Going for Kona (4 page)

At five, my cell phone rang with an unfamiliar number. I never answered those, but I remembered that Sam didn’t have his phone, and Adrian apparently didn’t have his, either, so I squeezed the phone between my shoulder and ear and kept working my keyboard. One hour until we went to press.

“Hello.”

“Mom, Belle left me.”

“No, Sam, she had late swim practice. Remember? We decided this morning that Adrian was picking you up after practice.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I tried to text you. You should carry your phone. I don’t know why we even pay for it.”

“I do carry it. Sometimes. And Adrian’s late.”

“It’s only five o’clock. Give him a few more minutes.”

He groaned. “Yeah, more like half an hour. I’ll look like an igmo standing out here. And it’s hot. Can’t you come get me?”

“I’m finishing something that’s going to print tonight, honey. You’re going to have to be an igmo. I’ll see you at home. Love you.”

“Ugh. Bye.”

I sent Adrian a quick message:
“Don’t forget Sam.”

Forty-five minutes later the phone rang again with another unfamiliar number. I closed my eyes. I just needed five more minutes of peace to finish up so I could get out of there.

“Yes?” I pushed the speaker button and set the phone on my desk. I kept typing.

“Mom, he’s still not here.”

I pursed my lips and released my breath slowly. I was going to kill Adrian. “I’ll come get you, but you could walk home faster than I can get there.” My phone flashed with yet another number I didn’t recognize, but caller ID said it was the Houston Police Department.

Sam’s voice whined from my phone, but I didn’t really hear him. I stared at the number on my screen, and I knew. Without even answering it, I knew. With my son standing outside at Bayland Park talking on a borrowed phone and waiting for a ride that wasn’t going to come, I knew.

People passed by my office door, their voices serving and volleying. I clung to my phone with both hands and stared at the screen, which kept insisting I had a call from the HPD.

“I’ll call you back, Sam.” I pressed the button to hang up with him and accept the new call. “Hello,” I said. Or at least I thought I did. I couldn’t hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears.

“Mrs. Adrian Hanson?” The voice on the other end was deep.

Yes. Yes, that’s me. That is who I am. But I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to hang up the phone and stop the thing that was coming for me.

“Ma’am, are you there?”

I forced the words through my frozen lips. “Yes, this is Michele Lopez Hanson.”

“This is Detective Young of the Houston Police Department. I went by your home to talk to you, ma’am, and since you weren’t there, I took the liberty of coming to your place of work. I’m right outside, and I wonder if there’s a place we can talk?”

I closed my eyes. “What’s this about, Detective?”

“Ma’am, I need to talk to you face-to-face about your husband, please. I’ll explain it all then.”

I told him to meet me at the reception desk. I pushed myself up and grabbed my bag. My mind’s eye drew back, and I saw myself from a distance, a short woman covered in oozing concrete, squarish in a thick cement shroud. A chalky scent dried my nasal passages halfway into my skull. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t. My mouth tasted like writing “I won’t talk back to Mrs. Simpson” on the blackboard twenty times and cleaning erasers during recess, and I knew that whatever this detective had to tell me was my punishment, but for what, I didn’t know. If I did, I would take it back a thousand times and never do it again. I could be good. I
would
be good, so, so good. I willed my right leg forward, then my left.

“Michele?” someone called out from the interior cubicles. A buzz had started and was building as I made my way past. How did they know?

Another voice joined in. “Are you all right?”

I couldn’t answer the questions they were lobbing at me. I could barely even walk. My legs were lead posts. My thoughts ricocheted. Am I still moving forward? Why is it so hard to see? Why is everyone staring at me? And why do I have to go listen to this detective tell me something I already know, something that can remain untrue if he just doesn’t say it?

I came to a stop at Marsha’s desk, where a tall black man in khaki pants and a blue blazer was standing. He held up a badge.

Marsha whispered, “Michele, this man is here to see you.”

I nodded and motioned him toward the conference room with my hand, but I didn’t meet his eyes. He walked in front of me, but stepped back to let me enter first, then pulled the door shut behind him. I turned to face him.

“I’m Detective Kevin Young.” His voice was even deeper in person than on the phone. He handed me his card, then pulled out a wallet. “Does this belong to your husband?”

He handed me a square of black water-repellant material. I opened the Velcro closure and pulled out Adrian’s driver’s license and rubbed my fingertip over his picture. I tried to answer the detective, but my mouth was stuffed with something like chunks of the old foam pads Papa used to put under our sleeping bags when we went camping. My breaths became labored. I couldn’t talk with a mouth full of foam, so I nodded and stifled a gag.

His bass voice rumbled. “This wallet was found in the pocket of the victim of a hit-and-run driver about two hours ago on Endicott, near Meyerland Plaza. The man matches the picture on this license. We believe it is your husband. I’m very sorry to tell you this, but he had no vital signs when the paramedics arrived. He was declared dead at the scene.”

