Cold Cold Heart (9 page)

Paula came storming down the narrow, dark hallway like a heat-seeking missile, her face sucked into a tight, ugly fist of angry features.

“Where the fuck have you been? Why don't you answer your fucking phone? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

John ducked his head against the barrage. Paula sounded like New Jersey and looked like Danny DeVito in a platinum fright wig.

“Are you fucking deaf, John?” she shrieked, stopping just short of colliding with him.

“No, ma'am,” he muttered.

“We've had orders sitting here waiting for you!”

“I'll take them now.”

“No! No! It's too late. Tony had to take them himself because you weren't fucking here to do your fucking job! I would fucking fire your ass if it was up to me!”

John wanted to shove her away. The hall was too narrow and too hot, and Paula was too close and too loud and too aggressive. He tried to step away from her, but she closed the distance.

“In fact, I
am
going to fire you. You're fired! You hear that? You're fucking fired! You want your job back? You can go crawling to Tony and beg for it! And if he knows what's good for him, he won't take you back. We've got a business to run. We've got a reputation to keep. And if you can't manage a simple delivery job, and you can't manage to answer your goddamn phone, then you shouldn't be here.”

“I'm sorry,” he mumbled.

He hated apologizing to her. Not because he wasn't in the wrong, but because she was such a raging bitch. This was how she was all the time, always ragging on people, belittling everyone who worked for her. She did it to her husband as well. She especially loved going after men, making them feel small and powerless because she knew they wouldn't fight back.

John wanted to punch her in the face so hard she would fly backward all the way down the hall, through the crowded restaurant, and out the front door like something from a cartoon. But he couldn't do that. At least he had sense enough to know he couldn't do that, no matter how much he wanted to.

“I'm sorry you were in the war and whatever,” she went on, “but that's no excuse—”

Abruptly, John turned away. He had to go. Now, before he really
did lose it. No excuse? Too bad he almost died for his country. Too bad he would probably never be right in the head ever again. None of that compared to the importance of delivering pizza.

“Don't you turn your back on me!”

John kept walking. Paula kept ranting, but he ceased to hear the words. His pulse was roaring in his ears as he went out the door, past the Tomato Bug, and across the alley to where he had parked his truck in the vacant lot next to a welding shop. He couldn't hear anything but his own anger and embarrassment jeering at him, filling his skull with white noise.

The truck's engine grudgingly rumbled to life, and he pulled out of the lot, down the alley, and onto the side street. He kept off the main roads, hoping to avoid cops. The left taillight had been out since before he joined the army. His old man refused to fix it or pay any of the boxful of traffic tickets he'd accumulated in John's absence. He kept them instead, like a collection of something that somehow entertained him, occasionally using one to light a fire or squash a bug.

He was three-quarters drunk, sprawled in his recliner watching professional wrestling, when John walked into the run-down little ranch-style house they lived in on the outskirts of town. The stink of cigarettes, sour sweat, and bourbon permeated the room.

The old man popped one eye open a little wider, glancing over his shoulder. “You get fired yet?” he asked in a voice that was half gravel, half phlegm.

John said nothing. The rotten old bastard asked the same question every night, just as he had when John had been sixteen and mowing lawns for pocket money. He had always taken a perverse delight in his son's failures, happy to crawl atop his own child's fallen ego and crow. Christ knew he was generally too drunk to climb any higher.

John cut him a look as he passed, disgusted as always by the sight of his father. Mack Villante was forty-seven going on
sixty-two, his body pickled and aged by alcohol and bitterness. His face was hard and carved with lines, leathered from the sun, the tan a stark contrast to the white Fu Manchu mustache and crew cut. The beer belly was a permanent feature, and as hard as stone, no doubt with a liver to match. He was a big ham-fisted man, still capable of great strength and great violence, but not when he was like this—too intoxicated to stand up straight or speak without slurring his words.

He laughed at John's silent disapproval of him.

Fuck you,
John thought.
Fuck you, old man.
But he didn't say it. He had learned long ago not to pick a fight with a drunk. He stuffed that anger in with the rest, in with the bubbling, seething potful of it inside him. With every minute that passed he felt more and more like a volcano ready to blow.

Going into his bedroom, he shrugged out of his coat and flung it on a chair, stripped off his T-shirt, and shucked off his pants. Locked in the Tomato Bug with pizzas for hours at a time, everything he wore to work reeked of oregano and sausage.

