“Andi, stop,” Regan says. “What day is it?” she asks.
“What?” Andi snaps.
“Who’s the president?”
“I don’t have a fucking concussion. I don’t get what’s happening.” She looks so fearful and red blotches bloom across her chest, and Sasha can’t wrap her head around exactly what’s going on.
“I told you I’d be home midday Sunday. It’s after oneo’clock,” Carson says, a little annoyed that she seems unhappy he’s home, but still holding her hand, clearly understanding that she’s had a fall and maybe a bump on the head.
“Oh,” Andi says numbly, her eyes still darting around the room.
“And the detective said he called you and was gonna meet you here to ask questions about Tia. He’s asking all of us. It’s not just you. Do you remember talking to him earlier? Did you hit your head?” he asks patiently, but she snaps back her answers.
“No. Goddammit. I saw you in the garage with him moving shit around.” Everyone in the room exchanges furtive glances at one another, wondering if she really does have some sort of concussion.
“Yeah. My tire is low. I was getting the air pump off the hook on the wall when he pulled up and startled me.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Why are you telling me that?” she asks. Regan is now perched on the arm of the couch next to her, feeling around her head for bumps, as Andi mindlessly swats her away.
“It fell behind the giant-ass freezer we still have for some reason. He came into the garage and we chatted while we waited for you, and he helped me scooch it out a few inches to get the air pump. I mean, jeez. Is there any other detail you’d like to know? Or can we maybe get to what the hell happened to you? Are you okay?”
“I’ll get an ice pack. You have a goose egg,” Regan announces, then disappears into the kitchen.
“I think she’s just under a lot of stress,” Sasha says.
Andi stands abruptly and goes to the front window, looking out at Morrison, who’s still directing stragglers toward their checkpoint. “He’s not...”
“What? Jesus, Andi. Can we just—can you just lie down and rest? Let Regan get the ice and just...”
“He’s not arresting me?” she asks, her mouth gaping open and eyes wide.
“They don’t arrest everyone they want to question,” Carson says with annoyance in his tone that only makes her panic more. “You have to understand you’re the ex. You saw her the day before. They’ll have questions. That’s it. Everyone knows you were not involved. Shit, if it makes you feel better, we can go through the Ring footage to prove you were here. I told them you were here. Nobody legitimately thinks you did anything, babe. People are just freaked out.”
Somehow during Carson’s speech, Sasha clocks Andi’s eyes expanding and glossing over at the wordsRing footage, and then she watches Andi sit down quietly on the couch. Andi doesn’t say anything else until the ambulance sirens can be heard coming up the dirt road, and then she whispers an almost inaudible “Oh, God” under her breath.
Once the medics come in, it feels like a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen situation, so Sasha decides to take the church bus back to the town square. She squeezes Andi’s hand before she goes and promises to call and check in later, but she’s relieved to be out of there if she’s honest. The weight of it is too much. A whole town searching an eerie forest hoping not to find a dead body, and at the same time hoping to find something. It’s really an indescribable thing to witness—watching them all balance their usual meaningless chatter about soccer practice and the newLove Is Blindseason, then remembering where they are and what they’re there for and morphing back into the somber, melancholy version of themselves they’re supposed to be at such an occasion.
But Sasha has secrets of her own to deal with, and she’s made a promise to be somewhere. Tom has made the two-and-a-half-hour trip to the Manhattan restaurant, the way he does every other week to check in on things, see his brother, attend some meetings or whatever else goes into owning a few restaurants. Sasha doesn’t much care for the mundane details about bookkeeping and bottom lines and barbecue smoker prices and any of it, really. She pretends to be interested and of course does genuinely listen when Tom chats to her about work, but she has other things on her mind each time he makes the New York trip or whenever he works late.
