Vera
After the flurry of dinner, the house has gone quiet again. Brad missed the meal, his flight delayed, and is on his way from
the airport now.
Sitting at the kitchen bar, I watch Ana’s dot pulse on LifeWatch. She’s been at Agnes’s house for a while.
What is she doing? Destroying evidence? My impulse is to call her, or to get in my car and go to Agnes’s. Instead, I decide
to use the time before Brad comes home to scour the web for more information about Paul’s death. There still isn’t much. His
body found this morning by hikers in a too-shallow grave. Cause of death unknown.
All the detective said was that foul play was suspected. He didn’t say shot or beaten. He didn’t say robbed.
No suspects. No leads.
I watch a replay of his earlier press conference. That detective; I really don’t like the look of him. Too watchful, seeing.
An arrogance. Somehow he seemed to hone right in on Ana. It fits a narrative, like Payton said, the jilted girlfriend. It
certainly makes things a lot easier when the story has already been written and you just have to plug in the characters. He
won’t have to dig very deep into my sister before she starts to look more and more the likely culprit.
I type the detective’s name into the search bar.
“Who are you?” I say to no one.
I thought about brewing some chamomile tea but needed something stronger. I poured myself two fingers of Brad’s favorite bourbon,
Blanton’s. Taking a deep swig of it now, it’s smooth and hot in my throat, taking the edge off almost right away even as it
burns.
Timothy Bandeau. We’re all out there for anyone to see these days, the internet like a catalog of our deeds. I click link
after link. Homicide detective at Little Valley Police Department. John Jay College graduate, a dual degree in psychology
and criminal investigation. In his uniform he looks stiff, clean-shaven, with that weirdly erect posture of his like there’s
a rod up his back. His brow line is heavy, high cheekbones, a wide mouth.
I stare at the image of him as a younger man, clean-shaven, thinner. That look again, a person who thinks a lot of himself.
Also, something else, something subterranean. There’s something in the eyes when you’ve witnessed the truth of the human condition.
You see it in soldiers, cops, firefighters, EMTs. They know things about life, about death, about the human body that they
can’t unknow.
I take another sip of bourbon, scroll through the smattering of articles in which the detective is quoted about various cases
over his years on the job in this little town. Why here? I wonder. In this little place where nothing happens. Until it does.
Down a little further there’s another story, a feature. Local Detective Volunteers at the YMCA; Teaches Boxing to Area Underprivileged Youth. There’s a picture of him smiling, surrounded by a group of teenage boys. He has his arm draped over one, is fist-bumping another.
There he is—the real man.
Out of uniform, off duty, he is easy, affable, boyish. Boxing saved me when I was a kid. It taught me control, discipline. The daily physical activity helped me to stay calm, deal with my anger issues. Without it, I’d probably be in jail instead of a cop, he’s quoted as saying.
Some interesting layers to Detective Bandeau. Know your enemy; that’s what Agnes always said. Not that he’s our enemy. Yet.
There’s another article, more recent, about how the Little Valley Youth Center is in trouble, that some federal funding and
money promised from a donor fell through. There’s a GoFundMe link, a fundraiser coming up.
My phone pings, alerting me that my sister is on the move again. Looks like she is heading to Iggy and Brock’s now. She’s
been at Agnes’s all this time and I have no idea why. We both tend to retreat there when things get hot. There’s always work
to do, especially now that spring is approaching. You can lose yourself in the care and upkeep of that old money pit. Brad
thinks we should sell it. But that’s not an option, and he never makes me do things I don’t want to do. Which is part of the
reason I married him.
I drain the glass just as I hear him come in through the front door. As if an alarm has sounded, both kids come bounding from
their rooms just as they’ve always done since they were old enough to walk. Brad is the FP, as we call it. The favorite parent,
the good guy, the easy one. I am the workhorse, the disciplinarian. I don’t mind it. Someone has to keep watch.
