The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  2. Life fucking goes on.

  3. Get LeAnne to visit when I’m back “home.”

  Yes: time to look up the mom.

  First, she had to go back to cabin six to check on the dog. This was a lot like being on duty. The dog was standing directly on the other side of the door, her food bowl in her mouth.

  “For Christ sake—didn’t we just do that?”

  The dog pressed the bowl against LeAnne’s hip.

  “I get it.”

  LeAnne poured kibble into the bowl. The tinny sounds of the kibble chunks plinking into the bowl made her feel hungry herself, like some mixed-up signal was going on. They ended up eating together, LeAnne at the kitchen table with a ham and cheese sandwich, the dog on her right, head lowered over the bowl in a single-minded way.

  “Why are you always on that side?” LeAnne said.

  The dog made munching noises.

  LeAnne rose, stretched, and came very close to going into the bedroom and lying down. What was wrong with her? She could ruck march for twenty miles in broken country and carry on afterward as though she’d spent the day at a desk. Shape up! Demand more from your stupid, lazy self!

  LeAnne walked out of cabin six. Licking-the-bowl sounds followed her outside, right through the walls. She’d almost reached the car when there was a tremendous thud inside the cabin. LeAnne turned back. Another thud, this time actually bending the door. LeAnne opened it. The dog was winding up to do it again.

  “Get in the goddamn car.”

  The dog ambled peacefully out of the cabin, trotted over to the front passenger door, and stood there, calm and patient.

  “You’re not fooling anybody.”

  LeAnne followed the map Dot had drawn for her: back into town, across the bridge to the flat side, and into a neighborhood of simple, one-story houses on small lots, a kind of neighborhood she’d often seen near military bases, where people were just getting by. She came to Apple Street, turned left, stopped in front of 136, a small L-shaped house with the foot of the L for the garage, and a willow tree with a swing hanging from a thick horizontal branch about fifteen feet up. A police cruiser sat in the driveway; Sheriff’s Department read the badge on the door. The dog began to pant. LeAnne parked on the other side of the street, leaned over, and cracked the dog’s window open a few inches. Not the dog’s window, for God’s sake. Her window. This was her car.

  “Don’t get used to anything.”

  The door to 136 Apple Street, which fronted the driveway, opened and a uniformed cop came out. The dog began barking furiously and tried to stick her head out the window.

  “Knock it off!”

  The cop glanced over, got in the cruiser, and drove off. The dog kept barking until the cruiser was out of sight, then slowly lowered the volume down to a sort of harrumphing.

  “You’re staying in the car. You’re shutting up. You’re being good.” LeAnne got out, crossed the street, and knocked on the door at 136. She glanced back. The dog had stuffed pretty much her whole muzzle, and one eye and one ear, through the gap in the opened window; slobber slid down the glass. “What the hell do you—”

  LeAnne heard footsteps on the other side of the door. It opened and a woman looked out. The woman was an older, smaller, less pretty version of Marci; the voluptuous mouth was identical. Her eyes—hazel like Marci’s, but maybe not so intelligent—looked tense and worried.

  “Hello,” LeAnne said. “I—”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “LeAnne, wasn’t it?”

  LeAnne stepped back. “I’m LeAnne, but—”

  “You don’t remember me? I’m Marci’s mom.”

  “Right, but—”

  “I met you when I came to visit. Visit Marci at Walter Reed.”

  LeAnne shook her head, not denying what Marci’s mom was saying, just simply in confusion. She was still losing, and worse than she’d thought.

  “Well, it must have been the meds,” Marci’s mom went on. “If you’ve come for the service—and how nice of you—I’m afraid you missed it.” Marci’s mom covered her mouth with both hands. “But . . . but maybe you don’t know that she . . .”

  “I know,” LeAnne said.

  Marci’s mom reached out, took one of LeAnne’s hands in both of hers. “Thank you for coming anyway. And it’s good to see you looking so so much better.” She gave LeAnne a close look. “Did they . . . save the eye after all? I must have misunderstood.”

