Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  Gin grimaced. She would have guessed benzodiazepine—known as “benzos”—or barbiturates, given Tom’s probable access to prescription medications, though abruptly quitting other drugs could also cause seizures. “Have you been using for a long time?”

  “Off and on. Funny thing is, I finally quit. After they found Lily. I just . . . I mean, I guess I’d always hoped she’d gone somewhere, pursued her dream, lived the life she used to talk about. I mean, I knew it was crazy . . . but she was Lily, you know? And then when I realized that she hadn’t gone anywhere at all—that her life . . .” His voice thickened with tears, and he cleared his throat. “She would have hated what I, the way I’ve become. And I thought, I mean I know it kind of sounds stupid . . . but I thought maybe this was a sign I should step up and do the things I always told her I would. Shit. Shit.”

  He grabbed a handful of tissues from the box beside the bed and ground them against his face.

  “You went cold turkey?”

  “Yeah, I haven’t had anything stronger than a few drinks and a hell of a lot of caffeine since then. And believe it or not, I was going to try to quit drinking, too. I just didn’t think I could do it all at once.” He looked so contrite that Gin felt herself softening toward him, and had to force herself to hold onto her resolve.

  “Have you had other seizures?”

  “No. It was only after you started asking me all those questions, on top of those damn detectives practically coming out and saying they thought I did it. That I killed her.” His gaze dropped to the sheet covering his body. “That I ever could have hurt her.”

  “Tom!” Christine burst through the door, Olive trailing in her wake, looking frightened. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  Tom looked accusingly at Gin, not answering his sister. Gin shrugged: after failing to locate Spencer, she had done as Tom asked, and told no one that he had been admitted.

  But everyone in the hospital knew Spencer Parker, who had served as its chief administrator for many years. Someone had made a courtesy call, whether to Christine or to Spencer, it didn’t matter. Gin was surprised that Spencer hadn’t already appeared, but maybe he was trying to respect his son’s wishes, at least for now.

  But for Christine, his twin, there were no such boundaries. Never had been.

  “Want to tell her, Gin?” Tom said in an exaggerated attempt at cheer. “Or shall I? Me? Okay, well then, sister dear, I am very sorry to break it to you that your brother is a drug addict.”

  Christine gasped, her eyes going wide. She put her hand on Olive’s shoulder and steered her out the door. “Go sit in the waiting room,” she said in a no-nonsense voice, and the girl complied, looking frightened.

  “He had a seizure,” Gin said, as succinctly as she could, once Olive was out of earshot. “It was probably caused by abruptly withdrawing from regular benzodiazepine use. The days ahead are going to be rough ones, but the good news is that Tom should be able to make a complete recovery.”

  “Benzo . . . what?” Christine echoed, looking from one of them to the other. “Is that a prescription drug? Tom, please tell me this isn’t true.”

  “It’s true,” he said, almost defiantly. “I’m a full-on addict. I finally found something I’m good at.”

  “The benzodiazepines are psychoactive drugs like Valium and Xanax,” Gin explained.

  “Oh, but that’s just the tip of my little iceberg,” Tom muttered. “I’m a full-service junkie.”

  Christine whirled on Gin. “What are you doing here anyway? This is a private—a family matter!”

  “Aw, hell, Christine, Gin is family,” Tom protested. “Look, don’t take this out on her. I got here on my own steam. She tried to help me, sis. She was there when it happened.”

  At first shocked by Christine’s anger, Gin quickly realized that Christine was mostly afraid, and was lashing out because she didn’t know what else to do. Christine had always acted as her brother’s front line, his protector.

  “Christine, it’s going to be all right,” Gin said gently. “Tom has already made the most important step, which is to choose sobriety. There are very effective programs to help him and—”

  “None of that is any of your business.” Christine looked more furious than mollified. “And what were you doing coming here and talking to him anyway? Trying to make it look like he killed Lily?”

  “What? No, I—” Gin broke off as Christine grabbed her arm and tried to pull her out of the room.

  “What about you, Chris?” Tom said, recovering his strength a little. “You sure got here quick. Just in the area? Or are you over here with Olive again, pretending everything’s fine?”

  “Olive? Is something wrong with Olive?” Gin asked.

  “No, no, she’s fine, we just had a follow-up visit on a minor matter.” Christine gathered herself, patting down her hair and taking a deep breath. “Look, Gin, I’m sorry if I overreacted, but you can’t—I mean I know these are hard days, horrible, for you. For all of us. But people can’t go around making accusations with nothing, with no reason.” Her fury had morphed into something that looked a lot like panic. She was twisting her hands and shrinking into herself, and her appearance had lost some of its polish. A few errant strands of her pale blonde hair had escaped its precise style and hung over her eyes, and her blouse had come partially untucked from her pants.

  “Christine, I promise you, I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything,” Gin said. But was that true? Was she all too anxious to pin the murder on someone—anyone—other than Jake? “I just thought I’d come and visit Tom here.”

  It was a lame excuse and it earned her a suspicious reception. “Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to him for a moment in private,” Christine said.

