Later(11)

“As fast as you can, then.”

“Roger that, Tee-Tee.” I never liked her calling Mom that, it’s what some kids in my class called having to go to the bathroom, but Mom didn’t seem to mind. On that day she wouldn’t have cared if Liz called her Bonnie Boobsalot. Probably wouldn’t even have noticed.

“Some people can keep secrets and some people can’t,” I said. I couldn’t help myself. So I guess I was mad.

“Stop it,” my mother said. “I can’t afford to have you sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” I said sulkily.

I knew she and Liz were tight, but she and I were supposed to be even tighter. She could have at least asked me what I thought about the idea before spilling our greatest secret some night when she and Liz were in bed after climbing what Regis Thomas called “the ladder of passion.”

“I can see you’re upset, and you can be pissed off at me later, but right now I need you, kiddo.” It was like she had forgotten Liz was there, but I could see Liz’s eyes in the rearview mirror and knew she was listening to every word.

“Okay.” She was scaring me a little. “Chill, Mom.”

She ran her hand through her hair and gave her bangs a yank for good measure. “This is so unfair. Everything that’s happened to us…that’s still happening…is so fucking fucked up!” She ruffled my hair. “You didn’t hear that.”

“Yes I did,” I said. Because I was still mad, but she was right. Remember what I said about being in a Dickens novel, only with swears? You know why people read books like that? Because they’re so happy that fucked-up shit isn’t happening to them.

“I’ve been juggling bills for two years now and never dropped a single one. Sometimes I had to let the little ones go to pay the big ones, sometimes I let the big ones go to pay a bunch of little ones, but the lights stayed on and we never missed a meal. Right?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I said, thinking it might raise a smile. It didn’t.

“But now…” She gave her bangs another yank, leaving them all clumpy. “Now half a dozen things have come due at once, with goddam Infernal Revenue leading the pack. I’m drowning in a sea of red ink and I was expecting Regis to save me. Then the son of a bitch dies! At the age of fifty-nine! Who dies at fifty-nine if they’re not a hundred pounds overweight or using drugs?”

“People with cancer?” I said.

Mom gave a watery snort and yanked her poor bangs.

“Easy, Tee,” Liz murmured. She laid her palm against the side of Mom’s neck, but I don’t think Mom felt it.

“The book could save us. The book, the whole book, and nothing but the book.” She gave a wild laugh that scared me even more. “I know he only had a couple of chapters done, but nobody else knows it, because he didn’t talk to anybody but my brother before Harry got sick and now me. He didn’t outline or keep notes, Jamie, because he said it straitjacketed the creative process. Also because he didn’t have to. He always knew where he was going.”

She took my wrist again and squeezed so hard she left bruises. I saw them later that night.

“He still might know.”





10


We did the drive-thru at the Tarrytown Burger King, and I got a Whopper, as promised. Also a chocolate shake. Mom didn’t want to stop, but Liz insisted. “He’s a growing boy, Tee. He needs chow even if you don’t.”

I liked her for that, and there were other things I liked her for, but there were also things I didn’t like. Big things. I’ll get to that, I’ll have to, but for now let’s just say my feelings about Elizabeth Dutton, Detective 2nd Grade, NYPD, were complicated.

She said one other thing before we got to Croton-on-Hudson, and I need to mention it. She was just making conversation, but it turned out to be important later (I know, that word again). Liz said Thumper had finally killed someone.

The man who called himself Thumper had been on the local news every now and then over the last few years, especially on NY1, which Mom watched most nights while she was making supper (and sometimes while we were eating, if it had been an interesting news day). Thumper’s “reign of terror”—thanks, NY1—had actually been going on even before I was born, and he was sort of an urban legend. You know, like Slender Man or The Hook, only with explosives.

“Who?” I said. “Who did he kill?”

“How long until we get there?” Mom asked. She had no interest in Thumper; she had her own fish to fry.

“A guy who made the mistake of trying to use one of Manhattan’s few remaining phone booths,” Liz said, ignoring my mother. “Bomb Squad thinks it went off the second he lifted the receiver. Two sticks of dynamite—”

“Do we have to talk about this?” Mom asked. “And why is every goddam light red?”

“Two sticks of dynamite taped under the little ledge where people can put their change,” Liz went on, undeterred. “Thumper’s a resourceful SOB, got to give him that. They’re going to crank up another task force—this will be the third since 1996—and I’m going to try for it. I was on the last one, so I’ve got a shot, and I can use the OT.”

“Light’s green,” Mom said. “Go.”