by Nicole Bokat
Natalie appreciated the word “suffer,” its humanity, as compared to clinical terms like “dysthymia,” and “panic disorder.”
He’d steered Natalie away from discussing their treatment with anyone, even Isabel. “Can you do other things together?”
“Such as?” Natalie had asked.
He swung around, towards her, and wrote on his prescription pad. “Bowling?” When she laughed, he grinned at her, as if they were friends. “Tennis?”
“C’mon.”
Since her mother’s death, she’d been colonized by a viral strain of loneliness, an ailment nestled in each of her body’s cells. Now her husband was leaving. Maybe she deserved it, this deep-rooted isolation. But asking Natalie to stop confiding in Isabel, even just about these sessions, felt like a too high a penalty—even for a criminal like her.
“Look, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Just for a little while.”
Natalie stopped seeing Dr. Katz after that suggestion.
TWO DAYS LATER, Hadley was staying after school to help paint the sets for the musical Anything Goes. Natalie was left with extra hours to fill. She’d planned to research new clients and send out promotional emails. She needed to get more advertising work, not just her preferred assignments, to meet her expenses. But it had been a long morning of editing, and her concentration was shot. She dug out her cell phone from her bag and pressed the star icon “favorites.” Marc’s name was still on the list. She’d told herself that it was because they shared a daughter, but she knew better.
Next on the list was Isabel, who’d vowed to disappear into her work until her book was finished. Then Hadley. And finally, Cate.
She visualized her friend working in her garden, spade in hand, flap hat on her head, smelling of earth. Once she’d held up a beefsteak tomato and smiled proudly. “It’s bigger than my boobs.” Natalie wished she were there with Cate now, her smell of the good earth. But her friend was in her shop till later that afternoon when she had to drive her sons from one after-school activity to another.
There wasn’t anyone else she felt comfortable calling. She could get in touch with Jeremy, as long as she treaded lightly. I owe you an interview, she wrote in a text. Then she headed for the kitchen to see what chores she could tackle. A dim square of light pressed against the window over the sink as she rinsed out the coffee pot. She heard the ding from her cell, wiped her hands on the dishrag and fished out the device from her back pocket. She read the name on the screen: Jeremy Sonnenberg. His message: About happiness or normal human misery?
She grinned and typed: Isabel.
The phone rang almost instantaneously, without having to wait, to anticipate his response. Easy peasy. Those were her mother’s words from years and years ago, when Natalie was very young. “You are such a good girl, easy peasy.” How did an insouciant child turn into a killer?
“That was quick,” she said.
“Yep, that’s me. So, did you find out anything more about Grace Cooke?”
“Belle is asking some people she’s friends with in the Caymans to find out the details for me. Hey, I promised you an interview.”
She glanced down into the sink, at Hadley’s cereal bowl, two flakes pasted with milk to the side. Say you want to see me.
“Great. You free tomorrow night?”
“Yes! I know, not a full dance card.”
He laughed. “Well, that makes two of us.”
They made plans to have dinner and when Natalie hung up the phone, she sung lyrics that popped into her mind, old Gershwin tunes, some remnant from her childhood. Another mom dropped Hadley off from school, and they ate stir-fry chicken with vegetables. Hadley rattled on about her “putrid math class.” They settled in together to watch an episode of Top Chef on the couch.
“You’re in a good mood, Mom,” Hadley said.
“‘Cause I’m with you, Hads.”
Natalie’s cell phone pinged. She pushed the green square with the bubble graphic and the number one in neon red.
“What is it?” Hadley asked, in her vigilant voice. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing, honey.” Natalie smiled. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”
Isabel’s text read: You’re off the hook! I bugged the detective to find out ASAP. It’s good news. He promises to send notes soon. Off to my lecture. Will call when I get the report. No more worries. XO, I.
seventeen
—
“EVERYTHING WORKED OUT,” ISABEL BEAMED. “COME IN!”
