Four Thrillers by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

  “But you couldn’t get credit like that without her signature, Erik, could you?”

  He’d given up a successful career in information technology after Trevor was born so that Linda could work and the kids wouldn’t be cared for by strangers. He’d managed her career, everything from sales to publicity to Web site design and maintenance, taken care of the accounting, helped with the kids. It always seemed like the perfect arrangement, one that made them both very happy. Everything was joint; there were no separate accounts, separate incomes.

  “She signed,” he said, resting the heels of his hands on the windowsill. The window looked out onto another building of artists’ lofts, where many residents shared my sister’s aversion to blinds. “She just didn’t read what she was signing.”

  “Oh, Erik.” Crushed. I knew my sister; she was going to buckle under the weight of this.

  “If it had been anyone else, I never would have even considered it,” Erik said urgently, turning back to me. He must have seen the look on my face, wanted me to understand. “But Marc’s a genius, you know? And he’s family.”

  His reverent tone reminded me of a peculiar energy I’d always picked up on between my husband and brother-in-law. Linda had laughingly claimed that Erik had a boy crush on Marcus, like Marc was the cool kid at school and Erik just wanted to hang around him. I’d noticed it, too. I’d also observed that Marcus seemed to realize it as well, and how he appeared to enjoy it. But I figured it was harmless—at least they got along. They were buddies, met for drinks after work, took the kids to the country so that Linda and I could spend the day at Bliss, our favorite spa.

  “I wasn’t trying to deceive her, Izzy Understand that. I was trying to surprise her.”

  I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything, just stared across the street.

  “He was supposed to pay me back yesterday, Izzy. I was supposed to meet him for lunch and he was going to give me a check. But he never showed.”

  I watched a woman in a loft across the street move through a series of yoga poses, her impossibly thin body limber and strong. Another young woman chased a naked toddler across an apartment on another floor, both of them laughing. It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard him. I was just waiting for the words to sink in. Their implication echoed all the things Detective Crowe had said and not said the night before.

  “He wouldn’t cheat you, Erik,” I said, my voice sounding weak. “He wouldn’t. Something’s happened.”

  Erik nodded, seemed unable to find words. I didn’t like the expression on his face. Something dark. Something desperate.

  “Did you tell the police?” I asked.

  He nodded. “They know; I’m sorry. It felt like a betrayal but it could be … relevant.”

  I wish I could say I was numb from the shock but I wasn’t. I felt as if I was standing in the middle of a city that was being bombed from above. I didn’t know where to run as everything solid around me crumbled to dust. My body was flooded with adrenaline, in full fight-or-flight response.

  Erik rested his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry, Izzy. This is not your problem. You have too much to deal with right now. I just didn’t want you to find out from the police.”

  “It is my problem. Of course it’s my problem, Erik.”

  “No,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “No.”

  “Does she know yet?” I asked him.

  He released a heavy breath. “Not yet. I need to figure out how to tell her. I …” He just kept shaking his head, his eyes opening and drifting over to the closed door of their bedroom where she lay sleeping. He never finished the sentence.

  “Don’t tell her,” I said, leaving him. I grabbed my bag and unlocked the door. “Give me a little time.”

  “Wait, Izzy” he said, following. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something that’s not just sitting around here watching all our lives go to hell.”

  ON THE STREET it felt good to be moving. I walked off the curb and lifted my arm at the sea of traffic that was flowing up Lafayette. An old woman in a dramatic, hot-pink pashmina wrap and long coat walking three white standard poodles stared at me. I remembered the large bandage on my head, lifted a hand to touch it as I slid inside the cab that pulled over.

  “Hospital?” the driver wanted to know. I couldn’t tell if he was being a smart-ass or not.

  “Eighty-sixth between Broadway and Amsterdam,” I told him. I wanted to go home, to examine the place that housed my life with Marcus, to tear it apart if necessary, piece by piece, in an effort to find out what had happened to my husband. There was no place for fear or grief in my mind; I was nothing but my hunger to understand what was happening to my life. In the days to come, this single-minded focus, this terrible drive would be responsible for some very bad decisions and horrific outcomes. Of course, I had no way of knowing that as my cab raced uptown; I was just doing what I knew how to do.

  7

  From three stories above, Linda Book watched her sister hail a cab. She knocked on the window, then struggled to open it, but the damn thing was stuck. It was no use, anyway. Linda could just see the black of Isabel’s hair, the white of the bandage on her head as she disappeared and closed the door behind her. She watched the cab speed off, thinking, She’s going home, no doubt. Trying to figure it all out. Trying to fix what was broken, to make it right again. Linda released an exasperated breath at her sister’s stubborn streak, which was all the more annoying because it was a trait they shared.

  She leaned her head against the window for a moment, considered her options: Call her? Chase after her? Leave her be? She decided to leave her to it. Izzy was an unstoppable force. And Linda had children to take care of, to dress and get off to school. More than that, Linda knew that Isabel had to do this; there was no other choice for her. It was the curse of the writer, a feral hunger to understand and by understanding to control.

