Everything That Follows

by Meg Little Reilly

  “No,” Hunter said. “I think that might provoke him to do something really crazy. He really doesn’t care about money.”

  The senator studied the wine list. “Sure, sure, no one cares about the money until they let themselves care about it.”

  “He doesn’t want the money, Dad.” Hunter shifted in his chair and scanned the room again. It felt like his father was enjoying this demonstration of power.

  “Okay, okay. Just get your friend Kat to take it. She sounds like a smart girl.”

  “I just don’t know how to convince her. I’ve tried.”

  Erika approached and the senator waved her away.

  “I don’t think she’ll take it,” Hunter said again.

  “Well, what does she want? Does she want what Sean wants?”

  Hunter really and truly didn’t know the answer to this. Kat loved Sean, but he had always suspected that they didn’t want exactly the same things. Her motivations were more complicated. “She doesn’t want to go to prison,” he whispered.

  “That’s not the same thing.”

  Hunter looked around the room. “She wants to work, I think. She wants to keep blowing glass. I think she really likes her life as it is, actually. Or the way it was.”

  “Good, okay.” The senator picked his menu back up and began reading. “Then the money needs to be about that. Make it about that.”

  Hunter hated this feeling, having his father swoop in to solve all his problems and give him assignments. If he had any other options, he would stand up and shake his father’s hand, and announce that he’d be handling everything on his own from here on out. But he didn’t have any options. And there was no room for error this time.

  “I’m going with the filet,” the senator announced. “Where’s that waitress? I need to get the two thirty back to Woods Hole.”

  And then he remembered the other thing. “Dad, there is some good news.”

  “Glad to hear it. Tell me.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Hunter whispered. “It wasn’t either of us, actually. The guy’s scarf got caught in the propeller and it pulled him in.”

  His father stared blankly at him.

  “So, it wasn’t me who...pushed him.”

  Hunter watched as the senator considered this information. It could have saved all of them, if they’d only called the police immediately. But this was no longer about how Kyle Billings really died or who was to blame. No one would believe them now. Now it was about two obviously guilty people evading the authorities because whatever they actually did must have been truly awful.

  “Well that is good news. I’m glad to hear it, son.”

  Hunter picked up his menu. What he was hoping to hear, he didn’t know. But it wasn’t that.

  “Is the boat in working order now?”

  That wasn’t what he wanted to hear, either.

  “Uh, yeah. I think so.”

  “Double-check the motor, if you would. I’d hate to have it serviced right now, given the situation. We need to sell it eventually.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Erika came back and they ordered the filet and the lobster roll. The senator inquired about one of her tattoos and complimented her earrings. She smiled the way she smiled for all the flirtatious older patrons, and Hunter was impressed by her unwillingness to be fully charmed. She was a stellar judge of character.

  And then Hunter was alone again with his father, who was mildly pleased to learn that his son was not in fact a murderer. But only mildly. Because the senator didn’t really care whether or not his son was a murderer—that’s what Hunter realized. He only cared whether people thought he was a murderer. To this man, being a murderer was precisely the same thing as having people believe that you were one. The social and political costs were the same, and so it was the same. This was the pull of his father’s moral compass. The senator had lived for so long in the political spotlight that he’d lost the ability to see truth through anything other than the lens of public scrutiny. There was no good and bad to him; only the perception of good and bad.

  For Hunter, there was something freeing in this grim realization. It meant that he could let go of some of the shame he’d been walking around with on behalf of his family. He’d always assumed that the burden his fuckups placed on his father were predominantly emotional burdens—the weight of watching your child fail—when in fact they were only financial and reputational. In other words, they were fixable. It wasn’t personal. When Hunter got arrested for public drunkenness, or got that waitress pregnant, or left that joint in his pocket during airport screening, he was creating new logistical problems for his father’s people to solve, most of which went away with the proper fee. The inhumanity of it freed Hunter from a bit of all that sorriness he’d been feeling.

  When their plates were nearly empty, Erika appeared and whisked them away.

  “Son, it was good to see you,” the senator said as he scanned the other diners. “I think you’ve got some work to do, but nothing impossible.”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to Kat.”

  “Good, good.”

  “So, ah, how’s the campaign going?”

  His father stood up and took his overcoat off a hook. “Oh, it’s a pain in the ass. One high-priced fund-raising dinner after the next. But it’s a necessary evil.”

  Senator Briggs loved to complain about campaigning, though he obviously enjoyed the game of it all, the win in particular.

  “Polls look good?”

  “Yes, as long as we don’t have a terrorist attack or a market meltdown, incumbent democrats should all be okay this cycle.”

  “Well, good luck.”

  He looked at his watch. “Son, I gotta run. Good to catch up. I trust you’ll take care of things.”

  “I will.”

  His father nodded once and went for the door, stopping along the way to shake every hand at a table of tourists who seemed to recognize him. And then he was gone.

  Hunter went to the bar and had three shots of tequila. Erika raised her eyebrows but said nothing at all. It was one thirty in the afternoon.

