After Nightfall

by A. J. Banner

  “She was leaving Dr. Black. The cardiac surgeon.”

  “His profession is beside the point,” I say. “But he’s away at a conference.”

  “That’s what I hear.” I feel the detective looking at me, but I don’t meet his gaze.

  “I need to talk to her,” I say. “I want to know what was going on, why she took those pills. Why she was here with Nathan. What did she mean, Lauren knew?”

  The detective tucks the notepad back into his pocket. “All good questions, Marissa. I’d like to know the answers, too. We’ll have to ask her when she wakes up.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  In the morning, as I park at the hospital, I look at my hands on the steering wheel, my ring finger bare. I drove here in a daze, the detective’s questions still chipping away at my sanity. Does he think I make a habit of following people in the night? Could he seriously believe I would have hurt Lauren? What am I even doing here? What will I say to Hedra? She overdosed on an antidepressant, Nathan said when he called last night, but she would be okay. The blood came from a superficial cut, not life threatening. He wanted to keep talking, explaining, but I hung up on him, a tempest of rage rising inside me.

  Now I sit here, feeling as heavy and inert as the vehicles parked around me. My body wants to sink into oblivion, but I get out of the car and stretch my legs, realizing how stiff I feel, my limbs heavy with exhaustion. I didn’t sleep well.

  I walk through the parking lot into the hospital, ride the elevator up to Hedra’s room. Through the half-open door, I see the foot of her bed before I see her. A thin stream of sunlight spills in through a bay window, splashing across a tile floor, countertop, a bedside table, the linens. Mounted from the ceiling, a television silently plays out the news. I knock softly.

  A soft, throaty voice says, “Come in.”

  I step inside, clutching my purse. Hedra sits propped on pillows, her head bandaged. An IV line snakes from the back of one hand. She looks toward me, and as I push the door fully open, Keith comes into view, hunched in the chair next to her bed. I’ve never seen him this way—sleepless, rumpled, his shirt and slacks like an unmade bed. He hardly looks like an abuser; he resembles a distraught husband.

  “Marissa,” he says. “Come on in.” He reaches toward the bed, engulfs Hedra’s hand in his.

  “I came to see how you’re doing,” I say to Hedra. I came to scream at you. But she looks haggard. I try to tread softly, although my shoes squeak on the floor.

  “Mild concussion,” Keith says, conveniently leaving out the part about the overdose. “We’re grateful to you for finding her.” He doesn’t mention what Hedra might have been doing at the hotel. What about the pills? Did she take the whole bottle?

  “How long will you be in here?” I ask, trying to remain civil.

  “I can leave tomorrow,” she says, “maybe even today.” The reason she was in the hotel remains unspoken, a wedge between us. She touches her forehead. “I don’t know what I did. I must have passed out.”

  She knows perfectly well what she did. I want to yell at her to cut the act, but I can’t bring myself to provoke her. I look around for another chair. Keith points to one against the wall, near a countertop with a sink. I pull the chair around to the other side of the bed. “I’m glad you weren’t more seriously injured,” I say. Or am I?

  Keith squeezes her hand. “We’re all glad,” he says. He looks at me. “You’re pale. When was the last time you ate?”

  “I—can’t remember.” Maybe I had cereal this morning, or not.

  He points to the bedside table next to me. “Bag of peanuts there. You should eat.”

  “I’m okay for now. I can’t think about food.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he says. “It must be difficult, seeing this side of my brother.”

  “What side?” I say, my throat dry.

  He glances at Hedra, then looks at me. “We can talk later. You’ll understand.”

  “I’m not sure I understand anything.” I want to shout, I understand that he lied to me. That anyone or everyone might be lying. “I don’t understand what he was doing in your hotel room. What exactly was going on?”

  Hedra blinks away tears, looks out the window. “I’m not sure it’s anyone’s business.”

  “What Nathan does is one hundred percent my business,” I say.

  “Then ask him.”

  “I already have. I need your story.”

  “My head hurts,” she says.

