Page 76 of Second Chance

“Hm?”

“You guys okay if I take a nap for an hour?”

“Go ahead.” She gets up from the couch and peers into the kitchen. “You must be Tony’s mother. I’m Colette, Daniel’s neighbor.”

“Lovely to meet you.” Ma ignores her outstretched hand and pulls her in for a hug. “Daniel told us so much about you. Now, Colette, do you eat meat?”

Tony leaves them to it. He heads for the bedroom, pulls off his jeans, and roots around for the sweatpants he left in the bottom of Daniel’s dresser sometime in April when it got warm enough to sleep without them. He pulls his hair loose from its ponytail and sinks on top of the covers.

It feels like gravity is pushing him down harder than usual, like the weight of Daniel being gone is a stone on his back pressing him into the mattress, like he’ll never be able to sleep from the fear pulsing in the pit of his stomach. But the second his eyes close, he drifts off all the same.

By the time Tony wakes up, the whole apartment smells delicious.

He stumbles out of the bedroom, groggy and confused, until he finds his phone on the coffee table. It’s well past two in the afternoon. “Y’should’ve woken me up,” he mutters to whoever is in the living room.

“You needed rest.” Ma’s in the armchair, leafing through the coffee table book of ayahuasca-induced photos Paul from New York somehow managed to sell to the academic world as an anthropological project. He sent Daniel a copy to his campus PO box, which meant Daniel got called in during the summer to pick it up because the package was too big for his slot. Paul cited this as revenge for Daniel always calling him on the landline and nearly giving him a heart attack every time since no one ever uses the landline. Daniel, in turn, does this because Paul might be as New York as they come, but his parents were born and raised in Indiana and drilled an intense fear and respect of the city into him. This meant that when he and Daniel moved in together, Paul forced Daniel to repeat the number over andover until they could both remember it, in case one of them got mugged. Daniel complains about how much unnecessary space the number takes up in his brain every time he calls Paul, and therefore, he insists on calling the landline instead of Paul’s cell. Tony does not understand their friendship. He imagines having to call Paul and invite him to a funeral. The thought nearly sends him right back to bed.

There are no messages from Daniel on Tony’s phone. He spots one from an unknown number, and for a moment, hope climbs Tony’s throat, until he opens it.

Hi Tony,this is Meredith. I caught a flight to Albany. I should be there by 6:00 p.m. Can someone pick me up?

Tony pushes his hair out of his face. He tries to imagine a trip to Albany in his shitty car within the next four hours. “Daniel’s sister is flying in.”

“JFK or Newark?” Colette asks.

Meredith could take Amtrak if it were that easy, those are better and more connected airports.

Tony grimaces. “Albany.” The airport and train station in Albany are about an hour apart, and Meredith would have to find the right bus. Much faster to drive. “You have a car somewhere in this country, right? Could I borrow it?”

“Your father will pick her up,” Ma interrupts.

Daniel shakes his head. “Ma, I can’t ask that. I’m already not at the shop—”

“No arguments. Are you hungry? I made mac and cheese. We have enough time to eat before Gianna’s shift ends.”

Tony closes his eyes for a second. “Fine. Mac and cheese sounds good.”

It’s delicious, of course, it is. Ma leaves twenty minutes later, announcing Gianna and Lia will be by soon.

As soon as the door is shut behind her, Tony turns to Colette. “Anything from the detective?”

Colette shakes her head.

Tony turns to Emilio. “What about you? Anything on Lily?”

Emilio grimaces. He hasn’t done much more than pick at his mac and cheese, which would be a grave insult if the man hadn’t lost the love of his life and then been blamed for her murder within the last week. “I found her email to Amy. Nothing you didn’t know in there. Amy told her she had to retake the class she dropped out of last year, and Lily never responded.”

Tony considers. “What about Daniel’s emails?”

Neither of them answers him immediately.

“Are you sure?” Colette asks eventually.

Pushing his hair out of his face again, Tony says, “Look, I think he’ll forgive the breach of privacy if he ends up not dead.”

“Not that.” Colette waves away the thought of the potential invasion of privacy with a lazy hand. “I’ve seen Lily Peterson. She’s tiny. Could she really have the physical strength to stab someone? Or kidnap someone?”

“Stacy Allan was tiny, and she kidnapped me just fine.”

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