“What happened to your head?” Colleen had asked as she drove down the street.
“Kitchen fire. Left a paper plate too near a burner. Embers floated up and caught my hair on fire, but I was too busy dumping flour on the stove to notice.”
She didn’t look convinced. “You doing okay, Aidan?”
“I lost my job. I burned my head. I got my face on the evening news. No fucking way, but thanks for asking.”
“Aidan…”
He stared at her, daring her to say it. She was sorry. What a shame. Things’ll get better. Hold tight.
Pick a platitude, any platitude. The sayings were all bullshit. And he and Colleen both knew it.
She drove him the rest of the way in silence, biggest favor she ever did him.
Now he finished folding his towels, sheets, various coverlets, even three doilies. If it was a textile and it had been in his apartment, he’d washed it with Clorox color-safe bleach.
Let the police hash over that one. Let them hate him.
After this, he planned on returning to his apartment and packing up everything he owned. He was placing his entire collection of worldly possessions into four black trash bags, and he was bolting into the wind. That was it. Show over. He was done. Let his PO chase him. Let the police go apeshit looking for another registered sex offender.
He’d followed the rules, and look where it got him: The police were screwing him; his former coworkers had tried to jump him; and his neighbor, Jason Jones, just plain scared him. Then there were the reporters… Aidan wanted out. So long. See you. Bye-bye.
Which didn’t explain why he remained here, sitting on the floor of a grungy Laundromat, snapping his green elastic band and clutching a blue ballpoint pen. He’d been staring at the blank piece of notebook paper for three minutes already. He finally wrote:
Dear Rachel:
I’m an ass. It’s all my fault You should hate me.
He paused. Chewed on the end of the pen again. Snapped the band.
Thanks for sending me the letters. Maybe you hate them. Maybe you couldn’t stand to see them anymore. Guess I can’t blame you.
He crossed out words. Tried again. Crossed out more.
I love you.
I loved you. I was wrong. I’m sorry.
I won’t bother you again.
He picked up the pen again.
Please don’t hurt yourself.
Then, almost as an afterthought:
And don’t let Jerry hurt you either. You deserve better. You really, really do.
Sorry I fucked everything up. Have a nice life.
Aidan
He set down the pen. Reread the letter. Debated tearing it to shreds and attempting another bonfire. Held it instead. He wouldn’t send the letter. In group, the exercise was simply to write the note. Teach him empathy and remorse. Which he guess he felt, because his chest was tight, and it was hard to breathe, and he didn’t want to be sitting in the middle of a seedy Laundromat anymore. He wanted to be back in his apartment, curled up with blankets over his head. Someplace he could get lost in the dark and not think about that winter and how good her skin had felt against his, or how much of both of their lives he had destroyed.
God help him, he still loved her. He did. She was the only good thing that had ever happened to him, and she had been his step sister and he was the worst kind of monster in the world and maybe the guys at the shop should beat the snot out of him. Maybe that was the only solution for a jerkoff like him. He was a pervert. No better than Wendell the psychotic flasher. He should be destroyed.
Except, like any pervert, he didn’t really want to die. He just wanted to get through the night and maybe the next day.
So he gathered up his laundry and hailed a cab.
“Home, James,” he told the driver.
Then, sitting in the back seat of the taxi, he tore the letter into tiny, tiny bits, and flung them out the window, watching the night wind carry them away.
Nine-oh-five P.M., Jason finally had Ree down for the night. It hadn’t been easy. The growing media camp had kept them housebound for most of the day, and Ree was punchy from lack of fresh air and exercise. Then, after dinner, the first of the klieg lights had powered on, their entire house now lit up bright enough to be viewed from outer space.
Ree had complained about the spotlights. She had whined about the noise. She had demanded that he make the reporters go away, and then, when that hadn’t done the trick, she had stomped her foot and demanded that he take her to find her mother right
In response, he offered to color with her. Or maybe they could work on origami. Perhaps a stimulating game of checkers.
He didn’t blame her for scowling at him and storming around the house. He wanted the reporters to go away, too. He’d like their old life to resume anytime now, thank you very much.
He’d read an entire fairy novel to his daughter, all one hundred pages from beginning to end. His throat hurt, he’d lost command of the English language, but his daughter was finally asleep.
Which left him alone in the family room, blinds and curtains tightly drawn, trying to figure out what to do next. Sandra remained missing. Maxwell had a court-ordered visit with Ree. And Jason was still the primary suspect in his pregnant wife’s disappearance.
He had hoped, in his own way, that his wife had run off with a lover. He hadn’t really believed it, but he had hoped, because given all the options, that one kept Sandy safe and sound. And maybe one day she’d change her mind and return to him. He’d take her back. For Ree’s sake, for his own. He knew he was not a perfect husband, he knew he had made a terrible mistake during the family vacation. If she’d needed to punish him for that, he could take it.
But now, as day three closed and the hours dragged by, he was forced to contemplate other options. That his wife hadn’t run off. That something terrible had happened, right here, in his own home, and by some miracle, Ree had survived it. Maybe Ethan Hastings had grown frustrated with his unrequited love. Maybe Maxwell had finally found them and abducted Sandy as a ploy to gain his granddaughter. Or maybe Sandra had another lover, this mysterious computer expert, who’d grown tired of waiting for her to leave Jason.
She’d been pregnant. His baby? Someone else’s? Had that been what triggered this whole thing? Maybe, with Ethan Hastings’s help, she had figured out exactly who he was, and she had recoiled at the prospect of bearing a monster’s child. He couldn’t really blame her. He should be terrified at the thought of reproducing as well.
Except he wasn’t. He had wanted… He had hoped…
If they had ever had that moment, the one where Sandy nervously confessed they were expecting a baby together, he would’ve been touched, awed, humbled. He would have been eternally grateful.
But they never got that moment. His wife was gone, and he was left with the ghost of what might have been.
As well as the specter of impending criminal arrest.
He would take his daughter and run. Only thing that could be done, because sooner or later, Sergeant Warren was going to appear on his front porch with an arrest warrant, and a family court officer. He’d go to prison. Worse, Ree would go to foster care.
He could not let that happen. Not for his sake and not for his daughter’s.
He headed for the attic.
The access panel was in the closet of the master bedroom. He grabbed the handle in the ceiling, and pulled down the rickety folding stairs. Then he clicked on a flashlight and headed up into the pitch black gloom.