  “You wanna talk?” she asked.

  “Not really. Thanks, though.” He left a twenty on the bar and bid farewell to her.

  Hunter went out into the bright, cold day and began walking toward the glass shop. The tequila was doing its job of softening all the things that had been hard inside of him, but it wasn’t enough.

  He walked down Addison’s historic main drag, past the big white church, and the medium white library, and the tiny white post office. Every little house around had been painted to match these iconic structures and someone’s idea of authenticity. Everything in Addison was an antique, and the things that were not were designed to look as if they were. Addison was a facsimile of the past, real and fake.

  There was no one else in sight. Being alone on the streets of downtown Addison, surrounded by relics of history, made it feel like he was walking through a cemetery. It was a preserved archaeological fossil, dense with the ghosts of a previous era. In the quiet of November, Hunter could feel the ghosts moving about, tolerating his presence on their island.

  He turned onto Main Street and followed the cobblestone path northward, with the dark, sparkling ocean to his right.

  As he approached Island Glass, Hunter could see Kat inside talking to a customer. He went in and lurked by the back wall as she rang someone up for four champagne flutes.

  Kat saw him, but kept working. She wrapped each of the glasses in tissue paper with great care. Hunter thought she looked better than the last time he’d seen her, two weeks ago. She wore a sweater he’d never seen before, and her hair was swept up, exposing her long neck. But her face looked thinner, and her eyes more hollow. She wasn’t quite right.

  “Hi,” Kat said finally as the last customer left.

  “Hey. How ha
ve things been going?” Hunter wasn’t sure what to ask. The last time they were together, he was angry because she’d let him believe that he pushed Kyle. He was still angry, but he was also worried about her. He missed her.

  “Fine,” she said. “You?”

  “Shitty, actually. As you know.”

  She looked around nervously.

  “Kat, are you okay? Seems like you’re having a hard time.”

  “I’m okay. I really am. I’ve been working in the garage a lot lately. I’m working on some very cool new stuff.”

  He didn’t believe her. “Good. And everything else is okay? Have you talked to Sean?”

  “He won’t take my calls. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  Hunter leaned in. “We need to talk to him.”

  “I know.”

  The front door jingled and a well-appointed woman in her midfifties walked through the door. She smiled and began moving fluidly among the glass displays.

  Hunter walked away as Kat went to greet the customer. He pretended to examine a large blue orb hanging from the ceiling. Garden balls, they called them, though he’d never seen anything like it in a garden. He didn’t want to leave until he got a better read on Kat’s mental state and the situation with Sean. The phrase loose ends kept popping into his head, which made him feel like the depraved fixer in a bad Hollywood thriller, but that was also precisely what Kat and Sean were now, loose ends. Maybe Ashley too. Jesus, Ashley. He’d nearly forgotten about her. What was he going to do about Ashley?

  Kat was chatting with the woman in the corner. She nodded along as the lady requested something, and then she excused herself to check the stock in the garage. The woman promptly pulled out her phone and began punching away on the keypad.

  With Kat gone and the customer preoccupied, Hunter went to the counter, bound for her overstuffed tote bag that always sat behind the register. He knelt quickly beside it and began rifling through its contents. There was nothing interesting there: a balled-up flannel shirt, an old notepad and a bunch of pens floating around the sandy bottom. He didn’t know what he was looking for—maybe a prescription drug, something to help him understand her mental state.

  And then he saw it. A dog-eared piece of printer paper had been folded into the pages of some book about Florida. He pulled it out to find a grainy picture of Kyle Billings’s face. Hunter’s stomach dropped. He stared at the picture of Kyle until he heard the door to the studio close and Kat’s footsteps along the wood floor. He slid the tote bag back to where it had been, but pushed the picture of Kyle into the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Found it,” Kat announced to the woman as she returned to the room with a small box.

  Hunter pretended to scroll through his phone while Kat rang the customer up.

  When the woman finally left, he walked to the door and locked it.

  “Why’d you do that?”

  Hunter took Kat’s shoulders in his hands and looked directly into her eyes. “What’s going on with you?”

  “What?”

  Her shoulders felt bonier than they should.

  “What’s with your sudden interest in North Florida? What’s with this?” Hunter pulled out the photo.

  Kat looked at her feet. “I just wanted to know who he was.”

  Hunter shook his head. “No, you can’t do this. I knew you were obsessing. I could see it. Kat, this isn’t like you. You’re supposed to be the sane one. What is this about?”

  She looked around nervously. “I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t close my eyes without seeing him. Do I look tired? It’s because I can’t fucking sleep! I really need to sleep, Hunter, but I can’t. I just feel like maybe if I can fill in some holes about who he was, maybe understand his life a little better, maybe I’ll get some peace or closure or something. I really need to sleep.”

  “I’ll get you some sleeping pills.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not just that. It’s like I can feel him around me.”

  A man came to the door and tried to open it. He looked in at them, then gave up and walked away.