  “It’s a fake.”

  “Which one?” said Marci’s mom, her gaze steadily on the fake. “I can hardly tell.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” LeAnne said. “I just want to say I’m sorry about Marci.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. My name’s Coreen, which you probably don’t remember, either. Well, certainly not, now that I think, if you don’t recall the visit. My mind’s not at its best these days. But please come in.” And she drew LeAnne inside the house, closing the door behind her. A dog barked, very distant, so not her dog, nothing to worry about. Her dog? Christ. No fucking way. LeAnne took her place on a window seat in a little sunroom at the back of the house.

  “We tend to gravitate to this room,” Coreen said, filling two glasses with iced tea from a can. “It was always Marci’s favorite, so full of light.”

  At the moment, it was dark and shadowy. Rain fell steadily outside, making puddles in a small lawn that was mostly dirt, bordered on three sides by a fence; a weathered wooden fence that had a bicycle leaning against it. Streamers dangled from the handle grips.

  “So, um, forgive me if I sound stupid,” Coreen said, pulling up a footstool. “All these things, one after another. But am I right in thinking you and Marci didn’t know each other before Walter Reed?”

  “You are.”

  “You weren’t in that horrible IE whatever it was attack?”

  “IED,” LeAnne said. “I was not.”

  Coreen raised her glass, took a sip of tea. “What kind of people would do something like that? On top of all the horror, it’s just so . . . careless. Suppose a child stepped on it?”

  Careless was exactly the word. They just didn’t care. Or maybe they cared so much about something else that all the other normal cares shrank down to nothing. “I don’t know the answers,” LeAnne said. But at that exact same moment she remembered the names that went with the faces of the six pole-vaulting girls: Wrashmin, Durkhani, Hila, Muska, plus the two Lailas. Then came the kind of horrible possibility that could only occur to two types of people: those that would dream it up and those who would try to stop them before it happened—the “it” being planting IEDs under the padded safety mats in the pole vault landing pit.

  “A dumb question, I apologize,” Coreen was saying. “And Marci would have been peeved with me. I can just hear her—‘I knew the risks, Ma.’ She was proud to serve. I have to admit it was quite an adjustment for me—not the women in the military part per se, but the combat zone aspect.”

  LeAnne tried to absorb that, but her mind was preoccupied with a vision of the man with prominent ears, watching the pole-vaulting lesson from a rooftop. She glanced around the room, her gaze landing on a photo on the wall behind Coreen—Marci, maybe from ten or twelve years before, on her wedding day: strapless white dress, kind of low cut for a wedding dress, and somehow all the more lovely for that. The groom was looking at her in adoration—no other word for it. He seemed even younger than she was, about Marci’s height, slim, and kind of homely faced in a way that somehow got more and more pleasing the longer she gazed at his image.

  “That’s Harvey,” said Coreen, twisting around. “Her first husband.”

  Hubby numero uno loved the rain. And me.

  “She mentioned him.”

  “Marci was the love of his life. He’s been such a huge help.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The funeral arrangements. All the paperwork. Getting her . . . her poor body back home.” Coreen had a tissue tucked under her sleeve. She took it out and dabbed at her eyes. “Did Marci
tell you he’d never remarried?”

  LeAnne shook her head. “She didn’t tell me a whole lot about her past.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be her,” Coreen said. “But she spoke highly of you.”

  “She did? When was this?”

  “During my visit. I only stayed two days—had a lot on my plate back here, which turned out not to be the half of it—and the doctor said—promised me!—that she was going to be fine and ambulatory in no time. You were in the room for that conference, as I recollect.” Coreen gazed at her. Whatever she saw—confusion, annoyance, anger—made her look away. “Maybe you were asleep. The point is I wasn’t there for her at the very most critical time. And what good did I do here?” Coreen clasped her hands together, lowered her head, kind of folding herself up small.

  LeAnne rose, went closer, thought about touching Coreen’s shoulder. “What could you have done? It happened in a hospital.”

