minute to get things cleaned up. I already had the cops down, filed a report—”
“What’s the damage?”
“Busted in the doors. Broken glass everywhere … probably some wasted fuckers down at the community college getting a head start on Halloween.” I keep my phone wedged between my chin and ear while I pull on my jeans. “My office is a goddamn disaster. My computer’s fucked. I’ve got to get a tech guy down to look at it, see if it’s salvageable.” I start saying oh my God, Paul, but he cuts me off. “I have backups, but it’s a bitch of a thing—”
“What about the rest of our data?”
“Looks to be intact, but I’m going to have everything looked at just in case.” I can practically hear him pinching the bridge of his nose. “The worst part is, it’s just on that line between fucking around and fucking with me and the magazine specifically, which is going to bug the shit out of me until the day I die, which makes me think that’s exactly the point. But nobody else on the street got hit like this…”
“You really think it was college kids?”
“I don’t know. Were you feeling particularly pissed off at me yesterday?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Relax. It’s a joke. But don’t think I can’t tell when you’re pissed at me.”
“Like right now? I locked up, Paul. Jesus.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “I know you did. Anyway, if you got any ideas, tell me, Denham, because I got nothing but a new fuckin’ mess to clean up…”
I hesitate. I don’t have to guess what Paul would do if he knew I was going behind his back to look into The Project or that Lev Warren and Casey Byers now believe SVO is intrinsically tied to my desire to see them burn to the ground. Or that they believe I have information about Jeremy’s death that they don’t.
Or that this is probably the consequence of all of those things.
So I don’t tell Paul.
“Just let me out here.”
I look up from my phone; I’m exactly where it says I should be. A glance out the window confirms it. The cab driver peers at the road and asks, “You sure? It’s a long way up.”
I dig his fare from my pocket and pass it over the seat.
He frowns as he takes it and says, “I can get you closer.”
“It’s fine.”
I let myself out. A few fat snowflakes drift from the sky as I shove my hands in my pockets and begin the trek down the dirt road stretched in front of me. The cab pulls back onto the highway and I listen to the rush of its wheels as it drives away until it’s gone and I’m alone.
The Garrett property looks different without the tent commanding its landscape and all the cars parked haphazardly nearby, without its desperate crowd of revelers. But there’s still the ghost of that energy here, as if awaiting its next holy moment.
The ground is hard beneath my feet, the air painfully bitter. I try to steel myself against it, but I can’t. My mended bones make themselves known in bad weather, in the cold. They feel like a bruise wrapped around a toothache. Patty had so many years on me, but my body had so much wear on hers, so many more weaknesses. In that way, I was the elder between us. I hunch my shoulders and push forward, trying to ignore my churning gut. The house is at the farthest end of the farm and by the time I reach its edges, the beds of my fingernails are purple.
It’s a nostalgic-looking two-story with white siding and stormy blue accents. The kind of place that’s known many generations. It’s mostly well-kept, but there are parts of it that seem weathered just enough to keep it humble or at least maintain the illusion of humility. Jesus was born in a stable, after all. The front porch has a battered screen door blocking the hefty wooden door behind it and a raggedy wicker chair sits under a picture window, its curtains drawn.
The narrow path up is dug from the earth, flat stones pressed into it. I’ve just put my foot on the first one when the bulky front door opens slowly, a struggle very apparent in the tiny hands grasping its edges and forcing it open. The screen door is a much easier conquest. It swings out with a whine of protest, and then a little girl comes flying from the house