Once the three of them sat down, Marcus and Fiona each with a latte from Starbucks and Kelly with a slice of pepperoni pizza, Fiona asked about the sleepover.
“I thought it was going to be fun but it was really not so good.”
“Why’s that?”
“I came home early. I called Dad to pick me up.”
“Weren’t you having a good time?”
“I was sort of at first, but then it wasn’t fun anymore.”
Fiona leaned in a little closer. “And why was that?”
“Well,” Kelly said, “Emily’s mom got really mad at me.”
“She did?” Fiona asked. “Why did she get mad at you?”
Kelly said, “I’m really not supposed to talk about this.”
“I don’t see why you can’t talk about it with me. I’m your grandmother. You can tell your grandmother anything.”
“I know, but …” Kelly studied her slice, picked off a pepperoni slice and popped it into her mouth.
“But what?” Fiona said.
“I kinda promised not to tell anybody, except I told my dad because he’s my dad.”
“Who did you promise?”
“Emily’s mom.”
Fiona nodded. “Well, she’s not with us anymore,” she said matter-of-factly, “so you can’t really break a promise to her now if you talk about it.”
“It’s okay to break promises to dead people?” Kelly asked.
“Absolutely.”
Marcus was starting to shake his head. “Fiona, what are you doing?”
“Excuse me?” she snapped.
“Look at her. You’re upsetting her. She’s starting to cry.”
It was true. Her eyes had filled with tears. One threatened to spill over and trickle down her cheek.
“I know this may be troubling, dear,” Fiona told Kelly, “but sometimes, talking about a traumatic event can be therapeutic.”
“Huh?” said Kelly.
“If you talk about what makes you feel bad, it can end up making you feel better.”
“Oh. I don’t think so.”
“What sort of promise did Emily’s mom ask you to keep?”
“She didn’t want me to tell anyone about the phone call.”
“Phone call,” Fiona said. “A phone call. What phone call was that?”
“The one I heard her make.”
Marcus was shaking his head disapprovingly, but Fiona ignored him. “You were listening in on someone else’s phone call?”
“Not on purpose,” Kelly said hastily. “I wouldn’t do that. That would be eavestroughing.”
“Eavesdropping, Kelly,” Fiona said, not even cracking a smile. “So if it wasn’t on purpose, how did you happen to be hearing this conversation?”
“I was just hiding,” Kelly said. “From Emily. I didn’t really hear that much of it anyway because she was whispering a lot.” The tear finally spilled down her cheek. “Do I have to talk about this?”
“Kelly, it may not be pleasant to go over this, but I think—”
“Can I talk to you a minute?” Marcus said to his wife.
“What?”
“Sweetheart,” Marcus said, taking out his wallet and handing a ten to Kelly, “take this and go get yourself something for dessert.”
“But I haven’t even finished my pizza yet.”
“If you get it now, then when you’ve finished your pizza, you can start on it immediately.”
She took the ten from him. “Okay.” They watched her scamper over to the ice-cream stand.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Marcus asked his wife.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“That girl’s mother is dead. Now her best friend’s mother is dead. We’re supposed to be taking her out for a nice day and you’re conducting a fucking interrogation of her.”
“Don’t use that tone with me.”
“Fiona, sometimes … sometimes you just don’t know the effect you have on people. You can’t … Is empathy beyond you?”
“How dare you,” she seethed. “I’m only asking her these questions because I care about her welfare.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s something else going on with you. Is it because there’s something about this Ann Slocum you’ve never liked?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the way you acted with her at that purse party or whatever it was called. You had nothing but contempt for her. You were looking down your nose at her all night.”
She stared at him. “That’s nonsense. I don’t know where you’re getting this.”
“I’m just saying, I’m shutting this down. You’re not going to hound this child anymore. We’ll take her shopping, we’ll drive her around to those schools if you want to, although I swear, what makes you think Glen’s going to give up his daughter Monday to Friday I have no idea, and then we’re going to take her home.”
“She’s my granddaughter, not yours,” Fiona said.
“Funny, then, that I’m the only one who’s worried about her.”
Fiona started to say something, but then realized that Kelly was standing two feet away, an ice-cream sundae in one hand and her cell in the other.
She held it out to Fiona. “My dad wants to talk to you.”
SIXTEEN
I felt shaken as I went back into the house following Darren Slocum’s visit. I dialed Kelly’s cell the moment I was in the kitchen.
“Hi, Dad,” she said.
“Hi, sweetheart. Where are you?”
“Getting some ice cream at the mall.”
“Which mall?”
“Stamford.”
“Could you put Grandma on?”
“Just a second. She’s at the table.”
I could hear mall background noises—people talking, bland music—and then Kelly saying, “My dad wants to talk to you.”
“Yes, Glen?” Fiona’s voice was as warm as the ice cream Kelly was eating.
“Fiona, you up to taking Kelly for overnight?” I knew Kelly already had pajamas and a toothbrush and several days’ worth of clothes at Fiona’s house.
A pause, then she whispered, “Isn’t it a bit soon, Glen?” It occurred to me that she was trying to keep Kelly from hearing.
