Chapter 41
COOPER
When I get home from the gym, Debbie is cooking dinner in the kitchen.
She doesn’t need to do that every night. I could bring home food, or I could try to cook. My cooking isn’t anything to get excited about, but I’m a smart enough guy. I can figure out how to put together a meal. Especially now that I’m not going to have a job.
“Is dinner almost ready?” I ask her.
Debbie looks up from the saucepan and smiles at me. But there’s something off about her smile. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“Almost,” she confirms.
“Can I help?”
She pauses for a beat, then nods. “Can you set the table? And fill up the water glasses.”
I take four glasses from the cabinet over the sink and set them down on the counter. I grab the jug of spring water in the refrigerator, but there’s only enough in it to fill two glasses.
“Do we have any more?” I ask her.
“Just fill it up from the tap,” Debbie says.
I raise my eyebrows. “I thought Lexi won’t drink water from the tap. She says it tastes metallic to her. Isn’t that why we have this?”
Debbie laughs. “Cooper, I’ve been refilling that jug from the tap for the last two years. Lexi doesn’t know the difference.”
I had no idea she was doing this. I agree that Lexi’s teenage obsession with not drinking our perfectly fine tap water was weird, and it’s sort of funny that she can’t tell the difference, but I don’t know how I feel about the fact that Debbie has been lying to our daughter for two years.
And even worse, I had no idea about any of it.
Aren’t we partners in this whole parenting thing?
I finish setting the table, and then I do one better and let the girls know to come down to eat.
Izzy bounds down the stairs almost immediately, but Lexi is slower on the descent.
She’s also uncharacteristically silent. Lexi has been so moody ever since she turned fourteen.
Is that typical for girls? Thank God Izzy isn’t moody like that—I don’t think I could deal with two kids telling me that I need to find a new barber because my haircut makes me look like a dork.
“The police were at school all day today,” Izzy babbles as Debbie brings out a large plate of food.
We always get served family style, especially since lately you never can predict how much the girls want to eat.
They will consume anything between a full plate of food and five noodles.
“They were even still there when I left the building!”
“The police?” I repeat.
Izzy stares at me in amazement. “You didn’t hear? Mom didn’t tell you?”
I look at Debbie questioningly, but she is busy scooping pasta and white sauce on her plate. It seems like an issue involving the police would be something that Debbie would have thought to mention to me. Apparently not.
“No,” I admit. “What happened?”
“Coach Pike was arrested,” Izzy says. “He had a camera in the girls’ locker room in the shower.”
I let out a gasp. “He was recording teenage girls taking showers?”
“I heard the camera was just put in and hadn’t started recording yet,” Izzy says.
Thank God. The thought of what could have been on that footage is traumatizing.
“My friend Ayan told me he’s saying he didn’t do it, but, like, I heard they found a program on his phone that connected to the camera. So he definitely did it.”
A program on his phone that connected to the camera. Just like what we have at our front door.
“I’m sure he did it,” Lexi mutters. “Coach Pike is a total creep, and everyone knows it. I’m just surprised he was stupid enough to get caught. I mean, did he really think he could put a camera in the girls’ locker room and nobody would notice?”
She’s right. Anyone who did that is just begging to get caught.
“So, Izzy,” Debbie says, “now that Coach Pike is gone, do they know who will be coaching the girls’ soccer team?”
“Mrs. Laslo is going to take over,” Izzy says. “And she says even though Coach Pike told me I was off the team, I can join up again. She’s not strict like he was.”
“You were off the soccer team?” I ask in surprise.
“Jesus, Dad,” Lexi says. “Get with the program.”
She’s right. I clearly have no idea what’s going on in my family right now. But in my defense, I did just quit my job yesterday.
Izzy lowers her eyes to her plate of food. “The coach said I wasn’t fast enough.”
“And that was ridiculous,” Debbie chimes in, her eyes suddenly animated. “You were the best player on the team. I don’t know what he was thinking. Not only was he a despicable pervert, he was also a terrible coach.”
Izzy shrugs.
“Well,” Debbie says, “thankfully, that’s a mistake on his part that will now be corrected. I suppose at least some good came out of the terrible thing he did.”
I look over at Debbie again, sitting across from me at the dinner table.
She has already made a dent in her food, but the lump of pasta on my plate is just sitting there.
Izzy and Lexi have also piled pasta on their plates, although Lexi seems to be eating only one noodle every several minutes.
I’m the only one who isn’t eating at all.
“Aren’t you hungry, Dad?” Izzy asks me.
Actually, I’m not. I don’t think I’ve ever been less hungry in my life.
I wipe my hands on my napkin and push my chair back from the dinner table. It makes a loud scraping sound on the floor. “I’ll be right back,” I announce.
All three faces look up at me questioningly.
“I just need to run upstairs and…” I clear my throat. “I need to check something for work. It’ll just be a minute.”
Debbie gives me a funny look. My excuse sounded weak, because it is weak. I don’t need to check something for work. But there is something I need to take a look at, and my thoughts won’t stop racing until I do.
I hurry up the stairs to our bedroom. I shut the door behind me, although it’s not like anyone will be following me. I perch on the edge of the bed, on the side where I usually sleep, and wrench open the drawer of the nightstand.
The crumpled paper that I stuffed inside this morning is still there. The one where I wrote down the address that popped up when I did the search for Debbie in her Findly app. And now I dig my own phone out of my pocket.
I don’t know the full name of Izzy’s soccer coach who kicked her off the team. However, typing a few keywords into Google quickly brings up the news article about a high school sports coach named Robert Pike who was arrested for filming minors in the girls’ locker room at the high school.
He’s saying he didn’t do it, but, like Izzy said, they found a program on his phone that connected to the camera.
I scroll away from the news article, and the next thing I search for in my phone is “Robert Pike home address.” Instantly, the address of the home he owns in Weymouth pops up on the screen.
My scribble from last night is hard to read, but there’s no doubt the street name is the same.
Debbie was at Coach Pike’s house in the middle of the night. Then the next morning, he was arrested for having incriminating software on his phone.
There’s no way that could be a coincidence.
But it also seems impossible. Could my sweet, unassuming wife really have broken into the coach’s house while he was sleeping and installed something on his phone? Mild-mannered housewives don’t do things like that.
Just like they don’t break into the neighbor’s basement to destroy their fuse box. Or post pornographic videos of their bosses online.
I stare at the piece of paper with Pike’s address on it, trying to figure out what to do with this information.
If my wife did all those things, she is an incredibly disturbed individual.
She would be somebody in need of serious psychiatric help.
Because if she could do all that, who knows what else she could be capable of?
She could be dangerous.