“And the house…” I whistled. “This place makes the Vatican look like social housing.” Only a short, forced chuckle that time. “I guess I can’t blame her. We had these dreams for our daughter, for ourselves. And while I always loved that little house of ours, the one where you delivered Lena’s sex toys, it just wasn’t part of those dreams. Nathan, despite his boomerang-shaped dick, had the means to make those dreams come true for Karen.”
She frowned and seemed to perform some mental calculations in her head. “Your wife didn’t leave you, though,” she said.
“No.” I didn’t see the relevance; this had nothing to do with leaving, everything to do with cheating and lying to me about Lena’s true father.
More frowning, then she shook her head. “Was he at the funeral? Do you remember, Elliot?” she asked, suddenly all business again.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, sighing. I told her about finding Nathan’s face on the wedding video, though. “They had this exchange when she walked down the aisle, they just looked at each other. And even though it only lasted a second, maybe less, it killed me to see it.” I sighed again. “All this time.”
Veronica reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Worse things happen, Elliot.” She let that sink in. “Where does he live?”
I told her.
She allowed a nod. “I’ll find out more about him”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I need to see this one through to the end. For myself, for Lena.”
“Leave it with me,” she insisted with a tone Ava had probably heard a million times, whenever she was disobedient. “I deliver to all of the boutique banks and investment companies. One of them is sure to know this Nathan Darien. I’ll find out what and who he was doing back in…” she made some mental calculations, “…in 1997 when Lena would have been conceived.”
I thought about it. “Would’ve been March or April.”
“I’ll do better than that,” she promised with a wink, then let go of my hand and stood. “I need to get back home. I told the sitter I’d be back by nine.”
I checked the time on my phone and saw that Lena had already texted me. Three times. I texted back that I was on my way, then dropped sixty dollars on the table to cover the check.
“Do you have those names?” she asked.
“Of course,” I answered. “They’re in the yearbooks, but—”
“Perfect.”
We walked to the parking garage. The night sky had cooled the otherwise warm and muggy air. Veronica mentioned she had picked up a shift tomorrow and possibly the day after, but she would still have time to help with my bio-dad search. That was what she called it, my “bio-dad search,” and that made me smile.
At the garage, we climbed the stairs to my level and headed down the muted and eerie aisle to my Chrysler. I had never worried about my safety here, but tonight it felt different. Maybe it was just because I felt responsible for this young woman, or maybe someone was watching me. Us.
With my hand in my pocket, I kept hitting the “unlock” button on the key fob, and once we were close enough, the Chrysler beeped and flashed its lights. I opened the back door, bent over and reached under the driver’s seat where I had stuffed the yearbooks so Lena wouldn’t notice them. When I pulled myself back out of the car, I noticed that Veronica was standing close. Awkward, almost.
The glassy look in her eyes suggested something had changed between us in that moment while I was bending over, and I doubted that it had anything to do with how nice my ass looked.
She grinned like she had just read my thoughts, then cleared her throat, stepping back. “You asked about the makeup?” She shrugged, reaching forward and brushing the back of her fingers against the outside of my hand. “I wanted you to notice me.”
“Of course I noticed you.” I gulped, motioned at her outfit as an excuse to have noticed her on that very first day. “The orange and blue uniform suited you well, but not like this.”
She struck me with the back of her hand against my chest—a gentle, playful smack—then she took the yearbooks. “No, it was so you’d see someone else. Not the real, broken woman who drives a delivery truck for a living.”
I wanted to smack her back now. “You’re not broken. You’re natural, you’re…” She shrugged, dismissing my words. So I let it go. “Okay, then, how will I hear from you?” I asked.
She nodded at the car. “I parked a block away. You’ll drive me because this is downtown Detroit and you’re a nice guy. And while you’re driving, I’ll call my cell phone from yours so I have your number and you have mine.” She shot me a knowing grin.
“Right,” I said, turning around and opening my door. Deep breath. Was this how young people swapped phone numbers today? “Hop in.”
