“Okey-doke, let’s try that again. Look at me. Good. Now look at each other. And now turn toward me with just your shoulders…hold on, there’s a weird bulge in Vic’s pocket.”
I had a momentary flashback to junior high portrait day when my friends and I all put the fear in one another of “popping a boner” during our sittings, never mind the fact that the photos were only shoulders-up. It wasn’t my jeans pocket he was talking about, though. It was my jacket.
Cripes. “Never mind,” I said—I sound especially belligerent when I’m embarrassed—and palmed the wad of fabric as best I could to switch it to the other side. Nothing about it should especially register as “underwear” from this distance, but I strongly suspected I’d now be blushing in the remainder of the photos.
We went through the same rigmarole again. Look at each other. Look at Stroud and his imaginary cube of cheese. Swivel our shoulders. Tilt our heads. And for heaven’s sake, stop scowling, this is a wedding and not a funeral.
I dunno, maybe a funeral would be preferable. At least no one would expect me to smile.
Stroud must have given up on my face. With forced enthusiasm, he said, “If you’ve got your wedding bands with you, I can do a shot of your hands. Everyone loves to see the rings.”
Jacob grabbed them from the car and I took solace in the fact that he had to run out of things to take pictures of soon. But my optimism was short-lived. When the rings came out and Stroud moved in for the close-up, he said, “What’s wrong with your hand?”
I like to think I’m not particularly pasty for a white guy, but sealing my limb in plaster for so many weeks had left it a whiter shade of pale. I’m not sure if it was an optical illusion, or if all that time in the dark had done something to my follicles, because the hairs on the back of my hand looked abnormally thick and black.
“We can skip the hand shot,” Jacob said.
“How’s your other hand?” Stroud asked, and I held them up side-by-side. My right hand was just as long-fingered and knuckly, but was lacking the morgue-like appearance of the one I’d deliberately broken. “I’ll shoot the photos with your right hands and flip them around in Photoshop.”
Huh. Maybe he knew a little something about photography after all.
He did some shots of us slipping the rings on each other while the dogs in the background yipped and whined, Clayton played on his phone, and Barbara fretfully checked and re-checked her watch.
“That’s great,” Stroud said. “Now how about a hug?”
I’d heard of small-town friendliness, but this was getting ridiculous.
“Each other,” he added hastily, backing away.
I sighed as I put my arms around Jacob. Did he feel as awkward I did? If you’d asked me before, I would have said my better half didn’t know the meaning of the word. But now, I was starting to suspect that he just hid it better than the rest of us. Our bodies normally clicked together like a jigsaw puzzle, but now they were fitting like pieces from two different boxes.
My stomach sank as I realized we’d have to kiss for the camera. It was the logical next step. My mouth went dry and I wet my lips nervously. How many kisses had Jacob and I shared since that first fateful tongue-lashing in Maurice’s basement? I couldn’t even begin to count. But now it seemed as if I would undoubtedly manage to do it wrong—and that moment would not only be preserved for all posterity, but splayed on the wall at our wedding itself, larger than life, for everyone we knew to see.
Awkward stretched into unbearable, and I almost pulled away to take a breath, to collect myself and pull on the neutral mask I hid behind when my emotions cut way deeper than I expected. But Jacob sensed the motion before it picked up any momentum. Under the unflinching gaze of the dinky point-and-shoot, he pulled me up against him and pressed his mouth to mine.
Maybe it was the knowledge that other people were watching. Maybe it was the memory of our very first kiss, when he teased the aftertaste of Auracel from my tongue—in particular, my disbelief that my hot PsyCop colleague from the Twelfth Precinct was actually putting the moves on me. As much of a pain in the ass as our to-do list might be, the fact was, never in my wildest dreams would I have pictured us ending up together in the long run. And not only was I banging this guy—I was marrying him.
This G-rated kiss would’ve been enough to check this whole photography business off our list and move on. But instead of pulling away once expectations were met, Jacob leaned in, pressed his temple to my cheek and whispered, “You seem hesitant. Not having second thoughts…are you?”