  “I’m sorry,” Coreen said. “And with you coming all this way.” She looked up—surprised and maybe a little frightened to find LeAnne so near. “Marci said you’re a hero.”

  “Far fucking—far from it,” said LeAnne, stepping back. “Thanks for seeing me.” She stepped back some more. “I won’t keep you any longer.”

  Coreen dabbed at her eyes again. “Oh, please don’t go. I’ll stop embarrassing myself, I swear.”

  “You’re not embarrassing yourself.”

  “It’s just nice to see someone who was with Marci.” Coreen smiled, a wavering, unhappy smile that didn’t stick. “A roommate, after all. Tell me some of the things you talked about. Please, stay awhile.”

  LeAnne sat back down on the window seat. “Nothing, really. We pretty much just joked around.”

  “Really? Joked? That makes me happy to hear. That sense of humor of hers—so sharp.”

  “For sure,” LeAnne said. Her gaze went again to the wedding photo. “How come they broke up?”

  “Her and Harvey?” Coreen shook her head. “Marci . . . made a misjudgment. She was so young. Usually it’s the woman who’s more mature at that age, but not in this case. Did . . . she talk about her regrets? I only ask because she always put on a stoical face for me.”

  I fucked it up. “Regrets?” LeAnne said. “I don’t know. She seemed pretty stoical to me, too. Wasn’t that her?”

  “On the outside, yes,” said Coreen. “And maybe, over the years, on the inside too, more and more—especially after she got going in the military, and all. But deep down she was a very passionate person.”

  “Yes,” LeAnne said.

  “That’s what got her into trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Poor Marci. She fell for one of those macho men.”

  “This was her second husband?”

  “Did she tell you about him?”

  Numero dos was just what he looked like—a great big mistake. “Not really. Just the fact of his existence, more or less.”

  “It didn’t last long, but long enough to—” A phone buzzed. Coreen whipped it out of a skirt pocket, held it to her ear with both hands. “Yes? . . .” Her face fell. “Just that the sheriff was here. But no news . . . thanks.” She clicked off, repocketed the phone, looked up at LeAnne. “How much are we expected to bear, all at once?”

  “What are you talking about?” LeAnne said.

  “That was Harvey, actually. He’s been out with a search party since before dawn—and he’s not even the father.”

  “Is someone missing?”

  “Mia.”

  “Who’s Mia?”

  “You don’t know about Mia?”

  “How the hell would I?” LeAnne’s voice got loose and rose up. But maybe she should have known. Hadn’t Marci mentioned that name? But in what context? LeAnne tried to remember, found nothing in her memory but the feel of Marci’s kiss. “How would I?” she said, this time much more quietly.

  “Mia’s Marci’s daughter,” Coreen said. “She’s been gone since the night of the funeral. Of course, you’d have no way of knowing—I’m so mixed up, I don’t even—”

  “Marci’s daughter?” Facts stirred down deep in LeAnne’s mind, like they were digging themselves up from under the ground.

  Coreen pointed to a photo on the side wall, LeAnne’s blind side, which was why she’d missed it. In the photo, Marci and a girl of eight or so were standing by the willow tree swing in Coreen’s front yard, laughing their heads off. The girl had pigtails but more of her baby teeth than she’d had when the picture on the Missing Child poster was taken.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” Coreen said. “There’s just been so many . . . what would you call them? Events? Anyway, how do you put them in order?” She picked up her tea. The liquid trembled in the glass.

  Meanwhile, the bad side of LeAnne’s face was suddenly very hot. She rubbed it with her hand. The feel of her hand was icy on her face, like the meeting of two different people.

  “Maybe with the custody situation?” Coreen said, taking a sip. “That was a big event, for sure.”

  “The second husband was the father of the girl?” LeAnne said.

  Coreen nodded. “Mia was four when they divorced, but the marriage was over long before then, certainly for Marci. She got full custody, not hard to do considering the abuse that went on.”

  “Abuse of Marci or Mia?”

  “Marci. He—I wouldn’t use the word love because I don’t think he’s capable of it—but he never harmed Mia.”

