You see it now, don’t you? Anyone would fall in love with him. You would have fallen in love with him, too. Especially if you needed to be rescued.
My shoulder throbs under the weight of the bag. It’s killing me, I think, but no, it’s not the bad shoulder that will kill me, or the ache in my lower back, or the still-bent finger, now a sickly greenish yellow. It’s the gash on my leg, which, last time I checked, was neatly packed with pus, or the burning thirst at the back of my throat, or the fact that the temperature has dropped another ten degrees in the past hour and will keep dropping.
There are so many things that are killing me now, slowly, until I finally lie down on the forest floor and give my flesh up to the ground until only the picked and bleached bones remain.
The smell of gasoline and burning rubber. The shock of the skull stripped of its skin.
Has it only been a few days? I thought I’d be stronger than this. I thought I was strong.
All those days in the gym. All those miles running to nowhere. Little sachets of protein. Kickboxing on Tuesdays. C’mon, ladies. Push! Don’t forget to hydrate. I’ve been so stupid.
Twigs snap underfoot. The woods are in half-light, the shadows cast are long. A face stares out at me from the dark, eyes screwed shut, mouth frozen in a silent scream. I stop short, heart seized in my chest, and try to blink it away. “Hello?” I take a step forward and the face dissolves. It’s just a tree trunk, thickly set, with a wide hollow carved in its center. Like something Winnie-the-Pooh would get stuck inside, looking for honey.
Shit. I’ve been here before.
I’ve walked all day and ended up right back where I started. What an idiot I am. What a fucking fool.
A laugh bubbles up inside me and escapes my lips. Hysteria elbows its way past the fear nestled in the base of my throat and pushes out into the quiet evening air.
If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry, my father would say when I was a kid, usually about the Red Sox. Even when he got sick, even when the cancer had stripped him of every last ounce of earthly pleasure, he’d goggle his eyes at me and shrug. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. He stopped laughing, though, at the end. It took that away from him, too.
Maggie
I could have saved Shannon a trip: it turned out that photographs of Ben were ten a penny.
I had waited until I heard the police car rumble out of the driveway before I booted up the computer and typed his name into the search engine. The screen filled with entries. His name had been released to the media by then so the first few hits were about the crash. I clicked on the first one.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Jennifer McNulty
Pioneering CEO of Prexilane Killed in Plane Crash
Ben Gardner, 34, was the owner of the single-engine Mooney Aviation that went down over the Colorado Rockies last Sunday and is believed to have been piloting the aircraft when it crashed, killing him and the plane’s only other occupant, Allison Carpenter, 31. Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the crash.
Gardner had been the CEO of Prexilane Industries since 2011. Under his control, Prexilane grew to be one of the most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Jim hadn’t been kidding when he’d said the guy was a big shot. I went back to the Google search page and scrolled through a few more articles about him, jotting down notes as I went. There was something satisfying about writing the neat bullet points down on the page, like I was wresting back control. I was halfway through one of them when I heard someone come through the front door.
“Maggie? Are you in here?”
“In the kitchen!”
Linda staggered in carrying two cake carriers and a pile of envelopes. “These were on the doorstep,” she said, spilling it all onto the kitchen counter. She opened up one of the cake carriers and stuck her nose inside. She pulled a face. “I think this one’s a pound cake.”
“Why don’t you bring them home with you? Give them to the kids when they come around.”
She shook her head. “You know Kelly won’t let me give those kids sugar.” Kelly was her daughter-in-law, a Waspish blonde with whom Linda had been waging a war of attrition ever since her son Craig had slid a diamond onto her finger. “She only lets them eat dried fruit and carrot sticks, poor little things,” Linda tutted. She paused. “Though the last time I gave those kids cake, Benji tore down my nice curtains and used them to build a fort, so she might have a point.” She sat down at the table and studied my face. “How are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Oh, you know.”
“No, I don’t, but I can guess. Jim told me about Allison.” I nodded and kept my eyes down on the table. “I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry.” I reached over and took her hand in mine and we sat there for a few minutes, silent.
Linda shifted in her chair and the spell was broken. “He said they’d found the name of the pilot. He said you’ve seen a picture.”
“That’s right.” I pushed the pair of photographs toward her.
“Good-looking kid,” she grumbled. She stood up and walked to the coffee machine. “Do you want one?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I tried not to feel impatient as she bustled around the kitchen. I was grateful that she was there and I loved her dearly, but part of me wanted her to leave so I could get back to my research. She sat back down at the table with her mug and looked at me. “So. What have you found out?”
“What do you mean?” I tried to look innocent. I figured Linda would worry if she knew what I was up to.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that. I’ve known you for longer than either of us care to remember and I know what you’re like when you want to find out about something—like a dog with a bone. You didn’t spend twenty years up at Bowdoin to sit around twiddling your thumbs when something like this happens. So spill it. What do you know about him?”
I pushed my chair back from the table and sighed. “So far, not much. He’s rich, that’s for sure, and it looks like he comes from money, too—there was a piece about a family house in San Diego in the New York Times a few years ago. His father commissioned an architect to build it—one of those minimalist cement boxes. The neighbors hated it, apparently.”
