by A. J. Banner
“I don’t think so,” Nathan says, looking at me. “Did she?”
“Suicide? No, but the last few times I saw her, something seemed off.”
“Off how?” the detective says.
“When we went for coffee, she stared out the window. Sometimes she didn’t seem to be listening. I used to be able to read her, but we weren’t close anymore. We had fallen out of touch for a while.”
“How’s that?”
“In college, we went our separate ways. We got back in touch just over a year ago,” I say, feeling a need to explain. “She’d gotten a job at the hospital. We had lunch now and then, coffee, that kind of thing . . .”
“Thank you.” Detective Harding gets up, tucks his notebook and pencil back into his jacket pocket. “I’ll need to speak briefly with the others in the house.”
“My brother and his wife are in my daughter’s room,” Nathan says.
“What about the neighbor on the corner, on the other side of the Eklunds?”
“Arthur Nguyen,” I say. “I heard his dog barking sometime in the night . . . I don’t know what time it was. Usually, I don’t hear the dog making noise so late.”
“I’ll pay him a visit. I may be in touch again if I have further questions.”
As Nathan leads the detective down the hall, my mind whirls with questions—did Lauren fall? Was she pushed? Or did she walk to the edge of the cliff and take a deliberate step into the darkness?
CHAPTER FOUR
In the hall bathroom, I wash my hands. A cloud passes over the skylight, plunging the small space into shadows. I keep washing and washing, scrubbing and scrubbing, but I need a wire brush to scrape off my skin. The molecules of Lauren sank deep into the pores. I wish I could erase the image of her lying there, her cheek pressed into the sand. Her half-closed eyes—filmy, looking past me. No, looking at nothing. I still feel the salty breeze on my skin, her voice in my head. I need to talk to you. But she won’t speak to me ever again. I sink to my knees, grief exploding inside me. I can’t stand this tiny room, this house, the voices murmuring down the hall. The detective must be interrogating Keith, Hedra, and maybe even Anna. She’s only a child, but we can’t protect her from the news, from the internet. From violence, from death.
Lauren was alive only last night, and now here I am, sobbing in a tiny bathroom. She rushed to my rescue in a similar bathroom many years ago, when a boy had cornered me at a fraternity party. I don’t know why he picked me—I was so shy, a wallflower type. Maybe he found me an easy target. He pressed himself against me, and my throat constricted; my body trembled. His breath stank of beer, and the sheer weight of him paralyzed me. Then instantly, the weight lifted. Someone wrenched him away. Lauren. Get off her, asshole! she yelled, and suddenly he was on the floor, his nose bloody. Lauren grabbed my arm. Come on, Marissa. Let’s go.
Usually I was the one doing the saving. How many nights did I waste coaching her for tests she failed? How many hours did I spend taking meticulous notes, while she skipped class and copied mine later? I’ll make it up to you.
But I don’t care anymore about who saved whom. I only want her to walk through the door and say this was all a mistake, a nightmare. I’ll wake up in bed, not in this bathroom.
I’m drying my hands on a towel as someone knocks on the door.
“Marissa,” Nathan says on the other side. “Are you okay?”
I yank open the door, look at him, and collapse into his arms. He strokes my hair. “They’re gone,” he says. “They took her. It’s over.”
“It’s over. What’s over? Nothing’s over.”
“I mean—there’s nothing more we can do for her now. We wait for the police to do their job.”
“It’s my fault. I was rude to her last night. She wanted to talk. But I let her go.”
“You can’t think that way.” He pulls back, his hands heavy on my shoulders. “You couldn’t have stopped her—”
“But what if I could have? What if I’d followed her home and insisted?”
“We could all say the same thing. Nobody could be with her every second of every day. Most likely, she still would have fallen.”
“But would an autopsy show if she was pushed?”
Nathan rubs my arms. “I’m not an expert. But it should show what kind of injury killed her, whether it was from the fall. They have sophisticated methods of figuring things out, including the estimated time of death.”
