Alecia, Thursday, May 7, 2015
In another life, Alecia cared about Thursdays. On Thursdays, there used to be happy hours and late nights over Jack and Cokes, cigarettes and boozy, furtive whisperings while her coworker stole kisses from the guy in Content Management, you know the blond one with the cute mole-slash-beauty mark? Followed by slightly embarrassing Friday mornings and furtive, giggling conversations in the ladies’ room until it was Thursday night and time to do it all over again, either with the same guy or a different guy, it didn’t matter either way. They were young then.
But now, Mondays looked like Thursdays looked like Wednesdays, the only difference between them being what was scheduled for Gabe that day. So sometimes Alecia forgot the days of the week altogether. When the doorbell rang on Thursday and it was Vi, Nate’s mom, she didn’t think twice about it. She didn’t think about how Vi should be working—she was a receptionist at a dental office and worked every day, despite her sixty-four years, because the paper mill killed Bob Winters. Just keeled over one day at work; it was the fumes, she’d said to anyone who would listen. Even now, if you got her going, she’d tell you. She had to work, she should have been going into the prime of her life but the mill killed Bob and she had to work.
Had Alecia stopped to really think about it, she would have realized that Vi had a reason for showing up at 9 a.m. on a Thursday.
Violet Winters had been aptly named: in the face of any hardship, she shrank. She wasn’t the kind of person to “make a fuss” and waved off even the biggest inconveniences. She had one son, one child, her light and golden life.
“Where’s Nate?” Vi asked, standing in the hallway, clutching her purse to her chest. She wore scrubs and nursing clogs, even though all she ever did was answer the phone.
Alecia waved her hand toward the door. “He’s out, Vi. Hold on, I’ll get Gabe. He’ll be happy to see you.” Which wasn’t really true; Gabe was only ever over-the-moon happy to see one person.
“I came to talk to you.”
Alecia had no idea what Vi knew, but it hadn’t quite been a week since the paper published Nate’s story and only a few days since Nate was “put on leave,” so Alecia didn’t consider it her responsibility to call her mother-in-law and tell her that her son was sleeping with his student and might be fired. She slotted that in her husband’s column of responsibility and moved on with her day. But here Vi stood, worried and uncertain, and somehow this, too, had become her job.
“Oh.” Alecia turned and walked away from her. “In that case, I’ll make tea.”
Alecia really only drank tea around two people: Vi (Lipton) and Bridget (loose-leaf herbal blends that Bridget invented). She boiled the pot and let it whistle, and meanwhile called for Gabe again. He was in his room, oddly quiet, and Alecia was just so tired that she’d sat on the couch maybe a half hour ago and hadn’t even gotten up to check on him, even though a half hour is way too long to leave Gabe unchecked.
Vi followed her, her footsteps small and silent.
“How are you holding up?” Vi finally asked, and Alecia felt relieved that she wouldn’t have to play detective to figure out what Vi knew.
“Oh you know. Just fine and dandy. I mean it’s a fairly common event when a gal finds out her husband has been sleeping with a student.” Alecia yanked open the refrigerator door and poured milk into a crystal creamer. When she shut the door with her foot, she could see Vi’s face, the way her eyes had widened, horrified, or her mouth hung open, then closed, then open again. Her shoulders had slacked and she leaned against a chair.
“You can’t . . . believe her, can you?” Vi shook her head, but her voice shook, and Alecia almost laughed.
“Of course I can. You can’t believe him can you?” Alecia said this even as she felt the prick of doubt, the same one she’d been feeling for a week now, even when her mouth was insisting Nate was guilty, to Bridget, now to Vi, a few small cells in her brain were shouting with protest. It was a dissonance she couldn’t reconcile, and it was enough to drive her crazy. She’d been wanting someone to prove her wrong, to show her with hard evidence that Nate could not have done these things. But so far, no one had.
Of course Vi would believe her son. Of course she would have gotten the story from him. She looked wildly around the kitchen, craned her thin, veiny neck toward the living room, and Alecia realized that Nate had told her part of the truth, but not the whole truth. Not the part where he wasn’t living here.
Vi patted her blond hair, a round bowl cut that looked like a helmet, her short, squared fingernails flittering. “He’s my son. Of course I believe him. He’s always been this way, sticking his neck out for people that don’t deserve it.”
Alecia gasped, thinking at first that Vi meant her, but realizing too late that Vi meant her—Lucia what’s-her-name, the sexy weirdo.
“Vi, I can assure you that Nate enjoyed this particular charity act, whatever it was.” She busied herself gathering sugar and spoons and set them up on the kitchen island. All this civility over such an ugly conversation that Alecia had run out of patience for.
“Alecia!” Her lip trembled and her eyes, limned in red, twitched. Alecia realized then how fragile Vi looked, how pale, how shaky.
