Chapter Twelve
B lake crashes on the couch, the night shifts getting to him, about an hour after Colette and Gianna head out to investigate Lily’s room. Tony’s a little upset they left him behind, but it makes sense because his family decided to camp out in Daniel’s apartment. Anyway, someone needs to watch Lia while Gianna is gone. Plus, no one wants Emilio waking up to an empty apartment.
Ma spends the late afternoon in the kitchen, cooking up something much too complicated for dinner, and Tony dragged extra chairs up from Colette’s apartment when it became clear the apartment would be stuffed to the limit tonight. Now, he sits in the kitchen, one eye on the baby monitor, one eye on his phone. Lisa’s made it in as well and sits on the corner of the couch not occupied by Blake’s sprawled-out form, trying to convince Worf to be friends with her. So far, she’s gotten him to sniff her fingers and rub up against them, after which he promptly turns around and smacks her hand with his claws, even though he’s the one who asked to be petted.
Pa and Meredith should get in any minute. Her flight got in on time, and Pa texted before they hit the road.
There’s still nothing from Daniel.
Tony’s phone battery is almost drained again. He’s been checking it so much, reading and rereading Daniel’s last message, looking for a code or a hint or anything that could be a fucking lifeline. The police haven’t gotten in touch either.
“No news is good news,” Ma says, bending over the oven.
“Yeah, they haven’t found a body yet.” Tony’s aware his voice sounds detached, caustic. No one here deserves that. They’ve all shown up for him, for Daniel, but he can’t help himself. The longer they hear nothing, the more it itches under his skin. He wishes he could translate his irritation into something more tangible, into tears or rage or anything . Where’s all the emotion that was sitting under his skin for days at a time beforehand? Why can’t he work it up for Daniel, when Daniel’s—when he feels—when Daniel means…
“Tony.” It takes a moment for him to remember what Ma is chiding him for.
“Sorry.”
“Where are Daniel’s spices?” Ma asks, already busy over the stove again.
Tony points. “Cupboard right above you.” Calling them “Daniel’s spices” is a bit of a reach. When Tony started cooking here, all Daniel had was salt, paprika, and dried sage. Tony’s been fixing that, one shopping trip at a time, and by the look Ma gives him over her shoulder, she can tell it’s his doing. It would be a big coincidence if Daniel stocked the same brand of spices she always buys.
While her back is turned, Tony checks his phone again.
Colette has sent him seven pictures of a narrow dorm room cluttered with things. Tony zooms in to see beyond the general detritus. Laundry sits heaped in one corner. A silver laptop balances precariously on top a stack of textbooks covering the desk. The bed is unmade. All of the dresser drawers hang open. A prescription pill box sits on the windowsill by the bed, next to a plastic bottle of cheap vodka and an open can of soda.
Surely, a cold-blooded murderer’s lair would look less like a normal college student’s room. There’s also no sign of Daniel anywhere.
What are the pills? Tony texts Colette.
Xanax , comes the response.
The doorbell startles Tony up from googling the side effects of Xanax and trying to figure out whether they could cause someone to kidnap a professor.
It’s chaos from the start: Woken by the bell, Emilio wanders in and tries to talk himself out of staying for dinner since he feels so bad for overstaying his welcome; Blake shoots upright and blearily tries to help while getting in everyone’s way; Lia squalls at the sudden uproar; Colette and Gianna pretend, badly, that they only went to Hannaford’s to pick up more drinks; and there, in the entrance, Meredith Rosenbaum arrives with a carry-on suitcase in one hand and an expression on her face painfully reminiscent of Daniel’s at the end of a long day.
Tony sets the extra chair he’s carrying down. “Hi, Meredith.”
“Hi,” she says. “You look bigger when you’re not on FaceTime.”
It’s barely a joke, but he snorts with laughter anyway. “Thank you for being here. Come in. Let me take your bag.”
“Are you kidding? Of course I’m here. Have you heard anything?”
Wordlessly, Tony shakes his head. He pulls her bag down the hallway and leaves it in front of the bedroom. “Fuck,” he mutters to himself. He has no idea where Meredith will sleep, especially if Emilio sticks around.
They’ll figure something out. Maybe his family will go home.
Dinner is hectic. None of the chairs are the same height, and the only tables in the apartment are Daniel’s desk and his second overflow desk, both of which are full of crap they have to clean off.
