Authors: Allison Leotta
“Definitely.”
He told the interns to go home and get some rest. Back in the house, Cooper turned on the lights and went to the kitchen.
“How did you know?” Anna asked.
“I heard that a group of teenagers were coming. I didn’t know it was going to be a bunch of girls. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“You have to hand it to them. They must really hate you. I mean, just driving into Detroit is a serious adventure for a gaggle of sixteen-year-old suburbanites.” He poured cider into a cup and handed it to her. “You and Jody have seriously pissed off a lot of people.”
“Yeah.”
“Cheers to that.”
They raised their glasses and drank the sweet cider.
He rinsed their cups, turned off the lights, and returned to the den, propping up the power sprayer on the windowsill again.
“You think anyone else will come?” Anna asked.
“Unlikely. But I’m gonna hang out here just in case.”
“I’ll keep you company.” She sat down next to him. They talked about his time at MSU and her time at U of M, his brothers and her parents, whether ground buffalo was tastier than ground turkey. The night was quiet. After an hour, she rubbed her eyes.
“I’m completely exhausted but buzzing with adrenaline.”
“Arson and marauding packs of teenyboppers can do that.” He put his arm on the back of the couch. “Come here.”
She looked at him. “Cooper, I’m sorry, I’m not—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “Me neither. Not tonight, anyway. Just curl up. You need to sleep. This is my patented, no-fail, go-to-sleep method. You’ll be sawing logs in no time.”
His lopsided grin reminded her of the sunny farm boy who still lived inside this big Army Ranger’s body. She fitted herself into the crook of his arm and laid her head on his chest. A cool breeze came in from the window, but she was warm and comfortable pressed against him. His arm wrapped around her.
“I’m going to tell you all about green farming,” he said. “I think you’ll find it riveting. There are certain goals everyone agrees on—economic, environmental, and social sustainability—but a lot of debate about the practical application. Recent environmental methods focus on crop rotations that mitigate weeds and disease, pest-control strategies that don’t use toxic chemicals, and soil and water conservation practices that minimize adverse impacts to the immediate and off-farm environments.”
“Oh my God.” She yawned. “You’re good.”
“I didn’t get a degree in agricultural, food, and resource economics for nothing. Wait till I get to irrigation technology.” He continued talking. His voice was low and comforting, his words esoteric and dry. Anna’s eyelids drifted down. She smelled cedar and cherries on his soft T-shirt and felt his thumb brushing her shoulder. She slept.
42
O
wen Fowler deserved to die. I knew that for over a decade, from the day he raped me till the day he went up in flames. But I didn’t kill him in that stupid muscle car . . . although, I have to admit, the poetic justice of that was pretty satisfying: in the car where he raped me, by way of the football stadium that allowed him to do so much evil over so many years. But that wasn’t my plan. My plan was to drown him.
It was a warm night in May, and I was at Screecher’s. He was sitting at the bar, sipping whiskey, straight up. That’s what he did most nights after practice, if he didn’t go to the casino. Other than in the stadium, he was most at home in Screecher’s, that living shrine to him.
I wore jeans that hugged the curves of my ass, and a shiny black halter top that showed off all the cleavage I hadn’t had back in high school. My long blond hair hung in fresh-washed splendor down my back. Several men watched me as I walked in ridiculously high heels over to Coach’s side.
“What are you drinking?” I asked.
“Jim Beam.” He smiled at me. “Hi . . .”
“Jody,” I said. “Jody Curtis.”
“Sure, sure. It’s been a while.”
In fact, it had been ten years. I occasionally saw him around town, and if our eyes met we would nod at each other, but we never stopped to chat.
Now, as we exchanged small talk, he didn’t seem as wary as you might expect. I imagine it was because he’d targeted so many girls at that point. Some, like me, fought him. Some, like Wendy, liked it.
Many continued to crush on him for years afterward. It was probably hard to keep us straight.
The night he raped me changed the course of my life, but for him, it was just one in a series of the very similar events that played out on the seats of his expensive cars over decades. He might not even remember that I was one of the ones who fought.
