Fear the Worst

  If there was any pleasure in my life these days, it was learning about the music that my daughter enjoyed. Eclectic, to say the least. Punk, jazz, rock, classic pop tunes from the sixties and seventies.

  I was haunted by some words sung by Janis Ian: “It isn’t all it seems, at seventeen.”

  And when that song finished, something totally unfamiliar, and less professional, followed. First, some guitar reverberations, like someone was tuning up, getting ready to play. Then a bit of coughing, some giggling, then a young woman’s voice taunting, “Are you going to play it or what?”

  Syd.

  “Okay, okay,” a young man answered. “Just give me a second. I can lay the voices in right over what’s on the computer.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s going,” Sydney said.

  “Okay, we’re good. Okay, so, this is a little song I wrote myself that I would like to sing—”

  Sydney, adopting a mocking, low voice, interrupted with, “This is a little song I wrote myself I would like to—”

  The boy said, “Would you knock it off?” Sydney made a snorting noise before the boy continued, “Okay, so, like, this song is called ‘Dirty Love’ and it is dedicated to Sydney.”

  She began to giggle in the background. “Would you settle the fuck down?” the boy said.

  I thumbed up the volume on the steering wheel-mounted control.

  The boy belted out no more than a couple of lines. His voice was ragged, a harsh whisper with limited range. He sang, “She came into my life by chance, with a smile that put me in a trance.”

  “Okay, stop,” Syd said. “I’m gonna puke. And I thought you were going to say, ‘She came into my life by chance, I can’t wait to get into her pants.’”

  Now they were both laughing.

  Sydney and Evan Janigan.

  TWENTY

  I NEARLY CLIPPED A FORD WINDSTAR when I did a U-turn on Route 1 and headed flat-out for Bob’s Motors.

  There wasn’t any more to the selection. Once The Sydney and Evan Show finished, the iPod jumped to another song from the White Album, “Rocky Raccoon.” I hit the back button to put it on the previous track, then paused it.

  The CR-V doesn’t exactly handle like a sports car, so when it bumped up over the curb leading into the Bob’s Motors lot, I nearly lost control. But I gripped the wheel firmly, got the car back on track, and spotted Evan at the far end of a line of cars, a washing wand in his hand. I sped down to where he was, hit the brakes, and screeched to a stop.

  He held the wand suspended in midair, water trickling out the end, and looked over at me through the dark locks that hung across his face.

  I killed the ignition and as I got out of the car took the metallic green, match-pack-sized music player with me. Without headphones it wasn’t as if I could play his song for him, but I thought holding it up for effect would make my point.

  It did. The moment Evan saw what was in my hand, his mouth hung open.

  Even though I was walking, I was coming at him pretty fast. Speaking over the flapping of the multicolored pennant flags strung overhead, I said, “We need to have a little chat, Evan.”

  “What the fuck,” he said.

  I closed the distance between us, took the wand from Evan’s hand, and tossed it to the pavement. “So you and Sydney weren’t that close, huh? All you did was have dinner at the same table.”

  “I don’t know what your deal is, man, but you’re not my fucking father, you know?” he said.

  “No, but I’m Sydney’s fucking father, and I want to know what was actually going on between you two.” I’d moved even closer, forcing Evan up against a wet blue Kia sedan.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Tim!” It was Susanne, standing atop the stairs that led up to the office. “Tim! What’s going on?”

  I ignored her, and held the music player up to Evan’s nose. “I’ve been listening to Sydney’s tunes the last few days, and guess what just came up? Your little song that you dedicated to her.”

  “So?”

  “So?” I fired back at him. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “Tim!”

  It was Susanne again, moving toward us. She was using her cane and her gait was awkward and unsteady.

  “Susanne!” I shouted. “Just stay there!”

  Now Bob was coming out of the office, squinting in the intense sunlight, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  “My dad’s gonna bust your ass,” Evan said. He was trying to be tough, but his voice squeaked, and his eyes were darting left and right, like he was looking for a way to escape.

  Susanne, nearly breathless, had her hand on my upper arm and was trying to pull me away. “Tim, what the hell are you doing?”

  I tried to shake her off gently. “He’s been telling me he hardly ever talked to Sydney. But not according to this.” I held up the iPod.

  Evan shot Susanne a look. Susanne looked at him, then back at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “You need to listen to this.”

  “It’s no big deal!” Evan said.

  “What?” Susanne said. “What is it?”

  “He’s lied to us about how close he was to Sydney,” I said. “I wonder what else he’s been lying about.”

  Bob arrived, slightly winded. Evan said to him, “Dad, get this asshole away from me.”

  Bob grabbed my arm, much harder than Susanne had, and threw me up against the side of a Nissan. It knocked the wind out of me, but that didn’t stop me from bouncing back, grabbing Bob around the waist, and pounding him into the Kia.

  “Stop it!” Susanne shrieked.

  “You son of a bitch!” Bob said, trying to find enough room between us to land a punch. “Didn’t you get the message to keep the fuck away from my son?”

  He caught me with his right in the side of the head, but there wasn’t much power in it. Just enough to make me mad enough to form a fist and drive it into his stomach.

