He generally shaved for the outing, while Ree preferred donning a full ball gown and a rhinestone tiara. There was no point in touring twenty aisles of food if you couldn’t make a production out of it.
This morning, she bolted upstairs to brush her teeth, then returned to the kitchen wearing a blue-flowered dress with rainbow fairy wings and pink sequined shoes. She handed him some pink gauzy hair thing, and requested a ponytail. He did his best.
Jason wrote the grocery list, then made an attempt at general hygiene. Shaving his beard revealed an ugly bruise. Combing back his hair emphasized the shiner on his eye. No doubt about it, he looked like hell. Or more precisely, like an ax murderer. Third cheerful thought for the day.
He gave up on grooming and returned downstairs, where Ree was waiting eagerly by the front door, yellow daffodil purse in hand.
“You remember the reporters?” he asked her. “The people with cameras and microphones gathered across the street?”
Ree nodded solemnly.
“Well, they’re still there, honey. And when we open that door, they’re probably going to start shouting a ton of questions and taking pictures. They’re just trying to do their job, okay? They’re gonna be all crazy-like. And you and I are going to calmly walk to our car, and drive to the grocery store. Okay?”
“It’s okay, Daddy. I saw them when I went upstairs. That’s why I put on my fairy wings. So if they yell too much, I can fly right over them.”
“You are a very smart girl,” he told her, and then, because there was no time like the present, he opened the front door.
The screaming started with the first glimpse of his shoe.
He ushered Ree out, keeping her close to his side as he closed the door behind them, locking it. His hands were shaking. He tried to keep his movements slow and measured. No rush, no guilty sprints. Grieving husband, taking his little girl to purchase badly needed milk and bread.
That comment caught his attention, made him look up sharply. He was resigned to them shouting at him, but he didn’t want the pack of vultures going after Ree.
“Daddy?” his daughter whispered beside him, and he looked down to see the anxiety scribbled across her face.
“We’re going to the car, we’re driving to the grocery store,” he repeated levelly “We’re okay, Ree. They’re the ones behaving badly, not us.”
She took his hand, keeping her body pressed tightly against his legs as they walked down the front steps, made their way across the lawn, headed toward the car parked on the driveway. He counted six vans today, up from four yesterday. From this distance, he couldn’t make out the station call letters. He’d have to check it out later, see if they’d broken onto the national stage.
He kept himself and Ree moving, slow and steady, across the yard, homing in on the Volvo. Then he had the keys out, the doors clicking open.
Police brutality, he thought idly, as more questions followed about his face and his ribs protested as he swung open the heavy car door.
Then Ree was inside, the back passenger door closed. And he was inside, the driver’s door closed. He started the engine, and immediately the reporters’ shrill questions disappeared.
“Good job,” he told Ree.
“I don’t like reporters,” she informed him.
“I know. Next time, I’m getting my own pair of fairy wings.”
He cracked at the grocery store. Couldn’t seem to find the parental fortitude to deny his traumatized daughter Oreos, Pop-Tarts, bags of bakery-fresh chocolate chip cookies. Ree figured out his weakness early on, and by the end of the trip they had a grocery cart half-filled with junk food. He thought he’d managed milk, bread, pasta, and fruit, but to tell the truth, his heart wasn’t in it.
He was killing time with his daughter, desperate to give them a slice of normalcy in a world that had tilted crazily. Sandy was gone. Max was back. The police would continue asking questions, he’d been an idiot to have ever used the family computer…
Jason didn’t want this life. He wanted to turn the clock back sixty hours, maybe seventy hours, and say whatever it was he should’ve said, do whatever it was he should’ve done, so this never would have happened. Hell, he’d even take back the February vacation.
The woman manning the cash register smiled down at Ree’s glamorous getup. Then her gaze went to him and she did a double-take. He shrugged self-consciously, following the cashier’s line of sight to the newsstand, where he saw his own black-and-white picture staring out from the front page of the
They had used the photo from his official press pass, a closely cropped image that was barely one step above a mug shot. He looked flat, even vaguely menacing, staring out above the fold.
“Daddy, that’s you!” Ree declared loudly. She pranced over to the newspaper, staring at it more closely. Other shoppers had noticed now, were watching this cute little girl gaze upon a disturbing photo of a grown man. “Why are you in the paper?”
“That’s the paper I work for,” he said lightly, wishing they didn’t have so many groceries, wishing they could just bolt out of the store.
“What does it say?”
“It says I’m mild-mannered.”
The cashier lady went bug-eyed. He shot her a look, no longer caring if he appeared menacing or not. For God’s sake, this was his daughter.
“We should take it home,” Ree declared. “Mommy will want to see it.” She fished the newspaper out of the rack, tossed it onto the conveyor belt. He noted the byline read “Greg Barr,” his boss and the head news editor. He had no doubt now which quotes had been included in the story, basically anything Jason had said by phone yesterday.
He reached into his back pocket, working on his wallet before he grew so angry he could no longer function.
He got out his credit card, handed it to the cashier. Her fingers were trembling so hard it took her three tries to take the plastic. Was she that afraid of him? Certain she was completing a transaction with a psycho killer who’d most likely strangled his wife, then dismembered her body and tossed it into the harbor?
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, but the sound would come out all wrong. Too chilling, too disaffected. His life had gone cockeyed, and he didn’t know how to get it back.
“Can I have Pop-Tarts in the car?” Ree was saying. “Can I, can I, can I?”
The woman finally had the card back to him, as well as his receipt. “Yes, yes, yes,” he murmured, signing the slip, pocketing his credit card, desperate to make his getaway.
“I love you, Daddy!” Ree sang out in triumph.
He hoped the whole damn store heard that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
