Freefall

by Jessica Barry

  These events were business, too, even though they masqueraded as pleasure. Tonight was the opening of a gallery, though I hadn’t seen anyone looking at the art. Before each of these events, Ben would squeeze my hand. “Knock ’em dead,” he’d say, before deserting me to join the other men. But I never did knock ’em dead. The other women tolerated me, but I could never get past their bland politeness.

  “Have you tried these miniburgers?” I looked up to find a woman frowning at me. She was holding up a tiny hamburger like it was a piece of evidence. I shook my head. “They’re disgusting.” She pushed it into her mouth, wincing as she chewed. “The food at these things is getting worse.” She wiped her hand on her navy trousers and thrust it toward me. “I’m Liz.”

  “Allison.”

  She was older than I’d first thought. Her blue eyes creased at the corners, and her red hair was threaded with silver. She had a sweet face, I decided. The kind you could tell smiled a lot. “You’re Ben’s fiancée, right?”

  I felt a swell of pride as she glanced at the diamond on my finger. “That’s right.”

  She reached out and took my hand. “It’s a stunner,” she said admiringly as she held the ring up to the light. She winked at me. “It suits you, too.”

  “Thank you,” I said shyly. She let go of my hand and I felt a loss. I wanted my mother in that moment, very badly.

  I felt a pair of eyes on me and looked up to see Sam watching us from across the room. Our eyes met and he looked away. I’d mentioned it to Ben once, the fact that Sam was always staring at me, but he’d just laughed it off. “Can you blame him?” he’d said, pulling me in for a kiss. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the room.” I’d dropped it after that, but being in the same room as him still made me uneasy. I knew the difference between being admired and being watched. Sam was watching me.

  I turned back to Liz and plastered a smile on my face. “How do you know Ben?”

  “My husband works for him,” she said, waving vaguely toward the crowd of men congregated on the other side of the room. “Like everybody else here, right?”

  I laughed uncertainly. I couldn’t tell from her face if she was joking. “What’s your husband’s name?” I asked out of politeness more than any actual hope of recognition. The truth was, I’d never been able to keep any of the names of Ben’s colleagues in my head, no matter how many of these parties we attended. They all blended into one amorphous, bland-faced man in a dark suit that smelled of money. The wives weren’t much different—interchangeable blondes called Cathy and Deb wearing interchangeable sheath dresses and tennis bracelets. Liz was different, though, and not just because of her shock of red hair. She looked like a real person. I hadn’t seen one of those for a long time. I felt another pang of longing for my mother and tilted the champagne glass to my lips.

  “His name is Paul,” she said. “Paul Ricci.” She was watching me closely as she said this, her face unreadable. “Have you heard of him?”

  The name did sound familiar. I thought I’d caught it in the whisperings between Ben and Sam, but I couldn’t be sure. I smiled politely. “Of course. Ben has lots of good things to say about him.”

  Something flickered across her face, a shadow, imperceptible. “Is that right? That’s nice to hear.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “How’ve the ice queens been?” she asked, nodding toward the cluster of wives. “Are they playing nicely?”

  I hesitated. “Everyone’s been very welcoming,” I said, hoping I sounded more genuine than I felt.

  She bent her head back and laughed. It wasn’t one of the polite titters I was used to hearing at these things. It was a real laugh, from the belly up through the throat. The sound of it startled me, and I saw several of the Chanel blondes shoot her dirty looks. “You don’t have to lie to me,” Liz said, snaking an arm through mine. “I know they’re a viper’s nest. I’ve known most of them for the best part of a decade, and trust me, they don’t mellow with age. C’mon, I know where they’ve stashed the macaroon tower.”

  Maggie

  I was almost to my car when someone grabbed me by the arm and spun me around. It was a man in his midthirties, dark haired and heavyset, with a soft jaw bristled with stubble. His eyes were red-rimmed and his face had the yellowish, waxy sheen of someone who spent most of his time indoors. “You went up there.” His tone was strangely flat.