Time of death—an unknown moment lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce on each of us. I see her applying bright-red lipstick in the mirror, puckering her lips. How do I look now that I’m dead?
I brush past Nathan to the master bedroom. The house feels stifling. Suffocating. The air congeals in my lungs. I can hardly breathe.
Muffled voices drift from Anna’s room. I go to the closet and start pulling shirts and pants off the hangers.
“What are you doing?” Nathan says.
“I should go home for a while,” I say, my voice shaky. If I don’t, I will lose my mind.
“You just got here. I thought you were staying—”
“I was planning on it, but . . . I’m in shock. We all are. I need some time to myself.”
He sits heavily on the bed. “Don’t go. We can work through this.”
“I need a little space to breathe.” I throw my suitcase on the bed. I’m sick of living out of this weathered blue Samsonite.
“There’s something you’re not telling me.”
I look at him, my uncertainty rising to the surface. I take in his tousled hair, those eyes, so sincere and steady. That intense look of concern. A flash comes back to me, of his face lit by his cell phone screen in the night. And I wonder.
“Something’s been nagging at me, yes. Last night, you went out. Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. What do you mean?” He loosens his shirt, although the top buttons are undone as usual.
“I mean, around two in the morning, you went somewhere.” I toss a soft black turtleneck into my suitcase. I planned to wear the sweater for a romantic dinner, but I can’t imagine going on a date now or ever again.
He scratches his chin. “What are you talking about?”
“I woke up for a minute . . . I had a headache, a foggy mind . . . I looked at the clock. You were trying to be quiet . . .”
“I wasn’t.” His face pales. A bead of sweat glistens on his forehead.
“You pulled on clothes and left the room. You went somewhere in the middle of the night, Nathan. Are you going to tell me where you went?”
He runs the flat of his hand across his forehead, wiping off the sweat. “What’s this about? You don’t think—”
“You didn’t, I mean you wouldn’t—”
“What the hell are you saying?” He lowers his voice. “I know you’re upset about Lauren. You’re trying to get your mind around what happened.”
“You’re right, I am. You got up and you were looking at your phone, and you left. I don’t know for how long. Where did you go? Don’t tell me you were called in to work. I know you weren’t.”
His face flushes. I’m not sure why I’m pushing him. I trust this man who loves his daughter so much, who fell in love with me in the classroom.
“I went outside,” he says. “But I had nothing to do with what happened to Lauren.”
“Really?” I look at him.
“You don’t believe me? Jesus, we’re . . .”
“Engaged? We are, but that doesn’t mean—”
“You really think I would lie to you? I got a text from Rianne—I went out for some air.”
“From Rianne. In the middle of the night.” My insides twist into knots. His ex-wife’s name has been popping up in conversation recently, but I can’t reasonably complain. She’s Anna’s mother.
“It was about Anna. When I proposed to you, she started texting her mom like crazy. Rianne was concerned.” His jaw twitches, as if he’s holding something back.
“Concerned about what? That
Anna’s head might explode, because you’re marrying someone else?”
“Look, it’s the way things are. Families are complicated.”
“The three of you aren’t a family anymore.”
“I still need to deal with Rianne, much as I hate doing so.”
“I heard you get up. I watched you get dressed.”
“I didn’t think . . . I thought you were asleep,” he says.
“Why? Because I didn’t move?”
“You woke up when I got back. At least, I thought you did. You sat up and mumbled something, then you went back to sleep. I thought you were awake.”
“I wasn’t,” I say. Was I? Did I wake again? I don’t remember. In the morning, I saw my shoeprints outside. “I woke up later, when you were already back. You didn’t tell me you were going anywhere.”
“I went out for some air. That’s all, like I said.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else going on? Something I should know about?” I try to keep my voice to a loud whisper.
“Like what? What the hell is this, Marissa?”
I sit on the bed next to my suitcase. “You’re right, I don’t know what this is. But everything about last night wasn’t right.” My heart is hammering, fast and loud in my ears.