“The only thought going through my head is how lucky I am.”
Something unhitched inside Jacob. When he tightened his arms around me—to the serenade of a half-dozen yipping dogs—we finally, truly clicked into place.
18
WE TICKED A few more things off our to-do list before we finally dropped off Jacob’s sister and her kid. All in all, it wasn’t a particularly long day—we were both used to working lengthy shifts—but no one had trained me for dealing with nursing homes and dog photographers and wayward glitter. I was so out of my element, I found our errands surprisingly draining. And as we pulled up to his folks’ house, I realized our day was far from over.
As grueling as the day was, Jacob seemed in high enough spirits when Jerry and Leon looped him into helping them fix the lawn mower. I was in the kitchen with Shirley, trying to convince her that it was perfectly fine to open a bottle of wine (even though the other guys all drank beer and I didn’t want any). She cocked her head, looked at me, and said, “Is that glitter?”
Apparently the sticky-roller wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. Oh well. Maybe the sparkles would make our dog portraits look more like glamor shots. Naturally, I didn’t want to be the one to criticize her choice of photographer, so I went for the logical change of subject. “Yeah, that craft store was full of sparkle. This mandatory date idea of Pastor Jill’s…. I hadn’t realized there’d be so many hoops to jump through to get married in the church.”
“Oh yeah? Try marrying a Catholic!”
“No thanks, my heart’s set on Jacob.”
Shirley poured me the glass of chardonnay I’d told her I didn’t want, but it least it was a small one. She said, “Let’s see what you made. I went to a scrapbooking party once, but I really didn’t have the patience for it—so I’m sure anything you came up with would be better than my attempt.”
We adjourned to the backyard to keep the sparkle-contamination to a minimum. It was a coolish evening, but it was worth putting on a jacket to enjoy the spark of fireflies against the dimming sky. I wished I could just enjoy the moment, but Kamal’s notebook had ruined that for me. And if I was feeling robbed, I could only imagine how Jacob must feel.
She spread out the pages on the picnic table. “Is that your mom?”
“Oh, uh…no. It’s complicated.”
Usually, when family resemblance strikes, it’s about how much Jacob looks like his dad. But when Shirley met my eyes in that moment, I totally saw where Jacob got his spark of shrewdness. Shirley might come off easygoing, but she didn’t miss a trick.
I felt like I’d better explain so she didn’t draw conclusions any weirder than they really were. “The thing about being a high-level Psych…it makes you a target. And sometimes that means glossing over certain things and leaving my past in the past.”
“But when you really think about it….” Shirley dropped her hand to mine. There was a twinge of protest where it hadn’t quite recovered from the car door, but mild enough that I didn’t flinch too visibly. “So does everybody.”
I dry-swallowed. While I hadn’t been fishing for an opening to interrogate her—I could hardly pass it up. “Like…how?”
With a sigh, Shirley settled back into the patio chair, fortified herself with a long sip of wine, then said, “We weren’t always so understanding, Jerry and me. When Jacob came out, I mean. But you have to realize, in our generation—it wasn’t something people really talked about. Not a
round here, anyways. We get it now. In fact, I think it’s kind of sad so many couples had to pass themselves off as roommates. Some still do. Like the two ladies in the old farmhouse out by the creek. They’ve gotta be pushing eighty by now.”
My stomach was still doing queasy somersaults—because I’d been poised for some big confession. And I suppose I’d gotten one. Just not the one I’d expected. I fanned out the glittery, clumsily-assembled scrapbook pages and took in my pages, with their photos of my white, homogenized fake family. “My foster parents—well, Harold in particular—I don’t think he would have taken it well. My coming out.”
“And there’s no way to settle things now?”
In all this time, I realized, Shirley had never once mentioned my mediumship. Not to lure me out ghost-hunting, like Jerry and Leon, or to try and deny it even existed, like Barbara.
I thought about Darla reaching beyond the veil, with the dead folks struggling to get away from the contact like they were being waterboarded. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone I loved.
