The Deepest Secret

by Carla Buckley

  Unease curls through Eve. This isn’t Melissa. She doesn’t talk this way about Albert. Eve glances at Detective Irwin. He isn’t looking at Melissa. He’s looking at her.

  DAVID

  David had woken up that morning to the strange feeling that someone else was there. He’d pushed himself up from the sofa to see Renée sitting at the kitchen counter in a T-shirt and bright pink sweatpants. She’d looked particularly young with her face scrubbed clean. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

  She’d sprung up from the couch when he came into his apartment the night before. You should have told me you were here, she’d exclaimed. I could have picked you up. Her happiness upon seeing him had been clear. It had shined into every corner. He’d insisted she keep the bedroom; he’d sleep on the couch. She’d protested, but there was no sense in her finding a hotel at that time of night, was there? They’d ordered pizza and turned on the game. She’d wanted to know about Amy and had listened sympathetically. He asked about Jeffery, and she said he’d been calling, wanting to talk things over. She wasn’t ready. She might not ever be ready. Of course she was right. Jeffery had said terrible things to her, things a person couldn’t forget. David had pushed away his fight with Eve.

  The Steelers rolled over the Eagles. Renée had kicked off her shoes and they’d cracked first one beer, then another. Columbus had felt a million miles away. He’d glanced over at one point and saw tears streaking her cheeks. He’d been moved to say, Why don’t you stay here until you find your own place? She didn’t want to impose, but he gently insisted. He’d like the company, he told her, and she nodded and reached for the tissue box.

  The day passes quickly, and just before six, David turns off his office light and heads toward the conference room. Renée’s already there. She looks up with a wide smile. “I just put on a fresh pot. The good stuff, not the office dreck. I got it at that little coffee shop in your apartment building. Did you know they reopened under new management? It looks clean. You’ll have to check it out.”

  “I will.” He pours them each a cup of coffee and sits across from her. She fits so easily into his life. She knows which elevator in his building jolts at each floor. She knows which news station he prefers, and that he’ll eat any topping on pizza except for pineapple. She’s no trouble at all, except for the fact that his sofa is rapidly wearing out its welcome on his lower back. He stretches, rubs the spot.

  “Thanks,” she says, accepting the cup he holds out. “I’m wondering. Do you think we should include the group from Kansas?”

  “Geography might bias the results. Let’s stick to East Coast examples.”

  “Got it.”

  Outside in the hall, doors open and close, footsteps retreat. Everyone’s leaving for the day. It’s pleasant to be cocooned in this bright, warm space with Renée.

  She sips her coffee. “Jeffery called this afternoon. He wants to know when I can come get my things.”

  “Might be good to get it over with.”

  “I know. Damn, this sucks.”

  “Want me to help?”

  She looks at him, her face alight. “You wouldn’t mind? It’s not much, mostly clothes.”

  “Tell Jeffery you’ll stop by later this week.”

  “Yeah. Make him wait.” The smile she gives him seems genuine.

  His cell phone chimes. It’s Eve. “Hey,” he says.

  “Can you talk?” She sounds upset.

  “Sure. Hold on.” He stands up. “Be right back,” he tells Renée. In the hallway, he says, “Are the kids okay? Is it Tyler?” This is it. She’s found something.

  “No, no. Tyler’s fine. But he lied to us, David. Melissa, too. Both of them, and now I think she’s in trouble.”

  “Trouble how? What are you talking about?” His little girl.

  Melissa had taken the car without permission while Eve was picking him up from the airport. She didn’t even have her license. “All right, well, it’s not the worst thing that could happen. She’s safe, right? We’ll take away her phone. We won’t let her borrow the car, not until she proves she can be responsible.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not being clear. The police know. A homicide detective was here. He’s the one who told me that Albert saw Melissa drive up the street that night.”

  “So, what does that mean? Are they going to fine her?” His head pounds. “If the police don’t take away her license, I will.” He knows better than to suggest punishing Tyler, who had been complicit in this whole coverup. Eve would never hear of it.

