The Deepest Secret

by Carla Buckley

  Tyler’s seen CSI. He knows he left evidence behind. But the police don’t have a record of his fingerprints or DNA. They won’t ask for a sample, will they?

  His mom’s been gone all afternoon. She must be with Charlotte. She must know about Amy. She’s probably with the police right now, hearing about the kid who phoned it in, who left behind bicycle tracks and curly black hair. He texts her and she texts him back. Be home soon. He doesn’t even check into his sixth-period class. He keeps his computer turned off, opens his desk drawer, and pulls out his photographs from their hiding spot. This one of Albert stirring something in a pot on the stove, this one of Nikki climbing into her boyfriend’s car. Why doesn’t he feel sad? He should feel sad, but what he really feels is sick. Then there’s Melissa’s footsteps on the stairs and she pounds on the door. “Ty? Let me in.”

  She closes the door quickly behind her. “Did you hear?” She’s breathless, her eyes red and her face puffy. “They found Amy. She’s dead.” She looks all around his room like she’s never seen it before. “This is so messed up.” She slumps down on his bed and puts her face against her folded arms. Only when her shoulders heave does he realize she’s crying. He sits down beside her awkwardly, not knowing what to do. “It’s okay,” he says.

  “You don’t know anything.”

  Then their mom’s there. She comes into the room and he moves so she can sit between him and Melissa. She puts her arms around their shoulders and holds them both close. She murmurs things, soft and steady, that fall like snowflakes all around them.

  First, Albert shuffles through the front door, holding onto Sophie’s elbow. “How’s Charlotte doing?” Albert asks.

  He could walk right across the street and see for himself. It’s not as if he doesn’t like Charlotte, or vice versa, but they’re always using his mom to convey a message. Tell him to help himself to my tomatoes while I’m gone, Charlotte will say. Or Albert will say, Give this to Charlotte, will you? The mailman put it in my box by accident.

  “Oh,” his mom answers. “You can imagine.”

  Tyler looks up the street to Amy’s house, where all the lights are on. Not Amy’s house anymore. Charlotte’s house, now.

  Then some ladies from Charlotte’s church, then one of Robbie’s bartenders. Tyler doesn’t understand why everyone’s here, but they all want to talk to his mom. Zach shows up with his mom, who throws her arms around Tyler’s mom and cries in her hair. “I remember when she was born,” she says. He’s never seen Zach’s mom cry. He’s never seen her hug his mom, either.

  “We had to park on the ravine road,” Zach says. “Your street’s a mess. That dude from Channel Seven wanted to talk to us, but my mom said no.”

  Tyler wants to tell Zach how it felt realizing that Amy was lying in the water beneath his feet, how he’d raced through the woods and almost crashed his bike. How scared he is right now, jumping every time there’s another knock on the door. But Zach will tell his brother, who will tell his friends, and sooner or later, Tyler’s mom will hear about it. And that will be the end of Holly.

  A girl with long brown hair and bangs stands close to Zach. Savannah. She looks taller in her Facebook photos. And skinnier. Then Dr. Cipriano, who wanders from room to room. There are strangers, too, people who know his mom and ask, Is Charlotte all right? What can I do? Tyler’s never seen so many people packed into his house at one time. It looks like a party, but it’s not. Everyone’s talking in low voices, saying the same things over and over. I can’t believe … It’s so sad.

  All the kids are in the backyard. Melissa’s huddled with her friends on the trampoline.

  Some kids look over. Is he supposed to recognize them? Maybe they’re waiting for him to wave and say Hi. But what if they’re not? “They canceled football practice,” Zach says, like this is a big deal, like this says everything. “They have the road roped off.”

  The police are searching the woods. They’ll follow his bike tracks back to his house. Any minute, there’ll be the whoop whoop of the police cars outside and the banging on the door.

  “I bet she was shot,” Zach says. “Or maybe she was knifed. I bet there was blood.”

  All Tyler had seen was those floating strands of pale hair.

