“I will not be ambushed.”
“Did you ever think about how that might affect her as a person, as a mother? Did you ever think about how it might make her treat her own son?”
“You said this was going to be about the Cooper and LeRoy murders,” Reg said. “That’s the only reason why I agreed to talk to you. You want to make this into some... some kind of family thing.”
“The Cooper and LeRoy murdersarea family thing.”
Reg glared at the open laptop on the coffee table, the cardioid mic plugged into it, capturing every last word. “Turn that off,” he said.
“Kate was a victim. She not only lost her sister and her mother. She lost her father too. You. You were never there for your daughter, and it ruined her. Jesus, you blame April Cooper for just standing there while horrible things happened in front of her. What did you do during my mother’sentire life?You just fucking stood there.”
“Turn itoff.” Reg lunged for the laptop, but Quentin was there first, unplugging the mic, closing the lid, slipping it back into its case.
“Get out of my house!”
Quentin gripped the case, his palms slick from sweat. He headed for the door and Reg followed him. “There is no podcast, is there?” Reg said. “Your mother put you up to this.”
Quentin turned. Stared him in the face. Reginald Banks Sharkey. His grandfather. He’d never laid eyes on him until today. And until today, he’d never realized how little he was missing. “We were both better off without you.”
Quentin headed out the door and into the late afternoon sunlight, the old man shouting at his back.
“YOU’RE HOME EARLY,”said Dean.
Quentin checked the time on his phone. “Yeah, I guess I am.” It didn’t feel early, though. In fact, the ride from San Bernardino to their South Pasadena bungalow had seemed to last a lifetime, with Reg Sharkey’s angry voice looping through Quentin’s brain, along with his own angrier one, that interview playing out over and over, to the point of where he was flipping around the radio—NPR first, then Howard Stern, alternative rock, ’80s punk, the Soulful Sixties Station, anything, everything—just to drown it out.
What had he done?
Quentin wasn’t normally a combative person. He took hits from his interview subjects without snapping back, and during rare arguments with Dean, he always made sure to listen carefully before responding. Hell, even Quentin’s tweets were thoughtful and even-handed. He’dworked on that.He’d spent years learning to tamp down the rage that sometimes pressed against his skin, his throat, the backs of his eyes...
Man, he’d fucked this one up, though.
The podcast he was working on was calledClosure. And what had sold the station’s director of content on the idea was the personal aspect of it, how the Inland Empire Killers, both of them dead for forty years, continued to impact the lives of survivors and their descendants, including—and especially—Quentin himself.
The reunion with his grandfather should have been tender and surprising—a chance for Quentin to forgive his neglectful, damaged mother and the man who did such a terrible job of raising her and leave the past behind at last.
If the interview had worked out the way he’d hoped, Quentin and Reg would have taken a road trip to Death Valley, where April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy had perished in a fire at the site of theirlast attempted murder—a compound owned by a survivalist family called the Gideons.
He’d envisioned his grandfather and himself, reunited after twenty-seven years, watching the sun set over the craggy rocks. He’d imagined them making peace with the ghosts of the murderers, with Kate, with each other.Closure, the podcast living up to its title in the most satisfying of ways. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, Quentin had engaged in a two-and-a-half-minute-long yelling match with his mother’s father—a dumpster fire of an interview that was more Maury Povich than NPR.
When Quentin had finally arrived home, “Candle in the Wind” was playing on whatever station he’d most recently found. That was his mother’s favorite song and proof positive that God had a sick sense of humor. He felt his throat tightening, tears beginning to well in his eyes even now in his comfortable home with his sweet husband watching him, concern spreading across his face.Seems to me, you lived your life...Mom would sing it when she was high, in her cracked, broken voice. Just that one line, over and over, never finishing the sentence...
“What’s wrong?” Dean said.
He couldn’t lose it, not now. Instinctively, Quentin reached for his sunglasses—vintage Ray-Bans that Dean had given him their first Christmas together—but his shirt pocket was empty. “I lost my sunglasses,” he said.
“Quentin.”
“The ones you gave me. They’re gone. What the hell is wrong with me?”
“You’ll find them,” he said. “Tell me about the interview.”
Quentin took a deep breath, then handed the laptop bag to Dean. “On the bright side,” he said, “Terry Gross can rest easy.”
“Oh, honey.”
“Use the headphones, okay?”
Dean looked at him in that kind way of his, and Quentin could almost see the sentences scrolling through his head, the helpful adages and encouraging words thumbed through and rejected. “There’s a six-pack in the fridge,” Dean said, finally. The most perfect thing he could have possibly come up with. “I just bought it.”