  When Linda was just starting out as a photographer, she’d done a series she called “City Faces.” She’d walked around the city for weeks, just snapping pictures of people—some candid, some with permission—and wound up with a group of portraits that earned her an agent and her first major gallery show in SoHo. She’d asked her sister to write something for the brochure and they went through the photos together.

  “Oh my God, Linda,” Izzy said. “Look at her. This is beautiful.” It was a black-and-white shot of an old woman she’d met at a bus stop. Her face was a road map of deep lines, her hair a brittle and unapologetic white, but her eyes were as wide and sharp as a child’s.

  “Who was she? What was her story?” Izzy wanted to know.

  Linda had been confused, even a little put off by the question.

  “Who knows?” she said. “I didn’t talk to her. I just took her picture.”

  For Linda, it wasn’t about the story behind the woman. It was about the beauty of that one moment, about capturing it and making it her own. It was about the universe that existed in a single frame. But that wasn’t enough for Isabel. She needed to know about the significant events that led the woman to sit at the bus stop at that precise moment, what she was thinking that put the expression on her face. And if she didn’t know, she’d have to make something up to satisfy herself.

  They’d laughed about it, how different they were, how unalike were their individual arts and processes. In the end, Isabel wrote: “My face is what I give to the world. Look closely and you’ll see what the world has given to me.” Of course, it was perfect. Isabel was always pitch perfect whenever she put word to paper.

  In Linda’s memory, they seemed very young that afternoon, so excited by Linda’s upcoming show, the publication of Izzy’s first novel right around the corner. They thought, as they always had really, that the world belonged to them. They’d never been called upon to think of themselves any other way. Even the grim tragedy that marked their late childhood hadn’t changed that idea very much.

  Linda walked
away from the window and stared at her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Wretched. She’d never been happy with her body (too small at the chest, too wide at the hips) but she’d always liked her face. She’d always been satisfied with her easy prettiness, good skin, well-formed features, shining blue eyes. Recently, though, deeper lines had started to make their debut around her eyes and mouth. Lack of sleep and too much stress were causing her to look haggard and worn out. Even her silky blond hair seemed drier, was losing some of that estrogenic glow. She put her hands to either side of her face and pulled the skin taut to simulate a bad face-lift and made herself laugh.

  She’d never thought of herself as vain, but she supposed there were things she’d taken for granted about her looks. And now that those things were fading, she realized that she was very vain indeed. She noticed things about Izzy—her slim middle, the youthful fullness of her face, the smooth skin around her eyes—and it seemed to Linda that there was suddenly a big difference in the way they looked. They’d always been opposites in their coloring, Linda favoring their mother, Isabel their father. But they’d been equal in the timbre and volume of their beauty. Their father’s favorite proud refrain: “The Connelly sisters are lovely and smart.” There wasn’t a brighter one or a prettier one. Linda and Isabel had never felt the urge to compete with each other in those arenas.

  Linda would not have believed that two kids and five years could make such a difference in her appearance. But then again, she’d never even thought about her age until recently. Lately, she’d realized that the softness at her belly would not be dissolved by exercise or no-carb torture. There was a sinking to her face that would not be improved without surgery or injections. But she’d always imagined herself as having too much character to succumb to surgical beauty treatments. She couldn’t see herself as one of those vain, awful women who cared more about the lines on their foreheads than about their children, who thought that looking young (not that they looked younger, exactly, just altered) meant a reprieve from the disappointment gnawing at the edges of their lives. How much energy that must take, to fight that losing battle. She was an artist; she’d age with character and grace.

  Not that any of it mattered, not really. It was just one in a legion of dark little thoughts, mental gremlins, that could nip and gnaw at her sense of well-being if they were allowed.

  Of course, there were bigger problems than her fading youth. How selfish was she to be thinking about such stupid things when Isabel’s life was falling apart? Linda broke away from her reflection, slipped back into bed, and pulled the heavy mass of blankets and comforter around her. She wanted to avoid the day for just a few more minutes, avoid her missing brother-in-law and the fact that her injured sister had just raced into the fray. Normally, she’d be frantic. But for some reason, she just felt drained by the whole matter, as though she’d awakened covered by a blanket of snow. A kind of emotional hypothermia had set in, stiffened her joints, robbed her of energy.

  When she received the call yesterday and raced to the hospital, saw her sister pale and unmoving on the stretcher—that awful gash on her head—it felt as though she was living a terrible memory, as if it had all happened before. As afraid and shocked as she’d been before Izzy opened her eyes and started to speak, it was as though she’d been expecting some awful event relating to her sister’s husband all along.

  There was something wrong with Marcus Raine; she’d known it from the day she’d first lain eyes upon him. He was worse through the lens, all hard angles and an odd shadow to his eyes. As a photographer, she knew to wait for that millisecond when the face revealed itself, a flicker of the eyes, an involuntary shifting of the muscles in the jaw or forehead. This was the second when pretty people were beautiful, or beautiful people ugly, or cheerful people suddenly haunted. A face is an organic entity; it can’t hold a protective posture forever. It must surface for air. She saw him clearly and early.

