Closing Costs Read online

  It took a couple of tries with the clicker to get the doors to lock after she climbed out of the car. The battery in the fob probably needed to be replaced—yet another thing piled on top of a difficult day. Enough of them and she’d buckle. Not tonight. Go get a drink and chill out, bebê. Leave tomorrow for tomorrow.

  The front door was unlocked; she let herself in and threw the deadbolt out of habit. The alarm chirped its illusion of security as she opened and closed the door. They’d made the decision not to resubscribe to the service, but the system still had power and it kept making the sound every time someone came or went. The chirp was mildly annoying, but what she really hated was the glowing keypad mounted on the wall by the door. It looked trashy. If they weren’t going to have an actual alarm, she didn’t want the keypad or any of the plastic motion sensors high up in the corners. She didn’t want a gaping hole in the wall or a clumsy patch where the keypad had been either. Neither she nor Evan were handy enough to make it look like the alarm had never been there—hell, she didn’t even know if they could remove it without electrocuting themselves—so, eyesore that it was, it was staying until they could hire someone to deal with it.

  Evan’s shoes were lying on the floor where he’d kicked them off. She pulled off her boots and picked both pairs up, lining them up on the shoe rack beside the door. She set down her bag and shrugged out of her coat. She hung it in the closet instead of on the coat tree and padded into the kitchen, where her husband was making dinner. He had the music turned up.

  “Honey, I’m home,” she shouted.

  He started and his face turned red. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “You didn’t hear the alarm?” He shook his head and nodded toward the Bluetooth speaker on the dinner table. It was blaring the Reverend Horton Heat. He shouted, “Alexa, turn it down.” The music quieted enough for them to speak normally.

  His brow furrowed. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and stepped away from the stove. “Rough day? You want me to fix you something? Bar’s open.” Despite her attempts to hide her mood, he could sense it. He could always tell when she didn’t feel good. Still, she tried not to burden him with her problems at work. She wanted nights with her husband to be untainted by grief and stress.

  “Fix me a sidecar, bartender. And don’t skimp on the brandy.” She didn’t have enough Don Draper in her tonight to do more than put on her best smile.

  “Coming right up!” He turned the flame on the gas range down to WARM and went to the kitchen island they’d repurposed as a bar.

  She picked his glass of wine up off the black granite countertop and sniffed at it. A cabernet. He’d be in trouble for opening a pinot noir without her, but a cab was fine. She took a sip and put it back on the counter. “You want to talk about it?” he asked.

  Nelle didn’t often discuss her work, and she definitely didn’t when the work was hard. She was well-suited for her job because she was good at the physical mechanics of it and the direct sights and smells of dead bodies didn’t faze her much. She could look at a corpse and know it had been someone’s grandmother or father or spouse, but the person they had been before had fled, leaving behind the natural consequence of being mortal. Their remains. Nothing more.

  Beyond suffering.

  She wasn’t religious or spiritual and didn’t think anyone she saw had gone someplace better—or worse—they were just gone. Most of the time they were older folks, passing after prolonged illnesses. Their families remained, however, and needed the comfort of what the funeral home provided: an opportunity to say goodbye and have a meaningful experience moving through this massive transition. A person’s death was a milestone that deserved recognition like any other. It was good for people to acknowledge it, be present with it, and make peace, so they could continue to live. And she took comfort in knowing she helped ease them through—a gentle guide for the living and the dead. She thought of herself as “death positive.”

  It was hard to be positive about anything when it was a kid on the table. There was something about staring down at the body of a person who should be just beginning their life that couldn’t be put into words. Any person with a heart understood the injustice of an untimely death. Still, as much as she could intellectualize such a thing, it was hard to put it in an emotional box labeled The Way Life Is.

  Especially this one. “Some drunk asshole blew through a light and crashed into the back of the family car. She was . . .” Nelle trailed off. She couldn’t think of the right word. Killed? That word wasn’t enough. Ruined? The sight of this poor girl’s battered body had nearly broken her. Nelle thought she looked like the girl of her own she’d wanted to have. She’d swallowed her anguish and done her work the best she could for the sake of the child and her family, reminding herself the entire time, it wasn’t her on the table.

