Live to Tell

by Lisa Gardner

  Michael’s voice breaks. He turns away from me, walks toward the wall, and stares at it for a bit.

  “I had to call Darren,” he says at last, referring to an old college friend who’d become an attorney. “I had to get legal advice for Evan. That’s where we are with things, Victoria.”

  “He didn’t mean—” I try again.

  Michael whirls around. “Shut up. Just shut up. I don’t care that you’re hurt. I don’t care that you almost died. I want to hurt you worse, Victoria. I want to slap you until you realize once and for all that your denial is destroying our son. Evan did mean to hurt you. He intentionally stole that goddamn knife out of the drying rack. He cleverly slipped it inside the fabric on the underside of the sofa, where you wouldn’t find it. And he carefully retrieved it during an opportune moment, just so he could drive it through your ribs.”

  “How do you know all that? How can you possibly know?”

  “Because he told me.”

  I stare at him, slack-jawed, disbelieving.

  “He’s broken. He answered my questions by rote. There’s no light in his eyes. He stabbed you, but he broke himself. And I don’t know if we’ll get him back. Sure this was better than an institution, Vic?”

  The bitterness of his words hurts, just as he intends. I feel the full force of his helplessness. The buried rage from all the times I overrode him, shut him out of the parenting process because I didn’t agree with his solutions, couldn’t let go of my own notions of what was best for my child. I’m the nurturer. Michael, the fixer. We were doomed from the start.

  “Did … did they arrest Evan?” I ask, shifting a little in the bed, trying to get comfortable. I feel queasy, but that might be from the conversation as much as the aftereffects of the anesthesia.

  “I’m sure an arrest warrant is only a matter of time. At the moment, however, given his fragile mental state, he’s been hospitalized.”

  I stare at him in confusion. “Where?”

  “Upstairs. Turns out this medical center has a locked-down pediatric psych ward on the eighth floor. Evan’s now a patient.”

  My eyes widen. Once again Michael holds up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. I had Darren pull our divorce decree. I still have custodial rights to Evan and, given your current physical and emotional state, I’ll take you to court and demand full custody if I have to. Our son’s experienced a psychotic break. He’s upstairs and he’s gonna stay there.”

  “He’s just a child—”

  “Which is why it’s a pediatric ward. And, since you asked so nicely, it’s an excellent acute-care program. Highly recommended, considered very progressive in its approach to mentally ill kids. You can visit anytime you want, assuming you get yourself healed enough to get out of bed.”

  “Bastard.”

  “I wish I’d become one sooner,” he says flatly. “Maybe then we could’ve avoided this.”

  “I’m not a bad mom,” I whisper after a moment. It seems a stupid thing to say, given that I’ve just been stabbed by my own child.

  But Michael seems to understand. His face smooths, some of the tension seeps from his shoulders. He sighs, rubs his forehead. Sighs again. “No, you’re not a bad mom, Vic. And I’m not a bad dad, and Evan, when he’s Evan, is not a bad kid. And yet, here we are.”

  “What will happen next?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I won’t press charges,” I state defiantly. “They can’t arrest him without me, right?” My stomach rolls. I am going to vomit.

  Michael, however, shakes his head. “Not that simple, Vic. He stabbed you, then confessed to the police. Those officers will prepare affidavits. Those affidavits can be used by the prosecutor to demand an arrest warrant. According to Darren, the court will probably be willing to accept Evan being held in a mental institution versus a juvenile center for the time being. So that’s step one. Next, we let the legal process grind along while focusing on improving Evan’s state of mind. If we can show he’s more stable, the court may be more forgiving. Maybe. But it’s going to take time, Vic. Time for him, time for you, time for the legal system. We’re in it for a bit.”

  I cringe at what that means. Evan staying in a locked-down ward. My son, eight years old and institutionalized indefinitely.

  My turn to look away, to study the white walls.

