I take a deep breath, cut the bullshit, and reach in.
And…well. Not that a lottery winner is going to get a lot of sympathy here, but rotten luck that I couldn’t have drawn the Starbucks barista first. Instead, I’ve drawn a name—or, rather, two names:Robert and Kathleen O’Leary.
Damn.
I saw a lot of unhappy people in conference room four, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget Robert and Kathleen O’Leary. Their settlement mediation was the last I’d sat in on, and I like to believe that even if I hadn’t won the jackpot that night, it still would’ve been my last day at Willis-Hanawalt. That I would have said to myself,Enough is enough, and never gone back again. They’d been gray haired and slight, Mrs. O’Leary barely over five feet, her husband only a couple of inches taller—though between the two of them, he’d been the more diminished, the more fragile. Mrs. O’Leary’s eyes had been puffy and red, but focused; she tracked the conversation with a sad, knowing acuity—well aware her lawyer was outmatched, well aware that whatever money she walked away with, she’d never get what shereally wanted.
An admission of guilt.
But Mr. O’Leary—he’d barely been more than a bodily presence. At one point, I’d wondered if he’d had a stroke, or some other kind of catastrophic medical event that kept him from moving or speaking. I still don’t know if he had. But I do know that he cried: silent tears that tracked down his cheeks and dripped off his jawline onto the conference table.
“What a performance,” my boss had muttered, when the O’Learys had finally gone.
I swallow thickly, rubbing the slip of paper between my fingers. It’s so uncomfortable thinking about those days when we were doing the settlements, thinking about how clear I’d been that something was off, thinking about how many opportunities I’d had to say something. And yet I thinkabout those days a lot, too much, when—as my guilt jar is reminding me—I should bedoingsomething.
And so I do: I grab my laptop, spend a few minutes getting the information I need. I take off the mask, I shower, I dress carefully. When I walk out to my car, I’m doing so with purpose. When I drive, I keep the radio off, so I can focus, so I can keep that little slip of paper in my mind.
The O’Leary house is a small, brick rambler, tidy at first glance, but there are signs of neglect—the two clay pots on the front porch are full of leafless, tangled twigs, the bushes that line the bed underneath the shutters are shaggy, a few aggressive limbs of growth reaching up past the windows. The left side of the iron railing leading up to the front porch is listing to the side, two newspapers still in their bags beneath it.
I think, briefly and nonsensically, about whether I’ll pick up those papers when I knock on the door, whether I’ll have to start by saying,Oh, I just picked up these papers that were here, and it’s this stray, silly thought that finally gives me pause, pause that I should have had about ten thousand times before I got here: if they aren’t picking up their papers, maybe they aren’t around, or maybe they don’t open the door for anyone; maybe they don’t wantto be bothered.
Theywouldn’twant to be bothered, not by me of all people. Even if they don’t remember me, I’ll have to explain in order to apologize. I’ll either be poking at a festering wound or reopening one that can only be, even under the best of circumstances, barely healed. I grip my steering wheel, so hard that it hurts my fingers, in plain, simple frustration at myself. The real me—the smart, sharp, ambitious me, the me who proofreads everything six times, reading both forward and backward, the me who practiced presentations until notes were a distraction rather than an aid—that me would’ve thought of this. Instead, I’ve come over here thinking only of my own guilt, my stupid internet jar, and my stupid, lazy sense of purposelessness driving me.
If I really mean to make up to people, I have to do better than ambush apologies that they may not even want to hear.
My hand is back on the key, ready to turn, ready to back out and go home where I can rethink this.
But then the front door opens.
It’s not Mr. or Mrs. O’Leary there, that’s for damn sure, because this is about six feet two of muscled, fully alert dude, his thick, dark brown hair messy, his square jaw stubbled.
And he definitely does not look happy to see me, though I suppose he’d have that in common with the O’Learys.
It’s still possible to turn the key, wave an apology like I’ve found myself at the wrong house or something. But there’s something that stops me—something about the way this man stands so still, watching me, and something about that heavy fatigue I feel, all the time, pulling at my shoulders. Maybe this man knows something about the O’Learys. Maybe he can help me get some of this fuckingweightoff.
So I take my keys from the ignition,inhale, exhale—even doing the noisy puff of breath that my yoga teacher is always suggesting—and get out of the car. My heel wobbles a bit on the cracked pavement, and I steady myself on the top of the car door before shutting it behind me, smoothing the front of my dress, which is another terrible choice I made this morning. It’s a gray herringbone, sleek and tailored, a jewel neckline, and sharply cut cap sleeves. It’s a dress I’d wear to work, a dress that makes me look as cool and detached as I probably did on that day. It appalls me how little I thought this through, what a massive, selfish mistake I made this morning. I think of making a new slip, later:Bothered a man at his home, because ofmy narcissism.
“Hello,” I manage, surprised that my voice sounds very much like it always does when I meet new people, which is to say: it sounds detached and professional, when I came here to be anything but that. When I came here to show them that I do, in fact, have a heart.
A heart that is beating so fast that I suspect this man can see it pulsing in my neck.
“What can I do for you?” he asks, and however harmless the question is, however polite seeming, it is clear he does not mean it to seem so. His voice is gruff, clipped. He stands, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over his chest, like he’s here working security.
“I was looking for Robert and Kathleen O’Leary,” I begin. “But Ibelieve I’ve—”
Before I can finish that, before I can say,I believe I’ve made a mistake, he cuts me off. “They moved.”
It’s him that’s made the mistake now, because I’ve lain awake so many nights wondering about what has happened to the O’Learys, to other families I ran mediation for, that I am now desperate to know more. Did they take the money, buy a home somewhere beautiful, somewhere away from the place that must remind them of terrible grief? Do they live a better life? Have they been able to move on, at all? That little shred of information—they moved—makes me curious enough tokeep pressing.
“Do you happen to know where they went?”
“I do.” It seems like—I don’t know what. It seems like he has made himself bigger somehow. He is looking at me like I am something unpleasanthe stepped in.
“I guess I’ll have to be more specific with my questions,” I say, annoyed now. My concern is for the O’Learys, and this man is becoming an unnecessary roadblock.
“Guess so,” he grinds out, but then he shifts slightly, his hands tightening around where they are crossed, at the join of his elbows. And then he says, “I know who you are. And believe me, they would not want youto find them.”
I swallow, once, then again, suddenly feeling hot and sick. I should’ve had something to eat before I came, something light that would settle my nervous stomach. My eyes lower automatically, an old habit that I’d fully eradicated in my adult life, when I made my living off being completely unflappable. I am torn between wanting to ask how he knows who I am and wanting to turn back and get in my car, to pretend this morningnever happened.
