He Was Not There

by P. D. Workman

  He looked up to see a nurse hovering a few feet away from him, clipboard in hand.

  “Would you come with me, please?”

  34

  Tyrrell visited him. Mr. Peterson visited him. Kenzie did not. Zachary didn’t get any calls or messages from her. The staff in the unit didn’t mention any inquiries from her. Zachary knew he should call her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. As long as he didn’t talk to her, it wasn’t officially over. He could pretend that she was too busy, like he was, and that when life settled down for both of them, they would again be cuddling on the couch to watch an old Phillip Marlowe flick with a big bowl of popcorn resting on both of their laps.

  And Heather came. Grant was with her, but he stayed in the background, letting her visit with Zachary.

  “Hey, Feathers,” Zachary awkwardly gave her a hug around the shoulders. “How are you doing?”

  She looked around the unit. “Glad it’s you here and not me.” She laughed. “I guess that’s a pretty tactless thing to say, isn’t it? I guess I mean I’m lucky they didn’t commit me involuntarily. After what I did… they certainly could have said that I was a danger to others and needed to be evaluated.”

  Zachary nodded. He wasn’t offended by her saying that she didn’t want to be there. “So is everything going to work out? Did they… do the DNA test against Astor?”

  “It could drive a person crazy how long it takes to get results back, even when they are rushing it. But I know what it’s going to say.”

  She sounded certain of herself. And she was calm about it. She didn’t set any alarm bells ringing for Zachary. She sat down with him and held his hand for a minute. Her touch was reassuring, and in his mind’s eye he could see the little mother he had known. A blond, scraggle-haired gamine with freckles sprinkled across her nose, taking him in hand to teach him life lessons and to try to keep him from running wild or attracting the attention of their parents. She gave his hand a squeeze, and he suspected that she was thinking of a short, spindly-legged boy with buzzed dark hair and the attention span of a gnat.

  “I got a call from Ella.”

  He frowned. He took a minute to recall who Ella was. Ella Day, the genealogist who had worked on the genetic family tree. She had probably been concerned about Heather and wondered whether she wanted any further details of the baby’s heritage. He wondered whether she had been able to pin down the father as Robert Astor from the GENEmatch database, or whether she’d only been able to isolate that branch of the tree.

  “What did she have to say?”

  “There are different flags that can be set in the GENEmatch database, for privacy and contact information. How much you want to reveal to the public if someone ends up being a close hit.”

  He nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “When she uploaded the DNA profile, it triggered another match that wasn’t public information. But I guess the person who uploaded his information got an email notification about it, so that he had the option of seeing what had been posted and making contact.”

  Zachary looked into Heather’s eyes, and saw happiness rather than fear. “Was it…?”

  “My son.” Her eyes teared up. She looked at the ceiling and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “The baby that I gave up.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  “Yes. It was…” She closed her eyes, searching for the words. “It was such a comfort.” She opened her eyes again. “He has a wonderful family. It wasn’t like us, being raised in foster care. He had a stable, loving family and he’s very attached to them. It’s what I wanted for him.”

  “And now he knows who his biological mother is too.”

  She nodded. “He’s going to keep in contact.”

  “That’s cool.” Zachary smiled. “Awesome.”

  “Thank you so much for helping me. Not just for solving a cold case that everybody said was impossible, but for helping me to find him too. I was afraid that I would resent him, or see Mr. Astor in him. But he’s okay. I can look at him and just see Mikey, my son, and not anyone else. And know that he turned out okay.”

  Zachary walked out of the hospital to wait for his cab. It felt good to be out in the fresh air. He wasn’t one hundred percent okay, but when was the last time he had been?

  He’d been through some intensive therapy, another overhaul of his meds, and had been kept under observation for a couple of weeks to ensure that he was sleeping properly and wasn’t being overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts. Healing would be an ongoing process, as it always was.

  He did a double-take and blinked at the figure at the end of the sidewalk outside of the hospital entrance. The man turned and saw Zachary at the same time.

  “Oh.” He looked awkward. “Zachary. Hello.”

  Zachary approached Gordon hesitantly. His brain went spinning wildly with speculations of why Bridget’s partner would be at the hospital. Bridget had been ill. She had said that the cancer wasn’t back, but maybe she just hadn’t known yet. Something had obviously been wrong. Gordon wasn’t there for himself.

  Gordon nodded to the cigarette in his hand, holding it away from himself as if it belonged to someone else. “Filthy habit. Just when you think you have it licked, some stressor kicks in and you’re out on the sidewalk smoking again, everybody coughing and glaring at you as they walk by.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, she’s fine,” Gordon said immediately. “Just getting dehydrated. Can’t keep anything down and we needed to get some fluids into her.”