She’s arranged for Drew to watch Chloe—she tells him she has “margarita book club” tonight. She assumes Tom might have a few pints with his dad at the restaurant bar anyway and come home in the morning, or if he does come home tonight, it’ll be late, so she makes the forty-minute trek to see Raffy, and despite how many years she’s been going to see him, she still feels a pang of guilt twisting in her gut—she knows keeping this from Tom is a betrayal. It feels practically criminal after ten years, but that’s the thing about white lies... they snowball. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeing her ex-husband, because they coparent Drew, if you can call it that. But Tom has been so understanding despite all the baggage she came with, which makes her feel extra guilty for not being honest about this.
Raffy lost himself to the bottle a long time ago, so when she stopped by to drop Drew off when he was younger, Tom knew she had to stay and supervise, because who the hell could predict if Raffy would even be vertical let alone able to be responsible for a young son? Drew has wanted less to do with Raff as he’s gotten older. It seems like his visits are fueledby pity when he does go, and Sasha can’t make him have a relationship with his dad. She’s glad he doesn’t, if she’s honest, because watching his father slowly kill himself isn’t something she’d like Drew exposed to. But she still goes.
It just sort of happened and then became a habit—to make sure he was okay, take out the trash, open a window, check his meds, and then somewhere along the line, she realized it was secretive—that Tom wouldn’t approve of her going there alone although he probably wouldn’t say it. He’s too kind. He wouldn’t forbid her or try to control her. He’d just be very hurt, and how could she blame him for that?
But she can’t abandon Raffy, not after what he’s done for her. So she drives up, always with a mix of anticipation and a visceral sense of dread to see his face, wondering how bad things will be today. She winds her way up the steep road and onto the long dirt drive of the first house they bought together, whereRafael and Sasha Carrois still written on the mailbox at the end of the drive where it meets the road. Only her name has been rubbed off and is just a faint imprint now. Back when Raff was doing well, so, so long ago now, he was buying up real estate in Mexico and renting out beach bungalows. They bought this cliffside fixer-upper, in cash, and renovated each room, from the Spanish bath tile to the walnut floors. It’s not big or fancy. They thought about expanding, turning it into a showstopper, but they wanted modest and cozy. Good thing, she supposes, because he’s let the place go to such an extreme—the wood floors long ago rotted from dog urine from a Jack Russell he had a few years ago; the walls are covered in mold from bad ventilation when he went through a paranoid phase and closed off all the vents and windows; and the list goes on.
When she pulls up to the front door, she squeezes her eyes closed, sighs and hopes for the best, but when she walks inside, she is immediately hit with the overwhelming, acrid smell of vomit. She opens the window next to the front door even though the temperature outside is in the fifties and it’s already chilly in the rooms Raffy rarely pays to heat. She sees through into the living room where he is passed out on the couch. From the looks of the puke, he probably passed out last night and is still asleep, which is a good day for her because he’ll be able to have a coherent conversation after she wakes him up. Talking to him with a hangover is always better than after he’s already started for the day.
She covers her mouth and nose with her scarf and sits down at the edge of the couch in front of his frail body, and she strokes his hair for a moment and fights back tears—she feels like she should be used to it but she somehow seems to be mourning his loss like it’s brand-new every time she sees him like this. She kisses his forehead and then gently shakes him awake.
“Hey, Raff. It’s me,” she says and watches his eyes flutter open. He jolts a little when he becomes aware of her and then the vomit down the front of him, and the late hour. He looks at himself for a moment like a frightened child who wet the bed.
“Just give it to me,” she says, and he looks so fragile as he pulls his shirt over his head and hands it to her that she can barely stand it.
“Can you get in the shower?” she asks him, and he doesn’t speak, just shakily stands and disappears into the back hall and then she hears the water running. She throws his shirt in the washer and starts a load. She walks around the kitchen andliving room with a Hefty bag, dropping all the empty bottles inside, and cleans a few surfaces with a disinfectant wipe.
When he returns, he’s wearing a hoodie and sweats. He opens a Heineken to stop his hands shaking, then sits across from her on the couch, where the indented cushion and pile of blankets tell the story of a man who has scarcely left that spot in many days.
