The Accident

NINETEEN

“You think Mr. Slocum came over because he wanted these back?” Kelly asked. “You’re sure he didn’t ask for them?”

“He definitely did not.” I was examining the cuffs, which had a tiny key stuck to them with a piece of clear tape. I returned Kelly’s empty shoe bag to her. “If these were in his wife’s purse, he might not even know about them.”

“She’s not a police lady.”

“I know.”

“But maybe sometimes she helped Mr. Slocum when he was being a policeman.”

“I suppose that’s possible.”

“Are you going to give them back?” she asked. She sounded frightened.

I took a long breath. “No,” I said. “I think we’ll just forget about this.”

“But I did the wrong thing,” Kelly said. “I kind of stole them. But not really. I just didn’t want Emily’s mom to know I’d taken them from her purse.”

“Why didn’t you put them back when Mrs. Slocum left you in the room?”

“I was scared. She made me stand in the middle of the room, and if I was in the closet when she came back I thought I’d get in even more trouble.”

I gave Kelly a hug. “It’s okay.”

“What if we put them in a box and mailed them to Mr. Slocum but you didn’t write on the box who it was from?”

I shook my head. “Sometimes people just lose things. If he even knows about these, he probably won’t be looking for them for a very long time.”

“But what if a bad guy breaks in to their house at night and Mr. Slocum goes to get the handcuffs from the purse to keep him there until other police come?”

It was a relief I didn’t have to explain what, exactly, I thought they might have been used for. “I’m sure that won’t happen,” I told my daughter. “And we’re not going to talk about this again.”

I shooed Kelly off and put the cuffs in the drawer of my bedside table. Maybe, when it was trash day, I’d drop these into a garbage bag and send them off on their way. My guess was, if these cuffs were in Ann Slocum’s purse, not only did her husband not have a clue about them, they weren’t being used in the Slocum house at all. No wonder she didn’t want Kelly telling her husband about the call.

I wondered whose wrists had been of such concern to her.

I drove Kelly to school in the morning. “And I’ll be picking you up, too,” I said.

“Okay.” That had been our routine for the last week, ever since Kelly had gone back to school since Sheila’s death. “How long are you going to do this for?”

“For a while,” I said.

“I think I can start riding my bike again soon.”

“Probably. But we’ll do this for a little longer, if that’s okay with you.”

“Okay,” she said, with some dejection in her voice.

“And if Mr. Slocum shows up at the school, wanting to see you, you’re not to talk to him. Go find a teacher if he does.”

“Why would he do that? Because of the handcuffs?”

“Look, I’m not expecting him to do anything, but just in case. And we’re not talking about the handcuffs anymore, and you’re not to tell any of your friends about them.”

“Not even Emily?”

“Especially not Emily. No one, you understand?”

“Okay. But I can talk to Emily about other things, right?”

“She won’t be at school today. She’ll go back in a few days, I’d guess.”

“But I still talk to her online.”

Of course. I was thinking like someone from another century.

Kelly asked, “Are we going to the visitation?” A word she didn’t even know a month ago. “Emily said there’s a visiting today and she wants me to come.”

I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. First of all, I was worried it would be upsetting for Kelly. She’d just been to her mother’s funeral, and wept through most of it. I was worried about how she’d handle another one so soon. Second, I didn’t want her anywhere near Darren Slocum.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“I have to go,” she said. “To the visiting.”

“No, you don’t. People would understand if you didn’t go.”

“You mean, they’d think I didn’t want to go? Because that’s not true. I don’t want people thinking I’m a chicken.”

“You’re not-that’s not what they’d think.”

“That’s what I’d think. I’d think I was a huge pussy for not going.”

“A what?”

She blushed. “A chicken. And besides, Emily and her parents came to Mom’s funeral.”

Kelly was right about that. The Slocums had been there. But a lot had changed in the interim. And the situation between us and the Slocums was different.

“If I don’t go, then Emily will hate me forever,” she said. “If that’s what you want, then I guess I won’t go.”

