by Nicole Bokat
“Thanks. It’s the publicist I’m paying for out of my own pocket so let’s hope this works. Have to finish the damn book in time.” She waved it all away. “Don’t I sound privileged?”
“You have a lot to juggle. Maybe you should take out a loan or talk to George, sell some stocks so you can write full time.”
The glance had a hint of a smirk in it. “I can’t abandon my brand for months. It’s what will sell the book. I’ll handle it. If you get another email from this person, forward it to me. I’ll give it to Debbie to deal with.”
“Poor Debbie.”
“Poor nothing. She makes a tidy sum. Please don’t worry about this stupid harasser. If I thought he was a real threat, I’d say we should act right away.”
Isabel stood up and kissed Natalie, her lips warm from her tea. “Say hi to Hadley for me. Tell her as soon as my schedule clears up, I’ll take her to Cornelia’s Closet.”
Hadley’s favorite shop on Newbury Street with its tables of trinkets and potions, racks of sweeping clothes made of silk and velvet, hand-made hats and jewelry hanging from iron hooks shaped like antlers. “Not when money’s tight!”
“That’s nothing. Keep me posted.”
“Always.”
She watched Isabel walk away in her calf skin coat, then checked her phone before putting on her hat and gloves. There was a text from Hadley, informing Natalie that the club meeting had been canceled. She was getting a ride home from a classmate.
Where are you? Natalie quickly shot back.
They had a rule—both she and Marc—that Hadley needed to run it by one of them before driving with someone they didn’t know, especially another teenager. She wasn’t sure if this was adolescent insolence or simply impatience on her daughter’s part.
She hurried now through downtown Boston to a parking lot on Washington Street. Waiting for the attendant to retrieve her car, she glanced at her cell phone. No response from her child. C’mon, Hads, answer me. Where are you?
SHE WAS SPRAWLED on the couch as if on a beach lounger. Hadley didn’t even look when Natalie got home or wiggle her sock-less toes with the peeling pedicure in greeting. In leggings and her Liberté Egalité Beyoncé t-shirt, she had ear buds in place, computer planted on her lap. She peered at the screen devoutly.
Natalie’s breath slowed as she watched her daughter’s fingers click across the keyboard with quick, expert precision. “Hads,” she called out. “Hads!”
Her daughter pulled the wire out of one ear. “Yep.”
“Why didn’t you answer my text?”
“No battery. My phone’s charging in my room.”
Natalie sunk into the armchair next to the couch. “I was worried.”
“What’s new?” Hadley mumbled so low Natalie almost didn’t catch it.
“Hey. I heard that. It was rude.”
“Sorry, Mom.” Her head bowed, the girl stared into cyberspace. “It’s just this was no big deal.”
“Your friends are too young to have licenses. And you’re not supposed to ride with strangers.”
“Morgan isn’t a stranger to me. She’s a senior.”
“Priscilla’s friend?” Natalie’s thoughts scrambled. “Yeah …” Hadley combed both hands from her scalp down through her hair, glanced away.
“You said those kids get ‘wasted.’ That’s unacceptable.”
“Mom, chill! She doesn’t drink at school.”
Natalie’s posture snapped into place. Tall and tight. Maternal ferocity swelled. “I don’t want you in a car with any of those girls again! Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, okay, Ma.”
“Good.”
She observed Hadley hunched over, arms wrapped around knees. For the first time she could recall, Natalie didn’t apologize for her outburst. She could fail at everything else, but not at this.
In her office, she set about to follow up on some work correspondence. She clicked on her mail. Among the six messages, there was this:
The only reason I’m responding at all is because you mentioned Simon Drouin. I don’t know what you mean by “in contact.” If that’s your delicate way of saying what I think it is, words of warning: stay clear of him, for your sake as well as mine. “Interest in Isabel Walker,” is an understatement. Please don’t contact me again. Gillian Monroe.
thirteen
—
“I DID SOMETHING STUPID,” NATALIE SAID AS SHE STEPPED IN from the cold, “some detective work on my own.”
