After Nightfall

by A. J. Banner

  “Linen.”

  “Whatever. You had painted your toenails bright pink. I wanted to kiss your toes.”

  “I didn’t know you had a foot fetish,” I say, slapping his arm playfully.

  “I have a Marissa fetish,” he says.

  “And Lauren has a Nathan fetish.”

  He tilts his head back and groans. “Oh no, let’s not go there.”

  “She was fawning all over you.”

  He looks at me, his brows drawing together. “What do you mean? I didn’t notice—”

  “Stop it. You loved the attention.”

  He laughs. “She did go a bit overboard.”

  “When she left, she said she needed to talk to me alone. Something about you.”

  “Oh? What about me?” He kisses my neck. I feel my body waking up.

  “She wants to tell me tomorrow.”

  “Let me know how it goes. I’m eager to hear my secrets.”

  I pull away a little. “What could she tell me about you?”

  He shrugs, his eyes half-closed. “No idea. Who cares? Let’s go to bed.”

  “I promised Julie I would try to call.” I pick up my cell phone. “But it’s late now. Weird getting engaged without her.”

  “We were already engaged. She kept our secret.”

  “But she would have danced with me tonight.” I keep my voice low. “She would’ve been a breath of fresh air.”

  “We’ll make sure she comes to the wedding. Have you heard from her?”

  “She texted from her last conference session. Training young art prodigies in the modern age or something.”

  “The jet-setting life of an elementary school art teacher.”

  “And I live the domestic life of an SLP.” I nestle into his arms. “I want to stay like this forever.”

  He tightens his hold on me. “I never want to go back to work.”

  “Then don’t. Stay here so I can keep smelling you.” I sniff his neck, inhaling the faint soapy aroma and his indefinable male scent.

  “That’s all you love about me? My smell?”

  “Yup, that’s all.” I tap his abs, firm but with a comfortable layer of insulation.

  “Aw, you’re killing me.” He kisses me again, passionately this time. “I love you like crazy.”

  “I love you crazier,” I say, my signature line. “I love Anna, too.”

  “And she loves you.”

  “She seemed upset. I thought you were going to tell her—”

  “I did, in a gentle way. But I guess it didn’t sink in until I proposed to you formally at dinner, in front of everyone.”

  “She was upset. She ran off.”

  “She’s okay. She was fast asleep last time I checked. Come on.” He gets up, gently tugging my arm, and I see Lauren years ago, yanking my arm in our shared apartment. Come on, let’s go to the party. You can study later. Stupidly, I went with her, and she ditched me. Nothing like a dark memory to kill the mood.

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” I say, pulling away.

  “Don’t be long.” He heads to bed, and I close my eyes. I’m dozing off, drifting through a grassy field, the sky darkening, the ocean crashing against a distant shore. The field dissolves into the classroom. I’m helping Anna relax her diaphragm, and she smiles at me, but she is not Anna. She is Lauren, her grin malevolent, her teeth sharp. She’s going to drain me. I look around for a weapon. But there is nothing. Lauren lunges for me, and I shove her, knocking the wind out of her. I can feel the cold night air on my skin. She tips backward, and we’re both tumbling through space. Time passes, minutes, maybe hours.

  I wake with a start, my throat parched. I sit up quickly, gasping in the dimness. I’m cold, groggy. I stagger to my feet. What time is it? I can’t think straight. The clock in the kitchen reads 12:15 a.m. The full moon climbs high in the sky. I can hear the rhythm of the surf in the distance.

  My black flats sit on the floor next to the couch. I pick them up, tiptoe down the hall to the bedroom. I change into pajamas in the darkness, slip into bed beside Nathan. He’s snoring softly. I drift off again, lost in a deep slumber until a noise awakens me. Perhaps it is the box spring creaking, the shifting of the mattress as Nathan gets out of bed. The digital clock on the nightstand reads 2:05 a.m. He’s trying to be quiet, but I hear his breathing, watch his dark silhouette through the haze of my lashes, my body heavy with medicated sleep. Through the slightly open window, night sounds seep in—crinkles in the underbrush, the drip of residual rain from the downspouts. The air smells cold and clean. At first, I’m sure he’s going to the bathroom, but he’s moving in stealth, pulling on pants, sweater, and shoes. Does he have a night shift? He said he didn’t. Not this time.