  “You’re talking about physical abuse?”

  “I’m afraid so. There were three incidents. Marci was too shocked the first time to really know what to do. The second time she warned him. The third time—this was out in an old hunting cabin of his family’s, always too much boozing in a place like that—she left. Why are you shaking your head like that?”

  Shaking her head? LeAnne had been unaware. She stopped at once, tried to figure out why she’d been doing it. “Because, um . . . because I can’t see Marci taking any abuse from anyone. Not even once.”

  “Marci wasn’t quite as tough then. This was before the army. But . . . but it wasn’t only that. This might be a strange comment about my own daughter. Maybe I should just say she was head over heels and leave it at that.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Or that she was wild about him, another way of putting it. Wild sexually—there, I’ve said it. She had his name tattooed on her back before she’d actually left Harvey, if you can believe a thing like that. She—”

  “What was the name?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “On her back.”

  “Max. Max Skelly, but she just did the Max part. And she made a sort of funny pun about it, but I didn’t see the humor, especially since Marci had always said she’d never get a tattoo of any kind.”

  “To the Max,” LeAnne said.

  “You’ve seen it, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Marci say anything about it?”

  It wasn’t funny the first time. “No,” LeAnne said. “Not that I understood. Why didn’t she have it removed?”

  “That’s expensive,” Coreen said.

  “There must have been more to it than that.”

  Coreen nodded. “I brought it up once, gingerly, you might say. She told me she wasn’t about to Photoshop her own life. I’m actually not sure I ever quite understood what she meant, to this day.”

  LeAnne had never admired Marci more than at that moment. She gazed down at her feet, meaning down at the red shoes. “How did the army come into her life?”

  “Another big event,” Coreen said. “Marci couldn’t find any sort of decent-paying work, so she enlisted when Mia was old enough for kindergarten. I took care of Mia during basic training and a few other times like that, but mostly they lived together wherever Marci was based. Until she got posted overseas. Then I had Mia again.”

  “Who took care of her when you went to Walter Ree
d? Or . . . or did you bring her with you?” Meaning, LeAnne thought, have I seen Mia before? Had there been something familiar about the face on that Missing Child poster? She was back in the rubble pile section of her brain.

  “That was one of the very first questions the sheriff asked me,” Coreen said. “The answer is that my sister drove up from Boise and stayed here with Mia. All Mia really knew was that her mom was recovering from being hurt and would be home soon. I never got to the part about the . . . the nature of the injury, and so forth.”

  “Because you wanted to consult Marci first?”

  Coreen looked up. “Are you an officer in the army?”

  “I’m not in the army.”

  “I meant when you were.”

  “Negative.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Coreen said. “It’s just that you’re very smart.”

  “Enlisted soldiers can be as smart as anybody else. Marci herself, for example.”

  “Oh, she was smart, for sure. But in a different way from you.”

  LeAnne wasn’t interested in pursuing that line of talk. The truth was that intelligence didn’t rank at the top of human characteristics that mattered to her, not even close. “What did Marci say when you had that conversation?”

  “About her poor leg?”

  LeAnne nodded, just the slightest nod. She didn’t dare speak: that little phrase—poor leg—had uncapped a flood inside her, and the instant she spoke, her voice was going to crack and tears would flow and she’d be making a hideous spectacle of herself.

  “I’m sorry to tell you we didn’t get around to it,” Coreen said. “The Walter Reed visit didn’t . . . didn’t go well. I kept putting my foot in it, no matter what I tried. Whatever I said only seemed to set her off, make things worse instead of better. Why couldn’t I have done better? And now Mia’s up and gone—up and gone while in my care.”

  Inside LeAnne the flood receded. “Up and gone?” she said.

  “Sometime during the night after the funeral. I lay down with her at bedtime so she wouldn’t be alone—poor kid has nightmares at the best of times—and didn’t go to my own room until she was asleep. In the morning her window was open and she was gone. Tell me what kind of a mother and grandmother I am, for not doing better?”