Now that he was awake, she wondered if he was safe at the hospital. Someone had made a serious attempt to kill him this morning. Surely there would be a guard on his room. There had to be security at the hospital so that no one could come and go without being seen. There was, after all, someone who was intent on ending Flynn’s life.
Well, if Flynn knew who it was, he would surely tell the police. She would call Detective Burt as soon as she was back in New York, and find out. And then, she had a brainstorm. Why wait?
She rang the hospital and asked for room 1229. In a moment, she was connected. A woman answered the phone, saying just the room number.
Eden hesitated. ‘Lizzy?’ she asked.
‘Who’s this?’ Lizzy asked.
‘It’s Eden. I heard that Flynn is awake. Can I speak to him?’
Lizzy hesitated. ‘I’m not sure he’s up to it.’
Eden heard the rumble of a male voice.
‘It’s Eden,’ Lizzy said. Then she returned to the phone. ‘He wants to talk to you. Here. Don’t talk too long. He’s very weak.’
Eden did not reply. She heard Lizzy say that she was going out to the nurses’ desk to complain that the painkillers had not arrived. She heard the low rumble of Flynn’s reply. Lizzy promised to be right back. Eden waited patiently. In a few moments, she heard Flynn’s voice, weak and slurry. ‘Hi, Eden.’
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘Like shit,’ he said.
‘I’m sure. I want you to know that I called the police to tell them you were awake. They want to talk to you about the shooting. Do you know who did this to you? Did you see them?’
Flynn cleared his throat. ‘Can’t,’ he said.
‘Can’t what?’ Eden asked.
‘Can’t say,’ he replied.
‘Does that mean you don’t know who it was?’ Eden asked. ‘Was it someone you knew? Why would they want to shoot you?’
There was a silence. Then Flynn said, ‘Never mind. I have to …’ He was silent again. And then Eden heard him gasp.
‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ she asked.
He did not reply.
‘Flynn,’ she asked, more gently. ‘What’s going on with you? If you know who did this, you have to tell the police.’
‘Stay out of this,’ he said in a soft voice.
‘Was it DeShaun? Because of Lizzy?’
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘Leave it, Eden. You have to leave it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Exasperated, she cried, ‘I can’t leave it. Does this have to do with my mother? Does it have something to do with her death? Or Jeremy’s? Do you know? Because if you do … You have to tell the police if you know something. Your life could still be in danger.’
There was another long silence, and Eden thought Flynn might have ended the call. Then suddenly he said, in a voice that was thick and raspy, ‘Yes. I know. I know everything. But you have to stop asking. Just don’t even bother. I’m sorry, Eden.’
‘Here’s the nurse,’ Lizzy caroled as she returned to the room. ‘He needs some medication. NOW!’
‘Goodbye,’ Flynn said. The phone went dead.
‘Flynn,’ Eden cried. ‘Flynn!’ But the call was ended.
For a few minutes she stared at the phone. Part of her was tempted to throw on a coat over her pajamas and rush down to the hospital, but she forced herself to think clearly. That would not accomplish anything. Still, her mind was racing. Did Flynn, in fact, recognize his assailant? Or was he just confused and incoherent due to drugs and today’s surgery? He sounded lucid enough. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to Eden. It wasn’t as if they were close. It just seemed impossible that he might know, and not tell. In any case, he had made it clear that he was not going to tell her anything. Leave this to the police, she told herself. If Flynn knows something, Detective Burt will know how to get it out of him. You need to get some sleep. Tomorrow you go home. Her heart lifted at the thought.
Eden pulled back the covers of the narrow bed and climbed in. She was still shivering, and it felt good to be under the covers. She set the alarm on her phone, so that she would be up and out in plenty of time to make her flight.
