“I don’t know. Everything at the store was a jumble. I talked to a few officers, but I don’t know if anything official happened.” Simon leaned into her further, and she put an arm around his waist. “I couldn’t do it.”
“Couldn’t do what?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
“I couldn’t help him. The man—the boy who was shot.”
“The man who held you at knifepoint, you mean?” There was no sarcasm in her voice. She stated the facts. Simon had a tendency to get lost in the emotion of situations, and Joyce often brought him back to the realness of the circumstances they found themselves in.
Simon was silent again for a beat, and then, “Yes.”
“Why should you have helped him?”
“Because I’m a doctor, that’s what I was sworn to do.”
“You were in shock. You’d been held at knifepoint and seen a man shot. Nobody expected you to leap up and start performing surgery on the man.”
“His face was so young.” Simon’s voice hovered soft and quiet. “Just a kid, really. But hardened, somehow. He stunk, while he held me close to him. And that’s all I could focus on. That he smelled terrible.”
“That’s only human,” Joyce assured him. She squeezed her arm around him.
Joyce continued. “I’m glad you didn’t help him.”
Simon shifted away from her slightly. “Why?”
“Because he didn’t deserve your kindness.”
“But you didn’t know him. You didn’t know his story, or why he was in the store today. You don’t know why he needed the money.”
Joyce stood up quickly. Simon lost his balance as she moved away and threw a hand onto the bed to brace himself.
“That’s true.” She peered out the window into the hallway. People rushed around, faces focused or worried or blissfully unaware. “But there are lots of people who need things, and only a small portion of them will actually go to the point of killing another person to get them.”
Simon and Joyce looked at each other, and it was as though they were seeing each other—really seeing the other person—for the first time in years. Not just the hard or soft shell that formed when you lived with someone, day in and day out. But underneath, into the core that pulsed out their decisions, that determined their perception of the world.
They held each other’s gaze, neither willing to let go just yet.
Until there was a knock on the door, and Joyce turned to see who the next intruder into her marriage would be.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO ADDY
The guy said Addy’s name several times before he got her attention. Her cappuccino sloshed over the side of the cup when she grabbed it from him, making a slick pool of foam on the wooden countertop of the café. She didn’t know why she ordered it. Habit, Addy supposed. When she was writing her dissertation, going to the café was one of her major splurges twice a week. She’d take herself out to the café, plug in her laptop, sip on a cappuccino that wasn’t made from cheap Trader Joe’s espresso, and write and analyze and read far too many but never really enough research studies, and then write some more. It was a comfort to her, to know that she could go to the small wire table in the corner and just be alone amongst people for a few hours.
Now, she took a seat and set her drink down in front of her, not sure what to do. Certain only that the pit in her stomach kept growing.
She couldn’t get the girl’s face out of her thoughts. The way she looked in Dermot’s apartment, so young and broken, made Addy want to chuck all of her achievements over the last several years and explain that she was sorry the world was shit and that people hurt each other and that, if she’d known Dermot was making promises to Laura, Addy would have never slept with him.
Addy’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out. It was a message from her mother, asking how her day was going. Addy shoved her phone back into her jeans. Her mother would have to wait, because there was no way to explain over text to your mother that you’d somehow found yourself in the middle of a murder investigation because of your poor choice in men, just a few days after you became Dr. Simpson and your parents sent you flowers and a huge teddy bear that barely fit in your studio apartment.
She had revisions to do. The deadline for filing them was next Friday, and although she didn’t have many, Addy needed to start on them soon. Her mind wouldn’t focus, and instead of writing she stared out the window, her hands wrapped around her coffee.
A young mother went by her table, jostling Addy’s elbow with the edge of her stroller and offering a harried “sorry” as she continued on her way, a toddler protesting angrily in the stroller seat. Addy decided it was time to go and made for the door as well.
Her phone buzzed again, and she expected it to be her mother’s message repeating itself, but instead it was a new message from Laura. The three women swapped phone numbers yesterday before leaving. Trina was going to send updates about what she’d found on Dermot’s laptop.
Have you heard from Trina yet? Laura wanted to know.
Which is when Addy realized she’d been so focused on her own mistakes that she’d missed the obvious concern of Trina not sending any follow-ups of what she’d found, if anything. It was Wednesday morning. She’d assumed they’d hear from Trina sometime last night.
No, she replied.
I’m worried, Laura wrote back.
Addy called Trina’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. She tried again, but nothing. She knew where Trina lived, and over the group text she offered to go over to Trina’s apartment and check on her. Laura didn’t protest, just responded with an Ok.
I’ll let you know what I find out, Addy wrote back. Trina didn’t live far from the university, and Addy decided she could walk there. The cold air would help clear her head.
Addy met Dermot at one of those graduate student dinners celebrating someone’s birthday where everyone only pays for their own meal and the poor waitstaff are forced to make twenty separate checks for ten or twelve dollars each. Addy went with her friend Gina, who knew the English program grad student whose birthday it was. Gina’s friend was studying Hemingway’s letters and had spent most of the evening being just drunk enough to wax poetic on why Ernie was a genius and Virginia Woolf was a hack, but not drunk enough to offer to buy a round for everyone. Addy thought he was a douchebag, and she’d excused herself to go to the bathroom, instead heading to the bar to hopefully soften some of her irritation before having to go back.
She’d ordered a whiskey neat, and as she waited for her drink a handsome guy with dark hair and the healthy kind of glow you get from spending a lot of time outdoors sat down on the stool next to hers.
“Anyone who reads Hemingway is just trying to prove how deep they are,” he said.
Addy smiled. “People who point that out are just trying to prove how smart they are.”
“Fair point,” he replied, smiling back. The bartender brought Addy her drink, which she slung back in one deep pull.
“I’m Dermot. Can I get you a drink?”
Addy glanced back at the table, where the birthday boy was now waving a glass around and talking about Keats.
“Yes, please,” she’d said. She’d gone home with him that night, and the sex had been intense. Addy hadn’t slept with anyone since she was an undergraduate and being with Dermot and having him touch her in such an expert way made her feel alive more than she had for a long time.
The next morning, she left before Dermot woke up, leaving her number on a notepad by the bed in case he’d wanted to get in touch with her. And he had, but only to ask her to watch his apartment for him while he went away for the weekend.
She felt like it was some sort of sick joke he was playing, giving her a key to his apartment and a chance to poke around his things without him there, and at the same time rejecting her unspoken offer to be together again.
As she walked to Trina’s apartment, Addy passed by a convenience store on the corner, the R&S, and thought about stopping in to get something to bring with her. What do you bring when you’re going to someone’s apartment hoping they’ve found the evidence to clear them of a murder charge?
Cake? Entenmann’s?
She kept walking. Trina’s apartment was just another block down, in a building resembling a brick frown.
Addy didn’t pass anyone when she went up the stairs to Trina’s second-floor apartment. She called Trina when she got to her door, and the chimes of Trina’s phone were loud enough that Addy could hear them through the thin material of the walls. Addy knocked, banging on the door as hard as she could.
She realized Trina might be drunk, even though it was only 10am. It had been a rough time for Trina over the past year—Addy knew that.
Addy heard movement behind her, and a scrawny teenager with lanky hair and a face that seemed to wiggle too much stood in the hallway behind her.
“I have a key,” he said. “She helps my mom sometimes.”
