21

 

REDD SLICED THROUGH THE silky black skin of a chocolate mousse cake. As she lifted the frosted piece to her lips, she begged for peace.

“Want another cup of java?” the waitress asked.

Redd nodded. Her phone was vibrating when the waitress, one of the gaudy-makeup-and-a-nose-ring types, drew closer to pour fresh coffee into her mug. Redd checked the phone but didn’t pick it up.   

She knew she was wavering a bit, too much probably at a time like this. It was paramount to stay with the course, to stay dedicated. She couldn’t slip and let her emotions get involved in all of this mess, and it was clear that was exactly what was beginning to happen.

She had shouldered the risk of accepting this case, and she knew what the end result would be. She knew it would come eventually, no matter how many times she sent the reality to the back of her mind, hoping it wouldn’t find its way back. 

 “Just do your job,” she mouthed, almost silent.

“You look like something deep is on your mind.” The waitress nosed right in.

Redd’s lips broke, and she flashed a smile. “It’s this case I’m working on.” Why did she say that? She was more than familiar with what always came next, and she hated aimless dialogues. “But it’s just a case.”

“Oh, really? You a cop or something?”

“Or something.” 

“I always wanted to be a detective. Finding bad guys and putting the right people behind bars just seemed like something right up my alley.”

“You crave war?” Redd said, almost like her words were in search of a target. “Because this job, my line of work—it’s a war. There is no clear conscience, no sense of perfect justice, no certainty of winning the fight. I gave up on my thirst a long time ago. It just never seems to let go.”

The waitress was taken aback. She hadn’t expected that kind of answer from what she surmised was no more than innocent chitchat.

“So what held you back?” Redd asked, hastily deflecting the attention from herself.

“More like who,” the waitress returned, putting down the coffee pot.

Way to go, Redd. You caught the big fish.

“My ex. We were in love. Until I smartened up. I can’t exactly blame him, though. The loser gave me something pretty special.” The waitress pulled out a wallet-sized photograph of a small boy with a face that seemed to reach right out of the picture. His soft features brought back kind memories from her childhood. “His name’s Timothy. Tiny Tim, I call him. He hates that, though. And that’s why I love it.”

“He’ll come around,” Redd said, staring at the picture. “He’s beautiful.”

“Gee, thanks. Say, are you okay, miss?” the waitress asked. “You look lost in there, almost like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yeah, sure. I’m fine. Your son, he just rem…. Take good care of him.”

“My name is Paulina,” the waitress said, returning the photograph to her front pocket. “Hope you don’t think I’m weird. I carry his face around with me everywhere I go. It’s like he’s a part of me, you know?”

“Can’t argue with that, now, can I? You love him. I understand. He’s pretty lucky to have someone like you looking out for him.”

“You think?”

Redd nodded again then took a sip of her coffee.

“Well, like I said, that jerk gave me something pretty special.”

“I don’t mean to impose, but what happened?” Careful, Redd. Don’t let your emotions take you over. Don’t second-guess it.

“Tim’s daddy was all about Tim’s daddy. When he wanted something, the creep just took it, plain and simple. Took me. Took my heart. Then he started taking other things. First it started out small—my mom’s necklace, my father’s watch. But once the darkness has you, it doesn’t like to letcha go so easy.”

The hairs on Redd’s neck stood up.

“He liked taking things, thought it was his right. Ended up breaking into people’s houses while they were asleep and knocking off cheap stores. Guess he liked the thrill of it. One day, a detective—like you—came into the picture. Took him away. Guess he’d gotten careless living two lives, you know. He murdered two young boys, said it was an accident. But they all say that, don’t they?”

Redd connected to what she was hearing. It bothered her. She could see that Paulina still missed him, a little crushed that life had dealt her such an unfair hand.

“Maybe he’s gone for the better,” Redd tried. Those words were easy coming out, but once they escaped, they just hovered there with the silence, waiting for her to realize it wasn’t that easy to let someone go. She knew that whether a person was good or evil, they became a part of you.

 “I suppose you’re right,” Paulina muttered. “Suppose it’s for the best. Tim’s good and fine without him.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be okay, I guess. I loved him too much. Wish things coulda been different. I wish he wasn’t taken away. But when you do something that hurts other people, there’s really no other option. People like you are out there to help us. People like you, you’re just doing your job, can’t be blamed for that.”