“Excuse me?”
“For you to have someone over? Is it that woman who lives next door? The Mueller woman? Sheila told me about her. I saw her hanging out the door, watching as we drove off. My daughter hasn’t even been dead three weeks, you know.”
I felt the anger welling up inside me. “Ann Slocum’s husband came over here after you left, very distraught.” I closed my eyes a moment, counted to three.
“What?”
“He was being, I don’t know, pretty unreasonable. He wanted to talk to Kelly, and I can’t see any good coming out of that. Just in case he decides to come back here later and try again, I think it’d be better if Kelly stayed with you.”
“What do you mean, unreasonable?”
“It’s a long story, Fiona. What would really help me, at this moment, would be if you could keep Kelly until tomorrow. Until I know this has all blown over.”
“What’s going on?” I heard Marcus ask.
“In a sec,” Fiona told him. To me, she said, “Yes, of course, she’ll stay with us. That’s fine.”
“Thank you,” I said, and waited to see whether she might offer up even the slightest apology for what she’d first assumed my motives were.
Instead, she said, “Kelly wants to talk to you.”
“Dad? What’s going on?”
“You’re going to spend the night at your grandmother’s. Just the one night.”
“Okay,” she said, not excited, but not disappointed, either. “Is something wrong?”
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart.”
“Did you find out what happened to Emily’s mom?”
“It was an accident, honey,” I said. “She got hurt when she got out to check a flat tire.”
br /> Kelly paused a moment to take it in, then said, “So now Emily and me really have something in common.”
While Darren Slocum had claimed to be satisfied that I’d told him the extent of what Kelly had heard his late wife say on the phone, some instinct told me he was lying. As I’d told Fiona, I was worried he might come back, and keeping Kelly at a distance for another day seemed like a good idea. And I had no idea what he was talking about when he’d suggested I’d come into a windfall recently. The grass wasn’t even growing yet on Sheila’s grave, and he was intimating I’d had some kind of good fortune because of her fatal accident?
I didn’t know what else to do but chalk it up to the distressed ramblings of a man who’d just lost a wife himself.
I did end up going to the offices of Garber Contracting after lunch. The business was off Cherry, just before you get to the Just Inn Time hotel and about half a mile down the road from the Connecticut Post Mall. While I was able to do some general tidying, I wasn’t able to concentrate when I started checking the voicemails. I’d had every intention of calling these people back, but suddenly I couldn’t face talking to any of them or going by their houses to listen to their complaints about why things weren’t done. But I made notes of the messages so Sally could get back to everyone on Monday. While her choice in boyfriends was, to my mind, suspect, Sally was always on the ball at work. We called her our multitasker, who could keep the details of countless projects in her head at once. I’d seen her carry on a complicated phone conversation with a tile supplier about what we needed at one job while making notes about plumbing supplies we required at another. She liked to say she had several programs running in her head at once, adding that she’d earned the right to have a total system meltdown one day.
After the office was locked up, I went to the nearby ShopRite to pick up a few things. A steak for myself for dinner, some salami and tins of tuna and carrot sticks for lunches for Kelly and me through the week. I wasn’t big on the carrot sticks, but Sheila would have wanted to see them not only in Kelly’s lunch, but mine. It was odd. I was mightily pissed with my late wife, but still wanted to honor her wishes.
When Kelly was attending first grade, the first time she’d had to take a lunch with her every day, she begged Sheila and me to include a bag of potato chips. Her friend Kristen got potato chips every day, so why couldn’t she have them? Well, if Kristen’s mom wants to give her that kind of crap every day, that’s her business, we said. But we’re not doing it.
Kelly asked if Rice Krispie squares would be okay. Even if they had melted marshmallow in them, the cereal was healthy, right? So Sheila had helped her make up a batch. Melted the butter and marshmallow, mixed everything up in an enormous bowl, flattened them out in a pan. The two of them had made a huge mess in the kitchen. Kelly happily took a square to school with her every day.
About a month later, when Kristen was over playing with Kelly, she happened to ask if we could put chocolate chips in the Rice Krispie squares. She really liked them that way. She’d been trading her potato chips for Kelly’s squares every day.
As I was passing through the cereal aisle, the recollection made me smile. It seemed like a long time ago. It would be fun to make some one night with Kelly. Sometime around the start of third grade, she’d actually developed a liking for them herself.
I reached for a box just as someone else—a woman in her late thirties, early forties—decided to do the same. Shopping alongside her was a boy. Dark hair, jeans, and a jean jacket and running shoes with stripes and swirls all over them. I put his age at sixteen or seventeen.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman when we bumped elbows. “Go ahead.”
Then I looked at her and did a double take. It didn’t take more than half a second to realize who this woman, and the boy with her, were.
Bonnie Wilkinson. Mother of Brandon and husband of Connor.
The two people who died when they crashed into Sheila’s car.
The teenage boy with her had to be her son Corey. His eyes looked dead, as though they’d cried out every tear he’d ever have.