I glanced over at her. “What time’s the visitation?”

“It’s at three.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at school at two. We go home and get changed, and we go to the visitation. But here’s the deal: You stay with me. You don’t wander out of my sight. Are we clear?”

Kelly nodded. “Got it. And you won’t forget your promise, will you?”

We had reached her school. I pulled over to the curb. “I won’t forget.”

“You know which one I mean?”

“I know which one you mean. About looking into another school for you.”

“Okay, I was just checking.”

From there, I went into work, and told Sally I’d left her some phone message details.

“Done,” she said.

“And there were some other voicemails-”

“And done,” she said. “Okay, some of the places, they weren’t in yet, but I left messages.”

“Anyone looking for estimates?” I asked.

“Sorry, boss.”

We did a quick review of what work we did have going on. Our three active job sites were a kitchen renovation in Derby, a double garage in Devon out back of someone’s house, and finishing off the basement of a five-year-old house in East Milford. For the first time in a couple of years, we weren’t building an actual house from the ground up.

“Stewart and KF are at the garage,” she said. Stewart was our Canadian kid, and “KF” referred to Ken Wang, and was actually an abbreviated version of his nickname, which was Kentucky Fried Wang, or KFW, given that he hailed from the South. “Doug’s headed off to Derby, and there’s no one at the basement reno.”

“Okay.”

“Can we talk?” she asked, coming into my office. “I feel bad about Saturday,” she said, sitting down across from me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You and Theo okay?”

“I kind of chewed him out a bit after. I understand it’s your company and you get to make the call about who works for you and who doesn’t.”

“Yup,” I said.

“Even though I think he’s a good electrician, you know? He’s doing some work now in my dad’s-in my house.” Sally had moved in to her father’s place as his health had declined. He’d been a crusty old bastard, but that had also been his charm. He’d been a Civil War fanatic, had a considerable gun collection, old and new, that he’d been very proud of-an enthusiasm I had not shared. I knew how to handle guns, but had never owned one. I hadn’t shared many of his political views, either. He’d liked to argue incessantly that Richard M. Nixon was the best president the United States ever had, so long as you looked past that stupid shit he did opening up relations with China.

Sally quickly learned her father had no savings that would have allowed him to move in to a decent care facility, so she did the best she could, slipping out of the office at noon to make sure he’d eaten the lunch she’d left him, and that he’d taken his meds. The cost of prescriptions had been a killer. She’d spent what savings her father’d had on various drugs: insulin for diabetes, plus lisinopril, warfarin, and the heparin injections for his heart ailments. His Social Security didn’t come close to covering it, so Sally began dipping into her own savings. Pretty much all the money she saved on rent after moving in with her dad was going to drugs. If he’d lived much longer, Sally probably would have had to sell the house and find a small apartment for the two of them. But now the place had been left to her.

“Theo replaced a lot of my old outlets and put a ceiling fixture in the front hall, and when he’s done the bathroom it’s going to have one of those heated floors. I can’t wait to feel a warm floor under my toes when I get up on a cold morning. The tiling, well, that’s another thing. He’s doing that this week, and tiling’s not really his area, you know, but I can get someone else to fix that up later. Maybe Doug, if he’d do it.”

“Great,” I said, and thought about the words we’d had on Saturday.

“All I’m saying is, I respect your decision, and I’ll do what I can to make him respect it, too.”

I didn’t much care whether he respected it or not, just so long as he stayed away from any of my projects, but kept the thought to myself. “I appreciate that, Sally.”

She gnawed her lip, like she was working up to something. “Glen…”

“What’s on your mind?”

“What do you think of him? I mean, as a guy. A guy for me.”

“Sally, I’ve known you a long time, even before you started babysitting for Kelly. And I’ve got no problem telling you what to do around the office, but your private life is none of my business.”

“Okay, let’s say you knew Theo and I hadn’t met him yet, is he the kind of guy you’d set me up with?”

