Chapter Fifteen

Brent lives on the opposite side of town, past the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store and the new community center that’s going up, past the newer area that’s been built up to accommodate for what Barrens counts as a population explosion. Ten years ago this was rural open countryside and now it’s all new construction, contemporaries slotted onto pancake-flat plots of land. The houses are bigger and upscale by Barrens standards: two-story, generous lawns, U-shape driveways.

Brent opens the door almost immediately. Even in slippers and jeans, he looks put together, well rested, and not hungover at all. He’s standing there as if the doorbell has summoned him out of some J.Crew catalog.

“Hey, Abby. You survived.” He grins at me, but not quickly enough—for a split second, I thought I saw him wince. I think again of the body in the water…a nightmare. Has to be. Surely, if anything bad had happened, if something awful went wrong at the party, there would be signs of it—chaos, tension, maybe even police.

Unless I’m the only one who knows.

“What happened last night?” I ask him. My voice sounds distant, as if it’s coming from someone else’s throat.

“What didn’t happen?” He leans the door open a little wider. “I think I’m off vodka for the rest of my life. Come on in.”

His ease, his flirtation, the way his eyes sparkle: all of it confuses me. His hallway is clean. Light-filled. Running shoes laced neatly by the door, a key dangling from a peg on the wall, beneath framed photographs of Brent at various stages of his life: Brent trout fishing with his dad, Brent suited up in his football uniform giving a thumbs-up to the camera, Brent getting head-knuckled by a curly-haired guy dressed in a flashy suit against a backdrop of cornfields.

“I don’t remember getting home,” I say. I meant to ask straight away about Misha, but fear closes my throat. Brent speaks before I can.

“Really? You weren’t even weaving.” He glances over his shoulder to smile—a slay-them-where-they-stand look I remember from high school, though then it was never directed at me. “Erickson drove us both. He’s on the wagon. I asked you if you wanted help getting inside but you seemed to know what you were doing.”

It’s a small relief. I hate the idea of Brent seeing all my clothes disemboweled from my suitcase, my mess in the kitchen, the unmade bed. That amount of vulnerability is just too much to bear.

“This way.” Brent gestures for me to follow him. I take in the muted colors of his house, the orderly lines and the faint medicinal smell of the air conditioner. It’s a grown-up house, nicer even than my condo in Chicago, which looks clean only by virtue of having hardly anything in it. “Misha’s in the back.”

“Misha…?”

“Yeah. It was a rough night. We were taking care of Annie until four in the morning. So Misha needed to crash.” Seeing my look of confusion, he adds, “Annie nearly got herself drowned last night. Don’t you remember?”

“Things are pretty fuzzy.” An understatement.

Brent’s whole face darkens. He’s almost never so serious, and for a split second, he looks like a different person. “She got it into her head to go swimming. But she was too drunk to make it back to shore. Misha was a hero. She charged straight into the reservoir.”

Annie. Misha. The girl screaming for help. Relief washes over me. I was all wrong—Misha was trying to help Annie, not hurt her.

“Annie needs to quit drinking. But we’ve tried to tell her a thousand times…”

Brent waves me out onto the screened-in patio. There, sitting on the couch in a robe that’s hanging off her shoulder, is Misha Jennings.

“Abby. Hi.” She looks tired, and while she recovers quickly, she seems momentarily annoyed to see me. “How are you hanging in?”

“Better than Annie,” I say.

She sighs. “Brent just drove her home.” Despite the fact that it must be nearly six, she’s wearing a bathrobe, and there’s a towel turbaning her hair. She must know what I’m thinking—Misha and Brent, here together, and both with wet hair—because she unconsciously cinches the bathrobe tighter. “I finally took a shower. I actually feel human again.”

“Take a seat.” Brent doesn’t sit, though, even when I perch awkwardly on one of the armchairs, wishing almost immediately I hadn’t. “You want a soda or something? I’d offer you a drink but if I ever touch alcohol again, shoot me.”

“A tranquilizer, if you have one,” I say. Brent laughs first. Then Misha joins in. I quickly add, “I’m joking.”

“I hope we didn’t scare you away for good.” Misha leans forward and puts a hand on my knee. I clock right away that two of her nails are broken. “I’m glad you came last night. Did you have fun?”

“From what I can remember,” I say carefully, but I don’t know why I still feel uneasy. “I heard your husband is worried because you didn’t go home last night.”