He threw on sweatpants, a clean T-shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt. Sitting on the edge of the narrow bed he had slept in most of his life, he pulled on running shoes. He ignored his phone buzzing in the pocket of his discarded coat. Probably Tony Tarantino calling to second his wife's decision to fire him. He could never reconcile the Tony who had fought in the First Gulf War with the pussy-whipped version who was his boss.
Ex
-boss.

Fuck them both.

The old man was snoring with his mouth hanging open as John passed back through the living room on his way outside. Maybe tonight would be the night he died in his sleep or choked to death on his own vomit. Good. The world would be well rid of him. John would be well rid of him. Better an orphan than the son of Mack Villante. How many times had he thought that growing up? Every day of his life.

He bolted out the door into the night and started running. He needed to run to blow out some of the pent-up energy and the pent-up anger, and the rage at this place and this world, and the memories that weighed him down and plagued his sleep. He ran to clear his head, and he ran to exhaust himself. He didn't care that the night was black with only intermittent glimpses of the moon. It didn't matter that the wind was picking up or that it brought with it raw, cold rain. He welcomed the cold and the wet against the heat of his temper. He only ran harder into the dark, welcoming the jarring reality of footfalls on pavement and cold air sawing into hot lungs.

His mind went other places as he ran—to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to basic training, to high school. He saw men he had served with, men who had died, men without limbs, men without heads. He saw Dana Nolan as she had been and Dana Nolan as she was. Damage, damage, damage. Nothing got better. Life just got worse, harder, uglier.

He wanted it to change. He wanted to make it change. He wanted to beat the world with an angry fist and smash it into a million pieces. But in reality he couldn't do anything about it. He was helpless and worthless and a burden on society. He had no strength. He had no power. He had all he could do to get from day to day without fucking something up, without wanting to kill himself or someone else.

All he could do was run into the night and hope the night would swallow him whole.

You killed my best friend.

Killed
wasn't the word she wanted. She meant something else. She searched her brain for the right word or something close to it. Not
killed.
Hurt.
No. She went through a list:
Killed, hurt, dead, gone.
Gone
. Casey Grant was gone. What did that mean exactly? Why was she gone? Where had she gone? What did John Villante have to do with her being gone?

Dana felt a door fall ajar in her memory. It opened just a crack on rusty hinges. She tried to peer inside, but as in much of her memory, the view wasn't clear. The memories were bright in places, foggy in others. Parts of the pictures were missing, like lost pieces from a puzzle.

She remembered Casey now, could see her face as clearly as if she'd seen her just an hour ago: big brown eyes and a bigger smile, long dark hair that fell like a silk curtain around her slender shoulders. They were about the same size, two sides of a coin, best friends since grade school. They had been like sisters, attached at the hip. There were framed photos of the two of them on the bookcases in her bedroom.

Dana remembered so much about Casey now that she remembered her at all. How strange that she hadn't thought of her friend in all these months. Not once. How could she forget her best friend?
How could she not remember the last time she'd seen her? How long had it been? Years, she thought. College and internships and the start of a career ago. They had been children. She was an adult.

She felt guilty and unnerved at once—guilty for forgetting her friend, unnerved that so much time could have passed. Her focus these last months had been so completely and solely on herself, on getting from one moment to the next, that no one else had mattered to her. She had lived in relative isolation, in a place that held no past for her. It was tough to reminisce without a memory or a catalyst to spark a memory. But to not even have a thought about someone she had been so close to disturbed her.

“What happened to her? What happened to Casey?” she asked, looking from her mother to her aunt to Maggie.

Her mother was upset and angry. Frankie didn't seem to know what to say. In the background, Roger frowned into his beer.

“Can we just have our dinner and talk about this later?” Lynda asked. “The food is getting cold.”

“I'm not hungry,” Dana said.

“You don't remember that you're hungry,” her mother corrected her. She picked up a plate from the stack on the island and began to arrange food on it. “You have to eat, Dana. You haven't had anything since lunch. Your brain can't function if you don't feed it.”

“Okay,” Dana said. “While we break for dinner, let's pretend I didn't just accuse someone of murder. We can pick up the conversation after the cheesecake.”

“There was no murder,” Roger said.

“That anyone knows of,” Frankie added.

“I can't believe Anthony's sent that boy to our house,” Lynda muttered.

“He was never charged with anything,” Roger pointed out. “No one knows that there was even a crime committed.”

“I didn't recognize him,” Maggie said. “I didn't know he went into the military.”

“Those were probably his two choices,” Roger said. “The army or end up in jail for something. He was always in trouble, that kid. Just like his old man.”

