Did I really want to be fighting off a hangover when that happened? Or worse, in the process of conceiving one, too incapacitated to do the one thing I risked everything to come here and do?
If I wanted to be the hero of my own story for a change, I needed to do it with a clear head. Scotch had always been a way to help me forget what I’d become since I left my family behind. I would be damned if I let it prevent me from making things right, or at least trying to.
Before I had time to second guess myself, I dumped the contents of the glass down the bathroom sink, and followed it with the rest of the bottle. I tossed the empty container into the trash, and then set the entire wastebasket on the walk outside my door so I wouldn’t be able to smell it while I lay in bed.
I use the words “lay in bed” because I didn’t sleep. The SpongeBob theme had been playing on a loop in my head all day. I couldn’t shake the notion that my kids didn’t watch the show anymore. It was such a little thing, though, so inconsequential. Why, then, could I not stop thinking about it? Agonizing over it.
I pulled out my phone and hacked into Denise’s Facebook account, but this time I didn’t go right to the picture of her in the black dress. Instead, I pulled up her timeline and scrolled back ten years. The first post that came up was one cursing me—and all worthless, deadbeat men who ran out on their families. It had over two hundred comments, all either expressing disbelief in what I’d done or denouncing my worth as a human being in no uncertain terms. There was even a link to a fundraiser that, though long since closed, appeared to have netted her a few thousand dollars. (Badly as I’d wanted to dump all the money in the accounts she didn’t know about into our joint checking, I was too afraid to risk it. I wanted to leave nothing behind that could tie her and the kids to me. Which was probably the right call, but doesn’t make me sound or feel any less shitty.)
It was as good a starting place as any.
Hours passed, and I looked at everything. Not just on Denise’s page, but my kids’, too. Maggie had her own Facebook account, but was far more active on Instagram and TikTok, as was par for the course with her generation. Pictures of her and her friends, hanging out, making faces for selfies, being silly. A bunch of videos from her basketball games. More of her making passes to her teammates and playing tough defense than making shots. I smiled at that. There were pictures of boys, but none that looked as if they’d made it out of the friend zone. I smiled at that too, but in a sad way. I think all fathers of daughters are torn between wanting them to stay their little girl forever, but also to grow up and find someone who makes them happy.
By the looks of things, she’d make a good mom someday. There were dozens of pictures and videos of her with two young girls, seven to ten years old, captioned with the names Laila and Lexi. Hispanic, so probably not family. Kids she babysat, I assumed. They danced like fools in TikTok videos to Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. In one of the videos the girls were dressed in matching pink pajamas and had used what appeared to be every item in her makeup kit to paint Maggie’s face, who looked to be loving it every bit as much as they were.
Ethan had started his own YouTube channel where he played video games while others watched. He had about a dozen followers, probably all kids from school and Denise, but he carried himself like a celebrity in every video he made. And the drawings Denise had posted on her page only scratched the surface. When he wasn’t playing Call of Duty for an audience, he was making time-lapse videos of him drawing comic book superheroes like Spider-Man and Wolverine, or crazy-detailed dragons that would fit right in on Game of Thrones. Jesus, he was talented.
I moved on from family and checked in on friends I’d left behind, gawked at newborn baby photos posted by people I never thought would get married, let alone have kids. I read inside jokes about a fantasy football league I used to be a part of. I mourned the deaths of friends’ parents I’d known since I was a kid.
My own father passed away three years ago, but I’d never read his obituary. Only reason I knew about it was from seeing a post from Denise about attending his funeral. I read it that night, though. He died in his sleep, victim of a widowmaker heart attack from enjoying too many of the tastier things in life. We were close. He was the funniest person I ever knew, and was unquestionably where I got my sense of humor. They posted a picture of him with his obit, a classic shot of him in his easy chair, probably on a Sunday, watching the Eagles, one of those big smiles plastered across his chubby face. I cried for him the first time I saw Denise’s post, and I cried again that night in the hotel room.
From there I turned to my brother, David, who was still teaching history at the high school we both attended, but had won Coach of the Year for the varsity boys’ basketball team last season. There was an article with a picture of him, too, being lifted on the shoulders of a few boys from the team. He wore our dad’s smile well, even though his face—and the rest of him—was far more fit and trim than Frank Williams ever was.
Immediately following the post about his coaching award was a heartbreaking one in which he spoke about how he’d had to put our mom in a nursing home for early stage Alzheimer’s. Maybe if I’d been around to help, we could have taken care of her in her own home. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say.
I pulled up the website for my old recruitment firm, the Edelman Group. Saw that they had acquired two other firms since I left and now employed nearly thirty people. One of my old coworkers was named one of the Top 40 under 40 Professionals in New Jersey according to Jersey Man Magazine. They seemed to be doing well without me.
That was the common thread that ran through all their stories. With the exception of my mother—whose health would have been the same whether I was still around or not—everyone I knew before I left was doing just fine without Ben Williams in their lives. It was a sobering, painful truth that had been kept submerged by untold gallons of scotch and beer. Turns out, I never drank to cope with the things I’d done or the person I’d become, even though that’s what I told myself. I drank to forget about who I was.
