Chapter Eight
Sasha
Sasha sits by Andi’s side as she lies on the sofa in the living room. Regan is in Andi’s kitchen making tea—a weird quirk
she’s noticed about Regan, who defaults to putting on a kettle of tea every time something even slightly stressful happens,
like she’s in some British novel. Andi is out cold, and Carson is beside himself interrogating Sasha and Regan about what
the hell happened. Of course, they have no idea. Andi was there one second, and on the ground the very next. The officer’s
name is Morrison, and he got on his radio to dispatch an ambulance to the house, but now he’s outside on the front lawn, waving
folks to keep on going and head to their checkpoint at the lakeside pub in a “nothing to see here” tone.
Everyone obeys, but God help me, Sasha thinks, this will have them talking even more.
What’s going on inside that house? Why is there an officer?
Did they find something? Then, suddenly, Andi comes to, violently sitting straight up and gasping, holding her hand to her heart, looking around with fear in her eyes.
She tries to stand, but Carson rushes over as Regan comes in with a tray of tea, and Andi holds out her arms as if in self-defense like we are circling her and about to attack.
“I can explain all of it,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes. Carson takes her hand and sits her back down on the couch.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay. You need to sit,” he says. “What happened?”
Regan sits on the coffee table and puts a hand on Andi’s arm while Sasha dutifully pours cups of tea on the tray without knowing
why she’s doing it—just fueled by anxiety and confusion, she supposes.
“It was all an accident,” Andi says.
“What was?” Regan asks. “You fainted. That’s all.”
“You’re okay,” Sasha consoles, placing a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her.
“Where’s the detective? Is he taking me in?”
“What?” Carson says. “No—”
“And what the hell are you doing here?” she says, cutting him off. “What the hell are you even—why were you in the garage
with a detective? Why were you moving the freezer? I . . .”
“Andi, stop,” Regan says. “What day is it?” she asks.
“What?” Andi snaps.
“Who’s the president?”
“I don’t have a fucking concussion. I don’t get what’s happening.” She looks so fearful and red blotches bloom across her
chest, and Sasha can’t wrap her head around exactly what’s going on.
“I told you I’d be home midday Sunday. It’s after one o’clock,” Carson says, a little annoyed that she seems unhappy he’s home, but still holding her hand, clearly understanding that she’s had a fall and maybe a bump on the head.
“Oh,” Andi says numbly, her eyes still darting around the room.
“And the detective said he called you and was gonna meet you here to ask questions about Tia. He’s asking all of us. It’s
not just you. Do you remember talking to him earlier? Did you hit your head?” he asks patiently, but she snaps back her answers.
“No. Goddammit. I saw you in the garage with him moving shit around.” Everyone in the room exchanges furtive glances at one
another, wondering if she really does have some sort of concussion.
“Yeah. My tire is low. I was getting the air pump off the hook on the wall when he pulled up and startled me.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Why are you telling me that?” she asks. Regan is now perched on the arm of the couch
next to her, feeling around her head for bumps, as Andi mindlessly swats her away.
“It fell behind the giant-ass freezer we still have for some reason. He came into the garage and we chatted while we waited
for you, and he helped me scooch it out a few inches to get the air pump. I mean, jeez. Is there any other detail you’d like
to know? Or can we maybe get to what the hell happened to you? Are you okay?”
“I’ll get an ice pack. You have a goose egg,” Regan announces, then disappears into the kitchen.
“I think she’s just under a lot of stress,” Sasha says.
Andi stands abruptly and goes to the front window, looking out at Morrison, who’s still directing stragglers toward their
checkpoint. “He’s not . . .”
“What? Jesus, Andi. Can we just—can you just lie down and rest? Let Regan get the ice and just . . .”
“He’s not arresting me?” she asks, her mouth gaping open and eyes wide.
“They don’t arrest everyone they want to question,” Carson says with annoyance in his tone that only makes her panic more.
“You have to understand you’re the ex. You saw her the day before. They’ll have questions. That’s it. Everyone knows you were
not involved. Shit, if it makes you feel better, we can go through the Ring footage to prove you were here. I told them you
were here. Nobody legitimately thinks you did anything, babe. People are just freaked out.”
