Where was I on Halloween, Officer? Why, I was at my apartment I’m renting in Delavan, Wisconsin, answering the door to trick-or-treaters. I left my cell phone there, per the plan. I didn’t stream a continuous series of episodes off Netflix like Simon did, but my phone was there, regardless. It would ping the nearest cell tower at least a few times, even if not doing much of anything besides refreshing.
Christian Newsome? Never heard of him. Nick Caracci? Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.
My car? I drive a beater 2007 Chevy Lumina. You want to check the plates to see if they were ever recorded by tollway cameras or local POD cameras in Chicago? Go ahead and check. They never were. That car hasn’t been over the Wisconsin border since I moved to Delavan almost a year ago.
Oh, I may have used a Jeep to travel back and forth to Chicago, but that vehicle’s long gone now, and the registration won’t come back to me or Simon, anyway.
Simon Dobias? Never met him, Officer. You mean the guy who let me talk to him for hours and hours after my first SOS meeting, who scraped me off the floor a week later, when I was about to follow my sister, Monica, into the world of overdosing—me on cocaine, not oxy?
You mean the guy who forced me into rehab, who paid for the whole thing, and who was waiting for me when I came out?
You mean the guy who convinced me to give life another shot?
No, I’ve never met that man. Never heard of him.
I drive back to the house, humoring the girls, laughing at their jokes, but inside, a dull ache fills me. I’m ready, though. I have no idea what you’re talking about, Officer. My answers will be confident but not too perfect.
When I turn onto the street, I see immediately that the police vehicle is gone. Relief floods through me. I park in the garage. The kids fly into the house.
“Daddy, I got my ears pierced!”
I walk in slowly, my pulse decelerating, the adrenaline draining from me. The M&Ms are bouncing around the house, heading upstairs to his bedroom and home office, opening the basement door.
“Where’s Daddy?”
I spot him outside, in the backyard, staring out. Something in his hand . . . a cigarette?
“Girls, put his dinner on the counter. He’s outside. I’m going to talk to him. Just me,” I say as Macy rushes for the door. “Give us a minute, please, Mace?”
“Hey.”
Adam is standing by a stone fountain in the backyard, empty this time of year. He is underdressed for the cold, just a light sweater on with blue jeans. A cigarette burns in his hand.
“Since when do you smoke?” I say.
“Since pretty much never.” He looks at the cigarette and tosses it in the grass, stamps it out with his foot. “Monica started smoking to get over the OxyContin. Always seemed dumb. But I’d have gone along with anything that made her stop those pills. I even smoked a few cigarettes with her. Now, every once in a while, when I think of her, I light one up. Isn’t that the dumbest thing?”
“You’re thinking about her,” I say.
He glances in my direction, stuffs his hands in his pockets. “The attorney general’s office was here. The people I complained to after Monica’s overdose? Remember I filed that complaint?”
“I remember.”
Adam looks at me, his jaw quivering, his eyes filling with tears. “He’s dead,” he says.
“He’s— Who’s dead?”
“David.”
“David?”
“David Jenner. The man who stole Monica from us and then stole her money and left her with a bottle of fucking pills to overdose on? The handsome, charismatic, glorified drug dealer?”
I try to act surprised. “Of course I remember. I’ve tried to put that name out of my head.”
He lets out a sigh. “Me, too. And that wasn’t his name, anyway. We figured he used a fake name.”
“Right.”
“His name was Nicholas Caracci,” says Adam. “He killed himself.”
“He killed himself, huh?”
Adam shakes his head. “Apparently he was trying the same thing with some lady in Chicago. It—it backfired or something. I don’t know.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “So how are you feeling?”
“How’m I feeling? I want my wife back, that’s how I’m—”
He breaks down, something he doesn’t do often, covers his face with his hands and lets out a good, blubbering cry. I rub his back and hope that the girls aren’t watching.
“The things I said to her,” he mumbles.
“Adam, please.”
“After she left. When she was full-on using again, shacked up with some pretty boy who was handing it out to her like candy. I told her to stay away from the kids.”
“You had to.”
“I told her I didn’t want them seeing their mother as a junkie whore—”
I grab and hold him tight while he sobs and moans.
“You had to protect the girls,” I whisper. “You tried to help her, and you would have. She would have made it. But he used the drugs to drag her over to the dark side. He turned her into somebody she wasn’t. You couldn’t let the girls see her like that.”
I remember that time, too. Talking to Monica every day, fielding the occasional frantic call from Adam. I should’ve done more. I was too caught up in my own addiction. And I was out of my element. I’d never had to dispense a single word of advice to my older sister, the successful one.
“I would’ve taken her back,” he says, his voice still shaking.
“I know.”
“After he robbed her clean and took off, and she was living in filth and waste and practically in the gutter. I would’ve brought her back and cleaned her up and we could’ve—I know we could’ve—”
“I know, Adam, I know. None of this was your fault.”
That seems to help. Adam doesn’t have anyone to talk to about these things, about his guilt. There was no Survivors of Suicide for Adam, no therapist. A guy like Adam would never go for that.
I had someone. I had Simon. Simon listened. He listened to everything I had to say. He listened to me talk about the sister that I loved more than I ever realized after her death, and how I loved those girls. He didn’t judge me when I told him why I moved to Chicago, how I had used a private investigator to find Nick, and I was waiting for him to return to Chicago so I could kill him.
He tried to talk me out of it. He told me it wouldn’t solve anything. He told me I’d cleaned myself up, I was sober now, and I should focus on starting a new life and spending time with the girls. He proposed marriage and talked about us having a family of our own. But even when I said no, he never left me. He said I should move on, move forward. He said that’s what he had done with Lauren. He’d put Lauren behind him. And I should do the same with Nick.
But he didn’t judge me when I told him I couldn’t let it go, I couldn’t let Nick get away with it. He helped me pack my stuff and move to Delavan, so I could have some distance from Chicago, so nobody could possibly connect me to Nick or Chicago when I killed him.
And I was ready to do it. I was waiting for the summer. In the summer, so my original plan went, I’d come down to Chicago, run into Nick in a bar, and hope he’d take me home with him. If that didn’t work, I’d find some other way.
And then Simon saw Lauren on the street in Chicago last May, and my simple little plan to slit that monster’s throat turned into a much more complicated plan for both of us to find peace.
Did we find peace? Did I?
“Adam,” I say softly. “Macy really wants to show you her pierced ears. You still have two beautiful daughters.”