She had expected it would be difficult to fall asleep, but the upheavals of the day had worn her out, and she fell almost instantly into a deep sleep. Her dreams were the usual chaos of images, residue from the day, and an underlying feeling of anxiety that pervaded every repetitive situation, and every unresolvable difficulty that arose in her dreamscape. Eden moved from one jangled dream to another, until, abruptly, she was dreaming of her mother, here in this very house where she had lived and died. Tara was speaking to Eden while ministering to Jeremy, who was suspended in some painful-looking, medical contraption which was set up in that empty room down the hall. Tara was trying to free him from the equipment without any success. Eden was offering to help, but Tara insisted that she did not need any help. And yet, she kept performing the same repetitive actions which did nothing to alleviate the boy’s suffering.
In the dream, Eden was imploring her mother to listen to her, that she knew how to fix it, if only Tara would listen. Finally, Tara turned away from Jeremy and looked directly at Eden. ‘I am his mother,’ she said, a look of warning in her eyes. ‘I will decide what happens to him.’
Eden awoke, her heart hammering, her fingers clenching the covers. She lay in the bed, trying to breathe deeply, to calm her thudding heart. She did not understand why the dream had the feeling of a nightmare, but it had. So much so, that it had awakened her from a sound sleep. And as she breathed deeply, trying to calm her heart, her nerves, she inhaled something strange and out of place. Something that made her heart race again. She smelled the odor of gasoline. It was strong, and it was in the house.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Immediately, Eden thought of her mother. Was this what Tara, incapacitated by barbiturates, had inhaled with her last breath? Tara and Jeremy had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, which is said to have no scent, but the carbon monoxide was created by the running car. Perhaps the house did smell of gasoline fumes on the night that they died.
It’s not real, she told herself. You’re imagining it. You are just anxious because of this business with Flynn, and because you are sleeping in this house where your mother died. Besides, she remembered closing the door between the garage and the kitchen. And she certainly would have noticed if she had left the car running. The car was turned off. She knew it. She had just been dreaming of her mother. She wondered if perhaps she was having some empathic experience, some bizarre reliving of the event, because of her vivid dream about Tara.
Or maybe it was nothing quite that psychological. Maybe it’s coming from the neighbor’s driveway, she told herself. She forced herself to get out from under the warmth of the covers. She padded in her stocking feet over to the window and looked out. All the lights were out next door, but there was no sign of a visitor, or of anyone coming or going. No car running in the driveway. Okay, she thought. Not that. She felt a little shudder of apprehension. She did her best to convince herself that she was having some sort of olfactory hallucination.
But it was no use. She was wide awake now. Go out and check in the kitchen, she thought. Go and look. You’re never going to get back to sleep unless you go out there and check.
With a sigh of exasperation meant to conceal her anxiety, she pulled on her bathrobe. Luckily, she was still wearing socks. She had no slippers to put on, and the floors were cold. She opened the door of her room and stepped out into the hallway, silently heading down the hall toward the living room and the kitchen.
Moonlight filtered in through the windows, bathing the rooms in a grayish light. She could still smell the gas. If anything, it was more pronounced, the closer she got to the front of the house. She walked into the living room. As she entered the room, stacked with cardboard boxes, she was not only assaulted by the smell of the gas, she thought she heard a sloshing noise. She picked her way past
the boxes toward the dining area, half expecting to find the garage door open. Instead, she gasped at what she saw.
There was someone at work in the kitchen. A slight figure, dressed in a parka and hood, was wielding a large plastic gas can, splashing the gas in an arc around the room.
‘Hey! Stop!’ Eden exclaimed.
The figure whirled around to face her, and the hood slipped back from her face. Eden saw the shock of gray hair, the steel-rimmed glasses, and the woman’s face, but she felt as if she was looking at it through a prism. It was the woman on Flynn’s computer. Flynn’s grandmother. And then, as she looked closer she realized her mistake. She recognized this woman. They had met.
The woman stared back at her, stunned.
Eden stared back at Lizzy’s mother, Phyllis Cooper. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she cried. ‘Is that gasoline?’
Phyllis Cooper was nonplussed. She gazed at the gas can in her hand. ‘I thought the house was empty.’
‘Jesus,’ Eden cried. ‘One spark and this whole place will be an inferno.’
Phyllis looked around the room as if she were confused. ‘Oh no. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? What are you thinking?’
‘I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes,’ Phyllis apologized.
‘Why would you want to burn this house down?’
