Things You Won't Say (12 page)

“Hear what?” Jamie asked.

“Nothing,” Lou said quickly. “Are the kids watching
Nemo
on TV or is it a DVD?”

“What?” Jamie asked. “I think— It’s a DVD. Why?”

“Just don’t turn on the TV or radio until I get there, okay? I’m in a cab now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Okay,” Jamie said.

Lou could sense the cabdriver watching her. She looked up to see his dark eyes with heavy brows in the rearview mirror.

Lou had offered to help, but the irony was, Lou needed Jamie to instruct her on what to do. Jamie would be good in this situation—she’d keep everybody calm, and figure out the next step. She’d fix something to eat and tuck in the kids and
sit down and start making a plan. But Jamie was drowning now; Lou could hear it in her voice. For the first time, her big sister needed saving.

Lou would do anything for Jamie, but she wasn’t sure if she could do this. She didn’t know how.

The cabbie finally reached Jamie and Mike’s modest brick home, and Lou swiped her credit card through the electronic payment device.

“You know him?” the cabbie asked as Lou opened the door. “The cop?”

Without even thinking about it, Lou blurted “No” and slammed the door.

Instantly she felt a crush of guilt. She wanted to call back the cab, to yell, “Yes, and he’s the best guy I know! He didn’t do it—not like they said on the radio!”

But the cab was turning the corner and disappearing, and Jamie was throwing open the door. She must have been standing by it, watching for Lou. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she looked smaller somehow. Diminished.

Lou finally knew what to do—at least for now. She hurried toward her big sister, stretching out her arms.

•••

Christie was giving herself a manicure when her cell phone rang, startling her and making her smudge her thumbnail. She swore softly, then answered, already irritated at whoever was calling. It had better not be Simon, although she was furious he’d taken her at her word and hadn’t called. She’d never go out with him again, but a little groveling would be nice.

“Hi, is this Mrs. Anderson?”

Christie frowned. “No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

“Oh—I’m sorry. This is Sara James. Henry gave me this number for his mom. He’s over here hanging out with my son Jake.”

Christie poured a little polish remover onto a cotton ball and began to wipe her thumb clean. She’d have to redo it.

“This is Christie Simmons,” she said. “Henry and I have different last names.”

“Oh, me, too,” Sara said. “I never took my husband’s name, either.”

And I never married Henry’s father,
Christie thought. Who cares?

“Anyway, I’m calling because Henry was supposed to be picked up an hour ago. It’s no big deal, but Jake has swim team tonight, so . . .”

Perfect Jamie had forgotten to pick Henry up? Christie could hardly believe it.

“I’ll swing by and get him,” Christie said. “Sorry about that. Henry’s stepmother must have forgotten.”

She relished saying those words. Maybe Sara would repeat them to a few other mothers, let Jamie be the one to look bad for a change. Christie knew she was the subject of gossip among some of the other parents, who assumed Jamie was Henry’s biological mother until she corrected them. Christie stood out—she brought cupcakes with nuts to one of Henry’s classrooms, not realizing there was a kid with a potentially fatal allergy in the class, cheered too loudly when Henry shot a basket or caught a foul ball, and stood up to take pictures at the holiday pageant until a pinched-faced woman tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to sit down.

You just don’t want your husband looking at my ass,
Christie had thought. Maybe her black leather skirt was a touch tight, but she liked it that way and guys sure seemed to as well. No way was she going to turn into one of these Stepford mothers in a pastel sweater set and chinos. She’d unleashed a little shimmy as she sat down, just to piss off the wife. But later that night, when the pageant ended, she’d said good-bye to Henry, who was going home with Mike. Jamie was talking to the sour-faced woman, and Christie wondered if she was the topic
of conversation. A lot of husbands were going to get the cars and warm them up and bring them back for their families. She overheard people making plans to go out for hot chocolate as she walked past parents posing for pictures with their kids. Her car was at the far end of the parking lot since she’d arrived a few minutes late, and by the time she reached it, her toes felt like cubes of ice in her thin boots. She’d gone to a bar with a friend and had ended up sleeping with a guy. The next day, she’d awoken with a headache and no recollection of his name.