The bartender came over. It was Grady Figler, in all his tattooed glory, and I almost fell off my bar stool. We’d hooked up the weekend before, after a friend’s house party. He’d called once, but I hadn’t gotten back to him. I was too busy plotting. Now, Grady greeted me with a big grin, like I was there to see him. I wasn’t. I didn’t even know he worked there, and seeing him there was awkward. I ordered a Jim Beam, straight up. When he brought it, I thanked him and turned to Owen. I saw Grady standing there—maybe confused, maybe a little hurt. I felt bad, but I had an important goal that night, and playing nice with Grady was not it. In my peripheral vision, I saw him eventually walk off and take someone else’s order.
I lifted my glass to the coach. “Cheers to a great season.”
He smiled and we clinked glasses. The whiskey burned going down.
“Who’s going to be your first string this year?” I asked.
That was all it took to get Coach talking in earnest. He talked recruiting and practice. He talked scholarships and push-ups. He talked about the pressure of having the whole town’s reputation on his back. I nodded sympathetically and interjected the appropriate exclamations. But mostly I was experiencing some major butterflies from being this close to him again.
I was riveted by his face—how much it had changed, and how much it hadn’t over the last ten years. His blond hair had more silver in it now, especially around the temples. The lines around his blue eyes were deeper. But his figure was still slim and athletic; his polo shirt hugged him a bit tighter than it needed to, showing off that fact. His skin glowed with the perfectly even tan of someone who worked hard at it. He was fifty, but he was still very attractive, in a highly produced sort of way. It wasn’t fair. But the world’s not fair, and Coach Fowler’s ability to stave off decrepitude was just a tiny sliver of that.
I was keenly aware of how a decade had changed our dynamic. We were still twenty-five years apart, but forty-to-fifteen feels very different from fifty-to-twenty-five. Ten years ago, he’d been a grown-up and I was a kid. I thought he knew everything. He was like a god, on a different dimension from me. Now, we were still far apart, but we inhabited the same universe. If necessary, I could hold my own as a fellow adult. The shift was subtle but powerful. He must have felt it too.
We had a friendly conversation, during which I made sure my bar stool crept closer to his. I started touching his arm when he made a funny point and tipping my head to expose the side of my neck. I flipped my hair back over my shoulder and licked my lips. When the moment was right, I put my hand lightly on his knee.
He smiled broadly, said how great it was to catch up, and left.
I felt like an idiot. The people watching me flirt now smirked at me sitting alone.
I could only come up with two explanations. First, he was suspicious because I accused him of rape ten years earlier. But I didn’t get that vibe from him. Like I said, he didn’t seem wary. And I wasn’t sure he even knew I made a report to the police, much less remembered it now. Nothing had ever come of it.
I knew it wasn’t loyalty to his wife.
That left one other explanation, and that’s the one I thought more likely. He just wasn’t interested. Now that I had my own grown-up power and control, the turn-on was gone. I had real breasts and hips and a mind of my own, all of which I enjoy, thankyouverymuch. But he liked girls who were young, awed, and easy to control. At twenty-five years old, I had aged out of his attraction.
Grady came over and poured another two fingers of Jim Beam into my glass. “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “That man’s never gone home with anyone who’s old enough to drink here.”
43
G
ood morning, sunshines!” Jody trilled. She stood in the doorway to the den, wearing pajamas and looking pleased. “Someone had a good night.”
Anna lifted her head from Cooper’s chest. Light streamed into the den through the open window, where the power sprayer was still propped. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. Cooper lay on his back with his arm around her; she was curled into him. They were both on the couch below the window. His eyes blinked open and met hers.
He said, “It
is
a good morning.”
Anna sat up quickly. “Jody! Hi! Cooper and I were, uh, just talking last night, and I guess I fell asleep—”
“You don’t need to explain to me,” Jody said. “You two should’ve hooked up months ago. I’m going to have some cornflakes.” She padded to the kitchen.
