Dear Debbie, page 18
54
COOPER
The day moves slowly.
It seems like five o’clock will never come. Mrs. McCauley often leaves as early as three o’clock on Fridays, but maybe because of the missing money, she is staying later, so there’s no chance of sneaking out.
Worse, she keeps stealing looks at me like she doesn’t trust me. At one point, she followed me into the break room and stared at me while I heated up my Cup Noodles in the microwave. I had planned to eat in the break room, but I ended up taking the food back to my office and closing the door behind me.
It’s about half past three when my phone starts ringing on my desk. When I see Lexi’s name on the screen, I feel a jolt of surprise, followed by worry. Lexi never calls me. Her generation doesn’t seem to make many calls in general, but I can’t even remember the last time she placed a call to me in particular. If she needed anything, she’d almost certainly call Debbie before me.
Then again, Debbie has been acting very strangely lately. Maybe Lexi feels uncomfortable reaching out to her with a problem. I know the feeling.
I reach for my phone and click on the green button to take the call. “Lexi?”
“Dad?” There’s a tremor in her voice. “Where are you?”
That’s a strange question. It’s three o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Where does she think I’d be? “I’m at work. Why?”
“Do…do you think you can come home? Like, now?”
I look down at my watch, knowing that it’s way too early to leave with Mrs. McCauley keeping watch. “Is it an emergency?”
“Kind of.” She sounds much younger than her seventeen years. My kids are both teenagers, but they sound like babies on the phone. “I think there’s something wrong with Mom.”
What?
I clear my throat, trying not to jump to conclusions. Debbie and I have always taken a united front when it comes to parenting. I don’t want to betray her. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just a bunch of things that have happened,” she says. “And it’s all…it’s making us think Mom has, like, gone all vigilante.”
“Gone all vigilante?”
“So Izzy got kicked off the soccer team,” she says, “and then the very next day, Coach Pike gets arrested.”
I suck in a breath, not wanting to admit my own suspicions about that night. “Well, I’m sure it was a coincidence.”
“Yeah,” she says, “but then last night, I was telling Mom about some…problems I was having with Zane. And then this morning, he…he drove his car into the school.” Her voice breaks. “He’s in the hospital now.”
I nearly choke. “He what?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Lexi sounds surprised. “It happened this morning. She had to pick me and Izzy up from school.”
No, Debbie didn’t happen to mention that our daughter’s boyfriend was in a serious car wreck. Apparently, it didn’t seem important enough to tell me about.
Christ, what happened to us?
“And then,” Lexi continues.
Oh God, there’s more?
“I had to print this thing out for school, and my printer wasn’t working. So I went downstairs to use Mom’s desktop. And she had this document open on the screen, and it was…really weird.”
“What do you mean by ‘really weird’?”
“Um, I think you better come home and take a look, Dad.”
I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m not sure if I even want to know. But it’s pretty clear I’m not going to get any work done.
“Where’s your mother?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Lexi admits. “She said she was going on an errand, and that was, like, an hour and a half ago. She’s not back yet.”
An errand? Like the errands she went on the last two nights?
I open the Findly app on my phone to see where she went. But when I click on it, the last known location for Debbie updated two hours ago. She must’ve turned off location sharing.
She doesn’t want me to know where she went, and that scares the shit out of me.
“I’ll be home in a minute,” I tell Lexi. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I can lie to my children too, apparently.
55
I drive twenty miles over the speed limit all the way home.
I don’t know what is in this document on Debbie’s computer, but I can’t pretend anymore that there isn’t something seriously wrong with my wife. I agree with Lexi—it seems like Debbie is getting vigilante justice on everybody in her life who has wronged her or her family.
And I’m worried that I might have made the list.
I park at a weird angle in the driveway, but I don’t bother to correct it. I leap out of my car and head for the front door. I’ve barely got my key in the lock before Lexi yanks it open.
Both Lexi and Izzy are waiting for me with identical expressions of concern on their faces. Not just concern but something else. Like they’re counting on me to fix everything wrong in our lives. They haven’t looked at me that way since they were little.
And clearly, there’s still no sign of Debbie. I checked my phone to see if her location popped up before I started driving home, but no luck.
What could she be doing? I suspect this document on her computer will be another disturbing piece of the puzzle.
“I don’t know what she did to Zane,” Lexi says to me as I shut the door behind me. “But I know it was something.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she basically told me.” She squeezes her white fists together. “When we got home from school, she told me she ‘fixed’ my problem.” A few tears squeeze out from her brown eyes, which I now notice are bloodshot. “But I never wanted her to do that! I never wanted Zane to get hurt.”
I look over at Izzy next, who says, “I’m also worried about Mom. But I’m okay with Coach Pike being in jail. He was a dick.”
Good to know.
“Let me take a look at the computer,” I say, trying to sound collected.
