Unthinkable

by Brad Parks

  “Ohhh, are we doing cosplay today?” he asked, smiling. “You’re the farmer’s daughter, right? Whatever it is, I like it.”

  She fixed him with a mock-angry look. “You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that, Grichtmeier?”

  CHAPTER 14

  NATE

  After picking up the girls at the Grichtmeiers’—and thanking Kara profusely for watching them—I parked my car in a nearby garage.

  Now that I had successfully untracked it, I wanted it to stay that way.

  Jenny arrived home at half past six. She asked where the Range Rover was, and I made up a story about how it was in the shop.

  She then tossed herself into being with the girls like she always did. And I tidied up and made us dinner like I always did. It was, at least outwardly, a normal Wednesday night in the Welker-Lovejoy household.

  Yet the whole time, I was becoming increasingly overwhelmed by anxiety.

  The first source of it was what would allegedly happen at 9:47 on Friday evening, a clock whose ticking was getting to be like drumbeats in my head.

  The second part was more immediate, and that was what would supposedly transpire at 11:16 this evening.

  After tucking in the girls, Jenny and I ate and chatted. I lied about what the girls and I had done all day, saying we went to the park in the morning, and then the girls took extralong naps in the afternoon.

  She then told me about her day. There was a bizarre episode involving a woman with orange hair, which had been concerning enough that Barry Khadem—who I knew a bit from my days at CMR—had insisted she be escorted out of the building.

  Even more ominously, she enthused at length about this terrific meeting she’d had with an expert witness on the CP&L case. It was enough to make me worried she really was on the verge of a legal breakthrough, until I reminded myself that was just what Lorton Rogers wanted me to think.

  After dinner, Jenny announced she was exhausted and going to bed. I joined her, because that’s what I normally would have done. But sleep was far from my mind. As Jenny’s breathing slowed and she drifted off to sleep, I began thinking about my next move.

  It was staggering, being charged with the knowledge of a stranger’s imminent death. I truly didn’t understand how Rogers could be so indifferent about it. This wasn’t some hypothetical scenario, tossed out in Philosophy 101 to be pontificated upon by half-interested students.

  This was real. Marcus Sakey was currently a living, breathing person. Maybe he wasn’t much of a person—not someone I’d invite to dinner, not someone I’d leave alone with my children—but he still possessed some portion of the infinite possibility, as any other member of our species did.

  What if he was about to sober up? Find true love? Write a brilliant novel?

  It was unlikely, sure; but as long as he remained with us, his redemption was still possible.

  There was also a part of this that wasn’t about him. It was about me. If I was going to maintain any correspondence with my humanity—with my sense of decency—I had to at least try to keep him alive.

  Rogers had said the “accident” would take place “within a few blocks” of here. How many was a few? More than two, I guessed. But three? Five?

  Once I was sure Jenny was solidly down, I eased out of bed and grabbed shorts and jogging shoes from the closet. I wrote a sticky note saying I couldn’t sleep and was going out for a run.

  I left the note on Jenny’s phone, which was plugged in over at the charging station on the other side of the room. She didn’t so much as stir.

  Soon, I was out the door, into the streets.

  We lived on Grove Avenue, in the heart of the Fan. Imagining our house as the epicenter, my plan was to walk in ever-widening concentric circles so I would cover the entire area around where we lived. I’d find him soon enough.

  I set off at a brisk walk, taking right turns, searching for someone who might fit the rough profile of Marcus Sakey.

  Shambling. Dirty. Lost in a bottle.

  As block after pointless block passed under my feet, it didn’t take long for my optimism to wane. My concentric-circle plan was fine for a stationary target. Sakey was moving.

  And I was already running out of time. According to my phone, it was now 10:13, a little more than an hour to go.

  Giving up on my circles, I pointed myself east, walking toward the center of the city, looking for someone who might be more familiar with society’s underbelly. I was near the Altria Theater when I saw a guy with a bulging garbage bag slung over his shoulder, wearing way too much clothing for this warm a night, shuffling along with a limp.

  I hurried to catch up, and had soon overtaken him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said.

  He seemed to startle and cower simultaneously. I became aware of my size, which was considerably greater than his.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I continued, even as he eyed me. “I’m looking for a man named Marcus. Marcus Sakey. Do you know him by any chance?”

  “Marcus?” he said.

  By this point, I was close enough that I could make out the yeasty smell rolling off him.

  “Yes. Marcus Sakey. I’m trying to help him. It’s important.”

  The guy considered this a little longer. He was struggling either with the question or with locating his own senses.

  Then he said, “Don’t know no Marcus.”

  “Sorry to trouble you,” I said, then hurried onward.

  Over the next twenty minutes, I had similar interactions with an older woman who was slumped against a building with her dog, with a guy who then attempted to panhandle me, with a guy who was sleeping on a park bench until I nudged him awake, and with a younger man who was clearly strung out.

  Finally, an older man with salt-and-pepper dreadlocks, who had been hanging out in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven, brightened when I mentioned the name.

