by A. J. Banner
“Traumatic day . . . ,” Nathan says. “She’ll be fine.”
“Get to the bottom of this . . . family.” Her door slams; the SUV revs up and screeches off.
Nathan comes back inside, shoulders slumped. He hugs me. “Thank you for your help . . . in the tree house.”
Keith goes to the foyer, picks up the overnight bag. “We should get out of your hair. I’ll load the car. See you two out there?”
Nathan nods, distracted. Hedra gets up from the couch and follows Keith outside, leaving Nathan and me alone. “What happened out there?” he says. “What did she say in the tree house?”
“She asked me if people can be both good and bad.” Her words dig into my brain. Even me? Even you?
“What’s gotten into her?” He scratches at his chin with the back of his hand. I pull a few burrs from his hair.
“Something has her spooked.” I unzip her backpack on the counter, bring out squished bananas and bread, a bottle of water, socks, underwear, jeans, a shirt. And her damp bird-print pajamas. No jewelry box. “She went to bed in these,” I say, holding up the pajamas. “But they got wet. She changed into the other ones in the night.”
“What, you think she’s wetting the bed again?”
I sniff the pajamas. I smell only the outdoors—moss and cedar and the salty sea. “No, but look at the mud on the cuffs and knees. She went outside.”
Nathan frowns. “At night?”
“I don’t know. Arthur Nguyen said he saw two shadows last night when he went out with Bert. But he wasn’t wearing his glasses.”
Nathan stands perfectly still, looking at me. “You think . . . you still think it was me. It wasn’t. Arthur can’t see beyond the end of his nose without his glasses.”
“He could see well enough to walk his dog.”
“He could navigate that yard with his eyes closed.” In the driveway, Keith starts up the Mercedes.
“I’m not arguing with you,” I say. “But I’m worried about Anna. Maybe she needs a break somewhere away from here.”
“We can’t,” he says. “Rianne’s rigid about her schedule.”
“Talk to her. She can’t dictate our lives.”
“She can dictate Anna’s life. She’s her mother.”
“And you’re her father. You have as much of a say.”
“Rianne wants my hide. Maybe she should have it.”
“No, it’s not your fault that Anna ran to the tree house.”
“Maybe it is,” he says, opening the front door. The engine noise and smell of exhaust waft in.
“How is she?” Keith says, rolling down the driver’s-side window.
“She’ll survive into adulthood, I hope,” Nathan says. “But I should get back inside. Thanks for coming, you two.” He goes back in the house, leaving me standing awkwardly in the driveway.
“Drive safely,” I say to Keith.
“Will you be all right?” he says.
“I’m okay—it’s Anna I’m worried about.”
“She has always been troubled. This is nothing new.”
“Only in the last few years,” Hedra says. “Since Nathan and Rianne started fighting. She’s an only child—”
“We shouldn’t keep you from her,” Keith cuts in. “We have to head out. I’ve got to go into the hospital. Surgery.”
Hedra casts her gaze downward.
“I hope it goes smoothly,” I say.
Keith adjusts the rearview mirror. “Hedra. Your seat belt.”
She pulls the seat belt across her shoulder and clips it into place.
I wave as Keith pulls out of the driveway a little too fast. Hedra waves back at me, a false smile pulling at her lips. Her green eyes have gone dark. Keith reaches an arm around the back of her headrest, but as his hand touches her shoulder, she shrugs away.
CHAPTER NINE
As Nathan and I unload the dishwasher, I imagine hurling each bowl against the wall, stomping on the glasses, smashing them. Who cares about piling the plates just so, arranging cups in the cabinet? I can’t concentrate on ordinary tasks, when each moment becomes an exercise in endurance, haunted by Lauren’s urgent voice. By everything she wanted to say. Last night will always be our final dinner with her. The evidence lines up on the countertop—the wineglasses too delicate to run through the dishwasher.
I wash a glass beneath the faucet, washing and washing over and over until Nathan gently takes the wineglass from my hand.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, placing the glass on the counter. “We can do this later.”
