The Deepest Secret

by Carla Buckley

  “What makes you say that, Eve?” Gloria asks, and Eve glances in the rearview mirror to see Gloria frowning at her. With the cold suck of fear, she realizes she’s made a mistake. How can she explain herself?

  It’s Charlotte who answers, her thumbnail to her mouth. “Eve’s loyal, Mom. She always sees the best in everything.”

  Loyal. All the good things are draining away, slipping through her grasp and splashing to the ground. She’s clutching air.

  She looks at Gloria, holds her gaze in the mirror.

  Gloria’s the first to look away. “Well, let’s hope you’re right,” she says.

  DAVID

  He can’t believe they’d found Amy in the Scioto. He’d searched up and down that river. Lots of people had. But she’d been underwater the whole time. Even the search dogs hadn’t been able to find her.

  “I tried to call you,” Eve says. “I called you four times. Where were you?”

  She doesn’t say this accusingly, but he feels bad that he hadn’t been there for her. He’d intended to phone her the night before, but one drink with Renée had turned into two, and then dinner, and by the time he made it back to his apartment, it had been close to midnight. “How are you doing? You okay?” He’s in the office with the door closed.

  “It’s hard.” Her voice breaks.

  He wishes he were with her. “I can try to come home early.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Don’t bother. I know it’s hard.”

  It’s inevitable; Amy’s loss reminds them how close they are to losing their own child. It peeled everything back, revealed just how near things lie to the surface. “How are the kids?”

  It had been one thing when Rosemary Griggs died. Sad, of course, especially since she’d been like a grandmother to Tyler, but she’d been elderly and so sick. Her death had been expected. The XP kids whose lives had touched theirs all lived so far away. They’d never met. There weren’t those constant daily reminders. Their losses could be compartmentalized. Amy’s death is different. It breaks all the rules.

  “I don’t know,” Eve says.

  “They’ll be okay.”

  “How can you be so sure?” It’s Tyler she’s particularly worried about. He’d had a hard time after Rosemary died, sitting alone in his room even when he could be allowed out. The therapist she’d found had only made Tyler more upset. There’s nothing wrong with me, he’d told Eve. Other than the obvious. She’s done everything she can to give him a normal childhood. She refuses to see that it’s impossible.

  “They’re good kids,” he says. “They’ll figure it out.”

  “I hope so. I hope you’re right.”

  “How’s Charlotte?”

  “David, you’d never believe it. I feel so responsible.”

  “What happened?”

  “She just did a radio interview with Trish Armstrong. Remember her? She’s always been so willing to promote our fundraisers, and I thought …” He knows she’s pacing as she talks, the way she always does when she’s deep in thought, wiping a finger along a dusty ledge or picking up a dish and carrying it to the dishwasher. “Somehow she got hold of the polygraph results. It was awful. She accused Charlotte.”

  “Wait … it didn’t clear her?”

  “It was inconclusive. We should have canceled. I led her into a trap.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he says. Names rise to the surface, an ugly list. Susan Smith. Andrea Yates. Casey Anthony. He picks his next words carefully. “Do you think Charlotte’s been telling the truth?”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “She was the last one to see Amy.”

  “David, no! Charlotte would never hurt Amy. Never!”

  Charlotte’s always been more important to Eve than the other way around. Charlotte’s the free agent, outspoken and colorful and carefree, the one who can come and go. She has a wide circle of friends and interests that extend into the world. Eve’s the one who’s had to choose her friends from a very small circle. Not that Charlotte ever abused her unfair advantage, but it’s subtly come into play. He remembers that time when the children were small and Charlotte had insisted that Eve get rid of peanut products because of Amy’s allergy. Eve pleaded; Tyler loved peanut butter and she didn’t want to take one more thing away from him. She’d promised to keep the jar up high, out of Amy’s reach, but Charlotte had drawn herself tall and said that in that case, she just couldn’t allow Amy to visit anymore. Eve had had to weigh a sandwich versus Tyler having a friend and, by extension, herself. Of course Eve would defend Charlotte.

