Page 12 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Good job, Pops,” Clay says, making a right on Ivy Street.

“That was June,” I say, a common correction.

“Great skills, Juju,” he says instead, and they laugh.

Poppy’s voice begins to read. “‘I told you what would happen if you went p-p-public. I won’t kill you, I’ll make everyone around you pay, remember?’” Clay tenses, and I whip around in my seat and look at her.

“What are you reading? What the hell is she reading?” Clay slows the car down and looks in the rearview mirror, adjusting it to see the girls.

“What does it mean?” Poppy asks, holding out the folded note with an outstretched hand.

“Where did you get this?” I ask her, trying to stay calm, but I can hear the bite in my voice. She shrinks a little in her seat.

“It was on the floor,” she says, pointing down. Jesus, it fell out of my pocket into the back.

“It’s a play,” I say quickly. “It’s just the page from a play that Mort is working on, you know Mort. It’s just lines a character is saying.But it’s not for kids,” I take the note from her and she shrugs and opens a fortune cookie. I stare at the note with a sticky orange chicken fingerprint on it now, and then fold it back up and shove it in my pocket.

Clay’s knuckles whiten around the steering wheel and his neck blooms red blotches, but he doesn’t say anything with the girls in the car.

After they’re dressed in Dora jammies and sitting at the coffee table on the living room floor coloring next to the fireplace, I walk into the kitchen where Clay stands at the counter storing away Chinese leftovers. He’s slamming lids on Tupperware and whipping chopsticks into the trash. When he sees me, he carefully places both hands on the counter, an attempt to stay calm, and simply looks at me.

“Can we sit down?” I say.

“No, tell me what the hell is going on. I’m not an idiot. I saw your face when you heard the words being read, so something has happened. What?” I don’t respond right away. He opens the fridge and almost pulls out a beer, but he is headed off to a shift at the hospital, so he just slams the fridge with a sigh and stares up at the ceiling for a moment. I sit at the table.

“It showed up on my car yesterday. I was trying to find a time to tell you.” He sits, as calmly as he can manage. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone’s face drained of color yet look like their head could explode simultaneously, and I understand it. It’s the way I feel when I think about the girls being hurt—the utter helplessness and rage it evokes.

“Where? Here?”

“No, at the Oleander’s. After my shift. It was just on my car.” He stands, then sits and clenches his fists, and he takes a slow breath, then he stands again, walking over to the alarm system we put in after the incident last year, fuming. He punches in the code and arms it.

“This stays on when you’re home. It’s not just for nighttime anymore.Anytime you’re in the house, this is on,” he says, and I don’t try to explain what a nightmare that is with the girls running in and out and forgetting to disarm it and the crushing noise it makes and the police calling just for me to say, “oops sorry. False alarm.” I just nod in agreement.

Before he can say anything else, I hear the girls’ video end and the local news begin. I head in to turn it off when I stop cold, and I turn to see Clay in the frame of the kitchen door with his eyes fixed on the TV, also frozen in place.

There is a video playing as the top story.

“Authorities have obtained a video that might lead to clues from the frightening events that took place last October when a Rivers Crossing resident was assaulted at Firefly Cafe on 6th Street. The video has never been seen before, and it seems the bar owner across the street had security footage which is just now surfacing.

“It shows a figure walking into frame, pulling a hood over his face and then moving around to the back of the building. There is no footage of the man leaving the cafe which leads police to believe he fled out the back and into the woods behind it. The following images are of the police finding the victim just in the nick of time.” The newscaster with a blond bob and tight lips disappears from the screen and I see my car parked there, police surrounding it. Then I see myself being wheeled out on a stretcher like a corpse.

“Go brush your teeth,” I snap at the girls who just blink back at me, confused by my sudden mood change.

“Now, please!” I say and they scramble to their feet, looking crestfallen as they run down the hallway to their bathroom. The newscaster finishes up her short segment with…

“The owner of the cafe went missing on the same night and was never found, which has left local authorities baffled.”

Thisis why now. This is why he’s left a note and he’s back, because first the criminal profiler on the news yesterday stirred the whole thing back up—maybe said something that hit close to home although who knows what that would be,it’s all so generic—probably a white male, probably local, likely committed sexual crimes in the past. Useless information if you ask me.

And then, the next day, there is the first trace of actual evidence, and even if you can’t make out the person in the image, he knows it’s him, and maybe it could start to lead to something. Shit.

“Shit!” Clay hisses, echoing my thoughts. I see his clenched fists as he shakes his head at the ceiling, speechless. Then he pulls his coat on and hands me mine.

“Girls, stay inside. We’ll be right back.”

“What are you doing?”

“Come on,” he says, pulling on my sleeve and I follow him reluctantly, shouting “Clay! What?” behind him, all the way out to the back shed. I stand shivering in the doorway as he pulls boxes off a wooden shelf. He tosses an empty gas can out of his way and mumbles his frustrations under his breath the whole while. I know what he’s doing.

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