by Gregory Ashe
“You won’t just tell me,” Hazard said, wiping his face now, the gesture childlike and defenseless. “So I’ll say it for you: you’re moving out. For a reason that doesn’t make any sense to me. Just because your dad asked you to do it. Ok, fine. That’s settled.”
“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell him no? Do you want me not to help him? It’s two weeks, Ree. It’s this tiny sliver of time, and afterward, it’s not going to matter. We’re not calling off the wedding. We’re not breaking up. It’s just a damn PR stunt.”
“I want you to tell me why you’re doing this. Why you’re really doing it.”
“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint you, Ree. There’s no secret fucking reason. He’s my dad. He needs help. It’s something I can do.”
“He’s treated you like shit your whole life. Why are you helping him at all?”
“You didn’t say no, Ree. He twisted your arm, and you didn’t say no. You could have. You could have said no. But you wanted me to say no for you.”
“He’s not my dad. I could give fuck all about what he wants. I wanted you to tell him no.”
“Add it to the list: another place I’m not as good as Emery Hazard. Not all of us can just cut our families out of our lives and move on. Sorry I’m so fucking weak that I want to have some kind of relationship with my dad. Yeah, even if he does treat me like shit. Yeah, even if it’s a shitty excuse for a relationship.”
Hazard dried his hands on his shirt, the movements careful, taking his time to run the cotton along each digit individually. When he looked up, it was even worse somehow. “I don’t want to be treated like this.”
“Yeah?” Somers said, smacking the spray of water that ran over his burned fingers. “Neither do I.”
Nodding slowly, Hazard said, “Goodnight, John. I’ll be back in a couple of hours; I guess you’ll be out of the house by then.”
A piece of Somers that he’d thought was permanent, something the equivalent of a continent, had come unmoored and was drifting. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the chilly rush of the water, but his stomach churned, and he thought he was going to be sick. The front door opened, hinges squeaking, and then it shut. No crashing slam. Just a quiet click shut. And Somers thought Hazard hadn’t really been saying goodnight. He’d been saying goodbye.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARCH 26
TUESDAY
9:16 AM
IN HIS OFFICE the next morning, Hazard decided to organize. The second-floor suite was sparsely furnished; the large, front room had tubular chairs, a fern that had perked up a little in the spring sunlight, a large window that looked down on Market Street, and a painting that Somers had hung, crookedly, of the Grand Rivere. Hazard’s private office held a beautiful desk, stolen from Glenn Somerset, two chairs, and several filing cabinets. He started by moving the chairs around the front room. First, he put them by the window. Then he moved them over to the coffee station. Then he put most of them by the front window and one by the bathroom door. Then he tried to straighten the painting. It slid on its wire until it was crooked again.
Ok, Hazard thought.
He moved into his private office. He got out a can of Pledge and a rag. He really went to town. He sprayed so much Pledge that the air was full of lemon-scented wax, droplets of it floating in the sunlight like huge grains of pollen. And then, swearing, he pitched the Pledge can overhand into the corner of the room, where it hissed like a wounded thing, and he went back out to the painting. He slid it along the wire, trying to find the sweet spot. As soon as he let it go, it slid back to its original, crooked position.
Ok, Hazard thought. Ok.
He went back to his private office. He emptied the filing cabinets, stacked manila folders, and began sorting through them. Anything from the previous year, he moved to its own pile, alphabetized by client’s last name. Then he decided this wasn’t the best system; he should be sorting by the type of work he’d been hired to do, then by client last name. He shuffled the stacks together and started over. One of the folders, a real bastard, sliced open his thumb, and Hazard swore and stuck the bleeding digit in his mouth and went to the bathroom.
And then, with the mirrored cabinet hanging open, Hazard just stood there, thumb in his mouth, the coppery heat of blood against his tongue, staring at the first-aid kit.
Somers had moved out.
He closed his eyes; nothing actually tilted, but he still felt something like vertigo.
