“We’re in different grades, Polly,” Violet said, sounding miserable. “I’m a sophomore. He’s a senior.” She looked at Micah. “Thanks,” she said to him. “For your help.”
She mumbled something about having to study and started walking back in the direction of her house. Nico couldn’t get a bead on whether she was just uneasy around this older boy, or if perhaps she, like the others, held him responsible for what had happened. Nico looked at the boy and wondered if the story he’d told—and stuck to—was true or not. He’d said that he had had no idea Olivia was there, only discovering her body when, hungover, he went to try to clean up the next morning. She’d been in the guest room, curled on a narrow strip of floor between the bed and the window. A cursory glance of the room would’ve revealed nothing. She was out of sight except to someone trying to walk every inch of the house and survey the extent of the damage, the amount of work ahead to clean it up.
He’d said that earlier that night, she’d told him she was leaving with someone else, that they’d fought, and she’d left angry. Micah claimed he never saw her again after that, that he’d gotten drunk and passed out, waking late the next morning to find the real nightmare beginning.
“I just wish I could take it all back,” he’d said. Some took that statement as an admission of guilt. But Nico, for his own reasons, understood how someone completely innocent of wrongdoing could still wish they could take words and actions back, could undo what had been done.
He stuck out his hand to the kid. “Thanks,” he said, and waited for Micah to reciprocate, waited for the moment he could look him squarely in the eye. Maybe if Micah would look him in the eye, he could somehow know whether the kid was guilty or not. Maybe Nico could get back the mojo he seemed to have lost—that sense of knowing the right thing, of trusting his gut. Had he ever had that? If not, he’d certainly thought he had. Nico missed the days when he’d had it all but, of course, hadn’t known it. And wasn’t that the human condition? Like this kid’s, his life had changed profoundly and irreversibly last spring. Like this kid, he was still trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
Micah Berg gripped Nico’s hand. Though the kid gave it a good, strong shake, he didn’t quite look him in the eye. Instead his gaze took in the expanse of Nico’s face with a sweeping glance before releasing his grip and reaching down to scratch his dog’s head. “Good boy,” the kid said to the dog. “You’re a good boy.”
Nico decided not to attach too much meaning to the exchange. He bid both Polly and Micah goodbye and trudged back to his car, feeling sadder than before he’d arrived. He wished he hadn’t dropped by in the first place, wished he’d never gotten involved with these people, or this place.
Polly
Polly dragged her belligerent dog back into the house, made sure to shut the door securely behind her, and unclipped Barney’s leash from his collar. He sank down and rested his chin on his paws in that way he had that he knew would work on her anytime he’d been naughty.
“Typical male,” she said to him. “Guilty as sin, but thinking you can weasel your way out of it by looking cute.”
She rolled her eyes and walked away. Sometimes walking away was the best thing to do.
She’d walked away from Calvin, but he wasn’t letting her go so easy. She wasn’t stupid: she knew it was her money and not her he was pursuing. She’d ignored a call from him just as that cop had rung the doorbell. It was the call she’d been expecting since she’d backed out of her driveway with her dog beside her, the back seat loaded with her belongings and a bag full of money. It had taken longer than she had expected, but he had called. She could feel the silence between them breaking like glass shattering.
She’d had to will her heart to calm down enough to open the door to the cop and appear serene and composed. It was almost a godsend that Barney had bolted when he did, effectively ending the cop’s attempt at banter. She wondered what he’d been getting at with his concerned act. How dare he stand there and pretend like he cared, when he was the one who had hauled her daughter to jail, took her granddaughter’s mother from her?
He may have smiled at her, but behind the smile had been an agenda. If Polly had learned anything in five marriages, and many more relationships besides, she’d learned what a man looked like when he was trying to hide something. She closed her eyes and steeled herself to listen to whatever voicemail her husband had left her. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow she would call a lawyer. Tomorrow she would figure out what to do with the cash she’d hidden. It wasn’t safe to leave it here, at a possible crime scene. That detective had warned her the first time they had talked that they could search again at any time.
Calvin’s voice blared in the quiet room, and she grabbed for her phone to turn him down so Violet wouldn’t hear, though the girl was all the way upstairs, in her room, behind closed doors, where she stayed pretty much all the time, always saying she had to study. But no one needed to study that much. Tomorrow she needed to figure out that situation, too.
Polly reached down and touched her toes ten times, something she did whenever she needed to release stress, then rewound the message to start it over. “Sugar,” said Calvin, using the pet name he’d employed to charm her when they first began dating. For a moment the term of endearment filled her with hope, but the word was just like that fake smile on that cop’s lips.
“It’s your husband. I’ve just been over to the bank and spoken with a Mr. Dwight Richards, who says he has no idea what could’ve happened to my wife or our money. He suggested that I call you and straighten out our little domestic dispute. So that’s what I intend to do.” There was a pause, and in that pause she felt the violence that lay inside Calvin, coiled like a snake, so it shouldn’t have surprised her when he hissed the next sentence. “I’m going to straighten this out however I have to.” Then the line went dead.
She looked around, fear gripping her as she scanned her surroundings, as if she were going to find Calvin there, peering in the window, figuring out a way inside. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that Calvin didn’t know where she was. He didn’t even know she had a daughter, wouldn’t possibly link the news about the suburban madam’s arrest to Polly’s disappearing act. And she’d turned off the tracking on her phone before she’d even backed out of their driveway. So he’d never find her that way. She stood still and kept on taking deep breaths, telling herself it would all be OK. When Barney came slinking into the room, looking for solace, looking for forgiveness for his escape, she offered it willingly. Not because he deserved it, but because she needed to offer it. She needed to bury her face in his warmth and give absolution, hoping that in giving it, she’d somehow receive it, too.
Violet
When she took Barney outside again, it was on the leash. She gave him the evil eye before they ventured out into the yard, and he cowered appropriately. She took that to mean he’d learned his lesson. He did his usual sniffing and walking, and she let him lead the way, allowing the leash to slacken more and more with each step until he was walking far ahead of her and she was barely holding on.