Things You Won't Say (16 page)

The bill was over a hundred dollars—more than Jamie would earn that night in tips.

“Miss?” someone was calling, but she ignored them. She ran out of the restaurant and looked down the street, then swiveled to check the other direction. She could see a big group of people in the distance. Were those the guys? She sprinted toward them, her breath coming faster, her speed increasing along with her anger. Those jerks thought they were so cool, sneaking away. Maybe they didn’t realize she’d have to cover the cost of the bill, but that didn’t make what they’d done any less infuriating.

They didn’t hear her coming—probably because they were too drunk.

“Hey!” she bellowed when she was a few feet away, and one of the guys turned around.

“Oh, shit,” he said, leaning against his friend. They exploded with laughter.

“You owe me a hundred and fifty bucks,” Jamie said. She wasn’t sure of the exact total, but that sounded right, if she gave herself a generous tip.

“Who, us?” one said. His tie was loose and he seemed to be struggling to focus his eyes.

Jamie put her hands on her hips. Most of them probably had trust funds, or good jobs. They had that look—prep school haircuts and blue blazers.

“Pay up or I’m calling the cops,” Jamie said. She didn’t have a cell phone with her—back then they weren’t commonplace—but alcohol had dimmed the guys’ reflexes. “Come on, Alexander,” she said when the guys hesitated. She’d overheard the name when she’d been serving the guys.

“Shit, she knows you!” one of them said.

“I told you it was a dumb idea,” said another, punching his friend in the arm.

“Twenty bucks each,” Jamie said. She pointed at the guy who’d absorbed the punch: “Thirty for you.”

They still might’ve turned and run, but then Jamie caught sight of two police officers patrolling the street a half block away.

“Officers!” she called out, waving them over.

It was almost comical, how quickly the guys scrambled for their wallets as the policemen crossed the street. “Everything okay here?” the shorter cop asked. Jamie vaguely registered that he was gorgeous—dark hair, broad shoulders, olive skin—but she was focused on counting the money.

“Everything’s great now,” Jamie said. The guys had given her an extra twenty, but she decided not to point that out. They were already walking away.

“They try to run out on the bill?” the officer asked.

“It’s okay,” Jamie said. “I chased them down and got the money.”

The officers were grinning now. “I still think we should put a little fear into them. Maybe dissuade them from doing this again,” said the second cop.

The two officers turned and began walking briskly down the street. Jamie wanted to watch, but her customers had already waited too long, so she hurried back to the restaurant.

“What happened to you, girl?” another waitress asked. “Your tables kept bugging me for stuff. Now I’m in the weeds.”

“Sorry,” Jamie said. “Long story, but a table walked out on me.”

“That sucks. Bring two pitchers of Michelob to table eighteen, okay? And your corner table wants a jumbo onion rings.”

Jamie had just about gotten caught up when she saw a flash of blue in the doorway of the restaurant. The two officers were back.

“Hello,
21 Jump Street,
” said her waitress friend, nudging
Jamie as they both stared. “Doesn’t that cop on the right look a little like a young Johnny Depp?”

Jamie thought he was even more handsome. He was just four inches or so taller than her five foot three, but he seemed imposing. Maybe it was his broad shoulders, or the way he carried himself. As he stood there in the doorway to the restaurant, his hands by his sides, his eyes moving slowly across the room, he exuded calm confidence.

Then his eyes stopped moving. They’d landed on her.

Jamie found herself blushing as she walked over to him, suddenly grateful she’d taken that moment to rub away her mascara smears.

“Hi, Officer,” she said. The last name on the brass plate pinned to his shirt read
ANDERSON
.

“Just wanted to let you know we had a little talk with those guys,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll be back.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He smiled then, but his eyes stayed serious and watchful. “I don’t think you needed our help,” he said. “Looked like you were doing just fine on your own.”

Jamie grinned. “I’m not sure about that. They were about to run off, and even in my Nikes, I probably wouldn’t have caught them.”

He glanced down at her sneakers, and she had the impression he was checking out her legs, but maybe she was just flattering herself. She could’ve stood there all day, but the clatter of the restaurant invaded the moment.

