Chapter 19
I stashed the video even deeper into the random folder, my hands shaking, then saved another copy elsewhere on the drive. Safekeeping.
Safe from … who?
I might never find that file again. I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know what I would do with the footage—nothing?—but I needed time to think it through.
I pointed the dogs back up the stairs. I hadn’t brought my keys and had to pop the lock on the apartment door, old school. Pull and jiggle the handle, lift and push.
Once in my room, we all piled onto my mattress and all the feelings I hadn’t been able to release earlier finally welled up. Joey was dead? That was impossible enough to take in, but Alex—
Alex couldn’t have done something to Joey. He hadn’t liked Joey—but not, like, enough to kill the guy. Right? He was just protective of me.
But Joey had just set me back on my boot heels. Humiliated me, actually. Ruined pretty much any chance that I might let anyone else get close for a good long while. I hadn’t been nasty enough about it that Alex had taken me literally.
And I knew Alex. Didn’t I?
It’s what everyone said when someone in their lives hit the headlines. I thought I knew him. But I’d thought that about Joey, too, and I wasn’t sure of that anymore. Of anything. At all.
Lemon propped her chin on my hip in concern, and Bear licked the tears off my face as I cried.
I must have fallen asleep finally, because I woke from a nightmare at some point—falling, a black cavern below. The same dream I had all the time, the same jolting wake-up, as though my sleeping self couldn’t let my dream self strike bottom. Was there a bottom?
Then the dogs leapt off my mattress and raced away. What the—?
I sat up, groggy and confused. It was still dark, early winter morning. I’d already had one early morning, but this Friday was still going to happen as scheduled, apparently.
Oona was knocking around in the kitchen a little more noisily than normal. I took a deep breath and rolled out of bed.
She was standing at the counter in her shabby plaid robe, a man’s. Evidence of some past conquest or a secondhand find, I didn’t know. It hung down to the floor, and her floppy gray bunny slippers poked out below the hem.
“You know we can’t leave food out, right?” she said, still rubbing her short dark hair dry with a towel. She’d punk it up later. “You don’t think ants can climb up this high, but oh, they like a challenge.”
I was barely awake, and stood there, blinking in the light. Oh, right. The cereal I’d poured.
“And it’s pretty wasteful, anyway,” she continued. “Mixing three servings worth of, like, red number forty–dyed marshmallows into the good stuff and then not even eating it. I’m the one who buys the good granola, you know, not Alex.”
This was bad timing. I’d already caught the tremor in the arrangement of favors that allowed me to stay in the apartment. And I’d forgotten to buy milk.
If Oona kicked me out, I’d have to move back into my childhood bedroom at Alex’s house and stop pretending I hadn’t hit bottom. Or—
Where would I go if I couldn’t trust Alex?
“Sorry,” I said. My eyes welled up. “I…”
Oona’s gold nose hoop glinted as she cocked her head. Like Lemon did, hearing a noise she didn’t recognize.
“Come on, Doll,” she said, more gently. “Crying? Who are you? I’m not that mad.
And you’ve been helping so much with the dogs, anyway—you know what?
Never mind. I just … haven’t been sleeping well lately with all the banging around next door and the ghost has been really active … This isn’t a sobbing situation, is it?”
“Joey’s dead,” I whispered.
“What? Wait, what?” She looked all around the apartment, as though something or someone would contradict me. “Oh, no. Oh, that’s— Is that what was going on out in the alley? They’ve got it yellow-taped off but— Oh, you poor little snow angel, are you serious?”
She made a physical gesture that made me wonder if she’d been about to hug me.
We weren’t on hugging terms. She cradled her own elbows. “So he … he didn’t run out with the rent money, or he did?”
“I don’t know,” I said impatiently.
Oona was older than me by about fifteen years, with a real job and everything, but sometimes she could be so …
something. I didn’t know her all that well, really.
I’d only been there a week, but she’d been out a few nights already—the visiting cousin in town—but when we were in the same place at the same time, she could be overly chatty and fluttery, like a wild bird caught inside, flapping at the windows.
“But he’s dead, either way,” I said. “And Alex…”
I stopped. I couldn’t bring Alex into this.
I wasn’t ready to face what he might have done and why, or ready to rat him out without being sure, anyway.
Oona and Alex were pals, and she wouldn’t want him to go to jail—but she was also a stickler for rules.
Like cleaning up the kitchen after you used it. Like not murdering people.
“What about Alex?” she said cautiously.
“Nothing. I just … I don’t know how to feel.”
“Sure, you do,” she said. “It’s Joey. Dopey, argumentative Joey who might have robbed you blind and got you kicked out of your place—”
“And cost me, like, my entire vinyl collection,” I said.
“Oh, man.” She sucked her teeth, like ouch. “But he was still a good one, right?”
“He was sweet,” I said. It didn’t seem like enough.
“He was a good banjo player—”
“Pretty good,” I admitted. “He was a feminist. And very earnest.”
“In bed, you mean? Was he a … Southern gentleman?”
“Oona!”
“Well!” Oona said, blushing a bit, too. “He was good with the dogs. And they liked him. You can tell a lot about someone by how dogs feel about them. Joey could get loud about free will and bluegrass and was really far too competitive at darts, but he really seemed like … he loved you.”
“We didn’t use that word,” I said. I had never used that word, not with anyone.