George stood behind his wife, his shirt untucked over khaki pants, a stain on one leg. He reached out to embrace Natalie.
Pressed against him, she smelled coffee on his breath, not his usual orange tea. Natalie heard a voice in her head. He was always so kind and gentle, like you. Who’d said that? “Good to see you, George.”
“Likewise.” He released her and asked in a weary voice, “You doing okay?”
“Sure. You?”
The brown spot in the white of his eye had always been there, a tear near his iris. But today both eyes were bloodshot. A displeased side glimpse at Isabel. “Hanging in there. I made another pot of coffee.”
Isabel patted his arm and smiled. “Thanks, bear. Have another cup, yourself.”
“I’ve had enough,” George said, sharply. “What I need is some rest.”
“Bear …”
He turned towards Natalie. “If you can talk some sense into her, can you remind Belle she’s my wife, not a goddamn brand?”
“I don’t—” Natalie said, startled.
Isabel raised her hand at him, a warning. “That’s not her job. She doesn’t need to be involved in our fights.”
For a moment, no one spoke or moved, deadlocked.
“Of course,” George conceded. “I was out of line.” He slid out of the room, bowed, an actor sneaking off stage.
“Sorry about that.” Isabel asked, “You want anything to eat? I got us some bagels from Bobbi and Bubbies.”
“No thanks.” She nodded in the direction George had gone. “What’s going on? I’ve never seen George like that.”
“He’s just strung out. I’ve been flying in at all hours, working half the night. I keep telling him this is temporary, but George has his stubborn side. I’ve been away too much for him.”
“That’s sweet, Belle. You’re lucky.”
“I know. We’ll be fine.” Isabel scooped up Natalie’s coat, gripping it so hard her fingers drained of color. “Let me hang it up. Wow, you look nice! Going somewhere special?”
Natalie was meeting Jeremy in his South End neighborhood that evening. She’d charged knee-high boots and a burgundy cashmere sweater for the occasion. Since Hadley was with her father until the following afternoon, she figured she’d use her free hours to visit art galleries on Harrison Avenue. A reprieve, a distraction from the blitz of the last few months.
“An exhibit,” she said.
“You have a date,” Isabel declared. She returned from the closet and ushered Natalie into the living room.
“Don’t be silly.”
Natalie was surprised to see bills and receipts scattered all over the coffee table. Isabel and George were usually so pristine, so private.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to say. I still remember the feeling—if you say too much, you’ll jinx it.”
Natalie had airbrushed her meeting with Jeremy into something it wasn’t, shot through a rose light, pretty and fun. But talking to him about Isabel was disloyal; even prying into Sigrid’s illness had been a breach. Why had she splurged when all he craved was confirmation that Isabel’s program was a sham? Because no matter what her mind advised, she felt drawn to him.
“There’s nothing to jinx.”
“If you say so. Sit.” Isabel pointed to the gray leather chair that glistened like a wet seal.
Natalie sat. “I can’t believe you already got the report.”
“Yep. Yesterday. I had to rush him, but it was worth it. This should put your fears to bed.”
“Thanks, Belle. I hope it didn’t cost too much. I don’t want to cause more … problems between you guys.”
“Drop in the bucket.” Isabel rustled through some papers, picked up a fax. “The report verifies that the hit and run involved a fifteen-year-old girl on Turtle Farm Road. She was taken to Health City hospital a few minutes away in the boyfriend’s vehicle.”
“Does that prove it wasn’t my fault?”
Isabel lifted one of the stones and squeezed it like a stress ball. “We were close to the resort, which is a fifteen-minute ride to the hospital. That’s the first thing. Then there’s the fact that this girl, Grace Cooke, was out with her seventeen-year-old boyfriend against her parents’ wishes. They’d gone to a place called High Rock, and the boyfriend claimed he’d left her to walk home after they’d argued. He told the police he felt bad about that and circled back to pick her up when he saw a man on the road outside a compact car. Grace was unconscious on the road. There was no one else there.”
Natalie curled forward. “That part’s good news.”