  Someday it would be.

  That was the constant that kept her going. She didn’t feel death breathing down her neck, no matter how many times she encountered its work. Because, though it was inevitable, it wasn’t her. Not today.

  The last shreds of her pretense fell away. “I worked on a little kid today.”

  Evan abandoned the shaker and came to take her in his arms.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. Her eyes welled up with the tears she’d been holding in since she had picked up the child’s body at the hospital. Evan held her close and smoothed her hair down and whispered, “Shh,” while she let it out onto his shoulder.

  After a while, she pulled back and smiled weakly. She wiped at the big tearstain on his shirt, unable to make it go away. The cry helped; now she just felt raw and tired.

  “I’m sorry. I’m going to go take a hot bath, if dinner’ll keep. I just feel nasty.”

  “It’ll be fine. I haven’t put the pasta in yet. Everything can simmer. Take your time.” He slipped back over to the bar and poured her drink into a coupe glass. “Take this too.”

  She took a sip and said, “It’s delicious; just what I need. This, and a little time to decompress. Thank you.”

  He leaned closer and kissed her again. “No darkness.”

  “Only light,” she replied. She didn’t feel it yet, but after a drink and a bath, she hoped she would. She turned to go start filling the tub, but paused by the mail sitting on the kitchen counter. She picked through the bills, ad cards, and flyers. “Is this all that came today?”

  “Yuppers.”

  “I’m expecting something from Mom.”

  “They said it’d take a little while to reroute whatever goes to the old address. It’ll get here.”

  Nelle said, “She told me she mailed it to this address. It doesn’t need to be rerouted.”

  He shrugged. “It’ll probably show up tomorrow. If not, we can try to see where it is, if she kept the tracking number.”

  Her mood was dark and darkening further.

  Evan pointed to a plate of chocolate chip cookies covered in Saran Wrap sitting on the counter next to the pile. On top, a small note read Welcome Home. “That’s the only other thing that was waiting for us today,” he said. “It’s from the Darnielles, next door.”

  She pulled back the plastic and slipped a cookie out from the plate. Evan reached for the treat in her hand. “Whoa whoa whoa! I haven’t checked to see if those have nuts yet.”

  Nelle gave him a knowing look and took a bite. She chewed for a second and declared through a dry mouthful of cookie, “They’re fine.” She chased the bite with a sip of her sidecar. “I’m getting in the bath now.” She stuffed the rest of the treat in her mouth, grabbed a second, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He called after her, “Your extra EpiPens are still packed with the rest of the medicines in the box by the sink!” There was more than a tinge of fear and actual anger in his voice. When they were first married, she’d accidentally eaten half a cashew. Her eyes swelled shut and her throat closed while he was rushing her to the emergency room. After a shot of epinephrine and an eighty-dollar Benadryl, the ER doctor
made them wait until after one in the morning before she would release them to go home. And all that time, he kept beating himself up for not having brought her autoinjectors to the party with them and not asking about the food. Ever since, he’d been hypervigilant about anything edible not prepared by him.

  Nelle had a twin pack of EpiPens in her purse in addition to the ones that were packed away. Though the pair she carried around were likely expired. In any case, she hadn’t thought to check the cookies for nuts because how could the day get any worse than it’s already been?

  * * *

  She started the water, stripped, and finished the second cookie before taking another drink of her cocktail. It was perfect. Yeah, she could quit work and comfortably gain a couple of pounds. Wider hips would make the cute little Marilyn flare dress she liked hang better. Slightly wider.

  She set the coupe glass on the floor beside the tub, lit a candle, closed the Venetian blinds, and turned off the light before getting into the water. It felt good to just lie in the warm dark for a while and try to forget. She listened to her husband in the next room clanking around the kitchen to the muted sound of the Reverend Heat’s “Psychobilly Freakout,” and the stress of the day started to seep out of her body into the water. What was it her mother had always said to her when she was little? “We’re safe as houses.” She’d never understood what that meant. But lying there in the warmth, in the dark, it sounded right.

