No One Knows

by J. T. Ellison

  Good grief. She checked the date on the article heading. This was from before Josh’s birth.

  Daisy, a country singer.

  Would wonders never cease?

  The article mentioned that Daisy had gotten her start in the Nashville music scene after being widowed.

  Aubrey showed Meghan the paper. “Check this out. Daisy was a singer.”

  “That’s not all. God, there are medals in here. Bronze Star. Purple Heart. Tom wasn’t in the military, was he?”

  “Those must belong to her husband who died. Tom said he was in the service. She was married to him briefly before she married Josh’s real dad.”

  “So she’s had three husbands? Wow. Daisy really got around. What’s the deal with Josh’s biological dad?”

  Aubrey sat in the desk chair, pushed off and whirled around in a circle. “Bad news, that one. I met him once, when we were kids. He showed up and I thought he was a pedophile trying to steal us. But he’d just gotten out of jail. Josh was blown away. Daisy had told him his real dad died. He told me he had no earthly idea that his father was still alive, but I think he did know. I remember that day . . . Josh was wrecked. It really messed him up. He rebelled against Daisy completely then. Basically cut her out of his life, even though he was stuck living here. That’s when he and Tom got close. And he and I got closer, too. Which made things with Daisy that much worse. I think she always blamed me for Josh finding out the truth.”

  Now Meghan was interested. “What was his dad in jail for?”

  “He was convicted of identity theft. It wasn’t as common back then as it is now. But there were all kinds of allegations against him, including an attempted murder. He was a classic crook. He got out early for good behavior before Daisy ever had a chance to tell Josh he was really alive.” She went quiet for a moment. “I didn’t like him. He was a handsome guy, all smiles, but something about him made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He just seemed wrong, somehow.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Hardsten died a little while back. Before we got married. Got on the wrong side of a knife in a bar fight.”

  “Figures. Once a criminal . . .”

  Always a criminal.

  Like father, like son?

  Another chill paraded down Aubrey’s arms.

  “Yeah. Anything more there?”

  Meghan shook her head. “Nothing that screams ‘I had a child no one knows about.’ Though you have to admit, Aubrey, Daisy was certainly holding things back from people. Sounds to me like she’s an expert at compartmentalization.”

  “So where do we look for a kid?”

  “Adoption records.”

  The word adoption made Aubrey squirm. Somewhere deep inside, she’d always hoped someone would come forward to claim her, to give her a history, a family, a home. It never happened. As was required by the State of Tennessee, she’d gone to the monthly “adoption days” in Nashville, sat at a lunch table while eager couples walked past her without a second glance. She was cute, with her dark eyes and curly blond hair and long, coltish legs, but she had a fatal flaw: she wasn’t a baby. The couples who came to these events were looking for someone little, someone still impressionable, who could be molded in their image; kids who didn’t remember their real folks, who wouldn’t cringe when they were asked to call their new strangers mom and dad.

  Those Saturdays had been among the worst in her life. Every fourth Saturday of the month, they were prodded into the showers, dressed in the finest handoffs they had, and bused to the school, where they were lined up like show ponies. Or slaves. Eager children with one goal in life: to be loved.

  She desperately wanted to be saved from the hell she was living in, and being adopted again would make everything okay.

  It never happened, but soon enough, she was loved. By Josh.

  Meghan caught that something was wrong. She was watching Aubrey with her little pixie head cocked to one side and her lips pursed, but let the moment go without inquiry. She smiled and patted Aubrey lightly on the shoulder.

  “Come on, sugar. Let’s hit the courthouse. See what we can dig up.”

  “Wait. I need to show you something.”

  Aubrey reached into her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. She’d printed out the photo, was carrying it around like having it on her would make it disappear from the world.

  She handed it to Meghan. “Someone emailed me this last night. The subject line was ‘He’s alive.’ ”

  Meghan unfolded the paper. Aubrey could see the faint outline of Josh’s body through the back. Even prepared for it, the pain sliced through her.

  Meghan folded the paper, anger etched on her features. She was pale, and looked furious.

  “Are you okay?”

  Aubrey choked back a sob. “Of course I’m not okay. Someone’s playing with me, trying to manipulate me. But I can’t sit back and pretend nothing’s happening.” She grabbed the photo. “Clearly I didn’t know him as well as I thought. What if he’s been out there this whole time, living it up with some strange woman? I’m just his wife. Why let me know he’s okay?”

  “If this photo is even real. It could be something doctored up to make you doubt him.”

  “But who would do that? Who would want to torture me like this?”

  Meghan gritted her teeth. “I don’t know, but we’ll find out.”

  PART THREE

  Years of love have been forgot in the hatred of a minute.

