Hidden

by Catherine McKenzie

  He was there, and lots of people were missing from these photos. So calm yourself, Claire.

  First, calm yourself.

  Click, click, click, the slideshow keeps sliding. A sunny day, breakfast, a golf course, and then the final shot, everyone crowded in, come on, come on, get closer, closer, and say Johnson!

  Jeff’s standing in the second row, and Tish is next to him. The proud mama herself.

  There’s only one thing left to do now, but still, I hesitate. If I go to his email, if I see what I expect to see, find what I expect to find, am I going to feel better? Right now I have suspicions and doubts, but it’s the middle of the night, and all these things might have an innocent explanation. In the cold light of day, all these things might fade and disappear.

  But no. I’ve come this far. If I don’t look now, I’ll torture myself until I do.

  I go to his email page and enter his username and password. The page won’t load. My username and password are incorrect. I try again. I must have mistyped it. Username and password are incorrect. Incorrect. Not Abacus, not anymore. And not his birthday, or mine, or Seth’s, or our address or his favourite word (motherfucker— he could be childish sometimes), or any of the other combinations of letters and numbers I can think of.

  Why would a man change the password to his email? my brain mocks me.

  Why?

  I feel sick and tired, so tired now, but I have to press on, if I can. I have to know if there’s anything more.

  I scurry downstairs, knocking into corners in the gloomy light, in my tiredness, and panic, and search through the unpaid stack of bills until I find what I’m looking for: Jeff’s cell phone bill. I take it back upstairs, waiting till I’m there to open it.

  A long list of calls and texts, almost exclusively to me, with three exceptions: three texts to a number I don’t recognize on the weekend he was away. When his phone wasn’t supposed to be working. I check the area code on the web. It’s for the other Springfield.

  I stumble in a daze to the corner of the room and slide to the floor. Jeff’s travel bag is where he left it, unpacked, where it might still be sitting even if he were alive today.

  This is where Seth found the book.

  I take the items out one by one: dirty socks and underwear; grass-stained golf pants; his rumpled dress clothes, in need of a dry cleaning; two golf gloves. There’s nothing else. No lipstick on any of his clothes, no strange receipts in any of his pockets, no condoms.

  I raise his golf shirt to my nose and all I smell is him, faded, and grass. It doesn’t smell of perfume. There are no stray black hairs, or stray hairs of any kind. I hold the shirt to my face for a while, closing my eyes, trying to decide if Jeff’s scent is a help or a hindrance at this point.

  I put his shirt down and run my hand around the bottom of the case, thorough in my investigation, even though I doubt I could remember my own email password right now, and my hand comes up against something hard and sharp. Something I missed.

  I pull it out. It’s a black folded corkscrew, like the kind you buy in convenience stores or find in hotel rooms. The name of the hotel where Jeff stayed is stamped on the back.

  I unfold it, one side a corkscrew, the other a knife. A small piece of cork foil clings to the corkscrew part. Burgundy coloured, still smelling faintly of the bottle it protected.

  The text.

  The book.

  The trip.

  The changed password.

  The corkscrew.

  They are all I have to go on.

  They are not enough.

  Beth finds me in the study sometime at dawn. I’m leaning against the wall, the corkscrew in one hand, Jeff’s clothes strewn around me, a couple of hours of tears half dried on my face and T-shirt.

  “Claire! What the hell?”

  “I found this,” I say, holding out the corkscrew. “And he changed his email password.”

  A few quick strides and Beth is by my side, prying the device from my hand, moving Jeff’s clothes away. “Come on, honey. Stand up.”

  “And there was a text. Texts. She texted him. I think he texted her. She came to the funeral. Why, Beth? Why?”

  Beth doesn’t answer me, she just leads me out of the study and towards our bedroom, mine and Jeff’s.

  “Do you still have those pills the doctor prescribed? What did he call them?”

  “Funeral pills,” I say and the tears start again. “For a girl who mourns for someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Where are they?”

  I slump on the bed and pull a pillow over my eyes. “Bathroom.”

  I listen to her leave the room, run some water in a glass, crack the cap off a plastic bottle, and return.

  “Take these.”

  “No, Beth. I have to tell you. You have to see.”

  “No, not now. Take these. Sleep. I’ll get Seth to school. We’ll talk about this when you wake up.”

  “I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  She pulls the pillow from my eyes and props me up. She’s holding two pills in her hand, not one.

  “That’s too many.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  She holds them below my mouth and I open it like a child whose mother is playing airplane with her food. She hands me the glass and I swallow, once, twice. The pills stick in my throat at first but then they go down.

  “Get into bed.”

  “Beth.”

  “I mean it, Claire. Get into bed right now.”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  “Of course not, but you need to listen to me.”

  She has her sternest expression on, the one she must use to pulverize opponents in court. The pills are already making me woozy, or maybe it’s being up all night, so I give in. I lie back and Beth pulls the covers up over me, tucking me in.

  “You’d be a good mother, Bethie.”

