She looked at me strangely and said, “How funny. I’ve never seen anyone navigate the room so fast—and he didn’t even touch a single piece of furniture.” She should try it with a roomful of ghosts. That was a real barrel of laughs. “Whatever it is you guys do for a living…I’ll bet it’s never dull.”
I shrugged. “You could say that. So, what’s the next part?”
“There is no next part. Usually at this point, someone’s still wrapped around a folding chair. The good news is that Vic can be assertive when the situation calls for it.”
Well, sure, crackheads and vengeful spirits don’t take you seriously unless you channel your inner badass. The pastor must’ve seen whatever it was she wanted to see, since she let us out ten minutes early for good behavior.
We climbed into the car and Jacob paused with his key just resting against the ignition and a faraway look in his eyes. I waited. Eventually, he said, “The thing that’s bothering me most about Kamal’s notebook isn’t that I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be. It’s that I’m worried I’ve been living a lie, and my parents aren’t together because they want to be, but because someone forced them together, or paid them off.”
I jostled his knee. “Come on, we know your dad and Uncle Leon are inseparable. Jerry would’ve married Shirley just to keep him in the family.”
Jacob smiled sadly. “My grandmother knows something.”
“Yeah. She does. But she can’t tell us.”
“Even if she could, I doubt she’d be willing to.” He caught my hand and ran his thumb over my pale knuckles. “Vic, when I was blindfolded and you guided me through the chairs, I felt just as confident as I would’ve felt looking through my own two eyes. The sound of your voice was the only thing that mattered. And I’m worried that in all this useless digging around, I’ve lost sight of what’s important: me and you. Us.”
“Jacob….” It’s fine. The words were on the tip of my tongue. But I forced myself to bite them back, to stop trying to deflect the feelings Jacob was struggling to express. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need. I’m here.”
32
PASTOR JILL MIGHT have intended that trust exercise to teach me something about assertiveness, but it ended up convincing Jacob that he needed to clear the air with his parents. Despite the fact that we’d been staying under their roof these past few days—and in a none too comfortable fold-out bed—we’d avoided them pretty well.
When we got back to their place, both cars were in the driveway. We sat out front, peering through the windshield at the front door. “You don’t actually have to confront anyone,” I told Jacob. “Take it from a long-time avoider. Sometimes the best course of action is to simply drop it.”
Sometimes…but not this time. Jacob took a fortifying breath and we headed into the house.
We found his parents in the living room watching the news, each in their respective recliner flanked by a pair of TV trays bearing the remains of an early lunch. Shirley snapped down her footrest and said, “Are you hungry? I can make you a sandwich. We didn’t realize you’d be back—we would have waited.”
Shirley did make a mean sandwich—in addition to the mayo, she buttered the bread—and I realized that yeah, I could eat. “That sounds great.” I slid a glance to Jacob, who looked to be second-guessing himself, and decided that divide-and-conquer would give him the best opportunity to make his move. “I’ll help.”
I followed Jacob’s mom into the kitchen while he and his dad headed downstairs. God knows what Jacob claimed he needed in the basement, but it gave the two of them some privacy to really talk.
Sandwich-making didn’t require any actual assistance, but Shirley let me join in anyhow, even if it did take longer to hand things to me and explain how to do it instead of just doing it herself.
“Make sure the butter goes all the way to the edge,” she instructed, and I gave the slice of bread I was holding a more thorough spreading.
I then blurted out, “I’m not a big fan of bran muffins.”
I hadn’t realized just how much my relationship with Shirley meant to me until I threatened it by practicing confrontation. There was half a heartbeat in which I expected her to whack me with a slice of ham and call me an ingrate, and a poor excuse for a son-in-law to boot.
Thankfully, my panic was short-lived. “Oh, Jerry too—he says they taste like sawdust. Dry the lettuce leaf with a paper towel, otherwise when you bite into it, all the insides will slide out.”
Well…since we were talking…. I blotted the lettuce, steeled myself, and said, “How did you and Jerry meet?”
If Shirley thought the question was a non-sequitur, she didn’t remark on it. “We went to high school together.”
What about the author of the love letters? The bran muffin confrontation was bad enough. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle it if Shirley lied to me…if the trust I thought we’d built up was worthless. “High school sweethearts?”
“Oh, no—back then, each of us was going steady with someone else. We ran into each other a few years later.”
“Where?”
“At the bowling alley. It really wasn’t any big deal—like I said, we already knew each other.”
“But there must’ve been a moment when you realized you thought of Jacob’s dad as more than just a friend.”
Shirley smiled softly to herself. “His brother, Fred, had a buddy—this was before the big to-do happened where Fred got a free ride to college and Jerry got nothing—this funny kid, Norm.”
Norman…Krimski. I went very still and did my best to not hyperventilate.
“Norm was a real cut-up. He just blurted out whatever was on his mind. He saw Jerry helping me get a knot out of my bowling shoes, with Jerry down on one knee in front of me, and out of the blue, he says, You’ll kick yourself if you don’t propose to that girl. We all laughed it off. But then Jerry got our number from Leon and called the very next day to ask me out.”
