The Girl From Home: A Thriller (19 page)

Jonathan's first thought is that he can't afford putting his father in assisted living. Theresa's agency had required a year's payment up front, so she was a sunk cost.

“How much is that going to run?”

Amy's silence reveals her surprise. Jonathan's never once asked about the cost of anything.

“It's covered by insurance that was part of Theresa's agency's deal,” Amy says. “They told me that there won't be any out-of-pocket to us.”

Jonathan's relieved. At least his financial collapse won't affect anyone besides him and Natasha.

“I guess we should do that, then,” he says. “I mean, if that's what the doctors say.”

“All right. I'll handle all the admittance stuff.”

“Thanks.”

“We're booked on a flight out tonight. I've used up all my vacation days at work, and Jack has a cello recital, and the kids have school, and I just can't spend any more time here.”

“Amy, don't worry about it. I appreciate that you were with him this weekend.”

“I'm not asking for your permission to leave, Jonathan. I'm telling you that I'd like you to come to East Carlisle and see Dad. He shouldn't be in the hospital alone.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says.

“Okay you'll go?” she asks, as if she can't believe she's gotten him to agree.

“Yeah. I'll go.”

“Thank you,” she says, sounding both relieved and confused. “I can't tell you how much better I feel knowing that you're going to be with him.”

“Of course,” Jonathan says. “It's been too long since I've seen him. In fact, things are slow for me at work right now anyway, and so maybe I'll see if I can take a little time off and spend it in East Carlisle, so I can see him on a . . . you know, regular basis. I guess I'll stay at Dad's house. My twenty-fifth high-school reunion is tomorrow night anyway. I wasn't going to go, but now I suppose I will.”

“Um . . . okay,” Amy says.

Clearly she knows something's up, but that's the least of Jonathan's concerns at the moment. What matters is that he won't be homeless come Sunday night.

“W
hat are you going to do to ring in the New Year?” Jackie asks.

They're scrunched together on Jonathan's twin bed. Jackie's head rests on his bare chest. He can feel her breasts along his midsection.

“I thought we weren't supposed to talk about our spouses,” Jonathan answers.

“I'm willing to make an exception this one time. I want to imagine what you're doing tonight when I think about you. Which, I hope you know, will be every second of the evening.”

It's another opportunity for him to come clean with Jackie and tell her all that he's been hiding—about his job, his marriage, his life. He could tell her that he's ringing in the New Year with his father, that his marriage has been over for a month now, far longer than that in reality, that he's unemployed and homeless, without a penny to his name.

He's not ready to come clean. Soon, he hopes, but right now Jackie's love is his only hope of salvation, and he can't bear to think about what life would be like if she also found him to be a failure. To paraphrase what Jack Nicholson famously said, Jonathan simply can't handle the truth.

And so rather than answer, he glides his fingertips down the length of Jackie's spine and says, “You go first.”

“Well, our New Year's Eve tradition is glamour all the way,” she says with a laugh. “Do you remember Tony Gallucci?”

“I think so. Big guy. Football team. Not very bright.”

“Yeah, him. We go to his house and spend the night in his basement. He is so goddamm proud of that basement because he remodeled it a few years ago, with an oak bar and stools, a dartboard, and, I kid you not, a
Playboy
pinball machine. It's like the basement every sixteen-year-old boy wishes he had, but Tony actually installed it when he was forty, so . . .”

“That doesn't sound that bad,” Jonathan says.

“Oh, believe me, it's awful. Everyone will be drunk by eleven, and disgusting by midnight.”

Jackie lifts her head up so she's looking in Jonathan's face. She seems pained by merely having to think about the evening that awaits her.

“Now it's your turn,” she says.

Jonathan is spared from lying by Jackie's ringtone.

“Do you want to get that?” Jonathan asks.

