop, the owner, died a couple of years later. And the house, Paul told me, sat empty. No one ever lived there after us until recently. I had no reason to think our stuff hadn’t gone to the junkyard long ago except that Seth said that the house, the property had sat fallow, no one living there since us. He’d been out to the property a couple of times, wondering, always wondering if there was something that the police missed—on purpose or by accident. And, of course, there was the matter of the missing money.
And then the Bishop woman moved in, Seth and I following her blog, wondering what she’d find. She and the house were right for each other. If ever a place needed a rebirth.
It was afternoon by the time I rolled into Lost Valley. When I’d pulled over for gas, it took me a while to get the Suburban started again. My father and John Didion sat grimly silent in the backseat. Did I feel it? An electricity in the air? Did the sun seem too low in the sky, the sky too dark? I don’t know. Maybe.
thirty
Paul was waiting for Heather in the parking lot, just as he said he would be. She never doubted him. He was one of those rare men who always said exactly what he meant, always did exactly as he promised. There was a hard lump in her throat as she pulled in beside him, and her gut was a roil of guilt, sadness, dread. He smiled at her, something sad and sweet.
She’d bought a few things. A sundress, a new bathing suit and cover-up, some pretty lingerie. She’d used cash from her savings account, the one that Chad didn’t know about until recently. She owed herself that, this trip. It was only a week ago, a little more, that she’d learned what kind of trouble they were in. She’d known money was tight, of course. But she’d had no idea the mountain of debt that had accrued. She felt like a fool, one of those stupid women who let her husband handle the money. But he had always done, and she trusted him. He worked so hard, all that overtime. He never once told her or even hinted that they were buried, suffocating.
Her credit card had been declined—online, thank goodness, and not in a local shop somewhere. She checked their account and was amazed to see that not only was the card maxed out, but the payment was past due. She went to Chad’s desk in the basement, started sifting through the stack of bills, his files. How was it possible? She logged on to their bank accounts, between savings and checking, there was only a couple hundred dollars. Zoey’s college fund was empty, closed in fact. He’d taken a loan out against his pension. There was no other way to say it. They were broke. She could see what he’d done, as she followed the paper trail. Ran a card up, then opened another account to transfer the balance for a lower interest rate, then ran them both up again. Then he did it again, and again. He took out a loan against the pension to pay off the cards, then ran the cards up again. There were slips for payroll advances; there was a balance on their overdraft line of credit. Her chest felt tight; her breathing came ragged. How? How could this happen?
If he missed a paycheck, they’d have about two weeks before they were out of money altogether, with no credit to carry them over, if not for her small savings account. Thank God, he hadn’t known about it. Or had forgotten about it.
She was alone the afternoon she found out. It was raining, and she felt as if her whole life had crumbled around her. She couldn’t have been more crushed if she had discovered him cheating, if he was in love with someone else. Financial infidelity; he’d kept secrets, mismanaged their money, taken out a loan against their future, one he had no way of paying. She felt a hard stab of guilt; she never should have stopped working.
Her small account was all they had. Money she’d inherited as a teenager from her grandmother. She’d used it mostly for her education. But she kept it, contributing to it from the subbing jobs she took sometimes, things she’d sold on eBay. She’d hoped one day to surprise him—part of the down payment on a house, covering some of Zoey’s education costs.
She went to the bank, deposited some money i
nto their checking and paid down some balances, bringing them at least current on everything. She sent him a text:
Can you come home early?
What’s wrong?
I need to talk before Zoey gets home.
Can it wait?
No.
He’d wept at the kitchen table. She tried to understand, to feel for him. She tried not to hate him, herself. But there was more. Withdrawals, cash advances that she didn’t understand, that didn’t correspond with their payments due and normal expenses. How could she have been so naïve?
She had the printouts, the last six months of banking statements, credit cards, pension. It was all easy to get to; she knew all the passwords, so it wasn’t like she hadn’t had access all this time. She just simply hadn’t looked.
She told him about the account she had. He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes.
“How much?”
“A little over ten thousand,” she said. “A bit less. I paid down some balances, made us current at least.”
He laughed a little, this kind of derisive snort he issued that drove her crazy. “That’s a drop in the bucket.”
“It’s a small buffer at least,” she said. “We need to get a debt counselor. I’ll go back to work. We can consolidate that debt, and set a budget, work on paying some of this off.”
He shook his head, an odd black look on his face. It was the strangest thing, as she sat there with him, the sensation that her husband, a man she’d known since childhood, was someone else. Who was he? A stranger, someone less somehow than the man she thought she knew. The kind of love they shared was supposed to be unconditional. Wasn’t it? She didn’t even want to look at him.
“What else?” she said. It was there, standing in the corner, a black shadow, a wraith. A nebulous, shifting menace.
“This isn’t bad enough?” he asked.
“The withdrawals, the cash advances, so much debt. We’re not exactly living high on the hog here, Chad.”
He shook his head. “You think it’s cheap? That school? The rent here. Insurance. Food. Clothes. Vacations. Hell, we spent a hundred dollars on dinner and the movies for the three of us last weekend.
“It doesn’t add up,” she said. “I know what we spend.”
Did he forget that she was smart, educated, good with numbers? She didn’t blame him for forgetting if he had. She had forgotten all of that herself. She had let him take the reins of her life and let her world grow small—the house, the school, Zoey, Chad. Her friends had all left Lost Valley. One lived in the city, a magazine executive. Her other close girlfriend was a travel writer, always sending gifts from exotic climes. She never envied them, both of them childless, one unhappily married, the other always with someone new. At least Heather was happy. Well. Happy-ish. As happy as she could be. Or was that just what she told herself?
“What else, Chad?” she asked again. “Where did all that money go?”
