Chapter 2
Mackenzie August, a new man.
Full of vigor and life, fresh off negotiations with a blonde client in Jimmy Choos, a pep in my step, now I wanted to grill. A real man would wander into his pasture and select cattle to slaughter. I drove to Fresh Market.
I asked the butcher for four pounds of his fattiest grass-fed ground angus, and I bought a block of cheddar cheese, some Brioche buns, a head of lettuce, a package of bacon, two tomatoes, sweet potato fries, and Devil’s Backbone lagers. The cashier didn’t swoon but she wanted to.
My cherub of a son Kix spent the day at Roxanne’s, so I fetched him on the way home, him reclining in his car seat, kicking his little feet.
The house was ours. I scratched our dog, a boxer named GPA, as Kix told me about his day—Roxanne was babysitting another kid now, a boy about Kix’s age named Oliver, and Kix referred to Oliver as his ‘frienemy’ which was a clever amalgamation—until he ran out of words, so I gave him his box of toy cars and I set to it in the kitchen.
Smash burgers were on the menu. I pried the top off a bottle of lager and enjoyed the pop and fizz, and I chopped the cheddar block into thin slices and did the same with the tomatoes.
An ’80s Rock station played on the Amazon Echo speaker—Bon Jovi and Van Halen and Elton John and Michael Jackson and Guns N’ Roses and Billy Joel and Madonna and Fleetwood Mac.
Not every song fit my definition of rock, or of the ’80s, but all of it sounded perfect.
I slid two trays of sweet potato fries into the oven and set it to air fry.
I ignited the griddle on the back deck and wet the cast iron with avocado oil and laid on slices of bacon to sizzle.
GPA oversaw the food prep with unflagging alertness, not begging, not invading personal space, but every so often rising an inch onto her back legs to she could peer over the counter tops, before dropping back down.
She loved cheddar cheese, and was rewarded with some.
At six, our first housemate arrived home.
Noelle Beck. An NSA analyst who lived in a suite in our basement and brightened our lives.
Fit and thin and intelligent. She created life in her womb, a gestation beginning its second trimester.
Her morning sickness had eased and she was aglow with health and well-being.
Most days. She wore loose shirts and looked like she smuggled half a volleyball.
I told her what was for dinner and she groaned happily, music to a chef’s ears. She greeted the dog and the baby, shrugged out of her blazer, reached behind under her shirt, undid the bra, and sighed with relief. “My boobs won’t stop growing.”
“Hear hear.”
“Cripes, Mackenzie, sorry. That’s something to share with women but the women aren’t home yet.”
“I’m happy to listen. Boobs are one of my favorite topics.”
“Mine are tender and they ache,” said Noelle. “Still one of your favorite topics?”
“Less so.”
Puberty, said Kix, never stops being gross. You leak and grow hair and get fat, and I’ve decided to avoid it.
A Camaro arrived next, heard inside the house as a growl. Another housemate, Manny Martinez. A Deputy US Marshal, my friend for many years. Lean and muscular, dark hair, dark eyes, dark demeanor when displeased.
The child Noelle was carrying may or may not be his. It was complicated. There’d been cocaine.
Manny came into the house the way Bono from U2 would—overwhelming and effortlessly cool—and crouched next to Kix and they executed their new handshake greeting.
A forehand-backhand-fistbump-explosion maneuver that Kix got excited about and botched every time.
Manny spied the ground hamburger I was rolling into quarter-pound balls.
“Bien,” he said. “Make Beck’s burger a triple, por favor.”
“I cannot eat that much,” said Noelle.
“Today you had only yogurt, a banana, and a salad. You need protein, Beck.”
“Stop monitoring my diet.”
“Somebody has to,” he said.
Noelle breathed in deeply through her nose. “Gosh it smells like heaven.”
“That’s the bacon,” I said.
She groaned again and Manny fetched her a can of sparkling water. Of the many ways Noelle frustrated him, water consumption was high on the list.
“How’s the tetas?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. “Manny. I knew I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“They’re getting heavier,” he told me. “You noticed?”
I nodded. “I cannot stop.”
“I didn’t say heavier, I said bigger,” said Noelle.
“Everyone at the office agrees, se?orita. They look great. But we need new bras.”
“We don’t need anything. Are people really talking about my boobs at the office? My mother would die.”
“I did research. You heard of underwire?”
I shuffled the fries and flipped the bacon.
Times were strange in Chez August. Noelle was pregnant with a fifty percent chance of carrying Manny’s child.
When Manny learned about it, he proposed.
It was the right thing to do, he said. She turned him down, which was a relief, I think, to Manny, whose bachelor lifestyle included driving a car with no real backseat and sleeping on my floor and dating whomever he pleased and spending his money on luxury tequila.
Her reasons were, they weren’t in love and she wished to give the child up for adoption.
However, if either man felt strongly about being a father, she would take a paternity test and birth the child for him.
