by Jeff Abbott
“Mom…”
“I mean, if you feel you need to talk to someone, someone not me or Dad, a therapist…”
“Mom.”
“I just want you to be OK.”
Julia doesn’t say anything to this. She folds her arms and goes past her, into the kitchen, to Kyle. Iris walks away, scans through the messages. Julia isn’t hyping up what she saw or playing the victim or milking this for attention: nearly every response is crisp, curt, mature. I can’t talk about this, so please don’t ask me. Please pray for Ned. We need to be there for Ned.
She frowns at a few of the messages from Julia’s friends. Sorry we teased you about liking Ned. I wasn’t trying to be gross by asking about his mom and what happened. Please text me back and let me know you’re okay.
Iris walks to the kitchen, stands at the corner of the open space. She watches Kyle fold his arms around Julia, Julia lean into his shoulder. They’ve always been close. Iris feels a pang in her chest, her stomach.
“I just want you to be OK,” Iris repeats.
“I know that is what you care about.”
“What does that mean?”
“Me being OK. So I can do well on my tests and in my classes and get into a good college and have a bright future. You don’t want that derailed.”
“That’s not what I meant, sweetheart. You’ve had a trauma.”
“I’m worried about Ned right now, Mom. Not myself.”
A long, silent pause between them. You sure are focused on Ned these days, Iris thinks. She’s not sure how she feels about that. She likes Ned. She knows what she should do is not care, not fight it, so Julia won’t dig in her heels. Let the infatuation run its course. It might even end the friendship, and she’d be fine with that.
“That’s so good of you,” Iris says. “To worry about him so.”
Then Iris hugs her daughter and Julia hugs her back.
“Of course,” Iris says. “Let’s just take a break from the phone. For an hour. Just an hour.” Where is this in the parenting books or blogs? Helpful checklist when your child discovers a murdered body. Julia steps away and starts to help her father prepare dinner. Iris retreats as Kyle glances back at her with a look she knows: Really? Now? He returns to the stove, murmuring to Julia. Iris sips the wine, goes back to the window.
Somewhere in the Travis County Morgue, Danielle lies in a metal drawer, awaiting autopsy. Cold. Gone. Over. But when they were leaving the station, Iris heard Carmen Ames taking a call, jotting a note, quietly saying, “Crushed windpipe? Crushed with what?” then listening. Ames had her back to them and Julia didn’t seem to register it, but Iris did.
That might explain the discoloration in the throat, the blood on the lips. She hopes it was quick and Danielle didn’t suffer, but she probably did. A shattering blow to the throat, fighting to breathe and unable to, then the darkness. A strangulation without the hands closing around the throat. Iris shudders. Takes another sip of wine.
Did she see any potential weapon on the ground? She didn’t. Something heavy or blunt but narrow enough to strike the throat. Rock, pipe, wrench, bat? Or was the fatal blow delivered by a fist?
A blow. And her husband looking like a punching bag in the time between the body being found and Iris getting home from the police station.
Kyle is lying to her. Lying to them all.
Of course he’s not lying. He fell. He fell, just like he said.
Their home phone rings again, as it has done all day, and she lets it. They all let it. The phone machine announces the caller—a friend, another mom who is on school committees with Iris—and then the inevitable message begins: calling because she just heard, it’s so terrible, did Julia really find the body, what can she do for Iris’s family, for Ned, bring dinner maybe, just let her know, please call back when she has a minute. Listen, rinse, repeat. She stopped writing down who had called her at message number fifteen, three hours ago.
Grant comes downstairs. He looks haggard, tired. He was close to Danielle; she adored him, the baby they’d brought back together from Russia. She’s been so worried about Julia, she hasn’t worried about Grant.
“You hungry, baby? We’ll eat soon,” she says to him. He’s always hungry; he’s a fourteen-year-old boy.
“Not particularly. Can I go see Mike? I want to be sure he’s all right. I mean…not all right—he can’t be—but…” They’re all stumbling for the correct words.
“Mike might not be up for company right now,” Iris says. “I’m taking them dinner tomorrow night; do you want to come with me?”
Grant nods. Then he sits down on the couch, across from the window. From the kitchen they can hear the soft murmurs of Julia and Kyle talking.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Who do you think killed her? I think we should talk about theories.”
A cold finger of fear flicks her spine. Theories. She curses every network and streaming crime drama she’s ever let him watch. Of course, Grant is the type to think about who did it rather than deal with the emotional fallout of a murder. “I have no idea.” She makes her voice clipped.
“You must have an idea.”
“Grant.”
“The police will think it’s Mike. They always suspect the boyfriend. But why would he kill her in the park?”
She starts to say I don’t know but then she stops herself. He’s not a dumb kid. “Well, I guess there are a few reasons. She might have been there to meet someone. Someone she didn’t want in her house. She might have been forcibly taken there. Or maybe she was killed at home and the killer put her on the park bench.”
“He didn’t try to conceal her. He wanted her found.”
She gulps at her wine. “I guess.”
Grant has a look on his face like he’d like to kill the killer himself. “The killer had to be comfortable with killing her in the open. Someone could have seen. Even super early on a Sunday morning.”
