Nick ended the night in the bathroom. He knelt on the floor and made himself vomit into the stained toilet bowl, hoping to stave off a hangover. Then he stood, rinsed his mouth out, and locked eyes with the reflection above the sink. Was that person really him? The lines of his face were harsh, his eyes wet and empty. The image was sharp, but his mind was melting, blurring. He wished he could dissolve into the cold water and wash down the drain.
* * *
On Sunday, he was hungover anyway.
* * *
Sherie called on Monday. At first he thought she knew, somehow, that he was the one who called looking for her the week before. But she immediately started talking about court, and Nick realized it was just a coincidence. She told Nick there would be a court date next Tuesday. She said she was reminding him of the date, but he didn’t remember being given it.
“The dispositional conference,” she said, “is what we call it when the prosecutor and the defense attorney meet at court, talk about the case, and try to come to an agreement to settle it.”
“So it could all be over next Tuesday?”
“It could be, but please don’t get your hopes up.”
Right. Nick remembered the meeting at the DA’s office. If the case did settle, it would probably happen closer to trial. Two months had seemed like a lifetime to Nick, but apparently they were still early on in the case.
“How does it work?”
“At court? The defendant goes, and there’s a judge for part of it, but a lot of it is just the lawyers talking alone. Linda will tell Eva—that’s the defense lawyer—Linda will tell her why she thinks she would win at trial, and what she thinks a fair sentence would be. Eva will tell Linda why she thinks Linda will lose, and what sentence they would accept to make the case go away.”
“What kind of sentence would it be?”
“Linda wanted to know what you thought of him serving four years in prison, with a total of ten years he could serve if he violates probation.”
Nick didn’t know what to say. Four years in prison sounded like a long time. But maybe not. If they settled the case now, without Nick telling Sherie the truth, that would mean everyone would see the four years as Ray’s payment for what Nick said Ray did: invited Nick to a hotel, knocked him out, and assaulted him while he was defenseless. Four years didn’t sound so long, then.
“That’s just an offer to get him to settle,” Sherie went on. “If he won’t settle, if Linda wins at trial, she would argue for way more time.”
“So it would be four years if we skip the trial.”
“Exactly,” Sherie said.
If there was no trial, there was no reason to tell the prosecutor the story—the actual story. Was there? Would he be any freer, truly, just for having said it, if saying it would be pointless?
“That sounds good,” Nick said to Sherie. And he didn’t tell her.
* * *
On Tuesday, he had therapy. He went into the session ready to tell Jeff what he’d decided as he spoke to Sherie: that he would wait until after the coming court date to tell anyone else what he’d told Jeff a week before. But when he saw Jeff in person, it hit him how much he liked Jeff. Jeff had shown him, over the last couple of months, what it looked like to be a man who had also been a victim. Proved to him that you could be a victim without it defining you. Jeff was married. He was funny, but also gentle. He was sure of himself. He was the kind of man Nick wanted to be. And this man might lose respect for him if he knew Nick wanted to wait and see if the case went away. Might find him cowardly—might even think, I guess he’s not as brave as I thought he was. So Nick changed his mind and decided to lie.
“Have you talked to the advocate yet?”
“I called last week but she was gone for a family emergency.” Not even a lie, he thought, but he still felt guilty.
“Oh. Did you talk to the prosecutor, then?”
“No. I’m just gonna wait and tell the advocate this week.” Definitely a lie. “I’ll try her again when I leave here.”
Jeff hooked a finger under the band of his watch.
“You don’t have to if you don’t feel ready,” he said. “You get to make the decisions. No one else.”
Nick could hear the soft tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall behind him.
“And as I said last week, I’m more than happy to be there when you call.”
When he did tell Sherie—if he had to, if the case didn’t settle next week—that would feel good. Familiar.
“Maybe,” Nick said. Maybe it would feel good, or maybe it would feel like more of the same. Like he was a kid who’d spilled a glass of milk, and he was watching someone else clean it up.
Nick left Jeff’s office feeling even worse than when he got there. As Johnny drove him home, he wished for an accident. He pictured a car slamming into theirs, hitting the passenger side of the Volvo and snapping him out of consciousness and into a coma. It would leave Johnny unscathed, somehow, and no one upset—everyone could know that the coma wouldn’t last. His mom, Tony, Johnny, and Elle—none of them would have to worry. And Nick could sleep through it all. He could wake up after the case was done, after everyone had forgotten they were so interested in his life.
* * *
As it went sometimes after a bad day, Wednesday was okay.
* * *
On Thursday, he dreamed that Elle was knocking at his door, asking to come in, asking if he’d seen the news. She handed him a phone but the words were blurry.
“You lied,” Elle was saying. “You lied. You let me believe you. You let me see what I wanted to see. Everyone knows now. Everyone knows what you are.” She was sobbing. Nick was sobbing. And then he woke up.