I drank not to live with Rick Carter, but to kill Ben Williams. Because at the end of the day, Ben had the better life, and it hurt too much to acknowledge that I should have stuck with it, even through the hard times. Better to drown the bastard and move on than accept that the life I’d left behind was far superior to the one I was currently living.
But even if Ben Williams was truly dead, he still had a legacy. He had a family that was living proof he had once done something good with his life. And then Rick Carter came along and fucked the whole thing up. The least Rick could do was stay sober enough to make things right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I spent the next two days watching Robert go to and from work, and checking in for the same reports of nothing happening from Erica and Joey. On Day Four, Thursday, Robert never left the station, which made my life a little easier. By 5:00 that evening, I was still parked across the street from the station’s main entrance, but further up, so I had to use my mirrors to keep an eye on who was coming and going. It was tedious and strained my eyes, so I broke it up by playing solitaire on my phone. Robert must have come up to the car while I was trying to figure out where to put my ace, because I didn’t know he was there until he tapped on my window.
It was raining—a light, steady drizzle that had been going on all day—beading on my windshield and making everyone who passed by on the sidewalk miserable. Robert didn’t look any happier as he pulled his jacket collar around his neck and waited for me to start the car so I could lower my window.
“Robert, I—”
“Deptford Mall food court,” he interrupted. “You like Chinese?”
“Yeah,” I said, but it came out almost as a question.
“I’ll meet you at the Master Wok.” Then he turned and walked away. In my rearview mirror, I watched him disappear into the employee parking lot next to the station. Three minutes later, his blue pickup emerged and turned right on 24th Street, going away from me toward the Ben Franklin Bridge. I waited for a break in the traffic then did the same.
On the bridge, I called Erica and Joey for an update. All normal on their end. Denise and the kids were home, and the two squad cars were parked out front, waiting for the night shift to arrive. I told them about my dinner date with Robert and asked Erica to get there ahead of time to scope the place out. If the food court was some kind of set up, I wanted to know about it in advance. Of course, if he wanted to arrest me he could have just done so outside the precinct, but I’ve always been one to err on the side of caution. Once she texted me the all clear, she was to hang out of sight of our meeting. Joey I asked to stay behind and keep an eye on the house.
In an era when indoor malls were withering on the vine, the one in Deptford—a small town about twenty minutes from my old house—was thriving. It had nothing to do with the stores, which were the same as in every other mall in America, and everything to do with the dining scene. Both in the mall itself and in the area around it, upper scale restaurant chains had taken root and spread, like the purple flowers that used to blanket my lawn every April. They were nothing more than weeds, but they looked gorgeous and smelled great.
As a result, the food court in the mall itself had seen its average number of patrons dwindle, but still did enough business to keep the Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabons running. Master Wok was the obligatory Chinese place, and it wasn’t bad. At least, it wasn’t the last time I’d eaten there. Judging by the number of full tables in its little district of Food Court Land, it still was one of the better options available. Robert was seated at one of those tables, hands folded on top, scanning the faces in the crowd. There was no food in front of him. When he saw me, he waved and headed toward the short line in front of Master Wok, leaving his leather jacket draped over the back of his chair as a placeholder.
I made my way toward him and caught Erica out of the corner of my eye, sitting alone at a table by the Salad Works, her nose buried in a book she’d likely just purchased from the Barnes & Noble downstairs.
“Can’t remember the last time I ate here,” I said once I reached Robert. “They still have good sesame chicken?”
“No idea, I always get the boneless BBQ spareribs,” he said as he got in line. “You’re buying.”
I got the sesame chicken. It smelled as good as I remembered. Looked as good as I remembered. Unlike last night at The Colonial, I dug in and savored every bite of a dish I’d loved in another life.
We ate in silence as the tables emptied and refilled around us. After a while I started to wonder if Robert merely invited me here to score a free meal. Finally, as we each scooped up the last forkfuls of our fried rice, he said, “I checked you out.”
I looked up from my plastic bowl and swallowed. “And?”
“Seems Ben Williams died.” He moved some rice around with his fork. “Or at least, any trace of him did. Around eight years ago. Somewhere in Germany.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Of course, this was after he did some under-the-table, highly illegal recruitment work for not one but two organized crime families. One operating out of Philly, and one all the way across the pond in Jolly Old England. Found them some gunrunners, some IT hackers, and at least one triggerman that left two bodies in a parking lot in Kensington.” He shoveled the last bit of rice into his mouth and looked up at me as he chewed, wiping his hands with a thin brown paper napkin. “Took a while for the lead detective to connect the dots, but once he did, he had you. Which meant he had the crime families, too. Major bust. The kind that can make a career. Except . . . poof.” He opened both hands and waggled his fingers, like dandelion seeds blowing away in
the breeze.
“Poof?”
“Just like that, before he can make the collar, you’re gone. Vanished in the middle of the night. Leaving behind a wife and two young kids to wake up in the morning with no husband and no daddy.” He locked eyes with me. “Just the mess he left behind.”