“Wasn’t right how?”
“Like, Lauren was all over you, but you didn’t complain. You didn’t tell her to back off.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“Was that all it was?” I rearrange the clothes in my suitcase, folding and flattening my shirts, a vain attempt to restore order. But life, everything, is spinning wildly out of control.
“What else would it be? Did you want me to make a scene on our special night?”
I look up at him. “It didn’t turn out to be so special, did it?” Lauren ruined everything—but how can I think about myself? She is the one who suffered. She is the one who is gone.
“We couldn’t know what would happen. We couldn’t know that Lauren would—”
“Did she text you last night?”
“What?” He looks incredulous.
“Did she send you a text?”
“This is coming out of the blue. One minute, you love me, you trust me. The next minute, this interrogation.”
He’s right, but I can’t help myself. I’m treading water in an endless ocean, trying to stay afloat. “I’m only asking—”
“Why would she text me? I barely knew her.”
“You obviously got to know her after they moved in.” I gesture toward the Eklunds’ house, my fingers trembling. We watched the moving van unload their furniture. A week later, they invited Nathan over for dinner while I was at my place. “Lauren always did like to move quickly.” Even as I say the words aloud, I regret them. He looks stunned.
“What? It was just dinner. One dinner. And I go jogging with Jensen sometimes. Share a beer. You knew Lauren half your life.”
“She flirted with you at dinner, and in college she did things . . .”
“Like what? You think Lauren seduced me?”
“I wouldn’t have put it past her.”
“And what about me? You think I would let that happen?”
“No, I don’t. I don’t know what I think. Lauren and I . . . we seemed to be . . . friends again. But it was a mistake to invite her. She didn’t behave herself. I thought maybe she was in touch with you when you went out.”
He tosses his cell phone on the bed. “You want to check my texts? Be my guest. Read my email while you’re at it. Listen to my voice mail.”
“Nathan, stop—”
“No, you stop.” He presses his fingers to his temples. “You have to trust me.”
I take a deep breath, slowly exhale. “You’re right. My mind is in a weird place.”
He wraps his arms around me. “It’s okay. Nothing makes sense right now. We need to let it all sink in. Don’t run away just yet. Stay a little longer. I need you.”
“I need you, too.” He doesn’t know how much. I lean into him, his heartbeat strong and steady against my ear. Lauren steps out of the shadows, an apparition at the edge of my vision. I’m not supposed to be gone yet, she says to me, staring with milky eyes.
CHAPTER FIVE
We find Hedra watching over Anna in her room. They’re both on the bed, propped on pillows, pretending to read. Pale morning light fogs in through the window. Anna resembles her mother—delicate boned, with translucent blond hair and a haunting of freckles across her nose. I’ve known her just shy of two years, but she has grown a few inches, her body elongating, her face maturing, losing its softness. Before long, she’ll demand a purse, a training bra. She’ll want to learn how to drive. Nathan says it scares him to imagine her behind the wheel. Or dating. Nobody will ever be good enough for my little girl. She inherited his pronounced jaw and his love of nature. Of saving things. He once helped her capture an injured towhee to transport to the wildlife shelter in Port Gamble. Later she plastered stickers on the windows to prevent any more birds from hitting the glass. Birds. Her bird-print pajamas. I could’ve sworn she went to bed in them last night, but now she’s in her turquoise pair.
On her desk, a photograph of the family’s distant, happy past smiles out at us—Rianne, Nathan, and Anna at their mountain cabin near Olympic National Park, a forest darkening in the background, smoke pluming from the stone chimney. A selfie from Anna’s iPhone. She sits on a mossy log between her parents, grinning into the lens. Rianne’s radiant smile reflects infinite patience. Nathan ducks his head to fit into the photo frame, sticking out his tongue. Anna’s suppressed laugh bursts out all over her face. She shares a secret with her dad.