After leaving the house, Hazard had walked for a long time. Longer than two hours; the spring night had been mild, and the labyrinth inside him had mapped itself onto the external world, turning everything unfamiliar so that Hazard lost himself on streets he’d known his whole life. When he’d gone back to the house, all the lights had been blazing, and the front door had stood open. He’d had this weird, awful kind of hope, like a wire was hooked around his ribcage and yanking him up off his feet, and he walked the whole house before he allowed himself to check the garage. And, of course, the Mustang had been gone.
Hazard hadn’t slept. He hadn’t cried. He’d wrapped himself in the comforter from their bed, and he’d turned on the TV and stared at a few hours of QVC. Then, around five, he’d gone for a run. Seven miles. He hit the weight bench when he got back. He’d worked himself until sweat stung his eyes, until his arms trembled, until he actually couldn’t get the bar up and he had to grunt and roll it off him. He had lain there on the bench, shaking, for a long time. When he covered his face, to keep himself from falling apart, he smelled the iron tang of the bar on his hands. And then he had showered and come here.
Now, with his thumb bleeding in his mouth, he stared at the cabinet, at the first aid kit, and then at the ancient porcelain sink and the white cross faucet handles. He took his thumb out of his mouth and stared at it, too. And then he went back into the front room and stared for a long time at the painting of the Grand Rivere.
“You son of a bitch,” Hazard told the painting.
From the bakery below came the jangle of a shopkeeper’s bell.
“You selfish fucking excuse for a human being,” Hazard said.
Out on Market Street, a tourist bus rolled down the block and jerked to a halt. Air brakes made a short, sharp report. The sound wasn’t really that much like a gunshot, but Hazard was exhausted and frazzled and the suddenness of the sound sent him into overdrive: his pulse pounded, and his vision narrowed, and his whole body tensed. An instant later, he realized what the noise had been. His rational brain tried to take over again, but he was still too keyed up, still flooded with adrenaline and cortisol.
And the painting was still crooked.
“You stupid, self-centered, egotistical piece of shit,” Hazard shouted, and then he grabbed the painting, adjusting it, slamming it against the wall to force it to hang straight. When it slid back to its original position, he howled and yanked it off the nail. Holding one end, he spun and brought it down, once, across the arm of a tubular chair. The frame snapped; canvas tore. Hazard dropped the painting, and it hung, broken and splintered, like a dead thing.
“Fuck,” Hazard shouted, but by then anger and fear were burning themselves out, and he felt sick and shaky. He went back into the bathroom, grabbed the first aid kit, and sat down on the old vinyl flooring. He wrapped a bandage around his thumb. And then, squeezing his eyes shut, he let his head fall back against the door.
When his phone buzzed, he thought it was Somers. He worked it out of his pocket and checked the screen.
“Sheriff?”
“Emery, how are you?”
Hazard stared at the bathroom tile. “Busy.”
“I’ll keep it short, then. It . . . it’s Rory’s birthday on Friday. We’d like to do a little something for him. I promise it’ll be brief. It would mean a lot if you were there.”
Hazard tried to think of an excuse. Rory was the sheriff’s only son; he had died in Hazard’s arms after being tortured for days by madman.
“I’m not sure if I can make it. Things are complicated.”
“I understand. Thank you for thinking about it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“I understand,” Engels said again.
The phone buzzed almost as soon as the call disconnected, and this time, an unknown number showed on the screen. Hazard answered it again.
“Mr. Hazard, my name is Clara Fessler and I’m a reporter for the Washington Post. I’m doing a story on—”
Hazard disconnected. When the phone buzzed again, he silenced it.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. He didn’t care. The night before, with QVC voices piping at him, he had convinced himself he wouldn’t do a single thing to help Glenn until Somers came back—crawled back, begging—but now, sitting on a cold bathroom floor with his body trembling from the receding flood of fight-or-flight hormones, Hazard realized he had no choice. He could rage. He could break things. He could set the world on fire. But Glenn Somerset had played the ultimate trump card. Somehow, he had a hold over Somers, and unless Hazard did what Glenn wanted, Hazard would never get Somers back. The idea, which would have sounded insane if he spoke it out loud, made perfect sense in Hazard’s head.
