Nobody said anything about his impromptu late grocery run after “Emma” had left. Donna and Carly ate the ice cream he bought after dismissing Marcelline, though he’d blindly grabbed a brand they never ate. The conversation fell thin and strained as the strangeness of the past days seeped back into the foreground of everyone’s thoughts. Carly disappeared into her room. Donna wouldn’t look at him and went up to take a bath. She was asleep, curled tight against the farthest edge of the mattress by the time he came to bed. It was a long night.
Jonathan gave up trying to sleep once the sky lightened from black to gray. He waited until seven to text Owen. Do you want it or not?
After half an hour, he had to send another message or throw the phone against the wall. Going once . . . Going twice . . .
Owen let that hang in the air for another ten minutes before he called. “Are we in a hurry?”
Jonathan had expected him to be like this, straightaway pissing a perimeter around the exchange. But the urge to throw the phone didn’t lessen. “I’m not having any more conversations about this. It’s a simple yes or no question.”
“You think this is simple?”
Jonathan thought he heard something like the clink of silverware, a muted whir, maybe cars going past where Owen was. Outdoor café? He wished he knew more about exactly where that might be.
Jonathan wanted this too much. He wanted to be out of limbo, wanted it right up to treading on the line of wishing he’d never seen the painting at all. But nearly just as much as everything else, he wanted to be done dealing with Owen. Jonathan wasn’t good around him. It was embarrassing. Owen made his hands go clammy.
He wiped them, each in quick turn, on his jeans. The aggressive silence routine was getting old. “Okay. Tell the Anningers I’m sorry it didn’t work—”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, they want it.”
“Were you going to let me know that at some point?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“When I got around to it.” Owen was maddeningly mild. “You realize I exist between our conversations and do other things sometimes, right?”
Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose and willed himself to get through this phone call without losing it.
Owen continued. “So, yes. They want it and they’ve made the arrangements. Same type of setup as before—some cash up front, then a wire transfer after authentication. Although I still have a problem with calling it simple.”
Jonathan hoped Owen took everything in this world that he had a problem with and shoved it up his ass, but didn’t say so. His pulse sped up. “Great. How much?”
“Five million. So, minus the two hundred and fifty thousand you took four years ago, four point seven five.”
“That’s bullshit. It was seven and a half before.”
“Well, Jonathan, what can I say? Your urgency is their coupon.”
“What’s your cut?”
“I don’t get cuts. Stop trying to get in my shorts.”
“I just . . . Nah, that’s not enough. Go tell them it’s too low.”
Owen sighed. “I’m going to give you a second to play that back in your head.”
“Goddammit, you know I meant pretty please with sugar on top. You have to know this isn’t fair.”
“I do? I don’t think so. I don’t care about this silly little decoration, remember? Are you really going to piss your diaper over having to settle for five million dollars for something that isn’t yours?”
Everything that Jonathan had ever gotten wrong tallied to that sum. The shame of it was in all the moments lost to laziness and distraction. In his lack of stamina. In getting too comfortable. He hadn’t applied himself as well as he could have. And he could only hate Owen for paying attention enough to make the point.
It could be worse. He could be in prison. At least there was that. So he let the jab go unanswered.
“What’s next, then? When can we do this?”
There was a smile in Owen’s voice. “Ah, great. Back to the beginning of the carousel ride. So, once again, are we in a hurry?”
“I’d just as soon get it over with.” Especially if I’m being screwed to the tune of two and a half million dollars. But he didn’t say that part. He swallowed the pout. It was a small triumph, a warm touchstone of who he was, a reminder that he’d gotten far on being careful with words and tone.
“We can do it today, if you like,” Owen said.
“Well, I’d need to have enough time to go get it.”
“Lucky us. My schedule is wide-open. So whenever suits you, suits me fine.”
“Where do you want to meet? The same place as before?”
“I don’t care where we do it. You can handle that, if it worries you. Tell me when and where. I’ll be there.”
Jonathan didn’t like that. He set the meeting for twelve thirty in the same restaurant they’d met before. It would be busy and anonymously so. It felt solid.
Owen hadn’t suggested any adjustments to what Jonathan proposed. That was either because the transaction was going to be all the way straightforward, or that Jonathan had missed something. He knew, on a cellular level, that despite all of Owen’s protestations of not caring about the painting and the double cross, he cared about something in this, and in some way that was bad news for Jonathan.
So he made coffee and got comfortable in his desk chair. Jonathan threw a saddle on that paranoid feeling and let it take him where it might.
