I went back in, relocked the sliding doors, and opened the one at the end of the kitchen that connected with the garage.
Donna’s car was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
I went to the phone on the kitchen counter and hit the button that automatically connected me to her cell phone.
It rang once.
“Come on,” I said.
It rang a second time.
“Pick up.”
It rang a third time. Then, “Hey.”
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Driving around.”
“I came home, couldn’t find you. I was starting to get frantic.”
“I should have left a note,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“What’s wrong?” The stupid question to end all stupid questions, I knew. What I was trying to ask was, what made tonight worse than all the other nights of the last few months?
“I have a lot on my mind,” Donna said.
We were both silent for a few seconds. I could hear the hum of the car in the background. Finally, I said, “What’d you have for dinner?”
“I didn’t have dinner,” she said.
“Me neither,” I said. Another pause. “I’m kind of starving.”
“I guess I am, too.”
“The Denny’s would be open,” I said. “We could get a midnight breakfast. I feel like some eggs and sausage.”
“I’m not far from there,” Donna said. Long pause. “I’ll meet you.”
“I need you to swing by and pick me up. I haven’t got a car.”
“You haven’t got a car?”
“I’ll tell you about it over eggs.”
Before I could fill her in about the car, I had to explain the bruise on the side of my face. She noticed it as soon as I got into the passenger seat.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not as much as my pride.”
There were two other couples and one man sitting by himself at Denny’s. Donna and I took a table by the window and ordered decafs to start from the waitress, who was there before our butts had hit the seats. We clung to the hope that once we got home, we’d actually be able to get to sleep, so regular coffee seemed an unwise choice.
“The police seized the car,” I said.
Donna spooned some sugar into her mug. “Tell me.”
I told her. Starting with my visit to the Rodomskis’, followed by my visit to the Skillings’, taking Sean with me to where I’d dropped Hanna off, then finding her body under the bridge.
“And Annette Ravelson is sleeping with the mayor,” I said, “but that seems kind of anticlimactic to everything else.”
“How awful,” she said. “Finding that girl’s body.” I thought I saw her shiver. It wasn’t possible to think about any body without imagining Scott’s in the parking lot at Ravelson Furniture.
“Yeah,” I said. “The Skilling kid took it bad.”
“You don’t think he did it,” Donna said.
“I don’t,” I said. “But I’ve been wrong before.”
The waitress returned and we ordered eggs and all the greasy, wonderful things that generally come with them. An awkward silence ensued for several minutes until the food came.
“I can’t believe my brother would have the car seized,” Donna said.
I sipped my coffee, imagined the jolt it would give me if it weren’t decaf. “Yeah, I was surprised, too.”
“You two are like a dog and a cat in the same sack, but I think, at some level, he respects you,” she said. “Maybe he seized the car to make a point, that he’s not showing favoritism, even though he knows he won’t find anything.”
“Unless he does,” I said.
Her forkful of egg stopped halfway to her mouth. “Cal, Augie’s not going to frame you. That’s absolutely ridiculous. You think he’s going to plant evidence against you?”
I said nothing.
“For God’s sake, why would he do that? What possible reason could he have?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I know you don’t like him — half the time I don’t even like him — but he’s not capable of that.”
“He’s feeding the mayor a line of bullshit, saying his people never overstep their bounds.”
She gave me a look that suggested I should know better. “You think there’s a police force anywhere that doesn’t? Like, say, the Promise Falls police? I believe you used to work there.”
“Donna.”
“Augie looks out for his people. The way your chief looked out for you.”
“I lost my job,” I said.
“You could have lost more,” she said.
My time in Promise Falls was not something I liked to talk about. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Augie’s making a point. Maybe he just wants to inconvenience me. I’ll have to rent something in the morning.”
“Use my car,” Donna said. “Drop me off. If you can’t pick me up, I’ll find my way home.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
A couple of minutes of silence followed. I had a feeling we were done talking about my evening, at least for now. We were moving to something else.
Finally, Donna said, “I was afraid he’d stop loving me.”
I looked at her and waited.
“I was afraid, that if I— if we— got really tough with him, grounded him, cut off his money, forced him into counseling, just went to war with him about what he was doing, I was afraid he wouldn’t love me anymore.”
“I know,” I said.
“I even thought about turning him in,” Donna said. “Calling Augie. Have him arrested, put the cuffs on him, throw him in jail, the whole thing. Like that Scared Straight movie. Remember that? But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t think I’d be able to forgive myself. I thought about what might happen to him when he was in jail, even if it was only for a little while, about the other people he might meet in there, what they might do to him. But now that I didn’t do it, I can’t forgive myself for that, either.”
I put my fork down. I wanted to say something, but it was hard for me.
“What?” Donna said.
“I’m angry all the time,” I said. “I do my best to hide it. But it’s always there. It’s like I’ve got snakes slithering around under my skin. Millions of bugs, crawling inside me.”
“Are you angry with me?” Donna asked.
I didn’t answer right away. I was debating how honest to be, because I was angry with her. But it was nothing compared to the anger I felt toward myself. It was nothing compared to the anger I felt toward whoever sold Scott that final dose.
And it was nothing compared to the anger I felt toward Scott himself.
“I don’t know if there’s anyone I’m not mad at,” I said, and watched her face fall ever so slightly. “But you’re far from the top of the list.” I paused. “That’s where I am.” I made two fists, trying to work out my tension, and then relaxed my hands.
“You want to punish yourself, that’s one thing,” she said. “I get that. I want to do it to myself. But you have to stop punishing me.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I haven’t said a thing.”
“Exactly. You have to talk to me. I’ve never needed you more in my life than I do now, but you’re shutting me out. Withdrawing into yourself. When we lost him, what we had, part of that died, too. Are you willing to let it die completely?” Her eyes were red and moist.
I closed my own briefly.
“No,” I said.
I struggled to find words. “I’m afraid... I feel like it’s wrong to be happy. That if we’re ever good, if we’re ever happy again, it’s some kind of betrayal.”
A tear ran down Donna’s cheek. “Oh, babe, we’re never going to be happy. But we could be happier. Happier than we are now.”
As hungry as I’d been, I didn’t have enough appetite to finish what was on my plate. I pushed some eggs around with my fork, then set it down.