I grip the sponge, feeling untethered, my feet barely touching the floor. If it weren’t for gravity, I would have lifted off by now. We have the luxury of later, of planning the next hour, the next day, the next year. Lauren does not—so why should I bother? Any of us could die at any moment. I could slip, fall, and crack my head open. A car could swerve into my lane. I could get caught in a cross fire, collateral damage.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Nathan says, his hand on my elbow.
“I don’t want to sit,” I say, gripping the edge of the counter for support. “Did you notice Keith and Hedra acting like everything is normal? Keith, anyway. All he can think about is getting back into surgery.”
Nathan lets go of my elbow, towel dries the wineglass, and holds up the goblet to the light, checking for water spots. “His patients need him. It’s not like they can live without their hearts.” He puts the wineglass away in the cabinet.
“But he can live without his.” I reach into the dishwasher, bring out a mug that reads, Live life on purpose. But I don’t know my purpose anymore, except as the keeper of memories—of those who have gone. My father, and before him, my grandparents. And now Lauren.
“You’re right.” Nathan laughs dryly. “I’m not sure Keith is capable of grief. But he’s a damn good surgeon.”
“And that’s all that matters, right?”
“For someone with a damaged heart, yeah.”
I turn to Nathan, leaning back against the counter. “He alluded to something when you were taking a shower . . . He almost suggested Lauren had it coming. That she deserved to die.”
“You know how Keith is. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
“Didn’t he?” I reach into the dishwasher, pull out spoons, throw them into the cutlery drawer. “How do you know he performs surgery to help others? What if it’s just for his own sense of accomplishment? Or what if he enjoys cutting people open?” I shiver, pushing away the image of blood seeping out beneath Keith’s scalpel.
“Maybe he does. He’s got a dark side. You want to know what else he did when we were kids? He came in while I was taking a bubble bath and held me under the water. I was maybe five.”
“What?” I drop dinner knives into the drawer. “Why would he be so cruel?”
“He thought I stole something. I can’t remember what. I tried to hold my breath, but I thought for sure I was going to drown. He let me up at the last second, right before I lost consciousness. It was frightening.” He looks out the window.
“Oh my God,” I say, staring at the jumble of silverware in the drawer. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I look up at Nathan. His eyes are glassy, his expression almost feral.
“Because I want to forget. Because he’s my brother.”
“In DNA only. Remember?”
“But it’s in my DNA, too. That’s what scares me.”
“You’re different. You’re not like him.”
Nathan looks at me, a dark worry in his eyes. “I’d like to think you’re right. But sometimes I . . .”
“What?”
“I think about hurting people, like the person who killed Lauren, if she was pushed.”
“Everyone gets those emotions. But you don’t act on them.”
His shoulders relax. “I don’t. And neither does Keith. He’s mellowed out over the years. He even apologized for the way he treated me—”
“Do you think he’s cruel to Hedra? Does he cheat on her?
I mean, the way he looked at Lauren . . . the way the two of them looked at each other. I wouldn’t have put it past her to go after him. Or anyone else.” The anyone else hovers between us, but Nathan doesn’t take the bait.
He rubs his hands down his face, as if to erase his thoughts. “Come on. I wouldn’t go that far. I know what she did in college. But now? You think she was still like that?”
“She could have been,” I say, pressing the palm of my hand to my forehead. In truth, I don’t know what kind of person she had become. Recently, she kept me at arm’s length, rarely sharing her emotions. She talked about Brynn, difficulties at work. But we didn’t go deeper. We didn’t discuss our shared past.
The dishwasher is empty now. Nathan starts to load it again with leftover dirty dishes, the ones that didn’t fit last night. “Look, I get it. You’re trying to figure out what happened to her. But the detective is right. It seems she drank too much, wandered to the edge, and slipped. It happened, and there’s nothing we can do to change that now.”
