Chapter 11 Rae
RAE
LAZAREV GLOBAL - EMPLOYEE PAY STUB
Approved by: L. Lazarev
I wake up Saturday morning with Jillian’s words still ringing in my ears.
She disappeared. They never found the body.
Jillian couldn’t tell me much more than that. She’d gotten the tip from a retired P.I. she uses as a source sometimes. The guy had worked the case briefly back in 2007 before being told to drop it. No explanation was given. Just a fat check and a strong suggestion to find other interests.
“That’s all he remembered?” I asked her.
“That’s all he’d say,” she corrected. “He got weird when I pushed for details. And this guy worked Brooklyn homicide for twenty years. He doesn’t spook easy.”
She promised to keep digging. I told her to be careful. She laughed and, stealing my name, said careful was her middle name.
Her middle name is Rose.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well after we hung up. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Elena Lazareva’s face from that old photo. The elegant updo. The pale skin. The complete lack of smile.
The more I think about it, the more I start to feel like that remote look in her eyes wasn’t just someone who disliked camera-wielding paparazzi and public appearances. It was a woman who was trapped in a life she feared.
… Or maybe in a marriage she feared.
But that’s getting ridiculous and I know it.
I’m completely inventing scenarios with no basis in reality.
It’s just that Lukas seems like a man who’s capable of terrible things.
I keep flashing back to the night he caught me with his son’s hand wandering up my skirt and the icy way he said, I didn’t teach him properly…
I shake it off. I can’t think about this right now. Today is about Gideon. And I’m already running late.
I shower again, this time at a normal human temperature. I pick out a comfortable outfit—jeans, a soft cropped sweater, my beat-up sneakers. Visiting hours at Westgate start at ten, and it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive upstate to Saugerties.
I grab a granola bar and my keys, then check my phone one more time. No new messages from Jillian. No mysterious texts from unknown numbers.
Small mercies.
The drive is a straight shot. I go find the Zipcar I’m renting for the day, then take the Thruway north, out of the city, past the suburbs, past the strip malls, into the part of New York that actually has trees. The leaves are well into their turning. Reds and oranges blur past my windows.
Westgate Recovery Center looks more like a fancy bed-and-breakfast than a rehab facility. That’s probably the point. Red brick buildings with white shutters are scattered around manicured gardens. The whole place says, Healing happens here, in the most pleasant voice you’ve ever heard.
I park in the visitor lot and sign in at the front desk. The receptionist recognizes me now, since this has been my Saturday routine for almost two months. She smiles and waves me through without checking my ID.
“He’s in the common room today,” she tells me. “Good spirits today.”
I thank her and head down the familiar hallway. The floors are polished wood. The walls are lined with nature photographs. Everything smells like lavender and fresh laundry.
Of course, it costs a fortune, a kidney, an arm, and a leg. Gideon is only eight weeks into a six-month program, but I’ve already written enough huge checks to make my nose bleed.
But it’s working. At least, I think it’s working. We’ll see for sure in just a second if that continues to be the case.
The common room is at the end of the hall. It’s a beige space with lots of windows to open it up to tons of natural light. Patients and visitors lounge around on couches and armchairs, chatting or relaxing.
Gideon is sprawled on a bean bag in the sun, reading a paperback novel. He looks up when I walk in and grins from ear to ear.
“Rae!”
“Hey, Gid.”
He stands and pulls me into a huge hug. He’s gained weight since he got here. He doesn’t feel like such a skeleton anymore.
“You look good,” I tell him.
He’s twenty-one now, but sometimes, I still see the scrawny kid who used to follow me around the house whining for me to play with him.
We have the same dirty blonde hair, though his is shorter and messier.
The same brown eyes, though his are lighter and more honeyed.
He got Dad’s height—almost six feet—and Mom’s smile.
The combination always made him popular with girls, back when he was healthy enough to care about things like that.
These days, he’s clean-shaven and clear-eyed. His skin has color again. The dark circles that used to live under his eyes have faded to faint shadows. He’s wearing a soft gray hoodie and sweatpants, the unofficial uniform of recovery.
He looks like my brother again. Not the hollow stranger who showed up periodically at my apartment last year, shaking and thin, begging for money I knew would go straight into his veins.
I wish I could explain how much that means to me.
He holds me at arm’s length and gives me a once-over. “You look… tired.”
I thump him in the shoulder like the big sister I am. “Thanks a lot, wiseass.”
He grins. It’s the goofy, lopsided, irrepressible grin I remember from when he was a kid. Before everything went sideways.
We sit down on a nearby couch together. “How was the drive?” Gideon asks.
“Fine. Traffic wasn’t bad.”
“That’s good.”
“What about you? What’s new? What kind of voodoo are all these witch doctors doing to you?”
He smiles again and launches into a story about one of his activities. I look at him and listen and try to enjoy this moment of seeing life in his eyes again.
If nothing else, I try not to see the version I found two months ago.
September fifteenth. The anniversary of Mom and Dad’s accident. I knew it would be a hard day for him, but I didn’t anticipate exactly how hard. I called a few times. He didn’t answer.
I should’ve known then it would be a lot more than “hard.”