“Vi, I’m sorry . . .” Although she wasn’t really sorry at all. Alecia squared her shoulders, and with her palms on the cold Formica countertop, said, “If you want to find Nate, he’s probably at Tripp Harris’s house. Remember Tripp? The Mt. Oanoke cop? He’s staying there for a while.”
“You kicked him out? Now? He needs you, Alecia. He needs you to believe him. He told me that; he cried.”
“I believe he cried to you, Vi. I really do believe that.” Alecia stirred her tea, blew across the top to cool it, but Vi remained standing, unmoved.
“He didn’t tell me he moved out. He just told me what the papers were saying, what that slut”—Vi spit the word out, her eyes pinched shut at the violence of it—“was saying. She’s lying. You have to realize that.” Her voice was edging louder, maybe the loudest Alecia had ever heard it in her and Nate’s eight years of marriage.
“Violet, listen to me. Your son might not be guilty of everything they’re accusing him of, but he’s guilty of some of it. I cannot figure out which parts of his stories are true when he is here in this house. Do you understand? I’ve found credit card statements and Instagram posts and evidence that something was going on, but I can’t be alone with my thoughts, my own brain, with him rattling around here pleading his own case twenty-four-seven. Until I know more, he’s out. He’s staying with Tripp and we can talk in a few weeks when I’ve got my own head on straight. I have a son with special needs who demands my attention fourteen out of twenty-four hours a day. He comes first.”
“That’s the trouble, though, with you and Nate,” said Violet. “Nate has never come first. Not since Gabe was born. Not one day since he was born.” She pointed her finger at Alecia’s chest, her mouth pinched, angry. “You can’t forsake your own marriage.”
“He is your grandson. He is not like other boys. He needs more than most kids. He needs his mother—”
“He needs his parents to be married! You are sacrificing your marriage to your child! Can’t you see that, Alecia?” Big, fat tears dripped down her cheek, her chin trembling. “You are sacrificing my boy for your boy.”
“Your boy is a liar. And maybe an adulterer. And maybe, in the state of Pennsylvania, a criminal.” Alecia shouted this last part and felt immediate regret. Violet wilted, her fingertips gripping the countertop. It was too much confrontation, a wintery blast of reality on her velvety cheeks.
A crash, followed by a piercing wail came from upstairs. A second later, the doorbell rang, a long and insistent tone, followed by a sharp rap on the glass pane.
“What the hell?” Alecia put her hand to her forehead, just for a second to calm her buzzing brain. “Violet can you get the door, I have to see what happened to Gabe.” The crying had stopped but Alecia hurried past her.
Violet moved through the kitchen, the living room, and the front hall, hot on Alecia’s heels. Alecia was halfway up the steps when Violet said, “Oh dear God, Alecia.” And the tone in her voice stopped Alecia cold on the seventh step. She turned around and Violet’s face was even paler, had that been possible.
Her mouth seemed not to move when she said, “It’s the police.”
• • •
For whatever reason, Gabe had been trying to align his toy construction vehicles along the top of the window molding. He’d balanced himself between the desk and the metal radiator in Alecia’s bedroom and it was a wonder he didn’t crack his head open when he fell. She calmed him, kissed his cheeks, and led him back downstairs.
Vi stood in the middle of the living room with a rumpled man in khakis. “Alecia, this is Detective Harper.” She seemed not to know what to do with her hands and she wrung them in front of her, then crossed them around her middle.
“Hello,” Alecia said. Gabe clapped loudly next to her and she attempted to shush him with a gentle hand to his head. “Vi, can you take Gabe back upstairs so we can talk?”
Vi directed Gabe out of the room, under squawking protest, and she heard his heavy clomping on the wooden steps.
“Do you want tea?” Alecia asked, averting her eyes, and started toward the kitchen, motioning for the detective to follow her. He did. “I just boiled a pot.”
“Tea would be fine, Mrs. Winters.”
She gestured toward the kitchen island and Detective Harper took a seat in one of the metal-backed chairs. While Alecia poured two mugs, she was able to study him out of the corner of her eye. Tall, thin, maybe sixty. He wore wireless framed glasses and an unkempt mustache. He looked like an insurance salesman rather than a detective, but it was the keen blue eyes behind the glass that made her hands shake as she scooped sugar. When she set the ceramic mug in front of him, it clattered on the wooden countertop.
He seemed nice and comfortable with the silence.
Alecia wiped her hands on her jeans. “What can I help you with, Detective?” she finally asked. She remained standing across the island. The other chair would be too close, too intimate.
“I’m here to ask you about your husband, Mrs. Winters. And Lucia Hamm.”
Alecia stared into her mug, the surface ringed and rippling from Gabe’s heavy running upstairs. She’d gotten so used to it she hardly realized he shook the floor anymore. Detective Harper looked around their small, thin-walled townhouse, the teetering clutter on every flat surface: papers and envelopes and folders and bills and toy trucks and felt markers—always markers everywhere—and felt the apples of her cheeks grow hot.
