by Mary Kubica
“If she’s alive, we take her to the hospital,” I say. “Promise me, Bea. Promise me we can take her to the hospital if she’s alive.”
“She isn’t alive.”
“I heard her. She made a noise.”
“You’re hearing things.”
Bea pulls away. I don’t know where we’re going or how long it will take to get there. If Shelby is alive, I pray there’s enough oxygen in the trunk to last awhile.
But what about the exhaust pipe so close to the trunk? Does carbon dioxide get in?
And if she’s bleeding internally, how long until she bleeds out?
It’s only after we’ve gone a block that Bea turns on the headlights.
“If you heard something,” Bea says after a while, “it’s because bodies make noises when they die.”
Bea keeps her eyes on the road. She won’t look at me.
Rain begins to fall in big, fat glops. It splatters against the windshield. If the weathercasters are right, this is the first of many rains to come.
“Can’t we just check?” I ask a few miles from home. The hospital is nearby. If we check and she’s alive, we can take her there.
“Shut up, Meredith. Just please shut the fuck up!” Bea snaps.
I fall silent. I think of Shelby in the trunk. I think of what we’ve done. I think of Jason and her baby at home. I think of Josh, at home in our bed, waiting for me to come.
We drive for miles. We drive through town and then keep going. The road turns wooded. It cuts through the river’s floodplain, on the outer edges of a forest preserve. The houses disappear. The road turns narrow, gravel. The trees close ranks around us, scratching on the hood of the car.
That’s where Bea stops the car, in the middle of the abandoned gravel road. We get out. “We can’t do this. I don’t want to do this, Bea.”
“I’m not going to jail,” she says. She’s hell-bent on that. I’ve never seen this side of Bea. I don’t know who this woman is, but I know this woman is as scared as me, even if it manifests itself as anger and control. Bea is a good person. She’s not a psychopath. But she’s backed into a corner, desperate for a way out. This is that way.
She opens the trunk. I brace myself, not knowing whether we’ll find Shelby dead or alive.
Shelby is dead. She has no pulse. Already the earliest stages of rigor mortis have begun to set in. Her face is fixed in a terrifying grimace. The coloration of her skin has changed.
But she’s shifted positions since we laid her in the trunk. This bothers me.
Was she alive and deliberatively moved inside the trunk, trying desperately to get out?
Or was she dead and kinetic energy moved her?
I can’t stop thinking about it, obsessing over it.
But other than to assuage my guilt, it doesn’t matter. Shelby is dead.
I’ve lost all track of time. I don’t know how long ago the accident was, or how long we were driving.
The rain is steady. As we carry Shelby deeper into the woods, she slips. Her ankles, in my wet hands, are like sardines. They’re hard to hold on to. The ground is soft, wet. We trip over tree roots. We sink into the mud.
Here, we don’t have to worry about being quiet.
We go a couple hundred feet, deep into the trees. I hear the river flowing in the distance. It moves fast. My first thought is that Bea is going to toss Shelby’s body into the river.
But then she stops short of the river. She sets her half of Shelby on the ground. It’s ungentle.
With her gloved hands, Bea starts digging into the softened earth. “You just going to stand there and watch?” she asks. I gently lower Shelby’s legs to the ground. I drop to my knees. I start carving away at the dirt, with my hands still covered by my shirtsleeves. Shelby’s body lies beside me, watching. My actions are reactive, unconscious. I go through the motions, because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t leave. Bea is the one with the keys. She’s calling the shots. I cry as I dig. For a minute my whole body heaves. I try to get control of myself but I’m so overcome with emotion. Shock, horror, guilt, fear.
It takes forever to dig a hole big enough for Shelby’s body. It’s sloppy at best. It’s not nearly deep or wide enough. We don’t have a shovel. But at some point Bea finds an ice scraper in her trunk and we take turns with that. We find tree limbs and use those, too, to chisel away the dirt.
