81. To Keep You Safe and To Keep Me Sane
TO KEEP YOU SAFE AND TO KEEP ME SANE
ELIAS
I hit the connect button in my car when the phone rings through the speakers. “Hey, darlin’.”
“Hey, babe. Are you heading home?”
“I am. But I have a stop to make first, so I’ll be late.”
“Where’re you headed?”
“You can’t ask those questions this close to Christmas. You know that.”
“You said you were done shopping.”
“I did.”
“Were you lying then or are you lying now?”
“Neither, supersleuth. I’ll be home in a bit. Want me to grab anything on the way?”
“Depends on when you’ll be home.”
“In time for a late dinner, not after you’ve gone to bed.”
“Text me when you’re close. I’ll let you know if I’ve eaten by then.”
“Always hedging… Okay, darlin’. See you in a bit.”
I turn east onto a well-maintained road with lesser-maintained homes.
They’re still valuable, but they seem to have been forgotten.
The reedy grass was left high before it died, leaving it tall and brown as it blows in the breeze.
Winter came, and the cactus are what’s left. The lusher plants have withered.
It’s depressing, and I’m glad for the coming sunset so I don’t have to see it all.
Over the last few months, I’ve become uneasy about Rich Lager.
Brighton hasn’t said much about her visits.
In fact, she’s been reticent, which is telling for her.
Where she normally spills her day in detail, she mentions next to nothing except her confusion about the sickly horses.
She seems lost in her thoughts after her visits, and she sleeps fitfully on the nights she’s been to see him.
Braxton even asked what I was doing about it, since her schedule with Lager has become less regular but more frequent.
His home is modest and in decent shape, though it looks like multiple projects were started and never completed. Several shades of paint have been tested near the front door, but none must’ve been settled on.
I knock on his door and am greeted by a tall, thin man, whose graying hair was once blonde. Deep lines spread from the corners of his eyes and even deeper ones bracket his mouth. There’s power in his wiry body.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Lager?”
“Who’s asking?”
“I’m an attorney representing the Ranger family in a legal matter. May I come in?”
He pauses and pulls his chin back in. He stands back but surveils the yard behind me like he suspects something more.
He motions to the table that’s covered in unopened envelopes, old magazines, and dirty coffee cups.
I sit in one of the chairs, not allowing my back to the man. He circles the table widely and stands behind the chair opposite me with his hands firmly planted atop it.
“What can I do for you?” His eyes flick between me and the hall behind me.
“There’s a pending legal matter with Dr. Brighton Ranger.” His eyes brighten at the mention of her name. “I wanted to ask you some questions since you are a client of hers.”
He nods.
“Mind if I record this conversation?” I place my phone on the cluttered tabletop and point the microphone his direction.
“I guess.”
“How would you characterize your relationship with Dr. Ranger?”
“She’s my vet. My horses’ vet.”
“How long have you worked together?”
“A couple of years, I suppose.” His shoulders rise and fall with a jerk in time as he speaks.
“How did you come to use her as your equine vet?”
“Her momma recommended her.”
I hold back my surprise and keep my voice level. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. She was proud of her girl. Said she was moving home soon and loved horses.”
“How did you know Emilia Ranger?”
“I met her at the grocery store some years back.”
“You just struck up a conversation?” That sounds just like her actually.
“Yeah. We met in produce and crossed paths again in the dairy section. When I saw her in the freezer aisle, I thought she was following me. She said the same thing and laughed. I bumped into her again in the parking lot, and she told me about her daughter.”
This doesn’t add up. No way Emilia offered her daughter up to someone she bumped into in the frozen section.
“You saw her often at Albertsons?”
“All the time. I swear she was there every time I was. I’d have been paran—” He cuts off his thought mid-word. “She was harmless.”
I nod.
“Dr. Ranger reminds me of her.” His voice trails off as does the wistful tone in it. He looks down the hall again. “Excuse me a moment?”
I nod again, and he ambles away, muttering something to himself.
I sit at his table for a couple of minutes, thumbing through the mail left there. I can hear Lager talking, but he hasn’t returned. His voice doesn’t change tenor or volume. It’s consistent. He’s in the back of the house, and I still sit, becoming more and more uneasy, in his filthy kitchen.
I rise quietly, not comfortable with the possibility of his coming up behind me.
I pace to his sink. Next to it are medicine bottles.