  But now Evan was on my back, screaming at me, locking his arms around my shoulders and pulling me away from his father, who now had a clearer shot at me. As Bob wound up, I shot out with my right leg and caught him right where it counts the most. His punch never connected, and instead he cupped both hands over his crotch and doubled over. “Oh God!” he said.

  “Stop it!” Susanne screamed again. She’d dropped her cane at some point and was using a car to support herself.

  I tried to shake off Evan, but he was holding on to me with everything he had, trying to use his weight to drag me down to the asphalt. I managed to get some leverage into an elbow and drove it into his stomach. It made him loosen his grip on me, and I twisted away, stumbled, and fell against the Nissan.

  Evan wanted to take another shot at me, but Susanne lurched between us and shouted, “Enough! Enough!”

  The MP3 player had gone flying during the melee and was on the ground near my foot. I reached down, grabbed it, and slid it into the front pocket of my slacks.

  Everyone took a moment.

  Bob, whose face was red and puffy, tried to straighten up, using the Kia’s hood for support. But it was still wet, and Bob’s hand slipped, throwing him off balance momentarily.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “Fuck off,” he said.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Susanne asked me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “That’s what you are,” Evan said, pointing at me. “You’re out of your mind.”

  To Susanne, I said, “He wrote a song for Sydney.”

  “What?”

  “They recorded it, she put it on her iPod. He wrote this song and dedicated it to her.”

  Susanne turned on Evan. “Is that true?”

  He shrugged.

  “I asked you a question,” she said. “Is that true?”

  “It was just a song,” he said.

  Bob slowly stood back up to his full height, but you could see he was still feeling the pain. There’s nothing l
ike it. He looked at me. “I swear to God I’m going to kill you.”

  “Shut up, Bob,” Susanne said. That caught both Bob and me off guard.

  I said, “Your boy knew our daughter better than he’s been letting on,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  I took the iPod back out of my pocket. “Let’s have a listen.” I walked back to my car, turned the key ahead a notch, plugged the player back into the auxiliary jack.

  When Syd’s voice came on, Susanne’s face crumpled like paper. I knew how she felt. I hadn’t heard my daughter’s voice for weeks, either, until now.

  Sydney’s and Evan’s voices came out of the car speakers, then Evan went into his lyrics. Sydney followed up with the joke about him wanting to get into her pants.

  When it got to the end, I asked, “Anyone want to hear it again?”

  No one did. But Evan said, “See? It’s not even a whole song. It’s just a couple of lines, that’s all. We were just goofing around.”

  “Christ almighty,” Bob said to me. “This is what’s got your shorts in a knot?”

  But Susanne clearly saw it differently. To Evan, she said, “Why is Syd making a joke about you wanting to get into her pants?”

  Evan’s cheeks reddened.

  “I’m asking you a question!” Susanne shouted.

  “Suze,” Bob said, “don’t get yourself worked up.”

  “Fuck off,” she said to him.

  “Susanne, for crying out loud, stop listening to this ex-boob of yours. Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s using Evan to drive a wedge between us. He wants you back and he figures the best way to do it is to turn you against us.”

  “You’re an ass,” I said to Bob.

  He lunged at me and swung. He caught me in the jaw and I stumbled to the right, tripped over my own feet, and hit the ground.

  Susanne screamed at us, “Stop it!”

  She wasn’t using a car hood or any of us for support now. She was standing directly before Evan. Her right leg seemed wobbly.

  “For the last time,” she said, her voice now not much more than a whisper, “I want to know what was going on between you and my daughter.”

  “We talked some,” he conceded.

  “And what else?” Susanne asked. “What else did you do?”

  Evan glanced hopelessly at his father. “Look, really, nothing happened. We were just getting along okay, all right? We liked to talk. But not when you guys were around. We figured, if our parents knew that we actually liked each other, you’d start freaking out. You’d think it was like incest or something, but it’s not.”

  I think all the adults exchanged glances at that one. Even Bob and I.

  “It was no big deal,” Evan persisted.

  “Did you sleep with my daughter?” Susanne asked, point-blank.

  Ordinarily, that might have been something I’d have wanted to know myself, but I was worried about more than my seventeen-year-old daughter’s sex life.

  “I don’t believe this,” Evan said. “What a fucking question.”

  “How about answering it?” Susanne asked.

  “We only, we just, you know, okay, we made out a bit.”

  “Great,” Bob said.

  “She’s not my sister,” Evan said. “Just because you and my dad are getting it on doesn’t mean I’m messing around with my sister.”

  “You stupid idiot,” Bob said to him. He reached over and grabbed Evan by the scruff of the neck. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You moved me into the house with her!” he shouted into his father’s face, like it was his fault. On this, we were more or less on the same page. “What, you think I wasn’t going to notice?”

  I struggled to my feet and looked at Susanne, but she was avoiding me. Then, to Bob’s son, I said, struggling to make my voice as calm as possible, “Evan, I can’t pretend not to care about what you and Syd may have been up to. Any other time, I’d want to kick your ass across this lot.”

  Bob, perhaps calmed by the even tone of my voice, if not the words, released his hold on Evan.

