In Her Eyes

by Sarah Alderson

  Robert opened the safe for the man – of course he did. June was there and the man was pointing a gun at them. He was hardly going to refuse. Besides, all our things, like my jewelry, were insured. The man punched him and then hit him with the butt of his gun and knocked him out, all because he was moving too slowly, his hand shaking too hard as he opened the safe. The bloodstains on the floor are evidence of the savageness of the beating, as if Robert’s face isn’t testimony enough.

  Robert’s laptop has been taken away as evidence and the filing cabinet drawers are all flung open, the files emptied. The police must have taken everything. Everything except for a painting on the wall – another one of mine, a landscape view of the valley, and a couple of framed photos on the desk. One is of Robert and me taken a few years ago on our wedding anniversary, just after we moved into this house. The glass is broken but the photo is intact. We’re looking into each other’s eyes, both of us grinning. The happiness shines out and seeing it now causes a sharp stabbing pain in my side. We were happy. Weren’t we?

  My gaze drifts to another photo of all the children, taken last Thanksgiving. June is pulling a funny face at the camera, Hannah stands behind her, pouting. I remember her sighing and telling me to hurry up and take the damn photo already, she had to be somewhere – I can’t remember where – yet still managing to strike a pose like a pro. And there’s Gene, arm flung loosely around June’s shoulders, staring slightly over her shoulder into space. He was probably high at the time, now I think about it.

  I pick the photograph up, swiping at the tears that spring to my eyes, and study the children’s faces, wishing I could step back in time and hit pause on that day, wishing I’d have known to treasure that moment, every imperfect second of it.

  Chapter 29

  My hand is bleeding. Absently I watch the drops fall like tears onto the kitchen floor for several seconds before it dawns on me that they’re coming from my hand. I’ve somehow walked from the study to here, gripping the photograph of our wedding anniversary in my hand so tightly that my palm has been sliced open on the broken glass.

  I set the photograph down and pick up a tea towel, wrapping it around my hand to staunch the blood. It doesn’t hurt – even though the cut runs deep – but it makes me woozy to see the blood welling up. I haven’t eaten in I don’t know how long. I’m not hungry anymore. And I can’t remember the last time I slept for longer than an hour or two. Whenever I do fall asleep I wake with my heart pounding, the image of the man in the razor-teeth mask burned like a sunspot onto my retina. The effect is to make me feel as if I’m wearing virtual-reality goggles – I am sluggish and disconnected from everything around me, dizzy and clumsy too.

  Throwing down the tea towel I start gathering up the fragments of glass from the frame. I wrap them in the stained cloth and then cross to the trash can but then stare down at it, confused. There’s a bin liner in it, but it’s new. I remember wiping up the milk that June had spilled and then throwing the wet kitchen towel into the trash along with the empty milk carton. It had been three quarters full.

  Nate said Robert hadn’t put the trash out. He claimed Robert lied about it, so why is the can in the kitchen empty? Perhaps Robert emptied it the day we came home from the hospital. Or perhaps the police did after their search.

  I open the back door and cross over towards the big wheelie trash containers parked at the side of the garage. Both of them are empty. I dump the broken glass wrapped in the tea towel and then stand there, hands on hips, for a few seconds, puzzling over what happened to the trash from the kitchen. Where did it go?

  I wander around to the stairs that lead up above the garage to Gene’s apartment. When I got home thirty minutes ago I texted him to see where he was and he told me he was out buying groceries. I make for the stairs, deciding to take advantage of his absence and search his room for drugs. I should have thought of it sooner. I’m an idiot.

  As I start up the stairs, I catch sight of a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. Looking closer, I see it’s a plastic garbage bag, half hidden behind the stairs as though it’s been dropped there and forgotten about. I pull it out and then sit down on the bottom step to open it. The empty milk carton sits on the top, along with the soiled kitchen towels.