“Can I get you a beer?” she offered. “On the house.”

“I can’t drink when I’m on duty,” he said, and she instantly felt foolish. Here she was, trying to corrupt a cop. “But maybe I’ll come in and take you up on that another time.” He extended his hand. “I’m Mike, by the way.”

“Jamie,” she said. His hand felt very warm.

He walked out, then she hurried to get the now-cold onion rings to her corner table.

He didn’t come in the next night, or the one after that. Jamie had off the following night, but the other waitresses knew to be on the lookout for Officer Anderson, and they said he hadn’t appeared.

A week passed, and she resigned herself to the fact that he’d only been doing his duty. The electricity she’d felt had begun and ended with her, a closed circuit.

But then one evening she’d gone to hand a menu to a guy in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, sitting alone in a corner, and when he’d looked up, the menu had slipped between her fingers and landed on the table.

“Are the cheeseburgers here any good?” he asked.

She shook her head. “They’re terrible,” she said.

He laughed. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Brave of you, Officer,” she said.

“Call me Mike,” he said.

“So what can I get you?”
Me, me, me,
she thought.

“Could I get a Bud on tap and a medium-rare with Swiss?”

“Sure,” she said. It was just five-thirty, before the real rush began, so she lingered by his table after delivering his drink. She learned that he’d grown up in New Jersey, that he was twenty-four, and that he knew how to use one of the restaurant’s matchbooks to expertly balance the leg on his unsteady table.

But she didn’t learn the most important—the defining—thing about him until the following week, when they’d gone out for dinner and he’d driven her home. She thought he was working up the nerve to kiss her good-bye, which was surprising; he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d struggle with confidence issues. Then he told her about his young son, who was the reason he hadn’t come into the restaurant sooner. He had custody of Henry during most of his time off.

When he’d finished talking, he looked straight ahead, instead of at her. Almost as if he expected her to open her front door and run away.

“What’s his name?” Jamie asked.

Mike opened his wallet and pulled out a photo of a cute toddler with dark hair and eyes.

“He looks just like you,” Jamie said.

“Yeah, except he got his dimples from his mother,” Mike said.

“Ah,” Jamie said. “And she is. . . ?” Her voice trailed off. She wasn’t sure what she’d intended to ask. But Mike seemed to know.

“Not in the picture,” he said. “For me, anyway. We share custody of Henry.”

“Ah,” Jamie said again. She sat there for another moment, and then Mike leaned over to kiss her. His lips were soft, but the rough stubble around his mouth scratched her chin and she made a small, involuntary noise in the back of her throat as he wrapped a hand around the back of her head, pulling her even closer. She’d had only three real boyfriends, but kissing them hadn’t made her feel like this. She felt as if she were dissolving into Mike. When he finally pulled away, she was dizzy.

Jamie had always known she wanted to be a mom. She’d imagined in a vague sort of way that it would happen in her late twenties, and that she’d have three or four kids. But she was fresh out of college, with more than a decade of school loans in front of her. She was barely able to legally drink, and she often slept until ten or eleven in the morning after a late shift at the restaurant. Mike had a real job, an important one, as well as his own town house. When he mowed the lawn, he put Henry in a backpack carrier—at least until Henry was old enough to stand in front of Mike and put his own hands on the handle and pretend to push the mower. Mike changed diapers expertly, hoisted Henry onto his shoulders whenever they had to walk more than a block or two, which always made Henry giggle, and repaired leaky pipes under the sink while Henry lay beside him, banging his plastic Fisher-Price tools against the floor.

How could she have avoided falling in love with both of them?

Summer seeped into fall, and she began working at the public relations firm, which meant her schedule became more aligned with Mike’s. She fell into the habit of driving to Mike’s place on Friday nights, and he’d cook for the three of them—lasagna or chicken Parmesan or shrimp fajitas. She’d read to Henry while Mike did the dishes, or vice versa. Within a few months, Jamie had memorized the words to
Green Eggs and Ham
and
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
After Henry fell asleep, she and Mike would go to the living room and cuddle on the couch. Sometimes he’d rub her feet while they watched a movie.