“I can see why. It sounds like an eyesore. What else?”
I picked up the notepad on the table and read from my notes. “Ben Gardner graduated from Syracuse in 2009 with an MBA. Nothing about any honors or anything, so it looks like he was an average student. Parents gave him the reins to run the family business in 2011.”
“I know the type. Born on third base, thinks he got a triple. What kind of business?”
“Pharmaceuticals. A company called Prexilane. Anyway, he headed that up until—” My voice gave out suddenly. Terror. Pain. Blood. Fire. Bone. Ally. “Until the crash,” I finished.
Linda put her hand over mine. “You’re pushing yourself too hard.”
I shook my head. “No. It’s good for me to be doing this.” I lifted my eyes to hers, saw the uncertainty clouding them, the concern. “Really.”
Linda took a sip of her coffee. “What did you say the name of the company is?”
“Prexilane.”
“Sounds familiar.” She drummed her fingers on the table, eyes tilted up to the ceiling. I waited. “They make an antidepressant for new mothers who have postpartum depression. Kelly was on it for a while after Colton was born, though I don’t know why on earth she thought she needed it when she had me just around the corner to help. She came off it pretty quick, though—said it made her feel crazy. Anyway, they’re always advertising it on TV—you’ll know it when you see it.” She took another sip of her coffee, momentarily lost in thought. “If this Ben fellow was involved in that, it’s no wonder he could afford his own plane. He must have made a mint off it.”
“Looks that way. I just wish I knew what Ally was doing with him.”
She smiled at me sadly. “Don’t you think they were probably invol
ved romantically?”
I thought of his smug, polished face and winced. “I just don’t know if I see her with him.”
Linda raised an eyebrow. “He was good looking and he was rich. I think most girls see themselves with someone like him.”
“Ally isn’t most girls,” I snapped. I saw the look on Linda’s face and I knew I’d hurt her, but I couldn’t bring myself to apologize.
“Of course she wasn’t,” Linda said, and I hated her for using the past tense. “Look, I’ve been thinking . . .” She stared down at the table as though uncertain of how to continue. She took a deep breath. “Have you thought about a memorial?” I looked at her questioningly. “For Ally,” she said gently. “I think it might help you if . . .”
I felt a flutter of panic. “They haven’t found her body, Linda. How can I have a funeral for her when there isn’t a body?”
There was an awful look on her face, tenderness mixed with pity, and I looked away. She reached out and took my hand. “I’m not suggesting a funeral,” she said. “Just something where people can come and pay their respects. There are a lot of people in this town who loved Allison, and who love you. It could be good for you. Help you get some closure.”
I pictured a lid closing on a coffin. “I don’t want closure,” I spat. “I want to know what happened to my daughter.”
I tried to pull my hand away from her but she held on tight. “I know you do,” she said, “but you might never know.”
I felt the familiar lump form in the back of my throat and the black chasm open up inside my chest. “Please don’t say that,” I whispered.
“I’m not saying it to be cruel,” Linda said gently. “Trust me, if there was any way I could give you the answers you’re looking for, I would. I know that there are people out there working day and night to find out what happened on that plane, but you know how these things are. There are no guarantees.” She squeezed my hand. “I just want what’s best for you.”
“I know.” Linda always wanted what was best for me and for everyone she loved. I sighed. I knew when I was beaten. “Nothing over the top,” I warned. “No churches. No black. And no lilies—Ally hated lilies.” I hated them, too. The church had been full of them at Charles’s funeral, and the smell lingered with me for days.
“Whatever you want.” She glanced at the clock and scraped back her chair. “I’ve got to pick up the kids. Is there anything you need from outside? I could come back after I drop them off . . . ?”
I shook my head. The computer whirred impatiently in the background. I wanted to be left so I could get on with my research.
She got up and picked her bag up off the counter. “I’ll be over tomorrow. If you need anything in the meantime . . .”
I smiled up at her. “I know where to find you.”
I watched her leave, and then I cleared her mug from the table and dumped it into the sink. I reached up and touched my face and realized it was wet. I’d been crying. Linda was right. No matter how much I learned about what happened, it ultimately didn’t matter. A plane had crashed. Ally was dead.
Allison
I sleep underneath the Winnie-the-Pooh tree, its great big hollow staring down at me, and dream of being pinned in acres of the white pima cotton sheets that dressed our bed. I reached for him, but I got tangled up in the soft cloth, and the weight of the sheets held me down. I could sense him, though, feel the gentle dip in the mattress that would lead to where his body lay, smell the scent of him, soap mixed with the slightly sour tang of his breath. I kept fighting, arms outstretched, fingers searching, but the more I struggled, the more trapped I became, the acres of freshly laundered sheets binding me tight.
In the seconds before I open my eyes into the early pink light, I’m back in San Diego. Not the apartment I shared with Tara, with its banged-up old refrigerator covered in takeout menus and save-the-dates, and my little room at the end of the hall filled with prints I’d torn out of art books and impractical shoes and half-drunk cups of coffee (black, how my mother taught me to drink it). This was the house in Bird Rock, with its cream leather sofas and sea views from the patio out back. Ben’s house. I close my eyes and see the double closet filled with expensive clothes, and the surround-sound system, and the gleaming Italian range, and the bafflingly complex espresso maker I’d never gotten the hang of.