  “I know Marcus, yeah,” he said. “Haven’t seen him in a minute, but I know him.”

  “Do you know where I might find him?”

  “He sometimes hangs out near Catholic Charities.”

  Of course he did. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I thanked the man, then sped off, breaking into a jog. Soon, I was standing in front of Commonwealth Catholic Charities on Grace Street.

  It was buttoned up tight. There was no one hanging out nearby.

  I swore softly but continued running, covering the block around it, then two blocks. I was now asking anyone I saw—dog walkers, students, and local residents alike—if they knew Marcus Sakey.

  No one did. It was nearing 11:00 p.m. I was up on Broad Street by that point, in a part of town that might be deemed “in transition” but had been improving fast, thanks to the presence of VCU. It was also more than a mile from our house, which didn’t seem to fit the definition of “a few blocks.”

  I hailed a cab and asked the driver to get me back to our address on Grove Avenue as quickly as he could. When he came to our corner, I said, “This is close enough,” flipped a twenty over the seat, and got out while the car was still moving.

  It was now 11:05. There were—if this whole thing wasn’t just another facet of a continuing deception—exactly eleven minutes left in Marcus Sakey’s miserable life, and I was no closer to finding him than I had been two hours earlier.

  Not knowing what else to do, I started my concentric circles again, this time making lefts, if only to try something different.

  There was almost no one out on the street. The night had cooled somewhat. I was still perspiring heavily.

  In desperation, I started yelling every block or so, “Marcus. Marcus Sakey? Does anyone know a Marcus Sakey?”

  11:08.

  11:11.

  11:13.

  As the minutes fell away, my cries became louder and more frequent, but no more effective. The Fan was now mostly asleep.

  I was hurrying down West Main Street, passing an Exxon station that was two blocks from where we lived. The only person in sight was
a man pumping gas.

  “Excuse me, sir, do you know someone named Marcus Sakey?” I asked, approaching fast.

  In the way he recoiled, I could almost see my own mania being reflected back at me. I’m sure I was disheveled. My voice sounded unhinged. I could feel my own heart hammering.

  “Sorry, pal, can’t help ya,” he said, but only after I had stopped running toward him.

  I looked down at my phone.

  11:16, exactly.

  I had failed. I stopped on the sidewalk, listening for . . . something. The shrieking of tires. An engine gunning. A man’s anguished scream as steel crunched bone.

  But all I heard were the sounds of the city. Cars rolling past. Music from a nearby bar. Nothing at all seemed out of sorts or different.

  11:17.

  Had a life just been snuffed out or not? If Lorton Rogers and Vanslow DeGange were, in fact, frauds, then there was no Marcus Sakey, and therefore there would be no accident. They would probably try to fabricate one later. Perhaps they would hack into Richmond.com and upload a fake story about a hit-and-run death of Marcus Sakey, with police allegedly asking for leads.

  11:18.

  I was just walking aimlessly now, without a plan, half-blind from exhaustion and also a weird, aimless sort of grief. I was mourning someone I had never met, whose passing I ordinarily never would have known about. Did that even make sense? Thousands of people die every day in the United States—like, one every twelve seconds, right?—which meant even if Marcus Sakey had been killed at 11:16, ten more Americans had expired since then. Could I really—

  And then a police car ripped past me, lights flashing, sirens wailing, heading south.

  I sprinted after it, not slowing or breaking stride as I crossed through the next intersection, earning an angry honk from a truck that I had dashed in front of.

  At the end of the block, the cop turned left on Cary Street. I continued my chase, arms pumping, legs flying.

  As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw the officer’s destination. There were already two other police cars and an ambulance at the corner of Granby Street. I pressed forward, determined to continue until someone stopped me, which a young male officer soon did.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back to the other side of the street,” he said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “A pedestrian was struck and killed by a hit-and-run.”

  “Was his name Marcus Sakey by any chance?”

  The cop looked at me strangely. “Yes. How did you know?”

  Before long I was being questioned by a detective. I concocted a story about how I bought Marcus Sakey a sandwich now and then but didn’t know anything useful beyond that.

  Eventually, I was permitted to leave. I trudged home and silently entered through the back door.

  I crept softly up the stairs and dropped my damp clothing in the hamper we kept in the hallway, then paused at the entrance to our darkened bedroom.

  Jenny’s breathing was still slow and steady. I didn’t even think she had changed position since I’d left. I went over to the charging station and removed the sticky note from her phone, then eased into bed.

  As far as she would be concerned, I had never left.

  CHAPTER 15

  JENNY

  Jenny woke up at 5:22, eight minutes before her alarm clock would have rung, and shut it off so it wouldn’t rouse anyone else in the household.

  She turned toward Nate, taking momentary stock of the man she shared her life with.

  He was sleeping on his side, his hands tucked under his pillow in childlike repose. She found herself thinking of their thirteen years together. Sometimes, the time seemed like an eyeblink—had it really been that long? Other times, she couldn’t even remember a life without Nate.

  Or maybe she just didn’t want to. So much of her life was this precarious act. Whether it was as a lawyer or as a mother, she felt like she was constantly faking it, flailing in midair, moments away from a humbling and painful crash.

