We Were Never Here, page 12
“The man broke out in a cold sweat anytime anyone used the R-word,” Nana added, her voice light. “I think he keeps working so that he doesn’t have to be home with me.” She grinned and jutted her skinny elbow toward him. This dynamic I knew from my own parents, before they’d finally split: self-deprecating humor, Oh, isn’t it funny how we can’t stand each other.
“Well, dear, somebody’s gotta support your penchant for wine-tasting,” he volleyed back.
But she just chuckled. “Oh, I’ve been retired since the day Kristen finished college. I have no trouble filling my days. But we’re boring—tell us, Emily, what’s keeping you busy?”
I set my glass on the coffee table, next to a thick black book that I suddenly realized was a Bible. King of Kings, where Kristen had gone to school, leaned fundamentalist, conservative Protestant; her dad had been super involved in the community—girls’ basketball coach, deacon on Sundays. She’d switched schools after her parents had died, but Nana and Bill had continued to attend weekly services there.
“Oh, you know. Work is good—I’m at Kibble, it’s a start-up? That makes fancy, organic cat food?” Bill and Nana nodded blankly. “It’s fun; I’m learning a lot about the start-up world.”
“The problem with start-ups is that they’re just trying to make enough of a name for themselves to get bought out.” Bill shrugged. “There’s no long-term planning.”
I smiled and sipped my wine, but his comment burned. This was what Kristen was talking about: always right, always confident, with a touch of criticism prickling beneath his words.
Nana turned to me: “Are you seeing anyone special?”
“Yeah, we just had brunch with him.” Kristen smirked.
“It’s—it’s really new.” I closed off the topic and everyone looked around uncomfortably.
A drilling noise pierced the air, and Bill rolled his eyes. “The house next door, they’ve had workers tromping around the yard for months now. You know the one, with the stupid pineapples,” he said to me, pointing. I felt the air shift; Kristen had gone very quiet, and Nana regarded Bill with something twitchy and furious in her eyes. I wanted to fold up, shrink down to a tiny rectangle like a tent.
“Now, remind me,” Nana tried, “do you have siblings?”
Didn’t they have any questions for Kristen, whom they’d raised—whom they hadn’t seen in so long? I shook my head. “An only child, like Kristen.”
“And your parents are still in…Minnesota, was it?”
“That’s right. My mom is. My dad’s in Iowa.”
“So you don’t have any family here!” Nana said it with something like horror.
“Nope! I’m doing my own thing in Wisconsin, I guess.”
I liked it here; after eight years, Milwaukee felt like home. It had many of the things I’d loved about Evanston, the town around Northwestern—old, pretty homes and picturesque lighthouses, with just enough of its own offbeat identity to make it feel far from Minneapolis, and a better fit for me. Milwaukee had a dash of the backwoods and bizarre: kooky out-of-time dive bars and schmaltzy speakeasies tucked in among bone-white museums and broad, aggressively hip markets. And the lakefront—that beautiful lakefront. Every spring I vowed to spend more time there, reading or swimming or picnicking or flying kites with friends’ children. And every year, summer sped by and the leaves began to blush before I’d thought to make the short drive to Bradford Beach.
* * *
—
An hour later, I began the lengthy and time-honored process of expressing my thanks and attempting to leave. I followed Nana into the kitchen, clutching my empty glass and the untouched bowl of nuts she’d set out.
She whirled around. “I want to exchange numbers in case you ever need anything.” She handed me her phone, which felt naked and sharp without a case. “Email too. We should have done this a long time ago. I know you’re all set up here, but since your parents are so far away.” Her eyes flickered. “Just in case.”
* * *
—
In my car, I sat still for a moment, my breath traveling in droplets onto the windows and dashboard. Even my parents gave me a cursory hello when I saw them in person; Kristen’s grandparents barely seemed happy to see her. And vice versa—the dislike between them was palpable.
