ONCE AGAIN, THE WEATHER MATCHED OUR MOODS—DAMP, DARK, AND UNCERTAIN. As Colin and I trudged back to the car, neither of us talked. Gusts of wind whirled around us, bearing the smell of dead things. Colin stopped every now and then to take pictures of tree trunks and puddles.
“This sucks,” I finally muttered.
Colin said, “Yeah.”
“My feet hurt,” I said.
“My ovaries hurt,” he said.
“My prostate—” My police radio chimed from my hip.
Unknown Caller.
I let the call go to voice mail. A moment later, nerves twitching, I listened to the message.
“Elouise, it’s Daddy.” Victor Starr’s voice—dark like chicory coffee with a hint of arrogant Louisiana. “I know you’re still upset with me, but I’m not goin’ away. Not until we talk. Say whatever you gotta say to me, just as long as you say something. Anything.”
Back in December, I had said plenty.
That afternoon, he had stood on my front stoop, and I had just ended my marriage with Greg after a Hail Mary in the bathroom. Still wearing a towel and nothing else, I had opened the front door, thinking it was my husband who’d plead for one last chance. But a tall man with my eyes and Tori’s nose darkened my porch, and before he could open his mouth, the realization that this man was my father had crushed me like burning bricks. He had looked the same as he had when he’d abandoned me on that morning so long ago. Just grayer. Wealthier. Rounder—a middle-aged gut from Porterhouse steaks and creamed spinach.
He had wanted to come in and talk.
I had said, “No.”
“Can we talk out here?”
“No.”
He had shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “You wanna call your mother?”
“No.”
“Don’t you wanna know why I left?”
I had glared at him—dragon-rage coiled in my belly, claws flexing, preparing to release the fire of ancient hatred. Of course I wondered why he left. But that’s it. Wondered. Even though I possessed technology to search for missing people, I had never typed “Victor Starr” into the search bar. Nor had I asked Mom if sex had been their problem. Like our talk last night, I had sought to avoid that topic just as I’d avoid drinking from a water fountain in Chernobyl.
All of my life, I sought to place blame for his abandonment. Naturally, I had blamed the person closest to me—my mother. That belief softened once my marriage started to necrotize and I realized that my power to control Greg was akin to controlling Halley’s Comet.
Until last night, I still wondered if Mom loved Victor Starr. But I had never asked that question, either. I needed Mom and Martin together. I needed Mom to have a happily ever after.
And so, after my litany of “No, no, no” on that December day with Victor Starr, I had closed the door on him, pulled on clothes, and then curled up on the couch to watch The Poseidon Adventure for the three hundredth time. Stubborn, he continued to knock and ring the doorbell.
Even if he’d been chased by bees or zombies or zombie bees, I still wouldn’t have opened the door for him. I chose to lay there, mourning Shelley Winters. There’s got to be a morning after. And there was.
Victor Starr finally stopped knocking and went away.
Although, not really. Because here he was again, leaving messages on my phone, tidal-waving my life, and, worse, upsetting Mom’s.
Fucker.
Mom will have her morning after, I decided as my partner and I reached the car. And I would give it to her.
Colin handed me a bottled water and a roll of paper towels. “You okay?”
“Victor Starr called,” I said, then guzzled from my water bottle.
His shoulders slumped. “Ah, hell.”
“Yeah.” I paused, then added, “I hate having this reaction. I should be happy that my father calls me, right?”
Colin shrugged.
“Your mom and dad ever gonna come out to visit?”
He forced himself to smile. “You wanna meet my folks already? We haven’t even slept together yet.”
I smirked. “Your folks would stroke out if you brought me home. What would they do with all their white sheets, cans of gasoline, and wooden crosses?”
“We got a big basement,” Colin said with a shrug.
“If they fly out, we can pretend that you’re up for a Medal of Valor or something. It would be like an episode of Three’s Company.”
“What’s Three’s Company?”
“I’m not that damned old, and you’re not that damned young.”
“Whatever, Lou.” He sighed. “Gonna take more than that for him to get over me bein’ transferred. At least with your dad, you’re the one in control.”
At least.
After cleaning my face, hands, and hems with wipes and slipping back into my nice loafers, I sank into the Crown Vic’s deep passenger seat. I closed my eyes to force my banging pulse to slow.
Colin interrupted the silence by rattling Tic Tacs and singing a Maroon 5 song.
Nausea washed over me, and I sat up in the seat. “Let’s hit Chanita’s school and see what we can see.”
Colin drove down twisty La Cienega, then turned right onto Parthenon Street. “You gonna call him back?” He reached into the glove compartment and grabbed a bottle of DayQuil.
“I’m gonna vomit.” I pawed through the compartment, searching for peppermint candy or a sock to sop up the prehurl spit collecting in my mouth.
Colin reached into his pocket and plucked out the little container of peppermint Tic Tacs.
I accepted the gift and dumped thousands of candies into my mouth.
“He’s only gonna keep calling,” Colin said.
I crunched and crunched, then shrugged.
We passed the Jungle’s neglected apartment buildings, where aluminum foil sometimes doubled as curtains. We passed still-abandoned Santa Barbara Plaza, with its dead and gone businesses shuttered with wooden planks. An evangelical church now leased space in the middle of the depressed complex that had, once upon a time, boomed with fish markets, soul food restaurants, cocktail lounges, and Crase Liquor Emporium. Every business had suffered from riot-related fires and the urban troika: unemployment, crime, and poverty.
But Victor Starr had escaped this hell, lucky bastard.
“I hate when you’re quiet.” Colin brought the medicine bottle to his lips and guzzled. “It worries me.”
The lump in my throat only allowed me to grunt.
He took another swig. “You okay? For real?”
“Sure,” I croaked.
“Lou, you can’t solve everything by yourself. Let me help.”
“Thank you, Iyanla, but I don’t need you to fix my life right now. Try again tomorrow.”
He tossed the empty bottle into the backseat. “We talk about all kinds of shit now, right? My sex life. Your lack of a sex life.”
“Oy.”
“Family, politics—”
“We don’t talk politics cuz you’re an idiot.”
“The point is, we’re closer now,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And we’ve protected each other from the Crazies. And we control the Crazies so that law-abiding citizens can make a run for it.” He tapped the steering wheel. “Guess what I’m saying is … I’m here for you, partner.”
I nodded. “Thanks, pal.”
“And this monster in the Saints cap—we’ll catch him. Know why? Cuz we don’t let the Crazies win.”
I chuckled. “You can rah-rah all you want but law-abiding citizens—even us cops—can’t control the Crazies, no matter how hard we try. It’s just a matter of time before they eke into the cracks of the kingdom walls. It’s just a matter of time before the monster confronts me or confronts you in a dark alley when we’re least expecting it.”
“So,” he said, smiling, “to capture him, all we have to do is search every dark alley.”
“What if he makes no distinction between light and dark?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “I hate when you go all Nietzsche on me.”
“I’ll go back to being quiet, then.”
We rode down spruce-lined King Boulevard and slowed as we neared Madison Middle School. The sprawling campus shimmered beneath the darkening skies as though it were Oz. But it wasn’t Oz. Far from. I had despised junior high school, the Land of Misfits and Bullies, and I hadn’t visited my alma mater since ninth-grade graduation. As I climbed out of the Crown Vic now, the aromas of cheeseburgers and chili mac, rot and mold came to welcome me home.
Tori had been missing during my time at this school, and now, standing here, my hands cramped from remembering the journaling, the crying and the not crying, the numbness … I didn’t want to be at Madison. And as Colin and I walked those corridors, grief crushed my heart like it had so many years ago.