I’d always figured Camp Hell’s Director Krimski sprang into the world as a fully-formed middle aged man—and the only time someone would refer to him as a “cut-up” was if they were on the receiving end of a fatal stab wound.
I said, “How much time did you actually spend with this Norm guy?”
“Not much. He ended up moving away. Chicago, actually.” Shirley gave the sandwich its finishing touch: a diagonal cut. “Wonder what he’s doing nowadays?”
Yeah. Me too.
She handed me the knife, then paused and tugged up the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “How’s your hand?”
“Fine.” I flexed it a few times. “Uh…mostly. I’ll need some physical therapy to recover my grip. But after all that time under plaster, it’s weirdly…pale.”
If I’d been fishing for reassurance that I was just being self-conscious, I’d cast my line in the wrong spot. Shirley gave my hand a thorough scrutiny, then brightened and said, “I have just the thing!”
By the time I wolfed down half a sandwich, she’d bustled upstairs to the bathroom and come back with a tube of self-tanning lotion.
“First thing in the summer, my legs always look like fish bellies, so I need a little help. It’ll be our secret.”
I probably should’ve hung my left arm out the car window and let nature take its course, but that would’ve been some trick from the passenger seat—and besides, it hadn’t occurred to me.
“Give me your hand.”
I wasn’t entirely sold on the idea, but I obeyed. Shirley slathered the offending limb with lotion, then washed her hands. “It doesn’t look any different,” I said.
“Because it takes a few hours for the tan to develop. Just make sure you wash it off at bedtime, otherwise it’ll stain the sheets.”
I flexed my hand a few times, then said, “So Grandma Marks didn’t have anything to do with you and Jerry getting together?”
Shirley nearly choked on her sandwich. “Just the opposite.” She lowered her voice, and in confidence, told me, “That woman did everythin
g in her power to keep us apart. But I think that only made Jerry more determined to marry me.”
So, other than a good sandwich in my belly and a hand that smelled like self-tanner, what did that leave me with?
More questions.
Why had Jerry’s mother discouraged him from getting together with Shirley? Was Shirley meant for some other set of initials on Kamal’s roster—or did the old woman’s reasons have nothing to do with Kamal’s experiments? Hard to say. The machinations ran so deep it was hard to imagine anything else might be the cause.
Once Jacob ate—he denies that he loves butter as much as the next guy, but I know better—we headed out to check and double-check that our wedding would go off without a hitch. But our suits had been pressed, our flowers were on track, our decorations had been delivered, and our annoying millennial baker was only having a minor meltdown.
The prep work was done. Out of our hands. All that was left to do was show up for our bachelor party...if Jacob ever managed to pull away from the curb. He’d frozen with his hand on the ignition, lost in thought. And I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the bakery.
Eventually, he said, “I asked my dad about those love letters.”
I wondered when we’d come around to that. As much as Jacob might have been chagrined about letting our wedding take back seat to his investigation, he wouldn’t be Jacob if he just let the matter drop. “What did he say?”
“That Leah was just a high school sweetheart—a friend of the family his mother was gung-ho about him seeing.”
“I have a hard time picturing your grandmother being particularly fond of anybody.”
“Which means that Leah could have been part of Kamal’s experiments too—someone my grandmother was encouraging him to…breed with. If we track her down, maybe we can get some answers.”
“Hold on.” I pulled Kamal’s notebook out of the glovebox and refreshed myself on the strings of initials. “Even if Leah’s return address had her married name, there’s nobody with a first name that starts with L.”
“Which means my Uncle Leon wasn’t on the list.”
I thought back to the last conversation I’d had with Grandma Marks. “Only one child. That’s what Father Paul promised your grandmother.”
“What’s that supposed to mean—something genetic, a trait that only shows up half the time?”
I shook my head. “That wasn’t the impression I got. It sounded more like some kind of sick bargain.”
A text from Crash pinged my phone. Just about ready for the big shebang—what’s your ETA?
As much as Jacob might want to put this Kamal business behind him and just focus on the damn wedding, I could tell his compartmentalization skills were failing him miserably. I said to my phone, “Tell Crash we’re running half an hour behind.” And once I was positive the phone was done listening to me, I told Jacob, “You won’t get any peace until you’ve exhausted every possible avenue. So let’s go talk to your grandmother one more time.”
***
When we got to the nursing home, a group of old ladies was just finishing up their dinner.
Jacob’s grandmother was not among them.
The nurse at the desk in Grandma’s ward headed us off on the way to her room. “Just so you fellas know, Mrs. Marks has been sedated.”
“Why?” Jacob demanded.
“For her own protection. A few hours ago she fell again, and she keeps trying to get up and wander around even though her balance is out of whack. There’s no reasoning with her, poor thing, so we had to restrain her—and the doctor thought it was cruel to just let her struggle.”
Maybe so, but at least we could have still taken a stab at making her talk.
The nurse said, “You can still visit her, though. I know it’s real tough to see your loved ones when their minds start to go.”
Since the nurse had more experience with the elderly than either of us had, I figured it couldn’t hurt to pick her brain instead of continually running around on a wild goose chase. “What are the chances we’ll get to have a lucid conversation with her?”
