The Happiness Thief

by Nicole Bokat

  His eyes widened with glee. “That’s very Stephen King creepy. Sounds like a prank.”

  She took a long breath, another trick to calm down. “The man in the car who helped us search … he could be the one sending the emails, one of Isabel’s stalker fans, trying to get at her through me. I guess it could be a sort of prank.”

  “You mean that he showed up on this remote street in the Caribbean, out of the blue?”

  “He could have followed her. It was his headlights in my rearview that made it so I couldn’t see the road.”

  “That’s pretty convenient.”

  “No, listen,” she insisted. Please. Please. Believe me. “We were there for a big event—well, Isabel was. I was there for a vacation. The conference was highly publicized online, on her website, and other places.”

  “Has this kind of thing happened to her before?”

  “Not this extreme. But she’s dealt with some seriously troubled, even delusional people, fans, who try to get her attention.”

  He stuck a chip in his mouth and finished it in two bites. “I’m sure you’ve wondered why he wrote to you and not Isabel.”

  “I saw the man … near our hotel the next day and he asked for my info. I was stupid enough to give it to him.”

  “That doesn’t explain why he didn’t try to contact her directly.”

  “She hired an assistant to weed out these people,” Natalie said, her blood stirring. All her effort now was on this: validation. “He may have tried, but I was an easier target.”

  “I’m sure Isabel’s assistant can verify that for you.”

  “Isabel checked. Nothing.”

  “I suppose he’s the most likely person. It’s weird, though.”

  “Exactly.” Those photos of Isabel crammed into Simon’s copy of Get Happy Now fell to the floor like confetti. “Do you know how to trace an emailer … if they have a Gmail address?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I can’t legally. You can’t get Google to cough-up the identity of its Gmail users for something like this. You’d need a court order, and the guy would have to be threatening to blow up the White House. Tech companies are fighting the government on accessibility to their users.”

  “I’m just not sure what to do now.”

  “Call the Cayman police,” he said. “Be straight about it. If you tell them what you told me, maybe they can put your mind to rest.”

  “Or arrest me.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “I could just let the whole thing go,” she said.

  “Yep, you could. But something tells me you won’t.” He cut the air with his hand. “You’ll figure out the right thing to do.”

  “I hope so, thanks.”

  Natalie felt febrile with dread. She wondered about the repercussions if she were at fault. She could lose custody of Hadley. She could go to jail. It would be too much to endure.

  Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she deserved to be punished.

  sixteen

  —

  “YOU ALL RIGHT, MOM?”

  Natalie was loading the dishwasher after dinner, the hum in her head: internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen, facial lacerations.

  Quickly, she swung around. It was the sharp, high whistle of fear in her daughter’s voice that she never wanted to hear again.

  “Sure,” Natalie said. “Just thinking about a client who owes me money.”

  Even though Natalie knew her stepsister was conducting seminars in LA, she’d texted her. She’d gotten this response: It will be late for you when we end. Tomorrow ok? She agreed, of course. She’d emailed Simon: What do you know about Grace Cooke? Were you the one that brought her to the hospital?

  “Are we broke?” Hadley chewed the inside of her cheek, her cell phone hanging limply in her hand, like a favorite toy she’d suddenly outgrown. “I’m sure Dad can give more if you ask him.”

  “We’re fine. Normal, annoying stuff.” She waited a moment, wondering if she should have popped that Xanax, before returning to the dishes. “Do you have homework to finish?”

  “Yeah,” Hadley said, her voice slipping back into its normal register. “A reader response for lit and trig problems to finish. Mr. Robbins is such a dick.”

  “Hads, c’mon,” Natalie said, her shoulders falling back into alignment. What a relief that her daughter could focus on this lazy math teacher, a middle-aged man, with cottony hair and a cherubic face, who’d worn cargo shorts and sneakers to back-to-school night.

  “Mom, he is one. He didn’t even bother to teach this unit, just gave us pages to read to teach ourselves.”

  “Do you understand it?”

  “Yeah, I figured it out.”

  “Smart kid.”