We left the parking garage, and I drove to the outdoor lot while she fumbled with my phone. Because my last year had been spent in isolation with nothing but a few texts between Lena and me, I had nothing to hide from her, nothing embarrassing like naughty selfies or suggestive texts to or from a bunch of different women. In other words, nothing like what I feared I would find on Lena’s phone.
“This is fine,” she said before I could drive onto the lot. She handed my phone back.
“I’ll hear from you?” I asked, realizing that I sounded a little desperate.
She smiled, nodding. “Maybe we’ll even have a textual encounter.”
“Oh, no,” I answered. “We all know how those end up.”
Again with the goofy laugh, then she thanked me for dinner and left.
I watched her walk deeper into the lot, past a bunch of cars, and disappear into the darkness.
Chapter 9
Rest had never occurred to me. By morning, the grooves underneath my eyes had taken on a darkness and depth that made my reflection in the mirror unfamiliar to me. The clock in the guestroom said eleven, but I knew it was still an hour behind. I hadn’t “sprung forward” with daylight savings, hadn’t thought about it or bothered, not in this bedroom that I previously visited only once per week.
Packing the last of Karen’s clothes—a pair of Guess jeans with runs along the front that gave just enough of a glimpse of her thighs that I had always imagined fucking her in them—into the banker’s box with a bunch of other clothes, I rubbed my eyes. I couldn’t see straight, but I saw enough to realize I had finally completed the chore that had haunted me for the past year.
Karen’s things were packed away—in boxes, in the car, in trash bags. All that remained of her, ready for goodbye.
I placed this final box on top of the other two next to the guestroom door. I didn’t look back before leaving. I knew that if I had, I would find that the room was empty. Except for the bed, end tables, and lamps. And of course the lying clock.
“Papa Bear!”
I heard Lena’s elephant feet approaching in the hall.
“I’m supposed to be at school in an hour.”
I watched the doorknob turn and stepped back, waiting for her reaction to what I had been working at all night. When the door opened, she took in the colors, the walls, everything before settling on my face, which was when her eyes widened.
“Shit,” she breathed, shaking her head. I thought she meant the room. “You’re not driving me anywhere.”
Stepping aside, I watched her inhale the sight of the room, her eyes getting wider with each pass.
“Wow.” Her voice cracked.
Rest. I needed rest.
“Papa Bear, what did you do?” She stepped toward me, her arms open.
“It was time.”
A smile rose onto her face as she wrapped her big arms around me, squeezing as tight as she could. The tears spilled from my eyes at her show of support. When she pulled away, she held onto my wrists and smiled.
“I’m proud of you, Papa Bear,” she said. “I’m really proud.”
“Thank you.”
“But you need to sleep. You look dead.”
I allowed a nod. I felt dead.
&nbs
p; “So…can I borrow the car for the day?”
Headache. Drowsy. I wanted to sleep for the rest of the day, but something itched at my curiosity each time my unsettled thoughts brought me back to last week’s date with Veronica. She had all the information she needed when it came to Karen’s high-school life. She knew about Nathan Darien, she had possession of the yearbooks and even the last letter my wife had written to me. She had everything, and yet I hadn’t heard from her in eight days. And counting.
Had I trusted this young, tattooed mother of one a little too much?
Dragging myself out of bed, I hunted down the Tylenol in my bathroom dispensary and swallowed a couple before jumping into the shower. Without my car, I had no mobility. But that didn’t mean I had to stick around the house on a sunny Friday and surrender to inactivity and depression. After stepping into a fresh set of clothes, I walked into downtown Birmingham with the sun at my back. Few people realized that Birmingham was one of the trendiest hubs outside of Detroit proper. Of course, that was my bias.
My first stop was the Wayne County Credit Union on Woodward. I needed cash and opted for the ATM because Paul, the neighbor from across the street, managed this branch. Having become a bit of a recluse since Karen died, I didn’t really want to see him. Plus, he was a bit of a nosy fucktart.