“But she had bruises, and the blood . . . all over her. Her head was bashed in.” I try to keep my voice from sinking into the deep end.
“That happens when people fall,” Nathan says. He finishes loading the dishwasher, adds the soap, turns on the wash cycle.
“How can you talk about it in such a detached way?”
“I’m just stating facts. Ever see the simulation videos? They push a dummy off the edge of a cliff? The dummy falls over headfirst. Heads are heavy. You might try to stay upright but you won’t.”
I look at him, my throat dry as the dishwasher churns into action. “You watched videos of dummies falling off cliffs.”
He looks at me with disbelief. “For my job, Marissa. I wasn’t . . . researching how to throw someone off a cliff.”
“Right,” I say faintly, but my stomach twists. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
“Of course,” he says gently.
I pick up another wineglass, the last one from dinner, a faint lipstick stain on the rim. Lauren’s glass. She was the only one wearing this bright shade of red. I see her lips the way they looked on the beach—blue, dead. The memory of her clouded eyes punches me in the stomach. I put the wineglass on the counter, turn and dash to the bedroom.
I hear Nathan’s footsteps behind me. “Are you okay? What happened?”
I sit on the edge of the bed. “I can’t do this. I can’t wash her away.”
He sits next to me. “You don’t have to.”
“I just . . . don’t want to act like life goes on the same as before . . .”
He pulls me into his arms. “We’ll leave everything for now.”
I lean into him, grateful for his warmth. I’m dimly aware of his cell phone buzzing on the nightstand. A text pops up, and I glimpse a few incoming words, . . . about you . . . can’t stand this, before he reaches over and swipes it away.
CHAPTER TEN
Before I can ask Nathan about the text, Anna calls out to us from the backyard, her voice distant and muffled. We get up and go to the window. She crouches in front of a huckleberry bush, her breath smoking up in the cold. She holds up a giant pinecone and grins at us. “Look what I found!”
Nathan smiles and waves at her through the glass. “Come on back inside!” he shouts, but she doesn’t seem to hear. She turns away, videotaping some small creature in the underbrush.
My gaze slides to his cell phone screen, now black and silent. “Who sent you a text?”
“Rianne, worrying about Anna. She doesn’t want me to let her play outside. She could run away again. But she’s nine, not three. I can’t lock her inside. She loves being outside.”
“She’s certainly focused,” I say.
“She gets that from Rianne, like I said. But her love of nature comes from her grandma. My mom. I wish the two could have met. My mom used to take long walks in the woods, maybe to get away from us. Or to think. I don’t know.” He heads back down the hall to the living room. I follow him, stand next to him at the bay window overlooking the backyard and the forest beyond.
“She was a stay-at-home mom,” I say. “She never worked outside the home?”
“It was a full-time job for her, raising two boys. But she got restless. Took a night class. But Dad didn’t want her to . . . They argued, to put it mildly.” Nathan goes to the kitchen, pours himself black coffee. He never adds milk. The dishwasher softly churns.
“That must’ve been hard for you,” I say, thinking back, trying to pinpoint a time when I heard my parents fighting. Never, not once. They lived inside a muted marriage. We played games and laughed. But it was all an illusion. If it wasn’t, why would my mother have left?
“It was normal for us,” Nathan says. “Everything that happens when you’re a kid is your normal.”
“But you have a new normal now,” I say.
“For Anna,” he says, gulping his coffee. “Everything was going to be different for her.” His voice cracks. “It was supposed to be.”
I go to him, rub his back. “She knows you love her.”
“Yeah, right. Look at her. She ran away from me.”
“She wasn’t running away from you,” I say, but for a moment I think, Maybe she was.
He sighs, wraps an arm around my waist. “She still can’t find her cell phone. Rianne said she tried calling all morning. But I haven’t heard any of the beeping and buzzing when texts come through. Where the hell could it be?”
“Probably in one of her pockets. In her coat?”
“We’ll check again.”
“Do you think she saw something out there?” I say. “When she was out in her pajamas? Could she have lost her phone?”