‘I didn’t know anyone was here,’ she insisted again.
‘I get that,’ said Eden. ‘But that’s not a reason.’
Phyllis grimaced, as if the question was painful to consider. ‘I was worried,’ she whispered at last.
‘Worried about what?’ Eden demanded.
Phyllis looked around at the deserted house. ‘They would find something here. Something damning.’
Immediately, Eden thought of the photos of Lizzy. ‘Is this about Lizzy?’ she asked. ‘’Cause I can put those computer pictures in the trash, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘What pictures?’ Phyllis asked.
She doesn’t know, Eden thought, somewhat surprised. ‘All the pictures. Any pictures …’ she said vaguely.
Phyllis sighed and looked around at the piles of boxes. ‘He’s all packed up. Ready to go.’
‘Who?’ Eden asked. ‘Flynn?’
Phyllis sighed, and nodded. ‘Such awful things happened here.’
Eden wasn’t sure if Lizzy’s mother was in command of her faculties. She didn’t want to say anything to alarm her, or cause her to become agitated. She felt as if she needed to summon some help from the police, or a psych hospital, or both.
‘What things?’ she asked carefully.
‘You don’t remember? It was your mother. Your brother. They died here.’ Phyllis looked almost wounded, at Eden’s apparent forgetfulness.
‘Yes, of course, I remember,’ said Eden, as gently as possible. ‘Look, we don’t want to join them. Why don’t we go outside now, Phyllis? It smells awful in here.’
Phyllis frowned and looked helplessly at Eden. ‘I’m not done,’ she said.
Eden thought about Lizzy, telling her that her mother had had a breakdown when her brother was so ill with Katz-Ellison. Maybe she was having another breakdown now. ‘That’s probably enough for right now,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we just step out into the yard?’
She reached out and offered Phyllis her hand. She wished she had slipped her phone into her pocket when she left the bedroom. She didn’t want to handle this situation alone. But, for the moment, she had to do the best she could.
Phyllis shook her head, still holding the gas can defensively, like a weapon, in her hand. ‘NO. It’s too cold out. I need to sit down,’ she said.
‘Okay. Let’s put that gas can down now,’ said Eden. ‘We don’t need it.’
Phyllis looked at the gas can as if she had no idea what it was, and set it down on the table. Eden reached out her hand and Phyllis took it. Then she clung to Eden’s hand as Eden picked her way through the boxes to the living room sofa.
She gestured for Phyllis to sit down, and Phyllis sat. The overflowing ashtray was on the table in front of her. Phyllis picked up the pack of cigarettes and screwed her face up in dismay. ‘Such a foul habit. Your mother hated that. When he would smoke.’
Eden sat down carefully beside her. ‘He told me he never smoked in front of her and Jeremy.’
Phyllis set the packet down on the table and shrugged. ‘She knew about it, though.’
‘I’m sure she did,’ said Eden. ‘Listen, Phyllis, why don’t I call Lizzy for you? Maybe she can come and get you.’
‘Oh no,’ said Phyllis, shaking her head. ‘She’d be upset. She doesn’t have any idea.’
Eden peered at the woman narrowly. ‘Any idea about what?’
Phyllis sighed. ‘About anything. About your mother and Jeremy.’ She shook her head. ‘When I think about that it just makes me sick.’
‘What makes you sick?’
‘What I did for him!’ she exclaimed.
Eden stared at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. Phyllis reached out and tried to touch her face. Eden recoiled from her touch. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You probably don’t know,’ said Phyllis. ‘I guess it’s all right to tell you now. Your mother was very ill. She had a terrible disease. She was going to lose her memory altogether.’
So Phyllis knew about Tara’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She knew, when no one else did. ‘How did you know about that?’
‘Oh, Flynn told me. I was the only one he could tell.’
‘Really,’ said Eden flatly.
‘And of course, Jeremy … All that lay ahead for him was an agonizing death. Just like my Anthony.’
‘What did you do for Flynn?’ Eden whispered.