He reached for his phone. Googled his name. Nothing new. Googled Walker’s name. Nothing new. He should have stopped there, but he didn’t. He was sick with guilt. He wouldn’t pick at himself. Instead, he would read.
He scrolled to the bottom of the most recent article on Seaside. There were no new comments, so he reread what was there.
I might be able to swallow this if the “victim” were a smaller female, but a 20yo male gets knocked unconscious in a single blow? It’s just very hard to buy.
So can we just get straight that this guy blacked out, wasn’t hit on the head or whatever nonsense . . . just doesn’t want to own that he drank himself dumb. If he doesn’t remember what happened, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t consenting to it.
Nick was right not to tell Sherie. Not if he could help it. People already thought he was a liar. Already thought he was less of a man for the story he told. He didn’t want to know what people would say, what they would think of him, if they knew the truth.
He could make it a week—less than a week—to hear if, by some miracle, the case would go away on its own. Only if it didn’t would he need to make a decision. Would he tell the truth and watch the case fold and his reputation crumble? Or would he split himself in two: the real Nick only Jeff was allowed to see, and the fake Nick who’d appeared in the car on the way to the hospital and told the story no one seemed to believe?
* * *
Sherie called again on Friday. Court was pushed off, she said, until January 12.
Wait. January 12. That was a month away.
“Why?”
“His lawyer has a scheduling conflict next week.”
So what? Why did that cost Nick another month of his life?
“So . . .” What could he say? What could she do?
“Right,” she said. “So, there’s really nothing to do at the moment. I’ll call you after court in January to let you know where we landed. And now,” she said like it was good news, “you can just focus on the holidays. Any special plans?”
The only thing Nick had thought about the holidays so far was that maybe, just maybe, all of this would be over by then.
* * *
<
br /> On Saturday, he was drinking alone again when Elle knocked on his door.
His stomach rolled as he remembered his dream.
She opened the door and stuck her head in.
“Ooh!” she squealed. “We drinking?”
41
John Rice, 2015
On December 13, Rice stepped out of mass feeling calm and centered. He sucked the cool air in through his nostrils and let it out his mouth, sending a white cloud of frozen breath out before him.
His Sunday morning ritual consisted of mass at eight sharp and breakfast with the boys downtown at ten fifteen. Bob Lucre and Jim Allen would be waiting for him in their usual booth at Dorothy’s Diner in Cape. Hot coffee, a short stack, and a recap of the week. Most people seemed to feel filled up by their worship. Rice usually left feeling hollowed out, like all of the burdens he’d been carrying, all the negative thoughts, had been stripped from his head and given up to God. All his mistakes and bad choices, big and small, had been left behind in the rafters of the church. As freeing as it was to feel so light, his Sunday breakfast grounded him again.
Rice crunched down the cathedral’s salted steps and made his way to his car. It had snowed earlier that week, enough that the lot had been plowed. Rice had parked right up against a low bank of snow, already dirty with grit.
He sat down into the car and reached for his phone. This morning he had two missed calls from the station, a voice mail, and a text message from Brendan Merlo.
Nick hall at YCMC. Suicide attempt. Heading there now
The message was time-stamped 8:03 a.m.
Rice read the message over again.
He shot off a text of his own—he wouldn’t be making breakfast—then headed for the hospital.
* * *
Brendan Merlo was just reaching his patrol vehicle when Rice pulled into the lot next to the emergency department, giving his horn two quick taps. Merlo stopped and waited for him to park.
He whistled as Rice shut his door. “Don’t you look sharp.”
“Mass,” Rice said. “What’s going on?”
Merlo moved leisurely to Rice’s side. “Didn’t mean for you to come over, we’re all set.”
“What happened?”
“Kid’s roommate Ellen called it in, sometime around three this morning.” Merlo fished a small notebook from his jacket as he spoke. “Elle, I mean. Said they were at their apartment, drinking last night into this morning, thought they were having a good time, blowing off steam. Elle said he told her he was going to the bathroom and he was gone long enough she went looking for him. Found him passed out on the floor with an empty bottle of his psych meds. Hard to say whether it was a genuine attempt or not.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just my phrasing,” Merlo said. “Nick says he can’t remember doing it is all, and he doesn’t feel suicidal now. Obviously swallowing a whole bottle of pills looks like suicide, I just meant I don’t know if he really wanted to die.”
“What pills he use?”
“Fuck if I can pronounce it; it’s the generic Zoloft. He says he doesn’t want to hurt himself now.” Merlo shrugged. “I believe him.”
Rice didn’t. Instead, he felt a panicked frustration rising up. “They’re not letting him go home, are they?”
“Don’t need to. His sister-in-law really worked him over on staying at a hospital-type program. He’s going up to Goodspring in Belfast.”
He needed to get inside. “Thanks, Brendan,” Rice said, patting Merlo’s shoulder as he passed him by.
“No problem,” Merlo called after him.
Rice waved his hand in the air without turning back.
