And though all he could think about was the message and Laura, he forced himself to broach the subject of Mom—hostile territory—asked Martin if he thought she seemed to be thriving in the wake of Dad’s passing.

“That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“No, you’re saying she’s better off without him.”

Beyond the kitchen, Tim heard the middle step of the staircase creak—Laura working her way down from the bedroom—and he wondered if Martin had heard it.  The last two steps were noisy as well, and then came the front door you could hear opening from Argentina.  Nothing else to do but get him riled and noisy.

“Yeah, Martin, I guess I am saying she’s better off without him.  What’d he do these last five years but cause us all a lot of heartache?  And what’d you do but step in as Dad’s faithful apologist?”

Another creak.

“Ever heard of honor thy father, Tim?”  Martin’s cheeks had flushed with the whiskey and Tim wondered if he’d intended to raise his voice like he had.  His brother’s back was to the archway between the kitchen and the living room, and as Tim saw Laura enter the foyer and start toward the front door, he tried to avert his eyes.

“You know he beat Mom.”

“Once, Tim.  One fucking time.  And it was a total accident.  He didn’t mean to shove her as hard as he did.”  Laura turning the deadbolt now.  “And it tore him up that he did it.  You weren’t here when it happened.  Didn’t see him crying like a goddamn two-year-old, sitting in his own vomit, did you?”  Tim could hear the hinges creaking.  “No,” Martin answered his own question as the front door swung open, cold streaming in.  “You were in college.”  Laura slipped outside, eased the door closed behind her.  “Becoming a teacher.”  Any curiosity Tim had harbored concerning his brother’s opinion of his chosen profession instantly wilted.

“You’re right,” Tim said.  “Sorry.  I just…part of me’s still so pissed at him, you know?”

Martin lifted the bottle, took a long drink, wiped his mouth.

“Of course I know.”

Tim pulled Old Grandad across the table, wondering how long it would take Laura.  If the cruiser was locked, there’d be nothing she could do but come right back inside.  If it was open, might take her a minute or two of searching the front seats to find the phone, another thirty seconds to figure out how to work Martin’s cell, check his call history.

He sipped the whiskey, pushed the bottle back to Martin.

“Wish you’d come over more,” Tim said.  “Feel like I don’t see you much these days.”

“See me every Sunday at Mom’s.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Tim wanted to ask Martin if he felt that wedge between them, met his brother’s eyes across the table, but couldn’t bring himself to say the words.  They didn’t operate on that frequency.

A frigid mist fogged Laura’s glasses, and with the porchlight out, she took her time descending the steps, the soles of her slippers holding a tenuous grip on the wet brick.  The fog had thickened since Martin’s arrival, the streetlamps putting out a glow far dimmer and more diffused than their normal sharp points of illumination—now just smudges of light in the distance.

She hurried down the sidewalk that curved from the house to the driveway.

Martin had parked his police cruiser behind the old Honda Civic she’d had since her junior year of high school, over 200,000 miles on the odometer and not a glimmer of senility.

Laura walked around to the front door on the passenger side, out of the sight-line of the living room windows.  She reached to open the front passenger door, wondering if Martin’s cruiser carried an alarm.  If so, she was about to wake up everyone on the block, and had better prepare herself to explain to her brother-in-law why she’d tried to break into his car.

The door opened.  Interior lights blazing.  No screeching alarm.  The front seat filthy—Chick-Fil-A wrappers and crushed Cheerwine cans in the floorboards.

She leaned over the computer in the central console, inspected the driver seat.

No phone.

Two minutes of leafing through the myriad papers and napkins and straws and stray salt packets in the glove compartment convinced her it wasn’t there either.

She glanced back through the partition that separated the front seats from the back.

In the middle seat, on top of a Penthouse magazine, lay Martin’s black leather cell phone case.

“Yeah, I was seeing this woman for a little while.”

“But not anymore?”

Martin took another long pull from Old Grandad, shook his head.

“What happened?”

“She wanted to domesticate me, as they say.”

Tim forced a smile.  “How so?”

“Tried to drag me to church and Sunday school.  Anytime we’d be out and I’d order an alcoholic beverage—her term—she’d make this real restrained sigh, like her Southern Baptist sensibility had been scandalized.  And in bed…”

Laura opened the door behind the front passenger seat and climbed into the back of the cruiser.  Wary of the interior lights exposing her, on the chance Martin happened to glance outside, she pulled the door closed.

After a moment, the lights cut out.

She picked up the leather case, fished out Martin’s cell phone, and flipped it open, the little screen glowing in the dark.

“…I’d gotten my hopes up, figured she’s so uptight about every other fucking thing, girl must be a psychopath between the sheets.  Like it has to balance out somewhere, right?”

As he sipped the whiskey, Tim glanced around Martin toward the front door.

“Sadly, not the case.  When we finally did the deed, she just laid there, absolutely motionless, making these weird little noises.  She was terrified of sex.  I think she approached it like scooping up dogshit.  Damn, this whiskey’s running through me.”

Martin got up from the table and left the kitchen, Tim listening to his brother’s footsteps track down the hallway.

The bathroom door opened and closed.

It grew suddenly quiet.

The clock above the kitchen sink showed 11:35.

Laura stared at the cell phone screen and exhaled a long sigh.  Martin’s last call had gone out at 4:21 p.m. to Mary West, his and Tim’s mother.

She closed the cell, slipped it back into the leather case, sat there for a moment in the dark car.  She realized she’d somehow known all along, and she wondered how she’d let Tim know—maybe a shake of the head as she crept past the kitchen on her way up the stairs.  Better not to advertise to Martin that they’d suspected him.

She searched for the door handle in the dark, and kept searching and kept searching.  At least on this side, there didn’t seem to be one.  She moved to the other door, slid her hand across the vinyl.  Nothing.  Reaching forward, she touched the partition of vinyl-coated metal that separated the front and back seats, thinking, You’ve got to be kidding me.

Ten minutes later, flushed with embarrassment, Laura broke down and dialed her home number on Martin’s cell.  Even from inside the car, she could hear their telephone ringing through the living room windows.  If she could get Tim to come outside unnoticed and let her out, Martin would never have to know about any of this.

The answering machine picked up, her voice advising, “Tim and Laura aren’t here right now.  You know the drill.”

She closed Martin’s cell, opened it, hit redial—five rings, then the machine again.

The moment she put the phone away, Martin’s cell vibrated.

Laura opened the case, opened the phone—her landline calling, figured Tim had star-sixty-nined her last call.

Through the drawn shades of the living room windows, she saw his profile, pressed talk.