“It’s enough, Anne Marie. Leave him alone,” Missy said.
“Suddenly you’re feeling bad?” Anne Marie challenged.
“Anne Marie, you’re a shit,” Missy added, hopping up from the beanbag and heading for the door. As she blew past Roddy, she crashed into him, sending him bumping into the wall. In the hallway, his siblings scattered.
“Does that—？ Can I have my Game Boy now?” shirtless Roddy asked.
Anne Marie rolled her eyes and with a flick of her wrist, chucked the Game Boy toward his feet.
“No . . . don’t . . . !”
It crashed in that way that electronics aren’t meant to crash, the screen shattering.
“I’ll kill you,” Roddy muttered, dropping his shirt and running toward her. “I mean it, I’ll—”
“No. You won’t.” Anne Marie shoved him hard in the chest, sending him tripping over a wastebasket and tumbling to the ground.
“Now get the hell out of my room.” She kicked his shirt like a soccer ball. “And take your wuss shirt with you.”
Down on his knees, Roddy picked up his Game Boy, which now wouldn’t turn on.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t fucking cry, he told himself, already failing miserably.
On this day, Roddy knew better than to fight back.
Soon enough, that would change.
23
Today
“A-Are you—？ You look . . .” Zig caught himself. Stopped. Started again, staring at his ex-wife. “Charmaine, is everything okay?”
“Ziggy, we should do this inside.”
He knew that tone. He knew all her tones.
She got married. That was Zig’s first thought. She wouldn’t take a half hour drive unless it was big. Zig was tempted to ask her right there, but knew it would look desperate. They used to speak a few times a year—some texts during birthdays, then by voice on the anniversary of Maggie’s death. That had stopped years ago, Charmaine saying it was “too much,” whatever that meant.
“Mr. Zigarowski, you want me to wait?” Roddy called out from his police cruiser.
Zig waved him off, shoving open the front door and motioning for Charmaine to enter first.
As she brushed past him, he got a better look at her. She looked good. She always looked good, with porcelain skin and pale green eyes the color of palm trees. More important, he took in her smell, a mix of lavender and worn leather. Instantly, a rush of endorphins lit his brain, the kaleidoscope starting to swirl with old memories, all out of order. Their last meal at Patton’s . . . an old Sting concert . . . the taste of her kiss . . . that night in the bathtub after her brother’s wedding . . . that night in their car when they were first dating . . . the red lights of an ambulance . . . Charmaine screaming in rage, screaming in loss, screaming in agony—
“You had a funeral today?” Charmaine said, though it wasn’t a question.
Zig looked down at his suit. It wasn’t his clothing that gave him away. It was the smell. Charmaine hated the stench of embalming fluid. Back at Mint’s funeral, he’d scrubbed thoroughly, dousing himself in cologne, but some things can’t be masked.
“It’s not— It was a Dover thing.”
“I thought you were done with Dover,” she countered, no judgment in her voice. “Never met a fallen soldier you didn’t want to help, huh?”
“This one’s different.”
She made a face, that one she always made when she didn’t want to get into it. “I take it this is your handiwork?” Charmaine said, setting her purse down on the antique tiger oak bench, complete with a lift seat that Zig had rebuilt from scratch. Next to it was an English pine coatrack made with five vintage railroad spikes that he’d personally pulled from the ground. “You’re getting fancy in your old age.”