Naturally, Paul saw me in the ATM vestibule, waiting in line for the machine.
In his nice suit and polished shoes, he approached me. “Hiya, Elliot,” he said. “Your name showed up on one of my reports this morning. Why don’t you drop in for a minute?”
Report? Drop in? I waved blindly at the machine, at the underweight man in a wife-beater and sagging jeans, poking at the beeping buttons. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, Paul.”
Still with that fake, banker’s smile on his face. “I’ll get you in and out as quickly as possible.” He gave a head motion to nudge me be back into the branch, then raised his eyebrows in an are you coming or what motion.
So I followed him into the main area where people, instead of machines, handed out money and mortgages and investments. Paul glanced back at me as he blazed a path across the marble floor.
“How much cash were you looking to withdraw, Elliot?” he half-whispered.
“A hundred,” I lied. I only needed twenty because I knew if I carried the cash, I would likely spend it. But at the same time, I didn’t want my neighbor to know how tight I was with my cash.
Paul snapped his fingers at one of the free tellers, an older woman in a white blouse and department store jewelry. When he had her attention, he ordered, “A hundred dollars, Beth. All twenties.”
She nodded her obedience, then went to work while I watched with amazement at the power Paul wielded over his staff. The last time I snapped my fingers at someone, Karen nearly broke my wrist.
“They fucking fear me here,” Paul said with a grin as we reached his big corner office with a window overlooking the parking lot out back. He closed the door and waved me to a small, circular conference room table with seating for six. “Something to drink?”
I shook my head, regretting the motion because the headache was still there, mostly dormant but still present. “I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I reminded him.
He nodded, dropping into the seat across from me. His scrutinizing stare told me he knew something. “What are you doing, Elliot?” he asked.
I had hoped for a hint as to what he might “know.” I shrugged. “I was going to grab some lunch, probably a chicken wrap, and then—”
Paul chuckled. “No, I meant what’re you doing?”
Frowning, I shook my head. “Doing?”
“Yes. Doing.”
Was he referring to my stalking Karen’s high-school boyfriends in a weak attempt to find Lena’s biological father, flirting with a single mother in her late twenties, with a tattoo on her collarbone, black polish on her nails, and a blue streak in her hair, or preparing for my upcoming role as a grandfather, or maybe something else entirely? Like a job, perhaps.
Seeing my confusion, Paul leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table but still scrutinizing my face for signs of a crack. He sighed. “Doing, Elliot. Like me, I’m a bank manager. That’s what I’m doing. You’d say I’m bank-managing.” He nodded. “What’s going on with you? It’s a Friday afternoon, you’re here for cash instead of at your desk, managing the finances of some shipping company, and you’re wearing jeans instead of suit pants.” Another sigh. “And I received a five-figure deposit from your company that I put into your bank account. It’s not bonus-time, Elliot. I know that much. I can connect the dots. So, what are you doing, Elliot? I need to know where this money is coming from so I can confirm its legitimacy.”
“Oh, that,” I huffed. Even to my own ears, I sounded guilty of murder. They probably all said that—‘oh that girl with her head chopped off’, or ‘oh that hit and run after drinking too much’. “Severance. Just wasn’t working out. Ever since Karen died, I lost my passion for the work. So they gave me a severance package.”
Now Paul looked hopeful. “It happens,” he empathized. “I see it all the time.”
I nearly chuckled because Paul was no closer to being a career counselor than I was to being a detective.
“I bet you do,” I said.
Before he could make himself look even more useless as a person and bank manager, there was a knock at the door. I turned and watched Beth enter with an envelope in her hand. She placed it on the table under Paul’s hard stare. At fifty or so, Beth appeared to be one of those hard workers with no faults. Even the way she laid the envelope on the table and pushed it toward the middle with two fingers all suggested she made so few errors that the others—those younger male tellers, for example—envied her and wanted her to retire so she might stop making them look bad.
Still glaring at Beth, Paul asked, “Elliot, what’s your account number?”