  “Thank you. Now go to sleep. Don’t think. Sleep.”

  Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

  But how can I not?

  The text.

  The cell phone bill.

  The book.

  The trip.

  The corkscrew.

  I count these things.

  I count them until I sleep.

  CHAPTER 29

  Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

  Tuesday morning, and it’s time for Zoey and me both to go back to real life. School for her, work for me.

  Brian’s still out on his call by the time we finish breakfast, so I decide to drive Zoey to school, rather than let her brave the bus. She puts up a bit of protest, but it’s feeble. I can tell she wanted to ask, but keeping her brave face on won out.

  Zoey goes to a small private school for advanced children that’s housed in a building that still looks like the old rambling mansion it used to be. More modern wings have been added on, here and there, as needed.

  I was dubious about the school at first. It seemed like an awful lot of after-tax dollars to spend on basic education, and I’d gone through the public system and turned out all right-ish, but it was important to Brian. The school dismissed my ambivalence pretty quickly, though. Small class sizes, genuinely nice people, and enough kids there on merit scholarships so that I didn’t feel like Zoey was being reverse ghettoized.

  But today, Zoey’s first day back after the Incident, as she’s started calling it, my judgment is back out. If memory serves, eleven is the cruellest age, and if that proves correct, I’m ready to mount a campaign with Brian for her to switch schools next year.

  Bigger class sizes mean more places to hide.

  I pull up to the curb behind a line of luxury cars. Our modest sedan has always been out of place here. Zoey leaves the car silently. I watch her walk towards the front doors, thin and pale, her back held straight against the weight of her backpack. Her hair’s in a ponytail for once, and I feel a surge of pride and awe that today, of all days, she’s willing to come out from behind her cur
tain.

  If only I can be so brave.

  When I arrive at Johnson, half an hour later than usual, the parking lot of backed-in cars is almost full. I circle once, twice, until I find a spot. And because it’s that kind of day, I pull in nose first. I’m almost certain to have a warning citation waiting for me on my windshield at the end of the day. Somehow, in all the cuts, the guy whose job it is to look for safety code violations in the parking lot still has his job, but fuck it. I have bigger problems.

  Like sitting at my desk. Like realizing that too much of what has held me here this last year has been its pleasant association with my email inbox, my phone, the high-tech conference room down the hall. In a few short, jittery minutes, I’m thinking about requesting a transfer to a new office for an excuse I’m still working on when Lori pops in.

  “You’re back.”

  “I am. Sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday.”

  “Of course. Is Zoey all right?”

  She’s seen the video, clearly.

  “Yes, she’s fine. A million pin pricks from a million tests, but a clean bill of health.”

  She’s waiting for me to say more, probably about the video, but I will not make Zoey part of the water-cooler gossip circuit. They can have me, but not my daughter.

  “How was the funeral?”

  Now we’ve gotten to the real reason she’s here.

  “It was … very sad.”

  She purses her lips. “I can imagine. Thanks for doing that. Going, I mean. Not something I was looking forward to.”

  “Right.”

  “Lot of people there?”

  “Of course. Everyone liked Jeff. And Springfield is his hometown.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know.”

  Am I completely paranoid or is she looking at me like I just confessed to something? But knowing Springfield is his hometown isn’t anything. It isn’t anything at all.

  “Is there something I can do?” Lori asks.

  “About?”

  “I thought, with Zoey and all, that you might have a lot on your plate.”

  “I can handle it. We have that meeting at two, right?”

  “Sure. See you then. Your turn for the Safety Minute, BTW.”

  Of course it is.

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “There’s a list of topics on the interweb, if you’re at a loss.”

  “Right.”

  She lingers for a moment longer, then leaves. I stand up and close the door behind her. I feel weary and like my body’s tingling with nerves. I wish I’d saved one of the pills I stole from Brian, something to steel me against today. But today is the first day in a long series of days that might feel exactly like this. I have to learn how to face them, as I am, chemical-free.

  I sit at my desk and spend a mindless half hour cleaning up my emails, something I haven’t done in a while. Moving ones I need to keep into subfolders. Deleting the endless series of reply-alls, etc., that are the bane of office existence. I leave my sent items folder for last. Scrolling through it, I come to the last emails I sent to Jeff. There are eleven over the course of the weekend, that weekend.

  I’m surprised there are so many. I thought I had better control of myself than that, but clearly not. My mouse lingers over the first one, but I don’t need to open it. I’m worried. I’m worried. I’m worried is what they all say in one way or another, and I already know that. The manifestation of the worry is something I don’t know how I’ll recover from.

  So I delete the emails, all of them. Then I put my head down on my desk and try to keep myself from weeping.

  At the end of the interminable day, I slog through a heavy rain to my car, pull the soaked-through warning citation off my windshield, and drive home. Everything’s starting to take on that bright green spring look, the good part of so much rain.

  Brian’s in the kitchen, surrounded by the ingredients for a salad. A large piece of fish is on the counter, waiting to be steamed.