  Robert did put the trash out then, he just never put it in the cart. Why? The only thing I can think is that he was walking over to do it but got distracted – maybe by Gene coming out of his apartment and disappearing like a thief down the drive. Perhaps he went to investigate. But why didn’t Robert just tell Nate this? Why let them make a wrong assumption? This one small detail could help clear his name. He wasn’t lying about it. But, I think to myself, dampening my own excitement, even if he isn’t lying about that, he did still meet those men – there’s no denying the photographic evidence – and what the hell was that about?

  I head back inside, holding the trash bag. I need to call Nate and let him know.

  As soon as I walk back into the kitchen I hear a creaking sound from overhead, which makes me freeze mid-step and stare up at the ceiling. It’s coming from June’s room.

  It can’t be Gene as I would have heard him coming back in the car, and Hannah has been staying at Laurie’s, having refused to set foot in the house again, so I know it’s not her. My heart smashes into my ribs, trying to escape my chest. Get out of the house, the voice in my head commands. I put the trash bag down and tiptoe to the back door, then remember that I don’t have a car. Gene has it.

  My eyes land on the knife block and I draw a knife from it – not the carving knife, which is no longer there, but a small meat cleaver Robert uses for hacking up slabs of steak before he puts them on the grill – and then I pull out my cell phone and start to dial 911.

  There’s only silence overhead now and I wonder if I’m going mad, hearing things, echoes from before. Another creak followed by a loud, high-pitched shriek – a girl’s shriek – interrupts me. Dropping the phone, I run to the bottom of the stairs, and haul myself up them.

  ‘No!’ a girl screams and I recognize the voice. Hannah!

  I skid to a halt on the landing outside June’s room. Hannah’s standing with her back to me in the middle of the room, but when she hears me she turns in alarm.

  ‘Mom,’ she says, putting a hand to her heart. ‘God, you gave me such a fright.’ She double-takes. ‘Why are you holding a meat cleaver?’

  ‘What? What are you doing?’ I pant. ‘I heard you scream.’

  Hannah holds something up in front of her face.

  My hand flies to cover my mouth. ‘George.’

  The hamster dangles by its tail from her thumb and forefinger. His little body is limp, his mouth open in a tiny rictus grin. ‘We forgot to feed him,’ she says.

  Big fat tears start falling down my face. ‘Oh God,’ I sob, collapsing down onto the bed. ‘George. Poor George.’

  Hannah is right there, arms around me, hugging me, as though I’m the child and she’s the mother. ‘It’s not your fault, Mom,’ she whispers. ‘You were in the hospital. I told Gene to feed him.’

  I look at the dead hamster lying on the carpet and start to cry even harder. ‘What will June say when she wakes up?’

  ‘We’ll buy her a new one,’ Hannah tells me. ‘She’ll never know.’

  Of course she’ll know, I think to myself. She’s not five. We can’t pull the wool over her eyes like we did that time with the goldfish.

  I lean against Hannah. ‘What kind of a mother am I?’ I ask her.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she says. ‘It’s Gene’s.’

  ‘Stop blaming him for everything.’

  ‘Stop excusing him for everything.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’

  Hannah huffs and her arm drops from my shoulder. She stands up and crosses to George’s cage. ‘It’s not like we could have taken him when we leave here anyway,’ she mutters, and for a moment I think she’s talking about Gene before realizing she means the hamster. ‘I mean, we don’t even kno
w where we’re going.’

  ‘You’re going back to college,’ I tell her.

  Hannah looks at me. ‘How? I can’t pay my rent, let alone the tuition.’

  ‘We’ll figure it out,’ I tell her.

  She shakes her head. ‘How?’

  ‘We’ll take a loan.’

  She shakes her head. ‘What’s the point? Unless I become a lawyer, which I have no intention of doing, why would I get myself over a hundred thousand dollars in debt? I’ll never be able to pay it back.’ She puts her hands on her hips. ‘I’m not going back to New York.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I say angrily.

  She shrugs at me, mind made up. ‘I’m not taking a loan,’ she says, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘And besides, I can’t leave you here with June in the hospital and Dad in prison. How can I go back and pretend like my life is the same when it isn’t? Nothing’s the same. It’s never going to be the same again.’