“But you said there was no crime—” Dana started.

No one was listening to her. They all had something to say, and they said it all at once. Their chatter tumbled together until they sounded like a flock of birds squawking, none of it making any sense to her.

Frustrated, Dana climbed on top of the table, stood up, and shouted, “Would someone answer me?”

“Oh my God, Dana! Get down from there!” her mother ordered, hurrying across the room, the color draining from her face. “Get down before you fall!”

“Could someone please answer my question?” Dana asked again. “What happened to Casey?”

Frankie reached up toward her. “Come on, Li'l Dee, get down from there. You're going to give your mom a heart attack.”

Dana raised her hands out of reach. A vague dizziness began to tilt the table beneath her as she looked down.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me what happened to Casey. Where is she? Did he do something to her? John Villante—did he do something to her? Why would I think that?”

“Dana, please get down,” her mother said. “Your balance isn't that good, sweetheart.”

“I don't need balance,” Dana snapped. “It's a table. The table is flat.”

Even as she said it, she glanced down again, her vision tripping over the edge of the table to the floor.

“What happened to Casey?” she asked again.

Frankie stepped up on a chair and then onto the table.

“She's missing, Dee,” she said, reaching up and taking hold of Dana's wrist. “Casey's been missing since the summer after you graduated. You don't remember that?”

“No, I don't remember that,” Dana said defensively, trying halfheartedly to pull her arm away from her aunt's grasp. “I don't remember what happened to
me.
What do you mean, she's missing? Missing—like someone took her? Did someone do something to her? John Villante—did he do something to her?”

“Nobody knows what happened,” Roger said. “She just disappeared.”

“Like I disappeared?” Dana asked quietly.

No one wanted to make eye contact with her.

As quickly as the strong emotions had assaulted her, they washed away like water down a drain, leaving her feeling weak. Slowly, she sank down to sit on the tabletop, her legs folding beneath her.

She had disappeared. She had no memory of it, but she looked at the outcome every day in the mirror. She knew what had happened to her because she had been told. Maybe those same things had happened to Casey. Maybe worse.

She let Frankie and her mother help her down off the table and slipped quietly onto a chair. The conversation went on around her as dinner was served. Casey had not been getting along with her mother that summer. Some people thought she might have run away. There had been sightings reported over the years, in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and as far away as Florida. None had led anywhere, but that didn't mean Casey wasn't out there somewhere. There was still hope.

“Where there's life, there's hope,” Dana murmured, picking at the toppings on her pizza. As she said it, a shiver went through her. She didn't know why.

No one seemed to hear her.

They didn't talk about the obvious other choice—that Casey was dead, that someone had taken her and killed her, that she had met a terrible end at the hands of someone she knew or someone she didn't know. The world was full of evil. It happened all the time. Dana was the exception that proved that rule. Her family stepped around that truth like it was a pile of broken glass.

“But she's probably dead,” Dana said, raising her voice so they had to hear her. “That's what no one is saying. Someone probably killed her. Just say it. We're all thinking it.”

Roger frowned. “There's no proof of anything.”

“So we're just going to pretend that it's not a possibility?” she challenged. “By not saying it, are you assuming it won't occur to me? I'm brain injured, not stupid.”

“No one thinks you're stupid,” Roger said impatiently.

“Naïve, then. Casey is missing and probably dead. There's nothing real to suggest she's alive. Chances are she's not,” she said. “It's not like I don't know how that happens. I'm also aware that Santa Claus isn't real. So no need to tiptoe around that one either.”

“The sarcasm isn't necessary, young lady,” Roger said stiffly.

Dana bristled. “Don't scold me. I'm not a child. I'm not
your
child.”

Her mother gasped. “Dana!”

“We're just trying to be careful of your feelings, Dee,” Frankie said.

“You might want to consider returning the favor,” Roger muttered.

“It's been a long day,” Lynda said. “I'm sure Dana is tired.”

Dana groaned in frustration. “I'm right here!”

“Forgive us for not quite knowing how to deal, Dee,” Maggie said, the quiet voice of reason. “We're all in uncharted territory here.”

Dana frowned. “I just want everyone to be normal.”

No one pointed out that she wasn't normal. She wasn't the Dana they remembered, the sweet, sunny, happy Dana. No one had to say it; it was written on their faces. It hung in the air like a foul odor.

Suddenly, Lynda struck the table hard with an open hand. The
crack!
made everyone jump.

“That's enough!” she shouted. Her face was angry and drawn, the dark circles beneath her eyes accented by the overhead lighting. “I'm done with this conversation. We are done talking about this. Does everyone understand me?”

