He called, and she answered from down the hall. She was sitting on the floor of Ginny's old room, back against the wall. Same flowered wallpaper, same Pocahontas night-light. In the middle of the room sat a heavy-duty garbage bag, stuffed with diminutive clothes from the closet. Hangers scattered the floor.
Dray's face was blank, her forehead unlined – the impassivity of shock relived. "Sorry I didn't wait for you. I know you've been ready" – she gestured to the empty closet – "for a while now. I just wanted to…I guess with my reaction last night at the door, it made me realize…maybe it's time to move through it, like you've been saying."
He bobbed his head.
She blew a wisp of hair off her forehead. "It's so damn exhausting. It shouldn't be, this stuff, but it is." She extended an arm, and he pulled her to her feet. They kissed, Dray wrapping her arms around the back of his neck. She hadn't been as demonstrative or as emotional before Ginny's death, though Tim didn't mind the change a bit.
She moved to the bed and began pulling off the sheets – Powerpuff Girls flannels that had been dutifully washed weekly for over a year. Ginny's motifs were relics in the fast-paced world of children's trends. They'd grown outdated and unhip, an ignominy Ginny would never have permitted. Tim had learned, step by step, how to live again without a daughter, but he still missed toy stores and zany cartoons and Olivia the naughty pig. There was a time he could distinguish Beauty and the Beast songs from those from The Little Mermaid. He thought of Bederman's diatribe about the Christmastime ploys of toy companies and realized he would do anything to be conned into buying the latest and greatest girl's novelty right about now.
He started to help, emptying the desk drawers into a fresh bag, careful to handle Ginny's former belongings with care. When he realized he was treating a SpongeBob pencil eraser with reverence, he let go and started scooping and dumping. Dray's voice pulled him from his thoughts. "I don't even know if this makes me sad. Or guilty." She held a tiny T-shirt in each hand; they drooped like dead kittens. "We see so much of this shit, this heavy symbolic shit, in movies, on TV, but maybe this isn't the time and place for it." Her voice was flat like her eyes. "Maybe we should try not to think and just get this done."
At the end of the hour, Ginny's possessions – the sum total of her physical grasp on the world – were bound up in seven Hefty bags bound for the Salvation Army. Tim hauled them to the porch, then took apart her bed and her desk – doing his best not to let the crayon marks, the Kool-Aid stains, the glittery Dora stickers reduce him to uselessness. Once the furniture also made its way outside, he came back in, sweaty and hot in the face. Dray was standing in the entry, looking out at the sad assembly of goods on the front walk, a broken-down convoy.
Dray said, "I think I'm going to cry now."
Tim started to say okay but caught her as her knees buckled. He held her, stroked her hair. He pressed his face to her head, rocking her on the floor, her legs kicking and sprawling. He worked to control his own reaction, because the unspoken deal they'd arrived at through trial and error was that they'd only let go like this one at a time.
The crying stopped, then the tight sobs accompanying her inhalations. Her hair, normally razor straight and straw-colored, stayed pasted to her sticky face in brown swirls. Her eyes – honest and strong and magnificently green, as always. She coughed out a brief, exhausted laugh. "Guess I figured out what to feel, huh? Hell."
"Let me take you out. How about Nobu?"
"Nobu?"
"What the hell, I'm making the federal bucks now."
They'd been only once to the upscale Japanese restaurant, located over the canyon from their Moorpark house. On their post-Ginny wedding anniversary, a grim evening in May, they'd sat stiffly among second-tier movie stars and Malibu divorcees, pretending not to notice the three well-groomed girls at the table to their left or the empty chairs at their own four-top.
Dray changed quickly, even putting on a touch of eyeliner and blush. Makeup, which she rarely and reluctantly wore, didn't suit her – her looks were so natural and healthy she could go without – but Tim didn't mention it because he prized the intent behind her effort. He threw on a pressed shirt, and soon they were on their way in Dray's Blazer, Tim at the wheel, holding hands across the console. Dray blinked against the sting of the mascara. "In Your Eyes" wailed from the speakers, seeming an added contrivance to the impromptu romantic outing. When they reached the 23/101 interchange, Dray finally snapped down the visor and started smearing off her makeup. "You know what? This is too weird after everything tonight."
Tim let out a relieved laugh. "Thank God. How's Fatburger sound?"
Dray smiled as he exited the freeway. "Divine."
Chapter eight
The insistent bleating of the cell phone pulled Tim from sleep. Buried in blankets, Dray made tired noises and shifted around. A spout of hair across the pillow, the sole trace of her, had gone red in the alarm-clock glow – 2:43.
Tim sat up before answering, feet flat on the cold floor – a habit that forced wee-hours lucidity. "Yeah?"
"Tim Rackley?"
"Who is this?"
"You tell me."
He rubbed an eye, running through the options. Since he was working only one case, it didn't take long. "Reggie Rondell."
"Just might be."
"It's two-thirty in the morning."
"Is it really?" No hint of sarcasm. Some rustling. "Holy shit, look at that – you're right. I don't keep track of the hours so good anymore."
"You want to talk?"
"Not on the phone."
"Okay. Let's set up a time, and I'll come see you."
"I got time now."
"Now's not the greatest."
"For who?"
Tim dropped the receiver from his mouth so his exhale wouldn't be heard. "Okay. Where are you?"
"Where you left me. I'm working back-to-backs."
"I'm gonna bring my partner. I can have him wait in the car if you'd like."
"I'd like."
Tim snapped the phone shut and blinked hard a few times. Dray surfaced, bangs down across her eyes. "I forgot about this part."
He crossed the bedroom, crouched, and spun the dial of the gun safe.
Bear gazed bleary-eyed through the windshield, one hand fisting the top of the wheel, the other holding a chipped mug out of which spooled steam and the scent of cheap coffee. "Here's where I wish I still smoked."
The headlights blazed a yellow cone between the asphalt and the morning dark, the truck hurtling toward dawn. Curled between them on the bench seat, Boston stuck his muzzle into Tim's side until Tim scratched behind his ear. Bear had reluctantly inherited the even-tempered Rhodesian Ridgeback, and the two had rapidly become inseparable. Tim had only recently begun to disassociate Boston from his previous owner, a plucky brunette who'd fared worse than Tim in last year's collision course.
"Kind of a shady meet, no? A nighttime summons to a by-the-hour motel the wrong side of Culver City?"
"That's why you're here," Tim said.
"And I thought it was my sunny disposition."
Road construction slowed them to a crawl at the 405 interchange. In L.A., even a 3:00 A.M. drive can't deliver you from traffic.
"He's got no wants, no warrants, for what that's worth, but his jittery-poodle routine doesn't fill me with trust. You think he's really scared of me or he's trying to sitting-duck my ass out in the parking lot?"
"I think he's really scared of you. Or what you represent in his cult conditioning."
Bear stared at him as if he'd shifted to Swedish. "Well, Dr. Phil, I still say we just haul him in and press the fuck out of him. Or are you gonna give me your bullshit about catching flies with honey?"