“What’s to ask? I don’t know anything.” Alecia shrugged.
“You might. Tell me about your husband. Where is he now?”
Alecia felt a stab of annoyance. “He’s staying with a friend, Tripp Harris. I assume you know that already.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m unsure where our marriage will end up. Because I don’t know what happened with that girl.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Mostly, yes. But we’ve been less than perfect for a long time. I need space to think, that’s all. It’s temporary.”
“What kind of troubles?” Detective Harper pulled out a small notebook and a Bic from his shirt pocket.
“I hardly see how or why that matters. Just standard-issue troubles. Are you married, Detective?”
Harris nodded. “Twenty-two years.”
“Then you know. It’s not all skipping through meadows.”
“No.” He smoothed the ends of his mustache with his fingers and wrote in his notebook. “But I’ve never asked her to leave so I could ‘think.’ ”
“Then you’re a better man than me. Which is fine.”
“Mrs. Winters, where was your husband on Monday night? Did you see him?” His voice was short, the banter was over. Alecia was relieved, she wanted him to just get to the point.
“He came over around six. I was making Gabe dinner and he showed up, no call or anything, to get clothes. It threw me. We had a fight.”
“About what?”
“Who knows?” Alecia traced the handle of the mug with her finger. “Our life. Him not being here. The girl.”
“What about the girl?”
“He just denies it and I can’t make sense of it, that’s all.”
“I’m going to need you to be more specific,” Detective Harper said. He sat up straighter, his patience with her waning.
“I can’t be! He came over, I was mad, I picked a fight. He asked me if I believed him and I said I didn’t know. It’s literally the same argument over and over again.” Alecia felt the back of her knees sweat; a bead between her breasts rolled into her bra.
“No new information?” he asked, sounding skeptical.
“No,” Alecia lied. She had no intention of helping them arrest her husband, but she flashed on the Instagram picture and Nate’s plea, it was an accident. It might have been the truth, who was she to decide?
“Mrs. Winters, have you seen Lucia Hamm?”
“God, no. I’ve never seen her at all in real life. Only pictures.”
“What pictures?”
Shit. “I looked her up on social media,” Alecia admitted. This part was true. “She’s a teenager. You know, bedroom eyes, cleavage, the works. She’s got that hair. Crazy blond, it looks white.” She bumped her mug with a shaky hand, the tea splashing on the counter. “She’s got a look about her, though. Something in her eyes seems off.”
Harper was quick, flat with his reply. “How so?”
“Just, I don’t know. They’re . . . empty. Soulless. Don’t you think?” Alecia searched the detective’s face. It remained impassive. “Well, anyway.”
“What time did your husband leave here on Monday night?” Harper asked, shifting in his seat.
“I’m not sure. Maybe six thirty? He didn’t stay very long. Gabe was happy to see him and mad when he left.” Correction, Gabe was inconsolable when he left. For two hours. She didn’t add the part where she almost texted Nate not to come over anymore. That she’d bring him his clothes. Anything but throw Gabe into another fit. Her eyes skimmed to the back door, the missing glass panel that she’d duct taped over. Harper followed her gaze.
“Your son do that, ma’am?”
“He . . .” She didn’t know how to answer that. He’d thrown an IKEA kitchen chair at it, the leg cracking the glass, splintering it outward until she screamed, the walls shaking with it.
He turned a page in his notebook and this, somehow seemed bad to her. That he would turn a page. The investigation took an unexpected turn.
“He’s five,” Alecia said finally, her teeth clenched. “Do you know about autism spectrum disorder? These children can be violent. They are frustrated. That’s all I plan to say about my son.”
He wrote, a wild, loopy scrawl for a moment and then flipped the page back and forth.
He gave her a smile, quicksilver. “That’s fine, Mrs. Winters. You were home all night?” He thought for a moment, then added, “With your son?”
“Yes of course. I can barely find a sitter for him in the daytime.” Alecia felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, a prickling sense that this was not routine. That this was something more, something bigger, darker. “What’s going on? I thought you were investigating Nate and this alleged relationship. Why are you really here?”
The detective leaned back against the chair, the cheap metal creaking with the effort to keep him upright. He watched her carefully. “Because the last time anyone saw Lucia Hamm was Monday night. She’s missing, Mrs. Winter.”
Alecia felt the world tilt just a bit. She gripped the edge of the island for support. “Missing?”
“Not going to school, not at home. A teacher at the school filled out a report.”
“Which teacher?” Alecia asked, sharp. She knew before she asked, before Harper said another word.
“Bridget Peterson. You’re friends, right?” He raised his mug, slurped loudly on the now-cold tea.
Alecia didn’t answer him. Instead, she pressed her palm to her brow bone where a cluster headache started to pound. Bridget? She had to know how this would look for Nate. The girl had likely skipped town. What the fuck?
Detective Harper wasn’t done. “The last person to see her alive, that we know of, is your husband, Mrs. Winters.”