  “She’d be pretty gross, all bloated and stuff.”

  Tyler imagines Amy swollen up like a big fat balloon, her body pressing against the floor of the boathouse while he stood on top of it, and something roils in his stomach.

  “You think she drowned, or did someone put her there, like Refrigerator Guy?” Zach says.

  Their name for that old guy who died and left behind a refrigerator filled with the parts of a person. The dude’s son had come to clean up and found a head, arms, and legs all wrapped up in aluminum foil and sitting in the freezer. The newspaper said it was probably his ex-girlfriend who’d gone missing thirty years before. The old guy had to have done it. It wasn’t like she cut herself up and crawled into the freezer on her own.

  “Stop it,” Savannah says. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Sorry,” Zach says, sounding like he means it.

  After everyone leaves, it’s just Tyler and Melissa on the patio. Melissa’s quiet, her chin on her bent knees. From here, Tyler can see the sharp corner of Holly’s house cutting into the night sky. Clouds move across the stars, blurring them and making them unimportant, but they’re still there. Everyone knows that. They can see them for themselves. But no one’s seen Heaven.

  Their mom comes out and sits with them. She looks tired.

  “What happened to her, Mom?” Tyler asks.

  “It must have been an accident.”

  “But she could swim.”

  “Even strong swimmers can be overcome by the current.”

  “That river barely moves. A baby could walk into it and be fine.”

  “Will you just drop it?” Melissa snaps. “Isn’t everything terrible enough?”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” His mom pats Melissa’s knee.

  His sister jerks away. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Tell me the truth,” Tyler says to his mom. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “There are things I want to do.”

  “Like what?” Her eyes are shadowed.

  Like everything. “Drive a car.”

  “Ty,” she starts, and he knows she’s going to tell him he can’t.

  “How could you get your learner’s permit?” Melissa demands. “They need to take a photo ID. What if you have an accident and have to go to the hospital? What if you run out of gas? What if …” Her voice trails off. Even Melissa doesn’t want to list them all.

  He knows. There are so many things that it’s impossible to get around them.

  He can’t even go to the funeral.

  Rosemary told him funerals were for people who were still living, not for dead people, and she didn’t want him to feel bad because he couldn’t go to hers. She asked him to think of all the good times they’d had together instead, and so that’s what he’s been doing. But it’s been hard. It makes him wonder if all that’s left of people after they’re dead are the memories other people carry around. What happens when those people die?

  He knows how it’ll be. After an XP loss, the forums are busy with virtual hearts and flowers, everyone commenting, their words piling up into thick stacks. But eventually it all stops, and everything goes more or less back to normal.

  I’ll remember you, Amy. Until I die.

  He hopes someone will remember him.

  EVE

  They’re finally gone, the well-meaning neighbors and friends crowding her house, asking the same questions over and over, trying to rattle loose some explanation for what had happened. No one can know. No one can know. And after everyone leaves and the house is quiet again, the truth comes roaring back, shouting at top volume.

  She finds herself on her hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, the toilet, and the shower stall. She takes a toot
hbrush to the kitchen grout, and scours the baseboards, sponging away the dirt and dust.

  She carries the bucket outside to wash the pavers. Dawn’s ninety-three minutes away. The air’s already thinning, the rounded shapes of the chairs, the trampoline, the hydrangeas along the fence beginning to emerge from the blackness and claim space.

  The faintest sheen of pink is in the distance.

  There’s the fort David built. It’s been years since Tyler played in it. Amy had loved it. She had jumped her baby dolls up and down on the windowsills, waving their plastic arms as Eve worked in the garden. Amy had been five or so the day she’d suddenly cried out with pain, and Eve had immediately risen to run over to see what had happened. A spider? Had she twisted her ankle? Amy had held out a grubby finger and wailed, I got a splinter.

  Eve had pulled Amy into her lap and tilted the finger toward her. Amy had sniffled, collapsed against her, so slight, so small. So trusting. I killed you.