  So many things I want to tell my son. That I love him. That I still believe in him. I’m not in denial. I’ve seen the darkness in his eyes. But I’ve seen the light, too. I’ve seen all the moments that Evan got to be Evan, and I wouldn’t have missed those moments for anything.

  Something occurs to me. I turn my head to peer at my husband. “You said I was lucky the EMTs got me to the hospital in time. But how did they know? Who called them?”

  Michael sticks his hands in his pockets. “Evan,” he says at last. “He dialed nine-one-one, told the operator he’d stabbed his mother. He said you were bleeding and needed help.”

  “He tried to save me.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. The operator asked him what happened. You know what he said?”

  I shook my head, bewildered.

  “He said the Devil made him do it. And he said the ambulance had better come quick, because the Devil wasn’t finished yet.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  DANIELLE

  When Aunt Helen opened the door, first thing I noticed was her red-rimmed eyes. She tried to hide her tears. Brushed at her cheeks, ran her fingers through her short brown hair. Her cheeks remained wet, her face blotchy. She noticed that I noticed and, for both our sakes, gave up on pretense. She gestured for me to come in.

  She’d moved out of her downtown condo years ago. Now she had a newer townhouse just outside the city limits. Lower maintenance as she approached the downsizing phase of life. She’d retired from her corporate-lawyer gig years ago. Instead, she worked thirty hours a week for a nonprofit that specialized in promoting better rights, funding, and legislation for abused and at-risk kids. She liked the work, she said, precisely because it was a one-eighty from her previous career. She’d gone from protecting the fat cats to fighting for children’s rights.

  You’d think this would give us more in common, easy conversation for the few nights a month we shared dinner. Instead, neither of us ever talked about work. Maybe we had those kinds of jobs; you had to leave them at the office, or you’d go nuts.

  “Coffee?” she asked, leading me into the small but expensively appointed kitchen.

  “Whiskey,” I replied.

  Sadly, she thought I was joking. She poured us both glasses of water. I didn’t think that was strong enough for what I needed to do next.

  She carried the glasses to another small but beautifully decorated room. The sitting area featured gleaming hardwood floors, a white-painted fireplace mantel, and a vaulted ceiling. Off the family room was a screened-in porch that overlooked a stretch of wetlands. Earlier in the summer, we’d sat on that porch and watched for herons. This late in August, however, it was too hot and sticky.

  We perched on the L-shaped sofa. I sipped my water and felt the ceiling fan brush freshly chilled air across my cheeks. Aunt Helen didn’t speak right away. Her hands were trembling on her glass. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, but gazed at the floor.

  This time of year always hit her harder than it did me. Maybe because she gave herself the permission to grieve, to release the floodgates one week out of every year. She cried, raged, blew off steam. Then she picked up the pieces and returned to the business of living.

  I couldn’t do it. Never could. I didn’t want to release the floodgates; I was afraid I’d never get them closed again. Plus, all these years later, I remained mostly angry. Deeply, deeply enraged. Which was why I rarely visited my aunt around the anniversary. It was too hard for me to watch her weep, when I wanted to shatter everything in her house.

  My visit today had probably surprised her. She twisted her water glass between her fingers, waiting for me to speak.


  “Doing okay?” I asked at last. Stupid question.

  “You know,” she replied with a small shrug. Better answer. I did know.

  I cleared my throat, looked out the sunny bank of windows. Unexpectedly, my eyes stung and I fought through the choke hold of strangling emotion.

  “Something’s happened,” I managed at last.

  She stopped fiddling with her water glass and studied me. And suddenly, I was staring at my mother’s blue eyes. I was standing in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom, holding my father’s gun behind my back, while I tried to muster the courage for what I needed to say next.

  “He hurt me,” I heard myself whisper.

  “Danielle?” My aunt’s voice, my mother’s voice. They ran together, two women, both who’d claimed to love me.

