The Big Bang

by Linda Joffe Hull

  The door slammed behind him.

  ***

  Hope was at the bottom of the driveway as Frank rushed down his front steps.

  “Frank,” she said.

  He looked up.

  Froze.

  Their eyes met.

  “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life,” he said, turned, and ran down the cul-de-sac and onto Harmony Valley Drive.

  Before she could process what he’d said or what he hadn’t given her the chance to ask, she heard the tinny jingle of an ice cream truck, the screech of wheels, and a horrifying thud.

  Part V

  BIRTH

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  14.1. Amendment of Articles and Bylaws: The Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws may be amended with the provisions set forth in such instruments.

  Maryellen wasn’t sure what a grieving widow was supposed to feel or think or notice, but how could she not notice what a truly beautiful, unseasonably temperate day it was? How could she not appreciate how fragrant the flower arrangements, particularly the enormous wreath of lilies and freesia sent by the Estridges, whom she had to beg not to interrupt their treatment to fly in? How unusually pleasant the breeze rustling through the Harmony Hills Neighborhood Church on what should have been a sweltering, stifling memorial service?

  Somehow wasn’t.

  Somehow, as Roger Manning, Frank’s fellow clergyman and biggest competition, described the rewards her husband was already enjoying in his new home, she kept thinking about how much she’d like a warm chocolate chip cookie, right out of the oven, from the home he’d left.

  Along with a cold glass of milk.

  “Rest assured a man as virtuous as Frank Griffin—a respected minister, a successful pharmaceutical sales representative, a loving husband and father—has bountiful pleasures waiting for him in Heaven.”

  A baby wailed from somewhere behind her.

  Despite a vague sense of irony, Maryellen felt oddly free.

  Had to be the shock.

  She’d known before the first scream and then the knock on the door that something was wrong, but seeing Frank, lying there lifeless, his legs sticking out beneath the wheels of the ice cream truck, was too surreal to process. The last few days since, a blur of hushed condolence calls, casserole deliveries, and arrangements she’d helped make for others but never imagined orchestrating for herself.

  For Frank.

  His body just released from the hospital morgue.

  Maryellen put her arm around Eva, who was now sobbing in great gasps. She felt a terrible ache for her stricken daughter, but somehow, nothing in particular for herself.

  “And while we thank God for the happiness Frank is enjoying in the bosom of the Lord, one also has to feel righteous indignation. Why did He choose to take a man so ambitious, so full of future greatness, and so beloved from us?” Roger paused, the same way Frank would have. “So early.”

  The only thing she felt with the strength or conviction she thought she was supposed to feel, was that if it weren’t for Eva, she might have come untethered.

  Float away.

  “I mean this was a guy who loved life, loved a challenge, a guy who didn’t lose.” Reverend Roger smiled the benevolent smile of one who’d not only beaten Frank in the great race, but was acing his dress rehearsal as heir apparent to the flock he’d left behind. “And while we always win when we join the Lord, I wish I understood why He chose to take him just when he’d accomplished his biggest goal. Folks, I was with Frank just last week and I will never, ever, forget his pure elation as we discussed the land deal he’d inked for the Melody Mountain Community Church.”

  Maryellen had to concentrate to not shake her head. It was just like Frank to tell Roger he’d completed a deal he was still $2,000 short of finalizing.

  With the quiet rustle that filled the room, a certain peace filled Maryellen. At least Will wouldn’t have to know exactly where that land was to have been.

  Maryellen put her arm around her daughter as she sobbed that much harder.

  Not that it mattered now.

  The only thing that did matter was that Eva hadn’t really run away, not out of text message range anyway, and wherever it was she had gone was far enough to miss the horror of seeing her father rolled off, covered by a sheet. Maryellen thanked God again Eva’s missing clothing had reappeared in her closet sometime after that unspeakable evening spent in the same emergency room where she’d sat with Will, Tim, and Frank waiting for Hope…

  Who’s responsible here?

  I am, they said.

  All three of them.

  “While we will all ask this and other questions, it’s not for us to try, nor maybe will we ever understand His plan in all this…”

  Didn’t matter now.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Section 8. Drainage. For drainage purposes, the grades and

  low elevations as left by the Developer shall be considered the natural drainage.

  Never again would Hope hear the jingle of an approaching ice cream truck without conjuring the image of Frank running into oncoming traffic. She’d be haunted by the sight of his lifeless body for the rest of her life.

  And yet, hadn’t she been freed?

  She couldn’t look Maryellen in the eye and might never be able to again. She couldn’t stop watching Eva sob at the funeral, nor stop herself from marveling at how pretty she really was. From the picture memorial it was clear she’d been fair as a baby. Even if the baby did end up dark-haired and Hope had to claim some sort of Black Irish throwback, who would be the wiser?

  Hope patted the hint of bloat that had settled into her mid-section.

  Her job now was to protect the secret and anyone who could be hurt by knowing the answer she herself wasn’t totally, entirely sure of.

  Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

  Or, maybe she was.

