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“She’s probably just tired.”
“What do you think it might take to get her back to class?” I ask with a sigh. “I have a meeting at the police station.” This isn’t entirely true, but I do need to meet Max and get the information he is providing on the down low.
I hear a shift in the counselor’s breathing. I cross my fingers, hoping that I’ve done enough to make it sound important and official, even though it’s anything but. I only know that I cannot miss work. I am barely keeping the lights on as it is, and what goes on in my office is no place for a little girl. “Hello?” I say. I don’t even hear the raspy cough, just a dead silence.
“Hold, please.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman tells me firmly when she comes back on the line. “I am aware of your profession and the importance of your work. But, your daughter is inconsolable, Mr. Lane, and this is what it means to be a parent.”
Her brutal honesty shocks me at first, not to mention the fact that she used my exact words against me, practically verbatim. I feel the familiar build of acid creeping up my throat and I get angry. “I’m curious, Miss. What’s it mean to be a counselor these days? Wheredoall of those taxpayer dollars go?”
“Great. We’ll see you soon then,” she quips into the phone. If I didn’t know better, I swore I heard a smile in her voice.
So this is how I end up with a child camped under my desk, doing my best to field her incessant questions between conference calls.
Besides the Roberts case, which, if I play it right, will be my bread and butter, I am working several contracts with insurance companies that have gone nowhere, mostly from lack of attention. It takes a lot of effort to tail people and to report their comings and goings. It’s not exactly a cakewalk cataloguing and photographing the details of people’s personal lives. The contracts include weekly conference calls with the insurance agencies to provide status updates, and today my schedule is jam-packed. We go case by case; me relaying the evidence I’ve collected, the attorneys offering additional personal information, addresses, anything that might be beneficial. The goal is for me to gather evidence, to take photos or video in order to prove fraudulent claims. That, or to obtain anything, any information that might cause a party to settle. It’s low-grade work, work that any investigator can do, but it puts food on the table, and at this point, even though I don’t enjoy it, I can’t afford to turn it down.
Kelsey’s face lights up when I ask if she’s up for a stakeout, which in actuality means trailing folks that have insurance claims against companies who will do whatever it takes not to pay claims. Typically, my work is not a family affair, but since Bethany thought that accompanying her girlfriend on a business trip would be a grand idea, what else am I supposed to do?
“Maybe we’ll stop by and see Uncle Max.”
Her expression shifts.
I grab her backpack and my camera bag. “Or we don’t have to.”
“Remember what Mommy said?”
I tread carefully because there’s no telling. “What did Mommy say?”
“She said you weren’t supposed to do work around us. She said that’s why we can’t see you very much anymore because you’re always working.”
“I’m not always working, love. But I have a very important case that I need to solve. It would help a lot of people. Helping people is good, isn’t it?”
“Is it because of what Uncle Max said?”
I narrow my gaze. “What Uncle Max said?”
“He said there was a dead kid.”
It hits me then why she was so upset this morning. I shouldn’t have picked up that call. I should have been more careful. Sometimes I think that what Bethany says is true. I am not cut out to be a father. I bend at the knee, meeting her at eye level. “No honey, it wasn’t a child. Uncle Max just used the wrong word.”
Her brow furrows.
“Look—Uncle Max is old. To him, anyone under forty is a kid. It’s slang. Have you learned about slang words yet at school?”
“I don’t believe you,” she tells me, folding her arms across her chest. “Mommy is right. You always lie.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ethan
It’s so cold and so dark. It’s the bitter chill, the deep ache in my bones, that wakes me. I assume the power must have gone out or the heater is on the fritz.
I hear sounds coming from outside, like a door or a window has been left open, but I know that it’s something far worse. I make a move to climb out of bed. The next thing I know, I feel nothing. Something, or rather someone, hits me over the head. The crack is a sound I will not soon forget. I see a face flash in front of mine and then everything goes dark. I have no idea for how long, only that it seems like forever. I go in and out of consciousness, and the sensation feels strongly like being forced under water, only to be brought back up again.
The next time my eyes flutter open, it is to the sound of a child’s cries. Nick. He cries off and on and then he mumbles something. I can’t make out what, only that he’s repeating the same sentence over and over. I don’t know if it’s the blood that has filled my ears, or if my hearing has been permanently impacted by the blow to my head, I just know that my son’s words sound far off and that they are being spoken too fast for me to make them out.
I fight not to be pulled under by the darkness once again. It’s a battle to stay on the edge, half in this world, half of me wanting to give in. I can hear Bethany’s voice and that brings me back and holds me in place. She is pleading, but more than that, her voice is angry. She is arguing with someone. Then she is screaming my name.