  “David!” Her voice is shrill. He winces. “Listen! Forget about punishing her. That’s not why I called. I think he thinks Melissa did it.”

  “You just said he knows it.”

  “No, no, not driving without her license. He thinks she’s the … driver.”

  A shiver creeps up his spine. He ticks past the images of that night ten days before. He remembers coming into the kitchen and pulling his children to him. The kitchen had been bright and filled with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Melissa’s hair had been wet, but she’d just gotten out of the shower. Hadn’t she? His head had been busy with a thousand things. Of course he’d never suspected that she’d been out in the storm. Is it possible that Melissa could have hit Amy and managed to keep it hidden from him and Eve? “Do you?”

  “No!”

  Her certainty’s reassuring, but Eve could be blind when it came to the children. “What did he say specifically?”

  “Nothing, really. It was more the way he looked at her, like he didn’t believe a word she was saying.”

  “Well, she was lying, right? But that’s no reason for him to suspect her of anything more serious.”

  “Maybe,” she says slowly.

  “Melissa knows she’s made a mistake. Let’s all calm down and see what happens, okay? They’re not going to arrest her, not without some sort of proof.”

  Later, while he’s eating sushi from plastic trays with Renée in his living room, their feet up on the coffee table as they watch football, he thinks about this. What sort of proof would the police be looking for? He sets down his chopsticks.

  “What is it?” Renée asks, and he shakes his head.

  He can’t say it. He stands and goes into the bathroom, closes the door. He runs cold water into the sink and splashes it up onto his face, lets it drip down. He grips the sides of the sink and looks down into the basin. The sort of proof the police would be looking for would be a damaged fender.

  DO-OVER

  Voices crawl through the vent. Tyler sits on the floor, listening hard. Detective Irwin isn’t like Detective Watkins. He hadn’t spent a second looking around Tyler’s room. He’d been focused on Tyler, and he’d listened carefully. Tyler had hurried through his answers, wanting him to leave, and then he did. Only, to his horror, it had been to talk to Melissa.

  His mom’s waiting for him when he comes out of his room. She’s got her arms crossed and she looks upset, like she’s thinking a million things all at the same time, all of them bad. His stomach twists. “Come downstairs. I need to talk to both of you.”

  Melissa’s sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. There’s something weird about her and he realizes she’s not holding her cell phone or laptop. Tyler sits down beside her, but she refuses to look at him.

  “I want you to tell me exactly what happened that Friday night,” his mom says.

  He glances at Melissa. What has she told their mom so far? His mom would really be hysterical, wouldn’t she, if she knew? How much does that detective know?

  “Don’t look at Melissa,” his mom says, and reluctantly, he looks back at her.

  “She took the car,” he says miserably. Beside him, he feels Melissa stiffen.

  “Brat,” she mumbles.

  “Enough of that,” their mom says sharply. “You went to that party, didn’t you, Melissa? Why? What was so important that you would do something so risky?”

  And now Tyler understands that this is all
about Melissa driving the car without her license. The detective must know just this one piece of what happened, which is good news. Which is great news, and he doesn’t understand why Melissa doesn’t get it, why she’s sitting there looking so angry. Unless there’s something else he doesn’t know about.

  “Nothing happened,” Melissa says, which is a big fat lie. “I was gone for, like, thirty minutes.”

  She was gone for more than an hour. She’s lying about everything.

  A sharp knock on the front door makes them all look toward it. His mom goes over to open the door, and it’s Charlotte standing there. But it doesn’t look like her, with her hair sticking up every which way, her bathrobe hanging open over shorts and a T-shirt. “Charlotte?” his mom asks. “What is it?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Charlotte looks around and sees Melissa. Her eyes narrow and she pushes past his mom. Tyler feels Melissa shrink against him.