Somehow during Carson’s speech, Sasha clocks Andi’s eyes expanding and glossing over at the words Ring footage, and then she watches Andi sit down quietly on the couch. Andi doesn’t say anything else until the ambulance sirens can be
heard coming up the dirt road, and then she whispers an almost inaudible “Oh, God” under her breath.
Once the medics come in, it feels like a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen situation, so Sasha decides to take the church bus
back to the town square. She squeezes Andi’s hand before she goes and promises to call and check in later, but she’s relieved
to be out of there if she’s honest. The weight of it is too much. A whole town searching an eerie forest hoping not to find
a dead body, and at the same time hoping to find something. It’s really an indescribable thing to witness—watching them all
balance their usual meaningless chatter about soccer practice and the new Love Is Blind season, then remembering where they are and what they’re there for and morphing back into the somber, melancholy version
of themselves they’re supposed to be at such an occasion.
But Sasha has secrets of her own to deal with, and she’s made a promise to be somewhere.
Tom has made the two-and-a-half-hour trip to the Manhattan restaurant, the way he does every other week to check in on things, see his brother, attend some meetings or whatever else goes into owning a few restaurants.
Sasha doesn’t much care for the mundane details about bookkeeping and bottom lines and barbecue smoker prices and any of it, really.
She pretends to be interested and of course does genuinely listen when Tom chats to her about work, but she has other things on her mind each time he makes the New York trip or whenever he works late.
She’s arranged for Drew to watch Chloe—she tells him she has “margarita book club” tonight. She assumes Tom might have a few
pints with his dad at the restaurant bar anyway and come home in the morning, or if he does come home tonight, it’ll be late,
so she makes the forty-minute trek to see Raffy, and despite how many years she’s been going to see him, she still feels a
pang of guilt twisting in her gut—she knows keeping this from Tom is a betrayal. It feels practically criminal after ten years,
but that’s the thing about white lies . . . they snowball. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeing her ex-husband, because
they coparent Drew, if you can call it that. But Tom has been so understanding despite all the baggage she came with, which
makes her feel extra guilty for not being honest about this.
Raffy lost himself to the bottle a long time ago, so when she stopped by to drop Drew off when he was younger, Tom knew she had to stay and supervise, because who the hell could predict if Raffy would even be vertical let alone able to be responsible for a young son?
Drew has wanted less to do with Raff as he’s gotten older.
It seems like his visits are fueled by pity when he does go, and Sasha can’t make him have a relationship with his dad.
She’s glad he doesn’t, if she’s honest, because watching his father slowly kill himself isn’t something she’d like Drew exposed to. But she still goes.
It just sort of happened and then became a habit—to make sure he was okay, take out the trash, open a window, check his meds,
and then somewhere along the line, she realized it was secretive—that Tom wouldn’t approve of her going there alone although
he probably wouldn’t say it. He’s too kind. He wouldn’t forbid her or try to control her. He’d just be very hurt, and how
could she blame him for that?
But she can’t abandon Raffy, not after what he’s done for her. So she drives up, always with a mix of anticipation and a visceral
sense of dread to see his face, wondering how bad things will be today. She winds her way up the steep road and onto the long
dirt drive of the first house they bought together, where Rafael and Sasha Carro is still written on the mailbox at the end of the drive where it meets the road. Only her name has been rubbed off and is
just a faint imprint now. Back when Raff was doing well, so, so long ago now, he was buying up real estate in Mexico and renting
out beach bungalows. They bought this cliffside fixer-upper, in cash, and renovated each room, from the Spanish bath tile
to the walnut floors. It’s not big or fancy. They thought about expanding, turning it into a showstopper, but they wanted
modest and cozy. Good thing, she supposes, because he’s let the place go to such an extreme—the wood floors long ago rotted
from dog urine from a Jack Russell he had a few years ago; the walls are covered in mold from bad ventilation when he went
through a paranoid phase and closed off all the vents and windows; and the list goes on.