It’s a chance for Tony to catch Colette alone, to ask if they found anything.
“Nothing,” she says with a grimace. “It looks like her room was ransacked, but…”
“But she’s a college student. It might just look like that. How did you even get in?”
“Gianna knew the RA and asked for the master key.”
Hopefully, the RA didn’t find that at all suspicious.
“It might be good,” Colette offers. “There were no weapons. Nothing strange or dangerous, besides cheap vodka.”
“She might have taken everything with her.”
“Tony.”
Tony ignores her and sees about getting the desks to the living room.
“He’s going to be so pissed,” he groans as they carry out the proper desk from the office. “Took him all summer to get through all his papers and find the surface of the tables.”
“I think if he comes home safely, the state of his desk will be the least of his worries.” Colette means it to be encouraging, but the “if” doesn’t fill Tony with hope.
Somehow, between 5:00 and 7:30 p.m., Ma managed to produce a salad and two separate lasagnas, one vegetarian and one with meat. She also made her own garlic bread. It’s the tearaway kind, and it would be impressive if Tony didn’t know most of her kitchen cheats—she lets it do the second rise in the preheating oven so she can make it in under two hours.
The makeshift tables can barely fit all the plates, so they serve themselves in the kitchen and eat as best they can in the living room.
“I keep telling Daniel we need to get a real table,” Tony apologizes to no one in particular. “Sorry.”
“That’s fine.” Meredith smiles like her brother, all crinkly eyes. “Reminds me of college.”
“Right…well, I guess, in a way, Daniel still is in college.”
They discuss what they should do over dessert (brownies, quick and easy, and Ma’s one concession to the fact that whipping up a full meal for nine on a moment’s notice is actually a ton of work). Everyone kindly pretends there is anything tangible they can do.
Lisa offers to use her school supplies to get missing posters copied. Blake says he’ll tag along with her to work so he can start hanging them up immediately, which means they need to make the posters tonight. Gianna offers to make something on photoshop; Meredith finds a good picture of Daniel on her phone. Colette helps Ma with the washing-up while Tony and Emilio put the furniture back where it belongs.
Tony pauses to catch his breath when they’ve got the desks in the office again.
“You all right, man?” Emilio looks better for the sleep, his eyes sharper.
“Should be asking you that.”
Emilio laughs. “Pretty sure I’m not gonna be all right for a good long time.”
Tony’s throat dries out. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. It’s just a lot.”
“All that love and support. Must be rough.”
“Fuck you, dude.”
Unrepentant, Emilio shrugs. “They’re all here for you, and for Daniel. Means something.”
“Makes me feel as if I’m not…worrying enough.” Tony looks away as he says it, stuffing his hands into the pockets of Daniel’s sweatshirt. “I should be thinking about Daniel, not…wondering when we last washed the spare sheets.”
“You’ll have enough time to feel like shit later,” Emilio says grimly.
Tony’s head snaps in his direction.
“I mean, if… Look, you have no reason to feel like shit now .”
“Yeah.” Tony tries to nod, tries to look as if Emilio’s choice of words didn’t make him suddenly remember, all at once and viscerally, that Daniel could be dead. “Sure.”
It’s too late. Emilio mutters, “Sorry,” and heads back to the living room.
Tony gives himself a second to breathe before he follows. It’s a harsh reminder of what he could have already lost. He tries to be a realist, to acknowledge his fears without letting them rule him. Of course Emilio would know how it feels. Of course he would be able to rip away Tony’s attempt at distance with a few choice words.
The chill down Tony’s spine isn’t Emilio’s fault, but it makes it hard to look him in the eye.
The impromptu group project for the poster sits crowded on the couch. Gianna looks up when Tony comes in. “Hey. Is there a computer we could use?”
Wincing at the thought of the desktop in the office, the monitors, keyboard, and mouse now on the floor with the cables tangled up hopelessly, Tony digs in the drawer under the coffee table to pull out Daniel’s laptop. He hopes no one spotted the bottle of lube in there.
“Yeah, let me get you set up.” He pulls the charger cable out from under the couch, where Daniel shoves it when they’re watching TV and Tony complains about the damn cable always being in the way.
The password is “worfsforehead.” Daniel is such a nerd.