  I stared up at him. “Excuse me?”

  “I saw you back there.” He jerked his thumb toward the Prexilane skyscraper. “They won’t let me upstairs anymore.” He leaned in toward me. His breath was hot on my face, and smelled of onions. “Did they admit it?”

  I felt a spark shoot through me. “Admit to what?”

  “Your daughter,” he whispered. “They killed her, too, didn’t they?”

  My whole body went cold, as if it had been plunged into ice. I reached out and grabbed his wrist. “What do you know about Allison?”

  “Allison.” His eyes softened. “Was that your daughter’s name? That’s a pretty name. My wife’s name was Rebecca. Becky.”

  My heart sank, and I felt empty and sick. “You didn’t know my daughter?”

  He shook his head and covered my hand with his. His palm was slicked with sweat. “But I know what they did to her,” he said quietly. “They poisoned her with those damn pills, same as they did with my wife.” He was gripping my hand so tightly now I could feel the joints in my knuckles pop.

  “Pills?” I remembered the police report, and the glassy look in Dee’s eyes across the table at the diner. It all made sudden, awful sense. “What kind of pills?”

  “The ones they gave her after she had Lexy. They said they would help her get back to her old self, but . . .” He shook his head. “As soon as I heard you talking to the receptionist about her and asking about Prexilane, I knew you’d been through the same thing as me. I could see it in your eyes. They poisoned her just like they poisoned my Becky, didn’t they?”

  His face was inches from mine now, and I had to stop myself from flinching. “My daughter died in a plane crash,” I said quietly. “She was engaged to the CEO of Prexilane, who died in the crash with her. That’s why I was in there. I wanted to talk to someone about her.” He lifted his eyes to mine and I saw the same look in his eyes that I’d seen in my own so many times in the mirror. “What is it you think happened to your wife?”

  “I can’t trust you.” He shook his head. “You’re one of them.”

  “I’m not,” I said, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm. “I’m just trying to get to the truth, same as you. Let me help you.”

  He recoiled as if burned. The man turned his bloodshot, bleary eyes back toward mine and shook his head. “I don’t think anyone can help me.” I watched him walk away until he was out of sight, and then I climbed into the little rental car and drove back to the motel with shaking hands.

  Allison

  I startle awake. It’s pitch black in the woods, the sliver moon blocked out by the treetops. The steady thrum of crickets fills the air, punctuated by the occasional rustle of some small, scurrying animal. I realize, dimly, that it’s the middle of the night, and that I’ve fallen asleep without pitching camp. I can feel the cold, damp ground through my thin leggings, and my feet have gone numb in their sneakers.

  I stare blinking up into the dark. Sleep, which had descended on me so quickly, has disappeared again, and I know I’ll be awake now until dawn.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind getting up this early?” Liz leaned down to pull her laces tight.

  I shook my head. “I’m a morning person,” I lied. What I didn’t say was that I would have met her at any time, day or night. I was just happy to be asked. Happy to have—at least I hoped, privately—a friend.

  “Me too. It drives Paul crazy. He likes to sleep in on the weekend but I’m always up as soon as the sun comes up. I hate feeling like I’m missing the day, you know?”

  “Totally,” I said, thinking briefly of my old life, when the day would
n’t start until six o’clock in the evening and would finish as the sun was coming up. That was behind me now—all of it. Now I was someone who got up at dawn and met her friend to run on the beach.

  Liz looked up and smiled and it felt, as it often did with her, like she could see straight into me. “Come on,” she said, hitting the start button on her Garmin. “Let’s go.”

  We began at a steady, slow pace, which gradually increased as we both warmed up. She was forty-seven (she’d told me that the first time we’d gone for drinks together, in a kind of conspiratorial whisper, and I’d felt flattered) but she was in good shape, and pretty soon we were up to an eight-minute mile, our light footsteps echoing off the pavement as we headed for the shore.

  “So,” Liz said between breaths, “how’s Ben? Is he worried about the new round of trials?”

