Returning to my car, I started the engine and just…waited. My heart was racing under my chest and, while I wasn’t exactly in the finest physical shape, I knew the rapid heartbeat had more to do with my jacked-up adrenaline than with the short jaunt to the car.
I found my iPhone and sent a text to Veronica’s number.
Me: Who is the guy following me in the Chrysler?
I waited, glancing up and down the quiet driveway. I felt the AC kicking in. Finally.
Don’t know anyone who drives that type of car except you
Me: OK
Pocketing the phone, I put the transmission into Drive and edged forward. But at the lights on Crooks, I noticed that Veronica had written back already.
Did you look @ bank statements?
I wanted to tap a quick response, but the car behind me—a Jeep, yes, I looked, just to be sure—beeped its horn when the light turned green. Waving a thankful hand over my shoulder, I pulled out. As I had last night, I considered taking Big Beaver all the way home, but the I-75 would just be easier. Plus, I needed to make a trip to the Home Depot for some paint.
By the time Lena came home after school, the guestroom had been painted a neutral and calming Easter egg yellow. I had even purchased a border with images of wooden alphabet blocks on it. Proud of my achievement, I hurried downstairs in time to hear Lena’s lunch pouring into the toilet.
“Are you okay?” I asked from down the hall.
She groaned her usual response. It sounded more like annoyance than pain, but I stayed in the hallway leading to the bathroom anyway.
When Lena left, she pushed past and shot me a glare en route to the kitchen. “Today was fucking horrible,” she muttered. I heard the refrigerator door open, the water jug come out.
Despite the stereotype that most would peg to a pregnant teen, Lena rarely used the f-word. She was a good, well-behaved kid. I loved her more now than ever before, even though she wasn’t mine.
I walked into the kitchen and watched her drink straight from the jug of water, big swallows. “What happened?” I asked, picking at the flecks of yellow paint on my fingers and wondering if the Chrysler had followed her to school like it had followed me to the dump and back to Veronica’s place.
She kept drinking, inhaled a long breath of air once she needed a break, then glared at me. “Nothing,” she hissed, then went back to chugging the water.
I forced a fake chuckle. “You just said it was ‘fucking horrible,’ Lena. Tell me what happened so I can fix it.”
My words annoyed her. She tore the jug from her lips and tossed it at the sink, water burping from the open spout and spilling onto the counter, the floor. Her cheeks turned red, like her tone. “So you can fix it?” She waved at her belly, barely a bulge. “Can you fix this? Can you fix that I’m screwed for the next year?” She shook her head and started walking away. “I’m a pregnant senior, Dad. That’s not something you can fix.”
She walked with elephant feet down the hall and slammed the door to the basement, all while I continued picking at my hands.
“I painted the room,” I mumbled, purposely quiet because I didn’t want to share my little victory while she was in this kind of mood.
Chapter 12
Life happened. I forgot to invite Veronica over for dinner on Friday, so for the entire weekend, Lena locked herself in the basement and only came upstairs to use the bathroom and fetch food. She ate a lot, too. I could hear her move through the house while I painted a second color on the guestroom walls, a darker, even-flatter yellow so that it looked like some kind of fancy stripes. And then there was the border with its alphabet blocks that reinforced that this was indeed a baby’s room.
On Sunday, I slipped out of the house and picked up a crib from one of the trendy baby stores in Birmingham. I kept watching for the other Chrysler the entire time, but I never saw it. While assembling the crib next to the guestroom’s window, which faced the front of the house, I took frequent breaks to stare up and down Fairfax. Still no stalking Chrysler.
By Monday morning, the repurposed guestroom looked and felt like it belonged in another home. Not mine, not this middle-class suburban house that would forever remind me of the best and worst moments of my life, the moments where Karen had lived, struggled with disease, and where, in the year following her death, her final words continued to haunt me—Lena is not yours—slowly deflating and destroying my spirit. I had spent Sunday night on the guestroom bed, waking up in this room with the chirping from the pre-Fall birds singing through the open window and then—
“Just about ready, Papa Bear?”