Before we bury her, Bea strips her of her clothes. She savagely tears her shirt from her head. She yanks her pants down. She leaves her underwear around her knees.
Naked, Shelby still carries the baby weight. She hasn’t lost the extra pounds that worried her so. Her breasts are huge, sagging. They fall out of the bra that Bea tugs from her arms.
I watch Bea as she takes Shelby’s shoes. I think of the shame and indignity of being found naked. One final disgrace. I look away. I can’t watch.
“Why, Bea?” I ask.
“If she’s naked, it implies something sexual happened here. The police will go searching for a man.”
We drag her into the hole. We use the dirt and the mud that we’ve unearthed to cover her up. We canvass the forest, gathering whatever detritus we can find: leaves and sticks. We lay those on top of the mud. Shelby’s body shows as a protuberance from the earth. But it’s slight. With any luck, no one will find her here.
At some point in our drive home, it stops raining.
Bea stops just short of our houses, pulling to the side of the street.
“What are we doing?” I ask.
Bea kills the engine. She says only, “Follow me.” We get out of the car and start moving down the sidewalk. We’re both filthy, caked with mud. It’s on my clothes, my hands, my shoes. It’s in my hair.
Bea asks if I have bleach. I tell her I do. By now the rain has washed Shelby’s blood from the street. It’s no longer visible. No one will know it was there.
But Bea’s trunk still shows evidence of blood. That needs to be cleaned.
“Where is it?” she asks, walking fast. Her legs are longer than mine. She doesn’t wait up for me. I have to jog to keep up.
“In the garage,” I say. It’s where Josh and I keep all the cleaning supplies, so that Wyatt and the kids can’t get into them by accident.
We come to my house. It’s surreal, standing outside it at this time of night. I don’t recognize my own yard. “Go get it,” she says, about the bleach. “I’ll wait here.” She stands in the yard. The yard is wooded. The neighborhood is hundreds of years old. Some of the trees were here before the homes. They provide coverage. No one can see us, we think.
My house is dark. The porch lights are off. Josh must have forgotten to turn them on for me. He often does. It has to be the middle of the night. If Josh were to wake, he’d be worried. But Josh is a sound sleeper. The odds of him waking up are slim. It’s far more likely one of the kids would wake up and come looking for me.
I wonder about Jason. Is he sound asleep like Josh, or is he awake, worried, wondering why Shelby isn’t home from her run?
I slink into the garage. I leave the lights off. I move by rote. I find the bleach and return to Bea. It’s cold outside. Only now, as the adrenaline slows, do I notice. I start to shiver. It’s slight at first, but then turns considerable. My body jerks.
Bea takes the bleach from my hand. “I’ll take it from here,” she says. “Go take a shower and go to bed. And remember, not a word to anyone, do you hear? Not a word.”
I offer to help Bea clean. She doesn’t want my help.
Before she leaves, she makes me strip naked.
“Why?” I ask.
“Just do it,” she says.
On my own front lawn, I stand and strip down to my underwear and bra. I’m too devastated to be self-conscious. Bea takes my clothes from me. “What are you doing with those?” I ask. They’re covered in mud, in blood
.
“I have to get rid of them. They’re evidence,” is what she says, and then, “Go home, Meredith. Go home to your husband and kids. Forget all about what happened tonight.”
She starts to walk away from me. I grab her arm. “And if I can’t?” I ask, knowing I’ll never forget this night.
“You need to,” she says as she shrugs me off and leaves.
LEO
NOW
I don’t go to the hypnosis. I go to school because Dad makes me go. He’s worried I’ve missed so many days that I’m starting to fall behind.
The day sucks as school days do. When I get home, you and Dad are in the kitchen. I come in and overhear you tell Dad that you’re sorry. I hang back, by the door, watching you, wondering what you’re sorry for. You look so small. You stare down at your hands, picking at hangnails that you’ve torn and bitten off.
