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20

Del Flynn ’s mansion didn ’t have a sign reading “Tacky” on it because, really, it would have been redundant. The theme was white. Blindingly white. Interior and exterior. There were faux marble columns of white, nude statues in white, white brick, a white swimming pool, white couches against white carpets and white walls. The only splash of color was the orange in Del’s shirt.

“Del, honey, you coming to bed?”

His wife, Darya-Mrs. Del Flynn Number Three-was twenty years his junior. She wore tourniquet-tight white and had the biggest chest, ass, and lips money could buy. Yes, she didn’t look real, but that was how Del liked his women now-like curvy cartoons with exaggerated features and figures. To some it was freakish. To Del it was sexy as all get-out.

“Not yet.”

“You sure?”

Darya was wearing a white silk robe, and nothing else. His favorite. Del wished that the old stirring-his constant life companion, his curse, if you will, that had cost him his beloved Maria, Carlton’s mother, the only woman he ever loved-would return without the aid of a certain blue pill. But for the first time in his life, there was no need or desire.

“Go to bed, Darya.”

She disappeared-probably, he figured, relieved that she could just watch TV and pass out from whatever combo of wine and pills got her through the night. In the end all women were the same. Except for his Maria. Del sat back in the white leather chair. The white decor was Darya’s doing. She said it signified purity or harmony or a young aura-some New Age bullshit like that. When they first met, Darya had been wearing a white bikini and all he wanted to do was defile that, but he was really growing tired of the white. He missed color. He missed leaving his shoes on when he walked in the house. He missed the old dark green couch in the corner. An all-white house is impossible to maintain. An all-white house sets you up for failure.

Del stared out the window. He was not much of a drinker. His father, a first-generation Irish immigrant, had owned a small pub in Ventnor Heights. Del was practically raised in that place. When you see it up close every day, the destruction booze can cause, you got no taste for it.

But right now he sat with a bottle of his favorite, Macallan Single Malt, because he needed to be numb. Del had made a lot of money. He learned the restaurant business, the ins and outs, and realized that it was a pretty lousy way of making a dollar. So he went into restaurant supply-linens, plates, silverware, glasses, you name it. He had started small, but eventually he was the biggest supplier in southern New Jersey. He took that money and bought up property, mostly those private storage units on the outskirts of town, and made a mint.

It all meant nothing.

Sure, that was a cliche, but right now, all Del saw was Carlton. His boy. The disappearance sat on Del, consumed him, made it impossible to breathe. He looked out the window. The pool was covered for the winter, but he could see his son out there, swimming with his buddies, swearing too casually, flirting with whatever honey happened to look his way. True, his son-his only son-was soft. He spent too much time primping, too much time in the gym and waxing his body and plucking his eyebrows, as if that crap was manly. But when his son smiled at him, when his son hugged Del and kissed his cheek because that was what Carlton always did when he left for whatever club at night, Del’s chest filled with something so real, so wonderful and life affirming, that he knew, just knew, that he had been put on this planet to feel just that way.

And now, poof, his son, the only thing in his life that truly mattered, that was truly irreplaceable, was gone.

What was Del supposed to do? Sit back and wait? Trust the police to take care of his own offspring? Stick to the rules in a city that never played fair?

What kind of father does that?

You take care of your own. You protect your son, no matter what the cost.

It was midnight. Del fiddled with the gold chain around his neck, the Saint Anthony medal Maria had given him on their tenth wedding anniversary. Saint Anthony, she explained, was the patron saint of lost things. “Don’t ever lose us, okay?” she said, as she put it around his neck. Then she put one around Carlton’s neck too. “Don’t ever lose Carlton and me.”

Prophetic.

From the bedroom he could hear the television. Darya was watching on their new fifty-three-inch, 3-D screen with the surround sound. Here Del was-in this white home, sitting here in the lap of luxury-and he was powerless. He felt helpless and impotent and fat and comfortable while his boy was out in the cold and dark somewhere. Carlton could be alone somewhere. He could be trapped or crying or in tremendous pain. He could be bleeding or calling out to his father to save him.