Debbie’s computer is in the living room. Both the girls have laptops, but Debbie wanted to buy a desktop, with a whole complicated explanation about how she felt you could get more power for a similar price. I don’t argue with Debbie when it comes to technology, so she went ahead and bought one.
I sit down in the ergonomic chair in front of the computer. I move the mouse, and the screen jumps to life. A message prompts me for a password, and I look up at Lexi.
“It’s the date of Izzy’s birthday, then mine,” Lexi tells me.
Well, shit. I look up at her helplessly.
“Dad!” Lexi cries.
“Okay, okay.”
I do know this. I’m supposed to be good with numbers, but somehow, I can never seem to keep birthdays straight. Finally, I type in 1523, and thank God I get in, because I’m pretty sure neither of them would’ve spoken to me for the next week if I got it wrong.
There’s a folder titled “Dear Debbie” on the desktop. I click on it, and it’s filled with Word documents. I click on one of them. It appears to be a letter addressed to Dear Debbie, followed by her reply.
“It’s just her column,” I say. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s her column,” Lexi confirms, “but read her answers to the letters. They are really, really weird.”
I look at the question posted on the screen.
Dear Debbie,
Oh, I do so love to knit. There’s just something so peaceful about sitting in the rocking chair on my porch with my yarn and needles, a cool glass of iced tea at my side. My daughter loves the little gifts I make for my grandbabies, and all my friends appreciate the scarves I gift them for holidays. But my husband just doesn’t see the charm in it.
Last winter I knitted him a lovely blue scarf that was as soft and warm as could be, but that man didn’t even wear it once! Not even to humor me! But he’ll wear department store scarves like they’re made of gold. I’m not one to kick up a fuss, but it would warm my heart to see him happily wearing one of my homemade gifts.
Any suggestions to convince my husband that my homemade scarf, knitted with love, is as good—if not better—than the one he bought in the store?
Knitting Nancy
Dear Knitting Nancy,
The next time the two of you are going out together on a chilly day, why not suggest that he wear your scarf? If he’s reluctant, you can get it out and wrap it around his neck yourself. If you wrap it tightly enough, he probably won’t be able to take it off. And if you wrap it even tighter, he won’t be able to complain anymore. Feel free to wrap that scarf as tightly around his neck as needed!
Debbie
My mouth drops open. I admit, I don’t read Debbie’s column every single week, but I’m fairly sure I’ve never seen anything like this printed in it. Usually her advice involves getting out stains or suggestions for a movie night. It’s pretty tame.
It doesn’t usually involve strangulation.
Clearly, this was never published. This is a draft she wrote and saved on her hard drive, except I’m not sure why. Did she respond to Knitting Nancy personally? Are the two of them currently swapping advice on asphyxiation?
“I read most of the files,” Lexi tells me. “Like eighty percent of them are instructions on how to kill your husband.” She pauses. “Did you do something to piss Mom off?”
Shit.
“No,” I lie.
“Dad, do you think Mom has lost her mind?” Izzy asks in a small voice.
“I…I don’t know.” At the crestfallen look on her face, I quickly add, “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s just going through a hard time.”
I click on the files one by one. It doesn’t get better. It gets worse, in fact. Debbie has come up with a lot of creative ways to advise women to kill their husbands.
I reach for my phone. I check the Findly app again, but it still has no updates since she left the house. I click on her name in my contacts and wait as the phone rings. And rings.
“Is she answering?” Izzy asks me.
“Does it sound like I’m talking to someone?” Immediately, I regret snapping. This isn’t Izzy’s fault. “No, she’s not picking up.”
Her face falls.
The call goes to voicemail, and I leave a message: “Debbie? It’s me. It’s Cooper.” Why do I think she won’t know who “me” is? But right now, I truly don’t know what’s going through her head. “I really need to talk to you. I found… Anyway, please call me as soon as you get this. Please.” I take a deep breath. “And don’t…don’t do anything stupid.”
I hang up, and both the girls are hovering behind me at the computer, staring at me with alarm. I probably should have played it cooler for the phone message and reserved the panic for texts. But I can’t help it. What the hell is Debbie doing? Where is she?
“Maybe you should see where Mom went earlier?” Lexi suggests.
I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“Like, in the Findly app she made,” she says. “Check where she went yesterday and the day before.”
“Wait, I thought you could only see her current location?”
“Oh, Dad,” Lexi sighs. “You are such a boomer.”
What? I don’t have time to figure out her Gen Z insult. I thrust my phone in her direction. “Show me what you mean.”
Lexi takes my phone and shows me that if you click on the icon of Debbie’s face, there are three dots that pop up. She clicks on them, and it brings up a series of locations.
“See?” she says. “It shows everywhere she’s been for the last week if she has stopped there for at least ten minutes.”
Holy crap. I didn’t know the app could do that. My wife is very talented.
I scroll through the list of places she visited before turning off her location sharing. Most of them are easily recognizable and not concerning. There’s the school. The plant store. The grocery store. Titan Fitness. That house in Weymouth where Robert Pike lives. The Hingham Shipyard.