  Hadley rolled her eyes, but the flush of red on her neck showed she was pleased. “No big deal.”

  Once Hadley left the room, Natalie poked the bits of carrots down the drain, ran the water in the sink. Internal bleeding, a ruptured spleen, facial lacerations. If Isabel had any inkling that the creature on the road wasn’t a dog, would she have lied to Natalie to spare her the anguish? Yes. Isabel could have taken action to save the girl without saying a word.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, while en route to get Hadley from school, Natalie picked up her ringing phone. She’d waited all morning. At last, at last. Isabel said, “Hi there, it’s a whirlwind,” to the sounds of lapping water and raucous voices and gulls shrieking. “I’m rushing off to give a lecture. I’m so jammed up here, don’t have two minutes together till after 9:00 p.m., too late for you. I’ll be back for group this week. Want to speak afterwards?”

  “Sooner, if you can. Somewhere private.”

  “Are you okay? Did that guy contact you again?”

  “Not that. But there was a girl … in the Caymans … she was seriously hurt, and I might have done it.”

  Natalie expected a gentle reprove. Instead, “Let’s talk in person. I’ll text when I’m leaving LA.”

  There was no response from Simon that day, or the next, or the one after that. Natalie had been carrying her phone with her everywhere. When not at her desk, she tucked it in the front packet of her pants, as if proximity to her body would prompt a reply. For minutes on end, she’d stare at the rows of app icons—calendar, bank, weather, message bubble, Facebook, mail, Safari, camera, Wired Happy—until her eyesight blurred.

  Now, the morning of Isabel’s return, anticipation dried out Natalie’s mouth. “Forget Grace Cooke and …” But there was no use finishing the sentence. It wouldn’t work. She wanted to know why the accident was kept out of the paper. And she needed proof, one way or the other, if she had been driving the car that ran into the girl with the busted body, torn-up face.

  While she was in the shower, the phone pinged just loud enough for Natalie to hear. She imagined grabbing it off the floor mat, then losing her balance, banging her head and … peace.

  She emerged, wrapped a towel around her waist, another under her hair, and read:

  Coming in at eleven. One-thirty, my place? I’ll order from Gran de Café.

  The Gran was on Newbury, near Isabel’s apartment. As Natalie didn’t have a shoot, her schedule was flexible. Yes. Coming.

  ISABEL, AT THE DOOR, was incandescent. Despite her predawn flight, she appeared burnished and flawless, as if she’d been Photo-shopped. West Coast acid peels? Botox? Natalie felt a prickle of anger over the extravagance of snakeskin shoes and the ones with the glossy red bottoms, like the coating on candy apples, of rose gold laptops slipped into bison leather satchels, of business class tickets with leg room and free champagne. Have to keep up my image, Nat. Isabel was so worried about blowing through her book advance on her business, on George discovering the extent of her exorbitance. Plus, it makes me feel good. Why shouldn’t I feel good? That last question forceful, almost angry.

  Natalie’s thoughts ground to a stop. Isabel had invited her over to be of help. As she always did. “Thanks for doing this,” she said. “You must have gotten no sleep.”
>
  “I’m okay. I’m already futzing with this one chapter that’s driving me nuts this morning.”

  “Where’s Debbie?”

  “I sent her out on some errands. Let’s eat in the nook. I ordered the salad you like.”

  “What do I owe?”

  “Don’t be silly. You came to me, so I pay.”

  The breakfast nook was in front of the kitchen under a bay window. It had creamy white walls and a matching white bench that wrapped around a glass table. Isabel had laid out plates, glasses, and silverware.

  “Here you go,” Isabel said, handing Natalie her standard fare: a goat cheese salad with sliced pears in its plastic take-out container. She placed two bottles of Pellegrino in the middle of the table.

  Natalie asked, “How were the seminars?”

  “Great, other than the sound bath event on the beach. When the shamanic healer brought out the didgeridoo, and the healer of all light started speaking in tongues, I was done.”

  “Oh, dear,” Natalie smirked. “What’s a didgeridoo?”