  I didn’t know anything about the new round of trials, or about Ben’s work in general, for that matter. I’d tried asking him about it when we first got together, but he said talking about it just stressed him out—that he liked having me as an escape. Still, I didn’t want Liz to think I was just some dumb airhead, so I mmm’d noncommittally and asked about Paul.

  “He’s very stressed,” she said. “Not that he’d admit it. He refuses to admit when he’s under any kind of pressure, but I can always tell. He fiddles with his earlobe. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it, but every time he’s stressed he walks around pulling his left earlobe. It’s the weirdest thing.” She glanced over to me. “Does Ben do anything like that?”

  I racked my brain for some charming, harmless behavior to offer. The truth was that the only way I could tell that Ben was upset was in bed. He was rougher with me, and wouldn’t look me in the eye, though afterward he was always doubly nice, as if to make up for it. This wasn’t something I wanted to tell Liz. Instead, I mumbled something about him being a restless sleeper.

  “Paul does that, too,” she sympathized. “It drives me crazy. He twitches right before he falls asleep, like a dog, and it always wakes me up. Every. Single. Time.”

  I laughed. I loved these little glimpses of their married life. They seemed so happy together, so comfortable. I tried to imagine me and Ben when we were older, gray haired and soft chinned and companionable, but I couldn’t fit the picture together in my head.

  We ran in silence for a few minutes, our steps falling in sync. The streets were still quiet, just the odd early office worker clutching a paper coffee cup and the occasional whir of a street sweeper. Her voice broke through the quiet. “What do you think about Sam?”

  I kept my eyes on the ground. I thought about the way he looked at me, like I was a stray cat he wanted to stroke, or trap. “He’s okay,” I said, careful to keep my voice neutral.

  “I think he’s an asshole.” There was an edge to her voice I hadn’t heard before. The shock of her words interrupted the rhythm of my stride and I stumbled slightly.

  “Why?”

  I looked over at her and saw that her jaw was clenched. “Let me give you a piece of advice,” she said. “Be careful around that guy. You might think he’s your friend, but he’s not.”

  “I don’t think he’s my friend,” I said, too quickly. The truth was that I could have counted the number of words we’d exchanged on two hands. It wasn’t for lack of trying—I knew how important he was to Ben, so when we’d first got together, I’d made an effort to get to know him, but every time I asked him a question, he would shut down and leave the room. That hadn’t stopped him watching me, though, his dark eyes blank and unreadable.

  Liz nodded. “Good,” she said quietly. “Keep it that way.”

  Maggie

  The plane touched down in Portland at quarter to ten in the morning. I’d tried to sleep on the plane—I’d even bought myself a pack of over-the-counter sleeping pills at the airport—but I stayed stubbornly awake for the whole six hours, drifting off only as we circled Logan. I was half-blind with exhaustion waiting for the connecting flight, but as soon as we boarded I was wide awake again, staring out at the gray clouds below us, waiting for us to dive back through them and down to Maine.

  I drove home carefully, hands at ten and two. I didn’t trust myself to take my eyes off the road, not even for a second. A film of black dots occasionally swarmed into my field of vision and my head pounded steadily. I put the radio on, turned it to a station I hated, and turned it all the way up. Even still, I could feel myself drifting. I relaxed only when I saw the exit for Owl’s Creek.

  My back complained as I bent down to pick up the pile of mail on the doormat. I flicked through it quickly—mainly just bills and circulars, with just a few cream-colored card envelopes mixed in. The sympathy cards were finally starting to dwindle. I fit the key in the lock and pushed open the door. “Hello?” My voice echoed through the house. I don’t know who I expected to answer. I think I just wanted to hear my voice bouncing off my own four walls. I dropped my bag in the hall and headed into the kitchen.

  Everything was just as I left it. The scrubbed butcher-block table, the mugs lined up on the rack, the clock ticking and the dust motes settling. The air carried that strange stale smell it always did when the house had been empty for any length of time, like it had worked to forget me as soon as I was out the door.