A knock at the door brought his head up, and he scrambled to his feet. It was Somers. It was Glenn. It was Somers. Hazard checked himself in the mirror, the pallor, the hectic color in his cheeks, the tumble of dark hair that he hadn’t touched after toweling dry. Oh Christ, all thoughts of crawling and begging forgotten. Please let it be Somers.
The door opened before he could get to it, and a soft voice called, “Hello?”
Not Somers.
Not Glenn.
“We’re closed,” he said, emerging from the bathroom. “You’ll have to—”
He stopped when he saw her because for a moment, he thought he knew this woman. The last time he had seen Donna May Plenge, she had been handcuffed to a chair in the sheriff’s office, high as a kite and screaming mad. After another moment, though, Hazard realized that this was not Donna May, the antifa activist who had returned to Wahredua under the name Savanna Twilight. This woman shared the same dark hair, the same light brown skin, the same round face, and the same eyes. Sisters, Hazard thought.
“Mr. Hazard?” the woman said. Then she smiled. “You thought I was her, didn’t you? It’s ok; it used to happen all the time.”
Hazard tried to detangle his hair with one hand. “Today’s not a good day. You’ll have to come back—”
“No, please. It can’t wait. Honestly, it can’t.” She came a few more steps into the front office and glanced around, her gaze lingering on the twisted wood and canvas before darting back to Hazard. “I need to hire you, Mr. Hazard. My sister is missing, and yesterday, the police came and took my niece away.”
CHAPTER FIVE
MARCH 26
TUESDAY
9:56 AM
HAZARD STUDIED THE WOMAN, considering her words, and then worked his hand free of his hair. Waving for her to follow, he led the way to his office. When they were both seated, he said, “Let’s start with your name.”
“Courtney Vega.”
“And your sister?”
“Donna May Plenge.”
“Savanna Twilight?”
“Oh my God, I refuse to call her that. Anyway, she stopped using that name and went back to Donna May when she came home from county.”
“Sister or half-sister?”
“What? Sister. Oh, because of the different last name. She got married when she was eighteen and divorced the guy a few months later. She talked a lot about changing to her maiden name again, but she never did.”
Hazard leaned back, trying to bring his full attention to the conversation, but thoughts of Somers spun at the edges of consciousness. He studied Courtney more closely: expensive highlights in her hair, a skirt and blouse and heels that had probably come from a mid-range boutique, manicured nails. Either she had money, or she wanted to look like she did. She was a little rounder in the face than Donna May, but otherwise, she looked very much like her sister.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
“Well, that’s pretty far back,” Courtney said with a laugh. “I mean, the story is really all about Donna May being selfish and spoiled rotten. She’s the younger sister, by the way. There’s Raymond, our brother, and the two of us. We’re only two years apart, but from the way my parents treat her, you’d think she was an only child. I mean, I get it. She needs a lot of attention. That’s just her personality. High maintenance.” She ran those manicured nails along the arm of her chair. “I honestly think she’d die if she ever had to wash a dish, you know?”
“You said she’s missing.”
Courtney nodded, studying the arm of the chair, her nails picking at something invisible to Hazard.
“And your niece?”
“That’s Donna May’s little girl.”
“From her marriage?”
“Oh no. She and Clyde didn’t have any kids.”
“So the little girl?”
“Dolly. Dolores, but we call her Dolly. The police came and took her yesterday.” Courtney’s nose wrinkled. “Your boyfriend, actually. I thought, maybe, you know . . . I didn’t know if that would make a difference.”
“My fiancé,” Hazard said, proud that his voice didn’t change. “Why did the police take Dolly away?”
“It’s ridiculous. It’s no kind of reason at all. My parents raised Dolly. I raised her. I mean, she’s my itsy-bitsy baby doll.” Courtney’s voice rose into a falsetto on the last phrase, her whole face twisting into what Hazard guessed was supposed to be a look of endearment. “Who worked extra shifts at the Kum & Go so she had diapers? Who got up nights with her when Mama was too tired? Who gave up college so Dolly could go to preschool? You know I was three classes away from finishing my dental hygienist program? That’s a hard program. You can’t just walk in there. You gotta work.”
