Gone(3)

Just the word — a simple pronoun, them — filled Millard’s face with fear. Every muscle tensed. “Course it was them,” he rasped. “It’s always them.”

Rondeau nodded. He fingered a knot in the surface of the pine table, feeling guilty. The sun streamed in through the east windows. This place had always looked beautiful in the morning light. Now the sun only revealed the dirt on the floor and the grime caking the appliances. Two men living together made lousy housekeepers.

“Okay,” Rondeau said. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Some life returned to his brother-in-law, but he was still drawn in. Disappearing might have been his greatest fear — just vanishing into thin air at the hands of them. Just turn invisible. Be gone, never to return.

What do I know? Rondeau thought. Psychotherapy wasn’t his thing. That was Connie Leifson’s job, Millard’s therapist. “Okay,” he said again, “I think I’ll be able to get the criminal charges dropped . . .”

Millard finally looked okay again. They have people everywhere, he’d say, especially on the inside. That being abducted while in jail was nonsensical didn’t occur to Millard — one thing Rondeau knew from experience was that delusional people didn’t have delusions which were internally logical.

Of course, Millard could be afraid that they would kill him, even in prison, but Rondeau didn’t think so. His brother-in-law wasn’t afraid of death. It was that loss of freedom which made him paranoid. Being trapped. Locked away somewhere, alone. It was a phobia which had taken hold in the years before Jessica died, and had been exacerbated by her untimely departure.

“I’ll be able to get the criminal charges dropped,” Rondeau emphasized, “but you’re . . . we’ll likely face civil charges. That ‘drone’ was actually a quadcopter, not as sophisticated, but still pretty expensive. Totaled. And if this guy gets a slick lawyer, now we’re talking about loss of livelihood, all that sort of thing. They could say he lost a week’s worth of business. Could be a couple thousand dollars, maybe more. Who knows how much his clients pay him to take pictures . . . ?”

“Of my house!” Millard shouted. Not quite as enraged as before, but the anger still bubbling.

Rondeau raised his hands in a gesture of peace. Reasoning that the drone was probably just innocently passing over would be futile. “I know. I know, Mill. Of your house.”

Millard slumped in his chair. Rondeau continued to poke at the knot, stealing glances of his brother-in-law while he did. Despite all the trouble, he liked Millard. Always had. The family hadn’t done backflips when Jessica, their beautiful daughter from a well-to-do family married a transit cop from downstate. But all you had to do — at least back in those days — was meet Millard for about two seconds to understand why she had gone for him. Behind the outbursts of defensive anger was the man his sister had fallen in love with. The man who had been — and still was — a good man. The type of man who really would give you the shirt off his back. And he had.

Rondeau stood up. “What are you going to have for dinner tonight?”

Millard frowned. “Don’t know. I’ll put something on.”

Rondeau eyed the pantry — just a set of shelves that had once been pretty. All he saw was a couple tins of beans and a dusty old crockpot Jessica had used for casseroles. He headed out of the room, stopped in the doorway.

“You’re going to see Connie again, Mill. Alright?”

He legged it back down the hall, old boards groaning.

Millard called after him, “You wait, Jay,” his voice drifting away as Rondeau went out the door. “You wait. This isn’t the end. This is just the beginning.”

“You keep that gun up unless you’re after grouse,” Rondeau called back, and stepped out into the sunlight.





CHAPTER THREE / Polarization

Rondeau stopped at the college and slipped into the lecture hall. Connie Leifson was addressing a group of students. In addition to her private practice in New Brighton, she taught sociology. He stood at the back and listened as she finished her lecture.

“Alright, so what I want from you over the weekend, is this: I want two thousand words.”

The students groaned and rustled in the seats. Rondeau smiled. It had been a long time since he’d been in their shoes, but some things never changed. You came to school for an education, and then you resented the hell out of your teachers. Well, he had. Connie Leifson had probably loved it, he thought, catching himself considering her legs.

She settled the class down. “Two thousand words. Come on. Stephen King rips off two thousand words in an hour. You know what I want to hear from you: why are we so polarized as a society? Give me your take. What’s going on? People arguing about politics, global warming, government. Has it always been this way? Is Facebook to blame?”

The class laughed.

“Really,” she said. “Think about when you’re on social media, and people are in heated dispute with one another, and the attitude polarization is there, the tu quoques are there, and we’re calling one another, ‘idiots’ and ‘morons.’” Connie looked up at the clock. “Okay. That’s time.”

The students were like horses out of the gate. They immediately took out their phones and started playing with them. No one seemed to notice Rondeau. Connie was loading papers into her briefcase and looked up as he approached.