“Questions about height?”
“And other things.”
Dee took out her notebook again and scribbled. When Berk glanced across to see, he thought it read, little white vampire girl: not tall, though it was hard to tell from his side of the desk. The office door opened. It was Liam, one of the peach-fuzzed stock boys. “Hey, Berkoff, what are you doing in Wyatt’s office?”
“I’m having a meeting, can’t you see that? And this is a shared office.”
“Your wife’s on the phone,” Liam said.
Liam left and as Berk picked up the receiver he glanced at Dee. She held on to her notepad as if to say she would wait. Berk punched the line and the full force of Serenity’s voice hit him.
“Are you an idiot?! You’re meeting with those crime show people, aren’t you?”
“We can talk about this later.”
Dee heard the other side of the call, or could at least read Berk’s shame. She gathered her things and slid a business card across the desk to him, excusing herself silently.
“Stop talking,” Serenity commanded him. “Go phone your dad. Now! Or get a lawyer. Jesus Christ, Berk. Leave the past in the past.”
Chapter 6
Although Marly had phoned Everett earlier, she hadn’t managed to make it out of bed or get dressed. Everett leaned into the bedroom and said, “I’m here,” then went down into the kitchen, where he put the coffee on. There were too many times he’d wondered if he would walk in and see the shape of her under the covers, the blankets twisted up and her body unmoving, and he’d listen: breath. She was breathing.
He watched the kettle rasp. When Marly was younger, she was a different person. As he scooped coffee into the Bodum French press he’d given her, he remembered how, years ago, she’d spent three weeks bent over her sewing machine making him a pirate costume for a play. Every detail had to be right: the ruffle on the shirt, the embroidered velvet jacket. When she had it done, she boiled up some coffee. Everett watched as his mom poured pot after pot of coffee into a large plastic tub. She submerged his beautiful jacket and shirt—staining them. “A pirate is someone with fine things that have gone bad,” she said. Everett didn’t trust her—he knew how much she’d spent on the fabric, a whole week’s grocery bill—but when she pulled it out and dried it and he put it on, he stood, four feet two, a real living, breathing pirate before him in the mirror. She clapped the loudest of anyone that night.
The kettle screamed and Everett reached out and turned the gas burner to off. He poured the water, watched the steam rise.
“Your dad called this morning,” Marly said, and when Everett turned she was standing in the doorway in her bathrobe. His mother’s eyes were sunken, dark. Marly Kimberson took things for the depression, but sometimes she went off them. Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, Lustral, Luvox: they all sounded so professional. She said they made her fat and forgetful. He never understood what his mom needed to remember though, or why she needed to be thin.
“Y’all never talk. Surprised he remembered the exact date.”
She nodded. “Some things you don’t forget. Judy was having herself a shopping day.”
His mom had only met his father’s new wife once but she made firm judgments. When his dad and Judy visited they took Everett and Marly out for barbecue. Judy wore fuchsia lipstick. She had dyed black hair and impractical shoes that meant she had to be dropped off right in front of the restaurant. She called his father Teddy in a high pitch instead of Ted, and she was always touching him, as if he’d get away if she let go for even a minute. Everett never really minded Judy though. He’d had to see her more than his mom had. Judy grabbed the hard edges of his dad and shook them out.
Everett put his palm on the top of the plunger. He squeezed the mechanism down, crushing water through the coffee slowly.
“He said that if I run into Kennedy Wynn in the supermarket, I should run directly at her, cawing and flapping my arms like a bird. Said the only way to deal with a crazy person is to pretend you’re crazier.” She laughed.
Everett hadn’t heard her laugh in such a long time.
Marly put her fingers over her mouth. “Oh Lord,” she said, and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “Your dad never played the same bingo card as everyone else. Haley was like that too.”
She’d told him this about his father many times, but Everett never saw it. He saw the firm, unrelenting parts. In Ted’s eyes, there was a way to squeeze a toothpaste tube, a way to make a bed, to tie a tie. Nothing could be out of place and he hated tardiness. It was probably why he’d called Marly early, just to see if Everett had arrived at the appointed hour. Even when Ted was a drunk, he’d been strict about the household rules—although he was the one who usually violated them.
“He’s worried about you. Wants reassurance you’re not spending through all that money too quickly.”
Everett puffed his cheeks, blew out a breath. What did it matter? His family’s finances had gone from dime-thin to swollen overnight, and the civil suit payout didn’t seem to have disrupted the Wynns’ balance sheet—Gerry continued to live in the same sprawling house and drive his red Acura on weekdays, and his other two cars on the weekends. Everett pulled the milk out of the fridge. As he closed the fridge door, a yellow-eyed Amur leopard gazed back at him, held up by a magnet from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The door was covered in photos of animals from the World Wildlife Fund and children in faraway countries that his mother had sponsored. She’d spent her money as easily, though never on herself. Any charity that phoned could take her for an easy fifty.
“We shouldn’t sit around the house,” Everett said. “Let’s drive out to Virginia Beach, walk on the boardwalk. Maybe get a pizza. Haley loved it there.”
Marly nodded, both hands wrapped around a mug that read World’s Best Mom. Haley had given it to her. “The neighbors’ Labradoodle shit in our yard again. I was thinking we could pick it up in a plastic bag, drive it by the Wynns’, and fling it at their house.” Her mouth twitched in a way that wasn’t exactly a smile.
Everett told her they’d do that on the way.
* * *
—
They took his mom’s car so she could smoke; he didn’t want it to ruin his Mustang. Everett insisted he drive—Marly always went too slow, peering at the road ahead of her like a book with the print too small. As he backed her car out of the garage, he commented on the Spider-Man four-by-four he’d kept stashed there for two years.
The handlebars of the quad were positioned almost like a dog perking up its ears. There were two sets of headlights, round, alert. The whole machine looked eager, ready to go at all times—though it had sat in the garage for almost six months, since the last time he’d ridden it. It had a good personality for an inanimate object.