“Maybe. Maybe they were both in the park and he didn’t intend to kill her.”
“He.”
“I think it’s probably a man. But, hon, this could have been a random thing. Maybe she saw someone breaking the law in the park. Maybe a guy tried to kidnap her, to assault her, and she fought back.”
Grant frowns. “If I were looking for a victim, I’d go to a park in Austin, where there’s foot traffic at night, not way out here where the park’s normally empty.”
“I can’t guess what might be in the mind of someone like this.”
“But we have to,” Kyle says. “I mean, what if this is a stranger and he comes back?” He’s walked in with his own glass of wine, takes a long sip. Iris sees him wince at the alcohol on his swollen lip.
“You don’t need to scare the children,” Iris says, tight-lipped.
Grant stands. He has the look on his face Iris recognizes, when he wants to say something but can’t decide whether or not to say it. He opens his mouth, then shuts it. “People are texting me,” he said. “About what happened. I haven’t answered. Not a one.”
“That’s probably wise,” Kyle says.
“I can’t ignore my friends forever.”
“Just tell them you can’t discuss it,” Iris suggests.
“That works so well with teenagers,” Julia calls from the kitchen. “Tell them that the police say you can’t talk.”
“Is that to make him look cooler?” Iris asks.
“We don’t care about that right now, Mom. If he invokes the police, people back off. We need one message as a family.” Julia comes into the living room, sounding like a public relations executive instead of a teenage student.
They all look at her in surprise. Iris thinks she should have scrolled through more of the messages to learn how Julia deflects people.
Iris catches Kyle gazing out the window, so she does as well, and then so do their children. The family stands there, in front of their living room window, all four of them, staring out at the police cars parked at their dead neighbor’s
home, watching the officers and investigator teams moving in and out of the house, forcing it to give up its secrets.
Julia breaks the silence. “We have to be there for Ned. Like we’re his family.”
“You’re right,” Iris says. “Of course.”
“Ned has to be our priority. Helping him.” Julia’s voice grows stronger, and Kyle and Iris exchange a glance.
“And Mike,” Grant says.
“Yeah, whatever, once his alibi clears,” Julia says. “I know you think he’s awesome, Grant, but he has to be the prime suspect. The boyfriend or husband always is.”
Iris glances at Kyle. Would anyone ever believe you could kill me? Yes, I think they would. We never know what someone is capable of. We kid ourselves that we do, because it makes life easier.
11
Iris and Kyle
They’re getting ready for bed. Iris brushing her teeth, Kyle stepping out of his jeans and sweatshirt, pulling on a T-shirt. He collapses into the bed. He feels both exhausted and wired, which is terrible; it might be a sleepless night. His whole body hurts: his face, the scrapes on his legs from being dragged down to the creek. He could drink more wine; he could take a pill to calm himself. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve quiet. He stares at the ceiling.
He has had time to think, to calm down, to grow angry again. Someone beat him up. Someone threatened his children if he talked. But that same someone could have killed him and didn’t. That same someone could have knocked him out and left him for the police to find in Danielle’s house as they arrived. But hadn’t.
Someone else was in her house at great risk. Why? If that man was Danielle’s murderer, then he hadn’t wanted to commit a second murder so quickly.
Looking for something, the same as Kyle was?
The flash drive he’s found at Danielle’s is hidden in another shoe. He doesn’t dare put it in a computer here.
“Is something going on between Julia and Ned?” he asks. He needs a break from his own thoughts, and he senses this is a ripe topic.
Iris spits, rinses. “Other than being friends? I’m not sure. I asked Grant. He shrugged.”
“He wouldn’t know.”
“He would,” Iris says.
“Why? They’re not close.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say about your kids.” She climbs into bed, holding her laptop. He looks at it like it’s the enemy. She ignores this look and opens it. “Julia and Grant fuss at each other, but they’re siblings. Don’t be silly.”
“They’re going through a phase, then, of not getting along,” he says, refusing to cede ground. “What are you doing?”
“I’m reading the latest news account.” She’s silent for a minute, studying the screen. “No arrests, no suspects. They released her name.”
They are both silent then. Thinking of Danielle.
“Everyone on the neighborhood Faceplace page is freaking out,” she said.
“Murder does that,” Kyle said.
“Some dads and moms are talking of forming a neighborhood patrol where they are just going to walk around at night like they’re a security team. People are posting that they’ve spotted strangers in the greenbelt. A group wants to put up cameras everywhere. Another group wants to turn us into a gated community, and the Carter girl said someone tried to open their back door early this morning.”
“They’ll find who did it,” he says quietly. Then he adds, not looking at her: “Why do you think Danielle was in the park at that hour?”
“Went for a walk, maybe.”
“That early? Because she’d been dead for a while, right?”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. I’m just guessing. You said her wrist was cold.”
Iris doesn’t answer.
“I mean, it’s not like it’s Zilker Park or Pease Park,” he said, referring to two large public parks in Austin. “This is in our quiet little neighborhood.”