  “Nathan says you’ll recover,” I say.

  Keith makes a sour face. “Nathan says, does he?”

  “I’m not feeling well.” Hedra touches the back of her hand to her forehead.

  I want to say I’m not feeling so well, either, now that my engagement is shot, but I hold back. She’s in a desperate condition, and I hate what she and Nathan have done, bringing out this bitter side of me.

  “Marissa,” Keith says gently. “Hedra should rest. She has a head injury.”

  I get up and pace, my body trembling. I stop and look at Hedra, assessing her. “Nathan told me you overdosed on a medication and your head injury is superficial.”

  Her hand rises reflexively to her forehead. “I have stitches.”

  “What, one or two? Never mind.” I glare at Keith. “Don’t you wonder what she was doing at the hotel with Nathan? Don’t you want to know if your wife was sleeping with your brother? He said you were abusive to Hedra. He was helping her leave you.” I’m aware of the way I must sound—disturbed, accusatory, maybe even delusional. But I feel as though I have no control over my life. First Lauren, then Nathan. I’m on a roller coaster about to jump its tracks, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  She gazes down at her left hand, fiddles with her wedding ring.

  Keith looks at her, pain in his eyes. “Is that the story you both told?”

  “No, it’s not true,” she whispers.

  A nurse peers in the door. “Is everything all right here?”

  “Fine,” Keith says. “Everything is okay. I’ve got it under control.” The nurse nods and leaves. He turns to me. “Look, this is not the time or place.”

  “Neither was the night before last,” I say, “or any other night she spent in the hotel with Nathan. How long was it going on? Were you with Nathan even when he proposed to me?” I see her now, the way she excused herself from the dinner table, escaped to the bathroom. I see Nathan whispering to her in the hall.

  “No,” she says softly. “Nothing was going on.” She picks up a plastic mug from the bedside tray and takes a sip, her hand shaking.

  Keith holds the straw to her lips. “Slowly,” he says. “You’ll choke.”

  “How long then?” I say to Hedra.

  She keeps sipping, staring blankly ahead of her.

  Keith puts her cup on the table. “She’s exhausted. She shouldn’t talk too much right now. She and I have to discuss things first, and the detective is coming in to interview her.”

  So, I beat Dan Harding to the punch. I put my purse on my shoulder. “She needs to tell me. Hedra, I need to know. Why would Nathan propose to me if he was seeing you? If he . . .”

  “That’s Nathan,” Keith says in a quiet voice. “It always has been his modus operandi. He’s done this before.”

  “Stop,” Hedra says, turning her head toward the window. The IV bag catches the light as it drips.

  “He’s had affairs before?” I say.

  “Don’t do this,” Hedra says.

  “Were you planning to be with Nathan long-term?” I say.

  Keith stands abruptly. His shirt is untucked in the back. “She’s not with him. She’s coming home with me,” he says in a broken voice. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I’m going home,” she says, not looking at me.

  I rest my hands on my purse. “When I found you, you were mumbling. Do you remember?”

  She glances at me sidelong, a furtive look. Then she looks out the window again. “I don’t remember anything. Onl
y . . . one minute I was standing by the bed, the next I was here.”

  My heart plummets. Could she have forgotten? “You said something about Lauren. It sounded like ‘Lauren knew’?”

  She shrugs, her lips turning down. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

  Keith sits down again, the color falling from his cheeks. “I’m sure Hedra didn’t know what she was saying.”

  “You’re sure,” I say.

  “I don’t remember,” Hedra says, looking toward the window.

  “But you know what I’m talking about. Do you know what happened to her? To Lauren?”

  “She fell,” Hedra says. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Did you lose a scarf that night, at our house?”

  “What are you talking about?” she asks.

  “I found a scarf in the water, where Lauren died. The detective took it . . . The scarf belonged to you.”

  Hedra looks up at me, her gaze sharp. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  There is something, a connection—the scarf, Lauren, Hedra, Nathan. But what? “Did you bring the scarf when you came over that night? How did it end up in the water?”

