by Roz Nay
* * *
It’s a golden afternoon near the end of July and I head back to the flat for whatever sports event Chase has lined up for us to watch, but as I approach the door, I see that it’s ajar. Alex’s voice cuts through the air. She must have gotten off work early. For a second I feel put out, as if she’s muscled in on something that was mine. I go to push open the door but stop, my head by the gap in the jamb.
“It’s nothing,” I hear my sister say. “I don’t know why you’re so upset about it.”
“Alex,” Chase says, then there’s a thump of something being set down heavily. “I never see you. You’re always at work. And now I hear this. What am I supposed to think?”
“Sully’s a friend. I meet him for coffee. We talk about work stuff.” I know that tone. It’s a metronome steadiness before a boom. If she were a bomb, she’d be ticking.
“He’s just a friend? That you meet every day?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Did your little spy run home and tell you that? Leave it to my sister to paint me as untrustworthy. The irony is ridiculous. Meanwhile, you two are here all the time, cozying up, choosing baby names, swapping tales of how I’m cheating on you.”
“It wasn’t Ruth. She didn’t mention him.”
“Oh, spare me.”
I rest my forehead onto the wood of the front door, but it sways inward and creaks ever so slightly. Chase and Alex both turn.
“Oh, look!” Alex throws up her hands. “Speak of the devil.”
I take a wary step into the apartment. The atmosphere is thick, like liquid, like tar.
“What were you talking about?” I ask.
“You heard every single word, so I don’t know why you’re asking.” Alex picks up her bag from the couch.
“Where are you going?” Chase demands.
“Out. To see my ‘boyfriend.’ The one I see every day. Right, Ruth?” She pushes past me, actually banging my shoulder.
Chase stands there, rubbing the stubble on his chin as her footsteps clatter down the stairwell. It’s only once we hear the door of the main entrance swing shut that he speaks.
“Did you really hear every single word?”
“I heard some of them.” I step into the loft and close the door behind me. “Most of them. Yeah.”
“I’m sorry about that. We don’t usually fight. I don’t know what to do.” He starts toward the bay window. “She’s tough. You know?”
“She’s a slippery fish.”
“That’s funny. She says the same thing about you.”
I bet she does.
“Do you really know something about this Sully guy?” Chase wheels around to face me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be asking you. The last thing you need is to be put in the middle.”
He looks so sad, standing by the window, his shoulders drooping. It makes me want to hug him. Would it be weird if I did?
“Alex always comes out swinging if you corner her,” I tell him. “She’s been like that as long as I’ve known her. My mom used to call her Little Tiger because she was so fierce.”
“Little Tiger,” he repeats softly. “And what did your mom call you?”
“Little Owl.” I swallow hard.
“Really?”
“I was the worrier. Mom used to iron out my brow with her thumb. Like this.” I sweep my thumb up the bridge of my nose. Even now, the feeling transports me to a time where there were people who looked after me, and I grab on to the back of the sofa to steady myself.
“What did you used to worry about?”
“Being a big sister.” I take a big breath. “At Christmas one year, I stayed awake until midnight because Alex told our parents that she was staying at a friend’s house when she really went to a party. I didn’t want my dad to know, but he caught me watching for her through the kitchen window. He got it out of me and called the cops. Horizon was a tiny town. The cops pulled her out of that party and brought her home.”
When she got out of the cop car, she looked like a limp piece of cloth, sucking on her hair. I blink, releasing myself from the memory, from the trance.
“But Alex is such a stickler for the rules,” Chase says. “She’s all about safety and the truth and doing what’s right.”
She is now. I realize I shouldn’t have said any of what I just said. I’ve broken Alex’s rules. Panic washes over me like a salty sea.
“Look, I only told you that story because you asked. Don’t ever tell Alex you heard that from me.”
Chase’s forehead wrinkles. “Why not? What else doesn’t she want me to know?”
