Hannah
Poker, poker, poker. Eva was convinced that finding out more about poker night was the only way in. And Ben had said some of the guys from their group went to the casino every Tuesday and played at the high stakes table. Hillary had downloaded some of their photos from Facebook, and they had decided to find them at the casino and see if they’d say anything useful.
Hillary had even discussed trying to attend one of the poker nights—to offer to substitute for Ben and hope they’d let her in, figuring they could win a ton of money off a woman. But that seemed like a crazy, risky strategy to Hannah. She knew her sister could flirt and charm her way into any situation, but a bunch of drunk men, one of whom could be a killer? That seemed a little crazy.
Hannah had ordered criminal checks for every man in the neighborhood, six streets‘ worth, and paid with Hillary’s credit card. They were still waiting on those, but the chance that someone in the poker club knew or had seen something seemed pretty high. The only other lead—if you could call it that—Hillary was fixated on was Cat Saunders. Hillary kept saying she had as much at stake as Ben had and that the police had been sexist in focusing on him. Wasn’t Cat perhaps part of the bribery of the girl? Where were Cat’s handcuffs? Where was Cat’s jail cell?
Hillary brought up Cat’s name every evening they got together and kept asking if there wasn’t some way Hannah could confront her at work. But Hannah had very little face time with her. She was mostly interviewing girls out in the field, at various high schools, and was almost at the end of her list. The project would be over in weeks, and frankly, Hannah was lucky she still had it.
Cat hadn’t said anything to her about Ben, and she didn’t expect her to. Cat probably had a lawyer and had likely been told to keep her mouth shut. Still, Hannah decided to swing by Cat’s office casually, with a concocted question about the videos she was doing, just to speak to her. To see what came up.
When she got there, she was astonished to see the young blond girl from the hotel in with her. She’d thought her face, which suddenly felt red and sweaty, might give her away. But Cat stood up, smiling, and calmly introduced her to her daughter.
“Your daughter? But your last name—”
“I use my maiden name,” Cat said.
Afterward, Hannah felt like an idiot. She’d clearly misread Ben’s solicitous behavior toward the girl. He’d been fatherly, she could see now; that was all. And Cat had taken her by the arm and apologized for the awkwardness with her brother-in-law, for the scandal. For any problems she’d caused her family. Her last words had been “It’s hard to be married, isn’t it?”
Well, how could she disagree with that? And God knows, it was hard to be married to Hillary, perfect Hillary. And, she had to admit, hard to be angry with Cat. Charming, warm Cat.
Still, Hillary insisted on a background check on Cat, too, maybe so she could use something against her personally at a later time, and Hannah reluctantly agreed. Maybe she was as sexist as the cops, but she didn’t think any woman she’d ever met was capable of killing a little girl. Even her sister. Even her stone-cold sister.
The casino wasn’t far away—half an hour, tops—but the still-rush-hour traffic crawled and sputtered in fits and starts, and Hannah wondered aloud why she was even going.
“I mean, Hillary’s going to play, and you’re going to take notes, and what am I going to do?”
“Help us carry home our winnings,” Eva said.
Hannah was nervous, leaving Miles home alone. He had plenty of homework, the doors were locked, and his cousin and uncle were next door. Hillary had convinced her he was old enough to be alone. She’d said most boys stayed home alone at ten, not almost thirteen. But most kids didn’t live in a neighborhood where another kid had been killed. Most kids also—she had to be honest with herself—weren’t like Miles. But he’d seemed better. His therapist had said so, too. Appointments every week. Sleeping better, food habits back on track. Having Ben home, a father figure next door, was probably helpful, too.
She wrung her hands and sighed. The back seat of Hillary’s car was warm and comfortable, because it had its own heating vents. And the leather seats of the Lexus seemed almost twice as big as her Honda’s cloth ones. The traffic was clearing out a bit, and she tried to empty her mind, to not think about Miles. She should take advantage of someone else driving and someone else making this high car payment instead of her and just enjoy this spa of a car. She should relax and look at this more like a much-needed girls’ night out. If Hillary could relax, with all that she had on her mind, so could Hannah.
But every time she closed her eyes, she saw the ribbon in her son’s hamper. She pictured the girl’s necklace lying between their houses. She saw Kendra standing on the path, innocently telling her about her daughter. She saw Ben confessing to the detective that he was an unfaithful asshole but not a cold-blooded killer. All of it added up to more unease. Just an overall thick cloud of nerves, jangling her in a way she hadn’t felt since Miles was a baby. If both Ben and Miles were innocent, why did she feel so tense whenever she thought about her home?
“How long do you think we’ll stay?” she asked.
“A couple hours maybe,” Hillary said.
“I don’t want to leave Miles for too long.”
She was being ridiculous, she knew. But still, she’d called Mike and made sure he kept his phone on just in case. And she’d heard his annoyance in the tone of his voice, threaded with discontent. Mike saw things, heard things in her that he disliked. They were always there now, front and center. Still, at the end of the conversation, he’d asked if she wanted him to come over or take Miles for the night, which was nice of him. She’d said no. Not unless he calls you.
That was the last thing she needed, for Miles to think she’d sent his father over because she didn’t trust him. She trusted him up to a point. But then she thought about a coyote howling from a corner of the Tamsen farm estate. Or the hoot owl she’d seen down in the gully below the path, calling out. Squirrels rustling in the bushes, leaping in the almost-bare trees. Would he go outside even though she’d warned him not to? Would he be able to control himself? Had the police told the neighbors to look out for any suspicious behavior with animals? Dear God, maybe they had.