I shift my gaze to the windowsill, on which a glass bottle catches the sun, sending a rainbow across the floor—an array of colors and light that Lauren will never see again. Never a sunrise, never a sunset. A dusting of dry soil spreads across the sill, maybe from Anna’s dirty hands. She’s forever playing on the ground, crouching to shoot videos of ants, squirrels, birds. Her backpack sticks halfway out of the closet—bulging with clothes.
Hedra unfolds from the bed, languid in her leanness. She ushers us out into the hall. “Anna seems traumatized.” Her eyes are dark ringed, but I’m still struck by their cinematic green. “Is Rianne picking her up soon?” she whispers, stepping close to Nathan. She stands only an inch or two shorter than him, her face close to his.
“Not until tomorrow afternoon,” he says, glancing at Anna. “Why?”
“She needs to get away from here,” Hedra whispers.
Nathan brushes past into Anna’s room. “Sugarplum—”
“Leave me alone,” Anna says.
“Let’s just talk.”
“Go away.” Her voice is snippy, almost hostile. She’s either angry or frightened, but I can’t tell which. Maybe both.
Nathan comes out and gently shuts the door. “Leave her for now. I’m going to take a shower. Let’s give her some time.”
Hedra and I head to the kitchen, where Keith stands at the window, hands shoved in his pockets. The light defines his sharp features in profile. Nathan’s face forms rougher planes. And yet, the two brothers still look remarkably alike—same prominent jawline, and they both stand with their legs shoulder width apart.
But Nathan tolerates disorder, throwing spoons into the drawer in a jumble, while Keith straightens his cutlery at right angles, laying his life in symmetrical lines. At dinner, he tucked Hedra’s bra strap under the shoulder of her dress and kept an eye on her bowl. Does she suffer from an eating disorder? Maybe that’s why she went down the hall to the bathroom when Nathan followed her. I wonder what he whispered to her, before she returned to the dinner table. He probably asked her if she was all right.
Hedra slides into the breakfast nook, her knees drawn up, gazing out across the backyard. Her face has a stark quality without makeup.
I keep my hands moving, pouring coffee into the basket, filling the chamber with filtered water.
Hedra ge
stures toward the house next door. “Their lives will never be the same.”
“I know, it’s surreal,” I say, my voice shaking. “I still can’t believe it.” I open the fridge, bring out a carton of creamer for the coffee.
“What was Lauren even doing out there?” Hedra shivers, rubs her shoulders. “Why was she wandering around in the middle of the night?”
“We don’t know that it happened in the night,” Keith says.
“When else would it have happened?” she says, picking at her fingernails.
“Maybe early this morning?”
“Anyone want breakfast?” I stare at the shelves in the fridge. “We have leftover pasta. Or eggs. We have organic eggs from free-range chickens.”
“At least the hens are happy,” Hedra says.
The coffee bubbles and drips into the glass carafe.
“I’ll make an omelet,” Keith says, reaching past me into the fridge. He smells faintly of sweat and sleep. He brings out eggs, onion, tomatoes.
“Thank you,” I say, pulling my sweater close around me. The loosely knit cotton unravels at my wrists, as if the whole thing might come apart.
“She must’ve jumped,” Hedra says, looking at me. “Don’t you think?”
“What?” I say faintly. “No.” I wash the tomatoes in the sink. They’re soft, the skins beginning to wrinkle.
“She seemed unhappy.”
“Exactly how?” Keith says, laying a cutting board on the counter. “What made you think she was unhappy?”
She twists her hair around her finger, an oddly adolescent gesture. “At the last barbecue, I saw her go off for a smoke. She took that trail to the beach stairs, where she thought nobody could see her, and she lit a cigarette. Her eyes were all red, and she wiped them when she saw me coming up to talk to her. She said she had allergies.”
“Maybe she did have allergies,” Keith says. “Or she had smoke in her eyes.”
“I could tell she was crying,” Hedra says. “She asked me if I’ve ever wanted something more than anything in the world. I said yeah . . . freedom.”
Silence follows, and then Keith laughs. “Freedom from what exactly? From me? You want to leave our marriage?”