“There’s no way of knowing. Sometimes you’ll get a little glimpse. Sometimes it seems like they’re not even themselves anymore. But I like to think the person you love is still there, somewhere inside. That’s the part of them you talk to, even when it seems like nobody’s home. I’ve been in hospice over twenty years now, and one thing I can say for sure is that no one regrets getting to say their goodbyes.”
Hospice? Beside me, Jacob tensed.
No one said anything to us about hospice.
We made our way to the room. Asleep, Grandma Marks was a heck of a lot less intimidating than she was with her eyes open and glaring. The sight of a wrist restraint cinching her to the bed made my spine prickle.
Jacob clung to the bed rail, fuming. “What do you wanna bet she dies just to keep from telling us anything we can use?”
I dunno. If she died, maybe she’d feel the urge to come clean. Or at least feed me her justifications. But the way our luck had been going, she’d cross over and leave me hanging. “If you need to be pissed at anyone, be pissed at Kamal. He got what was coming to him.” I shuddered at the memory of his corrupted spirit fused with an outbreak of habit demons. “And then some.”
“The more time I spend with my dad these days, the angrier I am that she just threw him to the wolves like some sacrificial lamb for Uncle Fred’s benefit.”
“Look, Jacob.” I pried his hand from the rail. “Kamal is gone—you shoved him through the veil yourself—and your parents are okay. Your dad is okay.”
He grunted a half-hearted agreement.
I said, “You may not get any answers here—or at least none that you like. I’m sorry your origin story is as screwed up as mine. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you—not for one single moment.”
33
ON OUR WAY out the nursing home door, another text came in from Crash: this one containing the address of our bachelor party.
As if we weren’t under enough stress.
Back when Jacob and I decided to tie the knot in an official church ceremony instead of just sneaking off to City Hall for a private elopement, I knew I’d be called upon to do plenty of things that were way outside my comfort zone. What I hadn’t fully appreciated was how high on that list a stag party would be.
And that was before I knew the party planning duty had fallen to Crash.
Bad enough he was flirty and opinionated and unabashedly gay. He reveled in making me squirm. Maybe that’s what friends are for…but I’d rather not have to endure the agony in front of what few other friends I had.
Visions of muscular, oiled strippers waving their junk at me while people I knew looked on nearly had me begging Jacob to pull over so I could flee into the woods, never to be seen again.
But when Jacob mapped the location, I could practically feel the tension drain out of him. “We’re meeting at the park.”
That seemed awfully…tame.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that there’d be no strippers involved, but if we were in a public park, at least they wouldn’t be completely naked.
The road to the park was as treacherous and winding as they come, but the closer we got to our destination, the more Jacob relaxed. “I haven’t been here in years. Camping with the Scouts…fishing with Uncle Leon. Sunset over the bluffs…and after, when the stars come out…I can’t wait to show you.”
A park shelter had been reserved, and most of the cars in the adjacent lot had Illinois plates. My friends were mainly work friends…which made me doubly apprehensive about any indignities I might suffer in front of them. At least until I noticed a skinny girl of maybe ten or eleven lobbing pine cones at Clayton.
Jacob’s breath caught. “That’s one of Carolyn’s daughters.”
What a relief, and not just because it was a family-friendly event. Carolyn hadn’t RSVP’d before we headed up to Wisconsin. Having her here would mean the world to Jacob.
Funny. I’d always figured that between the two of us, I was the one who had the most trouble making friends. And yet, scanning the small crowd, I saw that I had just as many as Jacob. My old partner Maurice hovered by a smoking charcoal grill while his wife Nichelle was laughing over something with Jacob’s mom. Agent Peter Garcia, who was convinced I’d saved him from sure death at the hands of The Assassin, was slicing a watermelon. Hopefully he would put my mind at ease by checking it for surveillance devices while he was at it. My fake husband, Bly, was chatting with Jacob’s gym rat buddies…and he had a tall, thin woman with ramrod posture on his arm. Apparently he’d paid attention to my tip-off about Bethany. Hopefully he could learn to enjoy yoga. And hopefully Jacob’s sister didn’t give him too much hell for bringing along a last minute plus-one.
I didn’t make friends easily. But maybe I held onto them better because I didn’t alienate them by always having to be right.
Crash, with his spiked peroxide blonde hair, stood out among the crowd. He perked up when he saw us and slow-jogged over in his combat boots, metal bracelets jangling. “Greetings to the guests of honor. As you can see, your emphatic plea to keep it simple was received and heard. Hamburgers and hot dogs to the right. Taco bar with vegan options to the left. And all the fizzy-water you care to drink. The strippers canceled, but we did manage to arrange for a scandalous event called cornhole.”
“It’s a game,” Jacob supplied, for my benefit. “A G-rated game.”
Would I ever get a handle on whether Crash was just teasing or not? Unlikely. But I could live with that.
Red looked up from the taco bar he was arranging and came over to greet us. If you ever need evidence that Pastor Jill’s “opposites attract” theory plays out all the time, look no farther than the guy Crash settled down with. Red Turner is the most gracious person I know.
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 21