  I want to reach out to him, to say something, but my mind is foggy. I keep my breathing even, as if I am asleep. He’s looking at me in the darkness, I think. I can’t tell. He turns his back to me and bends his head down, his face faintly illuminated by his cell phone. Is he sending a text? Reading one? If there is some emergency, he would say so. He would wake me. But he doesn’t. He slips out into the hall and pulls the door shut behind him.

  Cotton clouds drift through my brain, and I hear the distant yapping of Arthur Nguyen’s dog, two doors down. When I wake again, a floorboard creaks in the hall—a door shuts softly nearby. Someone must be up, but this time it’s not Nathan. He’s in bed beside me, his breathing soft and regular. It’s as if he never left. Next thing I know, it’s 6:45 a.m. Perhaps everything—the door closing, the creaking floor, and Lauren—was all a dream.

  I get up quietly and change into jeans, sweater, socks. Nathan doesn’t move. I need to get out of here. In the foyer, I bundle up in my overcoat, put on my sneakers. They’re still damp, probably from yesterday’s walk, a few blades of grass clinging to the soles.

  Out in the crisp dimness, I take the path back through the garden. My faint shoeprints lead me through the dirt. Also from yesterday—must be—but it rained last night. Strange. I shiver and glance over my shoulder, half expecting to see a shadow of myself racing up behind me.

  I descend the long staircase to the beach. When I reach the bottom, I turn right, heading north along the rocky, detritus-strewn shoreline. My legs are shaky, but the farther I walk, the stronger I feel. The more alert I become. When I reach the headland, I turn back, leaning into the wind. The madrone and fir trees at the top of the bluff lean dangerously. Nathan’s disappearance in the night now seems almost ordinary. Almost. He went out for some air. Or to talk to someone at work. No need to worry. We’ll live happily ever after. Nothing will stand in our way.

  And I won’t take that medication again; I’m fuzzy-headed. I’ve got too much to do putting up my little house for sale, choosing furniture to bring to Nathan’s place. This is real, my decision to move in here. The future is already in motion.

  I lean into the wind with renewed resolve. I’m nearly back to the wooden steps up the cliff when I spot a pile of clothing—or a large clump of kelp—several yards south of the steps. I pick up my pace. A dull headache pushes at my temples. I duck my chin against the gale, my running shoes pumping below me. My toes go numb. The cold claws at my bones. I should’ve worn the new silk long johns Nathan bought me for winter.

  As I round the promontory toward the dark heap in the sand, the beach widens ahead of me, and I come upon a broken umbrella lying askew at the bottom of the bluff, the handle embedded in the sand. Like an exotic bird that has tumbled down from the clifftop. I recognize the bright-blue pattern of Laurel Burch cats, and my pulse quickens.

  I can’t move fast enough. Pebbles sneak into my shoes and slow me down, but I’m close enough now to see. The pile of kelp is not kelp at all, and it’s not a clump of clothing. It’s a woman in a long, black coat. She’s lying on her stomach, her head turned to the side, her legs at a peculiar angle, one bent backward. She’s barefoot. Her dark hair blows across her face.

  I rush toward her, kneel next to her. I’m light-headed, afraid I might faint.
I try to shake her, but she doesn’t respond. A part of me pulls back, suspended outside my body, watching from a distance. Behind her, a rockslide has left a large pile of debris at the bottom of the cliff. She must have fallen. All the way down. Time slows. The world backtracks. I see her the way she was only yesterday, her magnetic smile, the black sheath dress clinging to her curves. I’m leaning over her now, shouting at her to Wake up, say something, but she doesn’t move. Her cheek feels cold to the touch. Her lips are blue; her eyes have turned to clouded marble.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I focus on a spot on the living room wall, on the watercolor painting of a great blue heron perched in the shallows. I’m cold, so cold, even with Nathan sitting next to me on the couch. Nausea rises in my throat—I haven’t had breakfast. I need to vomit, but there’s nothing in my stomach. Nothing but acid. The living room window is open, letting in brisk, salty air. I can hardly believe we’re sitting here while the police swarm the beach and the house next door. It took them ten minutes to get here from town.

