There were half a dozen others spread throughout the room, none talking to each other. Katie waved me over and I settled into the seat next to hers. She handed me a paper cup of coffee.
“I thought you’d need this,” she said, assessing me with her inquisitive journalist’s eyes.
“What’s going on, Katie?” I needed to know, mindlessly sipping the lukewarm drink. It might have been machine-quality, but it tasted great. “Thanks for this, by the way.”
“A lawyer called me. Someone from Jenn’s firm, I think.”
“Jenn has a lawyer?”
“Yeah…” She consulted a notebook. “Shelley Brown. You know her?”
I shrugged. I had probably met the woman at an office Christmas party or something. “Why did this lawyer call you and not me?” Another even more disconcerting thought stuck its tongue out at me: Why did Jenn call a lawyer and not me?
Katie must have read my mind. “It’s attempted murder, Jaspar, not a parking ticket. This is serious. Jenn would have known she needed someone to represent her. I’m guessing she told the lawyer to call me so you’d hear it from a friend and not a stranger.”
I stared at her. Katie and I were not friends. Actually, we barely knew each other. She and Jenn had hit it off earlier that year, when Katie had come to Jenn’s firm with a legal problem. Something about a deadbeat boyfriend. I hadn’t paid much attention. I was just glad that Jenn had found someone to socialize with other than the single-minded, legal eagle, type As she worked with. Socializing with other lawyers is just like being at the office, except with drinks and pretzels and no one taking notes. It wasn’t until the night Mikki disappeared that I thought of Katie as anything other than the friend who dropped Jenn off after a girl’s night out.
Ever since Mikki’s disappearance, Katie had become a much bigger part of our lives. She held Jenn’s hand, lent an extra shoulder to cry on, made tea, poured wine, provided whatever Jenn needed whenever I couldn’t. When asked to deal with the outrageous media frenzy that had erupted once news of the kidnapping got out, she’d seamlessly jumped to the helm of our rocky boat and taken over, giving us one less thing to worry about. Sure, it was great for her career—something she readily acknowledged—but if someone could benefit from this hell and keep us out of it at the same time, I was all for it. As I looked at her that morning, I realized I might have been wrong about Katie Edwards. Maybe, sometime during the maelstrom of shit we’d suffered through together, she’d become my friend too.
“What happened, Katie? What the hell is going on? You’re kidding about the murder thing, right? I mean, who on earth would Jenn ever want to murder?”
The answer was a drop kick to my stomach.
Chapter 21
By some great power, or the celestial movement of stars and moon unknown to me, I had entered a new phase of my incarceration in the rectangle. Each day was an invitation to something new, a gentle, slow progression into a different reality—all thanks to the benevolent graces of Asmae.
When I’d finally managed to crawl down from my nighttime perch on her first visit, I found the meal she’d brought me wasn’t the usual dry crust of bread. There wasn’t even a single wondrous olive. Instead, on a platter laid out on a crate that doubled as a table, was a veritable smorgasbord of delights. Along with double my typical bread allotment was a ramekin of oil, another of honey, a small tagine containing a mixture of moist cooked lamb, apricot and vegetables, and a dollop of couscous. It was more food than I’d consumed all month. Although my desiccated salivary glands were telling me to do one thing, my stomach demanded another, performing its own version of a dry heave.
That day, over several hours, I only managed to swallow a miniscule portion of the couscous, along with small pieces of bread dipped in honey and oil. When Asmae appeared again just before sunset, bearing a second platter, I apologized, trying to explain my predicament with hand signals—not easy to do—and then spent the rest of my gesticulations thanking her in every way I could think of. With just that diminutive improvement in my diet, I could already feel my writer’s brain—once bursting with exposition and clever turns of phrase—if not exactly come back to life, then at least peep its intention to do so...but only if I continued to provide nutrients for my body, despite how it currently repelled them. Asmae nodded often, smiled widely, said little, and stayed only a few moments.
