CHAPTER 9
MAN TRAPPED IN GRUESOME
AVALANCHE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE
WHAT BURIED HIM!
ADRIAN
I woke up thinking about Vanessa.
It was incredible to me that I didn’t know her before this. That I didn’t realize someone so vibrant lived right next door. It seemed like the kind of thing that would have been self-evident. A warmth that I felt through the wall.
Last night she’d brought over a 2013 Far Niente cabernet. It was exquisite. We ate dinner and started watching The Office, but we ended up talking so much we paused it and never got back to it.
I’d done some digging around on her while she was dealing with her dad and his “stolen vehicle.” I searched “Vanessa Price” and clicked on the video with the most views. It was with some other YouTuber named Willow Shea and the video was the two of them eating ghost peppers. It was hilarious.
Then I’d checked her Wikipedia. It was brief. She was a staunch advocate for disability rights and had a charity committed to raising funds
for the cure of ALS—and she was famous, a fact I’d gleaned from the amount of fan mail she had and the five million views on the ghost pepper video I’d watched.
I was hoping I’d see what her old job used to be, but the Wikipedia page was sparse.
She’d said she didn’t date because the women in her family die young.
Her mom had died in a car accident and her sister died of ALS. I’d done a quick Google search of it. It was a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Causes muscle atrophy and eventually leads to death. Raising money for ALS had spawned that Ice Bucket Challenge from a few years ago. Stephen Hawking had had a slowly advancing version of it.
It was very awful and very rare. Ninety-five percent of all cases were random, which meant it probably wasn’t hereditary for her. Her dad was alive and well and while her mother had died when Vanessa was young, it wasn’t ALS that killed her. Wikipedia didn’t list any other of her relatives that had had it. Shit luck that her sister developed it, but it didn’t sound like anything Vanessa had to worry about.
With two untimely deaths in the same family and a sister hell-bent on self-destruction, Vanessa probably thought she was living out some real-life Final Destination movie.
Of course, that was ridiculous and something I think she’d eventually get over. Something I hoped she’d get over. She was too incredible to be lonely forever.
And she’d been right. I’d underestimated the restorative nature of a new sink sponge.
I was standing in the kitchen making a cappuccino. It was barely 8:15. I had no plans today and was thinking of hitting the treadmill when my phone
rang.
The house phone at Richard’s.
My good mood immediately evaporated.
When I’d called Mom yesterday to ask her how to clean up Grace after her diaper fiasco, she’d thought I was calling to tell her I was coming for Christmas. She was surprised that I was watching someone’s baby. She was less surprised that I was still sticking to my guns and refusing to be anywhere in Richard’s presence.
I picked up, thinking it was going to be another guilt-trip phone call from
her.
It was worse. It was Grandma.
“Adrian?” she said, in her small, frail voice. “What time are you taking me to lunch today?”
I drew my brows down. “Grandma, I’m not coming to see you today.”
“But it’s Tuesday! You always take me to Perkins on Tuesday.”
It wasn’t Tuesday. It was Sunday. And I never took her to lunch. Dinner
was our tradition.
She was confused again.
I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Grandma, you’re in Nebraska now, remember?”
She went quiet and I knew she was doing that thing she did when her mind got turned around, drawing down her thin eyebrows and searching the floor with her eyes.
It was more difficult to connect with her on the phone. She was less disoriented in person. I hadn’t really talked to her since the move. Every time I’d call, she’d lose her train of thought or forget who she was talking to and set the receiver down and wander off.
It made me that much angrier that Mom had moved her away from everything familiar, and my hatred for Richard went up a notch.
I heard someone in the background. “Who are you talking to?”
Shuffling, and then Mom got on the phone. “Who is this?”
“Mom, it’s me,” I said wearily.
“Adrian? I didn’t hear the phone ring.”
“She called me.”
Now she went quiet on me too.
“She’s been asking about you,” she said after a moment.
I squeezed my temples.
“She doesn’t understand why you’re not here,” she said. “And I can’t explain it to her.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have moved her out of state,” I said, my tone more clipped than I’d intended.
“I have a life, Adrian. Even if you don’t want to be a part of it.”
Any truce we’d committed to on the phone yesterday when I called to ask how to wash Grace was officially over.
“I’m handing the phone back to Audrey so you can say goodbye,” she said curtly, obviously done with me.
