Cait sat in the plush burgundy chair in her living room, listening for any chirp or whimper from Leyla’s room, but the only sounds came from the breeze that flowed through the windows and the creak of floorboards in the upstairs apartment. Her second-floor neighbor seemed busy up there today, and she had decided he must be cleaning. Maybe he had a date coming over tonight, or maybe he had just gotten sick of living in a dirty apartment. Cait knew how he felt. She ought to be cleaning herself, but she knew that Leyla would wake up the second she started.
Whoever answered Sean’s phone earlier had said she would get a call within twenty-four hours. The deadline was still far away, but she needed her brother more than ever, so she tried him again.
As she listened to the ringing on the other end of the line, a cold feeling of dread crept over her. The ringing continued and she began to wish she had counted the rings from the outset. After a time, the call simply ended, with no answer and no voice mail picking up.
Cait held the phone away from her face and stared at it a moment, then pressed END to clear the screen. Then she flinched when her ringtone started to play, the music much too loud in the quiet house. The display showed only Unknown Caller, but she felt a rush of hope as she answered.
“Sean?”
“Caitlin McCandless?”
The voice did not belong to her brother.
“This is she.”
“Ms. McCandless, it’s Brian Herskowitz.”
“Hercules,” she said, with a flood of relief. “Thank God. Listen, Sean usually calls me before he goes away, and he always tells me I should get in touch with you in an emergency. Well, he didn’t call this time, but now I can’t reach him. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but I really need to talk to him, or at least have you get a message to him. Can you do that?”
In the moment of his hesitation, she knew something was wrong. Hercules was supposed to be Sean’s wingman. They were as much friends as they were co-workers—at least to hear Sean tell it. Hercules should have been warmer from the outset, friendlier, but he’d called her “Ms. McCandless” instead of just “Cait.” The formality should have been a warning.
“Ms. McCandless—” he began again.
“Cait,” she interrupted. “Call me Cait.”
“I’m sorry, Cait, but I’m calling with awful news. Sean had a heart attack early this morning. He went out for coffee and had just left the café he always goes to, when he collapsed. The doctors say he died within minutes.”
“What?” she said, telling herself she hadn’t heard correctly, or that it must be some kind of horrible joke. “You … you asshole. Don’t say that. It’s not …”
Then the tears came, shuddering out of her in fits and gasps, and she held the phone against her cheek as if it were the only thing keeping her skull from falling apart.
Images of Sean flashed across her mind like playing cards in the hands of some magician—a brief glimpse and then back into the deck. Sean in a Batman costume one Halloween when he’d dressed her up as Robin; she couldn’t have been more than seven. Sean making her lunch—peanut butter and jelly and Fluff, just like she wanted—on mornings when their dad had forgotten. Sean waking her up late at night to watch scary movies that Dad had forbidden her to see.
Her father had loved her, and had devoted as much time as he could to her, but for all intents and purposes, her big brother had been her primary parent. Dad had taught her to throw a baseball and to ride a bike, but Sean had taught her to throw a punch and drive a car. He had held her as she’d cried that day in the seventh grade when Mike Torchio had teased her because, at nearly thirteen, she still didn’t need a bra, and told his friends in a voice loud enough for her to hear that he wouldn’t dance with her even if she were the only girl in their class.
Sean had wanted to pummel Mike for that, but he had loved Cait enough to leave the boy alone, because she couldn’t bear to see him hurt, no matter what he had done to her. As she got older, she had never regretted stopping Sean from beating up Mike, but she had regretted not doing it herself. Even back then, she could have taken him, because Sean had taught her how to fight.
And he had kept teaching her. The more he had learned, the more he had trained her. What she had learned about hand-to-hand combat in the National Guard had been next to useless in comparison to the skills and styles her brother had brought home from his training with the Marines, and then, later, from private instructors.
All to keep her safe.
“Tell me,” she said, her voice hard and cold. “Tell me how it happened.”
“Cait, listen. Sean and I worked together for a long time,” Hercules said, voice halting and full of regret. “He was one of the best people I’ve ever known. And he won’t be forgotten. I’m sure you’re aware that he worked at the Pentagon. After his service in the Marines and his employment here, he’s earned the honor of being interred in Arlington National Cemetery. His wishes have already been carried out, but—”
“Wishes? What are you talking about?” she asked.
It came at her too quickly. She could barely follow what Hercules was saying.
“Sean left explicit instructions about how he wanted his remains to be cared for in the event of his death. He’s already been cremated. A non-denominational memorial service will be held at Arlington, but we can schedule that around your availability.”