Somehow, my new caregiver/warden must have comprehended my speechless performance. Over the next several days, thrice-daily platters were prepared for the constitution of someone unaccustomed to eating actual meals. Every day the rations were adjusted for what had transpired the day before. If I ate one spoonful of couscous on day one, day two brought a spoonful and a half. If I didn’t touch any meat, fish was attempted the following meal. If I vomited or experienced diarrhea, the menu item that caused the reaction was immediately discontinued.
Sometimes the platter appeared at the opening of the door as before, slid through on the ground and left there for me to retrieve. Other times, Asmae would bring the fare in herself, arranging it on the crate-table, all the while cooing something that I concluded was either her describing the meal’s contents or asking after my well-being.
Oftentimes she’d find me prone in the lean-to’s shade, asleep and difficult to wake. I knew I’d grown dangerously thin and, by all other measures, dreadful and likely repulsive in appearance, so I understood the concern I regularly saw in her eyes.
I’d never been an exceedingly vain man, but I’d come to know—especially during the heady years following the release of In The Middle—the value of looking a certain way, of putting forward the best possible you. People react positively, and sometimes unreasonably exuberantly, to someone who is—by nothing more than cut of jaw, placement of cheek, color of eye, fit of clothes—defined by society as more attractive than others. More books were sold. Everyone benefited—publisher, agent, booksellers, me. My looks were something I’d been given, and had spit and polished as required. But, like everything else, they too had been taken from me. My current state was by far the least of my losses, but it was a loss nonetheless.
It was a blistering hot afternoon like countless ones before it, the sun pounding the rectangle with bolts of neon. As usual, I’d taken to the small haven of shade provided by the lean-to, and fallen asleep on the bamboo mat I used as a daybed. I’d been feeling poorly for days, which was nothing new, and running a fever. I could only guess at why. Perhaps I was fighting an infection—or perhaps my body was simply complaining, yet again, about its stunning fall from grace.
The sensation of a cool cloth pressed against my steaming forehead, perfumed with a delicate floral scent I’d come to associate with Asmae, was nothing short of miraculous. I didn’t open my eyes. It might have been because of my weakened state—or it might have been because of a desire to perpetuate the joy of what I admitted might be nothing but another hallucination.
Taking great care, Asmae unfastened the two remaining functional buttons of my shirt. She gently ran the cloth across my chest, and then down into the deep hollow of my belly. With a refreshed towel, she next ministered to my arms, paying special attention to my ruined hands. I loved every second, each pass across my starving skin bringing me closer to feeling once more like a human being...and I simultaneously hated every second, for fear it would be the last.
Maintaining an almost reverential silence, by which she asked permission to continue and I acquiesced, Asmae again dipped the cloth into a basin of water and wrung it out, setting off a flutter of aromas, and then laid it aside. With a touch so light it might have been the work of an angel, she rolled up the hem of each pant leg. She laid the cool, fragrant towel across the bridge of my right foot, then moved it up the leg, down the backside, and tenderly around the rough, chapped bottom of the foot, repeating the same route on the left.
Laying a buttery-soft hand against my forehead, she checked my fever. Whether my temperature told the story or not, I felt as revived and well as if she
’d just given me an entire body transplant.
This is how it can be.
Our lives had been stolen and gutted, Mikki’s and mine, and that was a horrible thing. But empathy, compassion, and kindness are powerful salves. Through Asmae and what she was doing for me, I suddenly knew what was possible. For me. For my daughter. Peacefulness filled me and took me to sleep.
When next I woke, the sun was dipping below my cement horizon, delivering a merciful abatement from the day’s heat. Tempered shadows of dusk revealed hints of color in an otherwise sun-bleached world. For long moments I lay there, enjoying the return of fresh night air, breathing in the perfume of a dinner platter that must have arrived during my slumber. I felt rejuvenated by the thought of someone like Asmae helping Mikki. I tried to recall the lessons we’d taught our daughter in the short years we’d had her. Would she know the difference between a person like Asmae, who came into your life to save it...and someone like Scott Walker, who came to destroy it?