  Her cell phone’s ringing, and she tugs it from her pocket. She flinches when she sees the name on caller ID, but answers it anyway.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Oh, Evie, I just saw the story on the news. How terrible, how truly terrible. How’s Charlotte? I hope she’s not alone.”

  “Her mother’s here.” Reproach creeps into Eve’s voice. She doesn’t mean to let it—it’s not as if it would do any good—but it’s there, anyway. Her mother doesn’t demand, Why haven’t you called? Her mother’s accepted this distance between them.

  “How are you, sweetheart? I know how important Amy is to you.”

  This is unexpected, this kindness. It reminds her of how it used to be, when she could tell her mother anything, when they would sit up late into the night, both of them wrapped in their bathrobes, talking. “Oh, Mom.” That small thump, her car spinning around and around, everything leaping at her in the bright stab of headlights.

  “I bet you’re not eating, are you? Or sleeping.”

  The sympathy in her mother’s voice reaches her. Eve presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. How did she get here, in the middle of this twisted nightmare?

  “David’s not there, is he? You’re all alone?”

  The truth of this forces her into the chair.

  “How about the children? This must be so traumatic for them.”

  “I’m worried about them.”

  “Melissa’s being quiet, isn’t she? You know that’s the way she is. She’s just like you in that way. No matter what, if you didn’t want to talk about something, you wouldn’t. I never could pry a word out of you. I had to just wait for you to come to me. She will. You wait and see.”

  Her mother’s right. This makes the world tilt back onto its axis.

  “And Tyler.” Her mother’s voice trails off. She has nothing to offer. She doesn’t know Tyler. She’s afraid of knowing him. “What can I do?” her mother asks instead. “How can I help?”

  “Could you come for a couple of days?” Two days. That’s all. She could let her mother take over and she could just put everything down for a while.

  “Oh, Evie. I don’t know.”

  No, of course she doesn’t. Eve’s parents haven’t visited in years. What if we open the wrong door by mistake? What if he gets burned?

  A clatter of the phone, and her father’s on the line. “Eve!” he barks. “Did your mother tell you? We’ve decided to sell the house. Move somewhere where I don’t have to take care of a yard. So if there’s anything you want, you need to come get it.”

  She clears her throat. “Like what?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Your bedroom furniture. You want that?” The four-poster bed that swayed when she climbed into it? Her nightstand with the chipboard back held on by one precarious screw, the glass lamp that had to have the key turned just so or the light bulb wouldn’t go on. Or something that holds no market value but is steeped in family lore and sentimentality: the duck decoy that had been her grandfather’s first attempt at carving, the framed sketch of the old family farm? Perhaps this is an invitation to think on a grander scale—the dining room set, her great-aunt’s china, her parents’ wedding silver. A rug, Crock-Pot, television set?

  Maybe this distance is Eve’s fault. She could have tried harder to help her mother accept Tyler’s illness. Eve had urged them not to worry, that Tyler would stay in his room until it was safe for him to come out, that of course the lamps in the living room wouldn’t harm him or the solar ones lining the patio. That even if their schedules didn’t mesh, her parents being early risers, there would still be a few hours for them to get to know their grandson before he went into his bedroom for the day or before they went to sleep at night. He’s eightieth percentile, she’d tell them after a visit to the pediatrician, meaning he’s not fragile. Meaning he’s normal in every way but one. But after that disastrous visit when Tyler was five, her parents had refused invitations to spend holidays or birthdays, or attend Melissa’s riding competitions. They were okay Skyping, though reluctant, unsure of the technology and always worrying that Eve couldn’t hear or see them. And now, listening to her parents’ voices on the telephone, Eve realizes she can’t hear them at all.

  The radio station is in a stolid yellow brick structure across from a strip mall. Inside, it’s not much better, plain beige hallways and the glass-walled room of the studio.