“Here you go.” Tony passes the laptop to Gianna.
From where he’s been scrutinizing the bookshelves in the hall, Pa says, “Hmm.”
Tony wanders over to him. “Something the matter?”
“Nah.” Pa looks back at the shelf. It’s the classics shelf, the one Daniel thinks looks the most pretentious because of all the matching Penguin logos on the spines. “You’re here a lot, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Guess you know where everything is.”
“Yup.”
There doesn’t appear to be more to say, so Pa continues his perusal of the shelf, frowning slightly.
Nonplussed, Tony follows Pa’s sightline to Daniel’s copy of Of Human Bondage . “Uh, that one’s not about what you think.”
“What’s it about, then?”
Tony grimaces. “Mostly about how doing good things for other people is worthless if it makes you feel good about yourself. There’s some stuff in there about love, too, but to be honest, I gave up about halfway through.”
“Sounds like a blast. Daniel recommend it?”
“Nah, he never tells me what to read.” Tony smiles faintly. “Just asks what I thought of it after.” Which doesn’t mean Daniel is relaxed about Tony’s reading material. When Tony set Of Human Bondage back on the shelf, it turned out Daniel had a whole speech prepared on why he hated it, as if he had been bracing himself to talk Tony out of enjoying it. He gave an impromptu lecture about virgin-whore complexes and W. Somerset Maugham’s biography, and Tony got lost in listening to Daniel talk about something he was passionate about and forgot most of the details.
“Hmm.” Pa runs a finger along the shelf. “He should stabilize this. Shelves are starting to bend.”
“I was gonna do that sometime this month.” Tony picked up a few two-by-fours at the hardware store and borrowed a drill for a quick and dirty solution against the weight of Daniel’s ever-expanding collection of books and journals. He was debating if it would be worth getting wood paint to match the shelf and if he should add some low-level lighting to it for the evenings. It seemed daunting, before, to talk to Daniel about making purposeful changes to the apartment. Tony was scared of asking too much. Now he wishes he was braver. Maybe if Daniel knew Tony was waiting for him at home, at their home, he wouldn’t have stayed at Lobell for so long, and no one could have kidnapped him. “Was gonna talk to Daniel about it sometime soon.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tony catches Pa’s smile.
“What?”
Pa shakes his head. “Nothing. I…nothing. You think he’d mind if I borrowed something?”
“Nope. The stuff he needs for work is at the office anyway.”
“All right, then, recommend something.”
Tony eyes the shelves. He hasn’t read many of Daniel’s books, at least not in comparison to the sheer number of them, but he does have a solid hold on what his pa reads. He pulls one of the less oppressively long Brandon Sanderson novels out from the fantasy section and offers it to Pa. “Give that one a shot.”
“Thanks.”
Pa settles in the comfy chair while work on the poster proceeds next to him. Colette and Ma are talking in the kitchen, a low murmur of voices. Tony debates going to help, but Emilio’s already there, drying dishes, and Tony doesn’t want to risk another disturbing conversation.
Instead, he goes for the hallway closet and pulls out the spare bedding. He can make up enough for two extra people to sleep here tonight, so long as they don’t mind sharing the couch. If anyone else is planning on staying, they’ll have to share the bed with him. Tony hopes that will be enough of a disincentive to drive everyone else away.
By the time he’s finished sorting out the sheets, cleanup is finished in the kitchen. Emilio’s on his phone in the hallway and seems to be talking to Francie if his sudden abrupt change in tone to soft and gentle is any indication. Gianna’s in the office with Lia, who’s about ready to be put down for the night. Colette and Meredith are drinking wine in the kitchen, and it looks like they’ve just about convinced Ma to join them for a glass. Blake and Lisa are bickering over the poster.
Tony lets himself fall into place beside them on the couch and pulls out his phone. Still nothing from Daniel, of course. Colette’s forwarded a text from Detective Taylor, a simple No news yet .
With nothing better to do, Tony googles Rate My Professor. He checks Amelia Lawrence’s page again and rereads the negative reviews left for her. There’s the one with the implicit threat, of course, but the other one isn’t what Tony would call grounds for suspicion. Take this class if you love zebrafish and robotically handing in every assignment exactly on time. If you’re human, tough luck .