I glance at them, noting they’re empty. Both say they have three refills left as of …
two months ago? I memorize their names and when I hear no more conversation behind me, I turn.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I turn on my heel to Lager standing behind me with a baseball bat. His eyes are manic, and his voice is lethally quiet.
“Admiring the view from your kitchen window. Bet it’s stunning on summer evenings.” I narrow my eyes. “Are you late for softball or something, Mr. Lager?
His eyes dart.
“Thank you for your time.” I extend a hand. He drops the bat onto his shoulder and squeezes mine in a shake that’s a bit too firm for polite conversation.
I grab my phone and am almost to the door when the frame near my head splinters with the force of the bat that just misses my head.
“Who are you?” he booms.
Rage rises in me. The ringing in my ear from the hit fuels my adrenaline. My mind focuses like a laser.
Filthy home. Stale smell. Burned out lights.
The blackness of Lager’s eyes as he shifts right before my eyes.
“I said. Who are you?”
“The Ranger’s attorney.”
“You have a name, boy?”
“Not one that I’ll give you.”
“Did Emilia send you?”
“I—”
“If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a thousand times, he’s no good for her.”
What in the ever-loving fuck?
“Okay.” I drawl. I have no clue what’s happening right now.
“She keeps going back to him, saying she has to. Says he’ll take the kids if she doesn’t. She could be free of him, but—” He speaks to himself because I’m certainly lost with this conversation.
“Brighton? Or Emilia?”
He nods. “Show some respect when you talk about my wife, boy.”
That’s my cue.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Lager. I hope this helps the case.” I know better. There’s no case that he can help with. He’s not well. And we’re having a conversation about a dead woman in the present tense.
I back down the porch steps and waste no time getting in my car, throwing it in reverse to leave his run-down property.
I hit the main highway when I realize my phone is still recording. No doubt the last five minutes are just my heavy breathing and swearing under my breath. I park in a lot, stop the recording, and only now realize my jacket is still on and that’s because the heat wasn’t on in Lager’s house.
I type two of the four meds I can remember from his kitchen sink into browser windows.
Searches on divalproex sodium and asenapine pull up more than I want to know. They’re prescribed for seizures or for migraines or as mood stabilizers. Separately, that is.
Together, they’re used to address manic phases of bipolar disorders and…
Fuck me…
Schizophrenia.
I arrive at home. Bright is my home. I don’t give a fuck where we live—though I have to admit I love her shower for two—so long as she’s in it with me.
The porch light beckons me as Christmas lights twinkle through the sheers covering the front windows.
I make it just inside the door when Luna ambles up, tail wagging, ears high. “Hey, sweet girl. Where’s your mama?”
Bright dries her hands on a kitchen towel as she enters the living room. “Right here. You were going to text on your way.”
I wrap her in a hug and kiss the top of her head before pulling back, holding her gaze. “I need a promise from you. And you’re not going to like it.”
“I’m listening.”
“Don’t go to Lager’s again.”
“I can handle myself, you know.”
“Of course I know that. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”
She leans up on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek. “So it’s settled?”
“If you agree not to go.”
“Can’t make you that promise, Eli.”
“What will it take to get you to agree?”
“Can you get those horses off his property so I can treat them?”
I cup her cheek. “He’s not well. Really not well. Like off his meds not well, and I’m afraid for you. I’m asking your help to keep you safe and to keep me sane.”
I tell her about my visit. Everything, that is, but the baseball bat that nearly rendered me in a vegetative state.
I pull in a breath before dropping a bomb.
“He thinks your mom is alive, that she’s his wife, and that you’re going back to an abusive husband so you don’t lose your kids.
Darlin’, I think he thinks you’re Emilia…
” I can’t finish that thought. I shake my head to erase the idea.
“What?” Her hand covers her mouth and her pupils dilate. “How…?”
“To understand the conversation I had with him, I’d have to live in his imaginary world.
Again, he is not well, but his anger and suspicion are not lesser for it.
He’s paranoid and has violent tendencies.
Please, please esteem your life—your health and your safety—over that of his horses. ” I hold her eyes.
She holds me tight, burrowing in, as if she needs to climb into my skin, until she pulls back and holds my gaze. “We have an every other Friday standing meeting. What should I do?”
“I don’t think he’ll know what day of the week it is. Or whether you’ve been gone one week or two. Certainly not before his meds are reintroduced.”
“And then?”
“Then— Then I’ll still want you to avoid putting yourself in that situation.”
Finally, she agrees to avoid him with a single bob of her head. The look in her eyes shows her resolve.
I’m praying she keeps that promise.