No one spoke.

“I want this to be a nice, pleasant family dinner welcoming Dana home. Is that too much to ask? Huh?” She looked from one face to the next. “We are no longer talking about violence or death or missing girls or what happened to Dana. Period. Is everybody clear on that? We're happy. We're happy to have Dana home.”

Tears filled her eyes as she looked at the carefully blank faces around the table.

She's fragile, too,
Dana thought. This day had been as difficult on her mother as it had been on her. She felt selfish and childish for not having thought of it sooner. Her life had been all about herself all day, every day for months now. Just as she hadn't remembered Casey, she hadn't given much thought to anyone else, either.

Frankie banged a hand on the table and popped up from her seat. “Let's have some fun, Goddamnit! This is a celebration!”

She snatched up her champagne flute and proposed a toast.

“To Dee. As corny as this may sound, today really is the first day of the rest of your life, Li'l Dee, and we're all so grateful to be a part of it. Welcome home.”

They toasted and drank, and the subject moved to plans for the next day and the days after. Dana would start with the new therapist. She would start training with Frankie at the gym, furthering the work she had done in physical therapy at the Weidman Center. Maggie talked about showing her the benefits of yoga. Roger excused himself. Lynda seemed to have run out of things to say.

Dana felt the weight of the day press down on her until she pushed her plate aside and put her head down on the table, effectively ending the party. Exhausted, she tuned out and said nothing as her mother insisted on walking her down to her room. She didn't want to brush her teeth or take a bath or have a cup of tea. She didn't want to change out of her clothes or even turn down the covers.

“At least let me put these things away for you,” her mother said, reaching for one of the piles of clothing Dana had dumped on the bed earlier.

“Mom, no,” Dana said, gently tugging a T-shirt out of her hands. “It's okay. Really. I just want to go to sleep. This stuff can wait.”

Lynda's eyes misted with tears. “I just want to take care of you. I know how lucky I am to have the chance. Don't spoil my fun all the time,” she added, mustering a little teasing smile as she reached up and brushed at Dana's cheek with a thumb. “You have pizza sauce on your face. You should wash up.”

“I'm too tired,” Dana said. “Besides, maybe I'll want a snack in the middle of the night.”

Lynda licked her thumb and scrubbed the offending stain away. “Mom's prerogative. You'll have to go hungry.” She leaned in and kissed the spot. “Sleep well, sweetheart.”

Dana shoved aside the piles of clothing, not caring that half of it fell to the floor, crawled onto the bed, pulled the pink blanket over her, and closed her eyes. Her body felt so heavy she could hardly move. She expected the physical and emotional exhaustion to drag her beneath the surface of consciousness like an undertow. She wanted to drown in it.

But while she longed for the nothingness of sleep, the faces and voices of the day continued to spin through her head like an unending newsreel.

She didn't want to see it. She didn't want to hear it. She fought to shut it down, trying to implement strategies she had learned at Weidman—visualization, relaxation, biofeedback techniques. The images and noise were stronger than her will to be rid of them.

Finally giving up, she sat up in the bed, turned on the television, and started flipping through the channels. The effect was no different from what was going on in her head—snippets of this, snatches of that—with the exception that the voices and faces belonged to strangers . . . until they didn't . . . until the face on the local news was the face that stared back at her in the mirror every morning.

Everything seemed to freeze in that moment—the chaos in her mind, the beating of her heart, the breath in her lungs. She had seen
herself on television many times—the old Dana, Before Dana. After Dana didn't belong on-screen. After Dana was the still photo that stopped the viewer's eye and kept him tuned to the channel the same as a photograph of a car wreck might. The station would probably get phone calls from viewers complaining about the shock value of her scarred face.

The reporter was the blond girl, the girl Dana had transformed into herself as she had stood staring at her in the driveway that afternoon. Kimberly Kirk. With both images side by side—Kirk's animated face and the flat still photo of herself—the contrast was extreme. Beauty and the Beast.

As Dana stared, mesmerized, Kirk told viewers that Dana had no comment when asked if she thought the man who had abducted her could have also abducted her best friend, Casey Grant, seven years before.

Dana hadn't even heard the question that afternoon. There had been too many voices, too much commotion. Casey Grant was a name from another lifetime. Hearing the question now shocked her, the shock bringing with it a huge logjam of emotions she couldn't even begin to penetrate. She had to try to peel the feelings away a layer at a time to identify and try to deal with them one by one.