  I took out a box of Friskies and shook it, waiting for the familiar sound of Barney running down the stairs from under the bed, but he didn’t come. I shook it again, but there was just silence to answer. He must be angry with me for leaving him. He’d be under the bed, sulking.

  I poured the Friskies into a bowl and set it on the ground along with a fresh bowl of water. It’d be there for him when he was ready to show his face.

  I flicked on the percolator. My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, and my bones felt an aching sort of heaviness. The milk in the fridge was on its last legs, and there wasn’t much else in there except for a sad head of lettuce and the casseroles from the Owl’s Creek brigade, most of which had spoiled and none of which I could face eating. I realized I’d have to run to the store the next day for more supplies.

  I fixed myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. The trip to San Diego was already starting to take on an unreal feeling, like it was something that had happened to someone else. I sorted the mail, unfolding bills and stacking them in a neat pile, shoving the last of the sympathy cards underneath. I pulled out an envelope addressed to Ally and saw the Saint Mary’s Credit Union emblem stamped on the back. I looked at it for a second and then slid a finger under the sealed flap. An official-looking letter fell out onto the table.

  ST. MARY’S CREDIT UNION

  42 South Street

  Owl’s Creek, ME 04117

  Dear Allison Carpenter,

  This letter is being sent to confirm that your St. Mary’s Credit Union account listed above has been closed due to a negative account balance. If you wish to reopen the account, please call us at 207-555-2222 or visit your local branch to make a deposit within ten days of the date of this letter.

  Thank you for banking with us and we hope you’ll choose to bank with us again in the future.

  All the best,

  John Howes

  Customer Service Relations

  I cursed under my breath and pushed the letter away from me. They must have run her account down with those damn fees they’d started introducing everywhere. “Banking charges,” they called them, though why they felt they could charge for something that had always been free I wasn’t sure. Didn’t they get enough from people by gouging them on interest rates? I felt a surge of irritation. And for Saint Mary’s to be doing it . . . I expected that sort of treatment from the big banks, but this was just a local mom-and-pop credit union. I’d go down there the next day and give them a piece of my mind, I promised myself, but then the futility of it struck me. I’d have had to close the account, anyway.

  Loss swept through me with its familiar dull, heavy ache, like a riptide pulling me under, leaving me slack and spent. I ne
eded to lie down for a few minutes. I could barely keep my eyes open as I washed out the mug and stacked the rest of the mail on the desk. I left my bag in the hall and trudged up the stairs to my bedroom. The room had the same strange smell of abandonment that the kitchen had—like I’d been gone a month rather than a couple of days.

  I’d clean the place in the morning, I thought as I threw myself down onto the bed. I climbed under the comforter and waited for Barney to come out from under the bed and curl up next to me for a nap as he always did, but he didn’t stir.

  I propped myself up onto my elbows and peered under the bed. Nothing but dust balls and an old pair of slippers.

  Barney was a creature of habit, and if he wasn’t downstairs in the kitchen with me, he was under the bed. I thought of his untouched bowl of food downstairs, and the fact that he hadn’t come to greet me at the door. The first cold fingertips of worry touched me, and I heaved myself out of bed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I found him.

  Ally’s room was the last place I checked. The door was shut tight as it always was, and I hovered on the threshold. I hadn’t been in there since just after Charles died, when I had tucked some of the things she’d left behind into her closet and out of sight. I pushed open the door and took a step in. The room was just the same as it had been the day she went to college and left behind all the accumulated detritus of eighteen years of growing up. There was her bed, with its checked comforter, and her walls tacked up with art prints and pages from magazines, and her box of cheap jewelry, and her desk, with its stack of thumbed paperbacks and its ceramic mug full of colored pens. There was the collage she’d made of her and her friends from high school at proms and pep rallies and soccer games and sleepovers. It was all exactly as I remembered, except for one thing: the smell. Sort of sickly sweet. I glanced around the room looking for the source—maybe a bottle of her old perfume had tipped over—but I couldn’t find anything obvious. It all looked just the same as it always did.