Page 63 of Play Nice

“I was very sorry to hear about her passing,” she says.

“I appreciate you saying so. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

I don’t even know Austin’s last name, so I can’t call her Mrs. Whatever.

“Dawn,” she says.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dawn,” I say. There’s a bouquet of pink and yellow tulips on the kitchen table. I take a moment to admire them. “Austin mentioned you and my mom had coffee a few times?”

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Back then. And recently. She would come to the house every so often, with Roy.”

“You knew Roy?”

“I met him a few times. Nice man. Interesting job,” she says. She’s being polite but testing the waters, which I respect.

“From what I’ve heard, demonology is actually a very dull profession,” I say. “A lot of paperwork, surprisingly.”

Dawn laughs, and I think I love her.

Austin watches us from beyond the island. He leans against the counter waiting for the kettle to boil. His hair mats to his forehead. It’s hot in here. Stuffy.

“What did you think of her?” I ask. “My mom.”

It’s too direct a question, and a wave of unease passes through the kitchen. Across Dawn’s face. Across Austin’s. The kettle whimpers, louder, louder, on the precipice of a scream.

I could justify my bluntness, add disclaimers, but I let it hang. I want her honest answer. I want her to meet me where I am. I think she will. I’m not fooled by her CVS reading glasses and Kohl’s sweater. She raised three sons on her own and has MS. She’s not some delicate flower, some vanilla suburban pearl clutcher. Especially not if she willingly had coffee with my mother more than once.

Austin turns off the burner just as the kettle shrieks. Another moment passes in silence.

Dawn tilts her head. Her eyebrows pinch together. Austin sets a ceramic mug down in front of her, one with a pastoral scene painted on the side. A deer in a meadow.

“She wasn’t like anyone I ever met before. I found it refreshing. I went over to introduce myself after Jackson moved her in. I brought her cookies, and she thanked me but said she wouldn’t eat them. She invited me in and poured me a glass of wine. It was four in the afternoon.”

Austin brings me a matching mug, only instead of a deer there’s a fox. He joins us at the table with a glass of water.

“She was very open with me. She told me about her situation with her ex-husband. Your father. She told me about you and your sisters.”

“Her entire life saga, sparing no detail, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” Dawn says, watching her tea bag steep, deep in thought. “She didn’t say anything about the house, though. I didn’t know about any of that until the book came out. Then we had all sorts of traffic on the street. No one was happy about that. About the attention.”

“That first Halloween was crazy,” Austin says. “The cops showed up.”

“I heard she lost custody and moved out. I waited for her to put the house up for sale, but it never happened. I didn’t see her again until, gosh. I can’t remember. Until Jackson was at Rutgers. You were in high school, I think,” she says, turning to Austin. “I saw a car in the driveway one afternoon. She came over. She brought me cookies. And wine.” She pauses, smiling at the memory. “Told me how she was living with Roy in Connecticut, but she couldn’t sell her house in case the possession was…dormant? I think that was the word she used. That’s the first time she spoke to me about any of that. Maybe because the book was out, there was no point dancing around it. But I wondered…”

“If she made it all up?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “She wrote in the book about Jack, but it wasn’t how he remembered it. And he was sixteen at the time, not in college. He has no recollection of saying anything, alluding to anything. There was nothing funny about the house until, well…as frustrating as it was to have the commotion on the street, I never held it against her. She had a tough time. I related to that. And I can’t imagine what it was like to lose her children. If it knocked a few screws loose…I understand.”

“Thank you,” I say. “There aren’t many people who knew her who I can really talk about her with. Alexandra is a touchy subject with my dad, my stepmom, even my sisters, honestly. I have my aunt, but that’s complicated, too. And then demonologist Roy and the rest of the occult society of Connecticut or whatever. Everyone has their biases. It’s difficult for me to trust anything they have to say, wondering if they’re trying to sway me, to get me to see her the way they want me to. And then there’s her book, which is fiction. Of course.”

She nods and takes a cautious sip of tea.

There’s something she’s not telling me.

I wonder if Austin senses this or if he’s just anxious to grab the weed so we can head back to my house, get high, and get naked. He stands up. “Be right back.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” I tell her. A thumb on the bruise.