Whatever Jess might have said to object, she swallowed back. “Okay,” she said. What harm? He was different than he was before she left. She’d first noticed when they were in the basement of the bar. Something in the way he held himself apart from her. Something about the solemn way he listened as she spoke. And now she was seeing it again. Where was the guy who clapped a dozen backs when he walked into a room? The guy who parted the air just by walking through it? Where was the kid who sprang for ice cream cones for the whole neighborhood, without having the first idea what the tab would come to? Gone, as far as she could tell. Humbled. Crushed. By her and what she’d done, yes. She made herself acknowledge that fact. But also, the slow-motion failure of a dream. She’d seen that failure coming, but he hadn’t. She saw that it hadn’t just been denial; he truly had not seen. And then it hit her that it was the same for him when it came to her dream. He knew long before she did that she would never deliver a baby. But he’d stood aside and hoped she’d arrive at that conclusion on her own.
Outside, they worked in synchrony. Jess put Malcolm’s phone on his car’s charger first, said she didn’t want to hear from anyone anyway. Not even Neil, Malcolm added in his mind. He shoveled while Jess used a broom to clear the car windows. What are we going to do? he thought over and over. What are we going to do what are we going to do what are we going to do? He knew she was asking the same. They discussed the weight and texture of the new snow, how it felt different from the heavy, sticky snow that had fallen on Friday. It was like they were in a play, acting like normal people, making their faces calm for the world. Jess asked Malcolm if he knew the Inuit people have fifty words for snow, and Malcolm reminded her that they watched that documentary together.
“Oh, yeah,” she said. Once the cars were clear, she went at the steps, at the windowsills. She reached up and waved the broom overhead to knock down icicles, one hand clutching the broom’s handle, the other crooked over her head to shield herself.
“Why don’t you check my phone,” he said, wincing as an icicle almost caught her in the eye. If he simply told her to stop, she wouldn’t. He wondered where Neil thought she was.
“Anything?” he asked, when she sat in his car to check.
“Emma,” she said. “She said, ‘How’s it there?’?” Jess squinted over at him. “Do you want me to reply?”
“Nah,” Malcolm said. “Anything else?”
“Roddy. Wants to know if he left his headphones at the bar. He said they’d be next to the register.”
“Oh my God that kid. What else?”
“Mary. Wants to know where your Mom is. She’s not answering the landline at home.”
“Can you write back? Tell her she’s fine. Tell her she’s staying with a neighbor. Ask her if she remembers Artie Sheridan. Ask her if she remembers when his wife died.”
“Gail’s staying with Artie Sheridan?” Jess asked. “That’s interesting.”
“Is it?”
“You don’t think so? Come to think of it I stopped by there once and he was in the kitchen heating soup. She was upstairs and he called up to tell her I was there and that the soup was ready.” Jess looked at the sky. “I never thought about that until right now.”
“When was that?”
“Two or three years ago I guess.”
“They’re friends. Good friends.”
“He’s attractive for a man his age.”
“Aren’t they kind of old for that?”
“Gail in her old bras that make her boobs pointy. Her big underwear.”
“Please.”
“I can see it. I’m being serious right now, I really can. I’m happy for her.”
“But she’s been so forgetful. Have you noticed? The other day she said something as if she expected my dad home soon.”
“I’ve noticed. Here and there. But, I don’t know. Last week I spent five minutes looking for my phone and it was in my hand the whole time.”
“I think this is different and Artie Sheridan isn’t going to sign on for that,” Malcolm said. “Why would he?”
“Maybe he loves her. Maybe he’s loved her for a long time and we never knew.”
Was it possible? Malcolm wondered. The way he looked over at her and her crazy hair that she could never make lie flat the way the other mothers managed to do. Her button-down shirts that she bought in the men’s section at Costco. The way he shook his head to signal Malcolm that he knew better, her chimney had not malfunctioned, but it was okay because he was there to set things right.
After an hour or so the driveway was mostly clear. In the distance came the sound of steady beeping, growing louder as it moved toward them.
“It’s just the plow,” Malcolm said, as he looked down the street.
But behind the big town plow with its flashing orange lights was a police car. And following the police car was an unmarked SUV.
“Oh,” Jess said, suddenly pale. They left an ember behind without realizing. The place had lit up despite their change of heart. It was astonishingly dumb. One look at their financials and anyone with a brain would be suspicious. Malcolm immediately saw how guilty he would look, a fire just after they discovered Tripp was staying upstairs.
The cars stopped at the end of their driveway. The plow stopped, too, and Jess was soothed by the sheer racket of it combined with the roar of the Colemans’ generator. It felt like a physical barrier, like the drivers of these vehicles would actually have to press their hands to their ears to see her and Malcolm clearly.
“How you doin?” Malcolm called over, when it was clear theirs was the house they were aiming for.
Jess recognized the female officer from around. The other two were trailing behind her, one of whom looked young enough to be in college. Malcolm shouted something to the driver of the plow, and next thing the beeping stopped. Immediately, Jess felt exposed. As the men in the SUV approached, she heard the female officer tell Malcolm that they were federal agents.
“This is my wife,” Malcolm told the group as Jess came up beside him. He glanced at her quickly as if to say if there was a different word for what she was to him, then he didn’t know it.
They had questions about Charles Waggoner, who still had not turned up, and Jess felt relief wash over her. “Who’s that?” she asked, but Malcolm said he’d fill her in later.
“Did you ever confirm he was on that second flight?” Malcolm asked. “To Panama?” The agents ignored the question, and the local cops looked a bit sheepish, like maybe they shouldn’t have told him so much. The two Feds asked how often Tripp came to the bar, whom he spoke with, his drinking habits, topics he went to, if he met friends there, if he ever talked about his job, if he ever talked about financial trouble, if he ever talked about a particular stress he was under or a decision he had to make.
“Sorry, but no,” Malcolm said. “I already told them”—Malcolm nodded at the three local cops collectively—“that he talked about how much he hated living around here, the routine of work eat sleep repeat, you know, who doesn’t feel like that? And that he seemed to have a dream of living in Peru. But specifics about work? No, nothing.”
They looked at him as if he might say more. Eventually, the shorter of the two offered a detail. “His partner was arrested this morning.”
“Okay.”
“If you were in touch with Charles—”
“I’m not in touch with him. He drinks at my bar sometimes. He was there on Friday. That’s it.”
“Wasn’t he staying at your bar? Upstairs?”
“Well, we found some stuff.” Malcolm looked at Jackie to help him out, but she gave him a look that said she couldn’t. “But I don’t know if it was his. I never go up there, which I guess someone knew.
“And also, I’m sorry,” Malcolm said. “But he just didn’t seem savvy enough to disappear. I always had the impression that he was pretty good at his job, which might seem crazy given that you’re probably here to arrest him. And he was a know-it-all about some things, yes. But this stuff about checking in remotely and taking a flight north to go south, I just don’t buy it. There was this one time, he was complaining about his phone’s battery life and I told him to try closing all his windows and apps. He asked me how to do that. When I took his phone, there were like two zillion windows open. He said he’d never closed one, not once, ever.”
Malcolm paused. “Some guys would be sort of defensive because no one likes feeling dumb or out of date or whatever. Especially a guy like him who was heading up a big company. Most guys like that would be like, ‘Oh, I kept those windows open on purpose, I love having a bazillion pages open on my phone.’?”
Jackie laughed.
“But Tripp just said technology wasn’t his thing and thanked me for figuring it out. And trust me, if I know more about phones than he did, that’s saying a lot.”