Benny Abbott Day Three
Benny Abbott
Day Three
“I told you not to come,” I say, embracing my sister the moment she’s inside.
“And I heard what you were really saying loud and clear.” Sarah kisses my wet cheek and holds me at arm’s length. “You look awful.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I can’t believe how hot LA is in October.” She sets her purse on the sofa before stripping down to a tank top. She’s gained a few pounds since I last saw her, and as I take in her beautiful full face framed by thick brown hair, all I see is my mom. I nearly cry again.
“Coffee?” I manage.
She accepts my offer and follows me into the kitchen. “Whoa,” she says when she sees the tree.
I sigh. I recognize I need to get someone out here to take care of it, but it’s so low a priority it hasn’t even made the list.
“Your Zen Den,” she says quietly.
I glance away, thinking not of the first time Joy saw it but the last. Sarah, who knows the whole story, rubs my back and says nothing more about the shed.
The coffee is strong and I don’t have creamer. Sarah waves off my apology and gets down on her knees to pet the dogs, who have barely left her side since she arrived. It’s like they know she’s a therapist and will calmly guide them through this difficult time.
When my sister last visited, I had no beds, no sofas, no dishes, and no clue how to be alone.
I’d donated all my furniture when I moved into Luna’s fully furnished house, and even if I hadn’t, I would’ve given her everything.
Which left me at square one. Sarah walked me through painful trips to IKEA and tedious online sprees, she filled my cart at the grocery store, and she reminded me how to keep putting one foot in front of the other. She is my rock. My only family left.
“So what are you thinking?” she asks, standing.
“Honestly?”
“As if I would accept otherwise.”
“I’m thinking that with every passing minute it’s less likely we’re going to find her. And I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”
“We’re gonna get through this.” She embraces me again, then brings me to the couch. “Fill me in. What’s new?”
We hug pillows, and I tell her about Keller’s visit, and the million-dollar transfer, and how terrible Joy’s house looked after the techs were through with it.
I mention the fight between Mallory and Quinn and that no one else seems to think it’s suspicious.
I tell her that Joy’s parents are stuck somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, and my corporate lawyer keeps asking how I want to handle Apex Plus, and my neighbor Ted is a colossal turd.
By the time I’ve brought up the search party we’re supposed to attend in a few hours, I’m beat.
Sarah blows out a thin stream of air. “All that happened since we last spoke?”
“And one more thing.” She waits as I retrieve Joy’s computer. “I’m not sure I’m even right,” I say, opening the XYZ folder through the desktop. I explain my theory that Joy shared it as a clue, and wait for Sarah to tell me I’m stupid.
“And she copied the same folder to your cloud?”
I nod. “A few minutes before she texted.”
“Oh my god,” she breathes.
“You don’t think I’m wrong?”
“It would be too much of a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”
I’m so relieved it almost hurts. I want so much to be able to help, to have a purpose right now, I was beginning to worry I’d wildly misconstrued Joy’s intentions. “But I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“What’s the common thread in all three episodes?”
“Apart from survival?” The fucking irony.
“‘Attic,’ ‘Dismemberments,’ ‘Appliances,’” Sarah reads, toggling through the audio files. “Not your best title work.”
“They’re just placeholders. These are the raw tracks.”
Sarah frowns at me. “Why raw tracks, do you think? Why not the edited episodes?”
“Because…” I have no idea.
“Do you think the clue lies in what was cut?”
It’s a good question, one I wish I’d asked myself, though in fact we don’t usually cut much content.
Just microphone mishaps and off-putting bodily noises.
And sometimes, as in the case of the attic raccoon, excessive laughter.
But there was one notable cut two weeks ago in the dismemberments episode.
We had a battle with some bugs in the middle of recording, and I told Mallory to go ahead and trim it down. I never bothered to check if she did.
“Hold on, I might have an idea.” I pull the episode up now and scrub through to the middle. When at last I hear myself say, “You can cut it,” I rewind a few minutes.
“It would never have occurred to me to use rubber bands to stop the bleeding,” Joy says.
“I think it’s probably most effective with fingers.”
“Ew.”
“I know.”
“No, look, ew!” Joy says. “By the door. It’s like a whole army of— Oh my god, ew. Where are they coming from?”
There’s a shuffling sound as Joy gets up to inspect. She’s across the room when her voice is heard next. “Oh, come on. This is so disgusting.”
“What was it?” Sarah asks as the commotion continues on the track.
“Silverfish.” I watch the waveform scrolling across the laptop screen. “Dozens of them. Coming through the crack under her door.”
More shuffling sounds as Joy and I remove the bugs with tissues. Joy’s at least ten feet away from the mic when she says, “Remember how bad the silverfish were at Chez Moi?”
“Only your apartment. They must like you.”
“Well, it’s not reciprocal. Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you! Xander and I drove past the building the other day on our way to the doctor. They changed the name.”
“No they didn’t. To what?”
“Chez … shit.”
“Has a real ring to it.”
Joy laughs. “It’ll come to me.”
But it didn’t come to her. When we returned to our seats a minute later, I saw that our mics were on. “Still rolling?”
“Thought there might be something worth keeping,” Mallory says.
“Eh, you can cut it.”
I stop the playback and turn to Sarah, who is clearly not following.
“It’s Chez Moi. Our old apartment building.
” Three mentions in three weeks. Which might not otherwise be odd, but she hadn’t brought it up in ages.
And then, three times in a row, she’d wedged it into the conversation while we were recording.
The attic raccoon, the old dishwasher, and now this. I explain this all to Sarah.
She clasps my forearm. “You think that’s the password? Chez Moi?”
I try it, hope swelling with each tap of the finger, and then exhale heavily. Invalid.
“Maybe it’s the new name,” Sarah suggests.
Nodding, I type the address into Google Maps and toggle into street view.
There it is: dirty cream stucco with faded mint-green trim, bifurcated by open-riser stairs.
They must have changed the name since they took these images, though, because CHEZ MOI is still prominent in mint-green cursive below the number 710.
“Maybe the address is the password.”
I try this too. Again, invalid. But I’m not giving up. In fact, I’m now brimming with renewed hope. “Or maybe…”
“What?”
I’m afraid to utter it aloud for fear it might not be true. I stand. “Do you want to go for a drive?”