There was more shuffling and then Grandma was back on the call.
“Adrian?”
“Grandma, I love you. I have to go, okay?” My voice was getting thick.
“Okay. You stay out of trouble. I’ll see you soon. Bye bye.”
I hung up and squeezed my eyes shut, blowing out a long breath.
I was clearly in the throes of a custody battle and the only way I was getting visitation was if I agreed to make peace with Richard and go down there—which I would never do.
I felt instantly exhausted and like I was being punished for having principles.
I went back to making my coffee. The phone rang again and I looked down at it, half expecting it to be Grandma. This time it was Vanessa. I smiled at the screen and swiped the Answer Call button. “Hey—”
“Adrian, I need help. It’s an emergency.”
I set my coffee cup down and immediately started for the door. “What’s going on?”
“I need you to come with me to my dad’s.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Your dad’s?”
“Like, it’s not a call-the-police thing, but it’s definitely urgent, and I need someone strong to help me. My hand is too weak, no one’s home at Brent’s house, and I don’t know anyone else.”
“Okay. Let me get dressed,” I said, making a beeline for my room.
“Don’t wear anything you’ll be sad to douse in gasoline and set on fire later.”
Vanessa left Grace with Yoga Lady—whose real name was Dawn. I drove.
“What happened?” I asked, getting onto the freeway.
She was wringing her hands. “Some stuff fell over and he’s trapped.”
I jerked to look at her. “Trapped? As in under it?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but it’s just his legs. He was able to call me. He’s not in any immediate danger. I don’t think he’s hurt or anything. He just can’t get out by himself.”
I shook my head. “And you didn’t want to call 911? They would have gotten there faster.”
“I can’t call the police to that house. They’ll red tag it.”
I drew my eyebrows down. “Red tag it? What’s wrong with it?”
She let out a long breath. “Remember I told you about the muddy hill of shit yesterday? And you were all cavalier and wanted to be my friend
anyway?”
I changed lanes. “Yes…”
“Well, this is the slide.”
Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a two-story house in Eagan.
Vanessa jumped out and ran up the walkway and went inside without waiting for me. When I came up behind her, I stopped dead in the doorway.
The smell hit me like a wall.
I came slowly into the entry breathing into my elbow. I’d never seen anything like it. Not in real life.
Floor-to-ceiling stacks as far as the eye could see. Shit literally everywhere. Every standing surface had a pile on it.
The love seat in the living room was completely covered with some sort of magazine/newspaper collection piled so high it blocked the light from the window. There was a broken blender on the credenza filled with bottle caps next to a rotting gourd with fruit flies buzzing around it. Bins everywhere, lining the walls with God knows what in them, the rim to a tire, a box filled with broken picture frames, one of those white wicker baskets used for flowers at weddings in the 1980s with a dented pink helium tank sitting in it — There was a chaotic method to some of the madness. Certain things seemed to be grouped together. A stack of board games piled on a chair, a CD collection. But all around it was garbage and decaying food. Broken, useless trinkets and appliances.
Vanessa called me from somewhere deeper in the house and I picked my way over the clutter on the floor to a hallway that was so crowded with stuff I had to turn sideways to squeeze through it. Vanessa stood in a room at the end trying to lift a fallen armoire off a pile of clothes.
“I got it,” I said, heaving it up and leaning it against the wall. Only after I had it moved did I realize there was a man under it.
Vanessa was already digging her dad out from under shirts and pants.
“Dad, you okay?” she asked, pulling him to his feet.
He brushed his sweater down, a sock still draped over his shoulder.
“Fine, fine, pumpkin. I put some laundry on an open drawer and it must have been too top-heavy. Toppled it onto me. Had a nice little cushion for the fall though.”
Vanessa looked back at me, a tired expression on her face. “Thanks for helping.”
Her dad gave me a broad used-car-salesman smile. “We haven’t been formally introduced,” he said, extending a hand. “Gerald Price.”
I was feeling nauseous. My eyes were starting to water. “Adrian Copeland,” I managed, shaking it.
Gerald put his hands in his pockets and rocked jovially back on his heels.
“So, Vanessa tells me you’re a lawyer.”
He smiled up at me like nothing was wrong. Like I hadn’t just lifted a dresser off him and we were running into each other in a Panera or something.
