Dear Debbie, page 16
If you don’t want the whole school to see those photos, you should stop being such a little cocktease.
Oh my God, I want to kill him.
I have to take a few deep breaths to calm myself down. My hands are shaking as I tap out a message to Zane:
Can we see each other now? I’ll sneak out and take my parents’ car.
There’s a chance he could be asleep, but I remember overhearing him say that he never goes to bed before two in the morning. Sure enough, three bubbles appear on the screen. He’s typing.
Have you reconsidered?
Kill him with my bare hands. Rip him limb from limb.
Yes. I want to see you. I’ll do anything you want.
You’re so smart. I knew you’d come around.
Yes, Lexi is smart. That’s why she told her mother what was happening.
Can we meet at the playground in the shipyard? We’ll be the only ones there.
The Hingham Shipyard used to be an actual shipyard many years ago but is now an area on the marina with homes, shopping, and recreation activities. I used to take the kids to the playground there when they were little, followed by lunch at Wahlburgers. During the day, it was always busy, but it will be completely deserted at this time of night. And I happened to notice on a recent excursion there that there were no cameras around the playground.
I’ll be there in 20 minutes.
45
I arrive fifteen minutes later.
Zane is chronically late, so I didn’t need to rush, but on the other hand, he also drives like chaos incarnate, so it seemed possible that he might show up on time or even early. I need to beat him to the playground.
As expected, the playground is completely empty. It’s officially “closed after dusk,” as if any children would come here to play at one in the morning. It’s a medium-size play area with tire swings, a play structure with a green plastic slide, and wood chips covering the ground that threaten to enter my shoes with each step.
Last night before bed, I went out and bought a six-pack of beer. It’s not the sort of thing we ever keep in the house, because Cooper and I don’t care for beer, but I need it tonight. As soon as I get to the playground, I crack open a can.
Then I add the opium. Enough to knock him out.
I certainly would never drink from a mystery can left on a playground, but I’m not Zane, who is eighteen years old with a penchant for getting in trouble. I place the beer in a prominent location on one of the benches lining the playground. Then I position myself behind a set of bushes. And I wait.
Zane is ten minutes late. When he arrives at the playground, he looks around, expecting to see Lexi waiting for him there. From my hiding place, I can see a flash of annoyance over his gaunt features. He might not wait for her.
Thankfully, I brought along Lexi’s phone for just this reason. I type out another message to Zane:
My mom got up to use the bathroom, so I got out a little late. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.
He reads the message, frowning. Is he going to wait for her? I have to do something to seal the deal. So even though it kills me, I type:
I want to do it right on the bench in the playground.
The message serves a dual purpose. First, it will ensure that he waits for Lexi, even though she’s not actually coming. And second, it gets him thinking about the park bench.
Sure enough, he walks over to the bench and sits down. I squint at him in the moonlight as he messes with his phone. I imagine he’s looking at the photos of Lexi, and I want to wring his neck.
Most of the time, I am able to push what happened that night with Hutch out of my head. But right now, it’s like he’s whispering in my ear: Don’t worry. This will be over in a minute.
I will not let that happen to my daughter.
It takes Zane a few minutes to notice the beer can. He glances at it a few times, then finally picks it up. He seems surprised that it’s nearly full. Then he sniffs it.
Opium does have an odor. It smells sort of sweet, with an earthy overtone to it. It reminds me a little of the smell of maple syrup. I’m hoping that the yeasty odor of the beer will mask the opium. I watch Zane contemplating the can. Hopefully, I’ve taught my own children better than to drink from a random container left in the park, but I have a strong feeling Zane will have no qualms about it if he thinks it’s alcohol.
Drink it. Come on, drink it, you piece of shit!
And then he does. He’s drinking it. He downs the entire can of opium-laced beer in what looks like five gulps.
I stay poised with my phone in case he looks like he’s going to take off, but after about five minutes, he doesn’t seem as fidgety as he was before. Fifteen minutes later, he is yawning and rubbing his eyes.
Half an hour later, he is out cold.
I wait another ten minutes, just in case. In the meantime, I make sure to delete the entire conversation between Zane and my daughter’s phone so she’ll never find out we met tonight. While I’m at it, I also block his number. I shove Lexi’s phone into my purse and walk over to where he is lying strewn across the bench. He had been messing with his phone, and it fell out of his hand and is lying on the grass below the bench. I pick it up.
Unlike Coach Pike’s phone, which I opened using his fingerprint, this is the type of phone that unlocks by facial recognition. This generally means that your eyes must be open to unlock it. However, during the summer, I walked in on Lexi and Zane in my kitchen, and he was complaining about how his phone wouldn’t unlock if he had his sunglasses on. I overheard the conversation and told him that you could turn off the “Attention” function on the phone so that it does not require you to be looking at it in order to unlock. When he seemed confused, I offered to do it for him. He handed me his phone, and I changed the settings personally.