  I open my mouth but she cuts me off. ‘I’ve decided, OK? So don’t bother trying to talk me out of it.’

  I close my mouth. It’s her life, I suppose, and what am I going to do? Force her to go? I’m too tired to even try. ‘OK,’ I say quietly. ‘We can talk about it again later, when everything is back to normal.’

  Normal. As though that’s ever going to happen. There is no normal anymore. There never will be. I sink back down onto the bed and for a few moments we both just contemplate the room. It’s still an utter pigsty, and now it smells of one too, the gut-churning stink of rotting hamster filling my nostrils. My head drops into my hands. When June wakes up we’ll have to tell her not only that her hamster is dead and her dad is in jail but that she can’t go home either, that she doesn’t have a home to go home to. For once I’m actually grateful she’s not awake.

  ‘We need to pack all her things,’ I say, taking a deep breath and standing up. I can’t sit here crying and feeling sorry for myself, I need to start packing, and start deciding what to sell.

  ‘That’s what I was doing,’ Hannah answers. ‘I’ve done my room already. I was about to start on June’s.’ She gestures at a pile of things on the floor. ‘I thought maybe we could take a few of her things to the hospital, put them in her room, for when she wakes up.’

  ‘I should have thought about that already.’ Another flurry of guilt hits.

  I glance at the pile of stuff Hannah has gathered – June’s teddy bear, her hairbrush, some gymnastics trophies, framed photographs of her and Abby and other friends, her collection of signed Hunger Games books, a photo album, a basketball. The detritus of a life fully but not even partially lived.

  I sink to my knees and pick up her bear, bringing him to my face and breathing in deep. He smells musty – of dead animal – and I drop him to my lap. There’s no scent of June in this room anymore. No trace of her. Her laughter has faded from my head too. When my mother died I forgot the sound of her voice within a year; the harder I tried to remember it the quicker it vanished, like trying to grab handfuls of smoke. I try to recall June’s voice but already it’s a struggle, like that lost memory from the night it all happened – the harder I reach for it, the further away it drifts. The doctors said I might have problems with my memory thanks to the head injury, but this fog is driving me mad.

  ‘Have you heard any more from the lawyer?’ Hannah asks, snapping me out of my daze. ‘About Dad? Are they going to let him out of jail? Has he said anything? Can we visit?’

  I shake my head. ‘Why?’ she asks angrily.

  I shrug. I haven’t told her that he is refusing to see anyone, except Gene apparently, only that we can’t get visitation rights at the moment.

  ‘He didn’t do it, he wouldn’t do it,’ Hannah says, her voice reaching fever pitch. She turns to me, frowning. ‘You don’t believe it, do you?’

  I’m staring at the bear in my lap.

  Why is Robert not speaking? Is he hiding his own guilt? What other motive would there be? He knows something and won’t reveal it. Think, Ava. What else could it be? What was he doing in Oxnard meeting those people?

  ‘Mom?’

  I look up, dazed, at Hannah.

  ‘You don’t believe Dad arranged it, do you?’ she asks tearily.

  I shake my head, because I don’t want her to think I do. I’m lying to protect her, as I’ve always done with all the children, and that’s when it occurs to me: is that what Robert is doing too?

  What if his silence isn’t a sign of guilt? What if he’s lying to protect someone? And the only person he’d protect like that, who he’d take a fall for, is one of the kids. I follow that thought, grasping onto it and trying to drag it kicking into the light. The only child he’s allowed to see him in prison is Gene. Gene – our possibly drug-addicted son. Is he somehow covering for Gene?

  It’s like a lightbulb going on.

  I remember the feeling I had at the hospital earlier with Gene, that I was talking to a five-year-old who’d been caught pilfering from the cookie jar. But now I realize it might not have been drugs, or flu, or fear making Gene so jittery. What if it was guilt?

  What if it was Gene who robbed us? What if it was him dressed up in a fright mask? He could have got one of his friends to help. What if it was Dave?! No. I’m losing it. What am I saying? It wasn’t either of them. It couldn’t be. I almost laugh at my paranoid delusions, but then I catch myself. Something is niggling at me, trying to push its way into the light. But it vanishes before I can get a grip on it.

