Chapter 2 #3
“Honestly,” Jesse repeated, sucking on the word like a hard candy. “You should know, before you try to bullshit me, that I’m not just a detective. I’m the polygraphy expert for the state.”
“As in . . . lie detectors? How did you get involved in that?”
“I did a lot of lying as a kid,” he said. “So I thought I’d be good at spotting it in others.”
“I don’t lie,” I said primly.
He laughed. “People who say they don’t lie are lying. Sixty percent of people don’t go ten minutes without lying. And the more you lie the bigger the lies get.”
“So are you good at it? Spotting liars?” I asked.
“Not as good as a polygraph,” he admitted. “But yeah, there are tells.”
“Like if someone looks away when they’re talking,” I offered.
“Actually, that’s not true,” Jesse said. “People who lie usually maintain eye contact. But they often cover their mouths or touch their faces. They talk too much, or their voices get higher, or squeakier, or louder.” He raised his eyebrows. “And they start sentences with words like honestly.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, yes, I feel guilty taking an hour for lunch.”
Jesse lights up. “See? I got a confession without even hooking you up to the machine.”
I laughed, and it made me realize that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed.
Or for that matter, had a conversation that didn’t involve vaccine shipments or sanitizing protocols.
I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite, then watched him do the same.
His hands were sure in their movements; the muscles in his forearms flexed.
He looked confident and competent and completely unlike guys my age who popped up in my Bumble app when I bothered to check it.
“So what did you lie about when you were young? Eating cookies before dinner?”
“That,” Jesse said, “and setting fires.”
I choked. “Like . . . arson?”
He nodded.
“That’s quite the origin story for a detective.”
“Most guys who wind up in law enforcement were either kids pretending to be Captain America or total fuckups who got rehabilitated.”
I tried to remember whether it was torturing animals or lighting fires or both that are red flags for future serial killers. “Why did you do it?”
“Because everyone pays attention to a fire,” Jesse said simply.
I could hear what he did not say: And no one paid attention to me.
“I used to have two sisters. One had leukemia and the other one—-”
He didn’t have to finish, because I sucked in a breath.
He was that Fitzgerald. The one whose family’s tragic story was well known in Rhode Island.
His sister, the one who’d had cancer, was now married to Professor Walker.
It was why he’d been so cautious about having me leave the materials in his mailbox.
“Ah,” Jesse said, reading my expression. “I see my reputation precedes me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “On the other hand, I bet you were the kid who colored inside the lines.”
“Only because I had to,” I blurted, and I covered my mouth, just like Jesse said liars do. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” I hurried to explain. “I had a great childhood. My family loved me. I just . . . couldn’t stand thinking that something I did, or didn’t do, would make them sad.”
He seemed to understand how it felt to walk a tightrope through one’s own home. “The last fire I lit was on August 23, 2004,” Jesse said. “My sister Anna died on the twenty--sixth.”
“My mother died on 9/11,” I replied.
His eyes locked on mine. I waited for Jesse to respond, but he just sat in the silence. He didn’t say: That’s terrible, or That must have been really hard for you, or any of the other usual platitudes.
“I never tell anyone that,” I said softly. “Because—-”
“Because people look at you differently,” Jesse finished. “It’s something, isn’t it,” he said quietly. “Watching the world burn down from the wings?”
Slowly, I nodded.
He said, “My father had a buddy in the FDNY, part of Hook and Ladder Crew 118. He’d stopped off to get his car washed and the employees were so slow that he was yelling at them and losing his shit because he was going to be late for work.
When he finally left, he got stuck in traffic, and that made him even later.
The towers fell before he got there, and everyone in his crew died that day except him.
He went back to that car wash and gave every employee a five--hundred--dollar tip. ”
“A lot of people have a 9/11 story,” I said.
Very slowly, so that I would have time to protest or move away, Jesse shifted to brush his pinkie against mine. It felt comforting, at a time when we were all isolated in our own bubbles. “Now I know two,” he said.
I got to my knees and began cleaning up my personal picnic. “I’d better go.”
“Wait,” Jesse said. “I’d like to take you out to dinner.”
I paused. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, for one.”
“We’re going to be in one whether or not you let me take you out to dinner,” Jesse pointed out. “I’ll cook, if you don’t want to risk a restaurant. We can grill on the roof of my building and stay six feet apart.”