And then two other locations that don’t fit into any of those categories.
Oh shit. Oh no.
“Dad?” Lexi says when she sees the look on my face.
I bring up the list of my contacts on my phone and click on one of my favorites. I say a prayer to myself that I’ll hear someone pick up on the other end of the line, but it’s not a surprise when it goes to voicemail. Even so, I call one more time for good measure.
This is very bad.
I stand up abruptly from the chair, and it rolls several feet out of the way, crashing into our sofa. “I have to go.”
Lexi and Izzy exchange looks. “Go where?” Lexi asks.
“I’ll be home as soon as I can.” I pat my pockets to confirm my keys and phone are there. “And if your mom calls or comes home, call me right away.”
“Dad, where are you going?” Lexi presses me.
I can’t tell them though. What I suspect is too awful for words.
“I’ll be back soon” is all I can say.
I can only pray that I’ve got it all wrong.
56
DEBBIE
The boy steps aside to let me enter the fraternity house. He has an open, friendly expression on his face, because he has no idea what I’m planning to do. If he knew, he wouldn’t let me past the front door. Actually, he’d probably be calling the police.
“My name is Lennox,” he tells me. “I’m the president of the fraternity.”
“Is Lennox your first name or last name?”
He laughs. He seems sweet and earnest, but so did Hutch. “First name. My last name is Newberry.”
“Like the comic store.”
He nods. “No relation.”
I look around the small space of the living area. It contains a few ratty sofas that look like they came from the curb and a coffee table with books stacked on it. The top one is labeled Statistical Thermodynamics. This place looked so different on that night that changed my life. If somebody transported me here and didn’t tell me where I was, I never would’ve known. I suppose it looks different when it’s nighttime, filled with loud music and the stink of alcohol and cigarettes in the air.
“So what’s the article about?” he asks me.
“It’s just a profile of fraternity life,” I explain. “We picked Zeta Pi randomly, and we just want to know what it’s like to live here.”
I expect him to remark on the fact that it sounds like a very boring article, but instead he nods like this is completely reasonable.
“Do you want a tour?” Lennox offers.
I hesitate. I do want a tour. That’s part of the reason I’m here, but part of me is scared that I might get triggered, remembering what happened to me that night. The last thing I want is to have a panic attack in this frat house.
But I came here for a purpose. And I’m not leaving until my work is done.
“I’d love a tour,” I tell him.
Lennox smiles eagerly, gesturing around the room we’re standing in. “This is our living area,” he says. “We spend a lot of time hanging out here, mostly talking. We have our meetings in the basement.”
“Is the basement where you have parties?” I ask, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.
If Lennox notices the subtone, he doesn’t let on. “Yeah. It’s a big open space so it’s perfect for parties. We don’t get too wild though. It’s MIT after all.”
He laughs at his own joke, but I don’t join him.
“All the fraternity brothers here are friends,” he tells me. “Some are obviously closer than others, but I consider every member of Zeta Pi to be my brother. We look out for each other.”
“And if one of you did something wrong, for example”—I poise my pen at the notepad I cleverly grabbed at a drugstore on the way over here—“would all the brothers be held accountable?”
He takes a moment to think over that question. “Yes, I think we are. Every member of Zeta Pi represents all of us. If one of us does something wrong, that’s a reflection on the entire fraternity.”
I wonder if the other brothers knew what Hutch was up to. I highly doubt it was the first time he did something like that. He was so smooth. In retrospect, it was all very rehearsed.
If one of us does something wrong, that’s a reflection on the entire fraternity. If the other brothers knew Hutch was doing something wrong, they would have covered it up. They wouldn’t want his actions to reflect badly on all of them. A fraternity could have their charter revoked over something like that.
Lennox takes me around the first floor of the house. He shows me the kitchen and a little backyard area. It’s all interminably dull, but I pretend to be enthralled by everything he shows me. The tour of the ground floor ends at the base of a flight of stairs.
“Most of our members live in the house,” he explains. “Do you want to see the rooms? They will likely be pretty empty since everyone is in class now.”
I would rather eat glass, but I know that I have to go with him. I can’t do this if I don’t. “That would be great, thanks.”
I follow Lennox up the stairs to the second floor with a feeling of doom in the pit of my stomach. The last time I climbed these same stairs, it was about twenty-five years ago. I didn’t know what was about to happen and that my whole life was about to change.
“So like I said,” he continues at the top of the stairs, completely oblivious, “most of our members live in the house. We have bunk beds, so it’s a little tight, but it’s worth it to be able to live with your brothers. Would you like to see one of the rooms?”
“Yes,” I squeak out.
He takes me down the hallway, and the first room on the left is already cracked open. He pushes the door the rest of the way open to reveal a small room with a bunk bed and two desks. In a way, it looks like a standard college dorm room. Nothing special.
But it’s nearly identical to the room I was in that night. So much so that my head starts to spin.