  “Tell you what?” his mom answers, but Charlotte’s right there, hauling Melissa up from the couch by her arms and shaking her. “Is it true? Is it?” He’s never seen Charlotte like this. She’s always been smiley and jokey with them. She’s always hugged them and brought them things. “Tell me! Did you hurt Amy?”

  His mom’s pulling at Charlotte’s shoulder. “Stop it, Charlotte. Let her go.”

  “No! I never saw her! I swear!”

  Melissa’s so convincing. Tyler wants to believe her. He wants to go along with the urgency in her pleading voice to where everything’s okay, but he can’t.

  “You lied to the police! You lied to me! You lied to everyone!”

  Melissa looks scared. “I know. I know, but I didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s enough!” His mom drags Charlotte, stumbling, away. Melissa rubs her upper arms. Her face is white. She sinks down beside Tyler, her knees knobby and pressed together.

  Charlotte whirls on his mom. “I thought you were my friend! I counted on you. I trusted you!”

  “I am your friend. Of course I am. Charlotte, please.” His mom looks so helpless. She and Charlotte have been friends forever. Just like he and Zach had been.

  “You never said a word. Not one fucking word!”

  “I know you’re upset. I’m upset, too, but Melissa did not hurt Amy.”

  “You can’t protect her, Eve, not from this. That detective, he’s getting to the bottom of this. He’s close.”

  Something rises in Tyler’s throat, something hard and round. He can’t swallow.

  “Really?” his mom says, but her voice trembles. She’s terrified and that scares him even more. “That’s great news.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Melissa says in a small voice. “You have to believe me.”

  Charlotte stares down at her. Her gray T-shirt has a brown stain on the hem. The pocket of her striped blue-and-white bathrobe sags; the sash drags on the floor. She doesn’t even seem to see Tyler. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” His mom puts a hand on Charlotte’s arm, but Charlotte throws it off. “I can’t even believe you anymore.”

  “No, Charlotte,” his mom says. “That’s not true.”

  “Stop, just stop. You’d do anything for your kids. Anything. You’d lie right to my face.”

  His mom lifts her chin. She crosses her arms, and she and Charlotte stand there for a long heavy second, staring at each other. Then Charlotte shakes her head and leaves, leaving the door hanging open behind her, the dark street stretching away. Tyler’s mom walks quickly over and shuts it, snapping the latch with a hard click.

  They sit in their usual spots, his mom on the couch beside him, Melissa curled up in the armchair, but none of them pick up their laptops or their phones. No one reaches for the remote to turn on the television.

  “Do you believe me, Mom?” Melissa says.

  “Of course I believe you. Of course I do.”

  But it doesn’t matter what his mom believes.

  Dawn’s close, just a couple of hours away. The night is clear, every star sparkling bright. If he reached up, he could touch them. His mom wouldn’t go to bed. Every time Tyler cracked open his bedroom door, he saw the halo of lamplight shining on the living room floor below. He’d actually fallen asleep at his desk, only to wake up with a jerk.

  Something’s over in Holly’s yard, moving low against the grass. The something straightens and becomes Holly. She has a bucket in one hand and a trowel in the other. She’s wearing a long silky dress that clings to her back and hips.

  He’s so surprised to see her, he just stops. “Hi.”

  Her hair’s messy, not as shiny as it appears in candlelight. Things look different in different light. Things that appear soft at night can be hard during the day, just as things that seem hard and crisp in the moonlight can be revealed to be creamy or flexible if you touched them. Grass, for instance.

  She doesn’t smile back, and he feels embarrassed, like she’s not happy about seeing him. Maybe it’s because she’s in her nightgown. Now that she’s turned to face him, he can see the way the cloth molds to her chest. His heart gives a funny leap.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about these grubs.”

  So she’s not upset about his being there. She doesn’t know that Melissa’s in trouble. She’s just worried about the skunk. She crouches and stabs at the grass with her trowel. “I’ve been trying to dig them up. Do you know what they look like?”

  “Like white worms.”

  “That’s right.”