“This was a custody issue?” Hazard hadn’t heard any of this from Somers; Glenn had already been at the house when Somers got home, and then their fight had escalated so quickly and so intensely afterwards that Hazard hadn’t heard anything about his day at work. “Who’s the father?”
“Custody?” Courtney said. “You know I had tickets to the Fire and Ice ball, did you ever hear about that? It’s at the Newport every year, it’s a big New Year’s Eve celebration, and I had tickets. And Juan Ramon was going to go with me. And what did I do instead? Dolly had the squirts really, really bad. Like, leaking out her diaper. And Mama and I sat in the Urgent Care for four hours with her. Mama even said I could go if I wanted to, but I didn’t. Where was Josh when Dolly needed her? Where was he her whole life until now? Tell me that, then talk to me about custody.”
Hazard sighed; it was like talking to a copy of one of those stupid magazines Somers picked up sometimes. Us Weekly, maybe. It was like that. Before it had been copyedited. “Josh is the father?”
“Joshua Dobbs.” Courtney looked up sharply. “Well? Aren’t you going to write that down?”
“If this is a custody issue, Miss Vega, then it’s something the courts have to decide. You should probably be talking to an attorney who practices family law.”
Courtney had perked up quite a bit at Miss Vega, and now she sat with her back straight, chest thrust out, as she examined her nails. Worrying a cuticle, she said, “Well, of course I know that. I mean, I’m not stupid. Who do you think has to do the talking for Mama half the time? Who do you think had to find an attorney in the first place? I mean, it’s not like I had anything better to do. I wasn’t in school anymore, was I? I mean, do you know how much dental hygienists make? Go on. Guess.”
“Hourly or annually?”
“My girlfriend Josie, she and I were in the same class, and I always did better on the practicals than Josie. Way better. And now she’s working for this dentist in Columbia. Go on and gu
ess. How much do you think she’s making? Forty thousand dollars. Forty.” Courtney’s eyes came up from her nails, and Hazard was surprised by the cold intensity of her gaze. “And I did better than her in practicals, but because I didn’t finish three classes, guess how much I’m making? Go on. Swing shift at the Kum & Go, guess. Eight-fifty an hour. What do you think about that?”
“Miss Vega—”
“Oh, you can call me Courtney.” But she had perked right up again.
“You said your sister was missing. Is that part of the custody dispute?”
“Well, of course.” She drew an emery board from a rhinestone-studded clutch and began working on her nails. “Mama and Papa raised Dolly. I raised Dolly. And now Donna May goes running off again, and Josh sues for custody. What does that awful old judge say? Well, Donna May abandoned her parental responsibilities. I told that lawyer, you want to talk about parental responsibilities? Where was Josh when Dolly had colic? Where was he when Dolly needed formula. Do you know how much that costs? I mean, he didn’t even chip in.”
“You said she went running off again,” Hazard said. “Was she gone much?”
“All the time. Once, for two years straight. That was the time before this one. She walked out the door, the day before Dolly’s birthday, and didn’t come back until two years later. I was at the tree-lighting ceremony when she got up there and started shouting for everybody to kill that police officer, the one who hanged himself. You could have knocked me over with a feather. My girlfriend Bonnie was there, and she said, ‘Can you believe that bitch?’ And I said, ‘Don’t call my sister a bitch,’ but honestly, she was totally right. Can you believe that? Gone for two years, comes back calling herself Savanna Twilight like she’s straight out of a Beyoncé video, and we’re all supposed to smile and hug her and act like it’s ok. Well, it wasn’t ok. Want to know why? Because it’s not fair, that’s why. Somebody had to stick around. Somebody had to take care of Dolly.” She punctuated the phrase with a savage movement of the emery board and then hissed and held her nail up for inspection. “Oh my God, would you look at that?”