Mom chatted with Eve Thornton at the counter while Cameron examined the baby, lying on her blanket on the living-room floor. The baby was only six days old, just a bundle of pink, with a scrunched nose and wispy hair matted to her smooth, round head, and wasn’t it crazy that everyone started out this way? Pudding hands. Blank and soft and tucked tight against themselves. Do you want to hold her? Mrs. Thornton had asked, and Cameron had said, No, that’s okay. But she looked sick, Mrs. Thornton, with a greenish-pale tint to her face and permanent droops under her eyes, like a cartoon of someone who hadn’t slept in months, so Cameron said, All right. They led him to a rocking chair beneath a painting of a sunflower.
Cameron hadn’t wanted to hold the baby. He knew what could go wrong. He could drop her. He could shake her. He could squeeze too hard.
He could want to hurt her.
Hold your arms like this, Mrs. Thornton said, and Cameron cupped his palms around his elbows. They lowered the baby into his arms.
It was then that Cameron knew he was not bad. Cameron had overheard Mom talking on the phone after Dad had gone, telling someone how Dad had never liked to hold Cameron as a baby. Never a good sign. All these years after Dad left, Cameron held baby Ollie, and the result was a small but necessary reassurance. He loved Ollie’s extremities—the tiny legs and the tiny arms. Technically, he knew Ollie’s body was similar to his own, only smaller in scale. She had baby veins and a baby liver and a baby femur and a baby cranium and even a baby heart. Baby toes that would grow and someday be shoved into socks and shoes, that would dance ballet and touch other toes beneath blankets. All these were in Cameron’s care, beating so calmly and so normally that Cameron wanted to kiss the baby—but he knew it was against the rules. So he swayed his arms instead, side to side. He knew where Ollie had come from. When two people love each other very much, Mom had said. He wanted to love someone very much, or at least well enough to make this little creature that smelled like musk and wool and baby powder. He wanted the weight in his arms.
Tuesdays after that, Cameron watched Lucinda and Ollie Thornton as they existed together in the clear-window house. It made him both sad and excited, lonely and hungry, these two fragile anatomies through glass.
Russ
Russ always wanted to carry a gun because his father had carried a gun.
A gun makes you a man, his father used to say.
Russ has few memories from childhood. His father was a cop, and his mother was a receptionist at a doctor’s office. Now, they live in a nursing home, and Russ’s sister lives in California—she had wanted to be a painter, but became a receptionist at a doctor’s office, too. When Russ hit adulthood, his family had separated, but not in any messy, painful way. Continents shifting lethargically away from each other. No real tragedy. Russ does have a few fond memories: fishing trips in their old sedan, Russ’s sister reading a book in the back seat, mother so white and nibbling on potato chips, father focused on yellow highway lines. Russ, blank canvas of a boy. This moment, so unexpectedly golden.
Often, Russ wonders why that particular memory stuck out above the rest: his father patting a fat police belt, Russ staring up from belly-button height.
A gun gives you the power. A gun shows ’em who’s boss.
Russ is standing by the water fountain near the front doors of the station house when a teenage boy walks in. The receptionist is away from her desk, so Russ stands a bit taller.
Can I help you? Russ asks. He runs his fingers over his moustache. Russ likes how he looks when he touches his moustache. He has practiced this stroke in the mirror.
We’re looking for the detective, the father says. The boy looks nervous—he bites his thumb, and the skin around the gnawed nail glistens. Russ had acne as a teenager, but never that bad. The boy is cystic. Craters will scab and scar across his cheeks.
Have a seat, Russ says. I’ll see if the detective is free. What’s your name?
Ronnie, the kid says. Ronnie Weinberg.
What brings you here? Russ asks.
I came to tell you about something I saw, Ronnie says, as he and his father shuffle to the plastic seats at the edge of the waiting room. Ronnie sighs, and his father pats him on the back, urging him on. And then he says: I think I know who killed Lucinda.
Four months before the arrest, Russ and Lee sat on Lee’s front porch. Late spring. Sudden warmth had spilled over Broomsville a few days before, welcome, promising. Inside, Cameron watched cartoons while Cynthia cleaned up dinner. Boxed mashed potatoes sprinkled with Hamburger Helper.
Lee hadn’t meant to tell Russ about having sex with Hilary Jameson. It came out after the third beer, a blurted brag.
Where did you even meet her? Russ asked.
The pharmacy, Lee said. She works behind the counter.
The pharmacy downtown?
Yeah, Lee said. We talked. You know, when I went to pick up Cynthia’s anxiety meds. Anyway, we flirted for a while. She finally slipped me her number, stapled to the bag like a prescription slip. I called her up, and we saw each other a few times, nothing serious, but then last night—
So you’re cheating on Cynthia, Russ said.
The words surprised them both. They watched the street like maybe it would change, reveal something remarkable about itself. Nothing happened. The rosebushes Cynthia had planted years before were still dead. There was nothing beyond the smooth white sidewalk, clean because the snow had dried and the rain would never come. And the feeling in Russ’s chest: a tight constriction, pulsing weight. Stricken.
You’re cheating, Russ said again.
The bottle whistled past Russ’s ear, shattering against the siding of the house. Upstairs, Cynthia’s voice. The Heineken bottle lay in shards by Russ’s work boots and Lee put an elbow over his eyes. He shielded himself, arms in a triangle around his face, like a child counting through a game of Hide and Seek.
I’m sorry, Lee said, face still buried in the crook of his arm. Just keep it between us, okay? I trust you.
Russ left without saying good-bye to Cynthia or Cameron. Fitting. Walking home, he wondered if it was warranted, this wretched, mammoth trust. What had he done to deserve it? Through the following months, Russ would nod uncertainly when Cynthia asked about the drinks at Dixie’s Tavern that had never happened, or the overtime shift Lee hadn’t worked. Russ felt he owed Cynthia the truth, as a human, a friend, a near part of her crumbling family. But he was enthralled by these words—I trust you—so he lied for Lee, even as Lee’s absence made Russ’s own world six shades darker. On the nights that Lee was supposedly at Russ’s house, or on a weekend fishing trip, Russ himself would sit on his couch and think, What am I, without this scheming, cheater friend of mine? The television, no consolation.
Later, Russ met Hilary Jameson. She was Broomsville pretty. She wore tight jeans low on her hips, flared and slightly too long. The bottoms were ripped and dirty from catching beneath her shoes. Brunette. Wide-set eyes. Her hair was straight, her teeth were straight, but something was missing. Shape. Color. She had a tattoo, the first thing Russ noticed about her. Miniature blue hearts followed one another up her neck, like regretful little ducks.