Page 28

“ ‘I’m scared…,’ ” Simone reads aloud. “I’m guessing she was going to get some sort of back-alley abortion? That’s all that was available back then. Poor thing.”

Taylor nods slowly. “I can’t even imagine. Except I can, because we’re right back there now.”

The letter continues. I kept my promise. I never told a soul, not even Linda. But you made promises too, remember? You said you’d make sure I was okay. Two hundred dollars, Larry. That’s all I’m asking for now. It’s not even half of what you promised me.

Simone’s hands go ice-cold as she and Taylor keep reading together silently, the soft paper fluttering between them. I saw the announcement in the paper about your engagement. She’s very pretty, your Carole. Does she know about me? About what happened? I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I really don’t. But I can’t keep waiting for you to do the right thing, not after what I did for you. The secrets I’ve kept for you. If I don’t hear from you by Friday, I just might find it harder and harder to keep your secret, and then what? Your life with your fancy fiancée will be over before it even starts. And that’s fair because my life feels like it’s over, so why don’t you think about that.

The letter ends there. No signature, no closing. Just the threat, hanging in the air across five decades.

Simone sits back, her wine completely forgotten. Her reporter’s brain catalogs the timeline, the relationships, the bizarre threats. But all that fades into the background as she becomes consumed with one singular, blaring question: what exactly her father-in-law—the man who taught her son to fish, who raised her orphaned husband—might be capable of.

CHAPTER ELEVEN ALEX

It’s not a good look to be at a bar chasing away a hangover, especially at four p.m. on a Monday. But there’s that whole hair-of-the-dog thing, and even though Alex isn’t convinced it’s a scientifically sound concept, anything is worth a shot when you feel this crappy.

Whisky—a whole bottle of Knob Creek—was the only way he could get through Thanksgiving weekend what with watching Poppy nod off and drool into his mashed potatoes more than once, and his mother-in-law interrogating him. Donette doesn’t exactly hide the fact that she isn’t his biggest fan. It mostly comes across in the way she arranges her eyebrows into a dubious look that Alex is sure she reserves just for him. It reads: I don’t know exactly why, but I got a feeling you’re up to no good, and it’s always made him nervous as hell. He’s tried to squirm his way into her good graces over the years—flowers, front-row tickets to Alvin Ailey, birthday spa days, the whole nine—but it never mattered because he will never be Kwame and he’ll never not be white. Alex suspects both are his unforgivable sins.

There was this way Donette had of teasing him, like they were in on some joke together, except he was the joke. Like Saturday night when she’d asked him to dance on command when Simone put on Donette’s favorite Beyoncé track. Being a good sport, he did, and then Donette fell on the floor laughing, and it wasn’t with him, because he wasn’t laughing at all. Alex remembers now, the night Langston was born, Donette said something about how she sure hoped the baby’s color would come in soon. Alex was surprised himself that Langston was so pale, almost translucent, but Donette seemed to have actual disdain about it, like her newborn grandson’s light complexion was an insult. But if the reverse were true—if, say, Poppy had made a comment that he was worried Langston’s skin was too dark, Alex couldn’t even imagine the fallout and blowup that would have followed. Dealing with Donette gave Alex the vague sense that he didn’t understand the rules of some game he didn’t even know he was playing.

Every time he tried to catch Simone’s eye over the weekend, silently begging her to rescue him or set Donette straight or at least have a moment of solidarity, she was distracted. Par for the course, lately, though he’s one to talk.

At least Alex has good reason to be distracted—trying to save an entire business from bankruptcy and his family from financial ruin and all. But he doesn’t know why Simone seems so distant. Actually, he has his suspicions. Thinking about his wife and her ex is driving Alex to empty his glass.

It was a mistake to ask her point-blank if something was going on with Kwame. She’d said no, that she’d only seen him the one time at that panel and it was all professional, but Simone, unlike him, is a terrible liar. Alex watched for it—her middle finger tapping at her thumb—and his stomach sank. It was her tell, and a clear sign there was more to the story. But short of blowing up his marriage, Alex is at a total loss as to what to do with that information, or his lack of information, beyond sitting on this squeaky barstool, watching a distractingly sexy bartender wearing reindeer antlers and a red-sequined bra top under a blazer string holiday lights around the bar.

If he were at Bronco’s, aka his “usual” place, Trevor would already be standing by for a refill. But Alex isn’t at his usual place because the fact that he even has a “usual” place for drinking is problematic. Not so problematic that Alex will stop making a quick visit to a bar altogether on his way home from work most nights. But enough so that he will at least vary his destinations. That’s how he ended up here at one of these new spots in the Third Ward packed with women ten years younger than him who all seem to have at least three inches of space between the bottoms of their shirts and the tops of their jeans, and men with trendy beards that are making him further rethink his own. He waves the bartender down, and she makes her way over slowly, like she’s wary of him. Alex decides it’s not personal, just a hazard of her job; she’s probably expecting him to hit on her. Which would make sense, she’s flat-out gorgeous. Copper skin and almond eyes that make him think she might be Ethiopian? Eritrean? He isn’t positive about the difference. Her skin glows under the lamplights lining the bar, and Alex wants to reach out and touch her. Drag one finger along the sharp edge of a cheekbone. Is it a fetish that he finds brown-skinned women so attractive? He worried about it enough to google it one day, and it took him down an uncomfortable Reddit rabbit hole that only inflamed his vague shame about his preferences. They’re a secret, though, there’s that, so no one can judge him. Besides, he’s married, so it doesn’t matter. And he’s married to the only Black girl he’s ever dated, so it can’t be a pattern.