  I licked my lips, forced myself to keep talking. “My father. On the nights when he drank a lot … sometimes he came to my room in the middle of the night.”

  “Oh Danielle.”

  “He said if I did what he wanted, he wouldn’t have to drink so much. He’d be happy. Our family would be happy.”

  “Oh Danielle.”

  “I tried, in the beginning. I thought, if I just made him happy, I wouldn’t have to hear my mom cry at night. Things would get better. Everything would be all right.”

  My aunt didn’t speak, just regarded me with my mother’s sorrowful blue eyes.

  “But it got worse. And he drank more, came in more often. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t take it. I went to Mom’s room that night. To tell her what he was doing. And I brought his gun with me.”

  “You threatened Jenny?” my aunt asked in confusion. “You were going to shoot your mother?”

  “No, I threatened my father. I told my mom that if she didn’t make him stop, I was going to shoot him. That was my plan. Not bad for a kid, huh?”

  “Oh Danielle. What happened?”

  “He came home while we were talking. He was drunk, calling our names. We listened to him come up the stairs. Mom demanded that I give her the gun. She said she’d take care of everything. She’d help me. She promised. I just had to give her the gun.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I handed her his gun. Then I bolted down the hall and hid under the covers in my bedroom. I didn’t come out until … afterward.”

  My aunt took a shaky breath, released it. She set her water glass on the coffee table, then stood, walking a few steps toward the window. My aunt wasn’t a restless person. Her actions now distracted me, made me study her intently. She wouldn’t look at me. She stared out at the sun-bleached wetlands, where the birds had to be more comforting than our current conversation.

  “You think it’s your fault, what your father did,” she said, softly.

  “I was a kid. Can’t be my fault.”

  She turned, smiling wanly at me. The first tear trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away, crossing her arms over her chest. “Dr. Frank taught you well.”

  “He should’ve; you paid him enough.”

  “Do you hate me, too, Danielle? Are my sister’s failings my own?”

  “Did you know? You’ve been so adamant about therapy all these years. Did my Mom tell you what he was doing?”

  Slowly, Aunt Helen shook her head. Then she caught herself, a second tear trickling down, a second tear wiped away. “I didn’t know about the abuse. I suspected. Dr. Frank suspected. But, Danielle, not everything going on in your family had something to do with you.”

  “I told on him. I tried to make it stop and everyone died. My mom, Johnny, Natalie. If I hadn’t said anything … if I’d just kept trying to make him happy…”

  “Your father was a self-centered son of a bitch. No one could make him happy. Not Jenny, not his kids, not all the second chances Sheriff Wayne gave him. Don’t pin this on yourself.”

  “It wasn’t fair, especially for Natalie and Johnny. I can hate my mom. Some nights I do. She stayed with him. Worse, she took the gun from me. If she’d let me keep it and go with plan A … So during my bad moments, I tell myself mom got what she deserved. But Natalie and Johnny—” My voice broke. I got up and paced. “They died because they poked their heads out of their rooms. And I lived because I was too scared to get out of bed. It’s not fair, and no number of passing years changes that.”

  “Danielle, I don’t know exactly what happened that night. I can’t tell you who did what to whom and I won’t tell you any of it was fair. But you’re wrong about your mother. She’d had enough. The day before your father … did what he did, Jenny called me. She wanted the name of a good divorce lawyer. She planned on kicking your father out. She’d had enough.”

  “What?”

  My aunt hesitated, then seemed to reach some kind of decision. “She’d met someone. A good man, she told me. A good man who was willing to help her. She just needed to get her ducks in a row. Then she was going to ask your father for a divorce.”

  I didn’t say anything, just stared at my aunt, stunned.