  Eve and Gloria don’t sit in the upholstered chairs but stand by the glass and watch Charlotte on the other side, a microphone in front of her. Trish Armstrong is happy to give Charlotte fifteen minutes. She’s a mother herself, she’d said on the phone, and had been following this story with great sympathy. Of course, the police aren’t looking for Amy anymore, but Charlotte had insisted on doing the interview anyway, in hopes it jogged loose some clues.

  The interview is being piped into the room.

  “… tell us what happened the night your daughter went missing.”

  Charlotte straightens before replying. She’s described those last few minutes a million times in Eve’s hearing. Eve could recite them all back, word for word, each one a nail hammered in. Charlotte turns her bracelet around and around. She’d removed her wedding ring the day Owen moved out, months before he filed for divorce. She’d known that their marriage was over right from the start. She’d understood that Owen would never forgive her, and maybe her acceptance of that had hastened her marriage’s demise. Charlotte’s talking, her mouth forming words, her eyes tracking Trish closely. Her need for Trish’s understanding and sympathy is naked on her face. It’s painful to see her friend stripped this way.

  “What would have possessed your daughter to go down to the river in such a storm?”

  They’ll never know. It’s cruel to wonder. Amy had dashed across the road in front of Eve’s car, and Eve had struck her and sent her tumbling down the ravine to her death. Amy had been a pale blur, unrecognizable. But had Amy seen Eve? Had she, at that last terrible moment, turned her head and seen Eve bearing down on her? Eve puts her forehead to the cold glass. Please let it have been quick. Please let it have been over in an instant, peaceful.

  “We’re hoping the autopsy will give us some answers,” Charlotte says.

  “They’re rushing it,” Gloria says in a low voice, though Charlotte can’t hear her through the thick glass. “That’s one good outcome from all this media attention, I guess.”

  “Yes.” Eve focuses on Charlotte’s face, the way she holds her chin up, the line between her eyes. But still the thought slides in. Right now, just a few miles away, Amy is lying on a cold steel table, alone, covered with a sheet, waiting for the sharp tip of the scalpel blade.

  What will the autopsy reveal? Will they discover some metal shard or paint flake? Eve’s hair, her saliva, her tears? It’s sickening to be thinking these thoughts. They crowd her brain and throb against her temples. No matter how much aspirin she swallows, pain pounds behind her eyes.

  “The medical examiner says Amy’s neck was broken,” Gloria says. “He said he could tell right a
way. I hope that means it was fast. I hope she didn’t suffer.”

  The loose feel of Amy’s head between her hands. Hot coffee slops over her fingers.

  Trish is saying, “What else do you want us to know about your little girl?”

  Eve’s thinking about this, about how it’s impossible to sum a child up in a few phrases, when Trish says, “I understand the police have been called to your house on multiple occasions.”

  Gloria clutches her arm. “Once. Once.”

  “That has nothing—” Charlotte begins, but Trish overrides her. “I understand you took a polygraph.”

  “Yes. I did. So the police could rule me out.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Fine. It went fine.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that, but I’m a little surprised.” Trish adjusts the microphone, brings it closer to her lips. Her voice changes, turns silky. “My sources say it was inconclusive.”

  A moment of silence. “I don’t …” Charlotte says.

  “You can see how things look, can’t you?”

  “I …”

  “Charlotte, did you harm your daughter?”

  “Of course not!”

  There’s something she’s not telling us, Gloria had said.

  “I’ve been told the police consider you a suspect.”

  Charlotte sits back, her face blank. She scrabbles at the microphone clipped to her blouse. She yanks it free and stands. Eve’s got the door open for her when Charlotte strides through it. She doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t seem to see her or Gloria.

  It’s in the car that Eve says, “Polygraphs aren’t reliable. Everyone knows that. They’re not even admissible in court.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The police think I’m guilty. You heard that woman. I’m their prime suspect.”

  “Maybe for now,” Eve says, desperate. “But not for much longer.” Not after they get back the autopsy results. No one will believe that Charlotte got into her car and ran down her child. Ran down her child.