For the third time, Rice found himself walking down a sterile hallway in York County Medical Center headed for Nick Hall’s room. This time his steps were propelled by an urgency not present for his first two visits.
Stepping into the ER was like waking up. He was at the ER. Off duty. To see a boy who’d tried to kill himself.
A nurse behind the large desk at the center of the unit looked up from the chart in his hands. “Can I help you?”
It was all wrong. The intrusiveness was clear: no one had called for his help. Nobody had invited him in.
“No,” Rice said. “No, I—”
“Detective Rice?” Julia Hall was standing in the doorway of what must have been a bathroom on the far side of the unit.
Shit.
“Julia, hi.”
She came toward him, not quite smiling. “Are you here for Nick?” She eyed his church clothes. “Or . . . something private?”
“Well, I was here for a personal matter, and I ran into Officer Merlo just now. Thought I’d stop over just in case . . .” He trailed off. Just in case what? What could he do for them?
For a second, Julia looked as though she was thinking the same. Then she half smiled and said, “That was sweet of you, but I think we’re okay.”
“Well, great. I’m glad. I heard he’s going up to Goodspring?”
She frowned. “Uh, it’s not set in stone yet, but it looks like that’s gonna work out. Why?”
“Oh, no reason.”
Julia crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “If it affects the case, it affects the case, I guess is how I see it.”
“Julia I—I wasn’t even thinking of that. I want Nick to take care of himself, truly.”
Her face softened, but her arms stayed crossed. “Me, too. Thanks for coming by, Detective.”
“No problem,” Rice said, and he turned away before she could beat him to it.
42
Tony Hall, 2015
House Hunters is good,” Tony said.
“Maybe when you’re old,” Nick answered.
Tony stood on his tiptoes, flicking through the channels on the TV mounted high in the corner of the room.
A woman in a wedding gown appeared on the screen.
“Pass.”
“Oh, how about a dog show?” Tony asked with genuine enthusiasm.
Nick turned the dead remote control over in his hands and nodded. “That could work.”
“We don’t have to—”
“No, keep it here.”
Tony rolled his shoulders as he came back to the chair next to Nick’s bed.
Before that awful silence could creep in on them, Tony asked, “Should we get a dog?” It was a question he might have asked Chloe or Seb; it wasn’t real. It was just a game.
Nick looked at him, then up at the screen. “Yeah,” Nick said. “You should get . . . that one.” Some kind of miniature Doberman–looking thing was being manhandled on a table.
“Christ. Probably more dangerous than the big version.”
Nick chuckled softly. “Why don’t you guys have a dog?”
“Julia’s allergic.”
“Oh yeah, I knew that.” Nick turned the remote over and over. “Literally her only flaw.”
That wasn’t quite true. To most people, Julia looked perfect. She was pretty and kind and endlessly thoughtful. She never showed up empty-handed, always remembered birthdays and anniversaries, always asked how you were doing and meant it. But she could be headstrong and critical when she thought she knew better than someone else. Especially when it came to Tony. Sometimes she just didn’t get him—didn’t trust that he knew what he was doing. Until she was in college she’d been rich, at least compared to Tony’s family, and then, abruptly, she wasn’t. Her dad died and the floor fell out from under her and her mom. When Tony met Julia, it was only a few years after that, and she was obsessed with taking care of herself. Every time Tony tried to do something for her, she questioned and critiqued and pushed him away. It was equal parts enraging and arousing, figuring out how to get her to let him in. Even now, sometimes they’d have a standoff.
“Speak of the devil,” Nick said with
a faint smile as Julia appeared in the doorway.
“You boys talking about me?”
“Just your allergies,” Nick said.
She squinted. “Scintillating. I’m gonna go down to the cafeteria—I just came back to take orders.”
“Yes!” Nick said with the most enthusiasm he had mustered since they’d arrived earlier that morning to see him. “A coffee, with cream and sugar.”
Julia winced. “You know, caffeine might be something to cut back on right now, it can kind of feed anxious feelings.”
“Oh—”
“Christ, Julia. Let him have a coffee.” Tony pressed his fingers into his temples. He could feel a splitting headache coming on.
Her voice was deflated. “Yeah, sorry, that was stupid.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Nick said. “I could have tea instead.”
“No, you can have a coffee.” Tony pointed a hand at Nick.
“Well, if I should—”
“A coffee will make absolutely no difference,” Julia said as she stepped farther into the room. “I don’t even know why I said that. Do you want anything to snack on with it?”
Nick paused. “A cookie, if they have any. Or something else sweet.”
“On it. Tony?”
“I might come with you,” he said as he stood. “We can figure out what the plan is today, with the kids.”
Julia backed out of Tony’s way as he came through the door. She had this antsy energy around him, like she was afraid to stand too close to him. It was exhausting.
“We’re running over to the cafeteria,” she said to the nurse at the desk.
The man nodded. “You’re good; I got eyes on him,” he said quietly as they passed by.
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