Both sides of his jaw flare from a quick grinding of his teeth. He steps back, and I knock my boots against the outside rug, then pull my feet out of them. My wool-socked feet sink into the first of several Moroccan rugs, each likely costing a year’s worth of mortgage payments.
Imagine trash like you prancing through his house.
He leads us down the hall toward his study, but a violent cough racks his body. He barely gets his drink onto a console table before doubling over, bracing himself against the wall. My first thought is one of relief that Ester, so susceptible to germs, isn’t with me. Feeling guilty, I step toward him and take his elbow, but he pulls away.
His trembling hand searches his pocket. He pulls out a tissue and dabs his twisting lips. After clearing his throat, he goes to put the tissue away, but I see crimson before he can. Germs may not be the issue.
“Is it bronchitis?” I ask.
He shakes his head wearily as if he wishes it were.
I step toward him. “What did the doctor say?”
“What he always says.” He leaves the martini, shuffles to his study, and opens the door. “I’m not about to start listening.”
“Maybe you should,” I say.
“My health, or lack of it, is not up for discussion.”
The room is dark except for the cast from an emerald desk lamp. He drops into his wingback chair behind the oversize desk. I really observe him for the first time in a while. He’s older, hair thinner, not brushed out as it was at the party last week. His skin is sallow, and I wonder if he’s been using makeup. The suit is baggy, as if he has lost weight.
“Will you tell Jack you’re sick?” I ask, sitting across from him. “He’ll want to know. To help.”
He makes a phlegmy growling noise. “That’s the last thing I want. From anyone.”
My guess is Uncle Cal has lung cancer, and that changes things. “How bad is it?” I ask. “I won’t tell Jack, if that’s what you want.”
“Full of secrets these days,” he says, his voice still raspy from the coughing.
“I missed the changes in you,” I say. Not to mention all his talk of legacy. His focus on the Council’s reputation. It was right there for me to see. “I’m sorry.”
He half grins or maybe grimaces. “Why are you here?”
You don’t belong here.
You don’t belong anywhere.
You should be dead.
Guilt sits within my gut, pulling with it memories of my grandfather, relishing his painful decline in a La-Z-Boy in my mother’s living room. “Alec is cooperating with the FBI. He has information on illegal activities Stefano committed. It includes the money laundering, and Max will likely take a hard look at the EDC. I haven’t heard your name, but you’ll want to protect yourself.”
“This ratting on Stefano gets Alec out of the murder charge?” Uncle Cal asks, seeming confused.
“I am getting him out of the murder charge,” I say. “He has a real alibi now.” I shift in my chair, focusing on my second reason for the visit. “Tomorrow morning, Phillip will air video evidence proving Alec’s alibi for the murder. The case will be blown wide open.”
He taps a thin finger on his oak desk. “Will Stefano be charged with murder?”
“He’s the only other suspect I can see,” I say. “There’s a long list of reasons he may have killed Belina. She was supposed to manage Alec, but she let him burn through all Stefano’s dirty money. Then Belina gave Stefano a hundred grand, to get him to let her go, maybe. I doubt he liked that.”
“The licenses will be on the market,” he says, more to himself, finally relaxing into his chair. “How soon?”
“Why?” I say. “You looking to invest with Miguel?”
He smiles at me and rests his hands in his lap. “I already did.”
I see it now, what else I missed. Uncle Cal wants Stefano to be charged with murder. That’s why he wants me on Stefano’s trail. He’s throwing money in with Miguel and the Rossa family. It is high risk, high reward, and quick turnaround. I am used to Uncle Cal having patience and an unusual appetite for the long game.
Just like that dead girl.
You were too wrapped up in yourself to see death circling.
Another soul touched by you damned to hell.
His breath is a wheeze, soft and rhythmic, answering why he is breaking his normal business pattern. He’s out of time.
“Why this risk now?” I ask. “Miguel is unproven, and Stefano is not an easy man to take down. When is enough money actually enough?”