  Gin excused herself and walked back down the hallway through the administrative wing. At the atrium where the surgery center connected with the rest of the hospital, skylights opened onto a fountain with comfortable seating and colorful art. Olive was sitting on one of the benches, writing in a notebook.

  “Hi, Olive.”

  The girl looked up, breaking into a tentative smile when she saw her. “Gin! What are you doing here?”

  “Just visiting with your uncle, as a matter of fact.”

  “Is he really a drug addict?”

  Gin hesitated, trying to find the right words to soothe the girl while still observing her mother’s request not to interfere.

  “It appears that your uncle has been abusing prescription medications. The good news is that he is determined to get healthy, and I can promise you that if he enters into treatment, he will get better.”

  Olive was silent, biting her lip as she considered what Gin had said. Eventually she nodded.

  “You and Uncle Tom used to be friends, right?”

  “I think we’re still friends,” Gin said, hoping that was true. “Your mom and your uncle are . . . important to me.”

  “You want to sit with me? Mom said she’d only be a few minutes.”

  “Sure,” Gin said, taking a seat next to the girl. “This is a good coincidence, actually. I forgot to give you your birthday gift the other day, and then I saw your mom and forgot again, and I’ve been carrying it around in my purse.”

  “You didn’t have to get me anything!” Olive protested. But her face shone with delight as she accepted the package.

  Gin noticed that the notebook Olive held in her lap held drawings, not words. The drawing the girl had been working on was a copy of the painting hanging on the wall; it featured a boat bobbing in a harbor.

  “Wow, that’s really good,” she said. “I had no idea you were an artist.”

  “Oh, I’m not, really,” Olive said, blushing and flipping the notebook closed. “It’s just something I do for fun.”

  Gin sensed that pushing her further would only embarrass the girl, despite her obvious talent. She watched her tear the wrapping off the gift.

  “It’s beautiful!” Olive exclaimed, lifting the lid off the white box to reve
al the necklace nestled inside.

  “You and my sister have the same birthstone,” Gin confided. “Alexandrite. I think it’s so pretty because it seems to change color in the light. Would you like me to put it on you?”

  “Oh yes, please.” She leaned forward and Gin fastened the delicate chain around her neck. “I love it!” The girl threw her arms around Gin in an impulsive hug.

  “You know, you remind me of Lily,” Gin said, gathering the wrappings and ribbon to throw away.

  “I’ve seen pictures. She was so pretty.”

  “So are you!”

  “Ugh, God, no, I’m completely breaking out.” Olive grimaced and pointed to a thin line of redness near her hairline. To Gin, it looked like standard adolescent skin issues, but she remembered how cataclysmic a breakout could seem at her age. “And it’s on my legs, too. Mom’s taking me to the dermatologist.”

  “Oh, is that why you’re here today?”

  “Well, actually it’s because I’ve been having these stomach pains. Really bad, like I’ve had to come home from school a few times.”

  Christine came walking down the hall before Olive could elaborate. Stomach pains could be so many things—cramps, a change in diet, anxiety. How did mothers do it? Gin knew that she and Lily had given her mother plenty to worry about when they were teens.

  “Mom, look what Gin gave me for my birthday!” Olive jumped up and held out the pendant, twisting it so that it flashed purple and teal in the light.

  “It’s lovely,” Christine said. She caught Gin’s gaze and held it for a moment, smiling uncertainly. “Gin, you’ve been so thoughtful, and I’m sorry for. . . . But Olive and I need to get going if we’re going to make it to our appointment.”

  “We’re seeing a specialist,” Olive said. “He’s like one of the best in the state for—”

  “That’s enough,” Christine said firmly. “Let’s let Gin get back to her day, shall we?”

  “Has she been having the stomach pains for long?”

  Christine’s head snapped back up. “Pains?”

  “I was telling her about how I had to stay out of school last week, Mom.”

  “Oh, you know kids,” Christine said lightly. “If it’s not one thing with them . . . Austen keeps falling off his skateboard and opening up the exact same cut on his knee. I don’t think it’s ever going to heal.”

  “Maybe they’ll have to amputate,” Olive giggled.

  The pair walked down the hall, arm in arm, and Gin walked slowly toward the exit to the parking lot.

  She had the distinct impression that Christine had been trying to change the subject.

  25

  Gin was getting into her car when someone called her name. She looked up to see Christine running toward her. She was alone.

  “I’m glad I caught you,” she said. “I just dropped Olive off at the waiting room.”

  “I’m sorry she’s not feeling well,” Gin said carefully.

  “She’s fine. Look, I want to talk to you about Tom, though. I’m sorry for the way I came at you in there, but, well, I’d like to ask you not to talk to him anymore.”

  “Not talk to him?” Gin frowned. “Listen, Christine, if you have any doubts about his addiction—”

  “I know he drinks.” Christine clutched the strap of her purse so hard her knuckles went white. “And I know he’s had a problem with drugs. But he’s working on that. He’s going to go to meetings.”

  “That’s . . . a great start,” Gin said. She’d been around the families of overdose victims enough to know that denial could run very deep in loved ones. “But he’s going to need a lot of support and compassion while he’s recovering—benzodiazepine withdrawal has to be managed with care, because it has some dangerous side effects and it can last a long time.”