“Nothing.” Everything. “Chase. Please don’t tell her.”
He stares at me hard, blinking as he considers his options. I’ve closed the lid on Alex for now, but at least for a moment it was open and I gave him just a glimpse of what’s in there. I allowed him more doubt than Alex ever would.
Any bluster he may have had dissolves, and he turns back to the window. “You have my word.”
He says it so simply and with such exhaustion. I believe him. He’ll keep his promise. Relief floods me. I knew it. I knew we were allies. My hard work is paying off.
“Do you want to watch TV for a bit?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says, and heads toward the couch. But just then, my cell phone rings. I pull the phone out of my pocket, and I stand there, staring at the screen. The phone rings and rings while the whole inside of my head turns to a swirling wind.
“Are you going to answer that?”
“No,” I say. “It’s nobody important.” My mouth feels dry, and I stagger to the bathroom, sliding the door closed. Finally the ringing stops, and I wait for the beep that’ll tell me Eli’s left me a message. Something caustic. Something radioactive. An acidic burn via voice mail. I pull open the cupboard under the sink and move away the bottled rows of organic cleaning products. There, at the back of it all is my bag. I reef through it to find Eli’s coffee tin, the one I hid the very first night I was here. Stripping away the tape, I pull off the plastic lid. The tightly packed mountain of cocaine baggies rests safely. So do the bound rolls of money. It’s all still there.
I might have told Alex a little about Eli, but what I didn’t tell her was that I’d hit him back in my own way. I took what I was owed. I was righting old wrongs. I think of it as my insurance policy. I don’t intend to do anything with the drugs—not unless I have to. The same goes for the money. I’m surprised Eli hasn’t contacted me until now, but I guess he knows I’m not exactly going to pick up the phone and offer him my address. He’s wily, though, Eli. He’s trying to find me. There’s no stopping it, just like always. I run and run and run, but everyone just pulls me back home. He’ll find me one day. And when he does, he’ll also find Alex and Chase. Again and again the universe pins me onto a hideous wheel, and I’m always at the very center as it spins.
ALEX
It’s because of Ruth. Chase and I have never fought like that before, and it’s her fault. I was naive enough to think that things could really change, but again, she’s in trouble and causing more of it. He’s colder with me now, less open, as if he’s a season in flux. He’s taken to going to bed earlier so that by the time I get there after working late, he’s already asleep and there’s no way of communicating with him. We jump if our feet touch in the night. Meanwhile, he and Ruth seem to be warming up more and more. I told her not to talk about the past, and so she found a loophole—she told him something about the present. She had no right to mention Sully.
It’s almost a direct transfer of happiness: what I lose, she scoops up. Chase hands Ruth the TV remote whenever they sit down on the couch. It’s the simplest gesture, but it feels loaded. She carries his plates to the sink. Maybe I should be glad they’re getting on so well—we’re family, after all. Except I know what really goes on in families, how tangled and competitive they can become. How broken. One family member’s prosperity is so often another’s downfall, and Sully’s right: it’s a jostle, a teeter-totter. I’ve seen enough
of that to last a lifetime.
At home, I can’t do anything without being scrutinized. Chase is watching me like scientists watch mice. Interesting behavior, he’s thinking when I do or don’t take coffee with me to work. I wonder what that means, when I check my email as soon as it dings on my phone. I don’t like answering work stuff at home, but a lot of people are on vacation or stress leave and I’m covering for them. Maybe Chase is right to be disapproving. We usually try to make use of his summer schedule to spend our free time together, but so far, Ruth has gotten in the way of that. I’ve given up telling him that none of my work emergencies have to do with Sully. Ruth has made sure that he won’t ever believe me.
The truth is, I haven’t even seen Sully for a week—work’s been so busy—although if I’m honest, part of me has been avoiding him. Chase is just so uptight about him. Why invite more confusion? I can’t tell if I’m asking that for Chase or for me. Instead, I’ve thrown myself into working overtime at the office, which is ironically the calmest environment I know at the moment. At least there, the chaos is on the outside. At least there, I know what I’m dealing with.
