4
Simon
This is risky. Just parking here, up the street from Lauren’s house, a bit before eight in the morning, could bring trouble. These are the homes we used to call the “Lathrow mansions,” running through the middle of Grace Village like a tourist attraction. Some of the pearl-clutching neighbors on Lathrow Avenue tend to call the police whenever they see someone who is “not from the neighborhood.” Usually that code stands for something very different than me, a middle-aged white guy in a respectable-looking SUV, but still . . . If I idle here for too long, I’m bound to draw someone’s attention, followed not long thereafter by a police cruiser swinging by for a quick inquiry. How’s your day going, sir? Can I ask what you’re doing? See some ID?
And it’s not as if I’d have a great answer. Making the most of my time in early July, when classes are out and my schedule is flexible, to spy on an old girlfriend and her husband, trying to learn more about her and him and them, trying to glean whatever morsels of information I can? That doesn’t sound so good.
That’s all I need—the cops show up and make a scene. Maybe even give me a ticket for some residential parking violation. Meanwhile, Lauren walks out of her house or looks out her window and sees ol’ Simon Dobias parked nearby for no apparent reason. Creepy!
I’m from around here, but not really from around here. I’m from Grace Park, mostly middle-class and proudly progressive—just ask us. But when Mortimer Grace founded the Park in the 1800s, he broke off a three-square-mile chunk and incorporated it separately as Grace Village. Mortimer’s views on class and race and religion would not be considered enlightened by today’s standards. He wanted the Village to be a gated community of wealthy, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants like him.
The gates are gone, and the charter was amended to remove insensitive comments back in the 1940s, but some would argue that the Village hasn’t really changed all that much. More than anything, the wealth. Most of the kids don’t attend Grace Consolidated High School like I did; they go to private prep schools. And when they grow up, most return to the Village to raise families of their own. There are sixth-generation Villagers there.
Lauren’s not from here, either. She’s from Old Irving Park on the north side of Chicago and still lived there when I first met her (Lauren as a paralegal at my dad’s law firm, me as a college kid doing gofer work). But here she is now, living in a palatial home, married to Conrad Betancourt, a twice-divorced guy fifteen years her senior, who runs one of the most successful hedge funds in the world.
I’ve probably exhausted my luck with my recon missions this week. And I’ve compiled enough information for now. I rip out the page from my green journal and review.
A town car picks up Conrad Betancourt every morning at six sharp and heads for the expressway downtown. He works out at the East Bank Club and then drives to his offices in the Civic Opera Building on Wacker Drive. He doesn’t return home at any predictable time—at least he hasn’t this week.
Lauren, from what I can tell, has no job. Every day this week, she has played tennis in the morning at the Grace Country Club. A round of golf afterward. Twice this week, she had dinner downtown, neither time with Conrad, always with a group of women. Each of those times, she spent the night in her condo on Michigan Avenue, not returning to the Village.
Every morning that she has awakened here in Grace Village, she has gone for a run. She runs through the town, usually about three or four miles in total, back by 8:30 a.m.
Run, tennis, golf. No wonder you’re so fit, Lauren.
Two teenage girls come walking by on the sidewalk, gabbing and looking at their phones while the Pomeranian on a leash sniffs a fire hydrant. One of the teens glances at me and does a double take. I have my earbuds tucked into my ears, so I start talking, as if in a phone conversation, which for some reason makes me seem less weird sitting in a parked car.
God, what am I doing? I should stop this. Forget the whole thing. Forget I ever saw you, Lauren. Move on, like I told myself I’d done. But it’s an argument I keep losing.
I don’t think I can let go again.
5
Vicky
The administrator in the emergency department sees my credentials, hanging from a lanyard around my neck, and nods at me. We’ve never met. Some of them have gotten to know me. “Social services?”
“Right. I’m Vicky from Safe Haven. I’m here for a Brandi Stratton.”
Near eight o’clock, the emergency department is in a lull. A woman sits with her arm around a boy sniffling while he plays a game on a tablet. A man is holding his hand, wrapped in a towel, with a woman sitting next to him.
“Curtain six,” says the administrator, “but they’re still stitching her up. Sit tight.”
“Sure.”
My phone rings, a FaceTime call from the M&Ms—Mariah and Macy, my sister’s girls. I step through the automated doors and narrowly avoid a gurney on its way in, a woman grimacing but stoically silent as paramedics wheel her by.
I throw in my AirPods and answer the call. Both girls are on—Macy, age ten, and Mariah, age thirteen-going-on-nineteen. They both take after their mother, my sister, Monica, beautiful just like she was, those almond-shaped eyes and the lustrous hair, traits that somehow avoided me. I used to joke that Monica and I must have had different fathers, which in hindsight might not have been a joke.
“Hi, monkeys!” I try to be cheerful. I don’t do cheerful well.
“Hey, Vicky,” they say in unison, the faces huddled together to see me. “Calling you back,” says Mariah. “We were at the pool when you called. Dad said we had to finish piano before we could call.”
Makes sense because we sometimes spend a long time together on the phone. That won’t happen now, with the call I must make on Brandi Stratton, curtain six.
I called the girls earlier today just to check on them. I wasn’t sure if they realized what today was, the anniversary of their mother’s death. Everyone remembers birthdays. People don’t focus as much on days of death. I do. I will sometimes forget my sister’s birthday. I will never forget the day she died.
But it seems to have escaped my nieces’ notice. To them, today was just another July day at the pool with their nanny and their friends. So I’m sure as hell not going to remind them. They seem to be doing better now. Macy, the younger one, not as well as her older sister, but they both seem to be living pretty normal and happy lives. At least that’s how it seems, with most of my contact recently by FaceTime. And even in person, you can only penetrate the adolescent psyche so far.
“I’m working,” I say, “so I’ll probably have to call you tomorrow. Macy, you should be in bed anyway, shouldn’t you?”
“Um, it’s summer?”
I walk back into the emergency area. The administrator nods to me. “Gotta run, princesses. Talk tomorrow? I love you, monkeys!”
“Curtain six,” the administrator reminds me. “You know the way?”
I definitely know the way.
The administrator pops the doors, and I wind my way through to curtain six, with the familiar cocktail of smells—disinfectant, body odor, alcohol. A man moaning in one curtain, another shouting out, belligerent and drunk.
A police officer, a young woman, stands outside the curtain. “Social services?”
“Right. Safe Haven. Officer Gilford?”
“That’s me.” The officer nods toward a quieter spot, a nook around the bend of the corner, and I follow. “Her husband did a pretty good number on her. Beat her with a frying pan. Apparently, he wasn’t impressed with the dinner she made. He didn’t even wait for the pan to cool down. Then he went old-school and just used his fists.”