Misha’s eyes flick to Brent. A wordless communication passes between them. I’m surprised that I feel a little jealous. Not of them, exactly, but of the easy intimacy, the way they’re playing house. Like Joe spending a lazy Saturday morning with Raj. It seems as if everyone but me can trip and fall into comfortable relationships.

For the first time it occurs to me that maybe Barrens isn’t rotten. Maybe the problem is me. Maybe the problem has been me all along.

“Peter and I had a fight and, well…I wasn’t exactly sober,” she says carefully. “Brent was nice enough to offer up his couch.” She emphasizes the last word very slightly. “Me and Peter fight like rabid dogs sometimes. It’s probably my fault…”

“It’s not your fault,” Brent says quietly. He takes a seat and puts a hand on her leg. That bothers me; I’m ashamed to feel so little sympathy for her. She looks upset—and much younger without any makeup—but I still feel like she’s faking.

“You must think I’m a mess,” Misha says. I’m not sure whether she’s speaking to me or to Brent, but he gives her knee another squeeze.

Then Brent turns back to me. “I told her not to marry Peter,” he says. He keeps a hand on her knee. “She never listens.”

Misha inhales a laugh. But when I look again, she’s swiping a tear with the back of her hand. “Lies,” she says, half laughing, half crying. “I always listen to you.”

Suddenly I know what’s bothering me about their pose: I’ve seen it before. Senior year, I stumbled on Misha and Brent sitting together in a knot of woods behind the administration building where I went to eat my lunch sometimes, rather than brave the cafeteria. The Dell, people called it—the smokers went there to get high between classes, and someone had even set up an old table and chair between the felled logs to serve as furniture. But at noon it was usually deserted.

Not that day, though. As I crashed through the underbrush I remember seeing Brent and Misha just that way. He had his hand on her knee. She looked as if she was about to cry. But when she spotted me, her expression transformed in an instant into one of slick hatred.

Are you spying on us, pervert? she spat out.

Leave her alone, Misha, Brent said. And then: She didn’t hear anything.

Only now does it occur to me it was a funny thing to say.

“Sorry,” Misha says. Once again, something has changed—an invisible current, a communication between them I haven’t heard. “God, I can’t imagine what you think of us. You must be dying to go back to Chicago.”

“I’m just glad everyone’s okay. Last night, I thought—” I break off. I can’t understand why I was so scared. Then I realize Brent and Misha are watching me, waiting for me to continue. “I just—I don’t usually get that drunk. It’s not like me. When I woke up and realized I had taken your shoes…”

This, finally, gets a smile out of her. “Oh, thank goodness,” she says. “We must have swapped. I thought I lost them when I went in after Annie.”

“Are you okay?” Brent squints at me. “You want a water or something?”

“No. I’m fine.” But I stand up too quickly and a head rush darkens my vision.

“Actually, I will take the water. Don’t get up,” I say, when he starts to stand. “I can get it.”

In the kitchen, I wash my hands, using up the last of Brent’s hand soap. I count my breaths, listening to the murmur of conversation from the other room. But their words are too muted to make out.

Here, too, everything is clean, pristine, almost unused. Brent has installed a water purifier to the tap, but his sink is perfectly dry and I wonder whether he’s ever run it. Curious, I ease open the refrigerator: the upper two shelves are crammed with pallets of bottled water.

“Leftovers from a corporate picnic last week. You should see all the Sprite I got stacked in my garage.”

I spin around at the sound of his voice, closing the refrigerator door; I hadn’t realized he had followed me into the kitchen. But if he notices my discomfort, he doesn’t appear to.

“If you want ice, it’s in the door,” he offers brightly.

“Just water’s fine,” I say.

He crosses to the cupboard, takes down two glasses, and fills them from the tap. He downs his and watches me carefully as I drink, as if my reaction will bring a final and definitive end to our investigation. The water tastes fine.

Brent’s refrigerator door is cluttered with magnets, and before we leave the kitchen, I notice that one of them bears Aaron Pulaski’s name. He sees me looking at it.

“Local guy,” he says. “Or as local as he can be. He comes from over in Hanover. I did some work on his campaign.” He says it casually enough, but I’m sure I’m not imagining the new tension in the way he’s standing. “I thought he’d do some good for the district. Turns out he’s just as incompetent as the rest of the pack.” He shrugs. “Oh, well. We all make mistakes, right?”

“We sure do,” I say. When he turns his back to me, I slip the magnet into my pocket. Weak spots.