I recited the numbers by heart.
Still with his eyes on Beth, Paul asked her, “Did you get that?”
Beth nodded once and walked away. “I’ll be back for a signature,” she promised.
“Damn right she’ll be back.” His eyes relayed defeat. “I’m a fucking babysitter at the best of times, Elliot. I need someone who can work autonomously.” He laughed. “Someone who remembers what that means. Like us, right? We didn’t need to know every fucking step of a job to be good at it. My boss? He says, ‘Paul, you need to bring in twenty million in new investment dollars, you need to loan out eighty million in new mortgage loans.’ That’s it. There’s no roadmap. It’s called ‘autonomy.’”
“Uh huh,” I agreed as I grabbed the envelope with the money in it. “Can I go now?”
Paul sighed, nodding. “You’re free to go.”
I stood up and made to leave, but saw Beth approaching through the glass. “Do I need to sign for the money?” I asked.
“Yeah, you should probably sign for that. I guess.”
Beth entered and had me sign for the cash. She smiled gratefully and asked if Paul needed anything else.
“Nope, you’re all set, Beth,” Paul said.
She returned to her workstation, her real job where she waited on people and didn’t get barked at like a dog.
As I walked across that marble lobby floor, Paul’s footsteps joined me. The manager dropped a hand on my shoulder. “Okay, I’ll come out and say it. I can use someone like you around here, Elliot,” he said. “Beth’s supervisor is a fucking moron, uses a calculator to add two and two. I need someone who knows operations.”
I gave him my best apologetic face because Satan would have a better chance at convincing Frosty the Snowman to come work with him. “You know, my background isn’t in Operations. It’s in Finance. Wholesale container leasing, in fact.”
“Sounds about right.”
“It’s not,” I assured him. “Not even close.”
He patted my back. “Okay, I get it. You want a sales job. I can make that happen too.”
“No, not rea
lly,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Paul.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. Or take no for an answer. “Just give it some thought, get back to me with your salary expectations and a reasonable start date. That works for me, Elliot. And we can carpool, too.”
I left the bank; Paul escorted me all the way to the sidewalk, where he hitched up the waist of his pants and took a deep, gut-popping breath, surveying the street scene.
“Beautiful day,” he said.
“Alright, Paul, see you around,” I answered, then eager to get away from Paul before this turned into a picnic. The first thing I saw was the orange and blue delivery truck a block down the road, closer to where Woodward and Hunter came together.
Paul said something else behind me, but I didn’t hear him. I kept walking and, after crossing at the lights despite the pedestrian light warning me not to, I found that my calm, even strides had graduated into an over-eager half-sprint. As I got closer, I noticed the truck’s engine wasn’t running, so I stood next to the driver’s side door. Although I appreciated the possibility that Veronica might think I’m a bit of a stalker or creep or both for standing here and waiting for her, I didn’t care. Because those fears, I soon realized, were unrealistic.
Veronica would not think I’m a creeper because the delivery driver wasn’t Veronica. Instead of the beautiful young woman from last week, a man stepped toward me. This was his truck, not Veronica’s. He had a shaved head and also wore a blue and orange baseball cap bearing his company’s logo on the bill. He had the kind of frame that said he split his time between work and the gym, the type of guy that might hang out on the south side of 8 Mile just for something fun to do on a Friday night.
“You lost?” he asked, stepping up to his door without noticing that he needed to step on my feet to get there.
“Where’s Veronica?” I asked.
He climbed into the driver’s seat, swiping and poking at his reinforced iPad before casting me an annoyed glare. “Who?”
“Veronica,” I repeated, my voice quivering in my ears. I motioned up and down my body as a way to describe her. “Blonde with a blue streak in her hair, a little younger than you. She has a kid, Ava,” I added, then pointed at the ink spilling out from his shirt sleeve. “Drives this truck, or one just like it, and she has a tattoo like yours, except it says, ‘Never let me’ something,” I told him, snapping my fingers now because it was all coming back.
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