  I turn my hands palms upward in my lap. They hardly seem like my own appendages, trembling and faintly stained with dirt. Or is it dried blood? I tuck my hands under my thighs, out of sight.

  “Should we go down to the beach?” I say.

  Nathan pulls me closer to him. “They’ve cordoned off the area. They have to examine the body.”

  I flinch at his words, the body. Come on, Lauren says, grinning over her shoulder at me. Let’s go to the beach. I saw a purple sea star . . .

  “What are they going to do with her?”

  Nathan pulls my hand out from beneath me and holds on. “They might take her for an autopsy.”

  The word autopsy punches me beneath the ribs.

  There’s a knock on the front door. Nathan gets up to answer, comes back with a tall man in a black trench coat and slacks. He’s slim, with slender fingers, a narrow face, and intense, dark eyes. That bit of a mustache seems like a mistake.

  Nathan sits next to me again, rests a protective arm around my waist. The detective folds into the armchair across from us and pulls out an old-fashioned notepad and pencil. “I’m Dan Harding. I’ve been assigned to this case.” He hands me a business card.

  “You’re a detective,” I say. “Does that mean she was killed?” Lauren is not a case. She is a person. Was. She lived and breathed, loved and hated, laughed and cried.

  “We’re trying to figure out what happened.” He jots down our personal information. He’s not wearing a wedding band. His jacket hangs from his shoulders, and he hasn’t ironed his slacks. He looks at me again. “Tell me about this morning.”

  My tongue ties itself into knots. I’m floating above myself again.

  “She’s in shock,” Nathan says. “Is it necessary to do this now?”

  “Memory tends to degrade over time. We should talk now, while your recall is still fresh.”

  Fresh, as if my memory has an expiration date. Best before . . .

  “I’m fine,” I say, although I’m trembling, my mind wandering away.

  The detective taps the eraser end of his pencil on his notepad. “Why were you on the beach so early?”

  “I was out for a walk,” I say faintly. “I go every morning, early, when I’m staying here, a few nights a week . . . I live across town on Juniper Lane. I walk to get my blood moving, to wake up. We had a dinner party last night and my brain was fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy because . . . ?”

  “I had a glass of wine,” I say. Or two. And a sleeping pill. “It was a special occasion. I hardly ever drink. I’m sort of . . . allergic. When I drink wine, especially red wine, my nose stuffs up and my brain turns to mush. I had to get outside to clear my head.”

  “Did you see anyone else out there?”

  “I wasn’t looking. The houses were dark. I saw a freighter in the distance, on the water. But no people.”

  “Did you see any other boats nearby?”

  “Not that I remember. Why?”

  “You didn’t see Lauren when you first got to the beach.”

  “No.” I squint out at the day, awash in light and shadow. I want to burst out of myself. “I walked in the other direction, north. I only saw her when I got back. I thought it was a pile of kelp or . . . Sometimes things wash up here. But . . . I had a worried feeling. Then I saw the umbrella. She borrowed it from me last week.”

  “The umbrella belongs to you?” The detective’s pencil scratches across the notepad, grating at my eardrums.

  “I recognized the pattern of Laurel Burch cats . . . and the small rip on one side. The umbrella was upside down.” I make a motion with my hand. “Embedded in the sand, like she’d let go of it. I got on her case about umbrellas.”

  His brows rise. “Oh? How’s that?”

  A tear trickles off my nose. I hastily wipe it away. I didn’t know I was crying. “She took them everywhere and then forgot them.” Why can’t I catch my breath? Why can’t I stop the tears?

  The detective nods slightly. “Did you notice anything else unusual nearby? Scuffed sand, objects? Footprints?”

  “No, I don’t know. The tide was on its way out. I remember thinking—I know it sounds weird—that the ocean had left her alone. The tide came up almost to her coat and then receded, as if the sea respected her.” It returns to me now, the image of her black raincoat billowing in the wind. She was barefoot. Her shoes must’ve fallen off on the way down.

  The detective scratches away at his notepad, and I imagine he’s writing, Marissa Parlette, looney tunes, heading for the mental hospital. “You went up to her and—?”