I heard Lena’s elephant feet walk right past the guestroom and into the master bedroom next door.
“Papa Bear?”
“I’m in here,” I called out, my voice country singer, heavy smoker scruffy.
More footsteps. The door snapped open and the yellow from the walls seemed to illuminate her face. Her eyes widened, her lips rose into a smile as the room’s bright color lifted her mood.
“Wow,” she gasped, her gaze touching on each of the walls, finding the border, the crib—she held her attention on that crib, either impressed with my choice of over-priced hardware, or surprised that the man who had spent most of his weekends in bed or moping around the house this past year could actually assemble something—and then those eyes found me.
“What do you think?” I asked, flinging the comforter (which matched the border, by the way) off of my body as I rolled out of bed. “Not bad, huh?”
Her lips lifted into a smile. “It’s better than ‘not bad,’ Papa Bear. It’s absolutely stunning.” She took a few big steps into the room, swallowing the floor space between us. “It’s perfect.” She hugged me.
I squeezed her tight, happy that she had forgotten about dinner on Friday. I closed my eyes and realized that, if everything truly happened for a reason, my forgetting to invite Veronica had happened so that I could finish transforming this former crypt into a bedroom for Lena’s baby.
“I want to sleep here tonight,” she whispered.
Slipping out of her embrace, I told her I needed to jump in the shower before driving her to school. And on my way out of the room, I cast a glance back and found her sitting at the edge of the bed, her hands on her knees as her big, starry eyes admired the work I had done.
It seemed happy endings happened, too.
I spotted the Chrysler the moment Lena stepped out of my car and headed up the front walk to the school. I saw the Chrysler in the side mirror, half a block back, idling at a stop sign, waiting to turn onto this busy street where school buses unloaded kids and parents dropped off their lazy teens. Outside the passenger window, Lena spun around, halfway to the building, and blew me a kiss before turning her back on me, oblivious to the stalking vehicle in my mirror.
I checked my phone, taking my time in this hectic drop-off zone, and spotted Veronica’s text message waiting for me.
Meet for lunch. Panera. Noon.
I tapped back a quick OK and left it at that before pulling in front of a speeding minivan and watching the mirror. Despite its efforts to squeeze into traffic, the Chrysler was unable to make its turn to follow me. A few horns blared, echoing through the school zone.
Since I needed to do some backtracking to get to the Wayne County Credit Union ahead of Paul, I made a few quick, cryptic turns onto side streets, knowing the Chrysler wouldn’t have a hope in hell of tracking me down now.
Unlike the last time I came to this end of town, I parked in one of the diagonal spots roughly one block away from the bank building. I hurried along the sidewalk, passing others heading to their downtown employers, and then I spotted my actual target a few steps from the bank’s front steps.
“Beth!” I shouted.
She stopped on that first stair and looked around.
Jumping into a sprint, I gave her a frantic S-O-S wave, hoping she would see me and recognize me.
“Oh, Mr. Elliot,” she said, smiling once I was close
enough. “Do you work here now?”
I surveyed our surroundings, trying to remember what model of car Paul drove. I knew it was bank manager blue, about as exciting as a tree.
Beth chuckled. “If you’re worried about the manager, you can stop.” The way she said the manager sounded like an insult. “He never gets to the office until after nine.”
I swallowed hard, aware that my heart was smashing against the inside of my chest, just like it had the last time I exercised my legs. Which was last week outside Veronica’s apartment complex. Maybe I needed to start exercising more frequently.
“Okay,” I breathed.
She frowned. “Are you…okay?”
I nodded, swallowing big mouthfuls of air. “Question for you.”
“Of course.”
“I don’t work here.”
She giggled. “You don’t want to, trust me.”
I wanted to hug her, but I smiled instead. “Can you get me reprints of my bank statements from 1997?”
She frowned. “It’s beyond our retention period, so I’d have to initiate a special inquiry with our data center.”
“Can you?”
