Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

“Any ideas?”

“Too many, unfortunately.”

“Anyone from around these parts?”

“Only the longest of long shots,” I said.

“Yeah, like who?”

I hemmed and hawed a little.

“Look, Moe, I’ve cut you way more slack than-”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Secret keeping becomes second nature.”

“Names.”

“There’s Katy’s first husband, Joey Hogan, for one. I’m going to see him right now. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course. Who else?”

“Woman used to cut hair at the Head Shop, Theresa Hickey.”

“Hot blond, married to a city cop, right?” Vandervoort asked, already knowing the answer.

“That’s the one.”

“Forget her. My big sister Mary knew Theresa Hickey. She dumped the cop years ago and moved down to Jupiter, Florida, with some rich guy owns race horses. She hasn’t been back here since.”

“Tina Martell?”

Vandervoort smiled sadly at the mention of her name. “Sure I know Tina. She owns Henry’s Hog over-”

“I know the place. Outside of town, over the tracks, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“She owns it?” I asked.

“Her old man left it to her. What’s old Tina got to do with this?”

“Probably nothing,” I said, “but remember when I was telling you about how Patrick had gotten a few girls pregnant?”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, Tina.”

“Well, fuck me. I can’t quite picture old Tina and Patrick. You know, Moe, for a-for a gay guy, this kid got a lot of-”

“It’s testament to how hard it was for him to come to terms with who and what he was.”

“I guess.”

“I gotta get to the hospital. They’ve moved Katy into a room and I want to make sure all the bases are covered.”

“Room 402,” he said. “You’ll find a deputy outside her door.”

“Thanks, Pete.”

“Remember, Moe, keep me posted.”

Just as Vandervoort had promised, there was a deputy outside Katy’s door. It was Robby, the young deputy who had stood out in the rain with me at the Maloney family gravesite. He smiled at noticing me and, I suppose, at the chance of conversation. There are aspects of police work that can be mind-numbingly dull. None duller than guard duty. The deputy assured me that everything had been quiet, that the only people to enter the room were nurses and doctors and not too many of them. As a matter of courtesy, I asked the deputy if I might not take a look myself. He liked that I asked.

Katy was asleep, but unnaturally still. I don’t know, maybe that was my brain talking and not my eyes. Her attempted suicide had changed everything. For all our years together, I had assumed Katy was a rock, that she could bear anything. Only once, when she miscarried, did she break down. Even then, I thought she recovered well and had gotten back to the business of life quicker than most. But now I wasn’t so sure I knew who my ex-wife had been all those years. Had she misled me or had I misled myself? Did I see who she wanted me to see or did I see who I wanted to see? Had she hidden the pain from me or had I blinded myself to it?

I thought about lifting the sheets to see if her wrists were restrained, considered consulting the attending psychiatrist to find out if Katy was sedated or if her sleep was a natural reaction to the trauma. I did neither. It was all I could do to swallow up the guilt I was already feeling. I knew I couldn’t handle anymore revelations about the myths of our marriage, not now, not yet. When I walked back past Robby, he called out to me. Something about last night’s Mets score, I think. For some reason it just made me angry, really angry, but not at him.

I started toward Joey Hogan’s house. Joey, what kind of name is that for a grown man, for chrissakes? Joey was Katy’s ex. Now, I suppose, first ex is more accurate. Not that I had anything against him. On the few occasions fate had thrown us together, he had been more than cordial, friendly really. He was a stand-up guy who cared so deeply for Katy that if another man made her happy, well then, that was okay with him. They had been high school sweethearts. Katy grew out of it, but Joey never did. As Katy said, she agreed to marry him for all the wrong reasons. He was loving. He was handsome. He was a good provider. It was time.

“You don’t marry a man because he scores well on some stupid test,” Katy had said many times. “Marriage isn’t about a checklist. It’s about passion.”

I wondered if she would still feel that way when she got out of the hospital and took stock of the last twenty years of her life. In any case, there wasn’t any passion left between Katy and Joey by the time they took their vows before Father Blaney. And moving into his parents’ house right after the wedding hadn’t exactly enhanced the chances of their rekindling any dormant high school sparks. Their divorce had been relatively painless, at least for Katy, and had come as a relief for the both of them.

Francis Maloney loved to use Joey to get under my skin.

“He still loves my daughter, you know,” my father-in-law jabbed at a family barbecue, Katy and Joey chatting happily at the opposite end of the backyard. “All she’d have to do is say the word and that boy would take her back, no questions asked.”

“Except she’s never going to say the word.”

Then Francis would smile that smile at me, raising his glass of Irish. “Ah, don’t be so sure, lad. Do you believe in ghosts?”

He’d always find some excuse to ask me that fucking question. I never quite understood what he meant by it. I did now, of course. Back then, when I didn’t answer, Francis would have a private little laugh at my expense. It was a laugh with red fangs and talons.

“Are you laughing now, you prick?” I shouted out the window.

Joey Hogan’s impeccably restored Victorian put a lie to the adage about the contractor owning the worst house on the block. Man, with the spindle work, wrap-around porch, clapboards, rows and rows of fish scale and diamond siding, a lot of trees had given their lives to let that house live again. Between the turrets and gables, between the asymmetry and compound angles, there was enough visual noise to keep my eyes busy for a week. And forget about the color scheme. Only on a Victorian could you use twelve different colors-including lavender or purple-without getting arrested. But I guess maybe that’s why I liked Victorians. They could break all the modern rules and still look beautiful.

I halfway pulled into the driveway and stopped, the ass end of my car sticking out into the street. Around here you could get away with that without getting the rear of your car sheared off. Truthfully, I didn’t think Joey had a thing to do with what had happened at the gravesite or with torturing Katy. Even if he wasn’t as comfortable with another man having his ex-wife as he let on, I knew as surely as I knew anything that he could never hurt Katy. I guess it was possible that he might hurt me, but he wouldn’t use Katy to do it. Nor did I think he had much in the way of information that could shed light on who might actually be hurting my family, but based on proximity alone-his home was less than a quarter mile from the entrance to the cemetery-I had to talk to the man. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t quite bring myself to pull all the way down the driveway.

I was afraid. I was afraid that Joey Hogan might accuse me of fucking up Katy’s life. I was afraid that he was right. But it wasn’t Joey Hogan who accused me. Christ, I wasn’t even fully into the man’s driveway. My own guilt accused. Guilt and me were usually strangers. Like jealousy, guilt was a cancerous waste of time. The world was only too happy to beat you up, so why do it to yourself? Anyway, I was suspicious of the eagerly guilty. They stank of martyrdom.