My wife has been sick and she doesn’t get out much, but she’s been feeling better so…”
“Sure.” She glanced down at the boy and tried to smile at him without being too creepy, but he was staring intently at a crack in the sidewalk and didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all.
“Great. Thanks so much. I’ll text you,” Stuart said and hauled Ted hurriedly away.
* * *
Roy was staring at his computer screen again. He hated when he did that. Sometimes he even nodded off. It was embarrassing. He felt so old and stupid.
“A Russian assassin on Mars,” he said aloud so that the pain of his humiliation would be even more acute. If only he could put on a hair suit and flog himself.
“Dad, I’m babysitting tonight!” Shy shouted when she came home from school. “They’re paying me loads of money!” She charged upstairs and slammed the door to the bathroom.
Roy continued to stare at his screen. Peaches would be at the karaoke thing. Peaches could help him. He hoped Wendy wouldn’t be too busy at work to come. She loved parties and going out and they never went anywhere anymore—which was entirely his fault. He reached for his phone.
There’s a fun-sounding gathering at a bar in the neighborhood tonight. Meet me there?
Chapter 14
The bar was unlocked. A karaoke machine with two microphones, a large screen for reading the lyrics, and two huge speakers stood beside the drum set. The wooden bar top gleamed and the whole place smelled of Murphy Oil Soap and something else Peaches couldn’t quite nail down. She checked the bathroom. The white porcelain toilet and sink were bleached clean. Ten individually wrapped rolls of fresh toilet paper were stacked on a shelf. The paper towel dispenser had been filled and the wastebasket emptied. Elizabeth had been busy.
Peaches’ relationship with Elizabeth and Monte began in August, when she was required to show up at the nurse’s office every day, even though the students would not be in attendance for almost a month. Once she’d ordered supplies and arranged her office, she had nothing to do except attend staff meetings and make copies of emergency contact forms. She took long lunch breaks and went for walks. One day, she walked past Monte and spied the drum set through the window, just sitting there collecting dust. The bar was open—at least, the door was unlocked—so she went inside. There was no one around. The bass drum had been set up wrong and the cymbals were missing a screw. Peaches wiped the drums down with a Kleenex from her bag and fixed the bass drum. Then she sat down and played a Pretenders song with two ballpoint pens, really whacking the drums hard with them because it was only Wednesday and her work week had been so long, hot, and boring. When she looked up, Elizabeth was standing behind the bar, pouring herself a shot of vodka, wearing nothing but a black bikini top and black vinyl shorts, splattered head to toe with metallic silver paint, looking ten feet tall and scary as hell. But she was civil to Peaches.
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said. “You can come in and play whenever you like. I’m here very infrequently.”
“Sorry about the pens, I didn’t see any sticks. I’m Peaches,” Peaches said. “I’m supposed to be the school nurse, but it was not necessarily the correct career path for me.”
And so it began.
The bar was a welcome escape from Peaches’ smelly office. Elizabeth would leave notes with instructions on the drums. Would you mind meeting the beer guy? He comes from 3 to 5. Or, Toilet paper, paper towel, and napkin truck dropping off boxes today 4 to 6. She’d disappear and then reappear again. They rarely spoke and then only cursorily. Elizabeth spent most of her time in the basement. The week before school started, she’d disappeared altogether—until now.
Formaldehyde, that was what she smelled. A heavy thud resounded beneath Peaches’ feet, followed by a muffled, exasperated growl. Peaches had been instructed to never enter the basement. Elizabeth would be up when she was ready.
She ordered pad thai from the Seamless app on her phone and sat down behind the drum set. She’d been playing drums since her boring but weirdly intuitive parents put her in a Girls Rock summer day camp at the age of nine. The crazy thing about it was, despite being married to a musician, she didn’t know how to read music. She didn’t even know