The restaurant wouldn’t be a place for trouble. Too many people with cell phones. Too many security cameras. And all of it too buried in a shopping plaza on a Saturday to get out quickly.
Although Owen was certainly built for it, Jonathan didn’t figure him for a blaze-of-glory kind of guy. The Mercedes gave him away. Something in him liked living. No full-on nihilist kept his car that clean.
So it—if there was any it coming—would be before or after. It was the same problem, both ways. He was in real trouble if Owen followed him. The only thing Jonathan had after he turned over the painting was Owen’s ill will.
Buying him off seemed unlikely. Owen was very proud that he had all he needed. Even if Jonathan offered him every bit of what the Anningers were going to pay, it wouldn’t interest Owen Haig. And if Jonathan was going to do that, he might as well have given it to Marcell—
Jonathan grabbed up his phone. Did you really know she wasn’t dead?
His phone lit up immediately. He let it go four rings in before answering.
“Oh, Jonathan, what are you playing at? Things were going so well.”
“You know, I’m not sure they were. I didn’t have what you might call a strong sense of security in our arrangement. Not like I would’ve hoped.”
“That hurts my feelings.”
“I’m sure. But seriously, did you know she was alive? Because I didn’t.”
“I can only advise you to get to the point.”
“Something weird happened last night.”
“As I was saying . . .” Owen’s words were still clipped and cool, but the strain was coming through in a slightly strangled grip in his voice.
“She showed up at my house last night. None too pleased, but playing it ice-cold. I had to keep a straight face in front of my wife and stepdaughter, because as far as I knew, she was long since in the ground. I almost had a heart attack.”
Owen said nothing.
“Hello? Really? She was bleeding like crazy. Pouring. From her neck. How could I know she made it?”
Owen’s breathing was now coming through the handset with little huffing breaks forced in at the pace of hard footfalls. Owen was walking somewhere, and fast. He still managed an exasperated sigh.
Jonathan reworked the basic math of what had happened that night. “So you did know. You’ve known the whole time that Marcelline is alive.”
Owen regained his breath and his regular voice. “Where is she?”
Jonathan heard Owen’s car start in a walled roar, the engine noise ringing off cement. The car door slammed. A parking garage.
“So here’s the thing,” said Jonathan. “You and I have a meeting at twelve thirty. I don’t want it to take beyond twelve forty. By twelve forty-five I will be hard at work on getting far away from here. As soon as everything is authenticated and I get the rest of my money, I will put you and Marcelline in touch.”
“You’ll put us in touch?”
“Sure. It seemed important to you. And what are friends for?”
“And why do I believe this? Why do I not just show up at your house and convince you—however that needs to happen—to tell me everything now?”
“You believe it. I can hear that you do. And you can hear me. You believe me because it’s true. This is the only thing I have to get on your good side. And I’m not going to lie, I’m glad there’s something I can use. You have to know I wouldn’t risk it by getting tricky with you now. But all of it hangs on the fact that I haven’t told her you’re here. Which I could still do. And if I do tell her, I’m thinking she’ll bolt. Seems like you might not want that. It’s simple, but fragile.”
“You and your simple.”
“See you at twelve thirty.” Jonathan hung up and grabbed his keys.
• • •
Jonathan didn’t entirely trust Owen not to show up anyway. In his worry version of the day, where Owen wanted the painting without paying, Jonathan had said he needed time to go get it. If he was being watched, he could go somewhere anyway, miming the misdirection. It would be the best time to discover whether he was being followed.
Freedom was just on the other side of lunchtime. But the painting was still his problem for a few more hours.
He listened for Donna and Carly, but the house was sleeping-in quiet.
He took the bag with the tuxedo-padded painting out of the closet and put it into the trunk of his car. It felt wrong. The back seat seemed safer, but either way, it felt as if he was inviting the most ironic car crash ever. And it would leave him more vulnerable than even that.
If his fantasy of Owen bearing down on him before the meetup was more than just paranoia, Jonathan’s not having the painting with him in a bad spot might be the only thing that let him live long enough to make one more plan.
So he put it back in the closet. But this time he folded the bag over in a loose roll and tucked it off to the side on the floor. He admired his handiwork and slid it under the two folded picnic blankets. That looked better. But he leaned the rolls of birthday wrap up against it as more camouflage, anyway.
Carly startled him in the kitchen when he went in to put his coffee mug in the sink, one of his rituals of leaving—everything set in its place. In the back of his mind, it was for the last time. He wouldn’t pass through this room again.