“No, I really don't,” Jackie says. “It's like what they say about two a.m. phone calls, right? Nothing good ever happens at two a.m. Well, I think nothing good ever happens when you're a married woman in bed with another man and the phone rings. I should just head home. After all, a new year awaits.”

She kisses him deeply. “Happy New Year, Jonathan.”

*  *  *

Although Jackie would have thought it was impossible, she finds Tony Gallucci to be an even bigger asshole now than he was in high school. He's on his third marriage, this one to a woman who served him beer at the Grove while he was only a few months into his second. Instead of going on a honeymoon, he bought his new bride D-cups.

Jackie and Rick arrive a little after ten, and the basement already smells like lager. Tony's wife, Cheryl, who calls herself Cher, is busy making sure that Tony gets his money's worth on his investment in her chest. Rick seems all too happy to take in the view.

“I hope we didn't miss too much, Cher,” Rick says. “I couldn't get this one out of the bathroom,” he adds, pointing to Jackie with his thumb.

“My man!” Tony calls out from behind the bar. “Belly up here, Ricky, have a brew, or three. You're way behind, my man.”

Rick makes his way to Tony. Their palms make a loud cracking sound as they slap together in a high five.

“Boys,” Cher says cheerfully. “Am I right?”

Jackie thinks that
idiots
is more accurate.

She looks around the basement, thinking that a little alcohol might go a long way tonight. She knows Rick is going to be too drunk to drive home, but she concludes that she's not going to get through the evening without at least some wine.

After pouring herself a glass of chardonnay, Jackie makes her way over to Lori Abbey, who was two years behind Jackie and Rick at East Carlisle High. Her husband, George, was their year, and shares the football connection with Rick and Tony.

“Happy New Year, Jackie,” Lori says as they kiss each other's cheeks. “You look beautiful as always. I love that dress.”

“Thank you,” Jackie says. “You look lovely as well. How have you been?”

“So busy. The boys are playing ice hockey now, and so we're up at the crack of dawn every day to get them to the rink, and then Sophie's violin concert was last night, and that was a big event, with my parents and George's parents all there.” She looks at her wineglass. “So Momma is very happy to be here tonight getting her drink on.”

Jackie shares the plastic smile she's perfected over the years for such interactions. “Did you have fun at the reunion?” she asks.

“Oh God, yeah, so much fun,” Lori says. “You know, with Facebook, reunions aren't such a big deal anymore. I already know what everybody looks like, and how many kids they have and what ages. But it was still so great to talk to everyone in person.”

Lori scans the room, and then conspiratorially leans in to Jackie. “And I saw you hanging around with Johnny Caine. I didn't think you two were even friends in high school.”

Jackie feels a sense of panic take hold. Does Lori know more than just that she and Jonathan were talking at the reunion? How about jumping into bed with him every chance she got since then?

She tells herself she's being paranoid. If Lori knew about her and Jonathan, it would be a nanosecond before she'd tell George and less than that before he'd alert Rick. And if Rick knew, he'd be sure to let Jackie know. No doubt with the back of his hand. Or worse.

“It's funny,” Jackie says with what she hopes is a convincing expression, “because that's what he said, too. I went outside to call home and check on the kids and he came out for a second to make a phone call, and so we said hello, and he said something like, ‘You know, we went to high school together for four years and never said a word to each other, and now here we are talking twenty-five years later.' Anyway, he seemed nice. Told me that he's married and works on Wall Street.”

Jackie reflexively turns toward Rick, who is on the other side of the room, still anchored to the same bar stool. Sometimes she fears he can read her mind. But if Rick knew what Lori was suggesting, he'd be beating the crap out of her right now, and not yukking it up with Tony Gallucci.

“Well, here's to a New Year,” Lori says, raising her wine above her head in a toast.

Jackie clinks her glass, but the sentiment sounds more like a prison sentence than the promise of good tidings ahead. She can't stay married to Rick another year. She just can't.