I drove to his apartment after work. I had a key, so I could’ve let myself in, but as it turns out, I didn’t need to, because the door was unlocked.
And Gideon was on the bathroom floor, with a needle still in his arm.
I thought he was dead. For the second-worst ten-second stretch of my life, I was completely sure my little brother was dead.
He wasn’t, though. His pulse was weak but there. I called 911 and rode with him to the hospital. Then I sat in the waiting room for two days straight while they pumped him full of Narcan and intubated him until he could breathe on his own without aspirating vomit into his own lungs.
When he woke up, I told him this was his last chance. It was either rehab or I was done. I couldn’t keep doing this. I couldn’t keep finding him half-dead and putting him back together, just so he could fall apart again.
He said okay.
I drove him here the next morning.
“So what about you?” Gideon asks, nudging my knee with his. “What’s going on in your life? Still working for that asshole boss?”
I hesitate and decide that, as good and stable as he may look right now, he’s still nearly in his recovery and doesn’t need to hear the full, gory details of my last saga. “Actually, I got transferred. New position.”
“Oh, yeah?” He arches a brow. “That’s good, right?”
“It’s… different.”
He waits for me to elaborate. When I don’t, he nudges me again. “Different how?”
“Just different,” I say, looking anywhere but at him so he won’t call me a liar. “Still figuring it out.”
“You’re being weird,” he observes. He tilts his head. “Is something wrong? Is the new boss a jerk, too?”
“No! No. Well, I mean, maybe, I don’t know yet. He’s just…” I trail off, in search of words that do not exist in the English language or any other language with which I’m familiar. “He’s a lot,” I finish lamely.
“A lot of good or a lot of bad?”
“Jury’s still out.”
Gideon frowns. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”
“Of course.”
“Because I know I’m in here and I’m supposed to be focusing on myself or whatever, but you’re still my sister. I still worry about you.”
I reach over and pat his hand. “I’m fine, Gid. Really. Just tired.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go for the time being. We talk about other things, like his roommate, a former Wall Street guy who snores like a chainsaw and a leaf blower had a very loud baby.
“They feeding you okay?” I ask, since Mom’s not around to ask that question herself.
“Better than okay,” he promises. “The chef here used to work at some fancy restaurant in the city. Yesterday, we had salmon with this lemon butter sauce thing.” He kisses his fingers like a cartoon Italian chef. “Incroyable.”
I laugh. “Good. You need to eat.”
“I know, I know.” He picks at a fraying hem on his hoodie, eerily similar to the way I was toying with that loose thread on my coat when I was in Lukas’s car last night. “Hey, Rae?”
“Yeah?”
“How much does this place cost?”
Instantly, I feel sick, same as I always do when I think about money these days. But I put on a good face for my brother. “Don’t worry about that, squirt.”
He still seems worried, though. “I overheard some guys saying it’s like fifteen grand a month. Is that true?”
I don’t answer. Which, as we both know, is itself an answer.
“God, Rae.” He runs a hand through his hair. It sticks up like loose straw. “That’s crazy. How are you even—”
“I’m handling it.”
“With what money? Your job doesn’t pay that well! I know it doesn’t.”
“I got a raise with the new position,” I say. I still don’t meet his eyes.
“How much of a raise?”
I look at my hands. “Enough of one.”
“Rae.” His voice is sharper now. “Look at me.”
I do. His eyes are searching my face. Even when we were kids, he could always tell when I was lying.
“How much of your paycheck goes to this place?” he asks sternly.
“Most of it,” I admit in a meek whisper. “Almost all of it.”
“Fuck.” He drops his head into his hands. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not up to you.”
“This is crazy! You’re scraping by on nothing so I can sit here and do yoga and eat fancy salmon.”
I grab his wrist and squeeze. “Hey. Hey. Look at me.”
He lifts his head. His eyes are damp and shiny.
“This is what I want,” I tell him firmly. “You getting better—that’s all that matters to me. I can figure out the money stuff. I always do.”
“But—”
“No buts.” I squeeze harder so he can feel how much I mean what I’m saying. “Your job is to focus on getting healthy. That’s it. Let me worry about everything else. Okay?”
He stares at me. Then he exhales slowly. “Okay,” he says. “But let the record show that I hate it.”
“Noted, and ignored.” I release his wrist. “Now, tell me more about this snoring roommate. Should we smother him with a pillow?”
The drive back to Brooklyn is quieter than the drive up. The sky has gone gray, threatening rain. I turn on the radio just to fill the silence.
I’m about an hour from the city when my phone pings with an email notification. I wait until the next rest stop to check it, but when I do, I’m immediately puzzled.
It’s from Lazarev Global HR.
Annual Salary Review: Adjustment Notice
I frown. My annual review was last month.
I open the email and read it twice. Then a third time, just to be sure.
Dear Ms. Everett,
Following a recent review of your compensation package, your annual salary has been adjusted to reflect your new role and responsibilities. Effective immediately, your salary will increase by $53,000 per annum.
Fifty-three thousand dollars…
… the exact amount I owe Westgate for Gideon’s remaining treatment.
I sit in my parked car and read the email again. The number doesn’t change.
I never requested a review. I never even hinted to a single living soul that I needed more money. The only person who knows exactly how much I owe…
… is Lukas.