That’s how I know that when I hold the phone up to his face, it will unlock, even though his eyes are closed.
I step back into the shadows in case Zane wakes up, although it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon. After deleting the conversation between his phone and Lexi’s that led him to the playground, the next thing I do is scroll through the photos on his phone and find the ones that Lexi sent him. I delete them all. It’s entirely possible he has them saved somewhere else, but deleting those photos is not my primary purpose.
I’m here to do something else.
Lexi told me that he had done this before. During his sophomore year, he dated a girl whose picture he sent around the school. Considering he was a sophomore, that girl was likely around fifteen years old. Which means that legally, he was distributing child pornography.
Now I must find the digital fingerprint of what he did.
It’s not fun searching Zane’s phone. I have to scroll through a lot of conversations with his friends involving my daughter, none of which are flattering. I find one from yesterday that particularly raises my blood pressure.
You still dating that Lexi chick?
Ya but she sucks at going down on me. Will probably dump her soon.
She needs lessons from Yvonne.
I think she’s too stupid to learn.
At some point, I put down the phone and just stare at Zane, who is still lying unconscious on the park bench. I’m going through all this trouble to find incriminating photos, but it doesn’t have to be this difficult. I’ve got a Swiss Army knife in the glove compartment of my car. I can walk over, get it, and chop off his dick. That would be justice, and it would certainly solve the problem!
I suppose it would create other problems though.
It takes me nearly half an hour of searching before I find what I’m looking for. The photo of that poor girl is still in his camera feed, because of course he’d be too naive to ever delete it. She looks only fourteen or fifteen. She’s completely naked, and she appears so deeply uncomfortable, I almost really do get that Swiss Army knife. He has shared this photo multiple times, and the evidence is all there. Right on his phone. He never deleted any of it.
And he called my daughter stupid.
I screenshot everything, then I create an anonymous email account. I send everything to both the high school administration and the local police department, noting the approximate age of the girl.
I allow myself a smile. Tomorrow will be interesting.
46
When I get home from my little errand, I find Cooper waiting for me in the living room.
He’s in his undershirt and boxers, and only the small light is on next to him, giving his face an eerie glow. I should have guessed he would be up. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and the absence of my body next to his in bed might have been enough to jolt him awake.
He stares at me, his frame rigid. He must’ve heard my car enter the garage, so he knows I’ve been driving. I can’t pretend I was taking a stroll around the neighborhood. Plus, I failed to turn off the Findly app, which was a terrible oversight. Although maybe on some level, I wanted him to know where I had gone.
“Debbie,” he says.
When he speaks, I smell it. He must’ve discovered the rest of the beers that I left in the back of the refrigerator. Cooper isn’t much of a drinker, but I guess I can’t blame him right now.
“Hi,” I say weakly.
“Where were you?”
I try to smile, although it feels like plastic on my face. “I was just driving around.”
He frowns. “Were you at the shipyard?”
Just as I suspected—the tracker on my phone gave me away. I will definitely have to shut it off next time. The same way he does when he disappears somewhere he doesn’t want me to know. He’s much better at keeping secrets than I am.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say. “I was just driving around. I thought it would make me tired.”
He struggles to his feet. His brown hair is tousled from sleep, and he has a day’s growth of a beard on his face. When I first met him, I had not been on a date in a very long time, but he seemed so sweet and earnest when he asked me. I was afraid of men for a long time because of Hutch, but for some reason, I wasn’t afraid of Cooper. He was, in fact, the first man who didn’t give me that sick feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach. He didn’t seem like he would ever hurt me.
When did that change?
“Debbie,” he croaks, his voice pleading.
I know what he wants. He wants me to tell him the truth about everything. But there’s no way I can do that. It’s far too late.
“Where did you go last night?” I counter. “When you told me you were getting dinner and you were gone for two hours?”
His eyes widen in alarm. “I…I told you. I just went for a drive.”
“A drive?”
“Yes, of course.” His voice takes on a defensive edge. “What do you think I’ve been doing?”
Why should I tell the truth when he’s been lying to my face?
When it’s all over, he’ll know everything. And maybe there will be a way he can understand.
“I’m tired,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”
I push past him, through the living room into the stairwell. I expect him to follow me up to the bedroom, but he doesn’t. He stays in the living room, and that’s where he spends the rest of the night.
47
FROM DEAR DEBBIE DRAFTS FILE
Dear Debbie,
I think my husband might be cheating on me.
I can’t be entirely sure, but all the red flags are there. He is completely uninterested in having sex with me and has been for several months now, even when I try to initiate. Sometimes I’ll call him during the day and can’t reach him at times when he should be available. On another occasion, he told me he was going out with friends, but when I texted the wife of one of these friends, she said her husband was home with her. And worst of all, I have smelled perfume on him that definitely was not mine!