Chapter 22
It’s shocking, the first time you embrace the love of your life and feel them almost-imperceptibly pull away. There is always a message in such a withdrawal. But, instead of focusing on what it might be, I pushed all negative thoughts away. After all, these were not the best of times. We were in the windowless, shabby back room of a police precinct, my wife having been arrested for attempting to murder our neighbor, Scott Walker.
I can’t remember ever looking at Jenn and thinking she was anything but outrageously gorgeous. But that morning, when I stepped into the room they were keeping her in, she appeared as grey and dull and dispirited as the space itself. As soon as our perfunctory embrace was done, the subtle disconnection overlooked, she fell into a folding chair. She introduced her new lawyer, Muriel Cope, who’d stepped in to replace Shelley Brown. Something about Jenn’s law firm being unable or unwilling to represent one of their own partners.
After a brisk handshake and a tense sideways glance at her client, Cope announced, “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
I stopped her. “Wait. What’s this about? What’s going to happen next?”
She and Jenn exchanged another look, then: “Why don’t you and Jenn talk first? Then we can deal with what’s ahead of us.” Briefcase and iPhone in hand, she left the room.
I sat in the chair opposite Jenn and reached across the table. Pretending to ignore the gesture, she quickly pulled her hands away, burying them in her lap. Her eyes were anywhere but on mine. I was already worried and confused, but now an air raid siren was blowing my head apart, warning me of impending disaster. “Jenn,” I pleaded, “I need you to tell me what’s going on. Is it true? Did you try to kill Scott?”
Tear-blurred eyes fell on me, and my heart lurched.
“Yes.”
With that one, simple word, I realized our lives were about to be turned upside down. Again. In the nearly two decades I’d known my wife, no one could have ever convinced me she would be capable of harming another person—or even giving it a try. Yet, for reasons that eluded me, as I sat there looking at the stranger’s face she wore that morning I didn’t doubt her confession for a second. “Why?” I asked. “Why would you do something like that? Why Scott?”
Scott Walker was the father of Mikki’s best friend, Delores, and a neighbor. They lived on the next block over from ours. A few years earlier, based on the strength of our daughters’ friendship, we’d attempted socializing with Scott and his girlfriend Anna, who was not Delores’ mother. It wasn’t a disaster, but the pairing didn’t click, and we’d seen little of the couple since.
“Muriel thinks the charges will be dropped soon.”
My heart leapt, a thrill ran through my chest and, unaccountably, a nervous chuckle erupted from my mouth. “Jenn, oh God, that’s great news!” I enthused, a flicker of hope ignited. “So this is some sort of crazy mistake. You can’t imagine all the stuff that’s been going through my head.” I so wanted to touch her, to pull her into my arms, but her body language continued to tell me that any sort of physical intimacy remained unwelcome.
“There’s been no mistake, Jaspar.”
I was becoming exasperated. For someone who relied on fact, logic, and clarity to do her job, Jenn was being stingy with all three.
“I did try to… I did attack Scott,” she said, her voice flat.
I sucked in as much air as I could manage, held it, counted to five, and then expelled it. “Jenn, you have to help me out here. What did you do? Why?”
“I found…” Squeezing her eyes tight, fat tears slipped down her cheeks, leaving damp hoary scars. “I found her pink barrette, Jaspar. Mikki’s pink barrette.”
I shook my head, more confused than ever. “What are you talking about?”
“You know how before…right before she was gone, how she’d been on a kick, always wearing those pink barrettes? They were her latest fashion statement. I think she was trying to see if she could turn something only little girls were expected to wear into a teenage fad.”
I nodded. I did recall hearing something along those lines. But, truth be told, I’d paid little attention, as befits most fads—especially those indulged in by thirteen-year-old girls and their friends.