“It could be out there, yeah. We’ll check the yard.”
“I didn’t see it in the tree house.”
Anna rushes in, slams the door, and whips off her boots, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She waves her disposable camera, a temporary replacement for the camera on her lost cell phone. “I got video of a gray squirrel burying pinecones for winter. I love it when animals bury things, like they know to plan ahead.” She seems to have forgotten her wish to run away forever.
“Great!” Nathan says. “Should we look for your phone again?”
“I’ll look for it by myself.” She waltzes into the kitchen, ducks her head into the fridge. “We don’t have any food.”
“Let’s go shopping then,” Nathan says, and he and Anna grin at each other, sharing a sudden sense of purpose. He turns to me. “Come with us?”
“I’ll stay here and clean up,” I say quickly. “I need a little quiet time.” I’m not ready to face the world. I could burst into tears at the slightest provocation.
“We’ll be back soon.” He kisses the top of my head. “Enjoy your time alone.”
After he and Anna leave, the silence oppresses me. I try to clean up, but I’m distracted, my thoughts drifting to the text on Nathan’s phone. He didn’t respond, didn’t try to pacify Rianne. He simply swiped away her words. He has taken the phone with him.
Through the window above the sink, I watch an old, silver Buick creep up the Eklunds’ driveway. Lauren’s father emerges from the car. A tall man, he looks diminished, defeated. He hunches in his raincoat against the wind. Her mother gets out, moving stiffly, as if her joints are fused. I remember her hair, long and dyed blond, often plastered to her head when she returned from a twelve-hour shift at The Oyster Bar, a mediocre seafood restaurant in Silverwood. Now her hair is curly white, tinted greenish. They must have driven all the way from Spokane, where they’ve been living for the past several years. Can it really be only six hours since I found Lauren?
I’m glad they’re here for Brynn. She needs family around her. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling, knowing her mother won’t see her graduate from high school, won’t come to her wedding, won’t pick her up from a party or give her maternal advice ever again. My heart breaks for the shattered family next door. I wish I could take away their pain—and A
nna’s fear. What did she hear or see last night in those bird-print pajamas? Did she see what Arthur Nguyen saw? A malevolent shadow flitting beneath the motion sensor light?
Lauren’s mother and father disappear behind the hedge, heading to the front door. I swallow a lump in my throat, escape from the kitchen, and go to the guest room to strip the bed. The large bay window faces the buffer of forest between the house and the road. We’re almost at the end of the lane, where civilization runs away into wilderness.
It feels mundane changing the sheets, fluffing the pillows. Lauren did the same when she was sixteen, working as a candy striper at Silverwood Hospital. Already on her way to becoming a nurse. When I asked her why she didn’t want to be a doctor, she said, Bedside, that’s where I belong. Out on the floor, caring for patients. She tended to her frail grandmother when she moved in with the family, in the last stages of a progressive lung disease.
Despite Lauren’s behavior at dinner, and the dark turn our friendship took, I feel the loss of her, the world’s loss of a woman who was, beneath her seemingly selfish exterior, a caretaker. Unlike Keith, full of himself, and Hedra, fragile and uncertain, and even me, although I thrive on helping others in my own way, Lauren soothed the terminally ill, embracing challenges from which the rest of us would flee.
Keith and Hedra ran away from the guest room in a hurry, leaving the blankets in disarray and a black umbrella on the dresser. In the coat closet in the foyer, I spot a credit card on the floor. It must have fallen from someone’s pocket. When I pick it up, I see it’s not a credit card but a key entry card, with a black stripe on the back, a card used to enter a hotel or motel room or a private club. The logo shows an oak tree sitting on an oak leaf, but no other identifying words. The image looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it.
I send a text to Hedra, asking if she or Keith left the card here. A few minutes later, she responds, It’s not ours. Must belong to Jensen or . . . maybe it was Lauren’s?
Maybe, I type back, a lump in my throat. Thank you.