Chapter 12
I drop Ella off at homeschool coding class in Plainsboro— she’s only going because it’s a class of four students, all girls she knows from Blossom and Twig—and check my phone the second I’m back in the car.
I have a new email from a potential client who introduces herself as a friend of one of the homeschool moms. She is hoping to have a home birth, working with a midwife I really like.
I will respond to her in a minute, but first I have to check all the places Grub might have written to me.
He would just video chat me, of course.
I check the local news in his area again. I read through the police blotters of a couple towns.
And then I see it.
I don’t believe it the first time my eyes pass over it.
An announcement from a funeral home. A service for James Ash, who tragically passed at the age of sixteen. Remembered by his mother, Deanna, and his stepfather, William.
William.
Bill.
Who bought the bike even after all Grub’s years of pushing him away.
There is a time for a service. It is happening right now. There is a link for donations. It’s for a suicide prevention charity.
I am screaming.
Alone in the car in the parking lot of a beige office complex under some power lines behind the strip mall with the Indian grocery store and the pizza place and the dry cleaner.
“No,” I am gasping over and over.
I am screaming like vomiting up all my horror, but still it comes and it won’t stop coming. I am stuffed with it, there is nothing else in me, it is coming through me like lava, coming from somewhere underneath, somewhere much deeper.
I never met him. Not in person. I will never meet him.
My brother. Named James.
Who loved me. Who called me Lorelei. Who was always trying to help me. Who never had a friend he could touch. Who never had parents he could hug. Who never got to know regular love.
“No, no, no,” I chant, rocking against the steering wheel. I hit my forehead into it, stay there a while.
He did not end his own life.
Despite it all. Despite how sad he always was. Despite how lonely.
He did not succumb to suicide.
He was hopeful, he was working toward answers, he was always working on something, always trying to solve the problem. He was Sherlock. He was not done.
He was murdered.
He was murdered.
And no one will ever even know. He was the only one who would even believe in his own murder.
Except for my disgusting father.
And now me.
The hour has passed and Ella is waiting for me and I am hardly alive myself, floating out of the car, up the path, to the door.
Someone is talking to me, one of the parents doing pickup.
Harini, from group. I am not sure what my face does, what my voice does.
Ella is grabbing my hand; we are going back to the car.
“I really, really have to pee,” she is saying. “I had to the whole time. How long will it take to get home?”
“Ten minutes,” I hear myself say. “Maybe eleven.”
“That’s a long time,” she whines. “That’s really long.”
“There’s a bathroom. You could’ve— ”
“The toilet there is too loud! Remember?” And then, unprompted, of the class: “I didn’t like it as much today.
We had to do a numbers and patterns race, and I don’t like racing because I don’t like games where someone always wins and someone loses.
But I had to do it, and I’m not sure I want to go back next time.
You said you wouldn’t force me.” The last part is chiding, a preemptive parry.
I don’t think I answer.
We are the only ones at home, of course. Dee and Mom are at work. I hate Mom for her stupid job that she doesn’t even really need. I hate her for not helping out. She could be homeschooling Ella, too. It doesn’t have to just be me.
“You can watch a movie,” I tell Ella when she returns from the bathroom.
“I can?” She is shocked. “Are you sure?”
I nod.
“I can pick it?”
I nod.
She looks at me suspiciously but then runs to get the iPad. A minute later, she is curled up on the couch watching something high-pitched, and I am standing in the kitchen staring at the clock on the oven. I watch the next minute replace the last one. Then another.
I knew he was gone.
I knew before I saw the funeral announcement.
I knew in the cab on the way to the airport, when he hadn’t responded. Grub always responds.
I am being crushed to death by my own rib cage.
I take a heaving breath, stumble up the stairs. Ella hardly glances up.
I make it to the top of the staircase and have to sit down. My whole body hurts. I lean against the cool, bumpy plaster of the wall.
Where is my phone?
It’s here in my hand.
I can’t see it right.
Everything bleeds together. Everything is slush.
What could I have done?
What could I have done differently?
What did I miss?
How could I have saved him?
“I’m sorry, Grub,” I whisper, choking on the words.
How did he really die?
What happened? What was done to him?
How will I face my life, how will I take care of Ella? How can I do tomorrow?
The dark lurches beneath me, it flings itself up, a ravenous vortex, as familiar as if it never went away at all.
I can’t survive this. It’s too many times now. I can’t endure it.
I am clawing at the surface of my phone.
I claw my way through a maze of apps, get to the message from the unfamiliar screen name.
My hands shaking, sliding with sweat, I write back to the demon hunter: Yes, I’m close to NYC. Let’s meet.
Great! he writes immediately back. He is online right now. He is typing, it says. He is about to say something else. He will probably tell me where to meet him now.
I’m assuming this is a man, even though there’s no hint of gender in the screen name or language. It’ll be easier if he’s male, since I will need to have sex with him.
Or sexual contact.
At least, I’m pretty sure I will. I don’t care.
I don’t care.
I will not sit here and wait for him to come for me next.
He killed Grub.
“I will kill you, motherfucker,” I whisper.
* * *
I’m right. He responds with a place to meet.
A time. Tomorrow evening, 8:00. After dark, I think.
I google the name he gives. It’s an old-fashioned speakeasy in the West Village.
The photos online make it look sinful-chic—all dark wood and red Oriental rugs and mood lighting.
The perfect place for a date with the devil.
Tomorrow evening.
Just enough time to tell Dee that I am going to a last-minute concert with friends from group, because I need to get out of the house.
She sees my face and I tell her that Grub died.
I don’t tell her that he was murdered. She holds me, I cry.
But I am so far away in my head, I hardly feel her arms around me.
I am withdrawing. I can’t handle her disbelief, however concealed and slim it might be, if I tell her the truth.
So I can’t tell her the truth. My amazing little sister who acts like a big sister, who always tries to protect me. Who can’t possibly protect me now.