  She pushes herself up against the pillows. “What scarf? I don’t have any scarf.”

  “I saw the receipt in Rianne’s boutique. From the Saturday before last.”

  She looks anxiously at Keith, then back at me, a veil falling over her eyes. “I bought stuff in her boutique, but—”

  “You were in Tranquil Cove that day?” Keith is staring at her as if she is a strange creature who has just emerged from a cave. “You told me you were visiting a sick friend.”

  “I was,” she says, but her voice wavers.

  “What is Marissa talking about, Hedra? What is this about a scarf?”

  “It’s nothing. I don’t know about any scarf in the water. What does that have to do with Lauren?”

  “She struggled,” I say, feeling myself shaking. “She didn’t want to fall off that cliff. She was bruised. Branches were broken.”

  “I don’t know what happened to her. I was asleep.” Hedra’s face is ashen now.

  Keith stands again and steps right next to Hedra’s bed, pushes the hair from her forehead in a tender gesture. She flinches, turning her head away from him. “If you know something, honey,” he says, “we need to tell the detective.”

  She holds her breath, deflates on the exhale. “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Are you sure, honey? If you do know—”

  “I don’t. I don’t know!”

  “All right.” Keith pats her arm. “But if you’re trying to protect someone. Nathan?”

  “I’m not. I told you. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “All right,” Keith says. “You’re tired. Get some rest.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing!”

  Keith ushers me out into the hall, and as he leans in toward me, I catch a whiff of his subtle aftershave. “We need to talk,” he says. “You and I, about all this. We have the same grievance.”

  “Or a similar one,” I say, sliding the palms of my hands down my jeans.

  “What did Nathan tell you? About me?”

  “I think you know. About the past, about the way you treated him—”

  “I was a shithead. I admit it. But we were kids. You should watch out. Nathan’s no saint. He can turn on the charm.” He scratches his unshaven chin, runs his hand along his cheek.

  “Funny, he said the same thing about you.” Right now, neither brother succeeds with me in the honesty department.

  “Whom are you to believe?” He straightens and steps away from me as a nurse strides by.

  “Exactly my question. Maybe neither one of you.”

  “I can’t blame you,” Keith says, glancing back into the hospital room. He looks down at his black shoes, then at me. “But right now, Hedra’s my primary concern. Do you know how many of those pills she took? At twenty-five milligrams, nine pills. Almost enough to kill her. Almost. Whatever problems we’ve had, they’re not worth losing her. She’s going to need therapy.”

  “Does she want to go into therapy?” I ask. Or was she trying to escape from him? From a life she couldn’t bear?

  “She’ll agree. She’ll see the wisdom in it. Whatever might have been going on between her and Nathan, it’s over now. She assures me of that.”

  “You’re assuming she even wants to go back to you.”

  He scratches his jaw again, looks down at me. “Why wouldn’t she? We all get restless now and then, don’t you think? Hedra wanders, but she always comes home eventually, one way or another.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  When I return to my house, my father tries to reassure me from his photo, his eyes always kind and forgiving. Too forgiving. He thought only the best of my mother, even after she left. She needs a little vacation, he said. She’ll be back. But he was wrong.

  She left in spirit long before she left in body. All those short trips on her own—to Arizona, New Mexico, California. She claimed to be attending conferences, visiting a cousin. Little did we know, she had been planning her final departure for years. Setting aside money, mapping a travel route. When I returned from my first year of college to spend Christmas with Dad, she had cleared out her belongings, including all the photographs of herself—anything that might remind us of her. But she’d left her Best Mom mug behind, the one I had given her for Mother’s Day when I was twelve years old.

  Her latest postcard catches a ray of filtered sunlight on the dining table.

  Dear Marissa, Sven and I are in Milan for a gallery show. What a city. If I didn’t love Paris so much, I could move here. Come for a visit. Thinking of you. Love, Mom.