“Oh,” she said.
I sang songs about love and heartbreak all the time, you know? I just didn’t feel them. God, Bern was right. I was hollow. “But yeah,” I said. “He tried. To love me.”
“Oh, Doll, baby,” Oona said. “Why don’t you go back to bed? I’ll bring you some coffee. You want a pancake or something?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve got to take the mutts out for their constitutional, but then I’ll be back if you want to talk before I go into work. Hey, did you see lights on in the place next door? I’m hoping it’s a yoga studio. My chakras are all a mess.”
When she was gone, I had a shower and another cry, but then I felt better and got dressed in clean clothes, jeans, and a T-shirt rescued from the apartment, and another sweater of Alex’s I’d borrowed.
But then I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t actually want to talk to Oona, to be asked questions about Joey.
Or be tempted to spill my doubts about Alex.
And I didn’t want to spend all day in the pub with Alex, either, hiding my fresh-cry face and avoiding the topic of the security cameras.
The doorbell rang. It had been maybe twenty minutes since Oona took the dogs out. I should teach her how to pop the lock on the door, but I didn’t think she wanted to know how easy it was to get into her place.
“Did you forget your keys?” I was saying as I swung the door open.
But it was Sicily on the landing.
“Hi?” she said. “You look nice.”
Speaking of red, puffy eyes. I looked away. I didn’t know if I had it in me for this.
“I look normal,” I said. “Did something happen? Or did you forget something in the pub?”
“I like those jeans.”
“It’s only that they’re not pajama pants,” I said. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”
“I got a call about you? From the police? And also … you left?” she said, not looking me in the eyes. “You didn’t say anything. You were just gone.”
“It’s called an Irish goodbye,” I said. “With a mom like Marisa, you’re lucky you’ve never encountered it.”
Although as soon as I said it, I realized she had. “Have you heard from her?” I asked.
“Can I come in?”
We stared at each other. “I was going out,” I said.
“Out where?”
Why wasn’t I a better liar? All that stage presence was wasted down here on Earth. “Down to the pub,” I said.
“Is it open?”
“No.”
“Oh,” she said. “Can I go with you?”
“I guess? How old are you, really?”
“Twenty-two,” she said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You can come with me but you can’t sit at the bar.”
“Deal,” she said, smiling like she’d actually made one. “Where are your dogs?”
“With their mom,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have used that word for dogs, but Sicily didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh,” Sicily said.
“What? Oh, what?” As we walked through the kitchen, the juddering of some big machinery started up somewhere in the other half of the building.
“That’s totally cool. I’m, like, an ally.”
I went to the wall and pounded on it, but it wouldn’t do any good.
“What? No, the dogs belong to my roommate.” I walked toward my room to grab some socks and shoes. Sicily took that as an invitation to follow me. “I just walk them sometimes, as a favor.”
“See?” Sicily said. “You are nice. I knew it.”
I shook my head at her and went to the closet.
I couldn’t wear my Fryes without unpacking the shards of songs crammed into them in front of Sicily, so I grabbed my red boots again, and a pair of the heavy wool socks I’d nabbed from Joey’s drawer at the old apartment.
I was tired of being cold. I sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on.
“I’m not as nice as you want me to be,” I said.
“Well, you let me in,” she said.
True, but I was in a weakened state. I didn’t want to talk to her about it.
“I have to dry my hair or I’ll never get warm,” I said. “Five minutes. Please don’t—you know.” I waved my hand to acknowledge my room, generally. “Just don’t.”
“I won’t,” she said.
It was Oona’s hair dryer, of course. It was Oona’s everything.
When I went into Oona’s room to grab it, I heard a faint noise, a thin, sharp whine a lot like the wind rushing through the storeroom toilet downstairs.
I guess that would be why Oona believed in the pub ghost. The window in her room leaked.
Alex could fix that, no problem.
At the thought of Alex, it all came back to me. Had he thought he was fixing something for me?
Back in the bathroom, I turned the dryer up high and loud, hurrying in case Oona came back and started making Sicily pancakes.
Bathrooms had such great acoustics. I put in a full performance of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and planned a humble speech thanking all my influences and the institution of the Grand Ole Opry for inviting me to their esteemed stage.
I imagined myself in a Western suit, black velvet cut to nip in at the waist and bejeweled boot heels that would sparkle in the stage lights, while I gave a tearful remembrance of Joey—
The fantasy fell apart. I turned off the hair dryer.
The banging around next door hadn’t even paused. What were they doing over there? It took me an extra second to hear the singing.
For once, it wasn’t me.
I eased open the bathroom door and listened.
She wasn’t bad. Not great, but not bad, and she wasn’t singing lyrics, exactly, just a sort of la-la placeholding mumble track instead of words.
So even though the melody was familiar, I couldn’t quite catch hold of the song.
I’d heard it recently, hadn’t I? Something by Kacey Musgraves, maybe?
Lainey Wilson? I didn’t listen to as much contemporary music as Lourey thought I should, but I listened to some.
I crept over the creaking floorboards of the kitchen to the open door to my room, still trying to place the song.
I poked my head through the doorway to find Sicily sitting cross-legged in front of my closet. She held a fragment of paper and had more in her lap, Post-its and notebook pages, all of it covered in my handwriting.
And my battered Frye boots on her feet.