After Christie wrote down the address and promised to come pick up Henry, she took a moment to finish painting her nails (in Essie’s Forever Young, and if Freud had anything to say about that, he could screw himself). A few minutes later she headed out, blasting her favorite Dave Matthews CD all the way Sara’s house. She found Henry and his friend tossing around a football in the front yard. The front door of the expensive-looking Tudor was open, and Sara stepped out and locked it behind her, then hurried toward Christie.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said as Christie got out of her car. Christie felt herself standing up a little straighter. She was the good mother in this scenario, the responsible one.

“I just can’t imagine why Jamie forgot,” Christie said, shaking her head. She was thoroughly enjoying this role.

Henry came over and gave Christie a hug. She wondered if it would ever stop feeling strange to have her cheek brush against her son’s jaw.

“You ready to go?” she asked. “I thought I’d grill some chicken if you’re hungry.” That line was for Sara’s benefit, too.

“Jake, come on, we’re late,” Sara said, climbing into her car and turning on the engine. She waved as she pulled out of her driveway.

“Are you really making chicken?” Henry asked.

“Sure,” Christie said. “We just need to swing by the store to get some.” Thank goodness she hadn’t gotten too deep into
character and said she’d make coq au vin—which she’d eaten once with Simon, the pretentious jerk.

“I wonder what happened to Jamie,” Henry said.

She probably forgot you,
Christie wanted to say. But she couldn’t. Any passive-aggressiveness she felt toward Mike’s wife paled in comparison to the love she felt for her son. She couldn’t put Jamie down if it meant hurting Henry. There weren’t many lines she wouldn’t cross in life, but this one was firm.

“Maybe there was some emergency,” she said instead.

“I tried calling the house, but no one answered,” Henry said. “Should we go by there first?”

Christie thought about it. “Sure,” she finally said. She was curious, and she also wanted to see the look on Jamie’s face when Jamie realized she’d messed up.

They drove to Jamie and Mike’s, arriving a little before 5:00 
P.M.

“Looks like they’re home,” Christie said. “Her minivan’s here.”

She rang the doorbell and heard the sounds of running feet. “I GOT IT!” Eloise shrieked.

“No, let me,” someone was saying—a woman with a deep voice. There was the sound of a brief scuffle, then Jamie’s sister, Lou, who quite frankly weirded Christie out, opened the door.

“Yes?” Lou said. Recognition dawned in Lou’s eyes a second later. “Oh! It’s you. Sorry, I thought— Never mind.” She had the door open about six inches, and she looked like a bat peering out of its cave. Lou didn’t make a move to let them in.

Seriously, there was something wrong with Jamie’s sister.

Eloise was screaming, “I wanna get the door! I wanna get the door!”

“Sorry,” Lou said again. “I’m going to shut the door. Can you ring the bell again so Eloise can open it?”

“For real?” Christie asked. The door swung shut. Christie stabbed the bell again.

“Herro?” Eloise said in her little-girl voice. “Henry! Henry! Henry’s home!”

“Can we come in?” Christie asked. “It’s really hot out here.”

“It isn’t much better in here,” Lou said, but the door finally opened.

The first thing Christie noticed was the mess. Jamie wasn’t one of those 1950s-style housekeepers, but her place was generally clean, if not tidy. Today, though, there was a bag with wet bathing suits on the wood floor just inside the entrance, leaking a widening pool of water, and another bag of groceries nearby, slumping over as if it had given up hope of ever being unpacked. Toys were everywhere, and the mail was scattered across the floor, where it must have fallen after being pushed through the slot, and was that. . . ? Christie squinted. Yes. A big old dog turd decorated the middle of the living room rug. She just hoped one of the kids didn’t step in it.

“Everything okay?” Christie asked. The yippy little mutt was jumping all over her and barking—probably desperate for someone to take her for a walk, Christie thought. And Lou wasn’t kidding; it was stifling in here. Christie lifted her hair off her neck with one hand and fanned herself with the other. “Where’s Jamie?”

“I’m here,” Jamie said. She came around the corner, and Christie noticed her eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. “Hey, Henry.” Jamie reached for the boy and hugged him for a long time, then she let go and turned to Christie. “Thank you so much for coming, Christie,” she said. Then she did something remarkable—she hugged Christie, too.