“Coffee?” he’d say, already sliding across the vast tangle of white sheets and out of bed. I would listen to the rumble and froth and trickle of the coffee machine and he’d appear a few minutes later holding two steaming cups, and he would hand one to me with a kiss and slip back into bed and I would reach for him, pulling him on top of me while the coffee cooled on the bedside table.
In those seconds before waking I reach for him just as I had in my dream, before my eyes start open and I remember everything all over again.
I got the hang of things pretty quickly. Most nights, the bar was open to the public, and I soon learned how to charm an extra couple of bucks out of Joe from accounts who just wanted to blow off a little steam and have a pretty girl pay him a little attention. After a week, I’d made enough money to move out of my car and into a Motel 6 in Kearny Mesa.
But the real money, the girls told me, was made at private events. Once a month, a cloud of wealthy white men descended on the bar like black-tied locusts, handshakes at the ready, gold Amex cards burning a hole in their wallets. They were the great and the good of San Diego—politicians, lawyers, businessmen, real estate moguls—brought together under the guise of charity fund-raising, though I don’t think any of them could have named the cause.
Dee told me to stick close to her on my first event night. “We’ll work a table together,” she said as she carefully applied liquid eyeliner before the start of the shift. She caught my eye in the mirror and winked. “They won’t know what hit them.” Our uniforms were swapped for cocktail dresses, and our job was to sit at the tables looking pretty and keep the champagne flowing and the guests happy. How you provided that happiness, we were told, was open to interpretation.
The guests arrived at eight p.m. sharp. The men varied in age from their early thirties to their late seventies, but each one of them shone with the polish of money. Dee and I were assigned to a VIP table of six at the front of the room. I was placed between a silver-haired banking executive and a paunch-bellied VP of an aerospace company. I smiled as I poured champagne into their outstretched glasses and then poured myself a half glass. We were expected to drink at these things, but it didn’t pay to get messy.
It started almost immediately. The banking executive took my hand in his while the aerospace VP’s hand crept up my bare thigh. I glanced across the table to see a man old enough to be Dee’s grandfather openly staring down her dress. The aerospace VP’s hand reached the hem of my dress. The banking executive asked me to fetch another bottle of champagne, and I felt his hand graze my ass when I stood up. Panic began to well up inside me and I signaled for Dee to follow me to the bar.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I hissed as I handed her a fresh bottle of champagne from the fridge.
She took one look at my face and pulled me into the stockroom. I watched as she tapped out a line on the back of her hand. “You just need to loosen up. Here,” she said, offering it to me, and I took it in one sharp inhale. She waited for the drug to hit my system. “Look, you want to make some money?” I nodded, numb. “The guys out there are harmless—they just want to have a little fun. If you play nice with them, I promise you won’t be living in that Motel 6 for long.”
A flush of shame crept up my neck. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “I saw the key in your bag.” She held a hand up to my face, and for a second I was reminded of the way my mom would stroke my cheek when I was sick. “We’ve all been there, sweetheart. You’re going to be fine,” she said. “Just do what I do.” I nodded and followed her back to the table.
There was a crisp hundred tucked under my champagne glass, and the bankin
g executive winked when he saw me clock it. “I hope we’re going to become good friends tonight,” he said, and I forced a smile and slid back into my chair.
“Sure.” I reached over and knocked back the rest of my champagne before folding up the bill and tucking it into my bra. The coke was buzzing through my veins by then, and I felt invincible. “We’ll be great friends.”
I lay there for a few minutes, listening to the breath rasp in my chest and the chickadees singing their morning greetings to each other. Oh yes, I think, that’s right. I’m fucked. I tug my arms out from underneath the blanket and stare at my fingertips (still gel manicured, they really are durable), which have turned blue and numb. Not a good sign. It’s been cold overnight, colder than I was prepared for, and even now my breath is visible in foggy little puffs.
I have to move. I have to find the path today, or water. Anything, really, other than this fucking tree. I sit up too quickly and the trees around me swoon. I lie back down, gently this time, and wait for the world to stop swirling.
Breathe.
Maggie
I sifted idly through the mail stacked on the counter. Most of the envelopes were addressed to Charles. He’d been a member of countless of-the-month clubs, none of which I’d gotten around to canceling. Outdoor Monthly, Amateur Geology Society, Cairn boxes, Angler’s Association, Astronomy Club: each month the boxes would arrive, and each month I’d carry them down into the basement where they’d stay until—well, I didn’t know when. I couldn’t imagine getting rid of them, even though I knew it was a terrible waste. Every month I thought I should really track down where these things were coming from and cancel. There were other packages, too, from far-flung collector friends who would still send him specimens they thought he’d find interesting. I didn’t have the heart to tell them to stop. And so on most days I’d flick the light on in the basement, walk down the creaking steps, stick the new boxes on top of the old ones, and close the door behind me.
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