Chapter Fourteen: Ryder
I couldn’t get the girl next door out of my mind. God forgive me, but even as they were lowering Bethany’s casket into the ground, with Cody sitting quietly on my lap, and Emily and Hank sitting on either side of me, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl. Obsession, I guess you’d call it. Even though I had never really met her— hadn’t really even spoken to her—I was obsessed with her, to the point of not being able to think about anything else. Her beautiful tanned skin, her gorgeous face, her long blonde hair, her long legs, her large breasts, her dark nipples, the blonde curls between her legs… fuck, I thought I would die if I didn’t get her in my bed soon.
Emily cried softly through the entire service at the church and at the graveside. Hank was stoic, as always, the strong, silent type. His kids sat quietly next to him with their hands folded neatly in their laps, dumbfounded by it all. It was the first funeral they had ever attended and didn’t really understand what was happening. It was hard to explain the concept of death to a couple of six and seven year olds, so I didn’t even try. Hank and Emily could educate them later, when they felt the time was right.
Due to the extent of Bethany’s head injuries, I opted for the casket to be closed during the service. Okay, that wasn’t the only reason. I had seen the body before the public viewing. The funeral director had done the best he could with what was left. The truth was, I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting there with my son in my lap trying to explain to him why his mommy wouldn’t wake up and climb out of the shiny wooden box and come home.
Quinn was there, of course, the only person invited from my side of the relationship. It hit me that he was the only friend I had, other than my SEAL brothers and sisters who I rarely got to see. He sat behind me at the graveside and put his hand on my shoulder now and then just to let me know he was there.
The pastor from Emily and Hank’s church conducted the service. A fat little man with a splotchy sad face, he asked if there were any particular passage from the bible that he should read, any passages that had deep meaning for me and Bethany. I politely told him to choose because I wouldn’t know a bible passage if you tattooed it on my forehead and neither would Bethany. I did recall something about coveting thy neighbor’s wife, then I remembered that I had been fucking Bonita Anderson for weeks, so I let it go.
There were several people at the service I didn’t even know. Emily identified them as members of the church who were there to support her rather than to mourn for Emily. I glanced over my shoulder now and then, looking for a stranger who might be lurking among the gravestones watching his lover being lowered into the ground. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t watching.
If I was her lover I’d certainly be there… fuck… what a strange goddamn thought to have. Get hold of yourself, man, I thought. Bury your wife. Focus on your son. Mourn like a decent person is supposed to…
There was the kicker.
I was not a decent person. Not anymore.
I was the asshole sitting next to his dead wife’s grave who couldn’t stop thinking about fucking that girl in the pool…
* * *
Okay, I know what you’re thinking.
Don’t judge me. Not yet.
You must be thinking, what the fuck, dude? You’re a thirty-three-year-old man and she must be eighteen or nineteen at the most. You’re a grown-ass man and she’s still a child. What you’re thinking about doing would get you locked up in some states. Get the shit beaten out of you in others.
Don’t do this, Ryder.
You’re better than this.
You’re a goddamn United States Navy SEAL, man.
You’re a disciplined, moral, ethical, dedicated, honest, upright kind of guy.
Don’t take advantage of that poor girl.
And you’re right, for the most part. I was a grown-ass man and while I didn’t agree that she was a child (not with those tits), she was considerably younger than me. The point that was probably sticking in your craw (and in mine) was that it had been less than twenty-four hours since I buried my wife. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Bethany. I was so incredibly sad and sorry that she was gone. But Bethany had moved on months ago. She told me she was filing for divorce. She told me she didn’t love me anymore. The fact that she had another man’s baby inside her was proof that our marriage was over.
I wasn’t going to lock myself away and grieve for the rest of my life. That wouldn’t be fair to me or to Cody. He needed his daddy whole—a happy, smiling, caring, loving daddy dedicated to raising him right and making his life as good as it could be. And that’s what I intended to do. I was going to be happy—I was going to make myself happy—and as a result, make Cody happy. And at the moment, deep in my soul, I knew that nothing would make me happier than fucking the girl next door.
* * *
After Bethany’s funeral, Cody pitched a fit to go home with Hank and Emily and their boys. I had no idea how to handle a kid who was stomping his foot and turning red with anger in the middle of a cemetery, or any other place for that matter. What I knew about parenting wouldn’t fill a tin cup. I was wondering how Bethany would have handled it when Hank put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me aside.
He said, “Let us take him for the weekend. He’ll be with the boys. It’ll take his mind off things. Plus, you probably could use a little quiet time yourself. We’ll drop him off back at your house after church on Sunday.”
I started to protest, but then realized he was right. Cody had been spending a lot of time with Hank’s boys. They were his family now. And Hank had been more of a father to him than I’d ever been.