Cooper sat up. On his face was a day’s worth of stubble and a grin.
“I’m sorry.” Anna laughed self-consciously. “She can be so goofy.”
“She’s right, though.”
Anna’s laugh trailed off. “Coop.” She looked down at her jeans. “My life is in D.C. now. I’m going back when the trial’s over. I like you too much to hurt you.”
“You think you can do worse than the Taliban?” A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Give it your best shot.”
He stood, stretched, and trotted up the stairs. She watched him go.
• • •
Despite Anna’s entreaties, Jody insisted on going to work. “They’re not gonna scare me off,” Jody announced. And then, less defiantly: “Plus I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“Call me when you get there,” Anna finally conceded. “And then at your morning break, at your lunch break, and at your afternoon break. And then call me when you’re on your way home.”
The arson had scared
her
.
After Jody left, Cooper brought out a folding table and helped Anna set it up under the window in his living room. From there, she could do her work with a view of the apple trees, the goldfish pond below, and the Detroit skyline beyond. She thanked him, and he went off to work on his farm.
But what work could she do? She’d been working on Jody’s computer, which had gone up in the blaze. She had lost all her work product for the case. Everything: her notes, her legal briefs, the five sealed police reports that had been anonymously left on Jody’s doorstep. She wondered if that was the purpose of the fire. The thought made her stomach hurt. How far would the town go to stop her from defending her sister? How much danger were she and Jody still in?
She called her sister thirty minutes later and made sure she’d made it safely into the GM factory.
“I’m fine!” Jody answered.
“Thanks.” Anna hung up and tried to be productive.
The first thing she needed was to buy a computer. The practice of law was fully computerized, and she couldn’t use her DOJ equipment to work on Jody’s case. She used her phone to do some research on laptops. After an hour, she ordered a Mac, which would be shipped to her.
A figure walked by outside, and she lowered her phone. It was Cooper, with Sparky trotting at his heels. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt and carried a bulky sack over his shoulder. She tried not to
stare at his rear—but failed. It was both a relief and a disappointment when he disappeared from view.
In quick sequence, Grace and Jack called, having seen the story of the fire on the news. Anna was glad to hear familiar voices. She heard the concern in theirs. She also heard, in the background of Jack’s call, a woman playing with Olivia. Anna thought of the red negligee draped over the chair in Jack’s bedroom. Her heart hurt. She hung up as quickly as politely possible.
She turned back to Jody’s case, trying to figure out how to rebuild all the work she’d lost. She could get another copy of everything the prosecutor had already turned over. She could get a copy of all the documents she herself had filed with the court. But her handwritten notes were irreplaceable, as were the sealed police reports that had landed on Jody’s doorstep. She might never be able to see those again. She did not have the information within them memorized. It was a tremendous loss.
She used her phone’s browser to skim through news websites, looking for coverage of Jody. She found stories similar to the one reported on CNN last night, but no new developments.
In the far distance, she caught a glimpse of Cooper pushing a wheelbarrow toward the community garden. She watched until he turned into a row of sunflowers and was out of her sight. She was too easily distracted today. But, she realized, Cooper was one of the few bright spots in her life right now. Was it really so bad to think about something good for once? It was certainly better than obsessing about that red negligee. Cooper was kind and smart. He had her back. She let herself linger on the memory of how warm and comfortable she felt this morning waking up with him on the couch. The moment when she looked up and met his eyes—she wanted to kiss him. That was crazy, of course. She shouldn’t risk the single good thing in her life by adding the wild card of romance. But . . . was that really a healthy way to think? If something was good, you should want more of it, not less.
Anna shook her head and vowed to get something—anything—done workwise. She logged on to the Westlaw app on her phone
and searched for cases where the government had been forced to turn over sealed materials.
After a while, she gave up and admitted that she couldn’t concentrate. She set her phone down again. She stood and looked out the window, trying to see where Cooper had gone. She sat and chewed her thumbnail.
Then she was on her feet, striding out the door, through the orchard, and across the street to the community garden.