I rise and walk out to the foyer to greet him. We’ve been married a long time, but I still feel a little rush at the sight
of him—the silk of his sandy-blond hair, that strong jaw and easy smile, his impeccable wardrobe. The kids are already on
him.
He’s got a stuffed bear for Coraline, a graphic novel for Grant. I know he’ll have a gift for me, too. This is his love language,
the giving of thoughtful presents.
They push by me through the swinging door into the kitchen as a group, attached, exuberant, laughing.
“Way to drink alone, Mom,” quips Coraline, clocking the bourbon bottle on the counter.
“I’m not alone,” I say, following. “I haven’t been alone in years.”
“Rough day?” asks Brad, giving me a worried frown.
“You could say that.”
He leans into me, snakes a strong arm around my waist and kisses me on the mouth. The kids wail in disgust. We try to model
a good relationship for them, even though as a couple we are far from perfect. We think about these things. What Grant and
Coraline see between us is what they’ll expect from their own spouses. I could fill a book with what I had to unlearn about
Sadie and Mac’s sick marriage. Brad, too, comes from trauma and pain.
We try to do better.
He fills my glass again and pours himself one, too. He looks tired, shiners of fatigue under his eyes. Though the lines around
his eyes seem more defined, he’s still boyish, like he should be all dusty on a Little League mound somewhere ready to throw
a pitch.
“I saved you a plate,” I say. “Can I heat it up for you?”
“That would be great. I’m starved.” Doubtful, but he knows I take pleasure in feeding him. That’s my love language, caretaking. Making beds and doing laundry, handing out water on the soccer field. Old-fashioned, silly maybe.
But I take a comfort in it. Homemaking, life making, is a lost art. Coraline told our therapist that she feels controlled by my constant presence at home, at school.
Maybe that’s part of it, too. Control all the little details, and it keeps the chaos at bay.
Grant comes in for a quick hug, then he’s bounding up the stairs again. Coraline lingers a while, chatting with her dad about
this and that, then she’s gone, too, and it’s just us.
“What is it?” he says to my back as I put his plate in the microwave. “You seem tense.”
When we met, I was a wreck. But then again, so was he. Both in our twenties, I had just lost my job because of a boss who couldn’t keep his hands to himself and how I handled it. Brad was trying to save his failing business, outrun all his demons.
“You look how I feel,” he’d said all those years ago. It was a bar in town, a place I’d just happened into after wandering
the streets for a while, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. He sat next to me as The Rolling Stones
played on the jukebox, and a happy hour group was getting loud around the pool table.
“That good?” I said, tipping back my glass, checking him out in the mirror behind the rows of bottles.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, flashing that boyish grin. “You look good. Just maybe . . .”
I turned to look at him. There was a jolt of attraction, a notch in my heart chakra.
He searched my face. And there was something about his eyes—dark brown and heavily lidded—his easy slouch, the bad boy smile.
“Just maybe a little sad.”
“Just tired, I think,” I admitted though on another night I might have just gotten up and left. I wasn’t looking for Brad
or anyone. I’m not like Ana. I’m perfectly happy without a man in my life. “But like on an existential level.”
“I hear that.”
He ordered a Blanton’s neat—one for him, and one for me. When we clinked glasses, he said, “I have a feeling we’re going to
be good for each other.”
He was right about that, in many ways. We were like two parts of a whole, each of us capable of less alone than we were together.
“Paul’s dead,” I say now.
The microwave beeps. I retrieve the plate, the savory aroma wafting.
“Who?” he says, squinting at me over his glass.
“Paul? Ana’s ex.”
It takes a moment for it to register. “Oh,” he says finally, the implications dawning. He puts down his glass, gets still.
“Oh, shit. Did she—?”
“She claims not. But I don’t know. Foul play is suspected.”
I run down the details, the brunch, the visit from the detective, the scant information I found online.
“Where is she now?” he asks.
