by Jenna Rae
“This is great news,” Phan insisted as they waited on another bench in another hallway for the last signatures. Del felt like she’d been sent to the principal’s office. Again. She cracked her knuckles.
“Yeah. Great.”
“You could have been suspended. Not only are you not in trouble, they’re pointing the investigation straight in the opposite direction.” He rubbed his chin. “You have the opportunity to walk away from this clean. And this is the only chance for that. You’ve made sure that everyone who should knows Hahn is missing. We file the Missing Persons report and you’re clean.”
Del made a face. “You’re right.”
There was a long pause, and Del peered at the pattern of water damage in the ceiling. She heard Phan rub his chin.
“But,” Phan spoke quietly, “you feel responsible for her. You can’t just pretend it has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s not that I still care about her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not more than I should.”
“Uh-huh.”
She shrugged and smiled when he mirrored her.
“She came to you for help so you want to help her.”
“Yeah.” She dropped her head into her hands, and Phan clapped her on the back. Del tried not to wince at that. He’d barely grazed her shoulder, but it stung like hell.
“Hey, I was wondering where you stood on the ‘Hahn as villain, Hahn as victim’ question.”
Del waggled her head. “I’d like to play it out both ways. Victim first.”
Whatever Phan thought about that, he nodded. “Let’s figure out who she could be running from.”
“A lover? A partner? Investigator?” Del sat back. “I wonder.”
“A partner who turned on her, maybe?”
“Let’s run it out. Who could it be? Would she have met the partner during the investigation, you think? Or is it someone she’s worked with before?”
Del tuned out through the next several minutes of Phan’s speculation. He didn’t really need her input anyway. He was just running through possibilities out loud the way Del liked to run through them in writing. Eventually Phan wound down, and the partners worked on the missing women files. Del tried to track down who exactly Mary Wilson really was and the day stretched until long after dark. They ran in circles, only occasionally exchanging a glance or muttered comment. Finally Phan slammed a case file shut and shook his head.
“I’m out. I’ve been looking at the same report for an hour and still couldn’t tell you what it says. I’m going home and you should too.”
Del rode home in a daze. Were they really doing this? Would she be able to find out who was scaring Janet, who had shot at her? Would she be able to find Janet herself? Del should still be on leave, and she knew it. After an OIS—an officer-involved shooting—the officer involved was placed on administrative leave. But Del’s admin leave had taken its course during her recovery, and now, after only a brief reprieve and two hoop-jumping sessions, she was back in the fray. Back to endless hours, fathomless frustration and no personal life.
Del slapped her helmet. She’d missed dinner again and she’d again forgotten to call Lola. After everything else she’d done and failed to do, it hardly seemed important, this one omission. But Del knew it was getting to be a problem, one she could hardly afford to continue ignoring. She resolved to make up for all the things she’d done wrong. She’d romance Lola, give her the reassurance and affection and tenderness she deserved. She parked the Suzuki outside, thinking Lola might like a ride, and took a minute to plan how she’d approach her.
Del clapped her hands together as she headed inside. She’d make a fresh start with Lola, do things the right way this time. She’d never make Lola feel like nothing again. She felt the weight in her stomach lighten. She’d been carrying around her guilt and self-loathing, hadn’t she? She couldn’t force Lola to face the truth about her cheating without hurting her. But she could give Lola what she wanted and deserved. It was past time to either start treating Lola like the love of her life or to let her go so someone else could.
But Lola wasn’t home. Her new purse and keys were gone, her car, too. Del fought panic. Maybe she went to the store. Maybe she went to dinner with Marco. In the kitchen, she found a note:
Dinner’s in the fridge. Hope you had a good day. Out late. Love you!
Del fought what she knew was irrational outrage. I work hard, all day, every day, and she can’t even bother to be here when I get home? She yanked open the fridge and saw a foil-wrapped plate adorned with a heart drawn in marker. Del stood looking at it for a full minute before easing the refrigerator door closed.
She was numb, unable to process her thoughts or feelings, and she sleepwalked up the stairs and eased to a sitting position on Lola’s side of the bed.
“Feels like my bones are made of peanut brittle,” she said, an echo of what Nana used to say years ago, when the barometric pressure dropped and her arthritis flared up.
“Nana loved peanut brittle,” she confided to Lola’s pillow. “Even after she lost most of her teeth she still loved it. She’d suck it, rot the teeth she had left.” Del only realized that she was crying when a tear spoiled the perfect surface of the pillowcase, and she rubbed it with her thumb, trying to dry it.
“She woulda liked you. She was kinda big and loud and ornery, but she always liked quiet people. She’d draw ’em out, get ’em to talk to her.” Del blotted her eyes with uncharacteristic gentleness, still feeling fragile. “She hated liars. Did I tell you that already?”