  The words lean to the right, trying to escape the paper, the way my mother longed to abscond from us. Well, why didn’t she leave earlier? Nobody was stopping her.

  I try to imagine an impossible scene: my mother calling to ask how I’m doing, what’s been going on in my life. As if she genuinely cares. She boards the first plane home to support her daughter in her time of need—but she never will. If I contact her, she will react the way she did when she called on my nineteenth birthday, February 9, not long after I caught Lauren in bed with Jensen. Love can be harsh. But you pick yourself up and keep going, don’t you? My mother’s voice quickened, the words stumbling away from the telephone. Mari, I’ve got to hang up. My taxi is here.

  Not that I expect anything from her anymore. Not that I’ve needed her in years. I write to her sister, my aunt in Mumbai, and other relatives scattered all over India, their support diluted in handwritten letters or brief Facebook messages. I ignored all the early signs of my mother’s desire to leave, but they were all there. She stared off into space, rushed through meals before shutting herself in her study. I latched onto the times she laughed with me, brushed my hair, went shopping with me for school clothes. But she never used the mug I gave her, and she left it behind.

  Did I ignore the signs with Nathan, too? How well do I really know him? How well can we know anyone? “Dad, help me,” I say to his picture. But he offers me no comfort.

  The day after I visited Hedra in the hospital, she went home with Keith. I haven’t spoken to her in the nine days since, or to Nathan, although he has tried to call several times. Once, he showed up at my door, but I didn’t answer. As he returned to his truck, shoulders slumped, I saw Bee Mornay’s curtain flutter in her living room window.

  I’m grateful to be back at the school, immersing myself every day in the solace of work. This morning, a chickadee fluffs its wings in the birdbath outside my office window. With such ease, the feathers flutter, droplets of water flying in all directions. Buoyant, ethereal, the tiny creature takes flight above the planet’s troubles. There is something timeless and otherworldly about birds, the surviving descendants of dinosaurs. Evidence of past eons. I could take comfort in knowing that millions of years from now, our lives will amount to nothing but a cosmic h
iccup. Lauren’s unseeing eyes will revert to stardust. Nathan and Hedra, locked in an intimate embrace, will disappear into ancient history. Of this I can be sure. Nobody will remember me missing Nathan and Anna and the life I thought we had.

  I’m grateful for the routines of the school day—the kids running and yelling, the smells of books and markers. The view from my office, of alders and dogwood trees, has a calming effect on my students. If only I could relax, too.

  “Earth to Marissa,” Julie says from the doorway. She splashes in, a fashion statement in a cobalt dress and an oversized orange pullover, carrying a paper coffee cup from the Tranquil Café. She plunks the cup on my desk. “I thought you could use another pick-me-up this morning. Off the floor, by the looks of things.”

  “I’ve been a downer, haven’t I?” I say, pushing back my hair. “You’re my coffee angel.” I gesture to a chair.

  “Coffee angel, coffee angel,” she sings in her melodic voice to the tune of “Earth Angel.” She gives me an awkward shoulder hug. “But seriously, how are you holding up?”

  “Work helps. I go crazy at home.”

  “Better to go crazy at school, right?” She slides into the chair, crosses her legs, and swings her foot.

  “Work keeps me sane,” I say, eyeing my paperwork, the seventy-three unread emails on my computer screen. “I’ve got Anna for a session this afternoon. I’m nervous.”

  Julie stares at me, her mouth dropping open. “Are you up for that?”

  “Her stuttering is getting worse. Rianne called me yesterday, asked me to see her again.”

  “You can refuse. Someone else can do it.”

  “I thought about it, but I miss Anna. I know it’s only been a couple of weeks, but she’s . . . she’s like my own daughter.”

  “Could a session with you bring up issues for her?”

  “I worry about that, too, but Rianne said Anna wants to see me. I don’t want her to think I’ve abandoned her.”

  “You didn’t. Her dad abandoned you. Let’s not forget who fucked whom. Oh, my bad. I forgot we’re at school. But I’m angry at that man. On your behalf.”