Also. The way that the mention of Chile didn’t bother Kristen—her almost aggressive casualness, the laid-back lean and unhurried, unworried timbre of her voice set me on edge. She’d brought it up at brunch with Aaron, and she hadn’t led the conversation away when Bill broached the subject. Meanwhile, I was so anxious about getting caught that even a mention of the trip made my fingers shake, my teeth chatter.
Chile. The image appeared as if projected onto the windshield: Paolo’s legs on the floor, sneakers turned up toward the ceiling. Blood in a big jammy oval a few feet away.
Sebastian’s head against the cheap metal leg of a bed frame in Cambodia. Blood speckling Kristen’s feet.
Stop. Stop. Stop.
I started my car, cranked the radio. When it was loud enough to drown out my thoughts, I drove away.
CHAPTER 16
I lifted the heavy globe, stuck my fingers inside. Like jabbing my nails into the holes of a human skull. I took a few steps and let the bowling ball slip from my grasp. It hit the alley with a satisfying crack, then curved toward the edge, narrowly missing all ten pins.
“Gutter ball!” Aaron called, and I turned to give him an exaggerated shrug. He was reclining in the booth, legs crossed, an old-fashioned held high, and I felt a warm rush at his relaxed air, how comfortable he was no matter the setting.
“Take two,” I replied as the machine spit my maroon ball back onto the rack. It clacked against Aaron’s like they were marbles for giants. I lobbed it a second time and though it arced to the left, it managed to send eight pins tumbling.
“That’s more like it!” Bowling had been Aaron’s idea; I hadn’t been since high school, and I had to admit there was something analog and satisfying about it, the clatters and whirs and Rube Goldberg–machine mechanics of it all. Hideous oxfords, strong drinks in flimsy cups, the familiar smell of floor wax and fried food and shoe disinfectant. I slid onto the plastic bench and Aaron squeezed my knee before standing.
I hadn’t seen Kristen since our strange day-date on Sunday, but I’d relaxed a bit since then. She was just jetlagged, I decided, and off her game. She was still my best friend, the one who knew me better than anyone else in the world. We’d fall into our old, familiar groove soon.
What’s more, slowly, incrementally, my fear of being connected to Paolo’s murder was withering. I’d checked the stats the night before: In the United States, 40 percent of murders go unsolved. Some arithmetic, then: That meant that detectives threw up their hands at almost seven thousand murders a year—seven thousand cadavers with no origin story, no clarity around the instant they went from human to body. And that meant there were thousands, maybe millions in the aggregate, of people walking the Earth this very moment who’d gotten away with murder. And surely most felt guilt, shame, regret like a cold sprinkler that spread out inside them. But they didn’t turn themselves in or hang themselves with a confession blazing nearby.
Perhaps they relished the new lease on life, vowed to try harder, do things better from that day forward. Forward. Because we’re three-dimensional creatures, stuck on a one-way timeline and unable to redo the past. The conclusion gave me some comfort, which was perhaps a bit sick: I wasn’t alone, and I had no choice, really, but to roll on forward, smooth and steady.
Watching Aaron swagger toward the lane and sweep the ball bang down the center, his red-and-blue shoe a millimeter from the oily wood, I marveled again at the two-facedness of it all. Does this make me a sociopath?
Aaron followed me home afterward, and whenever I saw him in the rearview mirror I felt a stirring in my hips. He was so uncomplicated and good, straightforward and kind. And he wanted me. After all the dating-app jerks who’d turn hot and cold like a miserable shower; after those wasted years with Ben, who dangled conditional love like a carrot outside my cage; after the months with Colin, whose ugly side seemed to blink on like a light; here was Aaron, happy to see me, eager to spend time with me.
In my apartment I gathered some glasses and a bottle of wine. I’d cleaned earlier in case he came over, but I’d left it just messy enough for it to look casual, like I hadn’t tidied up. I connected my phone to the Bluetooth speaker and cued up something sultry, a husky female singer tickling sad piano chords. Then church bells in the background, a dissonant fade-out.
I leaned against the sofa’s arm and arced my knees over Aaron’s lap. He stroked my calf.