When Carlton was four, he had been scared to go on the “big boy” slide at the playground. Del got on him about that, even going so far as to call him a baby. Nice, right? Carlton started to cry. That just pissed Del off even more. Finally, merely to please (or shut up) his old man, Carlton started climbing up the ladder. The ladder was too crowded, the kids jostling one another as they made their way up. Carlton, the smallest kid on the ladder, lost his balance. Del could still remember that moment, standing at a distance, his arms crossed as he watched his only son topple backward, knowing, even as he started to run toward him, that there was no way he was going to get there in time, that he, the boy’s father, had not only shamed his son and caused the fall but also that he was powerless to do anything to save him.

Little Carlton landed wrong, his arm snapping back like a bird’s wing. He screamed in pain. Del had never forgotten that moment. He had never forgotten that feeling of powerlessness or that horrible scream. Now that scream was back, haunting his every waking moment, shredding his insides like hot shrapnel.

Del took another sip of the Macallan. Behind him, someone cleared his throat. Normally Del was on the jumpy side, the kind of guy who leapt at the smallest sound. Maria used to comment about that. He was a light sleeper, his nights filled with bad dreams. Maria understood that. She would wrap her arms around him and whisper in his ear and calm him. No one did that now. Darya could sleep through a rock concert. Del just had to deal with his terrors alone now.

God, he had loved Maria.

He’d been so happy back then, living in that dilapidated house on Drexel Avenue, but the demons had called to him and Maria couldn’t understand it. When you stepped back and thought about it, the whole thing made no sense. You could be addicted to booze or drugs or gambling. You could lose your house, your health, your money. You could be belligerent and even abusive-but if the cause was, say, booze or pills or the ponies, the world understood your pain. Your true love stayed with you and got you help. But if your demon was sex, if you needed what Del needed, what every normal friggin’ man in the history of mankind eventually gave in to, if you do something that was built into man’s DNA, something that really harmed nobody in the way drinking or pills did, except through jealousy-then no one understands and you lose everything.

It was her fault, really. Maria’s. Raising that kid with no father figure in the house. Not being able to forgive or to understand what a man was like. He had loved her. How did she not get that?

“Good evening, Mr. Flynn.”

The voice chilled the room. Del Flynn slowly turned around. When Ken and Barbie smiled at him, the temperature dropped another ten degrees.

“Did you find my son?”

“Not yet, Mr. Flynn.”

They both just stood there, looking as though they’d just finished a song on the old Lawrence Welk Show or… what was that dumb holiday show his parents used to watch every year? The King family. What the hell ever happened to them? And why did seeing these two always make him think of the weirdest crap?

“So what do you want?”

“We have a dilemma, Mr. Flynn,” Ken said.

“A moral dilemma,” Barbie added.

Del knew people. You don’t live around here and work with restaurants and trucking and not meet people. One of his best friends growing up was Rolly Lember, who was now head of organized crime in the Camden area. Del had gone to him for help with finding his son. He knew that he was making a deal with the devil. He didn’t much care. Lember had told him that he’d have his people on the lookout, but Del would be better off hiring two expert freelancers-the best in the business. He warned him not to be too shocked by their appearances. Del also reached out to Goldberg, a cop well-known for providing inside information for a fee.

No, he was not about to leave this to the cops alone.

Del knew that earlier in the day Ken and Barbie had traced down a stripper Carlton had been banging. Her name was Tonya or Tawny or something like that. Earlier, the police had questioned the girl, but she gave them almost nothing. Ken and Barbie had been able to extract more information.

“Are you familiar with a town called Kasselton?” Ken asked.

Del thought about that. “It’s up north, right?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been there.”

“How about anybody with the last name Pierce? David or Megan Pierce?”

“No. Do they have something to do with my son?”

Ken and Barbie updated Del on their day. They didn’t go into details about how they went about gathering information, and Del didn’t ask. He just listened, feeling his heart break and harden at the same time.

Mostly harden.

“Do you think there’ll be some blowback?” Del asked.

Ken looked at Barbie, then to Del. “From Tawny? No. From Harry Sutton? Yes. But they won’t be able to trace it back to us.”

“Or you,” Barbie added.

Again Del didn’t ask for details. “So now what?”

