CHAPTER 17
I’m preparing the dough for apple dumplings when Coop finally makes his way to the kitchen. Bowls of ingredients line the counter in front of me. Flour and salt, baking powder and shortening, a bit of milk to mix them with. Coop leans against the doorframe, silently watching me combine the dry ingredients, then the shortening, then the milk. Soon a large ball of dough sits on the countertop, malleable and glistening. I form a fist and give the dough several rough punches, mashing it into an uneven heap.
“Gets the air out,” I say.
“I see,” Coop says.
I continue to punch, the dough bulging beneath my knuckles. It’s only after I feel the smack of countertop beneath it that I stop and wipe my hands.
“Where’s Sam?”
“She went to lie down, I think,” Coop says. “Are you okay?”
I offer a smile stretched as tight as a rubber band on the cusp of snapping apart. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Really, I am.”
“I’m sorry we don’t know more about who killed Lisa yet. I know this is hard to deal with.”
“It is,” I say. “But I’ll be fine.”
The mounds of Coop’s shoulders droop, deflating, as if I’ve also punched the extra air out of him. I grab a handful of flour and sprinkle it across the countertop. Then I slap the dough onto it, sending up tiny puffs of white. Rolling pin in hand, I flatten the dough in long, hard strokes. The muscles in my arms tighten with each push.
“Will you put that down and talk to me, Quincy?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I say. “Hopefully, they’ll somehow catch whoever did this to Lisa and everything will go back to normal. Until then, I trust you’ll do your best to keep me safe.”
“That’s my plan.”
Coop chucks my chin, just like my father used to do. It was a common gesture when we baked together and I invariably messed something up. Spilling a tide of flour over the rim of a bowl or cracking an egg so poorly that fine bits of shell swam in the yolk. I’d get upset and he’d squeeze my chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it and thereby steadying me. Even though it’s now Coop doing the steadying, the effect is the same.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “Truly. I know I can be a handful. Especially on a day like today.”
Coop starts to say something. I hear the pop of tongue on teeth as he opens his mouth, the word just starting to form. But then the front door opens and Jeff’s voice fills the apartment.
“Quinn? You here?”
“In the kitchen.”
Although Jeff is surprised by Coop’s presence, he does a good job of hiding it. I notice only a slight double-take. It lasts barely a second before he comprehends the situation and realizes Coop is here for the same reason he’s come home in the middle of the afternoon with a box of wine and two bags of takeout from my favorite Thai place.
“I left work as soon as I heard the news,” he says as he deposits them in the fridge. “I tried to call but your phone went straight to voicemail.”
That’s because my phone has been turned off the whole time I’ve been home. By now the texts, emails and missed calls are probably stacked so high I’ll never be able to sort through them.
His hands now free, Jeff pulls me into a hug. “How are you doing?”
“She’s fine,” Coop says dryly.
Jeff nods at him—the first overt acknowledgment that he’s even in the room. He turns to me. “Are you?”
“I’m surprised,” I say. “And upset. And angry.”
“Of course you are. It’s shocking news. Poor Lisa. They know who did it, right?”
I shake my head. “They don’t know who or why. All they know is how.”
Jeff, refusing to let me go, turns to Coop again. My head remains against his chest, turning involuntarily with him. “I’m glad you were here with them, Franklin. I’m sure it was a big comfort to Quinn and Sam.”
“I only wish I could do more,” Coop says.
“You’ve already done so much,” Jeff says. “Quinn is lucky to have you in her life.”
“And you,” I tell Jeff. “I’m so lucky to have you.”
I press myself deeper into Jeff’s chest, his tie slick on my cheek. He mistakes it for distress, which I suppose it is, and holds me tighter. I let myself be held, turning inward, Jeff’s body edging across my field of vision, eclipsing the image of Coop staring at me from across the kitchen.
Later, Jeff and I watch another film noir in bed. Leave Her to Heaven, with Gene Tierney as an obsessive, murderous bride. So beautiful. So damaged. When the movie is over, we watch the 11 o’clock news until a story about Jeff’s case comes on. The police union held a press conference with the dead cop’s widow, urging stiffer penalties for those convicted of crimes against officers. Before Jeff can grab the remote and switch off the TV, I get a split-second glance of the widow’s face. It’s pale, deeply creased, smudged with sorrow.