No, she’d hardly told Lola anything about her family. Why was that? She’d told Janet. Not everything, but enough for Janet to taunt her about it when she was mad. How had Del never realized Janet wasn’t reciprocating with her own stories? How had she never realized Janet was just storing up what Del shared with her as an arsenal?
“I opened my heart to the wrong person.”
Del nodded at her own words. “You’re the one I should have met first. You’re the one I should have fallen in love with first.” She hugged herself. “But maybe if it hadn’t been for Janet I wouldn’t have been ready to love you.”
Knowing it wasn’t productive or helpful, she ran over the previous days and weeks, examining each time she’d been dismissive or demanding or caustic. She started small and worked up from the minor offenses to the bigger ones. She shook her head, not wanting to examine these memories, but she pushed past her own resistance and probed. She watched Lola’s face fall over and over, watched Lola mask her hurt feelings and disappointment and loneliness. She watched Lola grow exhausted physically and emotionally. She watched Lola grow cautious. She watched Lola retreat further and further and wanted to stop there.
“Don’t be a coward now.” Del shook her head again.
“You ain’t got to the worst of it and you know it.” She sank onto the bed, curling up on Lola’s side, making sure she didn’t sully the pillow any more than she already had. “Get to it, girl.” She played the movie in her head and watched herself cheat on Lola with Janet.
“Every single minute since then has been a lie. And I been taking my guilt out on you.”
But the even bigger sin she couldn’t face. She knew Lola went gomer when she was scared. It was how she’d learned to survive, obviously. The explanation for Lola’s going gomer was easy; what was harder was explaining how that bad night between them had happened.
How could Del begin to explain even to herself that she’d simply lost patience with Lola’s inhibitions and reticence? How could she explain that she’d gotten sick of the way Lola was too traumatized by having been a victim for too long and in too many ways?
What kind of person does that? What kind of person says, hey, I’m sorry you were hurt and traumatized, but I’d really like to just fuck you without thinking about that?
“I made you go gomer,” she whispered, rubbing her thumb against the embroidered edge of Lola’s pillow. “I treated you like Beckett did. Like it wa
s him I was hurting by being so mean. Like it made you mine instead of his.” She covered her face with her hands. “Doesn’t that make me just as bad as him? I blamed you for being fucked up by him and I punished you for what he did.” She covered her mouth with her hands, mumbling through her fingers. “Sometimes it’s hard to be around you. I can’t stand to look at you.”
“I didn’t fuck you.” Del heard the petulance in her own voice and flushed. “But I made you feel like nothing. That’s just as bad. Maybe worse.”
Del rubbed her face until her skin burned. She felt like the last person on the planet. Lola was a million miles away because Del had pushed her there. Had she pushed Janet into disappearing too?
“If you both love me so much, why am I always alone?”
* * *
After Del’s nearly sleepless night, she and Phan spent another fruitless day tracking down worthless leads, splitting their time between the missing women and Janet. No one seemed to have known Janet for more than six months or a year, and the further back they went into Janet’s life the more clearly emerged the pattern Phan had identified. She was a vagabond, flitting among major metro hubs and making dear, dear, beloved friends who disappeared from her life after a few short months without leaving behind more than a picture or series of comments on Facebook.
“Listen,” Phan had finally said, “you have as much history with her as anyone we’ve found. I think I should keep tracking everyone else and you should write down everything you remember about your relationship with her.”
“But what’s the point? It’s not like anything happened while we were together that could lead to her being missing now.”
“Maybe not, but I still think it’s worth your time.”
Unconvinced but unsure how else to proceed, Del sat down to her homework and listed all the places she and Janet had been to together, along with the dates and times. Too restless to keep writing, she decided to visit each place in the city, though she couldn’t have said why she was doing this. She’d go to them in order and that meant starting at the bar where they met, if she wanted to be technical. But there was no tug at the memory.
“We were still strangers then. It’s where we met, but it doesn’t matter.”
What did matter was the Amazon Motel, and Del headed south. She forced herself to take her time going down Mission Street, knowing Lola was unlikely to go that route from the grocery store or wherever she was. Del needed to tell her Janet was missing, needed to deal with all of it. Right now, though, Del was lost in nostalgia, remembering that first dazzling night with Janet. She was yanked out of the past when she saw Lola’s creaky old Buick wheezing along.
“Where the hell are you going?”
Del pushed away the question of where the hell she herself was going for the moment. There was a woman in the car with Lola, and she was leaning in, playing with a strand of Lola’s hair. Del was tempted to follow Lola, but the Buick turned left on Cesar Chavez Street and the Amazon was waiting.
Of course, the Amazon wasn’t going anywhere, was it? But Del felt pulled to the little motel as if by some invisible hand. This was not, she assured herself, the result of any reluctance to consider the possibility that Lola might turn out to be someone other than the sweet, loving innocent Del had fallen in love with.