  Safe as houses.

  15

  He tore open the flap of the small Flat Rate box and shook out the slip of paper and taped up Bubble Wrap inside. The paper was a small piece of salmon-colored stationery like old ladies used. It smelled like lavender. His wife bought lavender-scented bags to pick up the dog’s shits when they took it for walks, so the smell always made him think of dog shit, and that always made him upset. He hated that he had to pick up the mess with his hands. People were such assholes about it. Especially that one bitch who’d put up the little cast iron sign shaped like a squatting dog with NO! engraved on it at the edge of her lawn. He tried to get Maxim to piss on the damn thing every time they passed by. After a while, the white paint on the word NO! started to turn a dull yellow. He loved that.

  Unfolding the stationery, he read the short note written in careful, tight cursive. Old lady writing.

  Dear Eleonora,

  I found this in the attic. I forgot I had it, and I thought you might like to keep it. It was your great-grandmother Ella’s before she gave it to my mother. Gran gave it to me and I put it in a chest and, I hate to say, forgot about it. It was one of the few possessions your namesake took with her when they left Poland. I think she’d be happy to know that you have it now, even if it’s not the sort of thing that’s in style to wear. It’s come a long way to be with you. I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you sooner. It’s hard to let go of things, but this belongs with you. Maybe one day . . .

  The pictures inside are of your Great-Gran Ella’s parents Josef and Esther. They died in Treblinka.

  I love you,

  Mom

  He set the note beside him on the sofa and unwound the packaging from around a locket at the end of a length of chain. He snapped it open with his thumbnail. Inside, the pictures were faded with age, but still recognizable. Recognizable to someone who might have known them, anyway. To him, they just looked like another couple of old Jews.

  He sniffed his fingers. They smelled like lavender, and that made him angry. He wished he still had his dog so he could get it to piss on the pictures, the letter, and the envelope. He tossed the necklace on the table, got up, and walked to the bathroom to wash his hands. After a hard scrub, he sniffed at his hands again.

  The fuckin’ smell won’t come off.

  “Treblinka,” he said. He liked the sound of the word. “Treblinka. Treb-lin-ka.” He thought that if he ever got a new dog, he might name it that. He could call it ’Linka for short and no one would ever know. But he wasn’t going to get a new dog. There wasn’t time enough left.

  He went to the fridge for a beer. Behind him on the table in the eat-in kitchen next to the blue polo shirt he’d special-ordered online sat the shopping bag that had been in the trunk of his car. He popped open the beer, took a long pull, and set it on the table. He pulled the oilcloth bundle out of the bag and unwrapped it carefully, as though it held one of his own grandmother’s porcelain figurines—the kind that were always praying, the ones that, every once in a while, he’d “accidentally” break, even though his grampa would tan his ass for it. The Heckler & Koch HK45 pistol was much heavier than one of those. The firearm was expensive, but that’s what money is for: spending.

  Like the necklace, you can’t take it with you.

  IV

  ◆

  Nightmares

  16

  TWELVE WEEKS AFTER CLOSING

  Evan was lost in a black void. His body was heavy, and when he tried to move, it felt like gravity doubled, making his arms and legs leaden and immobile. His head ached and he was disoriented and woozy, like he was drunk and blacked out, but not completely passed out. He remembered staging breakfast and having to run to the store. And when he’d come home, Nelle was gone. He went looking for her. Finding her was the last thing he could remember. He remembered tape over her mouth. More holding her to the chair. It was wrong and scary, and he’d taken a step toward her without thinking because she needed his help, and then her eyes and panic and . . . the void.

  He was still floating in it. No, not floating. He could feel his body, and it was seated on something hard. He was sitting up. Not lying on a floor or in bed. Though he couldn’t understand why, if he was sitting upright, he couldn’t move. Something cut into his wrists and ankles. Rope? Tape, like over Nelle’s mouth and arms. It felt tight and pinched, and he realized that while he could feel the seat against his body, he couldn’t feel his hands. No. He could feel them. They hurt. But the pain in his head made it hard to focus on the rest of his body, as if his mind was sunk in a pool too deep to see the surface.