“I think,” Iris said, “she went for a walk, and there was someone there doing something they shouldn’t be, maybe kids from another neighborhood—you know they’ve had problems with that—or someone who came into the park from the greenbelt, and maybe Danielle confronted them or she saw them smoking dope and they killed her.”
“For smoking dope,” he says in a flat voice.
“Well, I don’t know, doing something worse, then.” She isn’t looking at him. “No one could have wanted her dead.” But now she glances back at him as she sits on the edge of the bed.
“It’s weird,” he says, “when someone does something unexplained. Like going for a walk in the park at five o’clock in the morning, or whenever she did.”
“You were very late coming to bed last night.” There. She says it. Now their gazes meet.
“Is that a problem?” he asks. “I told you why when you woke up as I got into bed. I was working. I couldn’t sleep.”
“Did you see her walk by your office window?” His upstairs study faces out onto the street; if Danielle walked to the park, he might have spotted her. She might have looked at his study window, being the one light on in any of the houses along the road. She could imagine Danielle walking, head down, intent. She had been an intense woman. Walking toward her doom.
“No,” he says, but he waits ten seconds to say it. “If I had, I would have told the police.”
“I wonder if anyone’s security camera picked her up walking by their house,” Iris says. “Or anyone else walking to the park.”
He doesn’t answer that. “The police won’t tell us that. And she could have walked up there via the greenbelt.”
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” Iris asks, very softly. She touches his bruised face. “It’s OK. You can tell me anything. You know that.”
He stares at her for so long she thinks the worst. Then he says, “No, there is not. Is there anything you want to tell me?”
“No.” She slides under the sheets, closes the laptop. She kisses her husband’s forehead, touches his swollen lip with her finger, and then returns to her own pillow. She closes her eyes and he closes his.
She listens to the silence in the darkness and her own breathing and presses a fist against her mouth as she watches the shape of her husband in the bed, wondering what he’s thinking.
Wondering what he’s done.
12
Grant
Midnight.
Grant has set his email on his laptop and phone to ping if something arrives. When he hears the soft noise he’s half-asleep, but he sits up in the darkness.
It’s from the obscurely named Gmail account. From the Sender—this is how he thinks of this person now, with a name tied to activity.
He opens it.
There’s another picture this time, but included in the email, not a link to another website. A small house bundled in snow. The house is wooden, painted a soft green that seems almost hopeful for spring against the white of winter. He doesn’t know this house. There’s a cat sitting in the window—a small black cat—and he doesn’t know the cat, either.
There’s a message from the Sender below the picture.
Lies can surround a home and bury it in coldness. Be the cat, looking out the window. And look again in your tree.
A reference to lies again. Lies in rain, lies in snow. What does this mean? He searches Google Images again (“green house in snow”), but he doesn’t see the exact same picture in the results. Maybe this isn’t a stock photo.
He writes back: I don’t want any more emails from you.
The response is nearly instant: It’s hard to hear the truth for the first time in your life.
Grant stares at the words. Who is telling me lies?
Your family. They’ve lied to you for so long. Especially today. The money shows I’m serious. This isn’t a prank. This is your life.
Grant writes: Stop emailing me.
The Sender’s answer: if I stop talking to you then I might have to start talking to the police about what you
r daddy did. The bad, bad thing he did.
Grant freezes. You’re a liar, he writes. But he doesn’t press send. What if he makes the Sender mad? What if…?
Then he hears the soft click of the back door, which is directly under his room. He looks out the window and sees his sister heading out into the darkened greenbelt.
13
From Iris Pollitt’s “From Russia with Love” Adoption Journal
2002
My earlier entries have outlined all the paperwork we did—financial reports and assessments, the six home studies performed by a consultant, with results sent to Russia, the endless background checks. I was supposed to list every house I’d lived in, when my mom and I moved around a lot—yet I found them all, although my mother thought adopting from a foreign country was vaguely unpatriotic. (You’ll read this one day, baby, and I want you to know your gammy loves you; it’s just how she was.) I listed them on the form, the original, which I kept in pristine condition, working my notes up on printed copies because I lived in mortal terror I’d make a mistake on the submitted form—and that means I’d never get to meet you or be your mom. Our family’s finances were exhaustively chronicled—I even had to list the small trust set up for Julia by Kyle’s parents when she was born. I’m surprised they didn’t ask how much loose change was in Kyle’s pockets or between the sofa cushions.
Everything notarized, everything “apostilled” (my new word, which rules my life—apostilles authenticate the seals and signatures on birth certificates, court orders, or any other document issued by a public authority so that they can be recognized in foreign countries). The Russians, and Danielle, insist on all this. The stakes are high: if we take one misstep in authentication, we could lose our chance to have you…wherever you are.
Everything proper and done right.
I have a binder of notes, of forms, of checklists. It is like having a second job. You’ll appreciate this when it’s time for school reports. (Ask me for help, not Dad.)
SO I’d finished going through today’s paperwork TO BE YOUR MOM when Danielle’s unexpectedly at our front door, telling me THEY’VE FOUND YOU for us. (My penmanship is a little shaky right now. I just realized they don’t teach cursive anymore. Will you be able to read this? Oh, the thoughts I have on a day like today.)