“Thanks,” the girl said. “But all’s I kept thinking was that Jack should have been there to hear all the nice things people were saying about him.”
She sighed. It was a gale-force sigh. Then she said, “We all should have said more of those things to him when he was alive.”
“You guys went out for a long time, right?” Suit said. He smiled at her. “Is it okay to say ‘went out’? Or does that make me sound older than I already am?”
“It’s okay,” Ainsley said. “There’s really no way to say it that doesn’t sound sketchy. But, yeah, we pretty much started hanging out at the beginning of junior year.”
She shrugged now. Teenagers, Molly knew, were good at it. Shrugging. It usually meant boredom, sometimes a way to punctuate a thought. By the time Molly’s daughters were Ainsley Walsh’s age they had elevated shrugging to an art form.
“But we both knew it was going to end when we graduated,” Ainsley said. “It was already starting to end.”
“Happens that way a lot,” Molly said. “I sent four daughters through your school. And went there myself.”
“We hadn’t made it official yet,” Ainsley said. What came out of her next came out in an exaggerated form of what was once called a Valley Girl voice. “At least not Insta official.”
“I did the same thing with my senior-year girlfriend,” Suit said.
Molly sighed now.
“I married my high school boyfriend,” she said.
She knew what she and Suit were doing, trying to relax the kid, maybe get her to drop her guard, having no idea at this point about what, exactly.
Suit leaned forward now, like he was kindly Uncle Suit to Ainsley, too.
“Jack hadn’t said anything to me about you two breaking up,” Suit said.
“Guys don’t talk,” Ainsley said, “even to other guys sometimes. We didn’t care if everybody else knew. We knew.”
Going in, Molly thought.
“So why did Jack think there was something going on with you and Scott Ford behind his back? Scott says that’s what the fight was about the night of the party.”
“Nothing was going on!” Ainsley said, the words coming out hot.
“I’m not suggesting that there was,” Molly said. “I’m just wondering why Jack seemed to think so.”
Ainsley reached forward for the plastic bottle of water on the coffee table, and drank some.
“My mom keeps telling me it’s more important than ever right now for me to stay hydrated.”
“Words to live by,” Molly said. “But getting back to the party, why did Jack think you were cheating on him with one of his teammates?”
“He saw Scott and me coming out of Daisy’s one day at lunch,” she said. “I’d been there with one of my girlfriends. Scott was picking up a to-go. My friend had to leave, but I’d already ordered. Scott offered to eat his lunch there and keep me company. A few hours later Jack texted me, being sarcastic, and congratulated me on already moving on to the next guy.”
High school, Molly thought.
The pandemic in high school, from the beginning of time, had been drama.
Ainsley pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans, checked it, put it back.
“You have to be someplace?” Suit said.
“Kind of.”
“We won’t keep you much longer,” Molly said. “Why were you even at the party if things were ending with you and Jack?”
Ainsley looked at Molly, eyes big suddenly, tears forming. Molly had known from the start that it was bullshit about her being all cried out.
“Because I loved him,” she said. “Because he’d just had the best day he’d ever had in baseball, and when he asked me to come, I wasn’t about to say no.”
“When did you find out about the fight?” Suit said.
“When Scott came back.”
“And he told you what happened?” Molly said.
The girl nodded. “That’s when I went looking for Jack. But I couldn’t find him.”
Ainsley put her hands to her face and rubbed hard. Molly could never do that without ruining her makeup. Maybe Ainsley Walsh didn’t need it.
“It wasn’t just me who loved Jack,” she said, her eyes big and red and focused on Suit now. “Everybody did.”
Molly thought that it hadn’t done Jack Carlisle much good on the last night of his life.
“We’re still trying our best to love him now,” Ainsley said. “Can you understand that?”
Molly wasn’t sure she did. But telling this girl wasn’t going to do anybody any good.
So they left.
Sixteen
Suit should be sitting where I’m sitting,” Jesse said to Dix.
They were in Dix’s office, in the late afternoon. Jesse had decided that he needed a visit to his therapist more than he needed an AA meeting today. Dix, who’d been a cop. Who was a recovering alcoholic himself. Dix referred to himself and Jesse as a two-man club. The Dead Drunk Society.
“Are we here to talk about Suit or talk about you?” Dix said.
Dix had bought a new house, on the west side of Paradise, an area in the process of being gentrified, maybe so it would be allowed to even remain in Paradise. It was supposed to have been a bigger development before the real estate guy who’d bought up the land — Harry Townes was his name — had run out of money, and had to flip most of the land at a loss during COVID. Before he had, Dix had bought his small house at a very good price, knowing that nothing could be built behind him because of the small land trust back there. No ocean view over on this side of town, but some spectacular sunsets, one in its early stages right now.
Dix wore his usual white shirt. Both his bald head and his nails were gleaming. Everything about him was as neat as an operating room, which, in so many ways, this really was.
He had just finished telling Dix about what Ainsley Walsh had told Molly and Suit.
“Suit wanted to drive straight over to the Ford kid’s house and haul him in,” Jesse said. “Fortunately I intervened.”
“And I take it both of you, uh, demurred,” Dix said.
Jesse grinned.
“Fuckin’ ay,” he said.
Dix might have grinned in return. Or perhaps it was just his lips twitching involuntarily.
“Suit made a good point the other day,” Jesse said.
“He does that from time to time,” Dix said.
“More often than you think,” Jesse said. “He reminded me that I had done a lot of hotheaded shit on the job, especially when I was still drinking. Usually when I was hungover.”
“Hangovers,” Dix said, and not for the first time, “are like having a second job.”
They sat in silence. Dix was better at it than anybody Jesse had ever known. Jesse sometimes thought that if you counted only the time when they were actually talking to each other, in this office or the old one, he probably would be paying half of what he actually was.
“Are you here because Charlie’s death gave you the urge to drink?” Dix said.
“See,” Jesse said, “this is like a meeting for me. Just with less chatter.”
“Look who’s talking,” Dix said.
“Or not,” Jesse said.
There were two overhead lights built into the ceiling, reflecting off the top of Dix’s head.
“I should be feeling worse, or angrier, or something, about the boy,” Jesse said. “It’s Suit’s family.”
“But with you it’s more about Charlie.”
“Lot of people have died on my watch,” Jesse said. “There was a lawyer I was in love with once.”
“Abby.”
Jesse nodded.
“But even her I didn’t love the way I loved Charlie Farrell,” he said.
Now Dix did smile, fully.
“That old man was supposed to die of natural causes,” Dix said, “after having outlived us all.”