“When Jack is governor,” Uncle Cal says quietly.
I laugh, louder than I have in months, maybe years. But when I stop, there’s no smile. “He doesn’t want to be governor. He’s barely keeping it together as chief of staff.”
“And whose fault is that?”
A slap in the face would have been easier to take. I swallow thickly, trying to find a way to disagree, but I can’t. “He doesn’t want it.”
“Not yet,” Uncle Cal says. “But soon he’ll get tired of making the mayor look good. And if I’m not around to raise money, he’ll have a nice war chest. That is my real legacy.”
So this is his gamble. Invest with Miguel after I suspect Stefano. The licenses could mean millions to early investors. “How long do you have?” I ask.
“This is my last Christmas,” Uncle Cal says. “One way or another.”
“Miguel could be connected to Belina,” I say.
“You’ve got your man,” Uncle Cal says. “Take aim at Stefano, and don’t stop until he’s behind bars.”
Do as you’re told, girlie.
Let these men use you up.
Spit you out.
The river waits for you too.
I stand up, tired of his games and gambles. Not when it comes to justice. “Just get your house in order,” I say. “I’ll do my best to keep Max from your legacy.”
I pass the carpets, the expensive paintings, and the turret fireplace warming no one. Jack’s car is waiting in the driveway. I hurry inside after he opens his door so I can climb into the back. Ester begins to cry, and I lean over her car seat, trying to soothe her, wiping a few tears of my own.
A snow flurry begins as Jack drives us home. I imagine the conversation we could have if I were honest about Uncle Cal’s health. I consider going back on my word as we pull up to our house.
“That’s weird,” Jack says.
I look at our home. The front door is wide open.
Chapter 30
Jack and I sit with Ester in the locked car, waiting for the police to arrive at our home. There are no lights on. No movement. It’s all going to be a silly mistake; I forgot to lock the door on the way out, and the wind blew it open.
You’re about to get what you deserve.
Ester begins to cry, a piercing wail from within the confines of the car. I fumble with the diaper bag for the milk I pumped in the FBI bathroom. I make Ester a bottle, take it to her lips, but it spills, and she spits and doesn’t seem to want anything from me.
You were never meant to be a mother.
You’re reckless and selfish.
Your actions brought an intruder into your home.
I cry with Ester, silent tears, wiping them quickly, so very tired of my emotions being on a hair trigger.
I notice Jack is watching me in the rearview mirror. “Let me take her,” he says.
I unbuckle Ester and hand her to him. She’s quiet almost immediately.
She hates the feel of your skin.
Smell of your weakness.
She wishes you were dead.
I curl my knees up under my chin, trying to think of things I can do while I wait. Check to see how Phillip’s segment is coming along. Confirm the waitress with Alec’s alibi will talk on video. I also need to call my brother, to check on the data he analyzed from Jamestown. To see if he found another link to Stefano.
Instead I breathe and breathe and breathe. Someone has broken into my home. The place
where my baby sleeps, where my husband and I built a life. It has been violated by someone else.
I don’t want to watch the police pick through my drawers and run gloved fingers over shelves. My stomach burns with acid, the bile at war with my mind, which is trying to keep me from throwing up.
But the past is so close lately, with the voice’s return.
Come close, girlie.
Be good, girlie.
Lay still.
Pray with me, girlie.
My mind is stuck back in my tiny childhood bedroom, the scene of the “supposed crime.” Everything was upended: books scattered, New Kids on the Block poster torn, dolls disheveled, jewelry box broken, and the small diary hidden under my bed taken as evidence. A ballerina figurine I’d painted at Vacation Bible School the summer before was crushed beyond recognition. I threw it all away, even if it wasn’t damaged. I never decorated my bedroom again. Not in college, law school, or my first apartment in DC. Not until we created our home in Providence.
You destroy every home.
It’s all your fault.