“What do you mean?” Cate asked.
They entered Cate’s place together, having met at the spice store at five o’clock. Natalie’s friend switched on the light and dropped her leather bag on the floor next to a coat tree. Much of the house came into view at once, rustic and light and inviting. The high ceilings and back wall were covered in windows, and a glass door led to a small enclosed porch. The second-floor balustrade presented a view of the family room downstairs, everything open, a house with no secrets.
Natalie removed her jacket and pulled off her boots, one arm leaning against the wall for support. “Remember I told you about the last night in the Cayman Islands?”
“Of course. Wait. Do you want me to make tea? I have anything your heart desires.”
That night with my mother erased. The one in the Caymans gone.
“A one-way ticket for Marc and Elizabeth to Papua New Guinea?”
“Better! Hibiscus Petals, Chamomile Citrus, Ginger Lemon-grass, Ginger Plum, Peppermint, or Green Tea.”
Natalie smiled. “Peppermint sounds good.” She sat on one of the wood stools at the kitchen island. She glanced down at the scattered mail in the wicker basket where Cate threw her silver keychain of a Zodiac bull’s face—long lashed with upward curved horns. Once Cate had said, “Taurus seems so boring, all stability and reliability. But we bulls have our hedonistic side.” Natalie had laughed, admitting she hated that her sign, Cancer, was a disease, ruled by the moon, all brooding and sensitive, clingy if kind. No crab knickknacks for her.
While Cate boiled water and prepared the teabags in stoneware mugs, Natalie revealed that she’d met Simon for dinner in New York. “He makes Brad Pitt look bad. He was funny. Charming. I went back to his place and….”
Cate grinned. “Oh my God, you are so cute! Are you embarrassed ‘cause you think I’ve been married so long I don’t remember what it was like to have sex with a new guy? Believe me,” she sighed. “I remember it fondly.” She handed Natalie her mug and sat down across from her. “You deserve to have a good time.”
“I haven’t told anyone, not even Isabel.”
“We’ve been friends forever. I’m the safest person in the world.”
“Thanks. That part was pretty great.” Natalie stared as the liquid in the cup clouded, then darkened. “But, then, something freaked me out.”
Jaw so tight, fists clasped together, she relayed how she’d discovered Isabel’s book with the slew of suggestive images tucked between the pages. Dry-mouthed, she confessed to her correspondence with Gillian. It felt freeing to share with Cate—but also a transgression. Didn’t she owe it to Isabel to keep what she’d found a secret?
“That would freak me out, too.” Cate lifted up her drink, steam rising from it, and blew on it. “A one-night stand, all for it. But you can’t see this guy again. Promise me you won’t.”
Natalie nodded. “Isabel can’t find out what I did. She warned me about him. But I want to tell her about Gillian, so we can figure out which of them really is obsessed with Belle and why. I’m thinking of saying I went back to his place and just had a drink.”
A stern gash appeared between Cate’s eyes. “Maybe leave Isabel alone for a while. She’ll be worried about you. She just lost her dad.”
Bobble-head nodding, “Of course.” How selfish she must have sounded to Cate, not questioning Isabel’s role as the caretaker, no matter what the circumstances. “Godfrey’s email implicated me and accused Belle of lying.”
“Who are you going to believe
, Isabel or some crazy person who won’t identify himself? It could be someone else from the conference. Did you see any suspicious characters?”
“I’m not sure,” Natalie said. “There were so many people there, from all over the world.”
“Anyone named Godfrey?”
“People wore name tags, but I didn’t read most of them and the ones I did, it’s a blur.”
With fingers tapping her lip amateur-sleuth style, Cate asked, “Was someone harassing Isabel, or acting like he might stalk her? Or even just needy?”
“I wasn’t with her for most of the conference,” Natalie said. “At the party, there was one guy at the end who seemed upset she wouldn’t spend more time with him.”
“Could he have followed you?”
“I guess, but why would he contact me about the accident? I’m not sure how he could have even gotten my name.”