  “It’s this huge motherfucker of an instrument that sounds like wild animals moaning. Details to come. So, who was this girl you were talking about?”

  Here we go. You are being healed. You are floating on the wind.

  “I read about a hit and run on Cayman Island. A teenager was hurt.”

  “You read about it?” Isabel asked, smiling in bemusement. “You Googled this information?”

  “I couldn’t ignore those emails.”

  “But we went over this, and you said you were fine.”

  Natalie poked a slice of pear with her fork. “I was, I was, until I discovered this girl, Grace, was seriously injured.”

  “Okay, honey, let’s break this down,” Isabel said. “It couldn’t have been us. The road was empty.”

  “We can’t be absolutely certain.”

  “What did you read?”

  Natalie reported Jeremy’s information, envisioning it again—the pool of blood sloshing around Grace Cooke’s organs, dark liver, twist of tubular intestines—without referencing him.

  “Sounds like a severely injured kid who someone drove to the nearest hospital,” Isabel said. “No connection to us.”

  Natalie stared at her jagged nails. She ripped a piece off her index finger and watched as a spot of red spurted from the cuticle. “I can’t get it out of my head, what happened to her.”

  “Listen, Nat.” Isabel put her Panini back in its box after a quick bite. “I’m worried about you.”

  “You think I’ve lost it.”

  “I think you’re hurting.”

  “Well, why else would someone email me about it if I wasn’t involved?”

  “We went over this.”

  The pear Natalie had yet to eat looked so meaty, like flesh. “There weren’t any other accidents reported on the East End of the island that night.”

  Isabel formed a steeple with her hands and pressed them to her lips. “If we’d hit someone that size, chances are you’d have felt it. It’s unlikely she’d have been flung into the bushes—and, even if she had been, that Simon guy would have seen her. And, let’s say he didn’t, how would another driver, on this dark road, have managed to?”

  “I’m thinking of calling the Cayman police. Do you remember the name of the road we were driving on?”

  “It was some side street. I can’t recall,” Isabel said, lifting her Panini again to her mouth. “You’re not eating your salad.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “That’s a bad sign, too. You’ve been so anxious lately.”

  “Wouldn’t anyone be, if they thought they’d done these awful things? First my mother. Now this. You said it would be triggering, and it has been. I remembered something … from the night my mom died.”

  “What, Nat?”

  Isabel’s gaze was so fierce, Natalie imagined being lifted in the air by it. “Our conversation in the car, well, just snippets of it. We were fighting.”

  Nodding, Isabel said, “You cried about that at the hospital.”

  “It was weird. I said something about your mom being locked up, how I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me.”

  “Why were you talking about Sigrid?”

  “I don’t know. My mom said I was mixed up about her. But I wasn’t, was I? Something happened to her.”

  Isabel’s mouth twitched, just a tiny movement. “She suffered from postpartum depression. She was given different medications, even electric shock. Nothing worked, not well enough, anyway.”

  “You never …” Natalie felt herself blink; she’d been staring so hard at her stepsister’s familiar face. “Did I find out from you?”

  “No. I overheard my father talking to Laura. It was really late, but they were loud. You must have overheard it, too.”

  “I think you talked about Sigrid to me, at least the part about her being sent away.”

  Isabel sighed, faint lavender crescents under her eyes. “I might have. I tried to hide my dad’s real concern from you. He didn’t want another depressed wife on his hands.”

  Natalie felt tricked, even though she hadn’t been, not really.

  “You never shared that with me.”

  “What would be the point? Laura was never going to be like her. My father was only worried for himself.”

  “What was he so afraid of?”

  “It’s much worse than anyone ever told us.” Isabel’s voice was thick. She drank out of her bottle of sparkling water. “Sigrid didn’t die of an aneurysm. She overdosed on Seconal. My dad confessed the night before he died. He’d wanted to shield me.”

  “That can’t be right!” Natalie reached for her stepsister’s hand, caressed the smooth, cool skin, the sharp bones of the knuckles.

  “It is.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

  Isabel shook her head. “You’ve been so devastated since Marc left. I couldn’t dump this on you.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m not that selfish.” Was she? Was she really so egocentric, so fragile? “What about George?”