  She’d tried to talk to Isabel but her sister wasn’t hearing it. Linda realized that she’d have to accept Marcus and hope she was wrong about him, or lose her sister. That’s what happened when the biological family rejects a spouse; a continental drift. If the marriage is successful, the incompatible units slowly move away from one another. Visits become less frequent until there is only the occasional phone call, the obligatory Sunday afternoon get-together, the infrequent, awkward dinner where so much goes unsaid. Linda could see how it would happen, had seen it before with her friends. Isabel was that in love with him. And so Linda, with an almost superhuman effort, bit her tongue and they all moved forward together. The irony was that, five years later, Linda was just starting to let her guard down about Marcus. Erik had always liked him, was beginning to convince her that she’d been mistaken. She was moving beyond just tolerance, even starting to like him a little. She should have known. The lens doesn’t lie.

  She heard the high, light tone of her son’s voice and the low rumble of her husband’s. Then she heard the television go on. A minute later she smelled toaster waffles. The day was beginning without her. She felt a wave of gratitude that she had most of her Christmas shopping done. She’d wrapped all the gifts and driven them up to her mother’s in Riverdale last week. That’s where they’d spend Christmas Eve and open gifts on Christmas morning. Soon Brown was barking to go out and, through the wall, she heard Emily yelling at him to be quiet.

  She’d gone into the guest room to check on her sister last night and found Emily and Brown piled around Izzy She marveled at the two of them, her daughter and her sister, how alike they were, how much she loved them, how the same fierce urge to protect them was a fire in her center. Tough talk, bad attitudes, strong opinions, steely expressions—all of it just hard armor to protect fatally delicate centers.

  She heard her phone vibrate in the drawer by her bed and she quickly reached for it. The screen read: 1 Text Message. She flipped the phone open.

  Can I see you today? I’m desperate. She felt a powerful wash of excitement and fear.

  She answered: Family emergency. I don’t know. I’ll try.

  At a light knock on the door, she slid the phone under the covers, closed her eyes.

  “Mom?” said Emily, poking her face in. “I can’t find my black leggings.”

  “Okay,” she said, fake groggy. “Coming.”

  “Izzy’s gone,” said Emily. Her face was still but her eyes were bright with worry.

  “Izzy will be okay,” Linda said, sitting up and opening her arms. Emily came to her quickly and let herself be embraced. “We’ll take care of her and she’ll be fine.”

  “But what about Marcus?”

  She released a sigh and considered lying, offering some platitude. But Emily was too old and too smart for that. Lies would just make her more afraid. She took her daughter’s face in her hands. Emily looked so much like Izzy that Linda felt as though she were speaking to both of them.

  “The truth is, Em, we just don’t know what’s happening right now. The police are helping us and we’re going to figure everything out. Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together. That’s what a family does.”

  Emily leaned against her, wrapped her arms around Linda’s middle.

  “I think you and your brother should go to school today,” Linda said, rising. They moved together toward the door. “We’ll come get you if anything happens.”

  Emily nodded uncertainly but seemed okay with it. Sending them to school would make things seem normal, which they needed. Trevor was going to bitch a blue streak; she knew he was already banking on a sick day. People generally considered her son to be the sweeter of the two children. But he was less malleable, less cooperative than his sister, more prone to defiance and tantrum.

  “Your pants are folded on top of the dryer,” Linda said, patting Emily on her bottom. “Go get ready.”

  She heard her phone buzz again under the covers, but Emily seemed not to notice as she loped from the room. “I want jelly on mine, Dad!” she called, exiting and
shutting the door behind her. Brown started barking again.

  Guilt, the river that runs through motherhood, threatened to rise over its banks. The day and all the misery it promised loomed like a thunderhead. She smelled the scent of coffee and figured there was no way out but through.

  THE DAY MY father killed himself dawned blue and cold. I heard the hard wind rattling the windows and saw the bright sky and high cirrus clouds from my window as I woke. I looked across the room and saw my sister lying on the bed across from me. She stared up at the ceiling, her arms folded behind her head.

  “I had a bad dream,” she said, knowing somehow that I was awake. She looked pale, small in her bed like the child she was.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. Something terrible.”

  “Dreams can’t hurt you,” I said, only because that’s what she always told me. And she only told me that because that’s what Mom told her. She was fifteen. I was ten. But there had been no dream, I’d learn later. She’d seen him. Linda had been the one to find my father as he lay slumped in the toolshed far behind our house, the wall sprayed with his blood, the gun lying on the floor. Somehow she was the only one to hear the blast.

  It woke her from a deep sleep and she drifted out the back door to find him. He was always out there building things with wood—birdhouses, dollhouses, and tiny pieces of furniture, picture frames, curio cabinets. Everyone loved my father’s work. He was always making gifts for friends and neighbors, never accepting money. My mother complained about how he wasted his time with building trinkets when the lawn needed tending and the fence repair, that his hands were splintered and calloused, rough to the touch.