He hadn’t known Carly was already downstairs, but the surprise was in how glad he was that she was there. He flattened his hand against the cool stone of the countertop and ran it back and forth, feeling it to remember it and let it go.
“Hey, Carlzee.”
“Hey.”
She was looking at him funny. Again. This is how he would remember her. And, of course, this is how she’d remember him. Everything that had made her look at him like this in the last few weeks would become part of the mythology of when John disappeared.
If all went well, they would never know why he’d gone. Donna wouldn’t be able to say much after what they’d done with Roy’s body. Jonathan would never know how often they wondered about him, or how quickly they might move on.
When Donna had said she was in love, he liked her enough to play along. But it had been more than that. There was no reason not to admit that. The longer he was here, the more he’d wanted to be here. The illusion held together with attention, so he gave it attention. It felt secure and a little bit real. Eventually, the second possible avenue had come into view—sell the painting and stay. Why not? The choice was his. Except that it wasn’t.
The choice, it turned out, didn’t have anything to do with anyone in either version of his plan. And it was made in the open, caught on video for all the world—and Owen and Marcelline—to see. It was the decision of a rotten, twisted kid whose compulsions drove him right over the wants and needs of anyone who fell into his sights.
Jonathan shoved back on the urge to think of the people who might say the same of him. Truth was a composite.
He wanted to leave it with Carly on a better note, in case he didn’t see her when he came back for the painting. He wanted to be friendly, as they’d always been with each other. “Kinda thought you might sleep in. You must be so tired. It’s been a hell of a few days, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got to take care of yourself, you know.”
“I know.” She didn’t look up from her cereal bowl.
“Hey. Don’t let all this stuff get to you. Don’t let it do anything to you. The world doesn’t make you. You make yourself.”
She nodded. “Out of what?”
“Out of what you want.”
“That’s what you do?”
“Yeah.”
She seemed to agree with the counter, since that’s where the nods were going.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay.” She looked up at him tentatively, worried and so un-Carly-like that it felt like a punch. “Are you okay?”
The words felt bigger than the passage up his throat. “Yeah, sure.”
They both had the same lie, that they were okay. So to keep their own, they had to let the other’s lie go unchallenged.
“Are you going out?” Carly ticked her chin in the direction of the keys still in his hand.
“Yeah. Just for a little bit. Need a ride somewhere?” The hope for a yes from her was a sparkly, pricking thing. Something was getting lost in this goodbye. It felt important.
“No. But thanks, though. I’m not going anywhere.”
• • •
On Jonathan’s drive, his copilot was a relentless wariness. Watching the cars behind him and assigning intent to their distances from him, their turns and lane changes, all while not ramming into the cars ahead of him, it was a water-torture drip of adrenaline. He was glad he’d left the painting in the closet.
But the security system was killing him. The outside cameras alerted to two separate dogs, each with a person in tow, then two dogs trotting along together with no person at all for some reason, and some asshole on what appeared to be her first outing on in-line skates, wearing a groove into the sidewalk, up and down the street on her wobbly training mission.
He had to check all of this while driving with way too much purpose and hard braking. The whole thing on far too little sleep was a trick almost beyond his reach.
His skin stung every time the phone buzzed an alert. He thought of the painting. Owen. Marcelline. Sweat had his shirt sticking to his back. Maybe he should have brought the fucking thing with him.
When the foyer camera alerted, his relief had a certain logic. For all of Owen’s aura of getting shit done, Jonathan was fairly sure he couldn’t teleport.
Owen hadn’t driven up or walked over to the house or Jonathan would have known. It was just Carly.
Just Carly was very nearly the last thing he ever thought.
The camera showed Carly in the coat closet. And then again, still in the coat closet. And in the coat closet with some of the stuff pushed out behind her. Rolls of wrapping paper were among the flotsam in the images sent to Jonathan’s phone.
Interior 1’s last alert in the spasm of notifications showed Carly at the front door with the garment bag.
The outside cameras showed her getting smaller, with her arms full, heading up the street.
Oh, God. Something broke in him.
• • •
“Carly, you need to pick up the phone. What are you doing?”
Jonathan had called twice and let the second one go all the way to voice mail. Her greeting had never been personalized from the phone company’s default message. Voice mail wasn’t a thing for her crowd.
He had to get off the road. He flinched for the brake at the first turn-in but couldn’t bring himself to drive into the McDonald’s parking lot where he’d met Roy so many times before.