Honestly, it’s kind of funny. Not that Tony was ever the type of student to need an extension. He’s proud of his school record of pervasive mediocrity, right down to being punctual if not prepared. He wrote most of his essays the night before, and the worst it did for him was a D-plus in World History in eleventh grade.
Still, he knew many people like Lily Peterson. Charlie was a similar student when they all still went to school together, anxious, overprepared, and somehow underperforming, despite their intelligence, because the pressures of their brain were too big.
Tony gets it.
He’s eternally grateful he didn’t have unlimited access to the internet when he was growing up. This is exactly the shit he’d have thought would be witty to post about his high school chemistry teacher.
It’s not a good look, but it doesn’t scream murder either. Anyway, there’s no way to prove Lily left these messages, not without tracing her IP address or something else Daniel would probably know about.
With nothing better to do, Tony looks up Daniel on the site. He has a 4.1 rating. It’s lit up in green, so it must be a good score. The first commenter complains about all the reading but says Professor Rosenbaum makes up for it with interesting classes and good essay prompts.
The second one gushes about how available he is even outside of office hours.
The third one calls him cute.
Tony doesn’t disagree with any of these assessments, but he feels weird about strangers online leaving such detailed, personal descriptions of what they like about him. It’s almost a relief when the next commenter gives Daniel a 2.0 and calls his class boring.
Colette has a 3.8 rating. Apparently, she’s strict, but her classes are “worth it.” Tony wonders what that means. He’s debating screenshotting some of the funnier reviews—pro: it will be hilarious to tease Daniel and Colette about; con: Tony hasn’t checked the shop’s Google ratings in a while, and who knows what ammunition they might find in return—when his phone starts ringing.
He doesn’t recognize the number, but it has a New York area code. Frowning, Tony gets up to take the call in the bedroom.
“Hello?”
“Tony? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” Tony knows the voice, but he can’t quite place where from.
“Oh, thank fuck. You would not believe the journey I have been on to get your number.”
“Uh,” Tony tries. “Who is this?”
“Fuck, sorry. It’s Paul. Weintrob? Daniel’s—”
“Paul!” Tony’s heart jumps into his throat. “Have you heard from Daniel?”
“Maybe.”
Tony blinks. “What the fuck does ‘maybe’ mean?”
“About an hour and a half ago, I got a text on my phone.”
“Okay.” Tony’s running out of patience quickly. Paul is a weird guy at the best of times, and right now, Tony doesn’t have the stomach for it. “From Daniel?”
“On the landline . Frankly, I didn’t know it could do that.”
“Oh, shit. It’s the only number Daniel knows by heart.”
“Right,” Paul agrees. “And he never lets me forget it. My own parents never use the landline anymore, only him.”
“So he texted you?”
“He sent a text to the landline, or at least I think he did, and an automated woman’s voice read it out loud. She said the number it was from, too, but it’s not Daniel’s number.”
“What did it say?”
“Tony. Germantown. Come alone. No 911.” Paul recites it by rote, like he’s reading it off something. But that’s Tony’s name. That’s information straight from Daniel. That’s proof he’s not dead, or at least he wasn’t when he sent the message.
Relief gets Tony right in the knees, and he’s sitting heavily on the bed before he realizes what he’s doing. He can barely breathe. The vague, heavy fear he’s been carrying since this morning crystallizes into an anxious desire to get to Germantown right now, to end this.
“Tony, what the hell is going on?”
Oh, right. Tony hasn’t told him. “Daniel’s been missing since yesterday. No one has heard from him. He left his car. His phone isn’t on. And, uh. Someone stabbed a professor at his college last week.”
Paul lets loose an impressive string of profanity. “‘Why couldn’t you find a nice cushy job at a rural college, Paul,’” he mocks. “‘The city is so dangerous.’ I am never taking my parents seriously again. What the fuck is happening upstate?”
Tony laughs shakily. “I wish I knew. This is the first we’ve heard from him.”
“Okay,” Paul says. “Okay, okay. So, I listened to it three times, and then I accidentally deleted it. But I’m about eighty-nine percent certain those were the exact words. Tony, Germantown, come alone, no 911. You’re the only Tony I know, and Germantown is pretty close to you guys, so it has to be Daniel, right?”
Germantown. No police. That’s…ominous, at best.