Hillary pulled up to the circular entrance of the casino and was about to valet park when she spotted an empty space in the darkest corner of the front row of cars. She pulled in, and her mother jumped out eagerly.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Hannah said, wringing her hands.
“Calm down, Han,” Hillary said, reaching for her handbag underneath her seat. “We just got here. It’s practically still light out. He’ll be fine. You can always call him. Or send Morgan over to check on him.”
They got out of the car and walked up the long pathway to the arched entrance. It was garishly lit with gold and white lights that made Hannah squint.
“I don’t want Morgan outside in the dark either.”
“When did you get so fucking neurotic?”
Hannah almost asked her when she got so robotically calm, but that was a ridiculous question. Hillary had always been that type of calm. But Hannah had not always been neurotic. Her sister knew that, so did her mother, and so did Mike. She was a level-headed girl, almost to a fault. It was as if Miles’s problems had rewired his mother’s brain, not his. Miles was fine with himself precisely as he was. She was the one who had been altered.
A doorman wearing gold spats opened the door for Hillary, and she made a face of horror as soon as he wasn’t looking. A face that said Spats? Gold spats? They stopped a moment to take it all in. Tables. Noise. Cheap gold chandeliers. And too many people, people who looked like they couldn’t afford to lose any of the chips they clutched in their hands. It was as if someone had peeled open a flea market, poured the customers into this space, and sprayed it with glitter. It was down the road from one of the most upscale malls in the world, but there was nothing remotely glamorous about it. People weren’t dressed up—it could have been Black Friday at Best Buy. It could have been—if you looked too closely and noticed some people’s pants were dirty and they weren’t wearing socks—the Salvation Army.
Hannah still didn’t fully understand how watching their neighbors play poker would help them. Did they really expect the men to get drunk and spill their secrets to her sister? Hillary said yes, it was about gaining trust, about eavesdropping, but also about what they would say to her about Ben. How guilty they might feel. As if she could tell from the looks on their faces who might know more. Who might be glad Ben was being accused. Still, she was right about one thing—they couldn’t just knock on doors and pepper their neighbors with questions.
They headed for the poker tables, mingling, watching. Most of the people playing were older men, a few older women. No one they recognized from their list.
A waitress stopped by, and Eva ordered two glasses of champagne, then asked Hannah what she wanted.
“I’m fine with water.”
“Come on, Hannah. Live a little.”
“I don’t drink, Mom. You know that.”
“Well, you might be calmer if you had a glass of wine now and then.”
“Yeah, that worked really well for Dad, didn’t it?”
“Oh, Hannah,” Eva said with a sigh. “You have nothing in common with that man. When will you accept that?”
“It’s a shame you never learned poker, Mom,” Hannah said. “Looks like a good way to meet older guys.”
“Oh, I know the bare basics. I’m just not good at it. I’m a terrible liar, as you may have noticed.”
“Mike told me once that lying was the only reason women were good at poker.”
“That sounds like something he should have discussed in therapy.”
She’d never told her mother all the things they had, in fact, discussed in therapy. The way Hannah was raised, or non-raised as Mike sometimes called it. The way she and Hillary had tried so hard to be little grown-ups and help after their father’s death was something the therapist kept focusing on, over and over. But she didn’t know the half of it. All the stupid tests her sister had put her through to prove her strength. The ice-cold bathtub, with a timer. Eating tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce or soy sauce or the worst one, cocoa. Dry cocoa. She still gagged at the thought. Mike had always asked where her mother had been, and Hannah didn’t know. She was there and not there. She told Mike he didn’t understand because he didn’t have a brother. Two of the same sex is like a cartel, she’d said, and the therapist had made a note, which irritated her.
Mike had a sister who had her own room with a miniature vanity and dressing room in her closet. She got a new dress for every prom, had her nails and hair done. Spoiled, in Hannah’s view. Normal, in Mike’s view. She’d had a childhood. She’d been a girl. A princess, Hannah thought. Loved, Mike said. As if all the fault for their marriage’s divide lay with her childhood and not all the stupid things he did.
They strolled by the craps tables, wandered over to the roulette wheel, where they watched a group of women wearing tiaras shrieking and moaning over close calls and might-have-beens. The ladies were all dressed in black except for one girl wearing gold, and Hannah’s mother leaned over and asked if they were all pageant queens.
“It’s a bachelorette party,” the woman giggled and showed her the straw in her drink, shaped like a phallus.
“Wow. Are there male strippers here, too?”
“If you see any,” she replied, “let us know immediately!”
Hillary stayed at the poker table, dealing herself in, while Hannah and her mother circled and searched for nearly an hour. Every so often, they swung back to the table, and Hillary shook her head. No sign of any of them.
As they walked, Eva explained the various games in light detail to Hannah, as if sensing her daughter had exactly zero interest. Hillary was the competitive one, not Hannah. Hannah held tight to her phone in her pocket, afraid she’d miss the vibration, and every so often, she slipped it out and checked it just in case.
They were about to enter the ladies’ room when Hillary came running up, out of breath.
“We have to go,” she said.
“What? Why?” Eva replied.
“Ben just called. Morgan isn’t in the house.”
Hannah didn’t ask if the cousins were together. If Ben had checked next door, looked in on Miles. She knew better than to make this about her kid. She also had a terrible, sinking belief as she gripped her phone that it was about her kid.
That those two were together.
Somewhere.