“No. Not really. Some things, the best you can do is let it be.”
As replies went, it was vague, but it seemed to satisfy Shirley well enough.
We turned our eyes back to the photos. Shirley slid mine aside since they were full of strangers and looked instead at Jacob’s pages. I’m not sure how much actual thought he’d put into his page. It was haphazard and minimal, with three random photos and the word “family” stamped crookedly across the top. She said, “Jacob’s no better at this than I was.”
“At…what?”
“Scrapbooking.” Her eyes went shrewd again. “What did you think I meant?”
“Uh, say, we noticed something odd while we were looking through the album.” I flipped through the pages until I found the one with the pelican. “Jacob said his grandmother took these.”
Shirley dragged the album toward her and took a closer look. “Oh, that awful carnival at Sacred Heart. She insisted on dragging them there year after year.”
I pointed toward a picture in the lower corner. Jacob looked older than Clayton, but not by much. “Was that the last year? Why did they stop going?”
“Well, the whole hospital shut down. Some big malpractice scandal. It was so bad, their head administrator killed himself rather than go to trial.”
“What year was this?”
“I suppose Jacob would’ve been fourteen, fifteen.” Shirley pulled out her phone and poked around. “Huh. That’s funny. I can’t find any articles about it online.”
A thread of unease crept down my spine. “That’s okay. Doesn’t matter.”
“What was his name? It’s been so long” Shirley snapped her fingers a few times. “Dr. Mann—that’s it.” She continued to search. “You think there’d be something. It was a really big deal at the time.”
“Old records are funny that way. Depends who’s gotten around to digitizing them.” Did my voice sound normal? It must have, because Shirley continued to flip through the album, blissfully unaware that I was freaking out over the fact that Jacob had apparently survived his own personal Camp Hell.
19
ANYONE WHOSE LIFE has been touched by suicide knows it’s a tragedy of the highest proportions.
And then there’s me, whose first thought is how I can turn it to my advantage. Because murders and suicides aren’t likely to cross over without a hitch.
When Jacob finally came in from the garage with old grass stuck to his T-shirt and a smudge of shop grime on his cheekbone, I covertly motioned him into the bedroom and told him about the administrator offing himself.
He was halfway out the door again to go find the guy before I even finished getting the words out. I hurried along behind him. As we passed his startled family on our way outside, his dad said, “Where ya going?”
“Wedding stuff,” I said, then realized they’d all be eager to help. “Another assignment from Pastor Jill.”
Shirley, Jerry and Leon all deflated a little bit. Imagine how disappointed they’d be if they knew we were looking for a ghost.
As we climbed into the car, Shirley poked her head out the door and called out, “What about the shopping trip?”
“What shopping trip?” Jacob called back.
“The one on your sister’s calendar.”
“It’s fine,” Jacob non-answered, and then we were off.
“Is it really fine?” I said, as we pulled away from the curb.
Jacob made a forget-it gesture. “How is this the first I’m hearing about a suicide?”
“I don’t know—your mom didn’t make it out to be any big secret. How old were you at the time? Clayton’s age? Plus, there was Barbara. If they told you, no way could you have resisted telling her.”
Jacob couldn’t deny it—I knew him too well.
I said, “Maybe your parents didn’t want to scare you. Heck, maybe they just weren’t prepared to have the conversation. But either way, I don’t think it necessarily means anything more than the simple fact that they didn’t want to talk about it.”
We pulled onto the highway. Crown Vics have beefy engines, and when Jacob really floored it, he went from zero to eighty so fast he left my stomach somewhere back at the last intersection. “Ease up,” I said. “If I’ve gotta talk to a suicide, I wanna do it from this side of the veil.”
If there’s one thing all men absolutely love, it’s being told how to drive. But before Jacob could tell me exactly what to do with my suggestion, his phone rang in its dashboard holder, and Barbara’s name and number lit up on the screen. If it were me, I’d just let it go to voicemail. But it wasn’t in Jacob’s nature to avoid something when he could butt heads instead.