“And you might be getting some concerned calls,” Paul adds. “I had to call Mari, who called Daniel’s parents to get your number, to send it back to me.”
“Daniel’s parents know. At least his mom does. His dad was in surgery today, so you probably didn’t catch him.”
“God, you two are domestic.”
“Thanks, I think. You’re sure the message didn’t say anything else?”
“Nothing.”
There’s a long, awkward pause in which Tony tries to think of a good way to end this conversation.
“Christ,” Paul says, “Um, do you need anything?”
Tony has more help than he can deal with. “Thanks, but not right now. Let me know if you get anything else. This is actually really good.”
“ How ?”
“He’s still alive.”
It takes another three minutes of Paul expounding on the dangers of living outside of Williamsburg, but Tony manages to extricate himself from the call.
It’s dark out already. Every light in the apartment is on. The kitchen is spotless. The living room is quiet, as though everyone has tired themselves out by acting busy, and all that’s left is the anxiety drawing them together.
For a brief moment, Tony considers telling everyone the good news: Daniel’s alive, or he was an hour and a half ago. They have a place to go. They have a goal.
Immediately, he reconsiders.
He doesn’t want his family knowing he’s going to Germantown alone, and he’s definitely not calling the police if Daniel doesn’t want him to. He justifies it to himself on the pretense that the police are informed about Daniel’s disappearance and Lily’s likely involvement, and so far, it’s achieved jack shit in finding Daniel. But no one else was here last year; they wouldn’t understand. Tony’s not even sure Blake and Lisa would take it well. Colette will get it. Colette, he would take with him, but Emilio has joined her discussion with Meredith, and he…
He’s the one link to Germantown Tony can think of.
Suddenly, the chills Tony got when Emilio told him he would have plenty of time for grief later return tenfold. Tony spent all day being sure Emilio didn’t do it after seeing how honestly wrecked he is. But he doesn’t know Emilio. For all Tony knows, he could be the world’s best actor. If Tony tells everyone Daniel is alive, Emilio will know Daniel got a message out, and that could put him in danger if Emilio did it.
Instead of an announcement, Tony starts with a yawn. “So.” He keeps his mouth open pretending he’s too tired to stop yawning while he talks. “I’m getting pretty beat. How do y’all want to do this?”
“We’ll head back to Kingston,” Pa says. “Let you get some rest.”
“We’ll be here again in the morning,” Ma threatens.
“I can come into the shop.” For a moment, Tony feels guilty. He has absolutely no intention of going to work tomorrow. He knows his parents care too much to let him do it. He’s offering so they can turn him down, and he’s so thankful they will.
“Absolutely not. Let Kyle earn his keep.” Ma’s expression bodes no dissent.
Tony holds his hands up in surrender.
“You good to stay here if I take my car?” Gianna asks Blake.
Right. She brought him over this afternoon.
“I’ll catch a ride with Lisa tomorrow morning. But you gotta let me say goodbye to the princess.” Blake gestures to Lia, sleeping in her stroller, briefly angelic.
While he coos over her, Gianna pulls Tony into a brief, tight hug.
“Right, then,” she says. “I’m headed home too. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He blames it on the mess that has been this day, but tears spark briefly behind his eyes. Despite everything they’ve said to each other recently, he still has this.
“Yeah,” he says roughly. “Glad you came.”
She ruffles his hair. “’Course.”
It takes another twenty minutes for them all to get their shoes on, for Blake to give Gianna a hug goodbye (and since when have they been so close?), and for Lia to be picked up from her nap so Ma and Pa can fight over who will carry the stroller. (Pa’s back is acting up, but he still doesn’t like it when his wife carries things.) In the end, Emilio carries it downstairs for them. Pa will be so grumpy tomorrow when he has to open the shop after getting less than his full eight hours of sleep.
Guilt twinges in Tony’s gut. He should probably have told them the truth.
After, it’s just the six of them, standing around the too-well-lit living room.
“So,” Tony starts, wondering if he can get everyone to leave but Colette.
“It’s cool if we crash here, right?” Blake yawns.
“Um.” Is there a polite way to point out that Daniel’s sister has first dibs on the couch? Or that Blake and Lisa both have their own apartments twenty minutes away? Tony doesn’t really care; he gave up on being polite to the two of them long ago. But he’d rather get to know Meredith a little before she finds out what he’s usually like.