I couldn’t make small talk with him here, standing in this garbage pile. I was having a hard time breathing. Not just because of the smell, but because the room was so crowded with junk it was giving me anxiety. The floor under my feet was uneven. I was standing on blankets and balled-up socks and my head was too close to the ceiling. I felt claustrophobic.
“I’m sorry, excuse me. I need to step out.”
I left them standing there. I didn’t stop moving until I was outside again on the porch, gulping fresh air.
How the fuck had Vanessa grown up in this? I wouldn’t say my own childhood was without trauma, but this made me feel like calling my mom and thanking her.
Three minutes later I was still on the front porch when Vanessa came out and plopped down next to me on the weathered bench I’d retreated to by the
screen door.
I shook my head. “Wow.”
She scoffed. “I prefer a four-letter word, but sure.”
I looked over at her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude back there. I just needed to get some air.”
She sighed. “It’s overwhelming, I know. Especially when you’re not
used to it.”
“You’re used to this?”
“I’m used to a lot of shit.” She laughed a little mirthlessly. “I found a
raccoon living in one of the closets one time. Once you realize you’re one open window and a hoarded bathroom away from living with trash pandas, the whole second half of your life begins.”
I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.
She nudged my arm. “So, you still believe that whole ‘other families just do better PR’ thing?”
I snorted and shook my head at the yard. “Has he always been this way?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out in the cold air. “Pretty much. But this is honestly the worst it’s ever been,” she admitted. “It gets worse every time something big happens. Mom, Melanie. Annabel. I think it’s his way of dealing with it.”
She dug into the neck of her shirt and pulled out a yellow tube of Carmex.
I squinted at her. “Did you just pull that out of your bra?” I asked, watching her put it on.
“Yeah. Leggings don’t have pockets. Plus it gets cold and won’t squeeze from the tube unless I keep it somewhere warm. I call it my boob stick.”
She smacked her lips. “Want some?” She held it out.
“No. I don’t like the way that stuff tastes.”
“Yeah, it’s kinda gross. But it makes your lips super soft.” She pressed her lips together again and put the tube back in her bra.
I dropped my eyes to her mouth for a flicker of a second. Her lips did
look soft… I looked away from her.
A car pulled into the driveway of the house across the street.
“Oh, so now he’s home,” she mumbled.
“Who?”
She rubbed her hands on her arms. “Brent. He lives there with his
boyfriend, Joel.”
“How old’s your brother?”
“Twenty-one. Joel is too. They’re high school sweethearts. He’s been living over there since he was fifteen.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Your dad let him?”
She shrugged. “He was over there all the time anyway. It was just across the street. And Dad still made him come home for dinner every night and
holidays. It was sort of a win-win. Brent got out of this house, and Dad got to put shit in his room.” She laughed dryly. “Joel’s family is nice. Brent’s in a good place over there. He’s got the most potential of all of us to end up somewhat unscathed by this fucked-up family,” she muttered.
We watched Brent get out of the passenger side. He stopped and looked at us for a second before waving. Then he went around to the trunk and grabbed some grocery bags and went into the house with another young man.
“So what does he do for a living?” I asked.
She scoffed. “Lose money? He was a student. He went to college for business, but he graduated last spring. Absolutely refuses to get a job. He’s always got some disastrous side hustle he’s super into.”
“Like what?”
“Oh God, herbal supplements, skin-care products—you name it. To be fair, I did like the leggings though.” She blew into her hands. “Right now he’s trying to get me to invest in some business he wants to start. Not interested.”
“Why doesn’t he just go to a bank? Get a loan?”
She pressed her lips into a line. “Can’t. His credit is fucked. All our credit is fucked. When Melanie got sick, we almost lost everything. The medical bills were astronomical, and insurance didn’t cover even half of it.
Dad had to file for bankruptcy. We were living on credit cards at the end.”
She stood up. “You want to wait for me in the car? It’s trash day the day after tomorrow. I figure since I pay for the service, I might as well fill the bin. I realize it’s an effort in futility at this point, but at least it’s something.”
I pushed up on my knees. “I’ll help you.”
She paused by the door. “You sure? There’s probably at least one of the hepatitises in there.”
“If you’re getting one of the heps, I’ll get it too,” I mumbled.
She laughed and it made her eyes twinkle and I felt instantly glad I offered.
I didn’t want to go back in there—but neither did she. And I wanted to help her. Even if the thing we were doing was pointless, making her feel less alone in it wasn’t.