He jabbed the speaker on. “I’m in the car.”
“Good. I was starting to worry. The party store closes at nine.”
“We’ll have to postpone the store.” Jacob said in his most authoritative tone of voice.
Apparently that tone meant nothing to his sister.
“We can’t postpone—this is the time I blocked out, and I’m not using my vacation time next week just to help you pick out your favors—”
“You’re right,” I blurted out. “Send me the list and I’ll take care of it.”
There was a silence in which I figured the call had dropped—hilly Wisconsin backroads are infamous for their lousy reception—but then I realized Barbara just didn’t know how to react to anyone agreeing with her right off the bat. “Don’t cheap out on the candy,” she warned. “You don’t want it to be stale.”
“Right. No stale candy.”
“And make sure you don’t get the plastic bud vases. They just fall over.”
“Okay, got it.”
“You’re sure we can’t just go the party store quick? The reception’s at a nice enough supper club, but people still expect you to jazz it up a little.”
“Barb,” Jacob said testily.
I cut in with, “We would, but Pastor Jill gave us this huge thing to go through.”
I’d hardly call a 20-page PDF a “huge thing” compared to some of the documentation they saddled me with at the office…but Barbara didn’t need to know that. “No,” she said, “that works. It gives me time to follow up on some of the last-minute things. Just make sure you’re not late for your manicure tomorrow.”
Ugh…the manicure. “Will do,” I said, then prodded Jacob until he added, “Okay, Barb, thanks,” and disconnected.
A few seconds later, a list pinged my phone. I considered asking Jacob what tulle circles even were, but judging by the laser beam look in his eyes, the wedding was the farthest thing from his mind.
Shopping is nowhere near as big a deal as most people make it out to be. If you honestly don’t have a preference, it goes pretty fast, and with two-day shipping, I didn’t need to worry about whether the party store would be open when all our schedules eventually aligned. Candies, vases, balloons and ribbons. Even tulle circles—yeah, apparently that’s a thing. Into the cart and onto
the credit card they went. I went down the list, checked it twice, and even made sure they were shipping it up here and not to the cannery. But before I could gloat about my efficiency, I found myself bracing against the glove box as Jacob took a hairpin turn on two wheels.
Okay, not really. But the tires did squeal a little. “Look,” I said, “I know you’re eager to get there. But the traffic sign with the wiggly road on it says we should slow down to forty—”
He wanted to grumble, I could tell, but wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. We passed more signs you’d never see in Chicago. Falling rocks. Narrow bridge. Loose gravel. But nothing that alerted us to the presence of a long-gone hospital.
“Grab me the map,” Jacob finally said.
“A printed map?”
“Obviously—”
A flash in the darkness as our headlights bounced off something reflective—the eyes of a massive deer in the middle of the road. Jacob braked so hard my seatbelt almost strangled me, but Bambi managed to trundle off without a scratch…followed by several of his closest friends and relatives. Where was a deer crossing sign when you needed it? Not that Jacob would’ve been paying it any attention.
Once my heart was done trying to pound through my throat, as calmly as possible, I said, “You don’t know where we are?”
“I do. Basically.” Jacob flipped on the hazards and pulled over. “It’s been a few years.”
As far as I’m concerned, maps are for practicing your folding skills, since I can’t make heads or tails of them. But plugging the defunct Sacred Heart Hospital into the phone wouldn’t do us much good. Not only would it alert F-Pimp to our snooping, but it wouldn’t show up on the GPS anyhow, since they’d likely wiped it from the cloud years ago.
If the map wasn’t inscrutable enough, it was full dark now. Out here in the country, streetlights didn’t exist. Our surroundings felt surprisingly isolated and profoundly dark, and the meager light of the overhead dome was swallowed right up. Jacob insisted he could read the map, though, following the twisting, turning routes with his finger. “Okay, we crossed the river about three miles back, and we haven’t seen an intersection since then. Were we on AB or Business AB?”
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 12