She nodded. “Definitely.” Then she frowned again. “I’m assuming you don’t want the manager knowing about this.”
Shaking my head, I simply told her, “It’s about my dead wife.”
Beth softened, her head tilting gently to the side.
“No, it’s nothing like that, nothing bad. But Paul…he thinks…” I shrugged. “I don’t know what he thinks.”
Another bank employee stepped past us, making an elaborate show of making eye contact with me and then Beth. I see you, too, I wanted to say. But I kept my mouth shut and focused on my only ally here at the Wayne County Credit Union.
“How long does this kind of request take?” I asked.
“Let’s meet tomorrow,” she said, staring across the street, then pointing at the doorway to the opposite building. “Same time but over there.”
I nodded, agreeing. “Do I need to bring anything?”
She shook her head and started up the final step toward the ATM vestibule, which led to the bank’s locked doors. I watched her open those doors, and then turn around like she had caught me staring at her old lady ass. “Coffee.”
“Pardon me?”
“Bring coffee. One creamer, two sweeteners.”
“Okay.”
“Starbucks blonde.” She winked and continued inside.
I smiled back at her, but she was already headed across the squeaky clean marble floor. Stepping away from the bank, I started walking back toward the street where I had parked my car.
And that was when I noticed the Chrysler from this morning.
It rolled closer, slower than the speed limit, which was really creepy because the car had tinted windows and those gangster-style after-market polished rims. I watched those dark windows, waited for them to roll open like I was expecting a drive-by shooting for some stupid reason.
But then logic set in as I watched and waited, and I realized, I’m Elliot Fitch, I live in Birmingham, Michigan. My worst crime was raising someone else’s daughter and, maybe, pissing in a public park while drunk with my brother-in-law a week after we buried Karen’s gaunt body. Drive-by shootings don’t happen to people like me. I don’t even have a fucking tattoo. And for what it’s worth, when I pissed in public, it was raining, so my piss didn’t even stain or kill the park grass.
As it turned out, the windows didn’t open. No gun muzzles appeared, no shots were fired. And even though I couldn’t confirm it, I thought the driver’s shadowed face and long, curly hair belonged to a woman. Not a man.
I wondered what that might mean.
No appetite. I waited for Veronica at the windows next to the glass doors, inside the Panera Bread on Woodward, and my eyes followed her orange and blue delivery truck as it pulled quickly into a vacant parking spot in front of the store next door. A couple of people in business-casual attire entered the restaurant and slipped into the order line while I watched and waited for Veronica to appear around the front of her vehicle. Once she did, I caught myself holding my breath. Even in that uniform, she looked beautiful, and I couldn’t help but remember her right leg hanging over my shoulder in the foyer of her apartment.
She spotted me in the window and gave a professional smile as she entered.
I moved to meet her at the door. I wasn’t sure if a hug or a kiss would come across as needy or outright stupid, so I waited for her lead. And she led me through the order line to the register where we placed our order—just a salad for me too, dressing on the side, sure, balsamic is perfect, oh, and a water, and I got this, it’s on me, for real, I insist—and then we took our number to a table at the windows facing Maple. She hadn’t said much to me up until now, so when she finally spoke, I hadn’t expected her words to shock and melt me at the same time.
“We need to start with Eddie,” she said, and I didn’t know how to respond to that. Tracking a junkie down was probably as frustrating as starting from scratch. So she added, “You look good, Elliot. I’ve missed you.”
“Me too.”
“So what’s this you’re texting me about a Chrysler following you, and yeah Eddie’s probably got some answers, which is why I think we should start with him.”
I felt like the train had just blown straight through my station, and now I was going to be late for my own funeral. “Slow down,” I said, like I could bring that train back. “Why Eddie?”
She kept her voice low, rubbing her temples. “He’s been mostly clean for the past twenty years. Mostly. These benders, his living at Michigan Central Station, that’s all temporary.” She leaned closer. “You know he’s got two brothers, right? An older one and a younger one?”
I stared at her, watching her turn around in her chair and stare out the window toward Woodward.
