Page 5 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“All I can think is that he was trying to get this note to me. Maybe something happened when I went home that last night, because he was gone by morning and he never had a chance to give it to me. And then I think back to all the people who were in the room when I was there, and maybe he couldn’t risk giving it to me then, but I was there so much it’s all a blur. I can’t keep it all straight. I found it just a few days ago in the wooly sweater he always wore over his hospital gown. It was sitting in a bag for weeks and then I went through it all and… God. He was begging for help. I’ll never forgive myself. Maybe he didn’t want someone to find he’d written it—someone he was afraid of. I don’t know,” she says, tears welling in her eyes as she pushes the paper shreds back into her pocket.

“Why else would it be torn up?” she asks before I even have a chance to respond to all this shocking information. “I mean, that’s all that makes sense, right? For why it’s torn up? It’s like he was afraid of someone finding it, I mean why else? He was trying to warn me—to get help, and he was afraid the person who was after him would find it. I know how that sounds, but I have gone over this a million times in my head,and what other reason could there be?”

“Shit” is all I manage to say.

“My poor Otis, I couldn’t help him and he was all alone there with someone trying to hurt him. But who would want to hurt Otis? I mean, who in the world?” she says, and that’s exactly what I was going to ask.

“And you told all of this to Detective Riley?” I ask.

“Yeah right. What do you think he’d say—that Otis had a stroke and we didn’t know the extent of the damage, so this was probably some delusion or paranoia?” she says, and he would have a point, of course. “But I know my Otis, and he seemeddifferentthose last days. I know, of course, a stroke makes people different, but I still know him, Florence. I know him, and I saw his eyes change. Now I think it was fear, not just being sick, but…this…” She half motions to the papers in her pocket.

“I can’t let it go. I can’t have his cries for help literally in my hand and blow it off as paranoia. I need to find out the truth. And fine, people can think whatever they want about me, but what about Mack…and poor Shelby Dawson. It was a warning to them too.”

“You think he meant they’re in danger?” I ask. She closes her eyes and blows a cone of white mist into the frozen air, shaking her head.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Yeah. Maybe.”

“This could all be connected,” I sort of mumble to myself, thinking about any reason why, even if he was suffering from some delusion, he would bring Mack and Shelby into it. That’s pretty specific for a delusional man’s imaginings. Winny holds her head in her hands and I put my arm around her shoulder. We shiver together for a few moments.

“I believe you,” I say.

“You do?” she asks, straightening up and looking at me with wet, desperate eyes.

“If there’s some motherfucker out there responsible for this, we’re gonna find him,” I say. She puts her arms around me and cries while I hold her and tell her it’s going to be okay.

And that’s the moment everything was set in motion. I didn’t know it then, but hunting a killer would become my new hobby, not gardening, as it turns out.

4

SHELBY

It’s that sad, dead week between Christmas and New Year’s where everything feels weird and you are allowed to eat stocking chocolates or cheesecake for breakfast, so I sit inside the front office at work and nibble the leg of a deranged-looking gingerbread man, trying to keep the dark thoughts away.

It took a year of therapy and a couple dozen self-help books to begin to feel grateful to be alive. Gratitude is the only way to escape the spiral down into the depths, they say. So I try to say a list out loud in the morning, counting all the blessings in my life. I am grateful for my girls, for my husband, I am grateful for the heat in my car and my job that I love, I am grateful for the sky, and slipper socks, and the air in my lungs, and gravity, and this fucking gingerbread cookie. And sometimes it helps a little, but it doesn’t pull me from the depths as promised.

They found you just in time, bethankful. But when I look at my girls, and think about their fear, being locked in the car wondering where I was, there is no gratitude for being alive. There is nothing but white-hot rage. I can erase the terror I felt as the pain turned to numbness and then the world went dark. I can sometimes push the memory away for a whole day on a good day, but when I think about my babies crying in that car, I just… I have to stop the thought before I let it go any further in this moment, so I throw the rest of the cookie in the garbage and try to take a few deep breaths.

I carefully push myself to stand. One foot has a partial amputation. I’m lucky, they say. I can still walk and I lost two fingers on my left hand, what a miracle it wasn’t worse. I know they mean well—every lovely friend and acquaintance who tries to say something positive like that, I know that. What the hell can you really say to someone after something like this? But also fuck them for trying to make anything about this positive.

I peer out into the rec room and see Millie sitting in front of the TV watchingDie Hardand drinking from a jug of sangria, and Florence and Bernie playing chess at a card table covered in tinsel and Hershey’s wrappers. I can tell from here that Mort is in a filthy mood by the way he holds his book in front of his face, silently protesting the movie choice, but still peers over the cover now and then to scowl at the screen.

It’s the residents at Oleander Terrace who really pull me out of the depths, at least for short spaces of time throughout the day. The Ole is a small assisted living facility I manage where the residents have their own rooms and shared living space rather than their own apartments, but most of them are quite independent and only need limited care. I think most chose this place over fifty-five-plus apartment facilities because of the community. It’s not a nursing home. They mostly do what they please. It’s small and there’s always poker or pottery class or dance nights and just people around in the common area to fill the void,but it still doesn’t cure the loneliness. I may be jaded and half-crippled now, but I can still see that much clear as day.

Herb walks into the rec room in shorts and flip-flops despite the fact that it’s nineteen degrees below zero outside. He cracks a Miller Lite and sits in a battered recliner next to Mort.

“Christmas is over,” he says.

“So?” Millie snaps.

“So I recorded the Giants game, no more Christmas movies for cryin’ out loud.”

“Die Hardis not a Christmas movie, Herb.”

“Bruce Willis is literally wearing a Santa hat as we speak,” he says, gesturing to the screen.

“Mort, isDie Harda…?” Millie starts to ask, but he cuts her off.

“It’s a controversial question. I’m not getting involved.”

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