“Let’s assume he asked around. There were people there who knew your relationship to Isabel, yes?” When Natalie nodded again, Cate said, “So maybe he wants her to notice him and he reaches out to you. Maybe the guy is seriously fucked up and went to this thing thinking he’d meet these professionals who’d fix his life. He could have a huge crush on her. Not hard to see why. She’s beautiful, always had guys falling all over her.”
“That’s true.”
Cate smiled, skin crinkling, freckles like lightly sprinkled cinnamon. “Thomas Dean, her high school boyfriend. I had the biggest crush on him.”
Filed away somewhere in the recesses of her banged-up brain was that name. Natalie pictured a rangy boy with a languid gait and eyelashes that met his bangs.
“You did? We were just kids.”
“Thirteen, raging hormones. I used to want to go to your house so I could watch him play guitar in your living room. He was so hot.”
“She always had good looking boyfriends.” Until George. “Exactly. She attracts them in droves. So, say Isabel blows this Godfrey off—or that’s how he sees it—‘cause his expectations are ridiculous.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt someone that night.”
Cate said, “You didn’t see anyone there and neither did Isabel or even Simon. And you looked.”
“Simon did, in the bushes. There was nothing on the road but a few spots of blood, which I saw.”
“So, this Godfrey guy might just be trying to provoke you.”
Sipping her cooled-off tea, Natalie paused. “Maybe,” she said after a moment passed.
“Even if this crazy guy followed you that night doesn’t mean what he’s referring to is real. I think you should see if he gets more insistent. If he does, you have to call the police. Get him to leave you alone.”
Natalie circled both arms around her waist, tight as a cummerbund. “Okay.”
Oh, how she longed to be exonerated for her crimes.
NATALIE HEARD BEYONCÉ riffing loudly. “Turn it down,” she shouted once inside the apartment. What Cate had argued made sense, and yet, she couldn’t shake her worries loose. She’d felt the thwack, animal or person. She’d done that, caused that action, whatever the damage, no matter how disturbed the emailer might be, whatever his motivations.
The music, with its assertive drumbeat, made her think of shiny black boots marching. Natalie rapped on her daughter’s door. “Shush,” she shouted. When she didn’t get a response, she poked her head into the room. “I told you, Hads, use your earphones.”
“Yeah okay,” Hadley said. A moment later, the wires were dangling from her ears, and the noise had ceased.
Natalie entered her child’s domain. Hadley’s books were strewn across her desk and her Kurdish rug. She sat cross-legged on her bed, head bowed, thumbs texting. The goddess Durga stared down at Natalie with her black-rimmed, inscrutable eyes. She waved her eighteen arms, creating a juggling effect, snake in one, trident in another, sword in a third.
She walked over to her girl, kissed the crown of her head. “Aren’t you going to say hello?” Natalie plucked out an ear bud.
“Hey! You told me not to blast it.”
She stooped over, trying to decipher the girl’s messages. Before Hadley tilted the phone away, Natalie caught the identifying name. Dad.
“Why didn’t you want me to see it was Dad?”
“Do you mind? My texts are not public domain.” Hadley’s voice softened. “He just wanted to know if you were at Aunt Isabel’s workshop.”
“I skipped it this week to see Cate—which is none of his business. I don’t comment on where he goes or whom he marries.”
Hadley hunched over defensively.
“Tell Dad he doesn’t need to ask about me.”
“You tell him, Mom. I don’t want to get in the middle.”
She tousled her daughter’s hair. “You’re right. Sorry. Not your job.”
In her bedroom, Natalie stripped down to her underwear and put on pajama pants and a faded tee. She rooted around her drawer for Marc’s shirt with the Apple Computer logo and yanked it out. She carried it down the hall like a balled-up cotton rag that stunk from grease. In the kitchen, she stuffed the shirt into the garbage under the sink.
Once under her covers, Natalie viewed the novel on her end table. She flipped it open and tried to read, but the sentences didn’t gel into meaning. She texted her ex: Stop using our daughter to spy on me for ammunition. You’re not getting her.
