Brenda leafed quickly through the rest of the section. She tossed it on the table, but then picked it up. She reopened the paper and leafed slowly from the back. Not sure why, she scanned the pages.
“Marco Resident Takes Life.”
Hilda Frieslander. Quickly, Brenda read the short article, noting details told to her by the elderly resident and the lobby guard. Hilda Frieslander had been found late Friday night. It all fit with other details—strokes the previous year, diabetes, going blind from macular degeneration. Dead at seventy-nine, survived by a niece somewhere in Europe. No other family.
Sweeney had dismissed her suspicions. What would he say now? She remembered James Rivera lifting her suitcase out of his van. Minutes later, he had driven a few hundred yards to see about a dead client. Things happen. It goes with the territory—
Brenda felt guilty and selfish now about Sweeney, but she wanted his opinion. Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be necessary to actually see him.
She turned to her laptop and typed his full name. Patrick and Sweeney were both common Irish names, so she added “lobbyist.” The point was to gain a link to his email. She clicked and now studied the first of seven screens related to Patrick Sweeney.
It was no surprise. As a lobbyist, he had been involved with politicians and high-profile industries. She scrolled down the list. Not just big construction, but big oil, big tobacco. Brenda shook her head. Pfizer, Global Marine, Pulte. But the most recent entries suggested that late in the game, Patrick Sweeney had gotten religion. “Influence with a conscience: Sweeney says yes to Nader.” He had also gone to bat for migrant farm workers in Michigan. Then for Common Cause.
“Lobbyist’s Wife Takes Own Life.” There it was, with separate photos of Patrick and Teresa Sweeney. The date was September 9, 2003. Brenda didn’t want to read it, not now, and clicked “next” for the second screen.
“Holocaust on I-94, Seven Dead.”
The story was from the Detroit Free Press, dated two years earlier, Thursday, September 13, 2001. She clicked the link.
“A family of four and two school friends died Tuesday when a tanker truck loaded with diesel fuel jackknifed on I-75, just north of Monroe, Michigan.
“A witness reported seeing the truck’s right front tire explode and the rig out of control. Moments later, the truck struck a bridge abutment, killing the driver and overturning the tanker as a Dodge minivan, driven by Keith Shay, attempted to stop. The van failed to brake in time and struck the tanker. Police believe sparks from the impact ignited fuel seeping—”
“That’s why she killed herself—”
She didn’t want to know. Brenda pushed back her chair, stiffened her arms on the table. But now she read. Constance Shay, daughter of lobbyist Patrick Sweeney, her husband, her two children, and two friends of the girls, all four children students at Shrine School in Royal Oak had been returning from a late-summer trip to Naples, Florida…
Brenda lowered the laptop’s screen. She stood and walked. She was crying, seeing Patrick Sweeney leaning next to her on the plane. His hand with a tan line on his ring finger was resting on the tray table, he was sitting on the grass beside her, teeing up another ball. Doing his best, she thought, walking, crying. Trying his best.
She mustn’t stop, and moved now outside to the deck. She circled the pool. The surface was dancing with morning sun. All wrong, she thought, marching. So beautiful. Sky and clouds were mirrored in water, and gorgeous flowers bloomed outside the pool cage. All of it heartless.
“Everything just cooking along…” She kept walking, holding herself. “Everything smooth sailing…blue skies coming your way—”
“Brenda?”
She couldn’t answer, walking, marching, sure she would lose it if she stopped. There could be no response. No, there was nothing anyone could ever say to Pat Sweeney or do for him. Pat Sweeney, who had somehow managed to pull himself together, to come back from all that death two years before. But in that time, Teresa Sweeney had not been able to come back.
The cage door squeaked. “You all right?” Rayette stepped in. “You were talking, I heard—”
She couldn’t remember. Her brain seemed stuck. The only way to move or think was to face it again. Wiping her eyes, Brenda walked quickly around the pool, into the house, and to the kitchen. She re-opened the laptop. The story still glowed on the screen. She sat slowly and scrolled up.
September 13. The crash had taken place on 9/11, with no story the following day. Because of the World Trade Center, Brenda thought. And the Pentagon, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. It confused her. She wanted the two disasters to mean something.
They don’t, she thought, looking at the date. That day, Patrick and Teresa Sweeney had lived with it all by themselves. That’s what it meant, Pat and Terri sitting on a couch, trying to comprehend total loss, while all the world watched replay on replay of the Trade Towers coming down. And one year later, all of it over again. And a year after that—
Rayette sucked air. “My God—” She was standing behind, reading. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”
Brenda pushed back and stood. She couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t know this and stay here. At the same time, the thought of going alone to Sweeney made her frightened. If he had wanted her to know, he’d have told her. She remembered the list on his kitchen table, the photos. Children and daughter and son-in-law and wife, all laid out on butcher block, with a list of his assets.
Don’t worry about the phone ringing. You know what he’s down here for, she thought. Why he’s cleaning up.
Why stop him?
It shocked her, how quickly the question came to her. Having an answer seemed in the next seconds of great importance. Because, she thought,