So when I run into Sully in the corridor outside Family Services, it feels almost illicit. I’m with Minerva and Morris—the three of us are on our way to visit the Floyds—and Sully’s with another cop, a young woman, who’s telling him a story about her weekend. He nods at me but has to keep listening to his colleague. We gather in two awkward rows at the elevators. I press the button, and we all wait for it to arrive.
“And so we didn’t get in until four a.m.!” the female cop says. “It was crazy. Who knew about this town?”
“Yup. It’s full of surprises,” Sully replies, then turns and opens the circle. “How are you doing, Alex? I haven’t seen you in a while. You okay?”
“We’re all great!” Minerva says as she shuffles forward an inch.
Sully ignores her. “Where’ve you been?” he asks. If I can hear the hurt in his voice, so can everyone else.
“Oh, here and there.”
I feel Minerva’s face blasting heat my way.
The elevator arrives, and the others stream inside. I’m about to follow Minerva in, but Sully grabs my arm.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” He draws me to the side. “Excuse us,” he says as the doors begin to close.
“I’ll catch up with you in a second,” I say to my team. The last thing I see before the doors shut completely is Minerva looking like she wants to slice me in half.
“Hi,” Sully says, once the others are gone. He’s so close to me I can smell the soap on his skin. “You haven’t replied to my texts.”
“I’m fine, I’ve just been…” I don’t even bother to finish the sentence. He’ll see right through it.
“I wanted to tell you I looked into those prison records for your sister like you asked.”
I debated taking Ruth at her word, but I couldn’t bring myself to, not when there’s a child involved. And after she told Chase about my spending time with Sully, I felt a little justified in doubting her.
Sully moves nearer to me again, most likely to be discreet, but his face is only inches from mine. It’s making my heart beat faster. “Her timeline matches. She was in jail for the period you asked about. She wasn’t lying.”
“I guess that’s something.”
“Yup. It looks like they went light on actual time served. Good behavior, probably, and it was her first offense.”
That they know of. “What about Hal Nightingale?”
“He’s bad news. A record as long as my arm.”
“I know.”
“But he died two years ago. Got himself in more trouble than he could handle.”
Ruth was telling the truth when she said he wasn’t the father, but she left out the part about him being dead. Truth, but not the whole truth. Or could it be that she really doesn’t know? Either way, I don’t feel one iota of sympathy. Good riddance. This Eli guy must be real, then. I wonder what part of the truth Ruth is still hiding about him. I want to ask Sully to look into him, but I feel torn. I shouldn’t be talking to Sully at all if I don’t want to lie to Chase. I’ve got to end this. I have to leave, fast. “Thanks for doing that, Sully. I realize that was a huge ask.”
“It wasn’t. Not when you’re the one asking.” Sully doesn’t back up right away.
“I should probably go. Morris will be waiting for me downstairs.”
“Looks like a fun field trip.” He moves off and presses the button for the elevator again. “So, just to be clear, are you going to ignore all my texts? Or just the ones I send this week?”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I say, my voice abnormally light. “It’s just that right now—”
The door pings open.
“Coming?” he asks.
“I think I’ll take the stairs,” I say. “I need the exercise.”
“Alex, we haven’t done anything wrong,” he says. Then he gets into the elevator. I watch as the doors slide closed, leaving me on the outside. I hurry down the stairwell to the parking lot, where Morris and Minerva are already in the government car. Morris is squeezed in the back seat, maintaining his role as observer, the top of his head touching the velour of the roof. He’s installed a baby seat into the space beside him. That’s a good sign. Minerva sits stiffly behind the wheel.
“Come on,” Morris says as I get into the passenger side. “We haven’t got all day to dillydally.”