He eats like a teenager, shoving food in his mouth as though he thinks someone is going to try to take it away from him. He
grew up in foster care, had to fight for everything he has in life. Watch his back. These things don’t die—even when you’re
driving a Porsche and gave a million dollars to the free clinic last year. In public, he’s cool and measured, the very picture
of style, grooming, and manners. Charming. At home, he’s different. Sometimes I think of him less as my husband, and more
like one of the kids; someone I occasionally have to soothe or reprimand.
“She was at Agnes’s. Now it looks like she’s on her way to Iggy’s. She has their car. I’m taking her to the station in the
morning with a colleague of Payton’s to answer questions.”
He nods. Then, “I thought you had her under control.” Like he’s my boss. He’s not. I’m no trophy wife.
I give him a look, and he raises his palms in surrender. “I’m just saying. You said she was in therapy. That she was handling
her anger issues better.”
“She was. She is.”
He comes around the kitchen island to take me in his arms. I sink into him. He’s strong, body warm and solid. He holds me
tight and some of the tension releases from my shoulders. He kisses me on the head, says into my hair, “She’s a liability.
We can’t keep bailing her out of trouble. At some point she’s going to pull you under with her. You have the kids to worry
about.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I know you will.”
“What about the fire?” I ask.
He blows out a long breath. “There’s going to be an investigation,” he says. “The police suspect arson.”
I pull back from him, look up into his tired eyes. “What does that mean?”
“Someone sabotaged the system. Or it failed. Either way, it’s not good for us. The system is supposed to be fail proof, tamper
proof. Files that were meant to be turned over as evidence in a case against the company were destroyed. A man died.”
We stand like that awhile. I can hear the beating of his heart, matching the thrumming of my own. This is what I mean. If
you don’t control everyone, everything, the world can just spin out. But no matter how hard you try, something always seems
to get away from you.
“Anyway, we’ll put out a press release. Say that we’re standing behind the integrity of the system and are launching an investigation
of our own into what might have happened.”
“Okay,” I agree.
“Anyway,” he says, looking down at me. “I’ll handle the business. You handle Ana.”
Coraline is talking loudly on the phone upstairs. Music comes from Grant’s room, something I don’t recognize. The house smells
like Sunday dinner. I can almost believe that the world we have made inside these walls is enough to keep us safe from everything
out there. But I’m old enough to know that it’s not.
Yes. I’ll handle Ana.
In Brad’s arms, I’m thinking about Detective Timothy Bandeau and that too-watchful, too-seeing gaze, that smarter-than-you
smile. He’s a wolf at our door, huffing and puffing.
It’s okay. I’ve got this, as Coraline likes to say even when she’s not sure she means it. Protecting the badly behaved women
in my family is my birthright.
Brad heads down to the basement to knock out a couple miles on the treadmill, and I walk out to the back deck. The pool is covered for winter, and leaves blow across the surface in the wind. It’s cold. Above me, the moon is almost full.
“Have you forgotten about the Wolf Moon?” Lisander wanted to know when we last spoke.
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t think such things were important to you anymore.” There’s always that note of sadness, of resentment.
Truthfully, I’ve moved far from the kind of life Agnes and Lisander wanted for themselves, for me. I’ve turned my back on
The Cove. But it’s still with me. Still in my blood. I still practice, though just for myself.
The waxing gibbous moon is white-blue and rising bloated over the trees.
“Can we count on you to be there?” Lisander asked. “There’s unfinished business.”
Unfinished business. Maybe for her. My business was finished long ago. I have a life, a family. I’ve joined the real world.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I have no intention of attending the Wolf Moon ceremony. The last time I did, Agnes was still alive. And I promised myself
that I’d never attend again. And so far, I’ve kept that promise to myself. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the
tug, a tinge of sadness when I’m at Agnes’s place, like I’ve given up something out of spite that part of me still craves.
“I strongly urge you to attend,” Lisander pressed.
I didn’t answer and ended the call. I don’t take my orders from her, or anyone.
The fact is I have bigger problems than whatever “unfinished business” needs to be resolved on the night of the Wolf Moon.
I need to find out who killed Paul before the police do, and there’s no time to waste.