Detective Ramos pulls up next to us in the driveway with two uniformed officers. He nods our way and then hurries inside. Flashlights appear through windows, the first floor, then second. They’re in the baby’s room the longest, and I can’t take it.
“I need to go see,” I say, not recognizing my voice.
“It’s not safe,” Jack says. “Let’s wait for Detective Ramos to tell us we can go in.”
I know he’s right, but I still open my door, and suddenly I’m sprinting to the back door, which is wide open. I try to yell that I’m inside, but my voice falters in the entryway. Every drawer has been pulled out and dumped onto the floor. Every cabinet emptied. Boxes of mac and cheese are mixed with broken dishes and metal pans and takeout menus.
In the hallway, our wedding pictures have been pulled off the wall and smashed onto the ground. The dining room has every chair upturned, every dish smashed, including our wedding china. Even the champagne glasses we bought from where we’d had our first date are tiny shards.
Footsteps thump above, and I’m sure it’s the police. The person or people who broke in are gone. Threat made and received.
The living room is almost comically destroyed, like a movie. The couch ripped up, cotton and foam exploded all over the rug. All the DVDs are scattered and out of their cases. The mantel is bare, but it shouldn’t be. The fireplace poker is nearby, probably used as a bat against the photos; an empty vase and my collection of succulents in a small terrarium, now all in pieces on the floor.
You’ve destroyed another home with your lies.
The sickness and shame and guilt are suffocating, but I breathe because I must get to Ester’s room.
Lumbering up the stairs, I have to pause several times as my vision narrows, the blackout almost certain, but I safely make it to the landing. I freeze at my office when I see my laptop is gone. I doubt they’d be smart enough to get past the security codes before the hard drive wiped itself clean. But it’s possible.
I open the closet door and see my small safe ripped out. They won’t get much, but there’s a full copy of Belina’s journal and some personal things that meant a lot to me. My emancipation paperwork. My sealed court documents. I have scans of them elsewhere, and maybe I should have destroyed them. But I couldn’t. They went with me everywhere in that safe.
You may be done with the past, girlie.
We’ll never let you go.
I don’t even glance into my bedroom, but I open the door to Ester’s room. Two uniformed officers and Detective Ramos are gathered around the crib.
They can see the truth.
You don’t deserve to be a mother.
“Let me see,” I say too loudly.
They’re trying to stop me, but I shrug off their gentle touches on my arm. I know Ester is in the car, but her crying fills the room, loud and frantic.
There’s a knife in the crib. The entire blade shoved deep into the center of her soft pink sheets.
We’re not done with you.
Not until you get what you deserve.
Chapter 31
I’m sitting alone in Ester’s glider, rocking softly, staring at the place where the knife was taken out of my daughter’s bed and bagged as evidence.
They should have stuck it in you.
I tell myself it’s okay.
I can put our house back together, even if it’ll never be a home again.
Destroyed your home, then left the ruins.
Who are you to try to build another?
This is what you deserve.
Everything is so familiar. This feeling of helplessness. The intruder in my home.
My grandfather was the worst of intruders. A preacher who roamed Kansas and much of the Midwest because Southern Baptist churches are notoriously autonomous. Like in the Catholic Church, no one mentioned any of the “complaints.” They just sent him along to another town, another church, until finally, he had nowhere to go but his tiny hometown.
I told my mom about the first time, and she ignored me, doesn’t believe me to this day. I don’t know why I kept trying to get her to believe me, believe me, believe me. Maybe it’s nature that instills in us an almost infinite amount of forgiveness for our parents. The desperate need to be loved and cared for and kept safe. And even if they fail, maybe the next time. Or the next. Or the next.
It took three years of listening to his sermons until the Sunday he stood on the pulpit and preached about God’s justice. There was something about that word, the idea that justice was possible for anyone, whether it be God’s or the police’s or my parents’. It occurred to me that justice could also be mine, if I did something to get it.
The police were surprised and skeptical. Who would believe a preacher, beloved and local, capable of something so terrible? They took me home and got permission to search our house. I watched them in my room, more men, opening and closing and rummaging. There wasn’t anything to find. But they went through it all.