  She’s curved up like a C, her chin almost touching her knees. The bones of her spine poke up a line of bumps beneath the tautness of her dress. Her feet are bare, blades of grass standing up between her toes.

  “Do you want me to help?” He looks around for a fallen tree branch. Grubs don’t dig in deep. He can poke them out for her with a sharp stick.

  “Can you see with those sunglasses on?”

  She’s not being mean, just matter-of-fact. “Sure.” He can see lots of things with his sunglasses on. He has his eyes checked every six months, even his eyelids are flipped up and examined. His doctor says the reason he has good vision is because he wears shades all the time.

  He squats beside her. Her dress is tight around her calves, and there are small irregular patches of polish on her toenails, silver, like moonlight. They work for a while. It’s too dark to see much, but she seems intent on the process so he tries to see into the dark earth for the telltale pale gleam of a grub.

  “They say the hardest thing in the world is losing a child,” she says. “They say you never get over it. Do you think it’s true?”

  “I guess.” His mom gets quiet sometimes, looking at him.

  “Do you think it’s worse when your kid’s little or when they’re older?”

  “I don’t know.” He’s never once thought about it. Does the age of a person matter?

  “It’s got to be worse when they’re older. I mean, they’re lumps when they’re babies. It’s not like they can talk or anything. They just lie there and cry.”

  This is a weird way to talk about a baby, especially when you have one. He’s splashing around in a big deep pool and can’t see the sides.

  “Maybe she’s relieved,” Holly says.

  Charlotte’s not relieved, though. He knows that for certain. “I think she’s just sad.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe Amy’ll be born to another family and have a different life.”

  “You mean like reincarnation?” He jokes about this with his XP friends all the time. Although, sometimes, they’re not joking.

  “What if you could come back as someone different? What if you could have a do-over, not make the same mistakes again?”

  What if he could come back as a kid who didn’t have XP? “What kind of mistakes?” he asks, feeling brave.

  “All of them. What if you could live a perfect life? You wouldn’t have to worry about money, or love, or responsibility. You could be happy. You could be free.”

  “You’re
not happy?”

  “Mark says I should be.” She’s angry, but what about? Did he say something to upset her? I was going to be an actress, she’d said.

  Dirt is just the mashed-up pieces of rock. It’s soft and yielding, but it once was hard. This dirt is limestone and shale. Way below it, deeper than man has ever gone and probably ever will, lies enormous reservoirs of sandstone, metamorphic and igneous rock. He used to think that he could reach them with his little plastic shovel. He and his mom would carve out holes in their backyard and they wouldn’t get too far before he’d give up. Probably, all told, he’d only gone a few inches beneath the surface.

  “Holly?” he says, and shivers at the warmth of saying her name. “A new detective came by today.”

  “Detective Irwin? He talked to me, too.” The muscles of her arm are tight as she punches the ground.

  “Do you think he’ll find out who did it?”

  “Probably.”

  He focuses hard on the hole he’s digging, churning up small chunks of dirt. “What if it turns out to be a kid?”

  “That won’t change anything. Anyone who’s old enough to drive is old enough to be tried as an adult.”

  He bashes the point of his stick into the soil, tearing up pieces of grass, and spies something small, smooth, and light-colored. A grub? He scrabbles at the dirt around the soft gray shape and pulls out a flower bulb. A long scrape marks where the edge of his stick cut into its flesh. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  Still, he pushes the bulb back into the ground and presses the soil all around it. “It’ll be okay,” he promises.

  She doesn’t answer. She’s stabbing at the ground over and over with her trowel, and if there are any grubs lying there, they’re probably being smashed to pulpy pieces. He supposes that’s just as good as pulling them up and dropping them into a bucket. “I don’t think you have to worry about the skunks anymore,” he tells her. “Someone’s poisoning them. I saw a dead one the other night.”

  She nods. “Good.”

  He doesn’t know why this bothers him. Skunks are pests. He jabs the stick into the dirt and sees the telltale pale curve. “Here’s one.” He pincers the fat creature from its hiding place.