  Zachary swallowed. Bridget must be on chemo again. Why had she lied to him? She’d said right to his face that the cancer wasn’t back. He knew that a second appearance of the cancer so soon did not bode well for her chances of survival. Every time it came back, her odds went down significantly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Gordon didn’t owe him any explanation. There was no rule that said Bridget had to report a recurrence of her cancer to her ex, or that Gordon should. Zachary was supposed to be living his own life, not always getting wrapped up in hers.

  Gordon looked at him blankly. “Bridget said she had seen you. She didn’t tell you?”

  “I asked her, she said the cancer wasn’t back.”

  “Oh, no.” Gordon agreed. He touched Zachary’s forearm briefly. “Heavens, not that.” He searched Zachary’s eyes. “She’s pregnant.”

  35

  Zachary was still reeling when he got back home. He busied himself with housekeeping details, putting on the coffee machine and taking out the garbage that he had neglected to dispose of before going to the hospital and which smelled to high heaven. He filled the sink to soak the dishes with petrified food cemented to them.

  He didn’t realize that he’d left the door open when he took the garbage out until he looked up and saw Kenzie standing there.

  “Oh. I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Yeah, you seem a little distracted.”

  Zachary didn’t know what to say to her.

  “Lorne said that you were getting out today,” Kenzie explained. She stepped into the kitchen and wrinkled her nose at the smell of the garbage that still lingered there. “I figured it would be a good time to stop by and get my things.”

  “Kenzie, I…”

  “I pride myself on being able to take a hint, Zachary. You’ve been avoiding me. Pushing me away. I get it.”

  “I just…” He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know what he wanted. He had hoped that once he was ready, she would come back, and they would be able to resume where they had left off. But he had screwed up by not talking to her about it. He had instead been a coward and avoided talking to her. What was she supposed to think?

  He didn’t want her to take her things. He didn’t want her to be angry and disappointed in him. He’d never thought that she would just give up on him.

  She faced him, her face pink. “Lorne told me that you were upset about me talking to him about our relationship.”

&
nbsp; “Well… yeah, sort of…”

  “No ‘sort of’ about it. Be honest with me, Zachary. You can at least do that.”

  He looked down at his hands, anxious and embarrassed. He hadn’t wanted to make a big deal of it. But it had bothered him. He forgave her for it; he knew that she was only trying to sort things out and figure out how to have a relationship with him, or if she even could.

  “I was upset,” he admitted.

  “I shouldn’t have talked to him. Not without your permission. I should have talked more to you about it, or asked if we could see your therapist together to discuss it. I just thought that Lorne might have some insight. He’s known you longer than anyone else, saw you as a kid, and single, and with Bridget, so I just thought… he could help me to understand what you were going through and weren’t ready to talk about. I knew that whatever happened with Archuro had triggered some really bad stuff. But I didn’t know if it was all Teddy, or if it went deeper than that.”

  “I guess… it’s deeper,” he admitted. Too little, too late.

  “I guess so,” Kenzie agreed.

  She headed toward the bedroom to gather up her belongings. Zachary followed her. He watched as she went through the drawers and closet and the little bathroom to search out anything that was hers.

  “Kenzie, can we still—”

  “Oh, don’t give me the ‘can we still be friends’ speech. Show me a little respect.”

  He stood there, tapping his fingers to the sides of his legs, unable to be still.

  “You should know that I talked to Bridget too,” Kenzie said, without turning around to face him.

  “What?”

  “I know. It was stupid. I was desperate. You were so… it was obvious how badly you were hurting. And then when we started to get more intimate and it was obvious that you were just… totally checking out, I wanted to know if it had always been that way. And there was only one person I could think to ask.”

  Zachary remembered how Bridget had called him out of the blue, saying that she wanted to check on him. Had that been after she had talked to Kenzie? Kenzie had acted so indignant that Bridget had called. Was that to cover up the fact that she had spoken to Bridget herself? How could she expect Zachary to go on with his life and forget about Bridget, when she herself had involved Bridget again? How was Zachary supposed to move on?

  “She’s pregnant,” he told Kenzie.

  Kenzie had just picked up a bottle of pills and it fell to the floor of the bathroom with a loud clatter. She turned and looked at him.

  “What?”

  At least Bridget hadn’t told Kenzie and refused to tell Zachary.

  “I just ran into Gordon at the hospital. She’s been admitted because she’s dehydrated. Throwing up too much.”

  “And he told you she’s pregnant? Not that she’s sick, but she’s pregnant? He said that?”

  He was glad she found it just as shocking as Zachary did. He had told Kenzie their history. How Bridget had said that she never wanted children. The pregnancy scare that turned out to be cancer. Zachary remembered how the doctor had suggested Bridget have the eggs in her cancer-free ovary frozen before they started treatment, to bank them for later. Bridget hadn’t even wanted to. She’d said she wasn’t ever going to use them.

  Apparently, she had changed her mind after meeting Gordon.