Three blocks down had an office park with no such connotations for him. He parked and texted her. You need to pick up the phone.
He dialed. She didn’t. What are you doing? I am not kidding. Pick up. Now.
He felt his lips grinding into a snarl as the ringtone pulsed in his ear. The call rang back through to the generic voice mail. You will be very sorry if I have to call back after this. Pick up. Right now.
Carly answered then, but didn’t say anything.
“Carly, what are you doing? What is going on?”
The breeze, wherever she was with the painting, was all the answer he got.
“Goddammit, answer me. Where are you? What are you doing?”
The wind sound was eclipsed by Carly’s shuddery breathing. Her voice, when it finally came, was just above a whisper. “Why is this a big deal?”
There is a line of what is just too much. Jonathan had felt it waiting out there all his life. There was a seam in the universe that held what you could handle right up next to the vast expanse of all that you could not. It was the line that separated getting by from the thing that would change you into something that no one else would recognize.
He imagined that every person could sense when that line was close—for themselves and also for the people they were about to shove over the boundary.
“Carly, you’re on your way back home. You need to just say that you are and then turn around and make it true. I’m also on my way back. And you’d better beat me there. Do not stop anywhere. Do you understand me?”
He heard a fumbling rustle and then nothing. “Carly?”
She was gone.
• • •
“Hi!” Jonathan was bright and pleasant, but careful not to be too much of either when Ada’s mother answered the door.
“Hi!” She tried to match his tone over the obvious question in her eyes of what he was doing there.
His racing heart sank. “I was just swinging by to get Carly.”
“Oh? I’m confused. She’s not here. Did she say that she was coming over? Ada’s out with her dad this morning.”
He felt the line again, sliding just barely under his toes. His expression blanked. He couldn’t stop it although he knew the effect was startling to people. Jonathan turned and walked away before he made it any worse. “My mistake,” he called over his shoulder.
• • •
Walking into the house again, the feeling of last chance clung to him as if it had been a web spun across the doorframe. He didn’t know what it would take to get this back under his control, but it felt very much as if it had to happen here.
Donna’s face would tell him a lot.
She was at the dining room table on her computer. She looked up as he walked in. “Hi.” She looked tired, stressed, lovely, and not at all on high alert.
“Hi.” His chest ached. “Carly here?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. Honestly, I thought she was with you. Everyone disappears and no one leaves me a note. Real nice family I’ve got here.”
His thoughts were that dream-running-in-deep-sand kind of slow.
She pulled back in her seat to see him better. “What’s wrong?”
“I need you to call Carly for me. I need you to find out where she is.”
“Why? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“Yes and no. No. I mean, Carly is physically okay. She’s been under a lot of stress lately. Obviously, we all have. But she’s in a little bit of trouble. She took something that doesn’t belong to her.”
“Carly stole something? What? Like shoplifting? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Can you just call her please?” He nodded at her phone beside her computer. “Let’s just give her a chance to make this right. I don’t want to say too much.”
Donna’s own line of too far was coming for her. John knew she’d outpaced disaster by five steps, always. Her whole life, she’d been faster and stronger than anything that had pursued her. Her competence had been both a shield and a weapon. But since meeting him, more—way more—had been rolling toward her that she hadn’t known to outrun.
Jonathan rubbed her arm as she called Carly. “Let’s just find her and hear what she has to say.”
“She’s not answering,” Donna said, worried and shaking her head.
Jonathan thought his teeth might break from grinding.
“Let me just see where she is.” Donna took her reading glasses from the table and swiped and tapped at the screen of her phone.
“You can see where she is?”
Donna waved him off, ignoring his question. She tilted her head at what she was looking at. He swiveled around to see it with her. A map. Carly’s face in a circle above a blue arrow on the loose grid of streets.
“She’s over by the library,” Donna said.
She looked at him. He saw her, but all of his vision had become peripheral as his sight turned inward, watching, seeing how this had arranged itself. He grabbed the back of the closest chair at the table and squeezed until the edge of the wood bit painfully into the pads of his fingers.
They got to the same answer at the same time.
“Was she meeting up with Emma?” Donna asked. “Did she mention that to you?”
“Fuck!” he screamed, and pulled the chair to slam down into the floor. “No!”
Donna had gone white and rigid. He breathed deep and smiled, but it landed like a slap and she recoiled from him.
“It’s okay. It’ll be okay.” He took her phone. “Let me take this. I’ll go get her.”