  Nate was her solid ground.

  The place where she knew she could dependably land, no matter what. The part of her life where she never had to fake anything.

  Her favorite country song—no, her favorite song, period—was “Bless the Broken Road.” And not the poppy, Disney-fied cover by Rascal Flatts. The original, soulful acoustic version by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

  It was about someone who set out to find true love. And while there had been loss and heartache on the way, God had blessed the broken road that allowed them to find it.

  He played that song when he proposed to her. They danced to it at their wedding. She still played it—sometimes just in her mind—when she needed comforting.

  She was thinking about it as she watched him slumber.

  Then something changed. She was looking even more closely at him now. His eyeballs were darting about under his eyelids, looking around at whatever dream his subconscious had conjured up.

  It made him seem almost shifty, like someone who couldn’t make eye contact. And for just a moment, she had this feeling like he was keeping something from her.

  Something important. Something she really needed to know.

  Then she told herself she was just imagining it. Nate never kept anything important from her.

  Having chased the adverse thoughts from her mind, she lifted herself out of bed and got on with Thursday morning: a shower, which she turned cold at the end to wake herself up; a quick blow-dry, just enough that her hair was only slightly damp; and a dive into the closet, where she came away with a light-gray skirt suit and white blouse.

  As she finished in front of the mirror, she listened to the noises of the house, which had come alive a little earlier than usual.

  Parker was singing to her oatmeal, the lyrics a delightful mishmash of preschooler jabber. Nate was announcing the arrival of avocado chunks to Cate, who immediately cooed her approval with a spurt of nonsense words.

  Jenny loved these sounds. She made it a point to try to memorize them. Even though infancy and toddlerhood seemed to be lasting forever, the girls wouldn’t always be so little. Someday soon their monologues would shift to the inside, leaving their mother to wonder what was going on in their heads.

  Nate had a cup of coffee waiting for Jenny when she arrived in the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” she said brightly.

  “Morning.”

  “How’d you sleep?”

  “Like a rock. How about you?”

  He looked up from some strawberries he was cutting with a weary smile. She noted the bags under his eyes, the way his posture was just slightly stooped.

  Apparently, rocks didn’t sleep as well as they used to.

  “Fine,” she said.

  Then, from the table, Parker piped up. “Daddy, are we going to Mia’s house again today?”

  “I don’t think so, honey,” Nate replied.

  Jenny’s head jerked from her eldest daughter to her husband.

  “You were at the Grichtmeiers’ yesterday?” she asked.

  “Uhh, yeah,” he said, his attention back to the strawberries.

  “When?”

  “The afternoon.”

  “Oh. You just didn’t mention that last night.”

  He kept cutting the fruit.

  She prodded, “Was it a playdate or one of your childcare swaps or . . .”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Which one?”

  “Huh?”

  “I asked whether it was a playdate or a—”

  “Yeah, I just dropped them off for a little while. Why are you making a big deal out of it?”

  “I’m not making any kind of deal. You just didn’t mention it last night. You said it was a normal afternoon, that the girls took an extralong nap,” she said, feeling like she was cross-examining a difficult witness.

  “Oh. It must have just slipped my mind.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “So we are ma
king a big deal out of this,” he said.

  “Well, maybe we should. You said the other day after you dumped them on my parents that you didn’t need extra help. Do we need to revisit that? It’s okay to ask for help, you know. You don’t have to be such a guy about it.”

  “I’m not being a guy, I just . . . I had to drop the car off at the Range Rover dealership—I told you that. And I didn’t want to drag the girls along, so I asked Kara to watch them for a little bit. I’m fine. I don’t need help, okay?”

  The last part was snappish, which wasn’t like Nate at all. Jenny decided to back off.

  “Okay,” she said, then plastered a smile on her face, went on her tiptoes, and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I have to go.”

  “Yeah, have a good day. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” she said.

  She kissed both girls, but as she went out to the car, she was again asking herself whether Nate was hiding something.

  CHAPTER 16

  NATE

  I had been so focused on getting away with my evening adventure I hadn’t been expecting more inquiry about my afternoon.

  But I felt like I recovered well. As long as Jenny didn’t insist on seeing service records, the Range Rover story was going to hold up fine.

  Still, the weight of the lies was accumulating fast, like a load of boulders floating somewhere above me. How long until one of them came loose and bashed my head?

  More than that, I hated how it felt. And I wasn’t sure I had the capacity in my brain to keep all my falsehoods straight. Especially after the Marcus Sakey incident.

  I had been mulling the implications of Sakey’s death all night and into the morning.

  Had it convinced me beyond a doubt that Vanslow DeGange could peer into the future? Not really. There were a hundred ways the Praesidium could have manipulated his “accident” to fit a supposed prophecy.

  Had it convinced me Lorton Rogers and his accomplices were a ruthless bunch, fully capable of killing Jenny or my entire family to get what they wanted?

  Absolutely.

  Even if the predictions weren’t real, the threat was.