  “Yes, he knows. You’re not selfish. I’m just not good at being vulnerable.” Isabel smiled wanly.

  “You do like being in control. But if I were different, stronger—”

  “It’s not you. You’re there for me, Nat. You’re a great sister.”

  Natalie bristled. “You don’t require anything.”

  “But you always offer. And you’re a wonderful mother, which is something I never had. Hadley is so lucky.”

  “Thanks. I’m no Elizabeth with her M&M cookies.”

  “Enough! You should be so proud of yourself, give yourself a break.”

  “I’m reckless.” A nice word for manslaughter. “I can’t forgive myself that.”

  Isabel clucked her tongue. “There’s no shame trying a psychiatrist again. There are new meds on the market every day. And if one of them gives you relief, you could take it for a few months.” She touched her glossy lip, deliberating. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I started seeing a shrink after Dad died.”

  Natalie swayed backwards in her chair. She couldn’t imagine the logistics of the scene, Isabel in the comfy patient chair, yielding authority. “You did?”

  “Yep. I’m not invincible. You shouldn’t hold me to such a high standard.”

  Marc once said, “The way you idealize Isabel, go to her for everything, there’s no room for me, for our marriage.”

  “Maybe I’ve put you on a pedestal,” Natalie said. “Is this because of Garrick?”

  “I have regrets when it came to Dad.” Her eyes were wet, shiny, her voice ragged. “He’d never say it—too much like me, or me too much like him—he was deeply hurt by my book.”

  When she read Get Happy Now’s chapter on “flexibility and resilience,” Natalie’s leg under the covers had shaken so hard, Marc looked up from his book. She didn’t disclose that published on these pages was an example of someone with a rigid perception of th
e world who dealt with obstacles by emotionally isolating himself. Although Isabel never referred to Garrick by name, everyone who knew him guessed the truth. Isabel shared with Natalie that her father had accused her of “unprofessional conduct.” Weeks had gone by in which he hadn’t spoken to his daughter.

  “But you reconciled,” Natalie said.

  “Yes, thank God. It’s also things with George have been … tense. All my traveling, and then needing to meet this deadline for the book. It’s caught up with us.”

  “You guys seemed so happy on Thanksgiving.”

  “We are, just a tough time. Dad dying, work pressure.” Isabel deflected with a wave. “Anyway, all this stress on you, you should try another psychopharmacologist.”

  “Who are you seeing?”

  “We’ll find you someone else. You can’t see my doc, too incestuous. He’s a psychologist, anyway, can’t write ‘scripts.’”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Her stepsister said, “Give me the information, and I’ll find out about that girl in the Caymans. I’ve become friendly with one of the conference hosts; he has a place on Seven Mile Beach. I’ll ask him to refer a private detective and then show you the report. If you’re not involved and you can let it go, that’s one less thing to worry about.”

  “Oh, yes, thank you!” Natalie said. She had the urge to crawl over the tabletop and embrace her stepsister.

  “Eat.” Isabel picked out a piece of the arugula from the bread with her fork, then bit into her sandwich.

  OUTSIDE, NATALIE STOPPED for a moment on the stairs. The air kissed her with its frosty mouth. The magnolia tree, which burst forth with pink flowers in spring, was bare. Sigrid had committed suicide. Isabel was in therapy. Maybe the brain’s innate pessimism really was a blessing, a form of protection.

  The T was nearly empty, only two other passengers in Natalie’s compartment: a man with a deeply furrowed brow and a long nose with a bulbous tip, like a bicycle horn, and a woman who clung to the sleeping child on her lap as if afraid of theft. Natalie closed her eyes and thought of Dr. Katz, the therapist she’d gone to once right before Marc moved out. She’d liked him. He was young, with a mess of coiled hair and a suit that was a tad too big for him, as if he couldn’t be bothered to have it tailored. He pinched a pen in his fingers and swiveled in his chair playfully while Natalie spoke. He’d said, “Let’s see if we can help you suffer less.”