  “Look,” he says. “I just want you to prepare yourself.”

  “How can you even think that?”

  “We can’t ever know what another person’s capable of.”

  Silence.

  This conversation has veered off track. He wants to regain that earlier closeness he’d felt. “I don’t mean to keep saying the wrong things. Maybe you’re right. You’ve always had good instincts about people.”

  “I forgot to ask,” she says, “but what happened to that fellow at work?”

  “Preston? He’s been let go.”

  “Fired? Just like that? What if he gives the money back?”

  “It’s not about the money. He stole from our clients. He violated their trust and put us all at risk. Giving the money back doesn’t change any of that.”

  Eve’s quiet.

  It had once been so simple. He and Eve had fallen in love. They’d had Melissa, who was breathtakingly self-contained, a mystery to him then and a mystery to him now. Then along came Tyler, the eight-pound squalling baby boy, a son completing the perfect family circle. All his choices had been confirmed. He had been cocky with it.

  THE NAKED MANNEQUIN

  The XP kids are all talking about Yoshi. We should make a CD of her favorite songs. We should call her, all of us, at the same time. We should send her Oreos. She loves those. Tyler, what do you think? But he doesn’t know.

  It’s raining again, drops tapping hard on the roof. His mom sits across from him, her laptop balanced on her lap. She’s got all the lights shining, but it still feels gloomy. The weather’s chased the reporters away, though. Maybe now that Amy’s been found, they won’t come back.

  “Your grandparents called,” his mom says. “They’re moving into a smaller place and they asked if there’s anything we wanted.”

  He’s never been to his grandparents’ house. When they Skype, his grandma carries the laptop around to show Tyler what their house looks like, but it’s hard to get a fix on it, all the walls zooming in and everything at a wobbly angle. What Tyler really wants to see are his grandparents’ faces, but they don’t like to look at the camera. At least, they don’t like to look at it when he’s on the other side of it. They don’t seem to have any problem talking to Melissa.

  “Like what?” he asks.

  “Well, like furniture or dishes. They have some nice paintings.”

  “I don’t know. Do we really need any of that stuff?”

  “Well, it might be nice to have something of theirs to remember them by.”

  “Do they want me to remember them?”

  “Of course they do! Your grandparents love you very much.” His mom looks upset.

  He shrugs. He knows better.

  The back door opens.

  “Have a good time?” his mom calls, and Melissa pauses in the doorway. “The horses were nervous because of the thunder.” She goes into the bathroom to shower.

  Tyler tried horseback riding once. His mom had driven him to the barn, where all the lights had been turned off especially for him. She’d taken the back roads, the car bumping over the rough patches and finally crunching onto gravel. Melissa had picked out the gentlest pony. Tyler had held his palm below the horse’s lips, felt the tickle of whiskery skin. But then the pony had shifted weight, so big, so heavy, and Tyler had changed his mind. Nothing his mom or Melissa said could change it back.

  Melissa’s friend Sherry has posted a bunch of p
ictures from her party. Kids standing around in groups, sitting piled up in chairs. They look like they’re having fun. Tyler recognizes some of the kids, Brittany, Adrian, and then there’s one of Melissa. He almost goes past it before he realizes it’s her in the background. She’s talking to someone and she looks mad, the way she’s pointing her finger. She’s holding a can in her other hand.

  Tyler looks closely.

  “How’s it coming?” His mom’s closed her laptop and is coming over.

  He changes screens to the werewolf, with eyes that flash red and smoke curling from between its jagged teeth.

  “It’s perfect.” Her hand’s on his shoulder, her touch light. “What would I do without you?”

  She always makes it sound that way, like she’s the one who needs him, when everyone knows. He’s the one who needs her.

  The stars sparkle like glitter. The woods are alive with tiny sounds, the trees bending over the narrow path that leads down to the water. It seems crazy to think that he and his sister and his mom had ever run along this path, laughing, the lights attached to their caps bouncing and making them look like fireflies. Be careful of poison ivy, his mom would call out. Something Melissa had to watch out for, not just him.