But there’s a way the bartender’s looking at him—like she already doesn’t have time for him and he hasn’t even opened his mouth—that makes him feel like she can somehow tell, like she knows things about him she shouldn’t, like she’s already sized him up and she might describe him to a friend later, saying something like, Oh, you know the type. And her friend would roll her eyes knowingly. Alex doesn’t want to be a type! He’s drunk enough to want to slip her a hundred-dollar bill for a tip, for reasons that are hard to grasp, but he’s just clearheaded enough to know it’s a dumb move and will somehow only reinforce her bad opinions about him.

“Could I have one more, please?” Alex exaggerates the “please” and smiles in what he hopes is a friendly way, but his teeth are so dry they stick against his lips, so he’s not sure he’s pulled it off. Or maybe his lips are so dry they stick against his teeth.

“You sure about that?”

He won’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he fumbles with his phone, trusting that she’ll know the answer without him actually having to say it out loud. Sure enough, she slides a fresh full glass onto the soggy coaster in front of him.

He’s got to pull the trigger on this company-wide email. The draft has been sitting in his inbox for hours, but he’s been too chickenshit to send it. Finally, he decided it would be easier to do it if he left the office, so he could be far away from the disappointed reactions when he announced the annual Hartwell Ball is canceled. Since the company’s inception, the black-tie dinner has been held every December at the Pritzlaff. Every store across the region closes early so that all cashiers and store staff can attend. It’s where Poppy distributed bonus checks every year, handing one to each employee as they snaked in a line to his table so they could personally thank him, one by one, for his generosity. Even before all the corporate drama, Alex had been dreading this particular ritual. He found the whole kissing-the-ring thing gross and hated the idea of subjecting people—or himself—to it. The silver lining of the company going to shit and there not being money for a $60,000 event is that it saves him from having to do that. Besides, there’s not enough money for bonus checks either, and he doesn’t want to have to put everyone’s disappointment on public display.

After pressing send, taking a swig, and letting his forehead sink into his hands for a long moment of pure self-pity, he looks up and catches the bartender staring at him with something that also resembles pity.

He needs to get out of here. But instead of reaching for his wallet, he grabs at a memory. Or the whisky hurls one at him, more like it. The time his grandfather took him to see Death of a Salesman. He’d been dreading the outing, as he’d dreaded most of the “adventures” his grandfather took him on, since, without fail, they were intended to be molding him in some way, and not fun. In fact, young Alex understood that if he did somehow manage to have fun, at a lecture about Roosevelt or an Edward Hopper exhibit (which, granted, was almost impossible), he would be defeating the point of the activity. Character building was serious business. But once the play was underway, Alex was captivated. Something clicked in his ten-year-old mind as the characters moved across the stage—these weren’t just people reciting lines, they were creating an entire world right before his eyes. His grandfather took note, approvingly, of how Alex leaned forward in his seat, how his eyes widened when Willy Loman’s past and present collided. It was the first time he realized that words could build entire universes that felt almost more real—and appealing—than reality itself.

Afterward, tucked in the warm back seat of the town car with Terry at the wheel whisking them home, Poppy asked him what he thought of the play, and Alex had quickly tried to come up with a critique his grandfather would find respectable. He landed on: “smart.” His thinking was that describing the play as smart would work to make him sound smart. Also, his grandfather appreciated brevity.

Poppy had taken Alex to see the Arthur Miller play in order to drive home the themes of hard work and the potential and hazards of the American Dream, not to launch his grandson’s literary awakening, but that’s what happened. Alex began devouring fiction, starting with Harry Potter and moving on to everything Tolkien ever wrote. He often hid these books from Poppy, realizing that they were not nearly serious enough to please his grandfather. Same way he hid his dreams of being a teacher, to protect himself from his grandfather’s incredulity of thinking so small. You can be noble or you can be powerful, but only a foolish man believes he can be both, his grandfather had told him more than once.

How the hell did he get to thinking about Death of a Salesman? Oh yeah, the whisky. But also the neon sign. The one above the bar reminds him of the one that was in the stage set. Frank’s Chop House. This place, the Good Land, has an almost identical one. There’s another reason Death of a Salesman is on his mind. Here he is alone, in a bar, staring into an almost empty glass, marinating in his latest failure. He is Biff.

He picks up his phone to assess the damage. Already twenty-one replies to his email about the cancellation. He can imagine what they say, all some form of disappointment, maybe even hostility, so he deletes them all without reading.

In looking at his phone, Alex notes—because how could he not—that Simone hasn’t been in touch all day, hasn’t bothered to check in about his plans or when he’ll be home. The relief slides into dread so fast he’s dizzy. But what’s actually making him dizzy is the sensation that Simone is slipping away from him.

Another thing he’s learning in the relentless string of recent unwelcome realizations: that a relationship can change so fast. It’s not like succumbing to a long illness. No, it’s stumbling over a curb you didn’t see and sailing through the air, the seconds of hang time when you’re still not sure how bad it’s going to be. A bruise or a broken bone? In this scenario, though, he’s the pesky curb, the tripping hazard. Which is to say, whatever’s going on between him and Simone is mostly his fault, and thus, theoretically, in Alex’s control to fix.

He debates sending Simone a text, taking the initiative! He can write something about how much he loves her, to soften his arrival and the stubborn tension between them that he’s taken to monitoring like the weather. Partly cloudy today, chance of afternoon storms.

They used to do that many times a day—text each other “I love you.” They even developed a little emoji code—elephant plus cherries—to say it. The origins of this shorthand were lost to him, but Alex loves that—the secret language and inside jokes he and Simone have, so natural he can’t even remember how they came to be.

As he contemplates what to say, up pops a text from Connor. CALL ME… NOW. The all caps are aggressive, but then again, so is Connor.