“Actually, I was thinking…” Colette says. “Maybe Meredith would be more comfortable on my guest bed.” It sounds as if it’s an idea Colette came up with in the last five minutes, but Tony tracks her and Meredith sharing a glance and guesses they were talking about this before.
“If you’d rather, sure,” he says. “We’ve got enough bedding and space for two people on the couch. So, if these two”—Tony jerks his thumb toward Blake and Lisa—“are staying, it’ll probably be better. You can always have the bed though. I can drive back to Kingston.” He adds the last as an afterthought, a gesture to the fact that he doesn’t live here. It feels strange after he’s spent all day playing host, telling people where to find the silverware and the cups.
Meredith shakes her head. “No, no, I don’t want to put you out.”
“You’re not, not at all. I’m so glad you came—”
“Tony,” Meredith says firmly. Her hair is darker than Daniel’s, pulled up to a braid gone messy after a day of travel. It’s less curly too. Her eyes, though, are the same, and the way she looks at Tony, half gentle, half chiding—that’s Daniel all over. “It’s okay. Get some rest. We’ll have all the time tomorrow to be awkward in-laws, yeah?”
In-laws. The word sends a shoot of fear and longing straight through Tony. “Yeah, all right. Thanks, Colette.”
Colette gives him the same kind of look. She’s been spending too much time with the Rosenbaums. “My contributions have been vast. Eating your mother’s cooking and drinking your wine.”
She leaves her coffee maker on the stove when she and Meredith slip downstairs for the night, a clear sign tomorrow will be more of the same as today, with the apartment full of people who care about Daniel. And Tony. If he makes it back from whatever’s waiting for him in Germantown. Especially now he’s missed his chance to tell Colette about it.
Emilio clears his throat.
“Right,” Tony says. “We gotta get you home, huh?”
“I don’t wanna put you out, but you did drive me here.” Emilio shrugs. “I’m kinda short on other options. Unless you’d rather I call a cab.”
“It’s twenty minutes, man. It’s fine.” Tony turns to Blake and Lisa. “Bedding’s in the bedroom. You can throw all the pillows off the couch onto the floor.”
Blake salutes.
By quarter to eleven, Tony’s in the car, peeling off onto the 9G toward Germantown with Emilio in the passenger seat, and by some miracle, no one thinks it was his idea.
Of course, there’s the minor matter of being alone with a man who might have killed his wife. Germantown , Daniel’s message said, and Come alone . It doesn’t mean anything to Tony. Before Daniel, he didn’t spend much time this side of the Hudson, and Germantown isn’t known for its social scene. Mostly, it’s known for having a big trailer park. Or for being another dot on the map on the way to Hudson (the town, not the river).
What other connection could there be besides Emilio?
“So, no new leads, huh?” Emilio asks. It’s dark in the car. Tony can’t make out his expressions while he watches the road.
“Not exactly.” Tony drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “Sorry to waste your time.”
Emilio laughs humorlessly. “You got me out of the house. And you got to watch a prime suspect nap all day. Still think I did it?”
“After last year, I don’t trust my own instincts.” Tony never for a moment suspected Stacy until he knew it was her beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which means his gut instinct in ruling Emilio out as a suspect is meaningless. Ever since Daniel’s message told him to go to Germantown, everything Emilio says has sounded suspicious.
“Fair enough.”
“You’re still shockingly chill about people thinking you killed your wife.”
“Tried getting angry. Made it worse.”
“Ah. The memorial.”
Emilio rubs his hands across his face, scraping against his stubble. “Yeah. Apparently, yelling at a bunch of people makes them think you’re volatile or something.”
“Did it feel good?”
“When does it not feel good to get pissed off?” Emilio asks it as if it’s natural, as if everyone enjoys feeling rage.
After the last few days with Gianna, Tony can’t relate. Anger makes him miserable.
“God, the fights I used to have with Amy…” Emilio mutters.
“Yeah?” Tony prods. This is what got him in trouble with Stacy in broad daylight on a college campus. Now, he’s in a moving car, in the dark, and the only people who know where he is have no way of following them. This has “bad idea” written all over it, and Colette would tell him so, but she’s not here. Daniel would tell him so, but Daniel’s why he’s here, speeding to Germantown in the middle of the night.