  The beam of his flashlight silvers clumps of dirt and beaten-down weeds, shows him where to place his feet. He hears the soft hissing as the river below moves against the shore. Beneath him are layers and layers of rock, burrowing all the way down to a hot core of the earth. Ohio’s missing a bunch of those layers—two and a half trillion years’ worth. No one knows why. He had tiptoed around, imagining the gaping hole these missing layers left behind crashing down and taking him with them if he stomped too hard. Then his mom explained it’s like a sandwich missing the cheese. All the other layers still touched. She’d jumped up and down to prove it.

  There’s the boathouse, rising out of the flat river. Tyler had read and reread the newspaper article. There had been no security cameras at the gas station, and no one remembers seeing anyone using the phone. He’d been lucky—for once.

  Things are piled up all around the boathouse, making the walls look fat at the bottom: stuffed animals, bunches of flowers, dolls, all sorts of cards. Crime scene tape sags around the building, tied to small stakes. One torn end lies in the mud.

  It’s dark inside, darker than he remembers. The water laps outside the windows. The Scioto’s a sleepy river, pretty shallow along the banks. His mom had let him wade into the cold swirling water, fully clothed, the way he always had to be. She had held his hand and they’d stepped carefully, things sliding beneath the soles of his shoes. She’d pointed out quick shapes of fish in the water beside them.

  He leans out the window, holds the photograph of the fawn, its eyes wide and dark, its ears big and pointed. Amy didn’t know about his blog, no one did, but she would have liked this picture. He lets it go and it flutters through the air and lands on the water. It sits there, a pale rectangle floating in the dark.

  He pushes his hands in his pockets. He should say something, but what? He clears his throat. He’s seen funerals on TV so he knows someone always talks about the dead person, about what made them special and why they’d be missed. But if he were to say anything like that, Amy would start giggling. She’d laugh so hard she’d clutch her sides.

  Maybe it’s enough that he’s here, thinking of her. Maybe Amy can see him; maybe she can’t. But if she’s there, somewhere, then she’d understand that he didn’t mean to ignore her. He didn’t mean to let her down.

  He feels hollow. Amy had always been a pain, but now that she’s gone, she takes everything with her. Who’s left to admire him now?

  He steps out of the boathouse and a card flutters to the ground. He picks it up from a puddle. It’s a nice card, with a picture of a gray kitten on the front. He opens it.

  I’M SORRY.

  It’s Melissa’s handwriting. She’d never even said she’d been here. All the things she does in the day that he doesn’t know about. He crouches to put the card back and hears rustling behind him. He whirls around.

  A dark shape detaches itself from the shadows of the woods and assembles itself into a man. Tyler freezes. Maybe if he doesn’t move, the man will go away. Instead, the man calls out, “Who’s that? Tyler?”

  It’s Scott, Amy’s brother. “Hi.” Tyler doesn’t really know Scott that well. He can’t forgive me, Charlotte had told Tyler’s mom. The two of them were sitting on the patio, quietly talking. He’d wondered what Charlotte had done to make Scott not forgive her. Still, the divorce wasn’t what had changed Scott. He’d changed before that.

  “I thought it would never stop raining.” Scott sits down on the grassy bank, and after a second, Tyler sits down beside him. Scott puts something to his mouth and flips a lighter. A tiny spurt of flame wavers in the darkness. Scott tilts back his head and releases a cloud of smoke. “How old are you now, fifteen?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Old enough.” Scott holds out the cigarette.

  “I’m not allowed to smoke.”

  “It’s just weed.” Scott takes a hit, says in a squeaky voice, “Good stuff, too.”

  Melissa would do it. She would take a big puff. So Tyler takes the cigarette between his gloved fingers. He’s afraid he’ll drop it. He puts it to his mouth and sucks in a mouthful. Burning smoke fills his lungs, and he sputters. Scott pounds him on the back. “There you go.”

  His eyes are watering, but he tries again, sipping on the end of the little cigarette and holding the smoke in his mouth before swallowing it down. He coughs, then hands the cigarette back.

