Envy

chapter 29

THE NEXT MORNING, HAYLEY FOUND THEIR FATHER in his office writing and drinking coffee, which, judging by the dark ring at the mug’s midpoint, she was sure was left over from the previous day. Kevin Ryan was on a don’t-disturb-I’m-in-the-homestretch-of-something-reallyreally-important work jag. It was Groundhog Day, and all indications were that this exact scene would be repeated until he was done.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

Kevin swiveled his office chair to face her. He hadn’t shaved for two days and he was of the age where stubble wasn’t cool, where it looked more bum than stud.

Not that thinking of her father in that way would ever cross Hayley’s mind.

“What up?” he asked.

Hayley hated when he talked like that, but this wasn’t the time for a coaching session on which colloquial phrases were really in and which were used only on beer commercials written by completely unhip advertising copywriters.

“Dad,” Hayley said, framing a lie, a small but necessary one, “I was reading about a case in Nebraska or Nevada about a woman who committed suicide because her husband said she was fat.”

“I haven’t seen that story,” he said, glancing over at his idled keyboard.

“I saw it online,” she went on. “The husband kept calling her names, leaving her bags of food with nasty notes.”

“He sounds like a pig,” he said.

“You don’t know the half of it. Well, I’ve been wondering about him. I mean, can he be held liable for it?”

“I don’t think so.” Kevin slid his computer glasses down the bridge of his nose. “He mostly has to live with himself for being an ass.”

“Isn’t it like someone yelling fire in a crowded theater? You know, and causing someone to get trampled to death?”

“Not really. I mean, even if she were unstable and fat and he merely taunted her, that wouldn’t mean he was responsible. After all, the woman in Nebraska or Nevada—”

“Maybe New Hampshire,” Hayley said, adding a shrug for good measure.

“Right. Whatever N state she was from, makes no difference. The woman was an adult and responsible for her actions.”

“But her husband urged her to kill herself.”

Kevin, smelling a crime story, seemed more interested just then. “How so?”

“He told her to do it. Bullied her. He left her notes and told her to do the world a favor and kill herself.”

“That’s different,” he said. “If she was vulnerable and he told her to do that … By the way, how did she kill herself?”

Hayley hadn’t thought that one through. If she’d really read the story online—if there had been a story online—it would have mentioned the cause of the heavy woman’s demise. For a split second she considered offering up something totally off the wall, like the dead woman ate a hundred waffles and died of a perforated stomach, but she refrained. She knew her dad would Google the case then.

Waffles + suicide. Hit search.

“She jumped off a roof.”

“Wow,” he said. “That’s hard core.”

“Yeah, she hit the pavement and splattered like a melon,” she said, adding a description that she knew he’d like.

“Watermelon?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Casaba.”

“Nice, Hayley.”

She hugged her dad before leaving him to do his work. She’d lied to him, but she’d made him smile too. She could tell that he loved the melon visual. She expected that he’d use that the next time he had the occasion to write about a jumper.

The body hit the asphalt and splattered like a melon … er … like a casaba.