“Why me?” I blurted out.
“You surprise me,” Jesse admitted. “And I was jaded by the time I was eight, so that’s quite a feat.”
“How old are you?” The question burst out of me.
“Thirty--four.”
I shook my head. “Jesus.”
“He was thirty--three,” Jesse said. “Look, I’m immature for my age and you’re clearly an old soul. We could meet in the middle.”
I lurched to my feet. “I do not have time for anything but my job right now.”
“Right now,” Jesse repeated, standing. He put his hands into his pockets. “I can work with that.”
I looped my mask over my ears, grateful to hide behind it. “This has been really nice, Jesse,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea to see each other again.”
Squarely, I met his gaze.
I wondered if he knew I was lying.
By January 2021, the first doses of vaccine were rolling into Rhode Island, and we organized the distribution to healthcare workers who were on the front lines of treating Covid patients. The next wave of shots was earmarked for nursing home residents and those in long--term--care facilities.
Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for the vaccine recipient to burst into tears—-not out of pain from the shot, but out of sheer relief knowing they were one step closer to surviving this pandemic.
I wasn’t vaccinated yet as I didn’t meet the criteria.
The nursing homes had been hit the hardest. I’d watched staff hold up iPads for family not allowed to visit an elderly relative who was dying. I’d seen orderlies who had cared for people for the past ten years now zipping their corpses into body bags.
One day during that time, I’d been stationed at a vaccine distribution center most of the day, putting together the doses that would be given to the various care centers and nursing homes.
We had been at this since dawn and it was now nearly ten o’clock at night.
I collapsed into a chair beside Annette, who worked in epidemiology.
We were both in PPE, N95s, double--gloved. “I can’t feel my feet,” she moaned.
A masked woman I couldn’t recognize approached. “As of today, we’ve gotten vaccines on the way to every nursing home in the state. And there seems to be a bonus prize.”
“What’s that?” Annette asked.
“We have one extra dose left over.”
The Covid vaccines were finicky. They had to be kept at a certain temperature, and once they were released for distribution, they had to be used or discarded in a short time frame.
Annette was older than me. “You should take it,” I said. “Over sixty--five will have priority, and you are closer.”
She shook her head. “There’s got to be someone who needs it more than I do.”
Out of the blue, I thought of Professor Walker’s wife.
He’d gone out of his way to help us. It would not be wrong to thank him for his service by inoculating his wife.
I had not talked to Jesse for months, not since I’d met him for lunch and told him I wasn’t interested in seeing him again. But when I called, he picked up the phone immediately. “Molly?” he said. “You all right?”
“How fast can you get your sister to the old Citizens Bank Call Center?”
“Why?”
“Because I have a single dose of the vaccine left over and it’s hers if she wants it.”
He was so quiet I thought the call had dropped. When he finally spoke, his voice was thick. “Thank you. She’s in my bubble now, so I can bring her in.”
A half hour later, Jesse introduced me to his sister Kate.
She seemed hesitant to walk into the building, which I understood—-she’d been isolating carefully until now.
She was willowy, with a brown pixie cut and enormous, wary eyes.
When Jesse tried to help her to the chair where a National Guardswoman would give her the shot, she shoved him. “I’ve got this, Jesse,” she said.
Kate was wearing a wide--necked sweatshirt, and as she pulled it low on one shoulder to give access to her arm, I saw a scar on her chest where a port--a--cath had once been. She looked up at me as the needle pricked her. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Thank your husband.”
While her vaccine card was being filled out and signed, I moved a distance away, weaving on my feet from sheer exhaustion. Jesse approached, keeping six feet between us. We had all become magnets with matching poles, unable to touch each other.
I had forgotten the details of Jesse: how his focus felt like a laser, how he smelled like a sugar cookie, how his voice had gravel at its bottom. “I owe you one,” he said.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I told him. “I’m glad the dose isn’t going to waste.”
He shook his head. “I almost lost her once. I can’t go through that again.”
Kate stood, clutching her pristine new Covid vaccine card in her hand. “I feel very special.”
“You are,” Jesse said, gruffly. He nodded at me, put his arm around his sister, and started walking toward the exit. I watched his back, his broad shoulders. He looked like he could yank a tree out by the roots bare--handed, but he was so very gentle with Kate.