  I continued, “But the only thing that interests me right now is finding Sydney. We now know you’ve been less than honest about how well you two were getting along. Okay. Now we want to know if you’ve been less than honest about where she may be.”

  “I swear I—”

  “Shut up,” I said. “If you’re not straight with me, right now, right here, I’m calling Detective Jennings and turning it over to her.”

  “Honest, I don’t—”

  “Tell him,” Bob said. “Tell him what you know.”

  All eyes were on Evan. “She was just—first of all, she didn’t like her job.”

  “What job?” I asked. “Where was she working? What was she doing?”

  “She told me she was working at the hotel. Same as she told you,” Evan said, looking at me.

  “What didn’t she like?”

  “She said she wanted to quit, see if she could get her job back at the dealership.”

  “What else?” I said. “What else did she say?”

  Evan swallowed. “She was also kind of worried about another thing.”

  Again, we waited for Evan to spit it out. Finally, he said, “She thought she might be late.”

  “Late?” I said.

  “Oh shit,” said Susanne.

  And then she collapsed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  BOB AND I SHOUTED “SUZE!” at the same moment. But even after having been kicked in the nuts, he was down on his knees more quickly than I. He whipped off his sports jacket, folded it over, and slipped it under Susanne’s head.

  “Are you okay?” he asked urgently. “Suze?”

  It was as though she’d simply crumpled. Her leg or hip or something had momentarily given out and she’d dropped to the pavement like a marionette suddenly without strings. She’d managed to put a hand out to keep her head from striking the ground with any force.

  Bob looked at his son and barked, “Call an ambulance!”

  Evan didn’t seem to know which way to turn first, whether to grab a cell from one of us or run back to the office. Before he could get his feet to move, Susanne breathed, “No, no, it’s okay.”

  “Don’t move,” Bob said. He was bent over, cradling her head with his arm. “What’s happened? One of the fractures give way or what?”

  “Honestly,” she said. “It’s okay. I just kind of slipped. I don’t think I’ve broken anything again.”

  I stood, transfixed, looking not at Susanne, but at Bob. He was focused entirely on my ex-wife. Propping his back against a car, he had lifted Susanne enough to take her entirely into his arms.

  “You sure?” he asked, his voice shaking. “That was a nasty fall.”

  “Really,” she whispered.

  And then I thought I saw Bob’s chin quiver as he struggled to contain his emotions.

  “Why don’t I get some water?” I said.

  “I can do that,” Evan said, and ran.

  “I’m just an idiot,” Susanne said. “I should have been using the cane.”

  I found it on the ground, grabbed it, and handed it to Bob.

  Bob, still cradling her, said, “It’s okay. There was so much going on.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not just to Susanne, but to both of them. “I kind of stirred things up.”

  Susanne bristled. “You did not get me all stirred up. My leg gave out. Simple as that. Maybe the two of you can stop acting like squabbling children for a minute and help me up.”

  We did. We had her on her feet just as Evan returned with a bottled water he’d just cracked the cap on. He handed it to Susanne and she took a sip.

  “Thanks,” she said, getting hold of the cane and testing her weight on it. “I’m okay.”

  We all took a moment. Then Susanne said, “We’re not done here.” She had Evan in her sights again. “Talk to me.”

  The implications of Evan’s last remark, that S
yd was worried about “being late,” had finally sunk in. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  Evan kept his head low, like he was a puppy about to be hit with a rolled-up newspaper. “It was just the one time,” he said.

  “That’ll do it,” Bob said.

  “But like, a couple of days before she disappeared, she got one of those get-pregnant-at-home kits,” Evan said.

  “Home pregnancy test,” Susanne said, her voice weighed down with dread.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s it.”

  “What did it show?” Susanne asked.

  “I think it was positive,” Evan said.

  “Oh God,” Susanne said.

  “Or negative,” Evan said. “Which is the one if you’re not pregnant?”

  “Negative,” Susanne said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. Susanne glared at him. “I was thinking, it’d be positive to find out you’re not pregnant.”

  “Was she pregnant or not?” my ex-wife asked.

  “I’m not really sure,” he said. “I wasn’t with her when she did the test. You have to go into the bathroom and pee on—”

  “I know how it works,” Susanne said.

  “So she went and did it and she told me everything was okay, I didn’t have to worry about a thing. So I said, so, you’re not having a baby? And she said don’t worry about it, everything was fine.”

  “Did she actually say she wasn’t pregnant?” Susanne asked.

  Evan’s shoulders went up half an inch and dropped. “I think that’s what she meant. I kind of didn’t push it, you know? In case she told me something I didn’t want to hear.”

  Susanne and I exchanged looks. This wasn’t the sort of thing you made assumptions about.

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Just before she came to stay with you for the summer,” he said to me.

  “Where did this happen?” Susanne wanted to know.

  Evan kept looking down. “At Dad’s. You guys were both here on the lot that night.”

  “You’re really something else,” Bob said. “We welcome Susanne and her daughter into our home and this is what you do?”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Let’s not get sidetracked. We can all have a chat later about what Sydney and Evan did, but what matters now is finding Syd. When we get her home, when we know she’s safe, there’ll be plenty of time for lectures on all this.”