The other man, Junior, agreed to the adoption plan immediately.
Manny stewed on it for weeks, eventually deciding her plan was best, so there’d been no need to take a paternity test.
And yet.
Noelle Beck was his partner at the Marshal’s Office and in their secondary role as federal agents, and he took that responsibility seriously. Her diet mattered, her fitness mattered, what she drove mattered, her sleep cycles mattered, her skincare routine mattered. Her pregnancy really mattered.
I could see the war in his eyes. Her child would matter too. And if it was his? Ay caramba.
Timothy August arrived next. A beloved elementary school principal, and my beloved old man. He picked Kix up and sat on the couch and loosened his tie.
I lifted the crispy bacon to the far side of the griddle, the cooler side, and I dropped the beef in intervals where the bacon had been crackling.
The cast iron was slick with grease and the beef sizzled instantly.
I covered the beef with a sheet of parchment paper and smashed each ball with a heavy iron until the beef was flat and the size of a big pancake.
The parchment paper prevented spattering.
Nothing sexy or heavy about this burger—it was beef fried in its own fat, which flavored it.
Straightforward American cardiac destruction.
I poured Worcestershire sauce onto each patty, plus a heavy sprinkling of salt, pepper, onion, and garlic.
As the meat cooked, it reduced in dimensions.
I flipped each patty and laid a slice of cheddar cheese on top.
Ronnie and Stackhouse returned home at the same time.
Andie Stackhouse was Roanoke’s newest mayor-elect. A week ago, she’d won the election with 75 percent of the vote. She now spent her time juggling sheriff duties while assembling a transition team and meeting with the outgoing administration.
She and Ronnie were about to pour white wine but Timothy protested loudly from the couch—we were having red meat, for Pete’s sake. Red wine or nothing, those were the options.
I transferred the hot patties onto a cooling tray, stacking them to create half-pound double cheeseburgers topped with bacon.
Grease dripped and the cheese was gooey, and I awarded myself a Michelin star.
As they cooled, I toasted several buns on the griddle, the heat and fat crisping the outer surface.
I didn’t need to toast many because only Timothy and I ate carbs.
And pregnant Noelle.
I set the burgers out and let each person prepare their own, plus the sweet potato fries. Kix received some burger and bacon and so did Georgina Princess August. Plates full, we sat and I said grace and we ate, and life felt like a fairytale. Everything mattered and everything was as it should be.
Manny thanked me for the sweet potato fries, regaling us with the importance of fiber and the all-powerful gut biome. When Noelle finished her fries, Manny fetched her more and instructed me next time to buy the fries made with avocado oil. I instructed him to jump up his own rear end.
Stackhouse set down her glass of wine and said, “Listen to the day I had.”
“This sounds good,” said Ronnie. “I hope it’s juicy.”
“Alden Black died.”
“Oh shit,” said Ronnie. “That is juicy. Sorry for saying shit, Mackenzie.”
“Alden Black, your successor as sheriff,” I said.
“That’s him. He was seventy-one and apparently hadn’t eaten a vegetable since the ’90s.”
No one with long-range political aspirations wanted to be the sheriff immediately after Stackhouse.
In comparison to her, they would only be considered a letdown—career suicide.
None of her deputies had thrown their hat into the ring, nor had any police officers.
The only other candidates who ran were fringe lunatics.
The Roanoke powers-that-be convinced Alden to run, the retired police chief of Blacksburg.
He was respected and would keep the ship afloat and would only serve one term.
He’d be a palate cleanser, and the next election would produce true candidates.
He essentially ran unopposed by serious contenders and he won both the liberal and the conservative vote because Stackhouse endorsed him.
“He was supposed to be sworn in next month,” said Stackhouse.
“Does Virginia have a legal precedent for this scenario?”
“Yes,” said Stackhouse. “The former sheriff remains in the role.”
“That’s you. But you’re the mayor now,” said Timothy. “I know that’s obvious, but you’re taking the oath in a few weeks. How will it work?”
“Who finished second in the vote?” I asked.
“Me.” Stackhouse jerked a thumb at herself. “Strange but true. Several thousand voters wrote me in as a candidate. They were either confused because they knew I was running to be mayor, or they didn’t like our other candidates.”
“Can you do both jobs?” asked Timothy.
“I’ll have to for a while. In an emergency situation like this, the governor appoints a sheriff. But we have a new governor-elect with his hands full.”
“Simultaneously both our mayor and sheriff,” said Ronnie. “If anyone can do it, sweetie, it’s you.”
Stackhouse looked at me and Manny and smiled. “Would either of you two hunky men like the job? I could bend the governor’s ear.”
“With all my heart,” I said, “no.”
“Yes. But only so I can execute child molesters in the electric chair,” said Manny.
“Now that I think about it.” Stackhouse swirled her goblet of wine thoughtfully. “That’s a bad idea. Forget I asked.”