That was just to mess with Josh.
Then I drove across town and dropped it in a mailbox. Three days later, Josh brought up Owen at the press conference but not the letter. Maybe Josh is keeping this to himself, or maybe the police have asked him not to mention it.
For now, I am content to wait and see, because there is something else I need to do. Last night, I was out watching Annabelle Parson’s apartment. Finally. The meter maid who’d caught my eye was more difficult to find than the others. For Lindsay and Petra, all I had to do was look up their names on the Internet. Annabelle was smarter than that, no doubt to hide herself from all those angry people who got a parking ticket from her. To find out where she lived, I had to follow her home one evening. It was a little annoying.
Last night, I waited outside her apartment to see if she would return home alone or if she was seeing someone. Around midnight, I received a text from my son.
Out again? It’s going to cost you.
What do you want?
You mean, how much do I want?
This time he doesn’t want another video game. He wants cash.
The next day, I meet him at home after work. He is already on the couch, channel surfing, texting, and playing a game. Millicent is not home yet. Jenna is upstairs.
I sit down next to him.
He glances up, eyebrows raised.
This is a mistake. I should have told Millicent everything. We could have sat down with both Rory and Jenna, and explained that nothing is going on.
Dad just likes to take long drives in the middle of the night. Occasionally while wearing a suit.
I hand Rory the cash.
He is so busy counting the money he isn’t paying attention to the TV, where they are replaying press conference highlights on the news. Rory is oblivious to the real reason his father is out at night. All he has to do is look up.
We have tacos for dinner, made with leftover chicken, and they are delicious. My wife is a good cook and insists on making dinner every night, but the quicker she throws something together, the better it seems to be.
I don’t tell her that.
Dessert is peach slices sprinkled with brown sugar, and we each get one snickerdoodle cookie. Rory is the first to roll his eyes, though Jenna is right there with him. Millicent has always been stingy with dessert.
We all eat it differently. Jenna licks the brown sugar off her peaches, then eats the cookie and finishes the rest of the peaches. Rory eats the cookie first, then the peaches, although it’s all sort of a blur, because he inhales everything so fast. Millicent alternates between the fruit and the cookie, a bite of one and then a bite of the other. I mash the peaches and cookie together and eat it all with a spoon.
Tomorrow is our movie night, and we discuss what we will watch. Last week, it was a talking animal movie. Rory always groans at first, but he loves those as much as anyone. Both of the kids like sports movies, so we pick one about a baseball youth league trying to make it to the world championships. We vote on this like it’s a serious election, and Batter Up wins by a landslide.
“I’ll be home by five thirty,” I say.
“Dinner at six,” says Millicent.
“Are we done here?” Rory asks.
“Who’s Owen Oliver Riley?” Jenna says.
Everything stops.
Millicent and I look at Jenna.
“Where did you hear that?” Millicent says.
“TV.”
“Owen is a horrible man who hurt people,” I say. “But he can never hurt you.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about Owen.”
“But why are they talking about him?” Jenna asks.
“Because of that dead girl,” Rory says.
“Woman,” I say. “Dead woman.”
“Oh. Her.” Jenna shrugs and looks over at her phone. “So are we done?”
Millicent nods, and they pick up their phones, clearing the table while texting. I rinse off the dishes, Jenna helps put them in the dishwasher, and Millicent gets rid of whatever is left of the tacos.
While we get ready for bed, Millicent turns on the local news. She watches the press conference highlights and then turns to me. Saying nothing, she asks if I had something to do with it.
I shrug.
She raises an eyebrow.
I wink at her.
She smiles.
Sometimes, we do not have to say anything.
We weren’t always like this. In the beginning, we spent entire nights talking, just like all young couples do when they fall in love. I told her all my stories. Couldn’t get them out fast enough, because I had finally found someone who thought they were fascinating. Who thought I was fascinating.
Eventually, she knew all my old stories, so we traded only new ones. I texted her in the middle of the day to tell her the smallest things. She would send me a funny picture depicting how her day was going. I had never known someone so well, nor shared my life so completely with another. This continued until we got married, even afterward when Millicent was pregnant with Rory.
I still remember the first thing I didn’t tell her. The first thing of any importance, I mean. It was the car. We had two; hers was the newer one, and mine was a beat-up old truck that held all my tennis equipment. When Millicent was eight months pregnant, my truck broke down. It needed a thousand dollars in repairs, and we didn’t have the money. Any money we did have had been squirreled away, bit by bit, to afford a crib and a stroller and the mountains of diapers we were going to need.
I didn’t want to upset her, didn’t want to make her worry, so I made a choice. I told her the truck broke down but not how much it would cost. To pay for the repairs, I opened a new credit card only in my name.
It took more than a year to pay it off, and I never told Millicent. I never told her about the rest of the charges, either.
That was the first big thing, but we both stopped talking about the small things. We had a baby, then another, and her days became more exhausting than funny. She no longer recounted every little thing, nor did I tell her all the details about my clients.
We both stopped asking, stopping sharing the minutiae, and instead we stuck to the highlights. We still do.
Sometimes a smile and a wink is all we need.
Sixteen
Within twenty-four hours, Owen Oliver Riley is everywhere. His face is all over our local news and websites. My clients want to talk about him. Those who aren’t from here want more details. Those who are from here have not decided it he’s really back. Kekona, the local gossip, is in the middle on both counts.
Though she was born in Hawaii, she has been living here long enough to know all our legends, myths, and infamous residents. She doesn’t believe Owen Oliver is back. Not for one second.
We are on the court, and Kekona is working on her serve. Again. She thinks if she can just serve one ace after another, she doesn’t need to play the rest of the game. In theory, she is right. In reality, no one can do that. Not unless her opponent is a five-year-old.
“Owen could go anywhere to kill women, but they think he’s back here?” she says.
“If by ‘they’ you mean the police, then no, they haven’t said anything about Owen Oliver. It was just some reporter’s question.”
“Pfft.”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“It means that’s ridiculous. Owen got away once. He has no reason to come back.”
I shrug. “Because it’s home?”
Kekona rolls her dark eyes. “Life is not a horror movie.”
She is not the only one who feels this way. Anyone who didn’t live through it the first time thinks it would be ridiculous for him to come back. They see this as Kekona does, like a choice that makes no rational sense.