  “I appreciate that, but it really is something we’d like to keep in the family.”

  “You know . . .” Gin said carefully, aware that she might well be pushing Christine further away. “Addiction is a disease that affects the entire family. You might want to explore treatment for yourself too, especially if you’ll be seeing a lot of Tom in recovery.”

  “I don’t need a lecture.” Gin was dismayed by the abrupt change in Christine’s mood, the hostility in her voice. “What I need is for you to stay away from my family.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve seen what you’re doing,” Christine said. “You show up here and start accusing people. I mean, I’m just devastated about Lily. We all are. But you won’t convince people my brother killed her—at least, not if I can help it.”

  “I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything,” Gin protested. “I just want to know what happened to her. I happen to have some specialized skills that could be useful to the investigation, and they’ve invited me to participate.”

  “As a doctor,” Christine retorted. “Not a detective.”

  “Sometimes the lines blur,” Gin said, bewildered by her friend’s defensiveness. “For instance, my medical training helped me to deduce that Lawrence actually died of heart failure, not a gunshot wound.”

  Christine looked at her blankly. “I don’t understand. He was shot in the head. That had to be fatal.”

  “It would have been, if he was still alive. But at autopsy, the medical examiner found evidence of a fresh thrombus and plaque rupture in the coronary arteries. In laymen’s terms, that means that the artery was blocked, and the heart wasn’t receiving oxygenated blood,” Gin explained. “Lawrence was likely in a coma when he was shot, but in any event, he couldn’t have pulled that trigger himself. He was murdered, Christine. It wasn’t a suicide.”

  If she’d hoped to shock Christine into confiding something, it seemed to have the opposite effect. Christine merely shrugged. “Maybe he had a heart attack just as he was pulling the trigger.”

  “Unlikely, but I suppose possible. It is much more likely that its failure was caused by a drug overdose, and if that’s the case, it’ll show up in the tox screen.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt Lawrence,” Christine said tightly. “But it doesn’t make any sense to connect his death to Lily’s. The county officers had already taken over the case. Lawrence was being kept in the loop just to be polite, from what I hear.”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t know things,” Gin insisted. “Things someone wanted kept secret.”

  “Like who, Jake?” Christine shook her head sympathetically. “It must be hard to come back here and see him doing so well for himself. Especially given the way things ended between you two. Knowing you might have stayed together, if only . . . things had been different.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Look, Gin, I’ve been divorced almost two years now. I know it’s no picnic being single at our age. At least I’ve got my kids. I can only imagine that you’re painfully aware of your biological clock. And seeing Jake . . . well, it must bring up all kind of complicated feelings. But that doesn’t mean you should put emotion before reason.”

  Gin had never seen Christine like this, so deliberately cruel. It was true that they hadn’t been typical best friends—there had always been some distance between them—but Gin had always assumed that was because the sisters’ bond was so tight, there wasn’t much room left over for another girl. And Christine had Tom, her own best friend in addition to being her twin.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” Gin said, the tremor in her voice betraying the hurt she felt. “But I am truly only trying to find out who killed Lily. Jake told the police where he was and what he was doing that day. So did I. And my parents, and Tom. But what about you? Can you even remember what you were doing that afternoon?”

  “Of course.” Christine glared. “It’s not like you were the only one affected by her death. I remember everything about that time. I’ve asked myself a million times why I didn’t come by that day to see if Lily wanted to go to Rengel’s, especially since you were away at orientation.”


  Rengel’s was a corner drug store that sold candy and sodas. Gin had driven by it the other day and been saddened to see it shuttered. Back then, they’d often gone to buy licorice vines and Fanta and sit in the park next door, talking.

  “What did you do instead?”

  “Worked on my scrapbook,” Christine said. “I was adding all the photos from senior year and graduation. My dad told Lawrence all this back then. He came home early that day because he’d had a dentist appointment, and we were in the house together from four o’clock on, until he and Jake went out to practice driving the stick shift that night. It’s all in the notes.”

  Gin vaguely remembered those details from the investigation so long ago. Lawrence had asked the question from every direction: what had the girls been up to in the days leading up to her disappearance? Was she sure they hadn’t talked on the phone that night? Now she understood that he was trying to find evidence that Lily had been planning to run away.

  “Listen,” Christine said. “If what you’re saying is true, and someone gave Lawrence a drug to induce a heart attack, I assume it was some sort of controlled substance, right? Something you couldn’t get unless you were a doctor?”

  “Or someone with a lot of authority in the hospital,” Gin shot back. “Like Tom. Or your dad, for that matter.”

  Christine laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. It’s not enough to accuse my brother, you have to go after Dad, too?”

  “I’m not accusing anyone of—”

  “When the only physician in our families is actually your dad.” She smirked. “How easy would it have been for him to get his hands on that drug? And then go see his old friend Lawrence, the one who bungled the search for his daughter all those years ago? I mean, I certainly wouldn’t believe your dad could be capable of anything like that, but you have to see it from a cop’s perspective. Means and motive, isn’t that what they say?”