Monica traverses an obstacle course of cleaning supplies as she makes her way deeper into the bowels of my old home. I wander to the dresser and give it my own pat-down as if greeting an old friend. I grip the ends and give it a shake as if offering up a hug and something jostles from up above—the thin edge of a piece of paper and I snap it down to find a thick envelope with my aunt’s name, Jolene, written in my mother’s neat handwriting across the front. Something in me loosens and I resist the urge to bawl. There she is. I’ve found her. Seeing my mother’s handwriting is almost as good as seeing her face.
A dull thud hits the floor from across the room and I quickly tuck the envelope into the waistband of my jeans and pull my shirt over it. Whatever my mother has to say to my aunt, I want to drink down in private. Probably pages of family recipes. I’d relish to make them all. Or maybe directions to the venue of a gala she was hosting. If my mother was anything, she was old school, right down to the longitude and latitude minutia of life.
“Everything okay?” I head over and help Monica out of the tangle of scattered work tools. When the weather got crappy, my father would tinker down here for hours. We called him the mad scientist. Rachel once corrected me when I said it and suggested he was just mad.
“Oh hell.” Monica does a little tap dance as she falls into my arms. “Well, that’s better.” Her lashes bat up at me manically, and I openly frown at her as I lead us out of the dimly lit maze.
“Ladies first.” I follow her up the stairwell and lead her straight through the house, turning off lights as we pass them by. The bitter cold air outside feels like a welcomed reprieve as it attempts to descale the past off my flesh with its sting. “What did you come by for, anyway?”
She looks up, her hand finds a home over my cheek, heavy and weighted. Her skin glows against the dark expanse of nothingness behind her, and those lips look like a vortex of blood red darkness I never plan on getting sucked into again. In truth, I don’t find Monica attractive. I did once, and once was more than enough.
“You are a beautiful man, James Brennen Price.”
Brennen. I don’t think I’ve heard my middle name spoken out loud since the last time Monica said it. My father’s brother died just before I was born and my parents wanted to honor him in some small way. I’ve been hauling around my uncle’s ghost long before I ever did my siblings’.
“I can’t imagine the pain you’re going through.” Tears slick her cheeks as if on cue. “You lost a lot of family in your young life.”
I carefully remove her hand and land it at her side. “I often wonder what my family would have looked like if my brothers and sister were still here today. I imagine they’d all have families of their own by now. Lots of kids running around. But they took all those with them when they died. It’s just me. One kid—and I couldn’t keep track of her.” My voice cracks. Monica wraps her arms around me, leaping at the chance to offer me a modicum of physical comfort. Her perfume holds the scent of high school. Of all those years locked in a smothering relationship with her.
“You have a family. You have your father. You have me.”
I reach down in an effort to try to pry her off me and she tightens her grip. Her eyes widen as she buries them in mine. “And I think it’s time I told you about another family member you have.” She gives an audible swallow as her mouth contorts as if unable to finish the thought. “Our child.”
7
Allison
According to the laws of nature, the sun rises, the sun sets—the intervals in-between mark off seasons, months, years, decades, a lifetime. We are selected at random by the lottery of life and we mark off our years until we are selected at random by death. Or so it seems. I believe there is divine intervention behind each and every living soul. A purpose for us all, even if we never make it to the finish line. A meticulous network of preprogramed events that are meant to lead us from start to finish. My father once said that the Bible stipulated nothing was random. Then my mother took the book and knocked him over the head with it. But my father’s words stuck with me. I’ve always been prone to believe him over her. The friendly counselor over the wicked warden. Up until the day Reagan dissolved into thin air, I believed we had an ordained blessing upon us. Nothing could go wrong—with the exception of James fucking things up, but that was to be expected. He was and is a man.
I glower out the window as the steam rises from my coffee on this lonely morning. Yesterday was Halloween. I’ve never been a fan of the spooktacular night, but with Reagan, the day, the entire week leading up to it felt like a glorious festival. In a way, Reagan was giving me back my childhood. All of the delicate beautiful pieces I was missing, she hand-fed me by way of her laughter, that charming demeanor that made you love her without even trying. She cast her spell on me the first moment I held her in my arms. I saw Len in her dark eyes. That dark head of hair everyone swore belonged to James? It was Len’s, too.
A timid knock erupts over the door, and I bolt to it in hopes it’s Reagan herself.
But it’s not Reagan. It’s not any sane person I would crave to see at ten in the morning. It’s Heather Crazy Train Evans wagging her phone at me, pointing at it with a feral looking grin on her face.
“Are you insane showing up here?” I hiss as I jump onto the porch and close the door behind me. “If James finds out you’re stalking me, he’ll have you arrested and booked.”
“Maybe he’s the one who should be arrested and booked?” Her eyes bug out. She has her hair slicked back into a ponytail, showing off too much forehead. Her lips are puckered and pasty, crusting around the ridges as if the icy weather doesn’t agree with her. “I’ve got evidence that he’s not so innocent!”
“What?” I lead her down the steps and around to the side of the house, out of earshot and out of sight. “What are you talking about?” My chest starts to pound erratically because a part of me already knows.
“He’s a cheater, Al. He’s got a girl on the side. And I caught ’em. Me—your very best friend.” Her eyes seal over mine like a threat, that desperate wanting of approval knifing out of every pore in her body.
My stomach bottoms out for so many reasons, but more unnerving that the thought of her catching James with some woman—which I’m not sure I believe—is hearing her decry our friendship. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, a sound I’d much rather live with than have Heather wrapped around my neck like a noose.
“Show me.” I glare at the phone she’s cradling like an infant. Speaking of infants, I can’t stomach the fact she’d rather stay holed up with me than with her own family. It makes me uneasy, as if she’s bringing her obsession with me to a whole new level.
“I got ’em coming and going.” Her thumbs dance frantically over the phone until a picture pops up.
“It’s dark.” I shake my head, trying to make out the image. “What is that?”
“Some house he went to for some late night trick-or-treating, and he was looking for a treat if you know what I mean.” She enlarges the picture and a grainy version of his parents’ home comes into view. It looks monolithic, towering into the dull gray sky like a long forgotten relic.
“That’s his father’s house. He must have asked him to stop by. He probably needed a few things.” The way I’ve been sleeping the days away, James could have built a house and I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Uh-huh.” She flips through a few more pictures, and in each one another window is lit up with the peachy glow of secrets. “How about this?”
She zooms in on an unfamiliar sedan parked snug behind the truck. The next picture shows a shadowy figure making its way up the porch. The next shot is tight. The frame of a woman comes in clean—heels, her hand raised to pour down its wrath on that door.
A breath hitches in my throat. “He had a visitor. Probably a neighbor.” Dear God, let it be a neighbor.
“Just you wait, Ally Girl.” Her breathing grows erratic as she steps in close. The next picture shows the girl entering the house with the top of my husband’s head in full view.