Gerald was standing in the kitchen when we came back inside, blowing on a mug of soup. “He returns,” he muttered.
Vanessa gave him a look as she pulled some trash bags from under the sink. She shoved one into his chest. “Help.”
He eyed her. “Help with what? What, pray tell, do you think you’re
throwing away, Daughter?”
“Trash,” she said. “And you are too.”
“There is no trash here. Everything in this house has a purpose.”
She picked up a broken vase. “Oh yeah? And what’s the purpose of this?” She jiggled it.
“As soon as I find the missing shards, I’m gluing it back together,” he said, completely straight-faced.
She let out a slow, patient breath and set the vase on the counter with a clink. “Dad? This house is seriously not okay. I understand this is difficult, but I need you to work with me. We’ve got three bags. These bags are going to get filled up and taken out. You can do this.”
He frowned. Then he turned to me. “What are your intentions with my
daughter?”
“Dad! Focus!” Vanessa snapped.
I put my hands up. “I’m just here to help.”
He narrowed his eyes at me and Vanessa huffed. “Three bags. You do the upstairs,” she said, pushing the trash bag into his chest again.
Gerald gave me one last narrow-eyed look and set his mug down. Then he snatched the bag and wandered off up the staircase, muttering to himself.
Vanessa watched him go and then turned to me, blowing air through pursed lips. “So, you wanna see something?” She smiled.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
She led me back down the narrow hallway and opened a door. The room was full of bikes. Full. They were piled on top of one another in some sort of macabre bicycle graveyard. Mountain bikes with bent rims, fat-tire bikes with flats, rusted children’s bikes with the training wheels still on them.
“This was my room,” she said. “I used to sleep over there under the one with the tassels and the basket. Before the bikes,” she added.
She didn’t say it with any sort of regret in her tone. She was just showing me. Like she could separate what it was now versus what it used to be without it making her sad.
I think this was one of the most impressive things about her. Especially now that I saw the other side of it. She didn’t let anything get her down. She
took things like a blow to a punching bag. She got knocked back, but then she was up again. So resilient.
I wasn’t like that. I couldn’t let things go.
I crossed my arms and leaned in the doorway. “Did Child Protective Services ever get involved?”
Vanessa shook her head, leaning her back on the door frame. “I mean, they were called. But the few times they came out, he’d pull off some eleventh-hour save, get the house livable again, and we’d get to stay. It was the only time I ever really saw him bust his ass.” She looked back at me.
“Dad screwed up a lot of things, but he always managed to keep this family together. Family is the most important thing to him. Even if he has a weird way of showing it,” she mumbled.
I looked back into the room. I was getting nose blind to the smell of the house, thank God.
There were things of hers still on the walls, half covered by the rising mound of bikes. Evidence of an abandoned life. Pussycat Dolls posters, the mirror of a vanity with photos stuck to it, a blue first-place ribbon.
I wondered what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this. It couldn’t have been easy. Vanessa must have risen from the ashes like a phoenix.
“We should get started,” she said. She turned back for the kitchen and I followed her. She began tossing garbage on her way. “Just so you know, he’s going to fight me on every single thing. He’ll go through the bags, so make sure your trash is legit.”
“Legit trash. Got it.” I grabbed a crumpled chip bag and a greasy Chinese takeout container. “There’s some mail here,” I said, nodding at the end table. “Should we make a pile? Looks like these are for your sister.”
She was looking at a toaster with a frayed wire. “Yeah. Thanks.” She shoved it in her bag.
The toaster was concerning. This place was a huge fire hazard. Exits were blocked, the stove had crap all around it. I bet the smoke alarms didn’t work, and there was no way he’d ever find an extinguisher in this mess.
This was dangerous. I didn’t like the thought of Grace being here. At all.
“Did Annabel live here with the baby?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No, never with the baby. She had some roommates at a house in Hopkins. When she started using again, they
kicked her out and she stayed here for a few weeks. I have no idea where she slept. Her old room is full of car parts.”
I wandered the living room, leaving things so obviously garbage it made me cringe. I found more mail and added it to the pile. Then more. And more. It looked like he’d grab it from the mailbox and then set it down somewhere in the living room and forget it. “There’s a lot of mail here. You said you pay the bills, right?”
