BRANDON CALLED FOUR TIMES within an hour after I stormed out of the jail before I finally agreed to meet him. I drove down the street and sat in my car, knowing I would have to see him before I went home. I wanted him to squirm first. He suggested a coffee shop a few blocks away via his tenth text, and I agreed with a potent K.
I ordered a small amaretto upside-down latte, whatever that meant, and waited for Brandon on a comfy armchair toward the back. I wanted to get there first. I wanted him to have to walk toward me while I sat in a power pose with a smug look on my face. I felt intimidating and powerful, having dropped a bomb on his case.
He arrived just as the barista brought me my drink, creating an awkward bottleneck between the tables en route to me and ruining my moment. Great start.
He took a seat in the accompanying armchair, and I realized it was a poor choice for a serious sit-down. He adjusted to sit only on the edge, maintaining some sense of an upright posture. I stayed in a lounge position, unable to reposition in the squishy chair without looking like the boat in The Perfect Storm.
“Why did you take off so fast? Are you OK?” he asked.
“Who’s Gil, Detective Colsen?”
“I have no idea. The first time I heard the name was out of your mouth.”
“Your airtight murder suspect introduced Jenny to one of his friends two weeks before she died. Did you know that?”
“Of course I didn’t know that,” he said. “Benjy wouldn’t even admit he saw Jenny.”
“Well, he told me. Said that Jenny came to him for money, but he didn’t have enough so he told her his friend Gil would help her.”
“Money? Why would she need money?”
I threw up my hands. “I don’t know! You’re the detective.”
Brandon forfeited his posture and gave in to the chair. “I don’t know, this seems convenient.”
“Convenient for who?”
“The man’s been arrested, gets caught in a lie, and then all of a sudden there’s another man who Jenny contacted.”
“You know, it is possible you’re wrong. I know you can’t fathom it, but it might be the case.”
“You don’t think very highly of me,” Brandon said and waited a beat for me to protest, but I didn’t. “I’m going to look into it. I’m just not going to go crazy over some unsupported detail from a guy with nothing to lose. It’s something you would know if you were a real detective. People lie. All the time. You need evidence, motive, something else to go on.”
“Good,” I said without giving his dig about real detectives a reaction.
“What else do you know about him?”
Crap. I knew nothing really. A name. A place. A vague connection to Benjy. “He lives in New York City.”
“OK, what else?”
I turned my attention to my drink and took a long sip while he waited for more information. When my mouth was full, I was forced to swallow. Distraction over, I shrugged, admitting that’s all I knew.
Brandon rubbed his forehead. “Great, Gil from New York City. Alert the media.”
He was right. I would need more—some way to find Gil or at least prove he was real. Jenny had to have known something. It was time to do a little less talking and a little more snooping.
SUNDAY DINNER. Normally I dreaded this, even more so now that Jenny was gone, but this Sunday I was happy for an excuse to be in the house. Any other visit would seem suspicious. The news vans were gone. They’d stayed around a few days after they announced Benjy’s arrest, trying to illicit a sound bite from someone in the family. My father and Linda made a formal statement in front of the station about justice and remembering Jenny. After that, the vans pulled out. I’m sure they were happy to put the taillights to this snooze town.
I walked through the garage. Linda threw a fit if anyone walked through the formal front door. There was pristine white carpet immediately inside, and she would do anything to keep it that way. When Jenny was three or four, I would open that door as a joke to watch Linda jump from her seat and scream. Little Jenny would laugh hysterically, and I would close the door and walk around through the garage. Somewhere along the way, our little joke faded away and the distance between my sister and I grew.
“Virginia? In the living room,” my father yelled.
The kitchen was cold and sterile. There was always something cooking on Sunday. Even if it was store-bought, it was being heated. Not tonight.
I stepped into the living room and found my father gripping his phone, typing away.
I leaned against the doorway, waiting for him to put it down and approve an interaction. “What’s up with dinner?” I asked when I thought he’d forgotten I was there.
“Linda isn’t feeling well. I thought we could go out to eat,” he said.
This had never happened. Not once in eight years of Sunday dinners had we ever gone out. Why tonight, the one night I wanted to stay in the house and snoop around, did he want to go out?
“I could cook something.”
“No.” He stood from his chair. “We’ll go for pizza.”
Part of me wanted to believe he was reaching out to me. He had lost one daughter and wanted to shore up his relationship with the one he had left. In reality, I knew, the pizza place was the closest and quickest option.
We drove in his slick silver Mercedes. He got a new car every two years, and this was my first and probably only time in this one. The leather seats were cold and uncomfortable, like our conversation.
“What’s wrong with Linda?” I asked.
“She isn’t feeling well.”
“Is it a bug or something?”
“No, it’s from Jenny. She’s not the same, as I’m sure you can understand,” he said to guilt me away from further questions. It worked.
We rode in silence for the next six minutes. I watched the clock.