For a moment, shock paralyzed Christie. She couldn’t remember if she and Jamie had ever even touched before and now here stood Mike’s wife, her arms wrapped around Christie’s neck, her face buried in Christie’s shoulder. Despite the heat Jamie felt cold. She was trembling, too, and Christie’s
heart began to pound. Mike worked the seven-to-three shift—he had for years—and his cruiser wasn’t out front. He should have been home by now. Had something happened to him?

“What’s going on?” Christie asked. Jamie shook her head and held on to Christie tighter.

“Jamie?” Henry asked. “Where’s my dad?”

The quaver of fear in Henry’s voice was what finally seemed to break through to Jamie.

“Oh, honey,” she said. She finally pulled away from Christie and cupped Henry’s cheek in her hand. “I’m so glad you’re here. Your dad is going to want to see you as soon as he gets home. He’ll be here soon. He’s fine, everything’s going to be fine . . .”

Everything was not fine. The house was an oven and Eloise was wearing shorts but no shirt and holding on to Henry’s leg and there was poop on the floor and Jamie was babbling in that way that seemed a thin edge from hysteria.

“Can you go say hi to the other kids?” Lou asked Henry. “They were excited to see me, but you’re like a rock star to them.”

Lou inched up a bit in Christie’s estimation. Henry smiled modestly and went into the living room.

“We should sit down,” Jamie said, motioning toward the dining room. Christie followed the sisters to the big wooden table, feeling anxiety gnaw at her.

“Where’s Mike?” she asked. “Did something happen to him?”

“No,” Jamie said at the exact same moment Lou replied, “Yes.”

“Someone tell me what the hell is going on!”

Before either woman could reply, Henry appeared in the doorway of the room, clutching his cell phone.

“Jamie?” he said. Just a little while ago, when she’d seen him at his friend Jake’s house, Christie had been struck by how big her boy was getting. The fuzz above his upper lip,
that deepening voice, those broad shoulders—he was teetering on the brink of manhood. But now he looked like a little boy again, all gangly limbs and huge brown eyes.

“One of my friends just texted me,” Henry said in a wavering voice. “Did Dad really shoot someone?”

Chapter Six

MIKE DIDN’T COME HOME
until nearly seven o’clock that night. Jamie watched as a cruiser pulled up in front of their house and Mike got out of the passenger’s seat. She ran to the front door, flinging it open, as the police car pulled away. Her husband’s gait dragged as he approached their house. His head was bowed, and he still wore his uniform.

Jamie closed the door behind her, so the kids couldn’t hear, and leaned into him. After a moment, she felt his arms rise and encircle her body. They stayed locked together, wordlessly, for a long moment.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered.

She felt his shoulders heave, just once, then he released a sigh. “A bunch of bangers were fighting. I don’t know, maybe it was an initiation or something. It was too big to be spontaneous . . .”

She nodded when he paused.
Tell me,
she thought.
Please don’t hold this in, too.

“We were close by. A car had skidded through an intersection and wrapped around a streetlight. Anyway, no one was hurt, so when the call came in we got there first. Jay, the fucking idiot they paired me with, he just starts run
ning into the scene. He doesn’t wait for backup, he doesn’t stay behind me, he just goes. Maybe he figured they were young-looking so they’d be scared of the cops. What the hell was he thinking?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie whispered.

“The rain’s still pouring down, and Jay’s heading straight for two guys fighting. He’s screaming, ‘Freeze!’ like he’s on a fucking TV show. And I’m trying to get to him, to cover him, but guys keep running in and out of my line of sight. Someone punches me in the head from behind, and I spin around but he’s already gone. When I turn back, I see a guy reaching around behind him. Like to the back waistband of his pants, and I know what he’s doing. He’s getting his piece. Jay’s about twenty feet away and he’s got out his pepper spray. How does he think a hot shot versus a gun is going to end?”

Mike’s breathing was rougher now.

“The guy started to draw on Jay and I had a shot. I took it.”

“You thought he was going to shoot Jay,” Jamie said.

Mike nodded. “He
was
going to shoot Jay. Another two, three seconds . . . I see people looking up, like they think maybe the shot is another crack of thunder. Then the sirens come. Everyone’s running around, yelling. Our backup arrives and they secure the scene while I call for an ambulance.”