“She was organizing her love life.” Minerva says. She lurches into reverse before I’ve had a chance to put on my seat belt.
“I was not.” Why can’t she back off?
“Looked like it,” she mutters. Her knuckles shine white on the steering wheel, and I wonder how Morris broached the idea of his joining us on this Floyd visit. It can’t have gone well. Minerva’s been tense all morning, and that was before Sully even arrived on the scene.
“Morris, are you coming into the house with us?” Minerva asks after a moment. “Or are you here in more of an overseeing, conflict-resolution, stay-in-the-car type thing?”
“I’m coming into the house,” Morris says.
“Three social workers is overcooking it, don’t you think? It’ll feel like the Allied invasion.” She takes a corner too fast.
“Can you watch the road, please?” I ask. “And there was a reason the Allies invaded.”
She ignores me. “I want to be clear, this is not a protection case. It’s a follow-up.”
“Everybody’s on the same page,” Morris says.
“Yes, we’re just following up in case there’s another dead child we don’t know about,” I say. I can’t help it.
“Alex.” Minerva swivels in the driving seat. “That information was confidential and had I mentioned it, your view of the Floyds would have been totally biased, even more so than it—”
“Oh, I would have seen them as neglectful?” I say.
“Good God! Did you hear that, Morris? Alex, the death was ruled accidental.” She hits the brakes a little too hard, even though there’s no reason to slow down, and we all pitch forward against our seat belts. “I can’t work in these conditions.”
“Calm yourself down and keep driving,” Morris says. “Alex, Minerva’s right. I told you that already. Rocky Floyd’s death has no bearing on his brother’s situation.”
I shrug because I know Morris doesn’t really believe that. He knows it’s more serious, otherwise he wouldn’t have come with us today. Plus, he’s had the forethought to bring a car seat.
“Thank you,” Minerva says. Vindicated, her lips purse. “And perhaps if you’d stop running to your boyfriend at the police station every five minutes, your view of the case would be less warped.”
Don’t bite, Alex. Don’t bite. If everything derails on the drive to the Floyds’ house, we’ll never get Buster removed. I sit on my clenched fists and we drive in silence for a minute, to the point where I consider switching on the radio. Minerva turns to me.
“
What were you talking about with Sully, anyway?”
“Nothing much. He was just saying hi.”
She swerves left. Behind me, I hear Morris’s head bump the window. “I hope you weren’t discussing any of our cases with him.”
“I wasn’t.”
“And by the way, you still haven’t given me his number.”
I pick at the stitching on my leather satchel. “It might be better if I pass yours on to him. He’s kind of private that way.”
“Is he?”
I want to push her head into the driver’s side window. Morris coughs. He doesn’t ask a thing about what is going on. He doesn’t want to know.
“Minerva, can we talk a little bit about the Floyds? How have they been responding to the supports you’ve set up?” he asks instead.
“I enrolled them in a We Can’t All Be Perfect parenting program, and they’re doing fabulously.”
“That’s good news.”
“If they’re doing so well, their house should be visibly improved today,” I say. “If not, I think we can agree it’s a bad sign. A month is more than enough time for them to get their act together for their child.”
“The house will be fine. They’re entirely on track now.” Minerva fixes her eyes straight ahead. “For the record, Alex, your suggestion to Morris that Evelyn Floyd has an ongoing drug problem is wildly inaccurate. It’s comments like that that throw us off track and give us a bad name.”
“Give us a bad name?” I say.
“Yes. Us. Those of us who work to protect children. We’re called nitpickers, government drones, Family Stealers rather than Family Services.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
“At any rate,” Morris cuts in from the back, “we’ll just check in with the Floyds today, have a quick look around and make sure they’re using all the supports we’ve set up for them. I’m sure Buster is doing well and that it’ll all be fine.” He smears one palm against the other. “But just in case, are there any healthy family members in the area? You know, if things start to go a bit pear-shaped?”