“Yes.”
“Did they call an ambulance?”
Isabel read off the page. “Doesn’t say, just that the boyfriend insisted on driving the girl to the hospital in his car. The driver accompanied them, and the police interviewed him. White male, age thirty-eight, London license. Name: Robert Brampton.”
“Wait!” Natalie panted. “Oh my God, bb, the first two letters, Bob Brampton.”
“They weren’t on the same road as we were, and there was no mention of either of us, no women at all.” Isabel handed her the paper. “That’s your copy, so whenever you question yourself, you can reread it.”
Still, Natalie’s thoughts clicked away. “Could Simon have interfered, moved this girl? Could he have placed her somewhere else once we left? The boyfriend wasn’t actually on the scene; he didn’t witness the accident.”
Isabel stood before her, imperious. “Please, Nat, stop leapfrogging to the next possible catastrophe.”
“Grace was walking, you said. We don’t have the exact distance. It took us at least ten minutes to get back to the resort. She could have walked in the direction of our hotel. What time did she come into the ER?”
Isabel skimmed the paper. “The report says 1:14 a.m.”
“That’s less than an hour later. Did the boyfriend indicate when they’d fought, if Grace had time to walk to where we were?”
The grayish violet color seeped under Isabel’s eyes again. “I’m not even going to ask my investigator. You’re contorting the facts to make yourself the guilty party. The driver who hit Grace gave himself up to the police. It wasn’t Simon. Do you really think he would go to that extreme to … what … involve you, to get to me?”
“I don’t know,” Natalie said. “If I wasn’t involved, why would someone send those emails?”
Isabel sat on the couch facing her. For a second, she didn’t answer, finger to her lip. “That’s a different question. They could have come from Simon. I know I said before that he probably had nothing to do with the emails, but I’ve been having second thoughts. I asked Debbie to look out for anything from him. He actually wrote me a few days ago.” She held up her hand. “As himself, not an alias.”
“Shit, Belle. You should have called me right away.”
“I didn’t want you to get worked up, like you are now. And this was literally my first chance to breathe all week. Three lectures and my workshops and a radio interview.” She lowered her voice. “I needed to give George some attention.”
“Right, of course. I’m sorry.”
“Nat, I just handed you the detective report, which verifies the place and the people involved.”
“I’m so grateful, really. But, what did Simon want?”
“To meet with me in Boston. He’s coming to town for business.”
Natalie was subsumed, as if the water level just kept creeping higher, and she couldn’t paddle to the surface. “Why?”
“He didn’t give specifics, and I didn’t ask. I told Debbie to ignore his email, toss it in the trash file. If he contacts me again, I’ll have her alert the police.” Isabel dropped her stone back into the bowl. “One step at a time.”
“What he’s doing is harassment. Just be careful.”
Isabel said, “I’m always careful.”
“Promise me you won’t see him.”
“I have no intention of seeing him, Nat. What are you afraid of?”
Natalie could smell the wine on Simon’s breath, feel his tongue in her mouth, his fingers on her skin. She reached for a pebble, so white and matte, an unblemished eggshell. What to divulge? “I contacted Simon’s ex-girlfriend, recently. If Simon’s not Godfrey, she might be.”
“You did? How did you know who she was?”
Tracking one’s lies was a harder trick than photographing ice cream. With a quick shrug, Natalie said, “He mentioned her name on the beach. It was easy to find her on LinkedIn.”
“What did she say?”
“She warned me away from Simon.”
“Good advice.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “Maybe he told her he followed you to the Caribbean and brought up the accident. Dropped my name. It’s easy to find me by my website.”
“Even if one of them is writing you, it’s too convoluted to waste time on. Don’t get mixed up in their relationship drama. You weren’t responsible for that girl. And it was the only crash reported that night. That’s the main thing.”
“You’re right. Thanks. I need to reimburse you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Just do me a favor?” Isabel winked. “Have fun on your non-date.”
