Page 19 of Thicker Than Water
“Have you eaten?” I ask. “I could order takeout.”
“I’m fine. I found a frozen pizza.”
“Found it, huh?” I try for levity. “IthoughtI’d lost a pizza.”
When he doesn’t respond, I walk to the dresser, on top of which is a small black box where Jason keeps his tie clips and cuff links. I would have thought Aiden knew about that. As a little kid, he used to watch us dress for date nights, deeming himself afancy manas he clumsily pinned Jason’s clips into his hair.
Longing pumps through my chest as I pick out a pair of cuff links. I return to Aiden, and when he holds out his palm to receive them, I cradle the back of his hand. For a moment, he does not draw away.
“Thanks,” he mutters. Then he spins toward the door and leaves.
He’s angry with me, but I don’t regret my lie. For a long time, I’ve known it’s best to keep trouble clamped between my lips, to swallow it down, no matter how bitter.
My mother taught me that.
Even before the cancer that killed her, my mother’s skin was often tinged with gray. As a child, it made sense to me; clouds grew gray when they held in rain, so why wouldn’t my mother, whose bitterness brewed inside her like a storm, turn that color too? It didn’t take much to change her pallor—a commercial for a couples vacation, an extra shift she had to pick up to pay the bills—but every time, she’d look at me and grumble,Never trust a man, her skin as drab as ash.
But when she met Bob Sullivan, the color rushed back to mymother’s cheeks. I had just turned thirteen that month, the month of Bob, and for those four blissful weeks, I basked in my mother’s blushes like someone tilting their face to the sun. Bob was kind of boring, always recounting his days at the Honda dealership, but he brought flowers to my mother on Fridays, and finally, it seemed, she would be happy. Or at least less bitter. Less gray. For twenty-nine days straight—I counted—she never uttered her catchphrase, never so much as scoffed at a rom-com she caught me watching.
But then, as my mother made dinner for the three of us one night, I found Bob standing over her purse in her bedroom, saw him fold up a stack of twenties, saw him slip it into his pocket. Then he opened her wallet, pulled out her credit card, and stared at it for a long time, mouth moving in silence.
I rushed to my mother and told her what I’d witnessed. I expected her to flush with anger, to run to her room to confront Bob. I also expected a smidge of gratitude. Surely she’d want to know that the one man she’d gotten close to since my father was actually a thief; surely she’d appreciate the chance to not repeat her biggest regret: attaching herself to someone undeserving of her trust. And I was right; she was angry. But not at Bob.
“That’s ridiculous, he would never do that,” she spit out.
But that night, I heard my mother and Bob arguing, heard the front door slam, a car drive away. Then she tore into my room.
“I told him what you said,” she seethed. “And he says you’re delusional, that he makes more than enough money to ever have to steal from me. And now he’s gone. He said he wouldn’t take that kind of accusation, that clearly you’re not going to accept him into your life. Is that what this is? You weren’t content just to drive your father away, you have to take Bob from me too? You can’t just keep your mouth shut, can you? That’s why your father left us, you know. Because you wouldn’t stop screaming every night. You made usdelirious. So now this is two relationships you’ve fucked up for me. And here I am, alone again. You happy?”
No. I wasn’t.
I wished I’d kept quiet about Bob, who might have only been folding up his own money, or simply puzzling over her credit card, which had a different surname—my father’s—than the maiden name my mother had started using again. Maybe I’d misinterpreted the scene, been too quick to judge, to speak, and now I watched as my mother’s skin faded from the bright red of her anger back to a sheenless gray.
Later, she apologized for the worst of what she’d said—that it was my fault my father left—but over the years, her words remained in me, glass shards that cut me deeper each time my thoughts pressed against them. And when she scoffed at my news about marrying Jason, huffing out, “How well do you know this man?” I squeezed my lips together so I couldn’t speak the truth: that I wanted my mother’s support, not her bitterness; that her question didn’t sound like a warning, but an almost hopeful promise that I would end up as miserable as her.
“I know him really well,” I had answered her.
I take stock of our room, where Jason confessed what I still suspect was only part of the truth about the money. The dresser is a bit off, the lip of each drawer sticking out in a pout. There’s something wrong with the closet, too. It hangs open, a gap no thinner than a cell phone, but a change I’m acutely attuned to. I like tidy edges, neat lines; I’m always careful to keep things closed.
Jason’s nightstand. The closet. Every single drawer.
That’s a lot of places for Aiden to look for cuff links. What else was he searching for?
I retrace Aiden’s footsteps. I flick through hangers in the closet, shake out Jason’s shoes, shove past socks and pants and shirts in thedresser. I dig through the bulging hamper on my knees, tossing out my sweater from yesterday, the pants I wore Tuesday night, our first in the hospital. It’s only once I extract a pair of Jason’s own pants—the ones he wore Sunday, when we learned of Gavin’s murder; I know them by the crust of pizza sauce on the thigh—that I realize my search is no longer about Aiden.
I dig deeper into the hamper, clawing now for one particular outfit: the blazer, shirt, and pants Jason wore to the conference—memorable to me because I thought he looked especially handsome. The blazer, a pale blue one I’ve always loved, is nowhere to be found, but I weed out the salmon button-down and light gray slacks. Shaking them out, I notice something flutter from the pants, and I feel a spike of triumph.
Jason always does this, leaves the detritus of his day in his pockets, tissues or business cards that form stiff clumps in the dryer—and this time, he’s left a receipt. Jason’s credit cards couldn’t tell us where he went after the conference, but if he bought something afterward—a beer, maybe, or a snack—he could have used cash.
I snatch up the paper, then slump back as I read the details. The receipt isn’t from Friday night; it’s from that morning, a coffee before the conference—zero help. But ink bleeds through on the other side, and when I turn it over, I find an address—scrawled in Jason’s hurried handwriting.
I pull out my phone, attempting a reverse address search, but with only the house number and street name written on the receipt, I have to guess at the town. Nothing comes up for Willow Creek, where we live. I try Hillstead—where Integrity Plus is, where the conference was, where Jason crashed his car on Tuesday night—and there’s a hit this time:This address has 1 current resident.
I drop the receipt.
It’s the address for Gavin Reed.
Chapter SixSIENNA