“No, certainly not,” she slowly answered.

It didn’t take long for Redd to leave the counter and get lost in the night. She felt the cold wrap itself around her effortlessly. “Can’t be blamed,” she repeated, but it didn’t sink in. It wasn’t right, and it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see that.

But it’d been so long; she’d gone so deep. She hated the shell she had become, a tomb of what had once held her soul.

Escape it all before you get too deep. Before it goes any further.

Paulina’s story sang through her mind. Block it. She had to block it. It was too hard to think about him. It was too hard to remember, especially amidst all of this. She had to make the terrible memories die.

Her phone vibrated again. Different number.

Redd picked up.

* * *

There was a need for her now; she could sense it in Joel’s voice. The way he called her, practically begging her to come out to Massachusetts to meet with him. He sounded so desperate, but not in the way Aimee was used to hearing him sound, not the form his tones were taking lately.

This time, his desperation was well warranted and revived. The more she thought of it, the more she felt it was similar to the desperate, lovely technique he had employed when they were dating. Aimee once relished the opportunity to be with him, to be cradled in a manner obviously foreign to her own father. With Joel, it was always simple. Yet strangely, over time, it became complicated. Now it was like they were two rogue planets spinning out of control.

Joel refused to elaborate on anything over the phone. It was too important to get lost on some digital signal, he’d said. All she knew was that he finally had uncovered some useful, concrete news about their daughter, and that was enough to carry her out of the lake house and onto the road to meet him. Like a relentless moth to the flame, though, her mind wanted more specifics. And she’d get them soon.

Aimee checked the clock, which was right beside the monitor displaying her total bill for the trip. Taxis. She hated them. Always had. Her young driver was ever quiet during the first half of the ride, and it bugged her. What Aimee disliked most about traveling with strangers, particularly taxis, was that she had such little control over the path she’d be taking. The driver chose the routes and, if it got quiet enough, left her with too much room to think. Thinking led to feeling, which led to regrets, which became real and living things that eventually ate her up inside. Too much time to think always seemed to rip open the floodgates of the past, and she was already drowning.

But were all of these superstitions real or just her ailing mind searching for a lifeline? As she pondered the road her life had been on since summer, Aimee was overtaken by an unfathomable turbulence telling her that maybe she’d taken the wrong way. But these backseat notions, did they have any validity? Dear God, maybe all of it—Carlos, the fights, threatening Joel with papers—maybe all of it was her fear trying to find a mask to hide behind. In hindsight, maybe her daughter had the right idea.

She held her phone tightly in grip, wondering if she could talk to him again, like lovers do. Talk to him as if their worlds were still in true orbit. Talk to him like she’d already apologized and time had forgiven them both. For a brief spell, she thought if only he’d said the right thing or if she’d loved him harder these last few years, they wouldn’t be two rogue planets. They’d be set right. They’d be strong, on purpose.

Aimee brought her knees into her chest and sat cradled against the window. She didn’t care that the driver exchanged several stares with her. She was a little girl, waiting for Daddy to come home. Waiting and waiting to tell him how sorry she was that he’d gotten angry with her for doing the wrong thing.

But her youth eventually ran dry of the words. The sorry, it stopped coming. Replaced with malice and bitterness. They were the fuel that kept her war with her husband burning. She shouldn’t say sorry, not to Joel. Her father taught her that much. No matter how deeply she meant it, wanted it, needed it, she couldn’t say it.

It was past midnight and the fog was getting thick. Uncertainty was like a looming darkness all around her. Transparency, like a shallow light she could not escape. How she wanted things to be different. Watching film after film of their life’s work together made Aimee rethink it all. Why did she do it? Why did she toy with this game and risk the future ruin of her family?

Oh, it can’t all be my fault, she reasoned. Wherever I have failed, Joel did too. She had her father to thank for these arrows in her ready quiver. Still, the justifications she spent on herself didn’t make it right, didn’t reach the root of her pain.

Aimee was now transfixed by the luminescent shine of the clock, how its numbers took new shape every sixty seconds. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen a clock before, but this time she was wishing to see the numbers in reverse.