Chapter Twenty
Maria
I’m in Missoula for less than a day.
Just long enough to lie to the US Attorney. Just long enough to muddy the waters on the investigation. Just long enough to do my part to make sure that Ozzy and Preacher get away. Just long enough to further betray the principles I built my life and career on.
I’m the only witness to the crime. Ozzy and Preacher got away without anyone seeing them, and by the time the police realized there were other shooters on the loose, the two of them were long gone.
I fly back to Chicago the next morning, David’s final statement still securely in my bag. I don’t bother calling in to the office to tell them I wont be in for a day or two. If they can’t figure that shit out on their own, then it’s not a place I want to work for any longer.
I shut the door to my apartment.
The solid wood of my door against my back is the most comforting bit of reality I’ve felt in too long. I stay there for a while, pulling air into shaky lungs and thinking about the enormous distance that I’ve fallen.
Days ago, I was confident. Days ago, life seemed so simple. Days ago, I had a career path and a solid idea of who the fuck I was.
What the hell do I have now?
I make lunch out of a bottle of Jack Daniels.
Halfway through the bottle, I realize how damn quiet my apartment is. No amount of television or spotify does enough to quell the fact that my thoughts are screaming at me in my head.
I killed someone. I compromised myself for a killer. And now I’m alone with the pieces.
I call Roxanna.
More than anything right now, I need a friendly voice. Someone to talk to, someone to tell the truth to, someone to hear the truth from.
I get one ring in and hang up.
What can I tell her? That I thought about selling her out? That I’m that fucking selfish that I’d even consider putting a paycheck and a promotion over my family?
I don’t have the guts to tell her the truth. I don’t have the guts to own up to my shame.
I stare at my phone, insides a fucked-up, scrabbled rubix cube of a mess.
Instinctively, I start to dial Ozzy. It’s habit. He’s always been someone I can talk to before this. Someone I can count on. Someone I care about. Someone that can bring a smile to my face at the end of a long day when I’m feeling like shit, when I’m wondering if this long, lonely climb up the career ladder is worth it. I’m nearly to pressing the ‘Call’ button when I realize the futility of it.
Every single person in my life I’ve either betrayed or come close to betraying. The people I need the most, the people I’d call in this situation — my friends, my family, Roxanna, Ozzy, Bear — I can’t talk to.
I’m alone.
* * * * *
I get up the next morning, hung over, and decide I need to go in to work.
I can’t stay at home anymore and hope to stay sane. I need something to occupy myself other than drinking. I need people around me, even if they’re not the people that I exactly want to have around me.
My morning routine takes over — some light exercising followed by a long, hot shower, breakfast, and a cup of coffee. It feels good to just let my body go through the mindless motions. To do these things that feel normal and grounded in a time when things made sense.
I’m still shaken, still broken, but there is something wholly therapeutic about putting myself together for work. Something welcome about looking myself in the mirror, dressed, confident, self-assured.
When I step through the doors of my firm’s office building and it seems like it’s going to be just a normal day, where few people acknowledge my existence, and the ones that do acknowledge me keep their expressions of sympathy and concern to a professional level — because this is a professional firm — it’s comforting.
I might not be ok, and normalcy might be a long way away, but it doesn’t feel unattainable.
I sit at my desk. Work is all around me. Calling me to focus on something other than my life. These are things that I can lose myself in and, not a single one of these papers and files and reports mentions the wrenching calamity of what went down in Missoula.
With the door to my office shut, I get to work.
It’s calming.
Peace lasts for an hour. It’s interrupted by a knock at my door and the welcome banshee-like voice of Janet. I even manage to smile at her when she comes inside.
“Hey, sorry to just come in like this,” she says. There’s some cellophane-wrapped basket in her hands. “Something came for you just after you left. I’ve been holding on to it, but thought that now might be a good time to give it to you, what with, well, you know…”
She sets it down on my desk.
“Thank you, Janet” I say.
She smiles at me and pauses in the doorway. “If you want to get coffee or something later, just let me know. I’m here for you.”
I nod, murmur ‘thanks’ again, knowing that I will never take her up on her offer because there really isn’t anyone I can talk to. I wait until she leaves before I look at the basket. The door shuts and I open up the cellophane, tossing the crinkly sheets to the floor.
It’s filled with candy and snacks, treats that I’ve never heard of and, frankly, am surprised even exist because they just seem so damn strange: peanut slabs, chocolate fish, jaffas, hokey pokey squiggles, and something with the very unappealing name of ‘pineapple lumps’. There’s a bottle of wine from some vineyard in a town that has too many vowels in its name. And a pair of rugby tickets for a game tomorrow night. A game here, in Chicago.
There’s a note, too. Short, simple, sweet, written in Ozzy’s unmistakable scrawl. I hardly get through the first word ‘dear’ before I have to put it away.
I throw the note in a desk drawer and slam it shut.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I pull my phone out and try calling him. I need to hear his voice. If I’ve really lost him because of the secrets I kept and the way I spoke to him, at the very least I want to tell him I’m sorry for how it all ended.
There’s no answer; it’s all the answer I need.
My heart sinks in my chest.
I get up from my chair, leaving Ozzy’s gifts on my desk. I can’t be here right now. I can’t do my job with everything I’ve done weighing on my conscience. I’ve killed someone, I’ve lied to everyone I know, and I’ve broken every principle I believed in.
Without saying a word to Janet, I leave. I hail the first taxi I see, give him my address, and settle silently into the back seat.
The only thing on my mind is leaving.
I need to leave this all behind. I need to find somewhere I can start over new, without the reminders of everything and everyone I’ve failed.
* * * * *
By the time I get out of the cab, I have this half-formed plan in my head. I have the kind of resume that I should be able to walk into most any firm in the country and get offered some sort of job, even though odds are good it’ll probably be near entry level.
It’ll hurt being on the bottom rung again — hell, it stings just thinking about it — but I have to start over somewhere. I can’t do my job effectively at Meagher, Thatcher & Watkins anymore. I can’t look my coworkers in the eye and lie to them about everything that happened in Missoula.
They’re good people. They’ll understand me resigning and wanting to get a fresh start. I’m sure that more than a couple of them will even write me a recommendation.
My feet pound their way up the stairs to my third-floor apartment, my heels ringing out against the tile floor, my stride growing more resolute with each step.
I can do this.
I’m starting to feel normal again. I have a plan, a way to regain some purpose and to get on a track where I can rebuild the pride I’m so used to having in my career. I’ll serve my penance at the bottom of the ladder in some other firm — in some city other than Chicago — and find a new normal.
I’m so wrapped up in my head that I don’t see him until I nearly crash into him.
He’s there, right in front of my front door, pacing back and forth, hands clenched behind his back, cut on his shoulders.
He’s waiting for me.
Ozzy.