“I’ll be heading back to work tomorrow. There’s no time limit on grieving for your child, but I have to go back. It’s time,” he said as a fact, not looking for my approval.
I thought about the time he took to grieve for my mother. I couldn’t remember. I just nodded. I wanted to ask about Linda, about leaving her, but before I could find a way to ask that wouldn’t set him off, he broached the topic.
“Do you think you could look in on Linda occasionally? I know you don’t care for her, but she is alone and having a hard time,” he said, showing some unexpected empathy. Two wives committing suicide wouldn’t look great on his résumé, I suppose.
I really didn’t want to, but I didn’t have the energy to disobey my father to his face in a confined space. It came in the form of a question, but make no mistake, this was an order. “Sure” was all I said.
Pizza was uneventful. He asked pointed questions about my future, clinical and never personal. “Are you looking for work? … Do think you’ll ever find a career? … Do you have any savings left?”
I gave vague, monosyllabic answers that frustrated the line of questioning.
Then we sat silent for a beat until he tried again. Neither one of us had ever eaten so fast. It was one thing we had in common; we didn’t want to be there.
I knew what he saw when he looked at me: He saw all of his perceived failures. I dressed like a homeless person, I was snarky and abrasive, I didn’t have a job or much of a life. And when I looked at him, I saw his disgust. Maybe when he looked at me, he saw my mother; maybe when he looked at me, he saw Jenny. He wished it had been me. I wished it had been me. The whole damn town wished it had been me. If it had been me, it would have been something I did, something I got wrapped up in, somehow my fault.
I debated telling him about Gil. He had a right to know, but my father had so little respect for me, he probably wouldn’t believe me. I wasn’t ready for him to know how involved I had become. Part of me worried he might be proud of me, and this man did not deserve that. He did not deserve anything except guilt over how he had raised his children and the consequences it bore.
As we pulled back into the driveway, I needed an excuse to go inside. I wanted five minutes alone in Jenny’s room. We got out of the car, and I followed my father toward the garage. He looked back, puzzled that I wasn’t going to my own car, but said nothing.
He flipped on the lights to the kitchen as we entered. Still no signs of Linda.
“Do you think I could borrow a few books?” I asked. “My cable isn’t working.”
“Fine.” He said, walking out of the kitchen. I walked by him in the living room on my way. He didn’t even look up. He had done his Sunday duty. If I wanted to stay longer, that was on me. I passed the front stairs and wished I could just run up into Jenny’s room instead of playing games.
The back of the house was quiet, a preserved dwelling for a big family or guests, not two grieving parents. I opened the door to the study so the creak would reach him, then slipped off my shoes and held them in my hands. I ascended the back stairs, my socks on the carpet not creating a sound.
There were four doors in the upstairs hallway, a bathroom, the bedroom Linda was boarded up in, my old room that was now storage for crap that should be thrown away, and, lastly, closest to the front stairs, Jenny’s room. Her door was open a crack, and I was able to push it the rest of the way without giving away my position. It was untouched. Jenny’s jacket rested over the back of her vanity chair. A few schoolbooks were spread across the floor. Her bed was a mess. Linda strictly required Jenny to make her bed every morning, which made the image particularly disturbing.
I wasn’t sure where to start. I took timid steps toward the vanity and rested my shoes on the chair. Last year, the vanity was covered with neatly sorted makeup, nail polish, and hair accessories. It had devolved to a makeshift desk where Jenny stored old schoolwork and broken pencils. I leafed through the stack of papers. Her grades were slipping, as noted by red-penned notes like, Not your best. B-.
I slid open the drawer of the vanity, discovering the makeup that used to sit on top. A set of eye shadow had cracked open, leaving blue and purple powder over everything. Blue eye shadow for a tenyear-old. How does anyone rationalize that? Five years ago, I would have put an exorbitant amount on my eyelids and gone downstairs, pretending nothing was different. Jenny would laugh, my father would show no reaction, and Linda would plead for me not to waste the expensive makeup. First the jokes died; then Jenny did.
The textbooks on the floor were nothing of note. I slid them apart as if I was trying not to leave fingerprints. Math, history, science, boring and not all that different from the books I had in school. With her books all over the floor, I looked for her backpack. I opened the closet. Several bulky gowns and costumes, wrapped in plastic, were pushed to one side. Jenny’s assorted school clothes were spread out along the rest of the rod. A pile of stuffed animals was on the floor. No schoolbag.
“What are you doing?” my father’s voice boomed.
I slammed the closet door closed and whipped around to see him in the doorway. He had been as silent as I thought I was being. “I’m sorry,” I rushed to say.
“You shouldn’t be in here. Linda doesn’t want anyone in here touching things, and I can’t take anything more upsetting her right now.”
“Are you just going to leave it like this? Forever?”
“Don’t start trouble, Virginia. I think it’s time for you to leave.” He moved from the door, creating space for me to exit.
I grabbed my shoes and walked out, feeling as unwelcome as ever. That wasn’t new, but the missing bag was. Was anyone looking for the bag?