Deb had felt horrible for Grant’s mother at her funeral. She hated the men’s reticence, their pointless resistance to grief.
Grief is a monument. And they were doing their best to make the memory of Grant’s mother smooth, undisturbed land.
But that resistance was inside her, part of her. There was something that prevented Deb from taking her friends’ advice to seek counseling after Grant’s murder, to shy away from calling a therapist or finding a support group.
In a strange way, it seemed like taking the grief on herself honored Grant.
Kept him close to her.
She wondered if Kim felt it too, that pull to isolation. She’d noticed her daughter’s reluctance to leave the house, to talk with friends. Even to talk to her, aside from offering to share her Xanax, an offer Deb had—surprising herself—accepted.
“I don’t know how I feel either,” Kim said now, her hand wrapped around a glass of water. “It changes so fast. Like any moment I might suddenly be, like, lost?”
Deb touched her eyes, trying to ward off tears. Saw Kim do the same.
“Sorry,” Kim said after a few moments. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this here.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Kim nodded. “It’s hard to sleep. I feel too much. Scared and angry and sad. And I miss Dad.”
“I can’t feel anything without being sad,” Deb said. “I miss him too.”
The waiter brought their food, set it before them.
Deb touched her chicken fried steak with her fork, could barely push it through the hard, overcooked meat.
“You want to split my pancakes?”
Deb pushed her plate to the side, took her daughter up on the offer. They ate from the same plate, the pancakes sliced into small triangles, islands poking through a dark lake of syrup.
“Have the cops said anything else?” Kim asked.
“Just what I told you. It might be some gang who’s doing this. There’ve been other people, all men who died the same way.” Deb paused, spoke past the lump in her throat. “Shot the same way. The police don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
“Me neither,” Kim said.
The women were quiet.
“Sometimes I think Dad’s in the house. Like I forget he’s gone. Or I see someone and think it’s him.”
“That happened to me this morning. I saw someone near the backyard, but it was just the gardener.”
“The other day I saw someone walking to our door, and then he turned and left. For a second, I thought it was Dad coming home.”
They both dabbed napkins to their eyes.
“When are you going back to school?” Deb asked.
“Like I told you, they excused me from my classes for the rest of the semester.”
Deb didn’t remember. “You were doing pretty good, right? With your grades?”
“Pretty much.”
Deb believed her. Kim had an easy affinity for school and studying that Grant shared, but that ease had completely bypassed Deb. She’d been a good student, but only because of how intensely she studied. Kim and Grant could glance at their notes the night before a final exam, show up late, walk away with an A.
Grant’s confidence.
God, she wished she had his confidence.
“I don’t want you to feel like you need to stay here with me,” Deb told Kim.
“I like staying with you.”
Her words warmed Deb. Prior to this, her relationship with Kim had been defined by those volatile arguments. Spats that started, seemingly, the exact moment Kim turned thirteen, as if she’d realized at a young age that there was only so much control her mother had over her. She’d grown worse in her rebellious high school years, and by the time Kim left for college, they’d spent days without speaking to each other.
Now that distance seemed immature, something she and Kim had the privilege to play with, the kind of problems created from boredom, from the arrogance of boredom. When real tragedy struck, Deb had felt helpless. And needy. And she’d never felt that way before.
“Thanks for coming home,” she said.
Her daughter reached across the table, held her hands.
And there were those tears.
Those helpless, endless, shared tears.
CHAPTER
4
CESSY USED THE couch to stand. Nausea touched the back of her throat, grudgingly stayed down as she stared at a pillow and blanket on the living room floor, trying to figure out what had happened the night before.
And why she was naked.
She spotted an empty bottle underneath the coffee table.
Vodka.
Vodka had happened. And so had Anthony Jenkins.
Cessy sat on the couch, considered that an accomplishment. She didn’t expect to do anything else that productive today.
She crossed her legs, rested her feet on the coffee table and slouched, trying to ease her stomach. She found the remote control buried in the cushions and switched on cartoons. Watched SpongeBob SquarePants cheerfully bounce along the ocean floor.
The shower stopped.
That was interesting.
She hadn’t realized it was on.
Cessy was too hungover to do anything but pull a blanket over herself. She kept staring at SpongeBob until the door to her bedroom opened and Anthony stepped out.
“You look like shit,” Anthony said cheerfully. He walked over to her, towel around his waist, collapsed on the couch next to her. He stretched his long black legs out, crossed his ankles over the coffee table. Anthony had played basketball for Baltimore Community College and, almost a decade later, still had an athlete’s lanky grace, even if his muscles had lost their definition and he’d added a few pounds.
Cessy tried to think of a response. Her sleep- and alcohol-infused mouth felt like a dirty bird’s nest had been shoved inside it.
“Things have been weird.”
“Yeah?” Anthony was staring at SpongeBob argue with his pet snail.
Cessy scratched her scalp. Her hair was hopelessly tangled. “Hector’s dead. He was shot twice. One in the head, one in the heart.”
Anthony bounded to his feet.
“What? By who?”
“They don’t know.”
“Last night you said he was out of town!”
“He sort of was. Where are you going?”
Anthony had been inching over to the bedroom. “I should probably go.”
Cessy watched him. “You okay?”
“I can’t believe your husband was killed and you’re acting this way about it.”
“We weren’t married that long. And come on, Anthony, you got what you wanted.”
“Well, okay, maybe, yeah. But after all these years of trying at the bar, and you finally giving me the green light … still, though, this doesn’t feel right. See you, Cess. Sorry about what happened. But thanks for letting me use your shower. And for, um, last night.”
Anthony dressed quickly in front of Cessy—stumbling as he pulled on pants, accidentally pushing his head into a sleeve—and hurried off.
Cessy dragged herself to the shower after he left, let warm water run down her back, rested her forehead against the tiles.
The same thoughts she’d been having since Hector’s murder days earlier started rolling through her mind, like music from a player piano, a song she desperately wanted to ignore. Thoughts of how life had been before Hector was killed, when he was at his most depressed and withdrawn.