I kept nodding. The whole room had turned gray. I could barely see the detective now. Was he waiting for me to say something? He would be waiting a long time.

He squinted hard at me. “He was on a bicycle when he was hit.”

Hit and run. Bicycle. My mind started playing tricks on me and I saw Adrian in a bloody heap on the side of a country road, like the blond man we’d seen die. No. That hadn’t been Adrian then. And this couldn’t have happened to Adrian now. I wished the detective would just stop talking. I wanted to go home to see the tulips in the vase on my bedside table where my beautiful husband put them last night. To herd our bickering teenagers into the 4Runner for our family date. To deliver my anniversary surprise, to tell Adrian we were going to do Kona together. I wanted him. Adrian. My husband.

“Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

When I opened my eyes, all I could see was the ceiling. I shifted my gaze to the concerned face of a stranger. I sat up. My cheeks felt wet. I touched my face and my fingers found tears.

“Can I call someone to come be with you, ma’am?”

I shook my head no.

My phone rang. I groped in the purse at my feet and my hand found the hard surface of my phone. I pulled it out and looked at the screen. The call dropped and the screen changed to show six missed calls from the same number. It seemed familiar, and then I remembered. Sam. Oh no, Sam.

I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. Foam. I swallowed hard and tried again. “My son, he’s been waiting for my husband, and now me, for a ride home from baseball.”

The detective’s brows furrowed a V between them. “Can you ask someone to go get him? Or can we go get him together?”

I started to shake my head again, but stopped. “My boss.”

“Can the receptionist help me find him?”

I nodded.

“I’ll be right back.”

I nodded again, at nothing, sending tears trickling down my face in starts and stops. I sat in a chair at the conference room table and put my face down on the cold wood. I closed my eyes and tried not to be alive. It didn’t work, and within just a few minutes, I heard footsteps and lifted my head from the pool I’d left on the table.

It was the detective, with Brian.

“I’m so sorry, Michele. Marsha’s going to give Sam a ride home.” Brian’s face was as red as his hair and he had tears in the corners of his eyes. He sat down beside me and put a hand on my wrist. “Can you tell me where he is?”

“The Bayland Park baseball fields on Bissonnet. Thank you.” My words echoed flat and empty inside my concrete shell.

Out of nowhere Brian’s assistant appeared with a glass of ice water, a cup of hot tea, and wet and dry towels for my face. Brian stepped to the door and spoke to Marsha, who stood just outside. Her face looked red like Brian’s. Then Brian returned to his seat.

“Let me just get Jerry to take over for you on
SBRQ
.” Brian typed on his phone.

I had forgotten about the magazine. I nodded.

He slid the phone into his pocket. “What do you need from Michele, Detective?”

The detective turned to face me. “I’ll need you to come ID the body when we’re done here.” Bile rose in my throat. I wanted to see Adrian, but
alive
, not in a morgue. “I need to ask you a few questions first, and then we’ll need to get together and talk again in a few days. I know the timing is bad, but my job is to find the driver who hit him and figure out what happened. Someone has committed a crime, and your husband is the victim.”

Brian looked at me. I said nothing. He took the lead. “What kind of crime?”

“At a minimum, vehicular manslaughter, and leaving the scene. We also need to rule out intentional foul play.” He turned back to me. “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt your husband?”

A thought tapped at my brain, but I batted it away without looking at it as nausea again boiled up in me. I managed somehow to shake my head no without vomiting.

Brian answered. “Adrian was an author—his and Michele’s first book just came out—and a freelance sports writer. A successful athlete. A husband, a dad. I’ve known him for years, and I don’t know anyone who would want to hurt him.”

Detective Young scribbled some notes and exhaled audibly through his nose. “I hate to have to ask this now, but where were you this afternoon, Michele?”

This question confused me. Couldn’t the man see I was at work?

Brian jumped in. “Wrong call, Detective. Michele has been here since around one thirty.”

His answer helped me understand the question: “Where were you?” as in “Did you kill your husband?” I was too shell-shocked to be angry.

“Do your employees swipe in and out?”

“No, but we have security video that will show she didn’t leave.”

The detective nodded several times in succession. “That’s good. The incident occurred shortly after four. If you could make me a copy of that video, please.”

“Of course.” Brian pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just don’t understand what happened.”

“Mr. Hanson was killed by a hit-and-run-driver on Endicott, by Meyerland Plaza.”

“That’s no major thoroughfare.”

“Correct.”

“So, I don’t mean to Monday-morning quarterback, but shouldn’t we be talking about a broken bone or some road burn? What am I missing?”