Rarely did she turn on the TV atop her dresser. It was Marc’s to watch news in bed, left behind, forgotten. Now she grabbed the remote and scanned through channels, settling on a rerun of a medical drama in which a handsome array of male and female doctors was operating on a brain tumor. “There’s nothing more we can do. Cognitive function is gone.” She switched it off.
When her phone buzzed, she read Marc’s response: What’s with the paranoia, Natalie?
Towards the end of the marriage, he’d sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “For so long, I felt terrible for you, the trauma you lived through. I used to think you wanted to recover. I’m not sure anymore. It’s as if you like being damaged.”
She was sitting, leaning against the headboard, clutching her knees to her chest. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”
He turned to her. His face was mottled from crying, the whites of his eyes pink. “You can’t let go of your grief.”
“How can I let it go when I can’t even remember what happened? This is my life we’re talking about.”
“That’s the problem. Hadley and I should be your life.”
You don’t get the right to diagnose me anymore.
The phone vibrated again, and she peered at it. But it wasn’t a text; it was another email from Godfrey. Clenching her teeth so hard she felt pressure in her sinuses, she read: Who leaves someone on the road to die? A person like that should be locked up. The police have it all on file.
A yowling fury rose up. She hit reply and pounded out the words: Why are you doing this? Tell me exactly what you know or leave me alone.
For the next hour, Natalie focused on locating bbGodfrey by using several reverse-lookup sites. But there was no listing for the address. She could call the Cayman Police to call his bluff, to verify that there wasn’t anyone on that street; there was nothing in their files. She squeezed her arms, covered by a flannel pajama top. But, what if he wasn’t lying? Disclosure could be an admission of guilt, or at least involvement, in a hit and run, could lead to her arrest. She could try the local hospitals instead. But then she’d have to identify herself and her relationship to the patient—that is, if there had been one.
Dead end after dead end. There were no exits leading to a wide-open road.
What she needed was a private investigator, one of those guys with huge, paparazzi zoom lenses. Maybe she was cowardly, maybe immoral, for not coming forward. She couldn’t stand thinking about it another minute. She shoved the laptop to Marc’s side of the bed, as if it were a snapping turtle. Natalie rolled onto her other side and stared at the streamer of sky under the bottom
of her blinds.
In her dream, she was concussed and lying in the hospital bed. There was a gauzy texture to her thoughts and, although she couldn’t open her eyes, she could hear the people in the room.
“Poor thing,” Garrick said, “had to lock her up.”
Ellen said, “It’s right there on her scan. Function gone.”
“No,” she wanted to shout. But she couldn’t speak, stuck in this bed, unable to move or communicate. The thing inside her—a transparent slip made of ether—glided towards the ceiling, able to observe her empty carcass.
Simon whispered into Natalie’s ear, “We lied to you. It wasn’t a school at all. It was a psychiatric ward.”
And then Natalie cried out. She heard her own voice shouting, “That’s wrong.” There was no one else there. It had been a nightmare, nothing more.
She unhooked the blanket that had fastened around her waist like a tourniquet and rushed from her bed into the hallway. She stopped outside Hadley’s room. Had she alarmed her child? Natalie pushed open the door, heard nothing but steam shooting up through the pipes. She needed to set things right. Where to start?
Back to bed.
She lay on her side, under the sheet only, and watched the digital numbers of the clock until fatigue carried her back to the watery world of sleep.
In the morning, she bypassed listening to the Wired Happy app. Meditation couldn’t help her now; it was like trying to ride a surf-board in a tsunami. She slid on wool socks and went straight to the kitchen to start the coffee machine, cell phone in hand. While the liquid dripped slowly into the carafe, Natalie sat at the table and checked for a response from the previous night’s communication. If bbGodfrey were Simon, he was an early riser, too, so he might have responded to the questions she’d fired into cyberspace the previous night. No luck. But there were two new missives, one from Isabel inquiring as to her whereabouts the night before.
The other was: I missed talking to you after the workshop. Hope you’re not done with happiness. Jeremy.