  He nodded in answer to Kenzie’s question. “He thought she had told me. But she hadn’t. I was so worried that the cancer was back.”

  She looked at Zachary for a minute, shaking her head in disbelief. He wished that she would walk up to him and give him a hug and tell him that it was all going to be okay. Zachary would be just fine without Bridget. Bridget could have babies with Gordon, and Zachary would be just fine.

  But she didn’t.

  She bent over and picked up the dropped pill bottle and readjusted her grip on the items she had collected.

  “I should have brought a suitcase. I didn’t realize how much stuff I had left here. Do you have a bag I could use?”

  He went back to the kitchen for a couple of the plastic shopping bags under the sink that he never got around to recycling. He handed one to Kenzie and helped to fill the other, his eyes burning and a lump in his throat.

  “I’m sorry about Bridget,” Kenzie said. “I know that must be very difficult for you.” She took both bags and let out a deep sigh. “Good luck. I hope you can be happy.”

  Zachary nodded, not trusting his voice.

  She walked out of his apartment without another word.

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  Preview of Her Work Was Everything

  1

  Zachary had heard about the death of Lauren Barclay in the news before he was contacted by Barbara Lee. It seemed like such a tragic waste. A promising young investment banker, she had been tragically killed in a slip-and-fall accident in her home. It wasn’t particularly newsworthy, except for the fact that she had been an attractive, brilliant young woman, and that played well in the press on a slow news day. There were a lot of quotes from family and friends about how awful it was and what a wonderful person she had been. There would be a lot of mourners at her funeral.

  But he hadn’t really given it anything more than a passing thought. He had that little twinge of regret that he got when he read about a tragic death, but since he hadn’t known her and there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about her death, he had just given himself a second to feel bad for her and her family, and then moved on with his day.

  Barbara Lee had told him that she wanted to meet about the death of a friend, but it wasn’t until they sat down together for coffee that Zachary found out the friend was Lauren Barclay.

  “I just can’t believe it.” Barbara sniffled and wiped at the corner of her eye. “She was so brilliant, so full of life, I can’t believe she’s gone. It just isn’t fair. She was so young!”

  Zachary nodded. “I read a little bit about it… there wasn’t any hint in the news that there was foul play, though. They said it was an accident. She slipped in the tub?”

  “I can’t believe that. You don’t think that’s really what happened, do you?”

  He looked into her bloodshot eyes. She was probably an attractive woman when she wasn’t a complete mess. Her eyes were red, her face was blotchy; it looked like her hair had been put up into a partial bun at some point, but she had wisps of hair going in every direction and she might have slept on it once or twice since she had put it up. She smelled of sweat.

  “I don’t know anything about it, so I wouldn’t venture a guess,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about it? Why don’t you think she slipped?”

  Barbara rummaged in her handbag for a tissue and wiped her red nose. “I didn’t even know she was home. She worked all hours, she was always at the office. I hadn’t seen her for days. Then I got home… it was the middle of the day, and I could tell that she’d been there. I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. I figured she probably came home to change and then had left again. Or maybe she’d fallen into bed and was catching a few winks before she had to go back. But she wasn’t usually home during the day, so I didn’t expect… to find her…”

  Zachary thought he should touch her arm or make some other comforting gesture, but he wouldn’t want it to be taken the wrong way. She might not think he was professional and decide not to hire him.

  “I’m so sorry… you were the one who fo
und her?”

  Barbara nodded, giving another sob. A bubble of snot blew out her nose and she wiped it away. If she had been the one to find her friend’s body, it was no wonder she was such a mess. He couldn’t imagine what that would have been like for her.

  “Take your time,” he told her. “You don’t need to rush into this.”

  “I just want… to get it all out. Everybody wants to know, but nobody wants to hear about it. They all think that they want to hear the details, but… it isn’t like watching a murder mystery on TV. It’s something that… it’s so unreal. I didn’t know what to do. It was such a shock finding her, I felt like she was a mannequin or it was a prank, I just didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t touch her. I called 9-1-1. And then… the police came, and the paramedics, and they all wanted me to tell them about finding her. I had to keep repeating it over and over again.”

  She stopped talking to wipe and blow again. Her nose was red and raw.

  “But they didn’t think there was any foul play?” Zachary prompted.

  “No. But they didn’t ask if there was anyone who wanted her dead or if she had a boyfriend that was violent or she had just broken up with, or anything like that. Not like on a cop show or in a mystery book. They just asked about… when I’d been home last, what time I had found her, when she would have gotten home. The paramedics asked if she had a history of epilepsy or fainting spells. Just… like it was an accident.”

  Zachary nodded. He sipped his coffee, which was still a bit too hot, but he wanted to give her time to think and to calm down a little. He would get more out of her if she were relaxed and composed than if she got all wound up and couldn’t think straight.

  “So what was the timing? You said she wasn’t usually home during the day?”