  ***

  “So unbelievably, incredibly tragic.” Theresa handed Tim a cup of coffee. “I can’t even begin to process how awful I feel for Maryellen and poor Eva.”

  “Terrible,” he said, reaching for the sugar bowl. “Beyond terrible.”

  “I’m going to call over there later and see if there’s anything I can do,” Theresa said.

  “Good idea,” Tim said. “I’m headed over to the rec center to clean out the office for Maryellen.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Theresa said.

  “I volunteered to take on the playground problem, too.” Tim said. All he had to do was make a few calls, get things resolved, and he was a shoe-in for the presidential slot.

  Theresa cracked an egg into the frying pan. “Really great.”

  ***

  “I can’t believe Frank met his end at the hands of a drunk driver behind the wheel of an ice cream truck.” Will stepped into the shower. “The I told you so of it all makes me feel almost responsible.”

  “Imagine how Hope Jordan must feel,” Meg said. “She was coming over to talk to him and saw the whole thing.”

  Will turned on the spigot.

  “She seemed almost as shaken up as Maryellen and Eva.”

  “Yup.” He dunked his head under the warm, calming water and tried not to think about it.

  “Will?”

  He squeezed shampoo into his hand. “Huh?”

  Meg opened the shower door. “Do I need to be concerned about Hope?”

  “She does seem really distressed.”

  “About you and her, I mean.”

  He avoided that intense look he knew too well and couldn’t deal with by lathering his hair. “Not at all.”

  “You do know there is a rumor floating around?”

  “Rumor being the key word.” He paused before rinsing to make brief eye contact. “Started by Laney, of all people.”

  “I know, but…”

  “But nothing.”

  Will’s cell phone rang.

  “L
et it go to voice mail,” Meg said.

  “I need you to check and see who it is first.”

  “But—”

  “Could be really important, Meg.”

  She sighed, but turned for the phone. “Willams Forensic Engineering.”

  “Sorry,” Will bounded out of the shower, simultaneously drying his head and reaching for the phone. “Got to take this.”

  ***

  Maryellen woke to the whoosh of something being dragged down the carpeted hallway. She flew out of bed and opened the door to her daughter tugging what appeared to be her now full trunk toward the top of the stairs.

  “Ready to go,” Eva said.

  “Go where?”

  “Camp.” Tears ran down Eva’s face. “Daddy wanted me to go to camp.”

  “Honey,” Maryellen said. “You’re not going, now.”

  “But I… Daddy wanted me to learn to lead and I’m a leader.” Eva began to sob. “I was up all night packing.”

  “So we’ll unpack.”

  “Daddy wanted me to go so badly—”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Not okay. Not okay. Not okay,” Eva said, sounding eerily like Frank.

  “Let go of the trunk.” She uncurled Eva’s fingers from the handle and put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “You need sleep.”

  “Can’t. Haven’t. Don’t want…”

  “Have to.” Maryellen led her into the bathroom, took a sleeping pill from the prescription the doctor insisted she fill for herself, and gave one to Eva.

  “Daddy’s gone,” Eva said accepting a cup of water. “And it’s all my fault.”

  “Honey, it was an accident. A terrible accident.”

  “He was running to find me.”

  “Running,” Maryellen said, uncertain where he was going, but sure it wasn’t entirely to find Eva. “He wasn’t looking where he was going.”

  “I killed Daddy.”

  “The ice cream truck driver was drinking and—”

  “You don’t understand.” Eva trembled. “I…”

  “I told your dad he shouldn’t have signed you up for that camp without talking to you first, but he didn’t listen,” she said. “He didn’t hear.”

  “But Mom,” her voice wavered. “I…”

  “I should have listened, too,” Maryellen said.

  “You did,” Eva said. “That night.”

  The icy dread rushed through Maryellen. “You need to sleep.”

  “It’s all my fault Daddy’s—”

  “It’s not your fault.” Maryellen guided her toward her (and not Frank’s) side of the bed. As she settled her under the covers, the floral duvet accentuated the light blue of Eva’s T-shirt. How long had it been since she’d seen her daughter in anything other than black, and at a time where she’d never expect to see her in anything else? “It’s all going to be okay.”

  “Not okay,” Eva said as she started to doze off. “Not okay.”

  Maryellen tried not to hyperventilate as she stroked her daughter’s hair. The second she nodded off, Maryellen rushed downstairs to breathe into a paper sack. She settled in front of her computer to get whatever relief and distraction checking her e-mail could provide.

  The first e-mail to pop up was a response to her application from the Denver Public Library.

  She turned off the computer and breathed harder into the bag.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Section 1.5. Completion of Construction. Construction of a home on a Lot, once started, must be diligently pursued and completed within a reasonable time.

  “The building plan filed with the city and county required perimeter drains, but there aren’t any in our quadrant of the development.” Will parked in the Tech Center high-rise lot. “Henderson Homes was apparently strapped from breaking ground on the MM Collection and a project in North Denver and decided to cut corners.”