She sat on her parked bike, looking at the low-budget, nondescript motel and trying to catch her breath. Seeing the place was like falling through a hole in time and landing back in the Amazon the first night, and Del let herself pretend she was following Janet up those stairs, her whole body shaking with desire when Janet looked back at her and winked. She saw herself pushing open the door, propelling both of them onto the tired bed, frantic with the need to see and feel and taste every inch of this bold, outrageous stranger. She could see Janet’s body straining up to meet hers, hear Janet’s moans and squeals and low chuckle. Suddenly, it all seemed ridiculously crass, a tacky scene in a low-budget skin flick. Del detached herself from the past.
“Do you still love Janet?”
Had someone asked that question or had Del imagined it? She wasn’t sure. But sitting in front of the Amazon Motel, Del could almost see the question hanging in the air. She felt compelled to answer it.
Del shook her head. What she meant to say was no. But a different word slipped out of her mouth. The word was like a masked thief escaping a bank vault, loot in hand. She couldn’t believe the sound of the word for a moment until she heard herself repeat it.
“Yes.”
Chapter Nineteen
Lola replayed the evening in her mind, going over every detail in exhausting clarity, trying to understand what had happened. It didn’t make sense, any of it, and she ran through the mental playback again.
I got to the coffee shop five minutes early. I walked in, and right away, Sterling jumped up and started yelling.
“You came to me! Lola, hey, Lo-la! Over here!”
Lola blushed as she walked through the maze of tables to where Sterling stood, waving wildly.
“Hi.”
Sterling grabbed her in a too-tight, cologne-saturated embrace for just a few moments too long. “Lola, lovely Lola!”
“Can’t breathe,” Lola finally gasped with a nervous laugh.
Sterling wore a crisp white shirt, purple dinner jacket, and black trousers, and Lola felt frumpy in comparison, wearing old jeans and a pill-covered sweater.
“I was worried you wouldn’t come.”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, but I have no way of knowing how honest you are.”
This was said with such a self-conscious air of frankness that Lola knew she had to produce a smile, even though it felt like she’d been insulted.
“I guess that’s true.” Lola hesitated, standing behind a chair with her hand on it. “I came because I wanted to talk with you about something.”
“Because you feel guilty?” Sterling leaned too close again.
“What?”
“Well, you told me you have a girlfriend. But you’re attracted to me, right?”
Lola looked away, unsure how to respond.
“Come on,” Sterling yanked the chair sideways, pulling it out of Lola’s hands, and gestured at the seat. “There’s no law against thinking someone’s attractive. It’s not cheating to look, is it?”
“I guess not, but—”
Though she didn’t really want to she didn’t know how to explain why not, so Lola sat.
Sterling patted Lola’s shoulder, let her hand linger. “You feel like you’re being disloyal.”
That was exactly how it felt. Lola nodded, watching Sterling as she plunked down into the other seat.
“I love Del.”
“That’s great.”
Sterling beamed, and Lola hid her annoyance at what seemed like flippancy.
“Let’s get you a—hot chocolate? Herbal tea? Triple shot mocha latte? What’s your poison? I can tell you’re high maintenance, but how high maintenance are you?”
“High maintenance? I don’t know why you’d say that.” Lola shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“Hey, this is a coffee shop, not a swingers’ party. Wait, are you into that? I bet you are, aren’t you?”
Lola frowned and shook her head, but Sterling was already talking again.
“Never mind, I’m kidding! Hey, I get it. You’re not here to hook up. Well, you think you’re not. We’ll see, won’t we? No problem. Now, I’ll get your coffee. I take care of my women.”
“No,” Lola protested, but Sterling was pulling her by the arm.
“Are you kidding? This is a business meeting. I’m writing this off.” She sailed off, dragging Lola along with her. But it turned out that she’d forgotten her wallet, so Lola ended up buying their coffees and a pastry for Sterling.
After several minutes of wide-ranging small talk, Lola found her discomfort increasing but couldn’t determine why. Sterling seemed harmless, but there was something about her that ma
de Lola uncomfortable.
Is it just because I am attracted to her? Is it because I’ve been frustrated with Del? Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Sterling at all, and I’m really just upset with Del.
“Hey”—Sterling was waving her hand in front of Lola’s face—“Earth to Lola, come in, Lola.”
Lola grimaced. “Sorry about that.”
“Thinking about me?”
“Hmm. So, is it okay if we talk about your business? You were going to tell me about your marketing plan, I think.”
But Sterling gave her a sly smile. “You weren’t thinking about that. You were thinking about me and you and your girlfriend, weren’t you?”
Lola looked over her cup at Sterling’s smirking face. She was starting to feel like she was dealing with a terribly bright, terribly bratty, precocious child. It was hard to read Sterling. She seemed to swing from one mood to another with almost no warning. Could she be on drugs? Or was she a perfectly normal woman and Lola was just terrible at reading people? That seemed entirely possible, given how lousy Lola had always been at meeting people and making friends.
“I guess you could say that.”
“Wow, you dirty girl!”