‘When he went to Toledo that night, I came over to help your mother. I often did that. She needed help by then. She was already beginning to fail. I came over, and I gave her a warm drink with her pills. I told her to sleep and not to worry. I told her I would stay the night.’
Eden stared at the other woman. She suddenly understood that she was hearing a confession. It was coming at her like a runaway train. She couldn’t derail it if she wanted to.
Phyllis had taken Eden’s hand and was gripping it tightly. Her grip was warm and strong. Eden felt repulsed by Phyllis’s grasp, but she did not dare to pull her hand away. Phyllis looked at her earnestly. ‘I wanted the end to be as peaceful as could be. And it was. After she was asleep, I injected Jeremy’s feeding tube with some of the same drug, crushed up in his liquid protein. I had the note with me. Once they were both asleep, I turned on the car and opened the door between the house and the garage. I stuffed the windows, and left. I locked the door behind me. It was as if they just floated up to heaven.’
Eden snatched her hand away from Phyllis’s grasp. ‘Oh God,’ she cried, shaking her head as her eyes welled with tears. ‘You killed them.’
Phyllis looked somewhat affronted, as if she felt unappreciated. ‘I released them. I set them free. I know what it’s like. I didn’t want Flynn to have to suffer like that. Flynn had no one else to help him. Your mother couldn’t help him. She was already starting to disappear. The illness, you know.’
‘Flynn asked you to do that?’ Eden said, her voice shaking.
‘Oh no,’ said Phyllis. ‘No, he never knew. That’s why I left the note. So he would think that Tara had done it. She had reason enough, poor thing. He never suspected.’
Eden’s heart was hammering as she listened to this confession. So Flynn was not to blame. And she had been right in her surmise about Tara. She would never have left Jeremy to die alone. Tara had never realized what was happening to her. It took every ounce of self-control Eden had not to slap Phyllis Cooper across the face.
‘I did it out of kindness,’ said Phyllis.
Eden was trying to think. She needed the phone. She needed to get away from this … angel of death. She needed to get out of this house.
‘And for Flynn, of course,’
said Phyllis.
Eden shook her head, as if she had not understood.
‘For my son,’ Phyllis said.
TWENTY-NINE
Eden stared at her, trying to absorb what she had just heard. ‘Your son? Are you saying that you are Flynn’s mother?’
Phyllis nodded. ‘I am.’
Eden shook her head in disbelief. ‘But … no. Flynn’s mother is dead.’
‘My parents told everyone I was dead. They wished I was dead.’
Eden shook her head, rocked by this revelation. And then, suddenly, her own confusion cleared. She understood why those photos on Flynn’s computer had seemed so unsettling. It was not Flynn’s grandmother in those photos with Tara and Jeremy. Of course it wasn’t. How could it be? Those photos had been taken in the last year. Flynn’s grandmother had never been able to travel to Ohio. It was Phyllis Cooper in the photograph with Jeremy and Tara. It was Flynn’s grandmother she had seen in older, earlier Polaroid pictures, when Flynn was a boy and was pictured with his grandparents. The photo images of Phyllis and Flynn’s grandmother suddenly superimposed themselves on one another in her brain. Phyllis and Flynn’s grandmother looked just alike as they aged. They looked just alike because they were. They were mother and daughter.
‘Your parents knew you were alive?’
Phyllis looked down sheepishly. ‘Yes. They knew. But they washed their hands of me.’
Eden was dumbfounded by this admission. ‘Why?’
Phyllis’s cheeks reddened. ‘I had a very bad drug problem. I lived in Miami and I sold myself to any man who would pay. I got pregnant and had a baby, whom I neglected. Terribly …’
Eden remembered the story of the toddler, left on his own in an apartment by his addict mother. Eating cat food from the bowl on the floor. Filthy and frightened and alone. It was hard to picture this gray-haired, middle-aged woman as that low-life girl who abandoned her child for drugs. Of course, Eden reminded herself, this same neatly dressed lady had just confessed to murdering Tara and Jeremy. And now she was spreading accelerant all over Flynn’s house so she could burn it down. ‘I heard about that,’ Eden said, and couldn’t keep the chill out of her voice. ‘Poor Flynn.’
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