On a dreary Monday, I’m off running errands. James offered to pick Reagan up and start dinner. I was going to put off my rag-tag list of nonsensical things to do, but James suggested I take some me time—that I work so hard as a mother and wife. So I stole a few hours and took myself to lunch then coffee. It felt indulgent and unnecessary in this time of financial restraint.
James has had three job interviews, and as luck would have it, there’s not a county in the area who happens to be in the market for a civil engineer. Charles says he has a lock on a job in the development department down at the city, but when James went to check on it, nobody knew anything about it. Apparently, Concordia hasn’t had a civil engineer for the better part of a decade. Before James’ mother died a tragic death, she was starting to show signs of dementia, and now I’m fearing for poor Charles. Loretta Price, my former mother-in-law, was a saint, and it crushes my soul to think of the torment she must have gone through on that fateful afternoon. Charles was the lone witness. I could imagine it though and I have over and over, replaying it like a haunting chorus. When it initially happened, I tried desperately to get through my day as if that horror wasn’t intimately attached to us. But I saw it as if I was there, felt it as if I took the impact—her eyes widening as the train raced toward the car, then the powerful blow, the smashing of glass and steel crushing her ribcage all at once. Horrific. Hellish.
By the time I get home, it’s well after five. The autumn days seem shorter here in Concordia than they ever were back home. In the distance, the sun has dipped behind the chocolate mountains leaving a line in remembrance of its fame. In L.A., we watched as the sun was swallowed down by the sea in a blaze of tangerine glory, but here that purple outline over the mountains assures us it’s over before it ever began. I feel for people who haven’t witnessed a resplendent ocean-drenched sunset. People visit California for the beaches and the amusement parks, but it’s the sun that’s the real showstopper, the real star of the entire smog-riddled state.
I pull into the driveway, charged to find the house lit up like a jack-o-lantern, and I head inside, only to have the thick scent of roasted chicken light up my senses. James is a Johnny-one-note in the kitchen, but he can play the hell out of that one note.
“Smells scrumptious!” I wrap my arms around him spontaneously for the first time in months. His hair is neatly slicked back, his face clean-shaven, naked, and suddenly it feels as if we’re on a date somewhere altogether foreign to us.
He pulls back with heavy lids, a smile on his face that lies somewhere between one too many glasses of wine and lust as if to ask the question.
This is the longest dry spell we’ve ever cast on our marriage—the Hailey Oden sponsored coital cessation. Of course, the resistance has come solely from me.
I give a little nod as if to say yes to the unspoken fornicating question swirling between us. Tonight will be the night we come together again as husband and wife. It’s the first day I can remember that doesn’t feel like Hailey is hovering between us like a sexed-up ghost. In truth, she ruined our bond long before that day Faulk showed up on my doorstep in the shape of a human puddle. She was the other woman long before she made the title official. I suppose it works that way more often than not.
“Reagan?” I shout over his shoulder with a laugh caught in my throat. This joy and that which is to come—namely me—is what has me so giddy. “It’s time for dinner!” I give a sly wink to my husband. Tonight, long before we start in on that intimate dance, I plan on flirting shamelessly, making him want it, making him want me.
“She’s not here.” His head cocks to the side, vacuuming my gaze into his as he drips a line down my cheek with his finger.
“Then where is she?” A hint of panic flickers through my belly as my mind spins through a rolodex of possibilities. I shake my head as if coming to. That rolodex is useless in Concordia. There’s only one option. “Is she still at school?” I suck in a quick breath. “My God, did you forget to pick her up?”
“No.” He blinks back with a laugh. “She’s at Ota’s house. I said I’d pick her up as soon as you got home.”
“Ota’s house?” My brows rise with amusement, and then just as quickly fright. “Did you meet her mother?”
James locks his curious eyes over mine, and a moment of palpable silence bounces between us. “No, Ota asked if they could go over. I said yes.”
“Just like that?” I stagger to the door and let myself out into the icy air, already thick with dew.
“Hey, where are you off to? Relax.” James catches up to me while poking his arms through his jacket. “Reagan is fine. I promise.”
“How do you know she’s fine? She’s being rude, is what she’s being. We haven’t even met the child’s mother.” My heart ratchets into my throat as I quicken my pace. “Which house is it?” I look to each lit up home like a suspect in some sinister crime. “You’ve never been as careful with Reagan as I have. You’re too blasé, too caught up in that utopian society in your mind you think we all live in.” As quick as my mind reels, my mouth unleashes with chaos.
“Allison, would you stop?” He spins me into him as his eyes pierce through mine. “Look, you’re working yourself up over nothing.” He grips my shoulders and rubs my arms until they’re warm. “This is Concordia.” His voice softens as if begging me to do the same. “Idaho. She’s just at a friend’s house.”
“You’re right.” I blink back to life, startled by my own urgency to panic. “Sorry about that.” My lips pull down on their own, and I fight it. Of course, James knows what a shit world we live in. Three of his siblings died before he was twenty. All different causes and through nobody’s fault, with the exception of his older brother Aston, whom James blew a hole through while they cleaned their rifles. It was ruled an accidental discharge. It could happen to anybody, and often did. James always makes a point to show me similar reports in the news as if to say there goes another one. But I could tell he held onto that grief, onto the guilt, and wasn’t planning on ever letting it go.
“Which house do you think it is?” My breath pulls in a plume of fog as I size up the options. “I’ve seen Ota walk toward the woods.” I glance to the forest that lines the empty lot at the end of the street, odd and out of place like a toothless smile. My stomach sinks at the sight.
James squeezes my hand as if girding himself. “She said it was the house at the end of the street.” His voice comes out in a papery fog as he stares at the vacant forest where a house should seemingly sit. “Let’s try them all.”
James and I head door to door, starting with our neighbor to the right, an elderly gentleman and his wife. They laugh at the idea of having a little girl running around underfoot and suggest we try the house on the corner. Molly has at least a dozen grandchildren now, and Ota is most likely one of them.
“It could be,” I pant as James and I head over. “She never said more than a word about her family. She’s been standoffish since the beginning.”
“Ota’s a good kid.” He gives my hand another squeeze as we leave no stone unturned, heading house to house until we hit Molly’s oversized boxy home, a cookie-cutter replica of our own.
An elderly woman with a warm smile and short blonde hair answers the door wiping her hands on her apron. The scent of something sweet comes from the oven, and suddenly all of the worry melts right off me. Living in Los Angeles has been nothing more than a toxin, and now that I’ve let my paranoia get the best of me, I can clearly see that.
“We’re here for Reagan,” I say breathless, struggling with a smile. “I’m Allison, and this my husband, James. You must be Ota’s grandmother.”
The older blonde tilts her head, wrinkles her forehead into a series of lines, and that ball of acid explodes deep into the pit of my stomach once again.