THE DAY WAS shale gray and the air heavy with moisture. The naked branches of the dogwood outside Isabel’s townhouse were extended like a dancer’s arms. Natalie pulled her wool hat out of one pocket, her gloves out of the other. Isabel made sense; she was hard-pressed to accept blame even when the evidence pointed to her innocence. Or at least a firm, reasonable doubt. Natalie forced her thoughts elsewhere—the way the Happiness manual instructed—to a talk she’d had with Jessa the day before. Jessa loved “boy talk” even though she was married with a toddler. Yesterday Jessa had given her the thumbs up when Natalie brought up Jeremy at the studio.
Natalie had accompanied her to a nearby bar for a late lunch. They’d sat at a long wood table, sawdust sprinkled on the floor. Two of Jessa’s friends had shown up in t-shirts and jeans, one with a huge silver pendant around her neck, the other with a row of piercings—a star, a tiny bird, a peace sign, and a cross—circling down one ear lobe. They’d joked loudly about some party where a married man had hit on the woman wearing the pendant. The one with the piercings had grabbed Natalie’s arm and said, “You have to come out with us. We’ll find you a good guy.” Natalie had nodded and wondered if the cross on her ear lobe meant this woman had faith or was mocking it. But she’d felt a flicker of hope, of ease, of being one of the girls. How long had it been since she’d felt that way?
Racing down the street, her cheeks chapped. Have fun on your non-date.
Shame snapped inside of her. What did it take to learn from her mistakes?
Jeremy wasn’t interested in her. It was Isabel he cared about. Just like Simon. She’d head back to Brookline. If she canceled on Jeremy early enough, he wouldn’t be inconvenienced. He could interview her anytime; she could repay his favor over the phone.
The ride was tricky with the tooting horns, the wandering pedestrians, and the cyclists whizzing between cars in their Gore-Tex getups and high-perched helmets. Natalie had to navigate the twists in the roads, to change lanes and merge with traffic, to follow the instructions she’d printed out to avoid listening to that chirping voice on her iPhone. This wasn’t a route she was used to, and she cursed herself now for not taking the T. She hadn’t wanted to deal with waiting for the train in the piercing cold later that night.
It took forty minutes, twice as long as it should have, to make it back
to her place. She passed her neighbor’s apartment with the strong patchouli aroma wafting into the hallway. Natalie had seen this woman only a few times, a slender figure wearing oversized glasses. She’d introduced herself, “Vivian,” when she’d moved into the building the previous year. Natalie thought about Ellen’s package with Garrick’s letter, his apology. It had been nearly two months ago now. The FedEx office insisted it had been delivered. Maybe the messenger buzzed her neighbor’s bell when Natalie hadn’t answered. Once Natalie had taken a package for the previous owner and put it on the top of her hutch, forgetting about it. When she met the man weeks later in the vestibule, he referred to his confusion about his lost parcel, and she apologized for her transgression. Was that what had happened with Vivian?
Natalie paused for a moment outside her neighbor’s door, listening for voices or the sound of TV or music—any clue that her knock would be answered. Silence. Vivian was Dr. Franklin, a pain management specialist, at the medical center in town. “I work all the time,” she’d said, when she introduced herself. “Barely time to see Waldo.” She’d laughed, referring to her cat.
The older couple, on Natalie’s other side, wasn’t an option. They were snowbirds that spent November through March in Florida.
Another dead end.
In her living room, Natalie scrolled her cell screen for Jeremy’s information. “So sorry. Must cancel tonight,” she wrote. “Promise to talk about your book soon. Thanks again for your help.”
When her phone rang, she repeated her apology to Jeremy.
“Listen.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “You’re not obligated to me. Your stepsister’s program isn’t something you feel comfortable discussing. Hey, I respect that. I shouldn’t have pushed you. This is the official notice that you’re off the hook.”
“That’s not fair to you.”
“Nah. It’s fine. Not exactly good for the book’s argument, me twisting your arm into saying the Happiness Doc makes you miserable.”