“Okay, Hank, thanks.” I shook his hand and watched him lead my son away. I felt a sharp pain in my chest, as if a hand had wrapped around my heart and was wringing all the blood out of it. Cody was smiling up at Hank, chattering away, all the tears and confusion long gone. I was jealous of their relationship. I had a long road ahead of me. Uncle Hank had some very big shoes to fill.
On the ride home, my cellphone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize. I hit the button on the steering wheel to put it on the speaker. “Hello, this is Ben Ryder.”
“Mr. Ryder, this is Lieutenant Mason with the Arlington PD. Sir, I just wanted to let you know that you can pick up the car anytime you like.”
I frowned at the digital display, as if the man was talking to me from inside the dash. “I’m sorry, the car?”
“Yes, sir, the car belonging to Mrs. Bethany Ryder. It’s registered in your name, sir. That’s how we tracked you down as next of kin because we couldn’t get Mrs. Ryder’s ID from the car until several hours after the paramedics were able to lift her out, so we called up the tag number in the DMV database to get the registration name and address. We tried calling you, but couldn’t reach you.”
“I was out of the country,” I said quietly.
“Yes, sir, we eventually figured that out. When we couldn’t reach you one of the nurses at the hospital was smart enough to check the hospital records to see if Mrs. Ryder had ever been admitted before. Turned out your son was born at St. Vincent’s, so we got your employment information from the insurance forms and I was able to contact your employer, Mr. Blackwell.”
I flexed my fingers around the steering wheel and tried to focus on the road as I listened. “I don’t understand. You say it took several hours to get the car back on the road?”
“Yes, sir, it went down a steep embankment and landed about fifty feet down off Old Post Road just outside of Fall’s Church. Paramedics had to repel down to get your wife out. It took a while to get a chain on the car to pull it out.”
“Jesus,” I sighed. “Were you the officer on the scene, Lieutenant?”
His voice went quiet. “One of them, yes sir.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not,” he said. I could hear him sighing over the phone. “She was in pretty bad shape. It’s my understanding that she never regained consciousness and passed an hour after arriving at the hospital. I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ryder.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Where is the car?”
“Well, sir, it was totaled, as you’d expect. Not drivable. It’s at the city tow yard. I can give you the number of a wrecker service who can tow it wherever you like. I would suggest that you personally remove any of Mrs. Ryder’s personal effects that may still be inside the vehicle.”
“Personal effects?”
“Yes, sir. Whatever is still in the car you might want to retrieve. I bagged her purse and gave it to the lot manager to hold for you. There was a car seat in the back, some kid’s toys, personal papers in the glovebox, that sort of thing.”
“Do you know if her phone was in the purse?” I asked.
“No sir, I don’t think it was. It might still be in the car somewhere.”
“Right, okay. I’ll take care of it, Lieutenant. I appreciate you calling.”
I hadn’t even thought about Bethany’s purse or her cellphone. I would go down Friday afternoon to have a look, then have the car towed to a scrap yard. I was too beat to do it today and it was already after five so the lot was probably closed anyway. I pressed the gas and headed home, my mind reeling. For a moment, I wondered if the car might hold any evidence as to the identity of the man Bethany was fucking. Did I really care? Did I really want to know? My macho bullshit ego aside, knowing who Bethany was fucking probably wouldn’t have impacted my life one iota, not in the way fucking the girl in the pool was going to.
* * *
When I woke up Friday morning I couldn’t get the girl next door off my mind. It was crazy, I know. Borderline obsessive, even. I had zoned in on girls in the past, when I was much younger, back before I was married, but nothing like this. I can even remember seeing a news report about a forty-something science teacher in Alabama running off with one of his fifteen-year-old students. I remembered thinking what I’d do to a guy like that if that was my little girl. But this was different. The girl next door was legally an adult. She had masturbated in front of me. I mean, she had to have known that I was up there watching, didn’t she? Yes. Of course, she did. Why else would she do what she had done the moment I peered through the curtain?
In the SEALs, we had to meet with the Navy shrink once a quarter just to make sure our heads were still screwed on straight. You had no idea what that life did to some guys. Some guys melted down while others were cold as ice. One guy, a private from Idaho named Bixby, started hearing voices a month after he arrived and blew his brains out in the middle of the mess hall one morning during breakfast. Most of us just kept eating our powdered eggs and pancakes while the medics scraped the poor fuck off the floor.
“You either thrive or dive,” Quinn always said whenever a young recruit would ask how he handled all the bad shit we saw and did on a daily basis. “And if you dive, brother you ain’t coming back up.”
The Navy shrink would have probably said that I was obsessing over the girl as a way of dealing with my anger and grief over Bethany’s death. That the filthy dreams I’d been having for the past couple of days were just my brain reconciling itself with the fact that Bethany was gone. I was focusing on the girl to deal with the stress and grief of my wife’s death.
What the fuck ever, doc.
All I knew was that it felt like my balls were going to explode if I didn’t fuck her soon.
I had to see her. Talk to her. Touch her.
Today. Now.
I got dressed, picked up my phone, and headed next door.