“Can I ask you something?”
He took a sip of wine. “Of course.”
“Were you raised religious?”
A flick of laughter. “Yeah, Methodist, but my parents never seemed serious about it.”
I nodded, thinking. “And are you glad you had that?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You asking if I want to raise my kids with religion?”
“Oh God, no,” I spat out. “It really did sound like that, didn’t it? I was just—”
“It’s cool, Emily, relax.” He ran his fingers over my leg again, higher this time, along the jeans’ inseam.
I hurried to explain: “I was thinking about it after seeing Kristen’s grandparents the other day. They still go to the same church she went to as a kid. One time she told me her faith made it so much harder for her after her parents died, because her mom wasn’t a Christian. So Kristen thought she went to hell.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head. “How’d they die?”
“In a fire. She was twelve. So sad.”
“That is sad.” He thought for a second. “Was it, like, a freak accident? What started the fire?”
“I don’t know, what starts any house fire? Faulty wiring or something?”
“That’s awful.” He drained his glass. “Well, I dunno about the heaven-and-hell stuff. I never really cared about the Methodist moral code, but it was nice being part of a community.”
A moral code. My earliest associations with goodness and justice hadn’t come from a sacred text but from careful observation of what garnered approval…or at least didn’t draw my parents’ ire. Sex, too, lacked a pall of morality—starting with Ben, what to do, when, and with whom had all come down to what made sense to me, what felt right.
Screw Sebastian for trying to take that away from me; what I did with my body was my decision, all mine. I sat up and reached for Aaron’s jaw, then pulled him gently toward me.
“Well, hello.” His tone bordered on giddy, and I smiled against his lips.
I ruffled his hair, flicked my head toward the bedroom. “Just be gentle, okay?”
And he was, his lips and tongue and fingers soft, and he paused to stamp my neck with kisses and ask, again and again, “Is this okay?” Every time I felt the faraway panic begin to flare, I watched his face, the uncomplicated kindness there, and breathed until it subsided. Breathed louder, harder, both of our breaths rhythmic and sultry, until all that existed was the feeling, deep and tender and raw.
After a freeze-frame of stillness, he slid his hand across the sweat on my back.
“That was amazing,” he murmured, and gave my ass a cheerful slap. He padded into the hallway, and I listened to the minor melody trickling out of the living room.
I slipped into a kimono and sat on the edge of the bed. I felt sexy and wild, and I congratulated my body on finally cooperating post-Cambodia. I smoothed my tangled hair and turned on a lamp, then headed for the bathroom as soon as I heard him come out. As I neared, the music abruptly dropped out, replaced by the handbell-like chime that signaled a new text.
I’d dropped my phone on the coffee table earlier, and now I flipped it over. I scanned the screen twice, my stomach scrunching and crumpling like a sheet of tinfoil.
Two missed calls from Kristen, ten and fourteen minutes ago, when Aaron and I were in bed.
And just now, a text: “I need you.”
CHAPTER 17
“Everything okay?” Aaron paused in the kitchen’s doorway, brow wrinkled.
I looked up. My brain skittered ahead: I should call her. Wait, no. She’d purposely said nothing. That meant it was about Cambodia or Chile—definitely not something I could discuss in front of Aaron.
Or, hell, on the phone at all.
“What is it?” He crossed to me and I dropped the phone to my side.
“It’s Kristen,” I said. “She’s— I’m so sorry to do this, but I have to go see her.”
“Now?” He shook his head. “Is she okay?”
I ached to tell him, to open my mouth and let the truth spew like poison. You were right about something happening in Chile. And in Cambodia, before that.
My arms crossed over my belly. “Yeah, she’s…going through something right now.”
“Oh right, she just got laid off.” I must’ve looked startled because he added, “Or something else? Sorry, I know it’s none of my business.”
“No, I’m sorry. To be all vague and to suddenly run out on you.” I looked around. “You can stay, if you want? Dunno how long I’ll be there.”