*  *  *

William Caine's recovery differed from the worst case by only about ten minutes every few hours. In the past ten days, Jonathan had seen his father awake only twice, and both times he was groggy to the point of being even more incoherent than usual.

As if he realizes that this will be the last time he ushers in a New Year, William Caine stirs at ten minutes to midnight. His eyes pop open, and rather than seeming drugged, he looks as if he's awoken to a brand-new day.

“Johnny,” he says.

His speech is labored, much weaker than before he was moved to the ICU, but at least now his father's voice bears a passing resemblance to its prior tenor. Jonathan takes his father's hand, something that he never does, but tonight he feels like he needs the extra connection.

“Hey, Dad. I'm glad you're awake,” Jonathan says.

“Me, too,” his father says, and then smiles as if he gets the joke he's just made.

“It's almost a New Year.”

“That's nice,” his father says.

“Do you have any New Year's resolutions?”

“What?”

“New Year's resolutions. Things you want to do in the upcoming year. Changes you want to make about your life. That sort of thing.”

“No. My life is good,” he says.

Jonathan considers the answer. His father, likely only months away from death, doesn't want to change anything, and Jonathan desires that everything be different. Jonathan knows that there's only one way the next year will be better, though, and that's if he's with Jackie. He can hardly believe how hard he's fallen for her. Him, a man who never believed in love, truly believes that even with all the troubles swirling around him, even if he never makes another dime, if he's with Jackie, he'll be happy.

Of course, there remains a major impediment to that plan. Jackie's made it quite clear that so long as Rick's alive, he'll never let her ride off into the sunset with Jonathan.

Jonathan had told Jackie that he'd find a way. And indeed he has. Rick Williams needs to die in the New Year.

That is his New Year's resolution. Not to lose weight or read more, but to figure out a way to murder Rick Williams, so he and Jackie can live happily ever after.

I want what I want
.

*  *  *

Jackie hasn't spoken to Rick since they arrived, and Rick hasn't moved off the stool at the corner of the bar in all that time. A minute before midnight he shouts “Jackie!” across the room, the way you might summon a dog.

Ryan Seacrest is on the big-screen television, going on about how the countdown is about to begin. The camera switches to a close-up of the crystal ball that drops from the tower in Times Square.

Jackie does as commanded, taking the bar stool beside her husband, but Rick ignores her until the countdown to the New Year officially begins on TV, at which time he pulls her stool closer. She knows that she's only there for him to have someone to kiss at midnight, after which time he'll go back to drinking with his buddies.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

“Happy New Year!” the room shouts.

All except Jackie, who takes a long sip of wine instead.

Rick pulls her into him, nearly knocking her off her own stool. Without warning, he jams his tongue into her mouth. He tastes like foul beer, and then he drunkenly puts his hand on her ass, without any consideration that they're in a room full of people they know.

Next year, as God is her witness, she'll be kissing Jonathan at midnight.

*  *  *

Jonathan hears the countdown to New Year's begun by the nurses outside, and he joins in. His father looks confused, as if something is going to happen that might be frightening, so Jonathan halts his count at six.

“People count backward from ten to indicate the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one,” he explains.

“Happy New Year!”
is heard from the nurses' station.

“Oh,” his father says, despite the fact that he's most likely experienced more New Years than anyone else on the floor.

Jonathan leans over and kisses his father on the forehead.

“Why did you do that?” William Caine asks.

“Because it's a New Year's tradition to kiss whomever you're with at the stroke of midnight.”

“Did anyone kiss your mother?”

“She's in heaven, Dad. I don't know if they have New Year's there.”

“Oh.”

Jonathan offers a sad smile. “Do you think there's a New Year's in heaven?” he asks, solely so there's something to talk about.

“I don't know. But I'm sure I'm going to find out soon, and then I'll tell you.”

*  *  *

As expected, Rick passes out during the ten-minute car ride home, snoring loudly. Jackie was determined to let him sleep it off in the car, but the moment they pulled into the garage, he came to.