“Yeah. I get all the important stuff sent to my apartment.” She made a face at a plastic fish tank with a rotting tomato in it. She looked up at me over it. “I bet when you woke up this morning you couldn’t imagine how many times you’d be muttering ‘What the fuck?’ by ten a.m.”
I snorted.
She scanned the living room and sighed. “You know, I’m not usually humiliated this frequently in front of the same person. This is a new personal best for me.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed about this. It’s not your fault,” I said.
“Where’s the mail pile?” Vanessa asked, waving a white envelope. “I found another one.”
I nodded to the end table by the sofa and she walked to it. She stood over the stack I’d already begun and picked up the top letter. The corners of her lips fell. Then she tore it open and stood there reading it, her frown
deepening.
“What is it?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked from the page to the pile of letters. “Oh my God…” she breathed. “It’s so much worse than I thought.”
I set my trash bag down. “What?” I cleared the space between us and took the paper from her hand.
It was a bill for Annabel for an emergency room visit.
I looked at the stack and picked up half of the envelopes and flipped through them. There had to be twenty, twenty-five different bills here.
Clinics, urgent cares, hospitals.
Vanessa looked at me, her face white. “She was drug seeking. Faking injuries to get prescription meds.” She paused. “And she was doing it while she was pregnant.”
* * *
Vanessa was quiet the whole way home. When we pulled into the parking garage and I turned off the engine, she sat there a moment, staring straight through the windshield.
“Look,” I said. “There was only one clinic visit while she was pregnant.
And we don’t know if she took the pills they prescribed her.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand how a doctor could give a pregnant woman a narcotic.”
“Liability. Doctors can’t prove or disprove pain. If they deny her pain control, they can be sued.”
She took a deep breath and then pivoted to face me in the seat. “Do you
want to go to Duluth today?”
I wrinkled my forehead. “What?”
“Duluth. You know, two hours up north? We could go see the Christmas lights at Bentleyville and do the lake walk.”
I sucked air through my teeth. “I don’t know…”
“What?”
“Why don’t we just stay here? I can make us lunch.”
She smiled. “Oh, I see. You do want to hang out with me, but you don’t do spontaneity.”
“I can be spontaneous,” I said defensively.
She smirked. “Oh yeah? When’s the last time you did something that wasn’t thoroughly planned? And stuff inside your apartment building doesn’t count. That’s still your safe space.”
“Well, I saved a man from an avalanche today.”
She laughed. It was good to see the humor return to her face.
“Doesn’t count,” she said, still smiling. “You’re a fixer, so today’s emergency was totally in your wheelhouse. I’m talking about a genuine, spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-your-pants fun thing.”
I had nothing.
How did this woman have my card so thoroughly pulled?
When I didn’t answer, she cocked her head. “That’s what I thought. You thrive on predictability.” She narrowed her eyes. “I bet that’s why you like
the job you have.”
“How do you mean?”
“You like being in control. And what better way to feel like the master of destiny than to beat all the odds with everything stacked against you? Make
innocent men out of the guilty.”
I mulled this over. “I never thought of it that way.”
“You’re not that hard to figure out, Adrian Copeland. Even your hobbies are planned. You run races that you train for for months, you work, work, work—you are a creature of habit. A total control freak. Your dang junk drawer is organized.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You looked in my junk drawer?”
“I was looking for a spoon for my coffee. I was not prepared to see that.
Your paper clips were all color coordinated, and you had a little caddy for your loose batteries—” She shuddered. “I can’t even talk about it. It really
freaked me out.”
I snorted.
“I promise you, you will not implode if you do something you didn’t plan on today.” She grinned at me. “Come with me. It’ll be an adventure.
And there’s this Italian restaurant on Lake Superior and I swear to God, it’s
the best Italian food in Minnesota.”
Coming from her, this was high praise.
“I can’t remember the last time I went up north,” I said somewhat distantly. “Dad used to take me, but I haven’t been in ages.”
“You’re missing out. The North Shore is ridiculously gorgeous. So.
Duluth. Are we going?”
She waited for me to answer like a puppy wagging its tail.
“Okay. But I’m driving.”
She clapped her hands excitedly. “Yay!”
I smiled. I realized that doing what she wanted gave me a little high. She was some kind of mood booster for me—even when all we were doing was
picking up trash in a hoarded house.
I liked her.
And that gave me a little high too.