  “It might be,” she continued now, “that your mother never confronted your father with your accusations. Maybe, after hearing what you had to say, she was angry enough to kick him out that night. Told him she wanted a divorce. And he …”

  I could see it in my mind’s eye. The gun, which I’d carried to the bedroom, now lying on my mother’s nightstand. My mother, yelling at my drunken father to get the hell out. My father, caught off guard, enraged by my mother’s sudden defiance, seeing his own handgun, reaching for it …

  Natalie, wondering about the noise. Johnny, curious about the loud pop down the hall.

  I loved them. All these years later, I still loved them. If I’d known back then that I had to make the choice between my father’s abuse and my family’s love, I would’ve chosen my family. I would’ve chosen them.

  “Danielle,” my aunt tried now, “it’s not your fault.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s been twenty-five years. Will everyone stop telling me that?”

  “Will you ever start believing it?”

  “We were a family. Everyone’s action is someone else’s reaction. If he hadn’t started drinking, if she hadn’t tried to leave him, if I hadn’t found his damn gun. We might as well have been a row of dominoes. I carried the gun to my parents’ bedroom. I told my mom what he was doing. I tipped the first domino, then we all started to fall.”

  “Your father is to blame!” my aunt said sharply.

  “Because he killed your sister?” I retorted just as sharply. “Or because he saddled you with his kid?”

  My aunt crossed the tiny space in three strides and slapped me. The sting of the blow shocked me. I stared at her, startled by her fury.

  “Don’t you dare talk about yourself that way! Goddammit, Danielle. I have loved you since the day you were born. Just as I loved Jenny, and Natalie and Johnny. I would’ve taken you all in. I would’ve stuffed my silly condo to the ceiling with all of you if I’d been given the option. But Jenny had a plan. And being a good older sister, I listened to her plan and trusted her to manage her own life. That’s what family does. Her failings aren’t my failings, nor are they your failings. Life sucks. Your father was a bastard. Now cry, dammit. Let yourself bawl it all out, Danielle. Then let yourself heal. Your mother would’ve wanted that. And Natalie and Johnny would’ve wanted it, too.”

  Then, just as quickly as my aunt had slapped me, she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. I didn’t pull away. I could only surrender to her, my aunt, my mother. Things got so blurred with the passage of time.

  “I love you,” my aunt whispered against my cheek. “Dear God, Danielle, you are the best thing that ever happened to me, even when you break my heart.”

  “I want them back.”

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t picture them anymore. I see only you.”

  “You don’t have to see them, Danielle. Just feel them in your heart.”

  “I can’t,” I protested. “It hurts too much
. Twenty-five years later, it aches.”

  “Then feel the pain. No one ever said family didn’t hurt.”

  But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Instead I was in the bedroom again, handing the gun over to my mother. Trusting the woman with my aunt’s eyes to make everything all right.

  “Go to bed, sweetheart,” she’d whispered. “Quick. Before he sees you. I’ll take care of everything. I promise.”

  My mother taking the gun. My mother setting it carefully on the nightstand. Where the clock read …

  I froze. Caught the scene in my head, forced it to rewind. My mother, placing the gun in front of her digital clock, red numbers glowing 10:23 p.m. Myself, scurrying down the hall toward bed, where I pulled the covers over my head and blocked out the rest.

  10:23 p.m. I’d talked to my mother at 10:23 p.m.

  But according to the police report, my family didn’t die until after one a.m., at least two and half hours later.

  I pulled away from my aunt. “I need to go.”

  “Danielle—”

  “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but you’re right. Someday, it will be. I love you, Aunt Helen. Even when I’m a bitch, I know how lucky I am to have you.”

  “Tomorrow,” she said, still holding my hands, “we’ll go together.”

  “Tomorrow,” I agreed. Now I pulled my hands free and made my way toward the door, frantic to get out of her house.

  I hit the driveway, already punching numbers on my cell phone as I ran for my car. All these years later, I didn’t know his number, so I did the sensible thing and dialed the sheriff’s office. Then, the second I got someone on the phone: “I’m looking for Sheriff Wayne. My name is Danielle Burton and I need to speak with him immediately.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY