14. Holden
FOURTEEN
HOLDEN
Something is wrong with the dads.
I clock it the moment we sit down. The three men move like a team that’s been drilled to perform.
Burger Dad—the stocky one from the entryway—handles the grill with his back to the table.
He never turns around unless directly addressed.
Coffee Table Dad—tall, thin, the furniture polisher—sets out condiments and nibbles like a man working for tips.
Hawaiian Shirt arranges the corn and opens beers and smiles at all of us, but the smile seems stuck on. It never quite reaches his eyes.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people. Witnesses, suspects, grieving spouses, caught-in-the-act liars.
You learn to read their microexpressions—the twitch at the corner of the mouth, the too-fast blink, the way someone’s hands find each other when they’re trying to hold themselves together.
After enough years, you don’t even think about it.
It just happens. The room talks and you listen.
This room is screaming bloody fucking murder.
Milo’s mother—Gloria, she introduced herself with a handshake firm enough to rearrange knuckles—is seated at the head of the table like she’s the center of gravity.
Every line of sight leads to her. The moment she took her seat, Coffee Table Dad rushed over and poured her a glass of white wine and kind of bowed when she thanked him.
Now she’s sipping her wine and beaming at all of us with the radiant warmth of a woman who is genuinely, profoundly delighted to have company.
I’m officially creeped out.
“So,” she says, setting down her glass and folding her hands. “Which one of you is the cop?”
I almost choke on my lemonade.
“That would be me.” There’s no point denying it—she’s looking straight at me. I’m guessing she already knows.
“I knew it! The posture.” She points at me with her fork. “You sit like a man who likes to be in control. Who’s used to being the authority in a room.”
She’s right. Though I don’t feel particularly in control right now. That’s a problem.
“And you—” She turns to Knox, who is consuming his second plate of canapés. “You must be the security guard.”
Knox looks up. Chews. Swallows. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Milo says you barely talk, but you’d die for her.” She nods at Sage, who’s turning a shade of pink I didn’t know was physiologically possible. “I respect that. His father Ray is the same way. Ray? Say something.”
Burger Dad, apparently Ray, turns from the grill. “The burgers are almost done.”
Gloria’s mouth flattens into a straight line as she glares at Ray.
For a split second, Ray gets a panicked look in his eyes. Then he twitches, like someone just pressed a live wire to his spine. The tongs clatter out of his hand and bounce off the grill lid, scattering ashy flecks onto the patio bricks. As soon as he recovers, he gives a goofy, apologetic smile.
“Sorry about that—just hot,” he says, and in one motion, scoops the tongs up from the ground, brushes them on his apron, and goes right back to flipping patties as though nothing happened. “Where were we, honey?”
Gloria doesn’t miss a beat. “I was telling the children how you’re the quiet strength of this family. That you don’t say much, but deep down you’d die for me. Isn’t that right, Ray?”
Ray looks over his shoulder. He’s sweating. “Oh, yes, absolutely.”
He turns back to the grill. Milo grins at Gloria, who returns it with a little wink, her whole face lit like a chandelier. The show of it is nearly enough to distract from the jumpy current of stress running under the table.
“Who’s the bartender?” Gloria asks, scanning the group.
Micah gives a little salute with his beer bottle. “That would be me.”
“Ah. The pretty one. I was wondering which of you would be trouble.”
Micah’s eye twitches at the word “pretty.” But he recovers and tips his head politely, playing along.
She turns to Eli, whose expression is somewhere between exhausted and wary, his whole body angled away from the table, like he wants to fold himself up and vanish.
“And you must be the teacher. Milo talks about you a lot, Eli. He really looks up to you.” She lets the words hang there, as if expecting a response.
“He never mentioned you were clumsy, though.”
Eli smiles slightly and touches near the cut on his cheek. “Walked straight into a closed fist,” he says.
Gloria laughs with a musical trill, sharp and bright.
“Well, I hope you taught the fist a lesson or two. Nobody ever got smarter getting punched, but plenty have gotten less pretty.” She picks up her wine glass and holds it up like a toast. “To family. Milo thinks the world of all of you. He’s never brought anyone home before.
” Gloria’s gaze turns laser sharp. “Especially not a woman.” She smiles at Sage, who’s sitting to her right, across from Milo.
She reaches over and squeezes Milo’s arm.
“I was starting to think he’d invented you all. ”
“Mom.”
“What? A mother worries. And you did have that invisible friend until you were sixteen. What was his name? Gene, do you remember?”