“I don’t set people up.”

Sally rolled her eyes. “God, you’re impossible. Let’s say I’d never met him, but saw him on the site, and I said to you, ‘Hey, that guy, he’s cute, should I let him ask me out?’ What would you say?”

“He’s… a good-looking guy. Handsome. I can see that. And it looks like he cares about you. And he can be polite, until he’s… pushed.”

She studied me. “There’s a ‘but’ coming. I can tell.”

For a moment, I considered dodging, but Sally deserved the truth from me. “I would say maybe you can do better.”

“Well,” Sally said. “So.”

“You asked.”

“And you delivered.” She forced a grin and slapped her thighs. “Was that so hard?”

“Kinda.”

“I mean, I know what you’re saying. But what if I can’t do better?”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Sal.”

“Come on, look at me,” she said. “I’m, like, seven feet tall. I’m a circus freak.”

“Stop it. You’re gorgeous.”

“And you’re a skilled liar.” She got up and lingered a minute at the door. “Thanks, Glen.”

I smiled, then I fired up the computer and googled “Milford schools.” First, I looked to see what might be the next-closest public elementary school, jotted down a couple of possibilities, then looked at the private schools. There were several Catholic ones, but I didn’t know what the chances were of getting into one of those, considering we were not Catholic. We weren’t much of anything, when you got right down to it. Sheila and I were never churchgoers, and had never had Kelly baptized, much to Fiona’s horror.

I wrote down a few more school names and phone numbers, figuring I could make calls throughout the day when I had a minute. Plus, I left a message for Kelly’s principal. Not to rat out the kids who’d called her Boozer, but to sound him out about moving her to another school, given the awkwardness of her situation.

Then I drove to our closest job, the double garage in Devon. The client, a retired insurance agent in his mid-sixties, had two classic Corvettes-a 1959 and a 1963 Sting Ray with the split rear window-but no place to properly store them.

It was a simple job. No basement, no plumbing, other than a spigot for car washing. Just a solid structure with storage units and a workbench, good lighting and plenty of electrical outlets. The client had said no to powered doors. He didn’t want to risk them going haywire someday and coming down on one of his treasures.

As I got out of the truck, Ken Wang approached.

“Hey there, Mr. G, y’all lookin’ fine today.”

You never got used to it.

“Thanks, KF. How goes it here?”

“Excellent. I tell you, I’d give my left tit for one of these here ’Vettes.”

“Nice cars.”

“Some guy was sniffin’ around earlier lookin’ for ya.”

“He say what it was about?”

Ken shook his head. “No. Might be more work. So don’t go wanderin’ off or nuthin’.” He grinned at me.

I went into the new garage to see how it was coming. The interior walls were drywalled-I found a stamp on a drywall sheet to allay any fears that it might be that toxic stuff from China-and Stewart was getting ready to sand the seams. “Pretty good, eh?” he said.

After giving the two of them some guidance about where to put the shelving units, I walked back out to the truck to pour myself some coffee from my thermos and make a couple of school calls. A small blue car pulled up and a short man in a blue suit got out with an envelope in his hand. Maybe this was the guy Ken had seen earlier. As he approached the truck, I powered down the window.

“Glen Garber?” he said.

“That’s the name on the truck,” I quipped.

“But you are Mr. Garber?”

I nodded.

He handed the envelope to me through the window and said, “You’ve been served.” Then he turned and walked away.

I set my thermos cup on the dashboard and tore open the envelope, withdrew the papers from inside, and unfolded them. Some law firm letterhead. I scanned the paperwork. It was written in legalese I could barely understand, but I was able to get the gist of it.

The Wilkinson family was suing me for $15 million. Negligence. The crux of it was this: I had failed to identify my wife’s condition and intercede, which ultimately resulted in the death of Connor and Brandon Wilkinson.

I tried to read it more thoroughly but things seemed to go blurry. My eyes were tearing up. I closed them, leaned my head back against the headrest.

“Nice going, Sheila,” I said.