Tim felt something constrict in his stomach.
“Why does he have blood on his shirt, Tim?”
The toilet flushed.
“Listen, when he comes back out, you say since you aren’t feeling well, you’re going to bed.” The faucet turned on. “Then go upstairs and wait several minutes. I’m gonna offer Martin a drink. We’ll sit in the kitchen, and you sneak back down and go outside, see if you can get into his squad car.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think he brought his cell phone inside with him. He usually keeps it in a little pouch on his belt. Probably left it in the car. Get it, and look back over the outgoing history. If he called our house at nine-sixteen tonight, we’ll know.”
“And then what?”
The bathroom faucet went quiet.
“I don’t know. This is my brother for Chrissakes.”
Tim opened one of the high cabinets above the sink and took down a bottle of whiskey.
“Old Grandad?” Martin asked.
“What, too low-shelf for you?”
“That’s what Dad used to pass out to. Let me see that.” He grabbed the bottle out of Tim’s hands, unscrewed the cap, inhaled a whiff. “Jesus, brings back memories.”
“You want ice or—”
“Naw, let’s just pass it back and forth like old times in the field.”
They sat at the breakfast table, taking turns with the fifth of Old Grandad. It had been several months since the brothers had really talked. They’d been close in high school, drifted in college, Martin only lasting three semesters. Tim had come home two years ago when Dad’s liver finally yelled uncle, found that something had wedged itself between him and his brother, a nameless tension they’d never acknowledged outright.
And though all he could think about was the message and Laura, he forced himself to broach the subject of Mom—hostile territory—asked Martin if he thought she seemed to be thriving in the wake of Dad’s passing.
“That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to say.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“No, you’re saying she’s better off without him.”
Beyond the kitchen, Tim heard the middle step of the staircase creak—Laura working her way down from the bedroom—and he wondered if Martin had heard it. The last two steps were noisy as well, and then came the front door you could hear opening from Argentina. Nothing else to do but get him riled and noisy.
“Yeah, Martin, I guess I am saying she’s better off without him. What’d he do these last five years but cause us all a lot of heartache? And what’d you do but step in as Dad’s faithful apologist?”
Another creak.
“Ever heard of honor thy father, Tim?” Martin’s cheeks had flushed with the whiskey and Tim wondered if he’d intended to raise his voice like he had. His brother’s back was to the archway between the kitchen and the living room, and as Tim saw Laura enter the foyer and start toward the front door, he tried to avert his eyes.
“You know he beat Mom.”
“Once, Tim. One fucking time. And it was a total accident. He didn’t mean to shove her as hard as he did.” Laura turning the deadbolt now. “And it tore him up that he did it. You weren’t here when it happened. Didn’t see him crying like a goddamn two-year-old, sitting in his own vomit, did you?” Tim could hear the hinges creaking. “No,” Martin answered his own question as the front door swung open, cold streaming in. “You were in college.” Laura slipped outside, eased the door closed behind her. “Becoming a teacher.” Any curiosity Tim had harbored concerning his brother’s opinion of his chosen profession instantly wilted.
“You’re right,” Tim said. “Sorry. I just…part of me’s still so pissed at him, you know?”
Martin lifted the bottle, took a long drink, wiped his mouth.
“Of course I know.”
Tim pulled Old Grandad across the table, wondering how long it would take Laura. If the cruiser was locked, there’d be nothing she could do but come right back inside. If it was open, might take her a minute or two of searching the front seats to find the phone, another thirty seconds to figure out how to work Martin’s cell, check his call history.
He sipped the whiskey, pushed the bottle back to Martin.
“Wish you’d come over more,” Tim said. “Feel like I don’t see you much these days.”
“See me every Sunday at Mom’s.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Tim wanted to ask Martin if he felt that wedge between them, met his brother’s eyes across the table, but couldn’t bring himself to say the words. They didn’t operate on that frequency.
A frigid mist fogged Laura’s glasses, and with the porchlight out, she took her time descending the steps, the soles of her slippers holding a tenuous grip on the wet brick. The fog had thickened since Martin’s arrival, the streetlamps putting out a glow far dimmer and more diffused than their normal sharp points of illumination—now just smudges of light in the distance.
She hurried down the sidewalk that curved from the house to the driveway.
Martin had parked his police cruiser behind the old Honda Civic she’d had since her junior year of high school, over 200,000 miles on the odometer and not a glimmer of senility.
Laura walked around to the front door on the passenger side, out of the sight-line of the living room windows. She reached to open the front passenger door, wondering if Martin’s cruiser carried an alarm. If so, she was about to wake up everyone on the block, and had better prepare herself to explain to her brother-in-law why she’d tried to break into his car.
The door opened. Interior lights blazing. No screeching alarm. The front seat filthy—Chick-Fil-A wrappers and crushed Cheerwine cans in the floorboards.
She leaned over the computer in the central console, inspected the driver seat.
No phone.
Two minutes of leafing through the myriad papers and napkins and straws and stray salt packets in the glove compartment convinced her it wasn’t there either.
She glanced back through the partition that separated the front seats from the back.
In the middle seat, on top of a Penthouse magazine, lay Martin’s black leather cell phone case.
“Yeah, I was seeing this woman for a little while.”
“But not anymore?”
Martin took another long pull from Old Grandad, shook his head.
“What happened?”
“She wanted to domesticate me, as they say.”
Tim forced a smile. “How so?”
“Tried to drag me to church and Sunday school. Anytime we’d be out and I’d order an alcoholic beverage—her term—she’d make this real restrained sigh, like her Southern Baptist sensibility had been scandalized. And in bed…”
Laura opened the door behind the front passenger seat and climbed into the back of the cruiser. Wary of the interior lights exposing her, on the chance Martin happened to glance outside, she pulled the door closed.
After a moment, the lights cut out.
She picked up the leather case, fished out Martin’s cell phone, and flipped it open, the little screen glowing in the dark.
“…I’d gotten my hopes up, figured she’s so uptight about every other fucking thing, girl must be a psychopath between the sheets. Like it has to balance out somewhere, right?”
As he sipped the whiskey, Tim glanced around Martin toward the front door.
“Sadly, not the case. When we finally did the deed, she just laid there, absolutely motionless, making these weird little noises. She was terrified of sex. I think she approached it like scooping up dogshit. Damn, this whiskey’s running through me.”
Martin got up from the table and left the kitchen, Tim listening to his brother’s footsteps track down the hallway.
The bathroom door opened and closed.
It grew suddenly quiet.
The clock above the kitchen sink showed 11:35.