“We normally follow the evidence,” Barbie said, in a voice that sounded almost rehearsed, as if she were suddenly playing someone much older. “In this case, that would mean questioning Mr. and Mrs. Pierce.”

Del said nothing.

“And,” Ken said, “that would mean leaving Atlantic City for Kasselton, thereby widening the circle.”

“And adding to the collateral damage,” Barbie added.

Del kept his eyes on the window. “So you’re here to get my approval?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think the Pierces know something?”

“I think the wife does, yes,” Ken said. “We know that Detective Broome met with her today. She chose to have a lawyer with her-that lawyer being Harry Sutton.”

“That means she had something to hide,” Barbie added.

Del thought about that, about his visit to the precinct. “Whatever this Megan Pierce told him-Broome acted on it. He had the crime techs at a park tonight. They found blood.”

Silence.

“Do the Pierces have children?” Del asked.

“Two.”

“Try to keep them out of it.”

It was, Del knew from personal experience, the most merciful thing he could do.

Megan ’s drive home took two hours.

Dave had recently put satellite radio in the car, so she tried to listen to Howard Stern for a while. One time, when she and Dave were alone in the car and listening, Howard had chatted up a stripper named Triple Es, and Megan nearly jumped out of her skin because she immediately recognized the voice as belonging to Susan Schwartz, a girl who worked La Creme back in the day. They had even been roommates for a time.

Oddly enough, Megan found Howard Stern to be his least interesting when the show was its most provocative. While far from a prude, Megan had found the more graphic bits-the dirty sex, the bodily functions, the freaks-tame but got totally immersed when Howard conducted celebrity interviews or commented on the news with Robin. Megan was always surprised at how often she agreed with him, how much sense he made-Howard could be a wonderful distraction/companion on long, lonely car rides-but tonight, after a few futile minutes, she flicked off the radio and let herself be alone with her thoughts.

What now?

It was nearly one A.M. when she reached her driveway. The house was entirely dark, except for the lamp on a timer in the living room. She hadn’t called Dave to say she was coming home. She wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t know what to say to him, how she would answer his obvious questions. She had hoped the two hours in the car would clarify that for her. But it hadn’t. She had considered everything from a total fabrication (“A friend-I can’t tell you who-had a personal problem”) to total truth (“You better sit down for this one”) to something in the middle (“I went to Atlantic City, but it’s no big deal”).

So as Megan parked in her driveway, as she dropped her keys in her purse and opened the car door and closed it quietly, because it was so late and she didn’t want to wake anyone, she still had no idea what she would say to the man she’d been married to for the past sixteen years.

The house was quiet-almost too quiet, as they say-as if the shiny new brick and stonework were somehow holding its collective breath. The stillness surprised her. Despite the late hour Megan figured that Dave would be up, waiting for her to return, maybe sitting in the dark, maybe pacing. But there was no sign of any life at all. She tiptoed up the stairs and turned right. Jordan’s door was open. She could hear him breathing. Like most eleven-year-olds, when Jordan finally fell asleep, he fell hard and deep and it would take an act of God to wake him up.

Jordan always kept his door open and still, at the age of eleven, used a night-light. Megan could see the mounted shark above his head. For some strange reason, Jordan loved fishing more than anything. Neither she nor Dave had ever fished-or remotely enjoyed fishing-but Dave’s brother-in-law had taken Jordan when he was four, and the kid just got the bug. For a little while, that brother-in-law took Dave on his local fishing excursions, but when he divorced Dave’s sister, that ended. So now at least twice a year, Dave arranged a boys’ fishing weekend (some might coin this “sexist,” since the females weren’t invited, but Megan and Kaylie preferred the word “grateful”), everything from fly-fishing in Wyoming to bass fishing in Alabama and last year, shark fishing off the coast of northern Georgia. That was where Jordon got that particular trophy mount.

As always, Kaylie’s bedroom door was shut. She had no fear of the dark, only invasion of privacy. Kaylie had recently been campaigning-there was no other word for it-to turn the finished basement into her new bedroom, ergo, placing her person as far away from the rest of the family as possible, and while Megan was holding firm on the no, Dave was caving. His usual justification for giving in sounded like a plea: “She’s going to be leaving us soon… we need to let go of the little things… with such little time left, do we really want so much strife?”

