“You know, just typical mother-daughter stuff.” He freezes, the forks suspended in the air. “I’m sorry. I’m such an asshole. Here, your mother just . . . and I . . .”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Really.” Even though a lump has started to form in my throat. I blink back tears. I’ve been thinking more about her, ever since my talk with Eric, and I wonder if maybe my ire at her was partly typical teenage hatred. And I never had the chance to grow out of it with her. Or I never gave her the chance. I think of all the times she invited me out to Long Island over the years, and the disappointment in her voice when I would say no. But god, everything was always about her. And it was just so irritating.
But maybe in person it would have been different, or maybe as we got older, we could have gotten along better, and I just never gave her the chance. Or—after watching Connie and Deborah tonight—I wonder if maybe mothers are always irritating, no matter how old you are. And maybe you love them anyway.
I eat my food in silence as Eric pulls on a pair of rubber gloves and starts on the mountain of dishes piled on his counter and in the sink. I slip Rufus a few pieces of turkey whenever Eric’s back is turned.
When I’m finished, I take the plate, scrape the bits leftover into the trash, and set it on the counter with the rest of the dirty dishes.
“Thanks,” Eric says.
I grab a kitchen towel from where it’s hanging on the oven door and pick up a pan that he’s just finished washing. The water droplets left on it immediately soak into my gloves, so I peel them off to keep them dry. Eric eyes me. “Is that safe?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to be able to resist touching my very sexy hands?” I wiggle my fingers, teasing him. I’m not sure where this surge of bold confidence has come from, but I’m glad when he chuckles—sending a jolt of electricity up my spine. I pick the pan back up and start drying it. We work in silence, a comfortable assembly line, until I give voice to something that’s been bothering me.
“You know a lot about me from reading that New York Times article.”
“Yeah.” Eric cuts his eyes at me, as if waiting to see where I’m going with this.
“It’s not fair,” I say. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
He continues washing dishes, vigorously scrubbing a Pyrex. He’s at it for so long that I start to think maybe he didn’t hear my question. Suddenly, he stops scrubbing and the room falls still.
“I killed my best friend,” he says.
I stand there, a little stunned. “Well,” I say, recovering a little. “I was kind of expecting something along the lines of ‘My favorite color is purple.’ Or ‘I have six toes on my left foot.’?”
He doesn’t laugh.
I pick up a clean wooden spoon and start wiping it down, then ask softly: “What happened?”
He rinses the glass dish, sets it on the counter for me to dry, and then turns off the water. “I had a client, Bilbrun & Co., acquiring an aluminum factory in Kentucky. Just a little five-hundred-person plant. My team was responsible for due diligence, and I thought the plant was overvaluing their property. I had to hire a Realtor I didn’t know in Kentucky, so I wanted to go myself and walk through it with her, make sure everything was on the up-and-up.” He pauses and puts his hands on the counter between himself and the sink for support. “Ellie had a soccer championship game that weekend, and I had already missed a lot of her games that season. So I asked Dinesh if he would go to Kentucky in my place.”
“So you two worked together?”
“Yeah. Not the same team, but we were always doing little favors like that for each other. ‘Always wanted to see the Bluegrass State,’ he said when I asked him. ‘Maybe I’ll take the wife, go horseback riding while we’re there.’?” The side of Eric’s mouth turns up in a little half smile at the memory. “Bilbrun chartered a plane. I didn’t even know he took Kate until . . . until I got the call that the plane had gone down on the way there. Engine failure or something.”
“Oh, God,” I say under my breath. I want to say more, but a shriek so primal fills the air and steals my breath. Aja is suddenly in the room, his mouth emitting the sound like a banshee, his little fists clenched by his sides, eyes squeezed shut, his tan face turning a muted red. And then the screaming starts to turn into words. “YOU KILLED THEM! YOU KILLED THEM! HOW COULD YOU?” Tears drip from his eyes like coffee percolating into a pot, and his words start to run together, as if they’re tired of being words and want to return to just being sounds. “YOUKILLEDTHEMYOUKILLEDTHEMYOUKILLEDTHEMYOUKILLEDTHEM.”
“Oh my god. Aja,” I hear Eric breathe. He steps toward him, but Aja sees him and is off like a shot, slamming his door with so much force the sound reverberates down the hall.
Eric goes after him, and I hear gentle knocking and mumbled words, but a minute later he’s back, grabbing the back of the kitchen chair with both hands and leaning into it. “Fuck,” he says, drawing out the word.
“Is he OK?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. He won’t talk to me. Won’t open the door.”
“Want me to try?”
Pressing his lips together in a straight line, he says: “I don’t think so. Let’s give him a minute to cool off.”
He straightens his back up abruptly, standing to his full height. “I need a drink,” he says. He walks into the dining room and grabs the bottle of Glenlivet from the table and brings it into the kitchen, where he divides what’s left into two small glasses.
“Oh, I don’t . . . I’ve never . . .”
“Drank scotch?” he says.
“Drank at all,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Just into hard drugs, huh?”
I duck my head. “They were prescription.”
We both smile, and the tension dissipates a little.
He opens the freezer, puts a few cubes of ice in one of the glasses, and hands it to me. “Let the ice melt a little bit before you try it.”
I take the glass and put it to my mouth anyway. How bad can it be? I take a sip.
Bad. The answer is very bad. I sputter and spit, the small amount of liquid that made it down my throat burning as if I downed gasoline and someone put a lit match to it.
He shakes his head and mutters, “Stubborn,” then moves into action, getting me a glass of water, which I gratefully accept. Once I recover, he joins me at the kitchen table, and we sit there, sipping our drinks. I stick with the water.
“Aaaaaahhhhh.” A noise comes out of his mouth—a mix between a groan and a sigh. “Man, I am parenting to beat the band this year.”
I look at him—and even though I’m worried about him, the seriousness of what just happened with Aja, I can’t help it. I giggle.
“What?” he asks.
“?‘To beat the band’?” I ask.
“What? It means—”
“I know what it means,” I say, cutting him off. “It’s just—is this the nineteen fifties? Or are you just that old?”
His lips turn up, a genuine smile, and I’m glad. “Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry my idioms aren’t modern and trendy enough for you.”