Dad’s bought you clothes of your own and, even though they fit right, they’re not right. Girls don’t wear clothes like that these days because Dad had to shop in the little-girls section and not the one for teens. There’s a panda bear on your shirt. It has rainbows for ears. A girl like Piper Hanaka wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that.
“I’m sorry, sir,” you say again.
Dad tells you, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t know. How could you have known?”
There’s a quaver to Dad’s voice. I know it by heart. He just barely manages to keep the valve closed so the waterworks don’t begin. As I watch, Dad puts his arms out like he might hug you. You shrink back, banging into the countertop. Dad gets the point. He puts his arms down, knowing you’re more of a trauma victim than his daughter. You may never be the daughter he used to know.
Dad hasn’t gone back to work since you’ve been home. He’s on what’s called FMLA. He isn’t getting paid but that doesn’t matter because we have money. Dad’s a workaholic. After you and Mom left, he would rather have been at work than home with me. We never went on vacation or did anything fun. He thinks he’s undeserving of nice things. His car is a twelve-year-old Passat with a hundred thousand miles on it, when he could easily afford the same Mercedes-Benz the neighbors just got.
“It’s not your fault,” Dad says.
I close the front door and let my backpack drop loud enough that you know I’m home. I go to the kitchen. “How’d it go?” I ask. I help myself to an apple, sink my teeth into it. You and Dad are mute. “The hypnosis,” I say, with a mouthful of apple, because no one’s answering me. “How did it go?”
“Good,” Dad says, busying himself making dinner. He takes ground beef from the refrigerator, a skillet from the cabinet. He sets the skillet down lightly, careful to keep noise to a minimum for your sake. “It was very informative. We learned a lot. I’m glad we did it.”
Talk about beating around the bush.
I look from Dad to you. You stand with your shoulders rounded, your head slumped forward. I take another bite of my apple. My question this time is less open-ended. “What did you find out?”
It’s quiet at first. Everyone’s disinclined to tell me. I wait it out and, in the end, you’re the one who does.
“Gus ain’t real,” you say. You shuffle your feet, staring down at them so that your hair falls in your eyes.
My jaw hits the floor. “What do you mean he isn’t real?”
You’re red-faced when you say it. “Gus is pretend. I made him all up.”
This gets a rise out of me. After all that Dad has done for you, you go and do something stupid like this. You got Dad and the cops all worked up about some kid who didn’t exist.
“Why would you do that?” I ask.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“What do you mean you didn’t mean to?” I’m mad because a person doesn’t just go and invent another person by accident. You did it for attention. For a reaction.
“Leave it be, Leo,” Dad says. His voice is stern. He frowns at me.
But I won’t leave it be. “She’s a liar, Dad.”
You pull a face. Dad does, too. I might as well have hit you.
“Don’t call your sister names.”
“But she is,” I say.
“She’s not.”
“Then what is she, a schizo?”
It’s out of my mouth before I can think better of it. I don’t mean to be a jerkweed. I just am. But I’m pissed. Because I thought you and I were getting close. I thought you were opening up to me. Turns out I was wrong.
Dad slams a wooden spoon on the countertop. The sound is loud. “Damn it, Leo! Just shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In all my life, Dad’s never told me to shut up. You freak out, because of the noise. You’re shaking. You start to cry. Or maybe that’s pretend, too. Maybe you’re making that up just to dupe us.
Dad coaxes you into a chair. He gets you something to drink. He gets you one of those pills the shrink prescribed for you.
If I lied, Dad would take my internet away for a month. You lie and he babies you.
After you’re done shitting your pants, Dad goes back to his ground beef. I stand there watching the whole thing and then leave.
No one asks about my day.
MEREDITH
11 YEARS BEFORE
May
The next morning I’m sore. My whole body aches. I wake to Josh’s lips teasing mine. My eyes open and there he is, suspended above me. “You were supposed to wake me up when you got home,” he razzes me. “We had a date.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. My saliva is thick, my mouth like cotton. It’s hard to swallow.
“Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
I have trouble getting out of bed. It takes time. The room spins. I have a headache, one that creeps up the back of my neck.
Josh, watching me, laughs. “Looks like you and Bea had fun after we left.”
My cheeks flame. Josh doesn’t know the half of it. All he knows is that Bea and I stayed at the bar and had another drink after he and Kate left. He thinks I’m hungover.
“What time did you get home? I tried staying up for a while,” he says, and I tell him that I don’t know, that we lost track of time.
“Bea didn’t want to leave,” I say.
What I wouldn’t give to go back to last night, to go home with Josh instead of staying with Bea.
I push myself from bed. I think that when Josh looks at me, I must look different, changed. Last night, after I let myself in, I showered in our first-floor bathroom. I couldn’t risk waking him or the kids. I went to bed with my hair still wet. That was only four or five hours ago. If he looks closely enough, he’ll see it’s still wet.
“You want coffee?” Josh asks, standing at the mirror, fixing his tie. I say yes, though I’m not sure I can hold anything down. “Just give me a minute. I’ll brew a fresh pot.”
I’m no sooner on my feet than I have to rush past Josh and to the toilet. I fall to my knees before it, grasping the seat with clammy hands. The three or four drinks I had last night are not enough to make me sick. It’s what came after that lays waste to my insides.
“Wow,” Josh says, coming up behind me. He stands in the bathroom doorway, smirking proudly as I wipe the vomit from my mouth with the back of a hand. “That was a heck of a birthday celebration. You sure showed Bea a good time. She’s lucky to have you.”
I’m not known as being the life of the party. I’m more of a wet blanket when it comes to nights out. I’m typically the first to want to go home. This is uncharacteristic of me. Josh is relishing the idea of me being hungover because it doesn’t happen often.
He fetches a washcloth from the vanity. He soaks it in cold water and hands it to me. As I take it, I see mud still buried beneath my fingernails, despite my scrubbing last night.
I hide my hands from J
osh. My telltale heart is beating.
Word begins to spread later that day. It starts on Facebook. It starts as a plea. Shelby and I are Facebook friends, as I’m Facebook friends with many of my clients. Shelby is tagged in another friend’s post. That friend is looking for her.
That evening, Shelby makes the local news.
Josh and I watch together. The kids are in bed; it’s the ten o’clock news. I freeze up when the story breaks, barely daring to breathe as the anchorwoman talks about Shelby. I should tell Josh that I know her. I should tell Josh she’s a client.
But I get cold feet. I hesitate because I’ve never been much of an actor. I worry my reaction would come off as unauthentic and give me away.
And then, because I didn’t do it right away, I can’t tell him later. Because he’d want to know why I didn’t tell him before. It’s the same as what happened with Marty. As the days go on, I can’t tell him about the malpractice suit or Dr. Feingold or any of it, because it would all look so dodgy and dishonest.
I brood over the police coming by, asking if I know Shelby, and me having to decide whether to lie. If I lie, I’d never get away with it. But if I told the truth, it might get back to Josh, and then he’d discover the lie by omission. It’s a catch-22. I can’t win.
The next day, Bea comes to the house. I’m alone when she comes.
“Should we be seen together?” I ask when we’re behind closed doors.
“Why would that matter, Meredith?” she asks.
“Because of what we did,” I hiss under my breath.
“And what was that?” she asks. “Go to the bar and have a good time?” She tells me that to avoid suspicion, I have to act normal.
I recoil, offended. “I am acting normal,” I say, though I’m not. I’m far from it.
Bea asks what I would do if a client of mine ever went missing. “I don’t know,” I say, controlling the sudden urge to cry. Bea, before me, is impassive, tall. She looms over me in the foyer of my home. She didn’t bring an umbrella and so she’s wet. She drips onto my entry rug. “It’s never happened before.”