Chapter 8: The Call He Almost Didn't Take
Tyler stared at the phone.
It rang a second time.
Marissa, in the back seat, had seen the screen.
She said nothing.
The phone rang a third time.
"You don't have to," I said.
"I know," Tyler said.
It rang a fourth time.
He answered it.
He didn't put it on speaker.
He held it to his ear and looked straight through the windshield at the parking lot.
"Hello," he said.
I could hear a voice.
I couldn't make out words.
I watched Tyler's face.
His jaw was set.
His eyes didn't move from the middle distance.
He listened for a long time without speaking.
Then he said: "I heard you."
Another pause.
"No," he said.
"I don't think that's a good idea."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I'm not angry," Tyler said.
"I want you to understand that.
I'm not angry.
I just don't have anything for you."
The voice on the other end said something.
Tyler closed his eyes for just a moment.
"She raised me," he said.
"She worked nights.
She chose every carpet and every school and every birthday.
She was there.
You weren't.
That's not anger.
That's just what happened."
Silence from the phone.
"I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for," Tyler said.
"I genuinely do.
But it isn't here."
He ended the call.
He set the phone on the dashboard.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Marissa said, quietly, from the back seat: "Are you okay?"
Tyler thought about it.
Really thought about it, the way he had the night before when I had asked him what he felt.
"Yeah," he said.
"I actually am."
He started the car.
We drove back through the morning streets, past the coffee shop with the propped door, past the delivery trucks and the early commuters and the ordinary world that had kept moving through all of it.
When we got home, Tyler made coffee.
Marissa swept up the ceramic shards from the carpet — she found the dustpan herself, in the kitchen cupboard, without asking where it was.
I sat on the sofa and watched her do it.
She worked carefully.
She got the pieces near the fish tank.
She got the one that had slid under the coffee table.
When she was done, she carried the dustpan to the kitchen and came back and sat down across from me.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"All right," I said.
"When my mother first brought up the house — the first time, eight months ago — I told her to leave it alone.
I told her it wasn't our business." She looked at her hands.
"She kept bringing it up.
Different angles.
Different reasons.
And I started to let myself believe it.
That it was unfair.
That we deserved something.
That you had more than you needed and we had less than we deserved." She looked up.
"I let myself believe it because it was easier than admitting we just needed to work harder and wait."
I looked at her.
"The night of the dinner," she said, "when you said no — I felt something snap.
All those months of convincing myself, and you just said no, like it was simple.
Like we had no right to even ask.
And I—" She stopped.
"There's no excuse.
I know that."
"No," I said.
"There isn't."
"I'm going to face whatever comes from last night," she said.
"Whatever Gerald's recording means legally.
Whatever you decide to include in your statement."
"I've already given my statement," I said.
"I told them what happened.
Accurately."
Marissa nodded.
"I also told them," I said, "that you went to Gerald's office voluntarily the same night.
That you surrendered the phone and gave a full statement without being asked.
Gerald will make sure that's in the record."
Marissa looked at me.
Her eyes filled.
She pressed her lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"Why?" she said.
"After what I did."
"Because it's true," I said.
"And because Tyler loves you.
And because I have watched enough people make one terrible mistake and let it define them forever.
I don't want that for you."
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Tyler came in from the kitchen with three mugs.
He set them on the coffee table.
He looked at Marissa's face, and then at mine, and he didn't ask what we had been talking about.
He sat down.
We drank our coffee.
Outside, the morning continued.
Somewhere in the city, Marcus Whitmore was calling lawyers.
Somewhere, Raymond Okafor was sitting across from investigators with a folder of his own mistakes in front of him.
Somewhere, Sandra Briggs was learning what it cost to let someone use a small access for a large wrong.
And somewhere, Paul Hale was driving away from something again, the way he always had, the way he always would.
But here, in this room, in the ordinary morning light, the three of us sat with our coffee and the clean carpet and the fish moving slowly in their tank.
Tyler reached over and put his hand over mine.
May you like
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