  I give him a kiss, resting my head against his shoulder.

  “You smell like rain,” he says. His hand cups my head and holds me there for a moment, then releases me.

  “It’s brutal out there.”

  “I heard on the radio that there might be a slide on the backside of Tupper.”

  “Yikes.”

  “Hopefully there aren’t any hikers caught out.”

  “I guess you’ll be on call tonight, then?”

  “Till the danger passes.”

  “Where’s Zoey?”

  “She’s up in her room. So you really don’t think we should ground her?”

  He starts to shred a head of lettuce with his hands, tossing it into a large wooden salad bowl. I pull olive oil and balsamic vinegar out of the cupboard.

  “I think she feels badly enough already, don’t you? And it must be terrible for her at school.”

  “If she were a normal kid, we could take away her video games or something.”

  I smile at him. “I think I’ll take Zoey as she is.”

  He smiles back. “Me too.”

  He picks up a knife and starts dicing tomatoes. He’s not a surgeon, but he dices tomatoes like one. Every cube the same. Perfect.

  “How was your day?” he asks.

  “So-so. Got a parking citation.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Maybe. You?”

  “Hectic. And I think a patient of mine might be stealing meds.”

  My hand freezes on the bottle cap. “Why do you think that?”

  “Some pills I keep in my medical bag for emergencies are missing. I usually check regularly, but with everything that’s been going on, I can’t remember the last time I did.”

  “What’s missing?”

  “A mild sedative.”

  “Any idea who might’ve taken them?”

  “Could be any number of people, unfortunately.” He stops chopping. “You don’t think that Zoey …?”

  “Of course not. No. She’d never.”

  “You’re right. And maybe I miscounted. It was only off by a bit.”

  Thank God I never went back for more.

  “You want me to cook that fish?”

  Dinner’s a quiet affair. We try to get Zoey to tell us how school went.

  “Fine,” she says. Some kids in eighth grade got caught drinking after the football game on Friday. They might get suspended or expelled, and that’s what people seemed to be talking about mostly. At least, when she was around.

  I suspect she’s downplaying how it really was. There’s a red rim around her eyes, but she must be sick of talking about it, and I can’t blame her for that. I’ll follow up later. A few hours of dishes and homework and normalcy are due.

  Brian’s beeper goes as we’re clearing the table. He steps away to call in and comes back looking grim.

  “The slide?” I ask.

  “Two people. Trauma evac.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hopefully they’ll be all right. I’ll be back late.”

  “Of course.”

  We kiss quickly as he grabs his coat and medical bag and sprints for his car through the rain. I watch him for a moment. Someone’s parked across the street, the smoke from their cigarette trailing out the open window. A red ember glows brighter, fainter, brighter.

  I close the door and finish clearing the table. Zoey’s in the breakfast nook, a few missed days of assignments spread over the table.

  “You need any help with that?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, how about I try to help anyway? Let your mother feel like she’s doing something?”

  She laughs, but the doorbell interrupts her answer.

  “They make those Mormon guys go out in the worst weather,” she says.

  “Your brain works in mysterious ways sometimes.”

  She shrugs. “Why are they always dressed the same? Does God choose their outfits?”

  I walk to the front door, laughing. I swing it open, “We’re not interested
” already forming on my lips.

  But it’s not two young men in neat black slacks.

  It’s Claire.

  CHAPTER 30

  Storm Warning

  Did I ever really get over the shock of seeing Claire and my brother kissing? I’d ask myself that after enough time had passed that it wasn’t something I thought about every day. I’d forgiven her, I had, but I’d been changed by it. We’d been changed by it. And not in the ways I might’ve thought. I didn’t distrust her. I didn’t think she was going to end up in the arms of another man. I didn’t think she was going to leave me for Tim.

  But did I feel like I had some credit? Some bad deeds stored up, some chips to cash?

  I guess I did.

  But that doesn’t mean that when I cashed them in, I didn’t feel guilty at the payout window.

  The morning of day two at the retreat was taken up with putting together prize packs for the golf tournament and a couple extremely boring lectures on “who we are” and “what we want to be.”

  The only good thing about it was knowing I’d be playing golf all afternoon, and the shy, proud look on Tish’s face as she inscribed copies of her daughter’s poetry book for the prize packs.

  I’d been assigned to the prize committee, as had Lori, the woman Tish was replacing at the retreat. As part of the team-building aspect of the weekend, we were supposed to put something personal in the prize packs — a kind of adult show and tell. All I could come up with were prints of pictures I’d taken of people from around the office on my phone at candid moments. Since Tish was late to the party, and Lori hadn’t been organized enough to put something together before she got sick, the only thing she had time to bring was her daughter’s book.

  “You’re showing off,” I teased Tish as she wrote I’m a proud mama in copy after copy of the slim volume. There was a prize pack for everyone, fifty of them in all.

  Apparently “winning” meant being there in the first place.

  “If you can’t live vicariously through your kids once in a while, what’s the point?”