Even so, he should have guessed Kennett’s ulterior motive from the start. He’d even mentioned Audrey’s name in the bar that first night. The threat had pulsed before Michael like a neon sign, but he was too consumed with fear about Natalie and the kids to listen to his intuition. Best he could do was to pretend he had nothing to hide when Kennett essentially invited himself into Michael’s problem.
Now his greatest threat was sleeping in the room next door—or, if he was like Michael, failing to sleep. Every few minutes, it seemed, Michael found himself out of bed, pacing his hotel room like a prisoner in a cell, peering out the peephole at a fish-eyed view of an empty hallway, then out the third-floor window. There he looked out onto a bleak parking lot, expecting at any minute to see a swarm of police cars rolling in at high speed. But there were no strobe lights, no sirens, and no police came that night.
When would Kennett drop the other shoe? Michael kept asking himself. Obviously he had no intention of arresting him for Brianna’s murder. Double jeopardy kept Michael safe there, but Audrey was a different matter. Michael wondered if that was Kennett’s angle. Was he playing a game, working Michael undercover, gathering evidence he could later use to make an arrest? Perhaps. But he was also helping to track down Natalie, so Michael decided to tackle one problem at a time.
It was almost morning, and Michael’s sleeplessness began to take a physical and mental toll. He felt it in his bones, like a sickness he couldn’t shake, a weakness he couldn’t overcome. He was utterly out of sorts in both body and mind.
Poor Natalie, he thought. Once again he was reminded of his thoughtlessness in ignoring her suffering—or worse, losing his temper when she couldn’t do the simplest tasks. Insomnia was an insidious beast, a predator of the mind.
If he got out of this quagmire, if he somehow managed to fix the unfixable, Michael vowed to change. He was done living a life of lies. He’d come clean about everything.
Well, almost everything.
As dawn came, Michael decided to shower. He didn’t know what the day would bring, but he was going to be clean and shaved when he faced it. Toledo was obviously a dead end, but where to go from here, Michael couldn’t say. All he knew was that the more time he and Kennett spent together, the more chances there’d be for him to say or do something incriminating.
The shower’s scalding water didn’t wash away Michael’s worry. He stood under the showerhead, hands braced against the slick tile, thinking of memories Kennett had conjured up for him of another time many years ago, a party Michael had attended when everything started to unravel.
Without that party, Michael wouldn’t be in Toledo with Kennett, would probably be married to someone else, have different kids. Without that party, and what happened that night, his life would have been entirely different.
* * *
The place was packed with sweaty teens. A teacher was there, too. Mr. Oman. He was cool, though. In his twenties, not long out of college, taught chem, wasn’t a dick. He was drinking out of a red plastic cup like everyone else. Nobody was going to rat on him. He could score weed.
The party punch was spiked with so much vodka that a match held too close might have set the place ablaze. They were partying at Toby’s house because his parents were out of town and they didn’t give a shit anyway. Rye had just beaten Harrison 34–14 and after the game, everyone gathered at Toby’s for a big celebratory party. That’s where he first saw Brianna. She was young, just a sophomore, but he didn’t let that stop him.
She was a cheerleader, hot as hell, with legs longer than a mile and a smile like a sunbeam. He’d had his share of girlfriends (a benefit of being athletic and good-looking), but Brianna was something else. Sure, she was young, but he didn’t let her age or those pom-poms deter him. She was confident. Wasn’t at all intimidated to talk to a senior, much less one who was captain of the soccer team, member of the National Honor Society, yearbook president, and spent four years in honors choir.
He sought her out, waited until she was alone, before approaching. She wasn’t drinking, but he offered her some of his. She refused.
“It’s not my thing,” she said. “My mom would kill me if she caught me drinking.”
He didn’t know much about her mother back then, but he’d find out later just how uncompromising she could be.
Brianna had no trouble holding her own in conversation. She was flirtatious, playing with her hair, giggling at his jokes, and sending lingering looks, which he quite enjoyed, but he sensed there was something underneath her bubbly exterior. He was intrigued to find out if his instincts were right.
“So, is your mom really that strict?” he asked.
“She’s super religious,” Brianna said, sounding annoyed, like religion wasn’t her thing. “Let’s just say she’d be really upset if she knew I was here. I’m not allowed to go to parties with boys.”
He almost spit out his drink.
“What party has only girls? Hell, I’d like to go there.”
That got another coquettish laugh.
“What I mean is she really wants me to just hang out with kids from my church.”
“Well, that certainly isn’t me,” he said. “Last time I went to church I think Jesus was alive.”
She laughed again. They talked for hours that night, and after a while it felt like there was nobody else at the party but the two of them. Nobody else mattered. She was easy to talk to, bright as could be, so well-read, and she understood it all, too. English was his worst subject. He didn’t get a sense that she was too hung up on her religion when they kissed as the party was coming to an end, his hands traveling up and down her body, their tongues greedily finding each other.
They began dating, hot and heavy, and he got to know her mom, Helen—aka “Bane of his Existence”—pretty well. She kept coming between them, trying to force a breakup, but by then Brianna was hooked on him and he on her. He’d never done heroin, but he’d learned about it in health class, and felt certain that for him, she was that drug in human form.
Days blurred into weeks, into months, until his time in high school was coming to an end, but not his time with Brianna, or at least that was his desire. Once again, they were at Toby’s place, this time for the big blowout end-of-the-year party.
Most of the kids there were headed off to college in the fall. That was his plan, too. He was eighteen. Wasn’t sure where he was going. It was already spring and he hadn’t decided on Rutgers or Penn State, or what he’d major in—probably econ—but he was open to general business studies, too. It had been a good run, four years at Rye High. He’d done his share of soccer games, three years of lax, before “senioritis” set in hard and he gave it all up for more time with friends, red plastic cups, and most importantly, Brianna.
But Brianna was being quiet that night. She didn’t want him to go off to college and find another girl. At least that’s what he was thinking when she pulled him aside, away from a loud crew playing beer pong, to step onto the patio and talk in private about something important that was on her mind.