“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.