“I found one,” she repeated. “I knew it was hers because she’d initialed them on the back with a Sharpie. It was her distinctive mark, the right side of the ‘M’ for Mikki becoming the left side of the ‘W’ for Wills.”
Again I nodded. This was something I’d seen her do on her school books, or whenever she left us a message on the notepad in the kitchen. “So you found one of her pink barrettes. I don’t get why that means anything.”
“Think, Jaspar. Think about when we talked to the police that night. Do you remember when they asked us to…”
Suddenly I made the connection. I finished the sentence: “...describe what she was wearing the last time we saw her.”
“Yes.”
“That morning, when she left for school, she was wearing her pink barrettes.”
“Yes.”
“My God, Jenn, you found one? Where?”
She looked away. The tears had stopped. She busied herself looking for a Kleenex to blow her nose.
“Where, Jenn? Where did you find the barrette? And what does this have to do with Scott Walker?” Was she telling one story to divert me from another she didn’t want to tell?
Our eyes caught and held. She said nothing, as if silently willing me to come up with the answer on my own. For a full moment we sat like that, in that grimy room, staring at each other. Then as dreadful realization dawned in my eyes, fear bloomed in hers.
“D-did Scott find it?” I finally uttered, desperate for an alternative to the inconceivable scenario slowly forming in my mind.
“No,” she whispered. “I found it.”
“Where?”
“In Scott’s house.”
I could feel blood racing through every vein, triple time, to match the beating of my heart. “Where?”
“In his bedroom.” As she began to recite the facts I had every right to know, her voice grew leaden, her eyes dead. “In the bed. It was wedged between the mattress and the headboard.”
I thought I might be sick. “Mikki was in Scott Walker’s bed?”
She nodded.
I pulled in a ragged, tortured breath, and begged my stomach not to betray me. A starburst of pain radiated outwards from the base of my skull. My head began to pound. My mouth grew impossibly dry. “With Scott?”
Her shoulders moved in an indeterminate way. I didn’t know if she was saying, “Of course, you idiot, how else would the barrette get there?” or, “I don’t know.”
And as if these thoughts weren’t disturbing enough, ugly enough, heartbreaking enough, one more came crashing through my brain like a runaway train flying off a bridge into a depthless, dark ravine: “Jenn, how did you find the barrette in Scott Walker’s bed?”
Chapter 23
“Jaspar, I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry
. Two words that, put together, convey so much...or pitifully little. They can be all you’ll ever need to hear, or hopelessly insufficient.
It was Jenn’s turn to reach across the table, her trembling, red-splotched hands searching for mine. It was my turn to withhold. The situation was one of those idiotic scenarios where she knows I know, I know she knows I know, and I think I know what I know, but I need her to say it. Otherwise, I simply could never believe it.
I waited.
She took a few moments to stare into space, sniff back a few more tears—of sadness? regret?—and, like a lawyer preparing for opening statements, choose her words carefully.
“I’d been stopping by the house—the Walker house—to see Delores,” she started out. “I…I don’t exactly know why. I guess it made me feel better, you know? To talk to Mikki’s best friend. They were so close. It made me feel close to her again. I know it sounds crazy now that I say it out loud, but it’s how I felt.” A quick sigh, then: “One day, Delores showed me a picture of them together, one I’d never seen before. I thought I was going to fall apart when I saw it, Jaspar. The pictures we have, the ones we’ve looked at a million times since that night, they feel like…memories, something that’s long gone, Mikki in the past, Mikki before. But this picture, the one Delores showed me, it wasn’t a memory. It was something new. It was like I was sharing a new experience with Mikki, seeing her in a way I hadn’t before, with her doing something new, being in a new place. I…I just so needed that. Being with Delores gave me that.”
“I get it, Jenn.” I did. But she was stalling. Focusing on the innocent act, delaying the guilty. “Then what happened?”
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