Detective Young glanced at me as if deciding whether to answer in my presence. I guess he thought I could handle it. “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy and accident report to be sure, but it seems the vehicle was speeding, and that Mr. Hanson hit his head on the curb after impact. He didn’t have on a helmet.”

That got my attention. “He wasn’t wearing a helmet?”

Detective Young shook his head. “No.”

Oh, Adrian
.
It made sense. Adrian often rode his bicycle to run errands, and he tended to skip his helmet on those casual rides, which made me crazy. We had argued about it. I told him his skull wasn’t any harder just because he was in sandals, but he wouldn’t budge. It didn’t make it hurt any less to know I was right.

The men continued to discuss it, but my brain shut down. I needed something, someone, but I couldn’t pin it down. Well, Adrian for one, but I needed someone else. Who was it?

“Michele?” Brian prompted me.

I looked at him. When had the detective left? Panic shuddered through me when I realized I’d lost God knows how much time. I stared at Brian, unable to form words.

Brian reached for my hand and gripped it tightly. “I’m going to drive you to do the ID, then home. We’ll take your car and Evelyn will come get me. Before we do that, we need to make a few phone calls, don’t we?”

“Who do we need to call?” my voice croaked out.

“I was hoping you would tell me.”

I looked at him helplessly.

“A friend?”

I shook my head. I’ve never been the kind of woman who surrounds herself with girlfriends, and I didn’t have anyone besides Adrian I could go to with my soul ripped wide open and my heart bleeding out on the floor.

“How about family? Your parents, or Adrian’s parents?”

Mom
.
Yes. Mom would come.Mom would come and figure out what to do. She could help me with the kids and with the call to Adrian’s parents. And Papa, because he always made things better. “Yes, my parents.”

“You want me to talk to them?”

I nodded again.

“We’ll call on the way, then. Let’s get the ID over with.”

***

An hour and a half later, Brian and I walked in the front door of my house, our house, Adrian’s and mine. Brian, who was Jewish, reached over his head and touched the mezuzah left by the previous owners, then kissed his fingertips. I’d seen him do it before, and he’d explained that he touched the mezuzah—which held the Shema “One God” prayer on a parchment scroll—to ask God to watch over him in his travels. Adrian and I loved the mezuzahs and had left them over our doorways, but we didn’t touch them. Maybe we should have
,
I thought. Maybe then I wouldn’t have the horrific memory of my husband’s pale face and closed eyes against a stainless steel table to carry with me for the rest of my life.

Sam sat at the kitchen table with his laptop, and Annabelle stood beside his chair, one hand gripping the back. They looked at me, Sam scowling and Annabelle wide-eyed. I shot a glance at the clock. It was nearly eight. How had so much time passed?

Annabelle spoke first, her voice sharp but thin, brittle. “Where’s Dad?’

Before I could answer, Brian answered her. “Hi, I’m Brian, I work with your mom. We’ve met a couple of times.”

“We know you,” Sam cut in, his lips curled in a sneer. Annabelle’s nose and brow creased.

I didn’t think I could hurt any worse, but then I saw Sam blinking back tears, his mouth set in a grim line.

Brian put his hand on my shoulder. “Your mom got some bad news at work today, and we’ve all been pitching in to help her.” He stopped talking.

Time to be a big girl. I looked back and forth at the two of them, my Sam and Adrian’s Annabelle: our children. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, then tightened my jaw before I spoke. “Adrian, your dad, he was hit by a car this afternoon. He’s gone.”

Annabelle dropped her head and a strange noise started from her chest, then turned into an escalating wail. I watched her long curls fall around the sides of her face. She and I had a good relationship, but she was her daddy’s girl and didn’t often come to me for emotional support. But he wasn’t here; he would never be here to hold her, or me, again, and I didn’t know what to do for her. After a beat, instinct took over and I reached her in two giant steps. I swept her into my arms and she slumped against me as her wail turned into a sob.

Sam shouted over Annabelle. “Gone, Mom? You mean he’s dead?”

I looked at him, nodded, and held out one of my arms for him, but he ignored it and shoved his books across the kitchen table. They took out a plastic Rockets tumbler on their way to the floor. The cup bounced high, then lower, and lower still, each crack against the floor splashing dark liquid against the wall and baseboard. Sam ran out of the room and I heard his feet pounding up the stairs like I’d heard them a lifetime ago that morning.

“Sam?”

“Leave me alone!”

I let him go. I guided Annabelle to the couch. Her hysteria ratcheted up and we cried together until enough of the storm had passed that we could talk.

Somehow, I got the words out in answer to her questions as I rocked and held her. What happened. What I knew. What I didn’t know. I realized that I had questions about Adrian’s death, lots of them. As we talked, I heard cabinet doors shut and dishes clink in the kitchen. My heart quickened involuntarily until I realized it was Brian, not Adrian, taking care of us.