Her friends teased her for being hopelessly domestic. They were hitting happy hours and dance floors, thinking about joining the Peace Corps or working temp jobs, getting drunk and making out with crushes. But Jamie had always felt older than her peers. She’d been cooking meals for her dad and Lou since she was fifteen, and the day she got her driver’s license, she’d begun to do all the grocery shopping and other household errands, too. She’d been an anchor for her family ever since her mother died. Her friends couldn’t understand what a deep sense of relief she felt in finally being able to lean on someone else.

She and Mike fought over his propensity to shut down emotionally, over the fact that she got snappish when she was tired, over stupid things like whether to splurge on Thai or Indian food delivery. But they always found their way back to each other. Jamie would finish getting the kids to sleep and come downstairs to discover Mike had built a fire and opened a beer for her. Or Mike would fry up bacon on Sunday mornings and help the kids make a gigantic pancake that he’d cut into wedges for everyone to share.

But now, for the first time, she’d sensed a kind of emptiness in him. The emotional steel running through his core had
been chipped away, leaving this gray-faced, slumped stranger. Watching her husband become unmoored was terrifying.

After they’d talked outside their home last night, they’d told the children a simplified version of what had happened. Mike hadn’t wanted Christie around, so Jamie had gotten her out of the house quickly. It wasn’t until Christie was gone and Jamie had tried to pour herself a second, desperately needed glass of Chardonnay that she’d realized there was only an inch left in the bottle. Christie must’ve consumed most of it, and that was their last bottle. Jamie had reached for a beer instead and uncapped one for Mike. But she’d ended up pouring his down the drain because he hadn’t wanted to touch it.

Now, as the minutes and then hours ticked by and the bench seemed to grow harder beneath her, she realized nothing could have prepared them for this. No amount of stress or training or love.

“Mrs. Anderson?”

She looked up, expecting to see another cop with a sympathetic expression, but a thin guy in a suit with a cowlick in his brown hair stood there instead.

“I’m Davis MacDonald, the attorney for your husband,” he said, extending a hand. His wrist slipped out from beneath his jacket cuff and she noticed it was hairless, like a child’s. Maybe he was even younger than she’d first thought.

“We’re taking a break, so Mike asked me to check in with you and let you know it’ll probably be another half hour or so,” he said.

“You’re from the union?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

Yes,
Jamie thought.
I need you to save my husband.

But she just shook her head, and he started to walk away.

“Wait,” Jamie called, and he turned around, his briefcase bumping into his knee. She stood up and hurried close to him.

“Can you tell me anything?” she asked. “Do you think he’s going to be indicted?”

The lawyer hesitated.

“Tell me!” she said, her voice too loud in the open space. She saw a few officers turn to look at her, then quickly avert their eyes.

“Look, we’re still a long way from that. The FIT team isn’t even done investigating,” he said.

“FIT?” Jamie echoed.

“It’s the Force Investigative Team,” he explained. “They’ve got a special task force for shootings like this so cops aren’t accused of tampering with evidence for their friends. Just sit tight for a while. I’ll give you new information as soon as I have it.”

Jamie slowly walked back to her bench, digging into her purse for her checkbook, wondering how much a more experienced attorney would cost. Their bank account balance was just over six thousand dollars, but they needed to pay the mortgage and credit card bill in a few days. How many mortgage payments could you skip before your house was repossessed? Jamie wondered.

Jamie went to church because it was important to Mike. But she hadn’t truly prayed since she was a teenager and her mother had been in the hospital with the staph infection. God hadn’t listened to her then.

Now, though, she bowed her head, and began to pray with everything she had.

•••

On the bright side, the fire Lou had started in Jamie’s kitchen was a small one. The vent over the stove was going full blast, and all the windows in the house were thrown open now, which didn’t matter because the broken air-conditioning meant it was as hot inside as it was outside. Lou had found a can of air freshener in the bathroom and squirted it around, but the combination of floral-scented chemicals and burning plastic might have made things worse.