Her blouse and slacks seemed to hang off her, and her face was drawn and gray. Her mouth opened and stayed that way when she realized who I was.
I backed up my cart to wheel it around them. I didn’t need Rice Krispies. Not right now. “Let me get out of your way here,” I said.
Finally, she could speak, although only just barely. “You just wait,” she said.
I stopped. “Excuse me?”
“You’re going to get yours,” she said. “You’re going to get it good.” Her son’s dead eyes bored into me.
I left my half-full cart and walked out of the store.
I picked up what I needed at the Super Stop & Shop. And instead of buying Rice Krispies, I bought all the ingredients I thought I’d need to make lasagna. I knew I couldn’t make it as well as Sheila did, but I was going to give it a try.
I took the long way home so I could visit Doug Pinder.
My father had hired him to work at Garber Contracting about the same time I graduated from Bates. At twenty-three, Doug had been a year older. We worked side by side for years, but it was always understood I’d eventually be the guy in charge, even though no one expected it to happen quite so soon.
Dad, overseeing the construction of a ranch house in Bridgeport, had just unloaded two dozen four-by-eight sheets of plywood from a truck when he clutched his chest and dropped to the ground. The paramedics said he was dead before his head landed in the soft grass. I rode in the ambulance with him to the hospital, picking the blades out of his thinning gray hair.
Dad had been sixty-four. I was thirty. I made Doug Pinder my assistant manager.
Doug was a good right-hand man. His area of expertise was carpentry, but he knew enough about all the other aspects of construction to supervise the rest of the trades, and pitch in when needed. And where I was reserved, Doug was outgoing and jovial. When things got tense on a job, Doug knew just what to say and do to keep everyone’s spirits up, better than I could. For years, I don’t know what I would have done without him.
But things hadn’t been right with Doug the last few months. He wasn’t the life of the party anymore, or at least when he tried, it seemed forced. I knew he was under pressure at home, and it didn’t take long to figure out it was financial. When Doug and his wife, Betsy, moved in to a new house four years ago, they’d gotten one of those too-good-to-be-true, subprime mortgages with almost nothing down, and when it had come up for renewal last year their monthly payments had more than doubled.
Betsy had been working in the accounting department of a local GM dealer that had closed its doors. She’d found a part-time job at a furniture store in Bridgeport, but had to be bringing in half of what she used to, if that.
The salary I paid Doug had remained constant through all this, but at best, he had to be treading water. More likely, he was drowning. While the construction and renovation business had slowed, I had, up to now, resisted cutting the pay of anyone who worked for me. At least those on staff, like Doug, Sally, Ken Wang, and our kid from north of the border, Stewart.
The Pinders had a wood-sided two-story off Roses Mill Road, near Indian Lake. Both their cars—Doug’s decade-old Toyota pickup with a cargo cover and Betsy’s leased Infiniti—were in the drive when I pulled up out front.
I could hear loud voices inside as I raised my hand to rap on the front door. I held it there a moment and listened, and while I could determine the mood inside that house—“ugly” was the word that came to mind—I couldn’t make out any actual conversation.
I rapped hard, knowing I might not be heard over the commotion.
The shouting stopped almost immediately, like a switch had been flipped. A moment later, Doug opened the door. His face was red and there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He smiled and pushed open the aluminum screen.
“Hey! Whoa! Will you look who’s here! Hey, Bets, it’s Glenny!”
From u
pstairs somewhere, “Hi, Glen!” Cheerful, like they hadn’t been tearing into each other five seconds earlier.
“Hi, Betsy,” I called out.
“Can I get you a beer?” Doug asked, leading me into the kitchen.
“No, that’s—”
“Come on, have a beer.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not.”
As I came into the kitchen my eye caught a pile of unopened envelopes sitting by the phone. They all looked like bills. There were bank and credit card logos in the upper left corners of several of them.
“What’ll it be?” Doug asked, reaching into the fridge.
“Whatever you’ve got is fine.”
He took out two cans of Coors, handed me one, and popped his. He extended it toward me so we could clink cans. “To the weekend,” he said. “Whoever invented the weekend, there’s a guy whose hand I’d like to shake.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Good of you to drop by. This is terrific. You want to watch a game or something? There must be something on. I haven’t even looked. Gotta be some golf, at least. Some people, they don’t like watching golf, think it’s too slow, but I like it, you know? So long as you got enough people playing, camera can go hole to hole, so you don’t waste a whole lot of time watching people walk up the fairway.”
“I can’t stay long,” I said. “I’ve got groceries in the car. Some stuff that has to go into the fridge.”
“You could put it in ours for the time being,” Doug offered enthusiastically. “Want me to go out and get them? It’s no problem.”
“No. Look, Doug, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Shit, there a problem at one of the sites?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Doug’s face went dark. “Goddamn, Glen, you’re not laying me off, are you?”
“Hell, no,” I said.
A nervous smile crossed his lips. “Well, that’s a relief. Christ, you gave me a start there.”
Betsy popped into the kitchen, came over and kissed my cheek.
“How’s my big strong man?” she said, but in her heels, she was nearly as tall as I was.