  “I spoke to her, but she didn’t answer. I tried to shake her.”

  “You touched her?”

  “I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to . . .”

  “There’s no law against trying to revive a friend.”

  I nod, the word friend reverberating in my brain. Does the detective even understand the complexity of the term, especially when it came to Lauren and me?

  “Ms. Parlette? Did you try to resuscitate her?” He waves his pencil through the air. “Did you perform CPR, or . . . ?”

  “What? No.” I swallow the dryness in my throat. “I knew it wouldn’t help.”

  “How did you know?” His voice sharpens.

  “Her eyes were open, and they looked . . . cloudy.” Now I see her in my memory, the way she really looked, the way I couldn’t bear to think of her—dried blood on her forehead, her misshapen skull. Bruises on her face.

  “Potassium,” the detective says. “The cloudiness comes from potassium released into the vitreous humor, the liquid in the eye.”

  “Oh,” I say faintly. How quickly Lauren has been reduced to a collection of chemicals and body parts. And eventually, she will dissolve into dust and blow away, forgotten—the fate for all of us. I bite my lip, fighting back more tears.

  “You don’t have to talk about this,” Nathan says. He tightens his hold, his heartbeat thudding into me.

  “I need to say what I saw . . . It helps me make sense of it. But there’s no sense in it, is there?” Lauren parades through my mind, hips swaying, dark hair shining in the sun. I see her at age five, her hair already luxurious, singing in a breathy voice as we played hopscotch on the sidewalk.

  “She wouldn’t have gone to the edge of the cliff,” Nathan says.

  I reach for his free hand, grip his fingers tightly. The dream somersaults into my memory. Lauren tips backward, plunging into an abyss.

  “Oh?” The detective’s brows rise. He leans forward. “Was she afraid of heights?”

  “More than afraid,” Nathan says. “Terrified. She never went past the gazebo.”

  The detective jots a note, turns to me. “What’s your take on that? Did you have the same impression?”

  “Uh, yes,” I say. “She wouldn’t take the stairs if she could see down through the steps. She never dove off the high board at the pool. At the Space Needle, she stayed at the bottom while the rest of us r
ode the glass elevator to the top.”

  Detective Harding sits back, runs the palms of his hands along his thighs, as if his hands are sweating. “But she lived near a cliff.”

  “Great view from there,” Nathan says. “And she and Jensen loved the house. They’ve been there almost a year.”

  The detective looks out toward the bluff. “She never went all the way back there—at any time?”

  “Well, she could have gone for a smoke,” I say, grasping on to this possibility. “Jensen thought she’d quit a long time ago. But she took it up again recently. The occasional cigarette to calm her nerves. That’s what she told me, anyway. She asked me not to mention it to Jensen, so I didn’t.”

  “Did her nerves need calming for any particular reason?” the detective says.

  “She didn’t give me a reason,” I say. “But smoking seemed to help her. She could have gone back to the gazebo to keep the smell away from the house.”

  The detective is nodding thoughtfully. “Did she drink alcohol last night?”

  “Wine,” Nathan says. “A few glasses.”

  “A lot of wine,” I say.

  “But she did leave early,” Nathan says, looking at the detective. “She had to pick up her daughter from a party in town.”

  “She probably drove drunk,” I say. “Now that I think of it. Or maybe Jensen drove. He left soon after she did.”

  “All right,” the detective says, writing on his notepad again. He looks at me. “After you found her, what did you do next?”

  I let go of Nathan’s hand and flex my cramped fingers. A gust of wind slaps at the window, tossing cold air into the room. “I rushed back up here. Everyone ran outside. Nathan called 911. I brought Anna back inside. I tried to pretend everything was okay. I didn’t want her to know what was going on. But I couldn’t keep it from her . . . She asked me what happened . . . I told her Brynn’s mom fell.” I look down at the dirt and sand clinging to my clothes. The crime scene followed me back to the house. I’m aware of the ticking of the wall clock, and far in the distance, a boat’s foghorn.

  The detective tugs at his thin mustache. “What was Lauren’s state of mind? Did she seem depressed to you? Did she ever talk about suicide?”