  I get to my feet. I need to talk to Robert. That’s a priority. I need to ask him if Gene had anything to do with this. I would ask Gene himself but he’s conveniently gone AWOL.

  ‘I guess I should go bury him,’ Hannah says, and I startle, then realize she’s talking about the hamster, lying dead on the carpet at my feet.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I tell her, feeling sick to my stomach at the thought.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Hannah asks.

  I nod absently.

  ‘OK, well, I’ll go finish clearing up my room then.’ She pauses by the door and then comes over and hugs me. ‘I love you, Mom,’ she says, her breath warm against my neck.

  ‘I love you too,’ I say, wrapping my arms around her and breathing in deep.

  ‘Can I come to the hospital with you later to see June?’ she asks. ‘I want to bring her things.’

  I nod and wait until she’s left the room before I sink to the floor again. With the bear clutched in one hand, I stroke my other hand over the bloodstained carpet.

  There’s only one thing I know for sure. Whoever did this to June, whoever is involved, whether it’s Gene or a stranger, I’m going to find out and I’m going to make them pay.

  Chapter 30

  ‘Do you really want to do this?’ Laurie asks me.

  I nod, my eyes fixed on the golden Corona sign hanging in the blacked-out window of the bar we’re parked opposite. This area of Oxnard is a no-go zone at night. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t come here even in broad daylight because of all the tweakers and muggings. But these aren’t normal circumstances.

  ‘Ava, I’m not sure this is a good idea,’ Laurie says as I get out of the car.

  I slam the door shut and start marching towards the bar, clutching my purse against my side and wondering if Laurie is right and I’m out of my mind. I’m not totally sure what I’m doing here but I don’t know what else to do. I need answers and I don’t know where else to get them. Robert won’t talk to me, Nate is convinced it’s Robert so there is no point talking to him – and besides, if he had any idea of what I’m about to do he’d probably arrest me – and Gene never came home after buying groceries so I had no chance to confront him. My only option, I decided, was to go elsewhere for answers. I’m tired of sitting around and waiting; for June to wake up, for the police to tell me what’s going on, for Gene to come home, for the truth to emerge like a springtime flower poking through the soil of its own accord. I need to be pro-active and chase after it.

  Laurie thinks I’m
mad, but if I can talk to the men who met with Robert maybe I can get them to tell me what he wanted. They wouldn’t talk to the police but perhaps, somehow, I can make them talk to me. I can find out what Robert gave them money for and why. I can find out if Gene is involved.

  Someone grabs my arm and I whip around in fright, heart leapfrogging into my mouth, but it’s only Laurie. ‘I thought you were going to wait in the car?’

  She arches an eyebrow at me and shoves her arm through mine, and I don’t bother to argue. She’s not letting me go through with this by myself, or perhaps she just doesn’t want to wait alone in the car on a dark street. I don’t ask which it is, because when I push open the battered door to the bar and the entire room – two dozen or more men – pivot on their bar stools and look up from their pool games to stare at us, I’m grateful I’m not alone.

  Throwing back my shoulders, I make a beeline for the bar, Laurie at my side. A heavy silence has fallen and every eye in the place swivels to follow us. I can feel their gazes on my back like dozens of laser sights. We are so out of place we’re like aliens landing on the White House lawn.

  The barman, wiping out glasses, watches us approach wearing an amused expression on his face. I can guarantee the last time two white, middle-aged women walked into his bar was ten past never. Two men to our right, slumped on stools and nursing beers, openly stare at us, their faces blank as stone.

  ‘You two ladies lost?’ the barman asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, staring him in the eye. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘You looking for me?’

  I turn. A man has appeared and is leaning against the bar right beside me, grinning a lizard-like smile. His thigh rubs up against mine accidentally on purpose. He’s forty, maybe, with a pockmarked face and receding, stringy hair that he’s scraped into a ponytail.

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I’m looking for Raul Fernandez.’

  He shrugs and pulls a face. ‘Never heard of him.’