  He tried to lift his head and open his eyes, but the surge of pain in his skull brought forward a wave of nausea. He wanted to retch, but following that thought was the awareness there was something in his mouth. Something thick and dry that made it hard to breathe. Panic swelling, he tried to take a deep breath in through his nose. The effort made everything feel a little less real. The void resurgent. Nothing made sense. Nothing but the throb of pain that pulsed in his skull.

  My skull.

  His thoughts about his body were fragmented, as if he was only a collection of parts that hadn’t been put together properly and weren’t fitting. Hands. Back. Skull. Consciousness, misplaced deep down, not where it should be, in brain and skull. Why was he all apart? Why was he so deep down in this abyss? Another surge of pain and nausea crested and waned like a wave crashing over rocks and then gently flowing away, its particularity reoccupied by an oppressive whole.

  Far off, he heard voices, caught phrases that made no sense in a lost context.

  “. . . good girl . . .”

  “. . . if you scream . . .”

  “. . . water . . .”

  “I’ve been good.”

  There were two speakers. He worked to focus on them, but it was hard. One was Nelle. She didn’t sound right, but after a decade together, he knew her voice in all its variations—normal, hoarse, whispered, and shouted. Nelle was with him. They hadn’t been separated. It was the other one he couldn’t place. It didn’t belong to anyone they knew. A man. Not familiar. Not a friend.

  More pain.

  He tried to open his eyes again. While he felt closer to the surface, he couldn’t break through. He was stuck in the void. In the distance, though, he thought it was becoming lighter.

  He heard heavy footsteps moving away. Up the stairs.

  Closer to the surface. Almost there. Almost awake and back in his body. Just a little further.

  And then, “Please wake up, Evan.”

  His heart sank
, and he wanted to be back in the abyss. He wanted to be drunk and passed out because if he was lit and laid out at a party, then this wasn’t happening.

  “If you can hear me . . .”

  Oh god, I can hear you. I’m in here and I can hear you and I don’t want to hear any of this!

  17

  Nelle thought she saw Evan move again. His head turning just a little to the side, maybe. A little toward her. It could have just been gravity, but then his eyelids fluttered a little.

  Did the man see it too? He stared at her husband, but his face gave up little. She thought she caught a hint of disappointment before his expression reset. Was he upset that Evan was still unconscious? The man took a step toward Evan. Nelle watched as he reached out for her husband’s face. He grabbed Evan by the jaw and tilted his head up. Evan’s eyes didn’t even flutter. He looked dead. Except she could see his chest moving ever so slightly. He was breathing. That didn’t mean he wasn’t dying, though. He could have a brain hemorrhage or swelling. She’d seen the end results of head trauma, most often motorcyclists who tried to get around the helmet law by buying a little “brain bucket” that wasn’t DOT compliant. Once, she’d worked on a woman who’d drunkenly fallen off the platform at Wellington Station, landing headfirst on the steel rail. She knew what closed head wounds like those did. She knew all about worst-case scenarios. She was living one right now. The man had clubbed her husband with a bat.

  He let go of Evan, letting his head slump down again.

  She exhaled through her nose, and the man glanced at her with narrowed eyes, annoyed that she was making noise. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t breathe through her mouth because of the gag, and the tape around her midsection was tight. She felt light-headed and couldn’t tell if it was because she wasn’t getting enough oxygen or if it was from the beating he’d given her upstairs. Either way, she wasn’t feeling well and was certain that the sensation was only going to get worse as the hours dragged on. Her stomach growled. It seemed an inappropriate response in the face of larger problems, but she hadn’t had breakfast. She already felt weak, and it was hard to think clearly. In a few hours, it’d be hard to run or to fight. Even now, thinking of her stomach was a distraction from her most pressing problem: the man standing in her cellar.