“That’s all right, I’ll head home.” Aaron lifted my chin and kissed me sweetly, his lips soft. “See you soon?”
A folding feeling in my chest, a desperate desire to blow Kristen off and sink back into his embrace. I pressed my eyes closed, steeled myself. “Of course.”
* * *
—
I called Kristen from a button on my steering wheel as soon as I got on the freeway, which I had all to myself at midnight on a school night. I need you. I flicked through the possibilities like a channel surfer: Something had happened with our Cambodian secret—maybe the body had been recovered, bloated and waterlogged, or someone had uncovered something in the hotel, some evidence we’d missed. Or—more likely—it had to do with Chile, the fresher cover-up, one that hadn’t yet stood the test of time.
Or maybe it was so much simpler than that. Maybe she was finally freaking out the way I had after Cambodia, without upheaval at work and her last-minute trip to Wisconsin to distract her. Maybe it was all sinking in—the attack, the dawning horror of what she’d done to defend herself, and all those nightmarish hours afterward. Aw, Kristen. My love for her oozed from my heart like an egg’s soft yolk.
“Hi!” She picked up right before it went to voicemail. She sounded…chipper.
“Kristen, hey. I’m on my way.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m coming over. I figured you…that isn’t what you meant?” I switched to the right lane and slowed.
“Oh, I had a stupid fight with Bill at dinner and then I couldn’t sleep and felt like talking. On the phone.”
The baseball stadium sparkled on the left; I was still closer to home than to Brookfield. “Got it! I totally overreacted. I thought you meant…like, you needed me.”
She laughed. “Girl, you know I always do!” A crunching sound. “Are you close? You can still come over! Sorry, I’m working my way through a bag of chips.”
I slid onto the off-ramp, deflated and—though I knew it wasn’t fair—irritated. “It’s so late, I better not. But what happened with Bill?”
“He was giving me shit about getting laid off. Zero sympathy. As if he has any idea how these things work—he inherited his dad’s company.” More munching. “I know you understand what the job market’s actually like for millennials.”
“Totally. I’m sorry, Kristen. That sucks. He just doesn’t get it.” Ugh, if I’d known she didn’t actually need me, I would’ve let Aaron spend the night—I wanted to text him, check if he’d consider heading back, but my phone wasn’t in its normal spot in the console. “And it’s keeping you awake? A job loss is…big. It merits grieving.”
“I’m not, though. Grieving. Screw Lucas and that godforsaken job.” She swallowed a mouthful of chips and her voice grew clearer. “It’s just weird not knowing what the future will hold. I guess that’s why I called you. You’re my rock.”
“I’m here for you,” I replied, suddenly guilty that I was only half listening—that part of my mind was focused on catching Aaron before he turned his phone off and climbed into bed. At a red light, I hunched and groped around the footwell on the passenger side.
“And it was so nice to catch up in Chile,” she went on, and I was so surprised my foot slipped off the brake. I whipped upright and flung my weight on the pedal. “All that uninterrupted conversation, you know? And, Em, I feel like we haven’t talked that much since. No Kremily dates.”
Kremily—I hadn’t heard that one since before she moved away, the cheesy portmanteau we’d made up at Northwestern (our friendship was, we figured, easily as legendary as Kimye or Speidi).
“We definitely need some one-on-one time,” I said. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about me, just hang out with me!” There was a giggle in her tone. “Tomorrow?”
“Crap, I can’t tomorrow.” I had therapy, and felt another spear of guilt that I was hiding this from her. But…but we’re all allowed to keep a few things private. “Friday?”
“Wait, what are we doing for your birthday on Thursday?”
“I’m…well, shoot. I made plans with Aaron before you were here. We’re just staying in—I don’t feel like doing anything huge this year.”
“Got it.” She sounded so sad, and a cringe went through me. I reminded myself that it was okay to have plans with my boyfriend. It was okay to not invite her too. But then her cheer rebounded: “ ‘Nothing huge,’ noted. Yes, ma’am.”