Cait could barely speak, but she forced herself to do so, if only to keep him from saying anything else to add to her pain.
“Cremated? Who gave you permission to do that?” she demanded, wiping at her tears, trying to make her brain work.
There would be no good-bye, she realized. Her brother no longer existed as anything more than ashes. She wouldn’t even be able to see his body, to touch his hand and tell him how much she loved him. How much she needed him. How much she would miss him.
“I’m his next of kin,” she said. “You can’t just cremate somebody!”
Hercules seemed to hesitate. Cait thought she heard someone talking in the background and realized he wasn’t alone. It had sounded to her almost as if he was reading from a script, and now she wondered if that wasn’t close to the truth. This wasn’t a call from a grieving friend. It was Brian Herskowitz doing his job.
“Sean’s wishes were very clear,” Hercules said.
“Bullshit,” Cait hissed. “He never would have done that to me. Jesus, I thought you were his friend. Sean thought you were his friend. What the hell is really going on? My brother works at the Pentagon, he grows that beard and runs off to the Middle East every couple of months, and now he’s dead and you’ve turned him to ash before I’ve even had a chance to identify his body. Is he really dead, or is that just a story? And if he’s dead, what are you hiding by cremating him?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ms. McCandless—”
“It’s Ms. McCandless again, huh?”
“Cait,” Hercules corrected himself. “Sean and I worked together as systems analysts for the Pentagon. I know how hard this must be hitting you. I know your parents are gone. I know your baby’s father was killed, and I can’t imagine what—”
“Damn right, you can’t imagine! You don’t know me. We’ve met, like, twice. So stop trying to spin this. If these were supposedly Sean’s wishes, I want to see the documentation where he requested it. And you’d better believe I’m going to look into the legality of you fucking cremating him before even notifying me that he was—”
Dead. The word wouldn’t come. Oh, my God. Sean is dead.
And then it hit her. Cars with untraceable license plates.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Cait, why don’t you take some time to recover from this, get your thoughts together, and then call me? You can figure out what you want to do about a memorial, and—”
“Wait.” She felt sick, but her thoughts sharpened. “Listen to me. Sean couldn’t talk about his work, but I always guessed. I always had an idea of what he was up to. And I don’t believe a word of what you’ve said.”
“It’s the truth,” Hercules said. “I wish it weren’t.”
“Shut up,” Cait said, but without rancor. She was thinking. “Did Sean ever talk about our aunt and uncle? Jane and George?”
“Someone ran surveillance on their street last night and this morning. Earlier today, the same people attacked my aunt and tried to abduct my daughter. The local police are investigating, but they’ve got nothing.”
“My God,” Hercules said, his voice hushed, and for the first time Cait thought she was hearing the guy she had met before. Sean’s friend.
“If you know anything about this—if there’s something my brother was involved in that led to this—you’ve got to tell me.”
Again Hercules hesitated. And in those few seconds, Cait felt like she would fall apart completely. How could any of this be possible?
“Cait, I swear to you, if I knew anything about someone trying to snatch your baby, I would tell you. You don’t know me well but, through Sean, I feel like I do know you. There’s no way I can possibly express how sorry I am to have had to tell you that we’ve lost him, but on top of that … I wish there was something I could do.”
“There is,” Cait said, the realization coming upon her suddenly. “I’ve got a license plate number from one of the cars that was in front of my aunt’s house this morning. The police say it’s not a registered plate, that they can’t trace it. But I’m betting there’s more to it than that. If I give you the number, can you look into it for me?”
She heard muffled tones, like Hercules had covered the phone and was talking to someone else. Then he came back.
“I can do that.”
Cait got up and went to her bedroom, found the slip of paper, and read off the license plate number.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Hercules said. “Then you can let me know what you want to do about a service.”
A service. For just a moment she had allowed her anger to cloud her grief, but now it came rushing back.
“Thank you,” she said. The words tasted bitter on her lips. Thank you for what? For lying to me? Because she was absolutely certain that Brian Herskowitz had not told her the truth … at least, not all of it.
When she ended the call, she went in to check on Leyla and was amazed to find her daughter still asleep. But she knew it wouldn’t last much longer, so she walked to the kitchen and began to make some rice cereal, mixing it with jarred baby food. Leyla liked the plums best.
She wept silently, standing by the stove, her hands shaking. The tears were born of grief and sorrow, but also from the realization that she was not alone, even after all that she had been through. She had Jane and George, and she had her baby.
And she’d be damned if she would let anyone take Leyla away from her.