Chapter Twenty-Seven Harriet
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Harriet
“I knew something was off!” Nic’s pacing, red-faced.
I’ve never seen him like this—losing control.
“I let myself get distracted by a fucking eighty-year-old woman. You kept insisting she could have murdered George, but I knew—I knew it was an insane theory, and now she’s dead and he’s gone, and Sara’s fucked! ”
“Nic.”
He ignores me.
“Nic!” I say more loudly.
“What?” he snaps.
I hold up the contact sheet. “We have his mom’s address. She lives in New Rochelle, just north of the city. That’s, what—a three-hour drive from here?”
“So?”
“So I think we should go find Matthew. Get the evidence we need to go to the cops. Evidence they can’t ignore this time.”
He stills. “Drive up there?”
“Why not? He only has a couple hours on us. What if he’s on his way to say goodbye because he’s planning to flee? We could be working on borrowed time.”
“Borrowed time because you said an eighty-year-old was a killer,” he mutters.
My eye twitches, an argument rising in my throat, but I stop myself. “Then let me make it up to you.”
I shoot off a cryptic text to my mom, telling her I have to deal with a couple things, and we take off.
The drive through the bottom half of Jersey goes quickly; traffic is minimal since it’s still early Friday afternoon, but as we approach the city, it starts to thicken. We slow to a near standstill, right next to the industrial smokestacks of Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“Stinks,” I say. Nic’s been reading something on his phone with a frown, and when I speak, he blinks at me like he forgot I was here.
“What?”
I motion to my window. “That. It smells. I’ve always thought it sucks that it’s the first part of New Jersey a lot of people see.”
He drops his phone to his lap. “What do you care? I thought you hated Jersey.”
“I mean…I don’t hate it. It’s just growing up, the island always felt way too small.
My parents were divorced, living a mile apart, and they…
Well. It was not what anyone would call a friendly situation.
My mom constantly poking my dad, my dad responding.
My mom’s multiple marriages, my dad’s midlife crisis.
Gogo was around, but she had her own life.
I never really had a place I felt like was home, you know? ”
He doesn’t respond right away, and my throat tightens, worried I overshared. What was that? Those are things I never say, not even to Steven and Maggie. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever put those feelings into words.
I’m about to change the subject when Nic leans forward and grabs a bottle of water from the floor.
“Here.” He hands it to me, and I take it gratefully.
“Family’s hard,” he says quietly as I take a pull from the bottle.
“As you’ve seen, my family isn’t exactly a picture of function either.
My sister’s never learned to control her temper.
My dad’s been out of work for years. And my mom’s business was doing well, but now…
I don’t think I ever told you this way back when, but I got into culinary school up in New York.
I had this whole plan—concentrate in farm-to-table for my undergrad degree, then get a master’s in sustainable food systems. Eventually, open my own little place that incorporated all those things under one roof. ”
“You did?”
He nods. “I was all set to go, but then my dad lost his job and couldn’t land a new one. The rest is history. Eight years later, my mom has—or had at least—a successful catering business I helped build, my dad’s, well…same old, same old. And I never moved off the island.”
“Why not?”
He cuts his eyes to me. “You don’t get it, Baker.
My parents were barely hanging on. I couldn’t abandon them.
They needed me. Every time I thought maybe things were easing up, things would happen to prove otherwise.
I mean, look at this. Us. Driving up to New Rochelle for my sister.
I can’t abandon them. I won’t. That’s not what you do to people you love. ”
His words hit me square in the chest. My entire life has been predicated on the idea that, in fact, you do abandon the people you love. My mom’s divorces, my dad’s lack of communication, Kozel.
And then I turned right around and did it to Nic.
He settles his head against his headrest and closes his eyes. His eyelashes are long, black, tangled at their edges, and it takes everything in me to tear my eyes away from him and back to the road.