Coffee Table Dad—now introduced as Gene—brings a fresh pitcher of lemonade to the table. “Arthur.”
“That’s right! Oh, he and Arthur used to go on such adventures together.”
“Mom . . . ” Milo sinks down in his chair. “Stop. Please.”
As Gene makes his way around the table refilling our glasses, I notice the turtleneck is oddly bulky around the collar.
“What’s with the turtlenecks?” I ask, gesturing to my own neck and looking between the “dads.” “Some kind of uniform or . . . ”
“We like turtlenecks.” Gene sets the pitcher down and his hand trembles. Just a hair. Just enough for me to notice the way the sweat beads on his upper lip when his gaze flicks to Gloria.
“They really do,” Gloria says. “We have them in every color imaginable.” Her voice is warm, smile fixed in place. “Gene, sit down and eat something, dear.” Gene sits down so fast the chair legs scrape.
“Sorry. I’ll make sure that didn’t leave a scratch.”
Gloria laughs and waves him off. “No need. We’re enjoying our visitors right now. Dennis, come join us.”
Hawaiian Shirt—Dennis—takes the seat at the far end of the table.
He’s the chattiest of the three, asking us about what sports we like, if any of us have seen the new season of whatever’s streaming, normal suburban barbecue talk.
But he keeps glancing at Gloria before he speaks.
A quick flick of the eyes, checking her face, making sure whatever he’s saying is acceptable.
Interesting.
“So how long have you all been together?” Sage asks Gloria.
I get it. She’s a woman in a multi-partner relationship sitting across from another woman in a multi-partner relationship, and she wants to know how it works. How the math shakes out over decades instead of months.
Gloria’s face softens. “Dennis and I go back thirty-two years. High school sweethearts, if you can believe it.”
“Oh,” Sage says, her eyes lighting with interest. “Is Dennis Milo’s dad?”
Gloria’s eyes cloud over for just a second, the smile on her face falling before the whole thing resets. The dads exchange panicked glances.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. Gene came along about eight years in, when Dennis and I were going through a rough patch. He was . . . ” She pauses. Smiles. “He was exactly what we needed. Brought a stability that Dennis and I couldn’t create on our own. Isn’t that right, dear?”
Dennis swallows, rapidly nodding. “Absolutely!”
“Ray joined us about four years ago. He was working at the local auto shop and things just . . . developed.”
“It’s nice,” Sage says carefully, clearly not missing the way Gloria reacted at the mention of Milo’s father. “That it works between you all.”
“It works because we work at it,” Gloria says.
Her eyes sweep the table—Ray, Gene, and Dennis—like a general surveying her forces.
“Relationships don’t survive on love alone.
They survive on commitment. On understanding that this”—she gestures at the table, the food, the house—“is worth more than any one person’s ego.
” Her expression hardens, her voice dipping. “Or their wandering eye.”
The table gets quiet. Not the comfortable kind.
Dennis clears his throat. “To be fair, Gloria, relationships are also about—”
His whole body jerks. A sharp, full-torso spasm—shoulders snapping back, hands flying to the edge of the table, a strangled sound escaping through clenched teeth.
It lasts maybe half a second. Then he’s still again, blinking, straightening his turtleneck with fingers that are trembling harder than before.
“About what, honey?” Gloria asks, taking a sip of wine.
“About . . . exactly what you said.” Dennis picks up his fork. “You’re absolutely right.”
She giggles. “I always am.”
My brain compiles all the information it’s been flagging since we got here and damn near explodes.
The turtleneck. The ridge under the fabric.
The bulge at the collar that doesn’t match the garment.
I look at Dennis’s neck. At the way his fingers keep drifting up to adjust the fabric.
At the small, rectangular outline pressing against the knit just below his left ear.
That’s a shock collar.
I glance at all of the dads.
They’re all wearing shock collars.
I look at Sage. Her eyes are wide. She saw it too.
I look at Micah. His lemonade is frozen halfway to his mouth.
I look at Milo. He’s buttering a roll.
I guess this is normal for him.
Gene reaches for the corn. His hand pauses midway across the table, changes course, and picks up his napkin instead.
He dabs his mouth. Sets the napkin down.
Then reaches for the corn. The whole sequence takes about four seconds and is the most controlled act of vegetable acquisition I’ve ever witnessed.
“Milo tells me you’re all quite serious about Sage,” Gloria says, pivoting back to us like she didn’t just electrocute her partner. “A mother likes to know these things. That her son is with people who understand what they’ve committed to.”