“And you’re protecting her because she makes you feel nice and warm and fuzzy all over about your drug addiction,” Shauna says, gaining steam now. “She’s manipulating the shit out of you, and you don’t even know it. Or worse yet, you do, but you don’t care.”
“Dr. Freud over here.” I gesture toward her. “A lawyer and a shrink.”
Shauna keeps her stare on me. I know that stare. I’ve seen that stare a thousand times. She knows she’s right, regardless of whether she is or not.
“Listen, you don’t know her like I do,” I say. “If she’s a little intense when it comes to me, it’s probably because she doesn’t have any family anymore. Her parents are deceased, and she doesn’t have siblings. So yeah, she finds someone she cares about, she gets intense about it.”
Joel and Shauna look at each other.
“What are you talking about?” Joel says.
“She’s an only child, and her parents passed away.”
“Oh, Jason,” Shauna says.
Joel pinches the bridge of his nose. “She’s not an only child, Jason. She has a brother. And he lives here in town.”
71
Jason
Sunday, July 21
It’s near eleven in the morning. My eyes are heavy, my vision hazy; I fought the typical demon battles during the night, blood and fangs and cries of terror. Given the weekend, I kept up the broken-sleep pattern into the late morning, with a few doses of those yummy Altoids thrown in to lubricate the machinery.
I hate that I’m sleeping when there’s so much to do, but the truth is that there’s so little I can do. If running around the city would help me catch our killer, I’d do it. If standing on my head would do it, I’d be flipping upside down right now. I’ve racked my brain repeatedly to come up with names of suspects with whom I sat in a room and secured a confession, but if those names are out there somewhere in the netherworld of my brain, I haven’t found them, and pushing myself toward them seems to have the effect of pushing them away, like reaching into the back of a cabinet and contacting the thing you want just enough to move it completely out of your reach. It’s the worst kind of frustrating, this directionless angst.
I know I’m not well, and that a lot of what Shauna said is true. I know it the most when I’m in bed, either drifting to sleep or first awakening, when my guard is down, my justifications and rationalizations not fully engaged. Of course I’m not doing well. Of course I have to change things. But now’s not the time. I can’t spend time on pulling myself away from these pills while I’m trying to catch “James Drinker.”
Now’s not the time has become very good friends lately with I don’t have a problem. They trade off hours, one of them always on call inside my brain.
Alexa’s just getting out of the shower, wrapped in a bathrobe that is way too big for her, wiping a circle in the mirror out of the steam and brushing her hair. “Are you okay?” she calls back.
“I’m fine,” I say. I’m fine. I’m all good. I don’t have a problem. And even if I did, now’s not the time to deal with it.
I’ve avoided a complicated conversation with Alexa. Haven’t found the right time yet to ask her about the things Joel and Shauna disclosed to me. I’ve never been one for confrontation, which I fully realize is ironic given that the two things I’ve done best in my life-playing wide receiver on the gridiron and playing a lawyer in a courtroom-both involve conflict. But that’s when you flip on a switch, when you’re doing a job, when the people with whom you’re butting heads aren’t your friends and would just as surely knock you on your ass as you’re trying to knock them on theirs.
But with one-to-one personal stuff, I’ve never enjoyed getting into people’s faces. Probably something I got from Mom, who made it her duty to prevent “Dad volcanoes,” as Pete and I used to call them when we were kids, who made conflict avoidance an art form. A turned cheek will do you wonders, boy, she used to always say.
“You sure?” She comes out of the bathroom, her hair combed back wet.
My cell phone buzzes. It’s over on the dresser. Alexa takes a peek. “It’s Shauna,” she says. “Wow, that’s been a while.”
She looks at me for a reaction, but I don’t give her one.
“Do you want to answer it?”
“No, I’ll call her later.”
“Is she calling for any particular reason? I thought she was still on trial.”
“I have no idea why she’s calling,” I say, which isn’t really true.
“Shauna doesn’t approve of me,” she says.
I don’t answer. I’m probably supposed to say something.
“Has she told you that? Or said anything about me?”
“I think she’s concerned about me,” I say.
“And she doesn’t think I’m good for you,” Alexa finishes. “I know. She told me that.”
“She did?”
“Yes. When I went to pick up a few things at your office, when you were going to leave the firm. She yelled at me. She said you and I shouldn’t see each other. It was. . unpleasant. If I may say so, I don’t think Shauna’s a very pleasant person.”
“Shauna’s wonderful,” I say. “Shauna saved me after my wife and daughter died.”
“Oh.” One word, but more than one syllable the way she says it, a bell curve of octaves, like she just discovered something meaningful. “I think she likes being the only woman in your life.”
“That’s not true.”
I’m adjusting my position in bed as I say this, not looking directly at her, but the ensuing silence brings my eyes to hers, and hers do not look amused. She looks, more than anything, like she wants to slap me.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she says with mock sweetness.
She turns and walks back toward the bathroom.
“Alexa,” I say. “You told me you’re an only child.”
She stops in her tracks, her back to me. She turns around slowly, as if she’s afraid of what she’ll find behind her. “What?”
“Is it true that you’re an only child? Or do you have a brother, Aaron, in Glenwood Heights?”
She turns to face me again, her eyes narrowed, a look of discomfort. “Why. . would you ask me something like that?”
“You first,” I say.
“Me first. . me first. .” Her eyebrows rise. She lets out air. She crosses her arms. “Aaron is my brother, yes. We aren’t close. We never have been. He’s not. . he’s not nice to me. He’s not a good person. But technically, yes, I have a brother.”
“Technically.” I laugh. “Why tell me this whole thing about how your mother had you when she was forty and didn’t want any more kids?”
“Your turn,” she says, color coming to her face. “How do you know about Aaron? Are you. . Did you check up on me?” She’s good at this. Regaining the moral outrage, or trying hard to.
“My friends did, yes,” I say.
“Shauna, you mean.”
“Shauna and others. They’re concerned, that’s all.”
“So they did, what, a background investigation on me?” Try as she might to resist, Alexa is losing composure, placing a hand on the dresser for stability as the earth moves beneath her, as the footing of this relationship shifts sideways without warning.
“Yes, they did. I didn’t know about it. I was mad when they told me, actually.”
“Really? How mad? Did you stand up for me?”
“I did, in fact.”
“Well, go on.” She whips her arm about. “Go on. Get it over with. They told you about Brian.”
“Brian Stermer,” I say. “Yes.”
Alexa gives a bitter shake of the head, her eyes brimming with tears, red and swollen. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this.”
“They told me-”
“I told you!” she cries, slapping her chest. “I told you I’d been in a relationship that ended badly when I found out he was married. Did I leave out some details? Yes. Did I leave out the part where his wife found out about me at around the same time I found out about her? Did I leave out the part where Brian turned out to be a complete coward, who wouldn’t admit to his wife that he was fucking somebody on the side, and so he had to turn me into a stalker? Did I leave out the part where his wife basically bullied him into telling lies about me to a judge, as if that would somehow make Brian’s lies true? Or the part where Doctor Brian Stermer has more money than God and hired, like, ten lawyers to go after me, and I couldn’t afford a single one?”