  Hunter resumed. “You can’t feel him, Kat. He’s not here. And you never knew him, so you can’t miss him.”

  Kat straightened her stance. “I know that. I’m not losing my mind or anything. I’m just tired. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Hunter ran a hand through his hair. “No more pictures, Kat. This isn’t safe for you to be walking around with. You get that, right?”

  She nodded.

  Hunter tore the picture into several pieces and stuffed the shreds back in his pocket. Kat winced.

  “You need to hold it together. And we need to talk about the money again.”

  She shook her head violently. “No, I’m not taking it.”

  “Listen to me. This shop and your glassblowing garage won’t be here forever. The money is your only chance to have a future. Orla and Sean too. This money doesn’t mean anything to my family. It’s nothing. It’s just a contract, a cementing of an agreement. It’s that transactional for my father, so why not just consider it the same way he does? This is an opportunity for you.”

  She was looking at him now, listening, maybe considering it.

  Hunter wasn’t done. “You think it’s not right or fair to take money for something like this, Kat. But it’s not fair that I have all this, and you have nothing. I didn’t earn this, and neither did my father. Fairness is bullshit. There is no fairness. Take what you can. And I am telling you, from the bottom of my heart, that this comes with no stipulation other than our shared silence for the rest of our lives. It’s just a contract.”

  She was definitely listening now.

  “Just think about it.”

  He was proud of this speech. Her body language suggested that he was making progress with her. It was working on him too. Hunter didn’t feel quite so disgusting about this proposal after the whole fairness-is-bullshit pitch. It was also true. And, although it didn’t make his father any less of a sociopath for trying to control the entire world around him, it was truly a victimless crime.

  “What’s the number again?” Kat asked.

  “One point three million.”

  “That’s a weird number. Why that?”

  “I don’t know.” He really didn’t know. He imagined it was chosen for purposes of evading the IRS or laundering campaign funds or some other white-collar mischief that he wouldn’t put past his father.

  “I didn’t say I was taking it.”

  “I know. Just think about it. That’s all.”

  Kat didn’t say a word, but she wasn’t as closed to him as she had been ten minutes before. She was open now, and standing straighter. Maybe she could pull it together, after all.

  As if reading his mind, Kat said, “I know I have to talk to Sean.”

  Hunter nodded. “You do. And he’ll forgive you. He wants to be with you.”

  “I don’t know if he does anymore.”

  She looked more wistful than sad about this point, and Hunter felt the most contradictory mix of emotions as they stood there. The safety of their secret seemed to hinge on the coupledom of Kat and Sean. If Sean had Kat, he wouldn’t tell. But Hunter was not rooting for their coupledom. He rather hated the idea.

  “He’ll take you back, Kat.”

  She looked up at him, but she did not smile. “Let’s hope.”

  Chapter 11

  “Your wizard is dead.”

  “What!” Sean scanned the medieval village and the colorful figurines scattered across the board. This was the fourth time they’d played this game, and he still had trouble with the rules.

  Weeta laughed and pointed to the tiny people. “Your noblemen could have saved him, but they’re locked up with the vicar.”

  “I think you’re making these rules up.”r />
  She smiled and sat back in her chair. “Dad, I’m hungry. Can we order the pizza now?”

  “Yeah, we’d better. Your grandmother should be here soon.” Sean walked to the window.

  First snow of the season. It was only November, but the snow was three inches deep with no sign of abating. Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen snow before Thanksgiving.

  “Dad, you think they’ll cancel school tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He hoped. A snow day would mean one more precious day with her.

  Sean filled a kettle with tap water and put it on the stove top. He wasn’t eager to get back to their board game, but he’d do practically anything Weeta asked of him in exchange for her company. As long as they were engaged and moving their hands, Weeta would talk to him. She talked about school and friends, terrible teachers, and her plans to make the soccer team. He wasn’t deluding himself in believing that they had a special kind of connection, a product of his unbridled affection and the freedom that comes with not being the primary caretaker. Sean tried to adhere to Beth’s rules on those visits—bedtime at nine and limited video games—but he didn’t try terribly hard. He felt that the only consolation for living without her was the privilege of celebrating her presence without judgment when they were together. And so it was lucky for all of them that Weeta was smart and focused enough not to take advantage of him.

  “Daddy, where’s Kat?”

  Sean poured hot water over powdered cocoa. “I think she’s working tonight.”

  “Are you in a fight?”

  He never discussed such things with his daughter, but he knew this was inevitable. Weeta hadn’t seen Kat in weeks. “I don’t really know. Maybe.”

  She began clearing the game pieces slowly.

  “You don’t want to play anymore?”

  “Not really,” she said.

  “I’m sure I’ll work things out with Kat, though. This isn’t like your mom and me.” It might be like that, Sean thought. He wasn’t sure.

  Weeta carefully placed each figurine into the box. Their little swords and pointy shoes all fit neatly just where they should. It was a perfectly orderly life those medieval characters had. “Yeah, I know,” she said.