“I wanted to see that,” I say.
“I thought you’d want a break from bad news.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Just like Sam’s fine. And Coop’s fine.”
Coop left minutes after Jeff arrived, mumbling excuses about the long drive back to Pennsylvania. A clearly subdued Sam spent most of dinner trying to avoid the need to speak. And I remained mad, despite the Xanax and the baking and probably half the box of wine. I still am, hours later. It’s an irrational, all-encompassing anger. I’m mad at everything and nothing. I’m mad at life.
“I know this is hard on you.”
“You don’t have any idea,” I say.
That’s more than anger talking. It’s the stone-cold truth. Jeff doesn’t know what it’s like to have one of only two people just like you snatched from this earth. He doesn’t know how sad and scary and confusing that feels.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I don’t. I never will. But I do understand that you’re angry.”
“I’m not,” I lie.
“You are.” Jeff pauses. I tense up, knowing he’s about to say something I don’t want to hear. “And since you’re already mad, I might as well tell you that I have to go back to Chicago again.”
“When?”
“Saturday.”
“But you were just there.”
“The timing sucks, I know,” Jeff says. “But a new character witness has come forward.”
I look at the television’s blank screen, still picturing the face of that cop’s widow.
“Oh,” I say.
“The guy’s cousin,” Jeff continues, even though I have no desire to hear about his client’s character. “He’s a pastor. The two of them grew up together. Got baptized together. It could really help his defense.”
I flip onto my side and face the wall. “He killed a cop.”
“Allegedly,” Jeff says.
I think about Coop. What if he had been gunned down by this guy? Or what if Jeff’s client had murdered Lisa? Would I still have to pretend to be happy some niceties from a preacher cousin could reduce his sentence? No, I wouldn’t. Yet Jeff seems to expect exactly that.
“You do know that, in all likelihood, he’s guilty, right?” I say. “That he shot that detective just like everyone says he did.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not,” Jeff says, matching me in testiness. “It doesn’t matter what he’s been accused of. He deserves as good a defense as anyone else.”
“But do you think he did it?”
I sit up slightly, peering over my shoulder at Jeff. He’s still on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He blinks once, and I can see the truth in that swift flutter of his eyelids. He knows his client is guilty.
“It’s not like I’m some expensive criminal defense attorney,” he says, as if that makes it slightly better. “I’m not getting rich from defending obvious murderers. I’m upholding a cornerstone of the American justice system. Everyone has that right to a fair trial.”
“What if you were assigned to defend someone really bad?” I say as I flop back onto my side, unable to look at him.
“I’d have no choice.”
But he would. If his client was Stephen Leibman, he of the swinging knife, or Sack Man Calvin Whitmer, he’d have that choice to say no, that men like them don’t deserve defending.
Yet I know deep down Jeff wouldn’t make that choice. He’d choose to be on their side. To defend them. To help them.
Even Him.
“There’s always a choice,” I say.
Jeff says nothing. He simply stares at the ceiling until his eyes grow heavy and eventually close. Minutes later, he’s asleep.
For me, sleep is an impossibility. I’m still too angry. So I thrash under the covers in search of a comfortable position. If I’m being completely honest, there’s a part of me that’s just doing it to wake up Jeff. To make him as sleepless as I am. But he doesn’t wake as the clock moves from eleven to midnight, then midnight to one.
At quarter past the hour, I crawl out of bed, slip on some dirty clothes and tiptoe into the hallway. Light still peeks from under Sam’s door, so I knock.
“Come on in, Quinn,” she says.
I find her sitting cross-legged on the bed, reading an Asimov paperback bent at the spine. She’s changed her clothes, returning to the black jeans and Sex Pistols T-shirt of yesterday. When she looks up at me, I assume she can sense my anger. She certainly knows why I’m there.
Sam wordlessly leaves the bed and roots through her knapsack, removing a purse, of all things. It’s a Pleather monstrosity with short handles that can only be slipped to the elbows. Next out of the knapsack is a pile of paperback books, which Sam stuffs into the purse.
“Here,” she says, snapping it at me like a football.
I catch it, surprised by its heft. “What’s it for?”
“Bait.”
I say nothing. I simply follow Sam out of the room, the purse’s handles gripped in my sweaty palm as we slip out into the night.