  “Unbelievable.” Roseanne Goldberg, who he’d invited along, shook her head.

  “To cover their bets they offered enhanced warranties to those of us in the drainage challenged areas.”

  “And left a couple especially damp lots empty,” she added.

  “I told everyone there was something wrong with that land.” Will shut the car door. “I’m not leaving until they admit what they’ve done and agree to make everything right.”

  “They’re going to deny—”

  “Which is why I didn’t call or give them any advance warning,” he said.

  “I’m sure they’ll have some excuse about the drainage system being unnecessary given their take on the soils report,” Roseanne said.

  “The Estridge house is a smoking gun,” Will said “So much so, the forensic engineer left and came back to tell me he recommended their house be torn down and rebuilt.”

  “Which Frank dismissed summarily.”

  “But Laney and Steve didn’t,” Will said. “They’re waiting on a revised report from the structural warranty people.”

  They entered the building.

  Will pressed the button for the third floor.

  They got on and rode up in silence.

  The elevator doors slid open and they stepped into a hallway containing a single set of double doors.

  Locked double doors.

  The Henderson Homes sign was gone.

  The HH logo left a ghostly imprint on the wall.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Section 5. Severability: Invalidation of any covenant or restriction by judgment or court order shall not affect any other provisions, which shall remain in full force and effect.

  Frank wasn’t panicking about Eva like he should have been.

  He wasn’t panicking about Hope like Maryellen suspected he might have been.

  Whoever called Frank must have told him Henderson Homes had gone belly up, causing Frank to freak out and run out the door to escape.

  Bad as it was, Maryellen felt sort of relieved about what it wasn’t.

  And then Roger Manning called.

  Good thing you’ve got the deed in hand, he’d said.

  She pushed away everything, including the thoughts the lingering smell of Old Spice conjured as she opened the door to Frank’s office.

  She powered up his computer and tried to open the file cabinet.

  Locked.

  A password popped up on his computer.

  His desk drawer was also locked.

  She picked up his office phone and checked the messages. All were condolence calls from pharmaceutical clients.

  Tears, but of frustration, slid down her cheeks. Why hadn’t she ever thought to ask him about passwords, where he kept keys, or anything about his system in case of an emergency?

  Would he even have told her?

  She leafed through a stack of correspondence and bills in his inbox.

  Now, her inbox.

  She found nothing and, at the same time, everything she should have been aware of all these years, but let Frank handle. To fight off the growing feeling that the floor was dropping out from beneath her, she closed her eyes. Where would he have put the deed, assuming there was one?

  She stood still until she’d calmed herself enough to reopen her eyes. When she did, light reflected off the silver box he kept on the shelf above his desk.

  She reached up and opened the lid.

  A key.

  She opened his desk drawer, pushed away the paper clips, spare pens, mints and found another set of keys.

  She unlocked the file cabinet.

  Riffling through every file, she found records related to the various medical devices and pharmaceuticals he’d repped until she reached a Pendaflex in the bottom drawer at the back of the cabinet.

  It was labeled Viagra.

  He’d never repped Viagra, much less worked for the company.

  Inside was another key and an index card with the password for his rec center computer:

  OVALOFFICE.

  ***

  Maryellen opened the door to Frank�
�s rec center office, locked the door behind her, and forced herself to walk across the room and slide the key into the file cabinet lock.

  The click felt somehow reminiscent of Russian roulette.

  More so when she started to leaf through the church files.

  She skimmed myriad counseling records, overstuffed files filled with sermon, fund-raising, and community-building ideas until she came upon a Pendaflex marked DONATIONS. Inside, she found printouts of every donation, down to the penny, made to the building and all other funds since the inception of the church.

  $38,0133.12 worth of donations were earmarked for the building fund.

  She opened the file tucked behind and entitled, MELODY MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY CHURCH FINANCIALS, pulled the most recent profit-and-loss statement from the front of the folder, and located the line item, Building Fund.

  $38,0133.12.

  Her heart, beating frenetically, dropped back down and was almost normal by the time she went through the rest of the files and pulled the last folder.

  Inside, like she expected, was a key and a three-by-five card with the password for the home computer: MELEVA.

  For one emotion-fraught moment she thought she might shake the grip of her steely shock when she realized the password was a combination of his nickname for her and the name Eva had so desperately wanted to be called by him.

  She might even have cried, had she not also found copies of three checks, one for twenty-three thousand, one for ten thousand, and one for five thousand, all written on an account entitled MMCC Building Fund.

  The payee on all three was Henderson Homes.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Duty to Maintain Insurance: The Community Association shall keep in force at all times, to the extent fully attainable, comprehensive liability and casualty insurance.

  “They haven’t declared Chapter Eleven?” the Melody Mountain Ranch Community Association lawyer asked.

  “Not to our knowledge,” Trautman said.

  Under different circumstances, Tim’s de facto step-in as HOB president would have pissed Will off to the same degree the spectacular view of the Front Range from the lawyer’s seventeenth floor window would have buoyed his spirits.