  Fog hovers over the river, streamers of pale gray.

  “You believe in ghosts?” Scott asks suddenly.

  Every hair on Tyler’s arms stands up. “No.” Yes.

  “What if people do come back to haunt us? That could really suck.”

  “You mean Amy?”

  “Amy, other people.” Scott passes him the thing. Tyler fakes taking another toke. Scott doesn’t seem to notice.

  “You’re too young to get this,” Scott says, “but sometimes things you do can’t be undone. Sometimes there are things your mom and dad can’t help you with. You’re lucky, dude. You don’t even know yet how fucked up the world can be.”

  “Well, I have a fatal disease. So I know how fucked up it can be.”

  Scott rears back. “Yeah, shit. I’m sorry.”

  “All you do is shine headlights on me and you fucking kill me.”

  Scott starts to laugh. “Man, that’s crazy.”

  “I live in a box, man.”

  “Like a vampire.” Scott’s howling, smacking his knee with his palm. “Like a little vampire dude. What’s it like?”

  “Sometimes it really sucks. Sometimes it’s really lonely.”

  “I bet. I bet it is.” The fog’s rolled closer now, hovering between his hand and the ground. “You were friends with Rosemary, weren’t you?” Scott asks.

  “Yeah. I really miss her.”

  “She knew she was going to die and she was really brave about it.”

  “We’re all going to die. I guess we’re all really brave.”

  Tyler floats from tree to tree. He’s disjointed and slow, like strings are moving him. The thought makes him snort with laughter. Tyler, the vampire marionette.

  He wanders past the Farnhams’ house and stops. There’s something new, a long triangle of light along one windowsill, where the blinds have been pushed against the glass and tilted up. Anyone could walk right over and look in. No one’s ever seen inside the Farnhams’ house, not even on Halloween, when Mrs. Farnham sits in her driveway with a big bowl of candy on her lap. Tyler stands there, thinking. He shrugs. What the hell.

  There are a lot of things standing between him and the Farnhams’ house. He squints, planning his route. It’s like following that treasure map his mom made him, the one he’s stuck to his wall, crossing out the old neighbors’ name and printing in Holly’s instead. He takes an exaggerat
ed step to the right, then to the left, then two steps ahead. He’s like fucking James Bond. He tries not to laugh, but it bubbles out of him anyway. He bumps into the wishing well, sending the wooden bucket spinning. He grabs at it, and the world teeters this way and that. He blinks, trying to remember what it was he was doing. Oh yeah.

  A few steps later and he’s on the broad wood deck. Another couple of steps and he’s at the window. He curls his fingers around the windowsill and pulls himself up to stand on his tiptoes. Bricks catch at his clothes. He stares through the glass. What the hell?

  The room is packed with stuff. He’s never seen so much stuff in one place before: towering stacks of newspapers and books. Furniture filled with toys, dishes, vases. Dolls are everywhere, their hair curled and tied in big bows, their dresses in bright poufs of color. How do they keep from falling down? A crib’s been wedged into the corner, filled with blankets. A mannequin stands beside it, hand pointed up, her features smooth and pretty like she has no idea she’s not wearing any clothes. He grins.

  “I told you when we got married.” It’s Mr. Farnham, coming into the room. Tyler ducks down, but he can still hear Mrs. Farnham say in a pleading voice, “I thought you’d change your mind.”

  “You don’t change your mind about something like that.”

  “Would it have been so bad? Would it really have been so bad? I would have done all the work.”

  “Joan, honey. You know how I feel. I just didn’t want to share you with anyone.”

  “Not even with our own child?” Mrs. Farnham’s crying, her words all choked.

  The smack of a screen door. “Who’s there?” It’s Albert. “Come on out! Show yourself!”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Farnham’s standing right over him, inches away from where Tyler presses himself beneath the window.

  “Someone’s sneaking around your house.”

  “Where?”

  Tyler shoves himself away from the wall. The sidewalk sails in front of him, leading him home. Panting, he lets himself in through the French doors. He feels in his pockets for his flashlight, but it’s gone.