She’d gone through his paystubs, too. There were one or two that showed overtime. But mostly not. She wracked her brain for dates he said he was working, events at school he missed. She checked the corresponding stubs. There were discrepancies. She’d never once doubted, not for a second, that he wasn’t where he said he was, doing what he said he was doing. She’d never doubted his love. Other men lied and cheated; friends’ marriages collapsed around them. Not Chad. Not their marriage. And here they were. What a sad cliché. Not that she was faultless. Not at all.
“Heather,” he said.
“Just tell me,” she said. “We’ll fix it together.”
He reached for her hand. And his touch repelled her. She let her hand rest beneath his for a moment, then drew it away. That dark stranger, the one that resided in his eyes, knew the truth. On some level, he’d lost her. Long before this, they’d been in a slow drift, too busy, too caught up in the day-to-day to even notice.
“I have a way out of this,” he said. “Give me a chance to make it right.”
One of the things she had always liked about numbers was how predictable they were. Money, too. Money came in. If you didn’t spend it, you saved and it grew. If you spent more than you made, you accumulated debt. So, there was the enormous sum that they owed and the paltry (by comparison) amount of his paycheck. Heather would have to go back to work. They’d have to get someone to help them reorganize their debt and get on a tight budget. Chad would need to work overtime when he could. There was no other way to navigate this crisis.
“There’s no magic bullet for this, Chad,” she said.
Was it gambling? She couldn’t think of anything else. He barely drank. She’d never known him to take drugs. She really didn’t think he was having an affair.
“What if there is a magic bullet,” the stranger asked her. The desperate, dark-eyed stranger.
Zoey burst through the front door then. Heather had asked Crystal to take her day on carpool. Zoey planted kisses on each of their cheeks, then breezed through the kitchen, grabbing an apple from the refrigerator.
“Ugh,” she said. “I have so much homework. Heading right up.”
She thundered up the stairs, oblivious to what was unfolding between her parents.
“What are you doing home, Dad?” she yelled from upstairs. But she wasn’t interested enough to wait for an answer. Heather heard her door slam. Homework. Sure. She was going to get right online and play one of those stupid games with her friends.
Chad got to his feet.
“I have to get back,” he said, as if he’d just happened home for lunch.
“No,” she said, leaning forward. “I need to know everything. What are you talking about? What magic bullet?”
He lifted his palms in surrender. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re right. I’ve fucked up and we have to fix it. I assume this means you aren’t going to Key West.”
He was distant, blank almost. She wanted to reach out and grab the stranger and shake him until her real husband came back. The one, whatever his faults, had always taken care of her and Zoey.
“Well?”
Key West. Mary Jane’s wedding. Heather’s heart sank. She’d been looking forward to this little getaway so much, even more so when Chad stubbornly refused to come. She wanted the time to herself, without the shadow of his needs and under-the-breath comments, and all of it.
“I’m still going,” she said. She held on to it, like a jewel clutched in her fist. The smell of the ocean, the swaying palms. Mary Jane said there would be a string quartet. Heather had begged him to come; part of her had wanted that at first. But he’d said no. Now she knew why.
“Fine,” he said. He wasn’t even looking at her. She wasn’t even there. “What difference does it make at this point, anyway?”
When had she stopped loving him? When had she stopped craving his closeness, admiring things about him? Or maybe she was just angry, deeply angry. She tried to think about how she had felt on their wedding day. Relieved. She’d felt relieved like she had on graduation day, as if she’d accomplished something that her parents had both very much wanted her to do. Her dad had loved Chad, the son he never had. Heather was a good girl. She always did what was expected.
He started to leave and then stopped in the doorway without looking back.
“I’m going to fix this,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Chad.”
But then he was gone. She got up and watched him from the kitchen window. He sat in the truck for a minute, gripping the wheel with both hands, head bowed. Then he drove away. She didn’t even wait five minutes before she called Paul.
• • •
AT THE AIRPORT, SHE STEPPED out of the car and into Paul’s arms. The airport was far from home, so she wasn’t worried about being seen. She didn’t care. She came alive when Paul was there. That night they shared, so long ago, it lived inside her. It sustained her. She clung to him. He put his mouth over hers, and her whole body released the tension, the worry, the deep unhappiness she’d been carrying around. He was coming with he
r to Key West. She was going to the wedding, and the rest of the time they’d just hide out in the hotel, being together, figuring out the mess they were in. She’d been counting the seconds. But now that they were here . . .
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t even know there was something wrong until he asked. The joy of it, the illicit thrill of what they were planning to do, her suppressed desire for him, her love—was it really about Paul, about her? Or was she just trying to get even with Chad? Doing the thing she knew would hurt him more than anything else, a betrayal to match his. But hadn’t she betrayed him, too, long ago? Hadn’t she been betraying him all these years?
Heather and Paul stood there awhile, holding each other. She didn’t have to say a word.
“It’s okay,” he said, pulling back from her, smiling. “I’ll stay. You go.”
They sat in his car and talked—about what had lived between them all these years. About their shared love and loyalty for Chad. How what they wanted could never truly be.
Even after he’d gone, she’d sat a long time thinking. She missed her flight. Then she went home. Because she was a good girl and always, always did what was expected.
thirty-one
“Let me see it,” said Raven.
“Just wait,” said Troy.
He was lying on his belly in front of the locked door, trying to open it with a bobby pin and a paper clip. Claudia knew, had told them, that there was no way that they were going to pick the lock with those things. But they were convinced. After all, they’d watched a YouTube video. She kind of admired their confidence, their complete faith in themselves and their abilities, a kind of DIY mentality that this generation—Generation Z, was it?—seemed to have. They didn’t need to look to authority or professionals for answers. They looked to Google.