I don’t even need to think twice. “I’ll drive you.”
She opens her mouth. Shuts it. I can tell her first instinct is to say no but she’s reconsidering. She rubs her arms and glances at the photo of Jules and the girls on the end table.
The same photo I knocked over on the day of the funeral.
I’m trying really hard not to remember how it felt to touch her in the only minute she’s ever been in my arms. It’s not that I’m hoping to get something out of Gretchen in exchange for a favor. No, that’s not what this is about.
Gretchen turns back to me. “I was thinking I’d ask the girls’ regular babysitter to watch them all day. She’s good with them, says she misses seeing them.”
It’s pretty clear she doesn’t want to give Danny the responsibility of looking after the twins for hours on end. After today, I can’t say that I blame her.
“Just let me know what time you want to leave on Saturday,” I say.
“Visiting hours begin at eleven. It’s about a two hour drive.” She eyes me, perhaps wondering if I’ll change my mind.
I won’t change my mind.
“I’m always up early. And driving never bothers me.”
Gretchen smiles. A real genuine smile, not the playful sort I see when we’re going back and forth, teasing each other on a mission to find out who can get the better of who.
The sight of that smile seals my opinion that this girl is fucking beautiful and has the potential to own me.
“Thank you,” she says softly. “That would mean a lot to me.”
“Glad to be of some use.”
She winks. “I’ll buy you lunch in gratitude.”
“And I’ll be on my best behavior. I’ll even keep my filthy suggestions to myself.”
A door opens and a child’s voice calls, “Aunt Gretch, come watch with us!”
“I’ll be right there,” she shouts back.
I open the front door. “You shouldn’t keep them waiting, Aunt Gretch.”
“Fine, but it’s too bad.”
“What is?”
She starts to walk away and delivers a searing look over her shoulder. “I’m very fond of your filthy suggestions, Trent.”
She turns the corner without waiting for my response.
Gretchen.
I’m smiling like a goddamn freak on the short walk back to my house.
Gretchen. Gretchen. Gretchen.
7
Gretchen
Violence wasn’t part of my early childhood, not at all. When people find out your father is in prison for murder there’s an assumption that you must have been raised in a maelstrom of blood and fear.
This is likely true for some, but not for me.
I thought of my dad as a sloppy teddy bear of a man who drank too much and complained loudly. But I had no fear of him. He never laid a hand on us kids and to my knowledge he never physically hurt our mother either. He was on a first name business with nearly every member of the local police force and there was nothing unusual about him receiving a ride home in a squad car when he was too drunk to drive himself. While Alex Aaronson was widely regarded as something of a local joke, he’d never been in any real trouble.
Not until that August night.
It was the day of the annual boat race on the lake. Long before I was born, my grandfather won the race for five consecutive years. However, by the time I was growing up most of the competing sailboats were owned by the summer people and rarely did a Lake Stuart local take home the first place trophy. Every summer my father would make a brash prediction that next year he would compete and next year he would win. The fact that he’d never owned a sailboat and possessed inadequate sailing skills was beside the point.
Danny and Jules were off somewhere with friends and my mother hated everything about the lake. My father and I stood on the boardwalk and watched the race together.
“Next year, Gretch. This lake is our birthright, goddammit! Next year we’ll bring the trophy home.”
And I remember nodding to make him happy even though I thought he was talking nonsense far too noisily and I hated the way people stared in our direction with irritation.
Much later, I’d fallen asleep on the sofa while watching a Star Wars marathon and I was startled awake by the sound of the back door crashing open. There was no reason to be afraid. Danny and Trent would often go hurtling through the back door at odd hours, stinking of alcohol and weed and bonfire smoke as they raided the kitchen.
I wouldn’t have even gone to check if I hadn’t heard the unsettling sound of a grown man weeping.
My father stood in the middle of the tiny laundry room wearing only his underwear. At his feet were the bloody clothes he’d just stripped off and snot ran from his nose as he regarded me with bewilderment, followed by fury.
“Get out, Gretchen. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”
Like a panicky rodent, I scampered up the stairs, locked the door to my bedroom and hid beneath my bedsheets until I fell asleep.
The next morning, the news was everywhere and hiding became impossible.
Martin Reiser was the man’s name and he was some Wall Street bigshot who’d just completed construction on an opulent lakefront estate after tearing down four lesser homes. There was no known connection between him and my father until the fender bender at a Mill Street stoplight in the center of town. The accident was Reiser’s fault. He rear ended my father’s car and caused damage to the back bumper. It’s the kind of collision that happens all the time and should have been no big deal.
But both men were drunk. Tempers flared.
And in a comical twist of fate, Reiser was the latest winner of the Lake Stuart Sailboat Regatta. A witness said Reiser snatched the two foot high brass trophy from the front seat of his gleaming Bentley and waved it around. Reiser was a small man and there was really no threat. That’s what multiple witnesses said and the jury agreed. There was no good reason for my father to seize the trophy from Reiser’s clammy hands and deliver four skull-crushing blows. Even after Reiser was on the ground and people were screaming, Alex Aaronson didn’t stop.
Which is why his prison sentence was so harsh and has never been overturned on appeal.
I told Trent I’d be ready to leave for the trip at nine and I am ready. In fact, I’m sitting on the cracked front step with my handbag in my lap, my legs tucked under me and my eyes glued to the house down the street. At eight fifty nine a.m. I watch his Range Rover back out of the driveway and roll slowly this way.
We are going to visit my father in the state penitentiary. This shouldn’t feel exciting but it does because I’m spending the day with Trent.
I also have a crush on Trent. A big one. I could blame that on our moonlight kiss or the fact that I’m lonely and haven’t had sex in over half a year but the reason doesn’t matter. Trent is a source of unpredictable color in my life and I like thinking about him. I like seeing him. I like bantering with him. And I like how he surprises me with friendship when he sees that I’m drowning and frustrated and in need of support.
The vehicle brakes beside the curb and I stand up. Trent doesn’t need to exit but he does, opening the passenger door in a move that reminds me I don’t always know what to expect from him. Trent Cassini is an exciting mix of coarse sexiness and gallant manners and I’ve never met another man like him.