My mom glared at me with each item overturned, hating me even more than either of us thought possible. My father silent and doing what he was told. After the police left, no one helped me with my room. Derek wasn’t allowed, and he’d been hiding most of the day anyway. Mom said I should live in filth, since it was all I talked.
I didn’t sleep but instead put my room back together, trying to wear the guilt down into exhaustion. Thinking if I did just the right thing, Mom would suddenly understand.
I woke up the next day and was interviewed by a special detective. She brought an assistant district attorney and a counselor. That was where I saw justice, at least some form of it, for the first time. Where adults believed me and tried to put him away.
It didn’t work. So I waited. Left home at sixteen, legally emancipated, justice working for me at last. And I didn’t come back, except to watch my grandfather die painfully. He cursed me on his deathbed, body rotting away from a spreading stomach cancer. That was the truest form of justice.
I hear Jack’s steps and return to this home I’ve chosen and built with him. But I don’t see my fearless partner. Instead, everything about him is slack: his suit, his jaw, the circles under his eyes. He is angry, weary, and there’s plenty of worry in his hard stare. He watches me for a few seconds.
“Dev, are you okay?” he asks finally.
“Define okay,” I say but don’t move from the steady rhythm of the chair. “Where’s Ester?”
“Sleeping in the car,” he says. “There’s police everywhere. She’s safe.”
She’ll never be safe with a mother like you.
His shoes thud softly on the carpet, and he puts a hand on the back of the glider, stopping the rocking.
I look up. “This is terrible,” I say.
“We’re okay,” he says softly, not sounding entirely convinced.
He’s right. On the list of possible crimes committed against me in retaliation, it’s manageable.
> “Is Detective Ramos still here?” I ask.
Jack sighs, then crouches down in front of me. “We need to stop. For a day or two.”
“That’s impossible,” I say. “Is he downstairs?”
He reels back, and I see his patience end, even before he realizes it.
“Christ, Dev.” He bolts up, starts for the door, but then spins to face me. “What will it take for you to back off? Our house burned to the ground? Belina’s murderer on our doorstep?”
“I can’t stop,” I say simply because it’s the truth. He knows this about me. Loved me for it once.
You’re turning him into someone he never wanted to be.
You’ve ruined his life.
You’ve ruined everything you never deserved.
Jack stomps down the stairs, and I hear some murmuring as the back door slams. I look out Ester’s window and see him get back into the car.
I find Detective Ramos on the porch in the dark. The moon is a sliver, and shadows are everywhere. “I’m sorry about your house,” he says, not turning around.
“Me too,” I say. “But it’s not really your fault.” I pause, realizing that’s not true. “Actually, if you’d arrested the right person, this wouldn’t have happened.”
He sighs, cracking his neck to one side. “You should get to a hotel,” he says. “This will take us all night.”
“I know how long it takes.” My voice is shrill, terror and memories at my throat. “My computer and the contents of my safe are gone. It was mostly personal, but there was also a copy of Belina’s journal.”
“We’ll need a list of everything,” he says.
“I know,” I say, again too sharp, too emotional. “Look, we need to talk about the case. Alec’s case.”
Even now you’re obsessed.
You don’t deserve this life.
He turns, stepping closer to me with a placating smile. “I’m about to have my second child. My wife has been very enthusiastic about certain . . . aspects of raising our older son. Only organic, all-natural birth and breastfeeding until he can say, ‘No thank you; I’ll have a beer.’”
I frown but then realize he’s making a joke. “Funny,” I say.
“Look, she’s doing a great job. But sometimes I can see the stress and pressure. From other people. From herself. She’s the one with our son, day in and day out. I escape to my job, like Jack does. We get to use nonkid parts of our brain. Go where we want during the day. Not be controlled by this tiny little dictator. We unplug in a way you stay-at-homes don’t.”
Little Voices Page 25