Megan risked turning her daughter’s knob and opened the door. Kaylie was in her usual sleep position, on her side with her stuffed penguin, cleverly named “Penguin,” snuggled in close. Kaylie had slept with Penguin since she was eight. It always made Megan smile. Teens may look like adults, may crave adult independence from Mom and Dad, but good ol’ Penguin was a constant reminder that there was plenty of parental work yet to be done.

It felt good to be home.

In the end, Megan had done nothing wrong. She gave Broome the important information he needed and returned to where she belonged, unscathed. As she padded through her home, Atlantic City was getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. The only thing that had thrown her slightly off her game was seeing Ray, with Lucy looming behind them. She had felt the ache all the way back-the same one she’d always had with Ray-but there were things you can do and things you can’t. The idea of “having it all” is indeed nonsense. Still, that desire, that electricity as though your whole being were suddenly revved up to the tenth power, that feeling that she wanted to be close to Ray and then even closer and then that’s not close enough… it, of course, still haunted her. Sure, she could try to deny it. She had and would again. But if you have that feeling, what do you do about it? It is there. Do you lie to yourself? Do you control it and forget it and move on? And was it a betrayal to admit that she didn’t feel that way with Dave-or was that normal with a man you’ve known so well? To be expected, perhaps even good?

She felt something deeper and richer with Dave, something driven by years and commitment, but maybe that was just fancy talk. That sort of electricity-had she ever felt it with her husband? Was it fair to even compare or think such things?

Were such thoughts alone a betrayal?

You don’t get to have it all. No one does.

She loved Dave. She wanted to spend her life with him. She would lay down her life for him and the kids without a moment of hesitation. Wasn’t that, in the end, the pure definition of true love? And when you took a step back, wasn’t she really just glamorizing her days in Atlantic City and her time with Ray? We all do that, don’t we? We either glamorize or demonize the past.

She approached her and Dave’s bedroom door. The lights were off. She wondered now whether Dave would be in there-or had he gone out? She hadn’t considered that before. He’d be upset. He had every right to be. Maybe he had run off. Maybe he’d gone out to a bar and drowned his sorrows.

But as she started inside, she knew that wouldn’t be the case. Dave wouldn’t leave his children alone, especially during a time of crisis. A fresh wave of guilt washed over her. She saw now the silhouette of her husband in the bed. His back was to her. Looking at his still form, she felt scared about his reaction, but there was relief too. She suddenly felt that it was truly over.

Seventeen years ago, Stewart Green had threatened to kill her. That was what had drawn her back to the past as much as old yearnings-the fear that Stewart had somehow survived, that he was back-but Lorraine had probably been wrong on that one. Either way she had done what she could. She had done the right thing. Megan was home now. She was safe.

It was over. Or it was about to be.

The decision that had been tormenting her for the entire car ride home-the last sixteen years really-was suddenly clear. She couldn’t, pardon the pun, dance around her past anymore. She had to come clean. She had to tell Dave everything. She would have to hope, after all the years, that love would conquer all.

Or was that just another comforting lie?

Either way, Dave was owed the truth.

“Dave?”

“You’re okay?”

He hadn’t been sleeping. She swallowed, felt the tears sting her eyes. “I’m fine.”

Still with his back to her, he said, “You sure?”

“Yes.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. She was afraid to move any closer. Dave kept his back to her. He adjusted the pillow, settled back in.

“Dave?”

He didn’t reply.

When she touched his shoulder, he recoiled.

“You want to know where I was,” she said.

He still wouldn’t look at her, still wouldn’t say a word.

“Don’t shut me out. Please.”

“Megan?”

“What?”

“You don’t get to tell me what not to do.”

Finally Dave turned toward her, and she saw it in his eyes-the immense and unfathomable pain. It sent her reeling. Lies, she could see, wouldn’t work. Neither would any words. So she did the only thing she could. She kissed him. He pulled back for a second, but then he grabbed her behind the head and kissed her back. He kissed her hard and pulled her down toward him.

They made love. They made love for a long time without saying a word. When they were done, both completely spent, Megan fell asleep. She thought that Dave did too, but she couldn’t be sure. It was as if they were in different worlds.