When I ask him about it, he becomes very defensive. He says he feels hurt that I think he would do something like that.
What do you think? Do you think my husband is cheating on me, or am I being a “jealous wife”?
Sincerely,
Worried Wife
Dear Worried Wife,
I agree that a lot of your husband’s behavior is concerning for infidelity. Unfortunately, when a man is cheating, it is common for him to become overly defensive when confronted.
If you are highly suspicious that your husband is cheating on you, one thing you can do is search to see if he has an alternate phone that he’s using. Along those lines, he may have an alternate email address. If you can’t find anything on your own but you’re still suspicious, you may want to consider hiring a private investigator. If your private investigator turns up signs of infidelity, you may then want to consider hiring a lawyer. Or a hit man.
So as you see, you have many options.
Debbie
48
DEBBIE
The next morning, I make sure to wake Cooper up before the girls come downstairs. It won’t help matters if they discover their father sleeping on the couch. He looks at me with bleary eyes, then stumbles upstairs to take a shower or catch up on the sleep he missed during the night. He’s holding his back—the sofa is not the most comfortable place to sleep.
Lexi seems to be in slightly better spirits than last night. She isn’t crying at least. But like Cooper, she looks tired. She probably tossed and turned a lot during the night, but thankfully, she never discovered that her phone was missing. I managed to return it to her nightstand without waking her.
Izzy, on the other hand, is in a great mood. She’s back on the soccer team, and she doesn’t have to deal with a coach who is always putting her down. I should have gotten rid of Coach Pike ages ago.
I scramble up some eggs and put them on toasted English muffins. I have been making myself fiber cereal every morning, but I throw caution to the wind and make myself an English muffin with eggs as well.
“Would you like a ride to school again?” I ask the girls as I lay the plates of food down on the kitchen table.
“Yes,” Izzy says eagerly. She’ll never turn down a ride.
Lexi, who isn’t even wearing her headphones this morning, nods as well. “Sure. But I’ve got a physics test first thing in the morning, so I can’t be late.”
“Do I ever get you there late?” I challenge her.
She flashes me a grudging smile. “Not too often.”
“Try never.” I return her smile as I join them at the table. I am, in fact, habitually prompt. “Anyway, finish your food, and then we’ll go.”
Lexi looks down at the three plates in front of us, then over her shoulder at the stove. “Aren’t you going to make a plate for Dad?”
Well, that’s quite the loaded question. I open my mouth, not entirely sure how I’m going to respond, and that’s when the doorbell rings.
The sound sets off my nerves. There’s nobody who could be waiting at the front door that would have anything good to say. Is it Jo Dolan, wanting me to pay for her extermination bill? Brett Carlson, looking for me to pay for his broken fuse box? Garrett Meers, who hilariously still can’t seem to get the porn video down from the newspaper website?
“I’ll get it,” I say.
I abandon my eggs and hurry to the front door, where our visitor seems to be in the process of putting all their weight on our doorbell. And when I get there, my heart sinks. It’s somebody far worse than Jo or Brett or Garrett. It’s Zane.
And he looks pissed.
I guess that’s not a surprise. I dragged him out in the middle of the night, then he got stood up by his girlfriend who he thought was going to do God knows what with him in a public playground. I wonder what time he woke up on that bench. He’s lucky it’s a safe area, even in the middle of the night.
Honestly, he has some nerve coming over here after the way he threatened her, but I have to pretend like I don’t know about any of this. Lexi would kill me if she had the slightest idea what I did.
“Where’s Lexi?” Zane demands to know.
I fold my arms across my chest. “She’s eating breakfast at the moment. Can I help you?”
He looks like he’s not quite sure what to say. He can’t exactly tell me that my daughter stood him up in the middle of the night. So he says the one thing that he can say: “She blocked me on her phone!”
To be fair, I blocked him. Because he deserved to be blocked, and also, if I didn’t block him, he was going to blow up Lexi’s phone with messages asking where she was last night. In the interest of her never finding out what I did, I couldn’t let him send her any text messages.
“That’s her business,” I say tightly. “Do you have any messages you want me to pass on?”
“Yeah.” His lower jaw juts out. “Tell her she’s a bitch.”
I have to admit, that one surprises me. I didn’t think he had the gall to say that to my face. But it makes the next thing I have to say so much easier.
“I’ll be sure to let her know,” I say sarcastically. “Also, I have a little message for you as well, Zane.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah?”
“That’s right.” I smile brightly. “I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of what happens to a sex offender in prison.”
That wipes the smug look right off his face. “What?”
“A sex offender,” I repeat. “Like, for instance, somebody who passed around naked photos of a fifteen-year-old girl, which would legally be considered child pornography.”