“Terrence runs one of the law firms around here. Specializes in estates and trusts, sets up all kinds of things for super rich families.” She turned back to me. “Including his own.”
I frowned. “How do you know all of this?”
The pause and subsequent gulp suggested she didn’t want to share her trade secrets, but she added, “I make deliveries to all sorts of places, and I’m there all the time. The guy loves me, likes to talk while he fills in the delivery forms for me.” A shrug. “Apparently, I remind him of his daughter, which is sort of creepy because I know he checks out my ass when I leave.”
“And you two talk about Eddie?”
Our food arrived. We placed the conversation on hold, allowing it to stew in my gut like a shot of Jack Daniels.
“You think someone’s following you?” she asked between bites of her turkey and avocado sandwich.
“You know him. Or her.”
She laughed, nearly choking on her food as she grabbed a sip of water. My water, which I found endearing. “Or her? Ha! Equal opportunity, even for stalkers, huh?”
I smiled back, ready to tell her I saw the car outside her apartment just last week, waiting outside that front door, but decided against it. I didn’t want to worry her.
“Did you get the plate number?” she asked.
“What, you know cops who’ll run it for me?”
She shrugged, which meant yes.
“Isn’t that illegal?”
She shrugged again, which also meant yes. “I’m not the one breaking the law,” she insisted. “It’s them, always them.” She chewed, swallowed. “Get me the plate, and I’ll get you a name. We’ll solve that one easy peasy.”
It started to make sense why the Chrysler never parked out front of my house or came too close to me (so I couldn’t make out the plate) with today’s encounter being the exception. Then again, that slow pass out in front of the Wayne County Credit Union may have been accidental, unplanned. I wondered how I would score another chance at that plate number.
“Back to Eddie,” I said. “Just because he has a big-shot lawyer for a brother, why s
hould I start with him?” I didn’t understand that part.
“Because,” she answered, tilting her head to the side as she explained. “Eddie will know about Andrew, the used-car salesman that still lives at home.” She reached across the table and gave my hand one of those trademark squeezes of hers. “You won’t want to hear this, but your wife and Eddie were close. I mean, really tight, Elliot.”
Truth? It no longer bothered me. Karen had conceived and given birth to a child that wasn’t mine. She had lied to me about it, maintained that lie for Lena’s entire life. She had only told me about this lie at the last possible moment because she wanted to clear her conscience. Her “tightness” with Eddie meant nothing to me. No wonder she wanted me to find someone else once she died, to love again and all that bullshit. At moments like this, her love felt like it had been nothing but a scam, an illusion that would’ve lasted until the end of time if she hadn’t gotten sick with the cancer.
Another hand squeeze, and I blinked my attention back to Veronica’s face, her gentle smile, and those lips that had tasted soft and wet under mine almost one week ago. I wanted to kiss her again. Not just on her lips, either.
“How tight?” I asked at last.
She looked away like it made her uncomfortable just talking about this stuff. “Eddie’s brother, the lawyer? Let’s just say one of the photos on his credenza has your wife in it. And according to him, it’s only ten years old.”
Really? “Then I guess we start with Eddie.” I sighed. “Where do I find him?”
Chapter 13
I’d have wasted months, years, maybe even more waiting for something that would never happen—Eddie walking through that front door with a confession around his neck like a sandwich board. In that first wasted week, I not only finished transforming the guestroom into a baby’s room straight out of a Good Grandparenting magazine, but I also converted Lena’s pink bedroom as well, stripping the walls of their pink poison paint and recolored them with teenager-compliant tones—purples, greys, blacks, all of Lena’s favorites—and then I painted some lilies just above the baseboards, also her favorite. The artwork required an awkward stenciling kit, but it became awkward so I decided to free-hand the rest. The first few looked more like the artistic equivalent of dandelions, ugly weeds that you wanted to eradicate, but by the time I finished the length of that first wall, my craft had improved so that walking from one end of the room to the other left you feeling like you were stepping through a lush, beautiful field of…magic.
Surviving Goodbye Page 14