“Yeah, man,” Emilio continues. “I was practically raising our kid alone as soon as the semester started. Of course we fought about it.”
“Sounds rough.”
There’s a smile in Emilio’s voice. “You and Daniel aren’t the kind of couple that fights, huh?”
“There was one time.” Tony wouldn’t call it a fight so much as the catalyst of their relationship. They could have fallen apart over it; instead, Daniel found the courage to be honest about what he wanted, and Tony found the faith to trust in what they had. “But otherwise, no, not really our style.”
“Amy loved a good discussion.” Emilio sighs wistfully. “The night we met, we spent all night arguing about whether women are underrepresented in STEM fields. By the time we agreed on anything, the rest of the party around us was over, and it was nearly dawn.”
Tony’s not one to judge. Emilio apparently cherishes the memory. To Tony, it sounds awful. “Sounds different than fighting about your kid.”
“Well, yeah. We’d have worked it out though. We always do. Did.”
They pass through Red Hook and Tivoli while Tony chews on that. “Not something you can tell the police,” he says eventually when he can’t let the silence go on.
“Nope. Not you or your friend either, huh?”
Tony winces. He’s being too obvious.
“It’s cool. I wouldn’t trust me either. Hell, I don’t right now.”
“Comforting.”
Emilio shrugs. “I never thought I was the kind of guy who yelled at strangers. Turns out I am if enough shit has happened around me. Never thought I’d send my kid away because I can’t take care of her. Who knows what I could do.”
They’re closing in on Germantown now. With no other plan of how to find Daniel, Tony takes the turnoff to Emilio’s house. “You’ll be fine. You’ll get Francie back next week, and you’ll make it work for her.”
“Sure.” Emilio’s eyes are heavy on Tony, making him want to squirm. “Someday. Anyway, I wanted to say thanks.”
“For suspecting you of murder?”
“For getting me out of the goddamn house. And cleaning up my kitchen. I needed that. I’ll take being a murder suspect if it gets me out of my own head.”
It startles a laugh out of Tony as he pulls up to the curb next to the Lawrence house. “If you say so.”
“I do.” With a grin so sharp it’s wolfish, Emilio undoes his seatbelt and gets out of the car.
“Hey,” Tony says before he can get too far away.
Emilio turns.
“Look,” Tony says, “I have one more lead for you. It’s a long shot, but someone was leaving bomb reviews of your wife on Rate My Professor. Maybe you can trace them. Might be something to incriminate Lily Peterson.” At least it could keep Emilio occupied while Tony gets Daniel the hell out of this town.
“Probably not. But thanks. Come back anytime. Seriously.” Emilio raps his knuckles on the roof of the car, and then he’s vanishing into the dark of his empty house.
Tony watches lights turn on and off in the windows as Emilio climbs the stairs, uses the bathroom, and goes to bed, until a lone lamp upstairs stays lit. He wonders if Emilio will sleep. Probably not, not in the bed he and Amy shared. Tony couldn’t. He’d be sleeping on the couch if anything happened to Daniel. Unless Emilio’s that cold, and he likes to sleep in sheets still smelling of a woman he murdered.
Tony can’t stay here, watching the house like a creeper. Emilio knows his car; he caught Tony staking him out once today. Anyway, Daniel’s not in the house. Colette checked everywhere. Unless there’s a secret basement or something, Daniel must be somewhere else.
He pulls away from the curb and cruises through Germantown. It’s pretty depressing. A two-year-old billboard for the school’s baseball team looms to the side, and otherwise, only ads for shops in other towns line the roadside. Maybe in daylight it would be green and tranquil, but at this time of night, Tony can’t help but find it eerie.
Germantown by darkness is nothing besides the 9G winding through it. The only thing still open is the gas station with a lone teenager behind the till, eating a candy bar and scrolling on his phone. Tony exhausts every road in town he can drive down, headlights sweeping across darkened houses and empty parking lots.
He’s just finished another pass by the Lawrence house (Emilio’s light is still on upstairs) and is about to give up for the night when he spots it. To his left, a parking lot looms in front of a building with dilapidated neon lettering barely illuminating it. Only a C , an N , and two U ’s announce that it used to be a movie theater called the Continuum. And there, all alone in the parking lot, sits an ’07 Toyota Camry.