  —EDGAR ALLAN POE

  CHAPTER 45

  Josh

  Six Years Ago

  “So, Dr. Hamilton, what made you want to get into medicine?”

  Josh was across the table from Derek Allen at Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse, eating hot corn cakes and drinking an incredible glass of wine, waiting on the most expensive filet he had ever ordered. Allen didn’t seemed fazed by the prices, ordering filets and lobsters and the $180 bottle of Nickel & Nickel cabernet sauvignon casually, as if he did it every day.

  Josh was impressed. Someday soon, that would be him.

  “I want to help people. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s true.”

  “And what kind of doctor are you training to be?”

  “Well, interesting you should ask that. Today was my first day of surgical rotation. I thought I wanted family practice, but now . . . there’s something special about surgery. Though it means more schooling. More money. More everything.”

  Allen was looking at him with the same small smile on his face, almost like he’d known what Josh was going to say.

  “And your wife? What will she think?”

  Josh shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  Their meals arrived. Josh cut into the steak; it was perfectly done and smelled like heaven.

  “Another three years of school will be very expensive. What if I could find a way to help you along?”

  Josh stopped eating, fork poised over his plate. “What do you mean?”

  “A little side job, to make ends meet.”

  “I was thinking of taking a position at the morgue.”

  “Oh, this would be much more fun. And much more lucrative.”

  Josh put his fork down. “What is it you do, exactly, Mr. Allen?”

  Allen put his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. His smile was crooked, and he leaned in so he wouldn’t be overheard. “I’m a bit like you, actually. I make people feel good.”

  • • •

  Josh walked out of his dinner with Derek Allen halfway through his very expensive filet, panic driving him back to his Audi.

  What the man wanted was impossible, and there was no way in hell Josh was going to get involved.

  Allen’s “problem” was a simple one. He was a dealer, albeit a fancy one. He needed good, pure product for his upper-class clien
tele. Pills, especially. For while Nashville’s elite wasn’t going to be caught dead with a needle in the arm, a little bit of Oxy on the tongue was a whole different matter.

  Allen needed a source who could get him pills. Simple as that.

  Josh had balked immediately, started to rise, but Allen had grabbed his arm and said, “Sit. Down.”

  Josh sat, but didn’t move to pick up his fork or wine again.

  “Good. You need to think this through carefully. It isn’t chance that led you to be here. Why do you think I was at that particular coffeehouse? I know you, Dr. Joshua Hamilton. I’ve been watching you. I know about your little upper issue. Adderall, is it? Tsk.”

  Josh froze. When he could form cognizant thought again, he leaned across the table. “Who told you that?”

  Allen smiled. “I think you and I could do business together. I’m a good boss, I take care of my own. You’ll get everything you need to finish your schooling and take care of your wife, and no one needs to know.”

  “I don’t do drugs. And I don’t run them, either.”

  “Bullshit. You started by taking wifey’s pills, and when you couldn’t do it anymore without her noticing, you struck a deal with the pharmacist at the hospital. An expensive habit you’ve got going on there, Doctor.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Come, now. Look at your hands, they’ve been shaking since you sat down. Your pupils are pinpoint, you’re sweating.”

  “It’s hot in here.”

  “Hamilton, stop. I know all about it. All about you. Your friend in the pharmacy works for me.”

  Allen sat back, took a deep drink of his wine. Josh followed suit, trying desperately to calm himself. Oh, God. Bob, you fucking idiot. You’re working with an outsider? You told? Who else have you implicated?

  If the school found out, he’d be expelled, and he’d never get into another. Oh, God. Oh God oh God oh God.

  Play it cool, Hamilton. He’s fishing. Just play it cool.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I have to go now. My wife will be waiting for me.”

  “Three thousand a week. All I need are a few pills here and there. Think about what I proposed, Josh. You’re going to want to do this. I’ll make it worth your while, and I’ll protect you. And if you don’t play ball, there will be consequences.”

  Josh nearly knocked over his chair trying to get away from the table.

  In his car, he wanted to cry. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He wanted to kill Bob, the fucking prick. He started to drive to the pharmacist’s house, then pulled to the side of West End and had himself a breakdown.

  God, Aubrey couldn’t find out. If she knew he was supplementing, as he thought of it, she would freak the fuck out. She was so antidrug it was insane. That’s why she’d had the leftover Adderall in the first place; she didn’t like how they made her feel, so she’d tossed them under the sink. She hadn’t noticed when they disappeared. He’d been refilling the prescription for a year, but when it ran out of refills, he needed a new source.

  Bob was that source. He did it for most of the med students. Skimmed off the top of the bottles coming into the hospital.

  And now, because Bob was a stupid motherfucker, Derek Allen wanted Josh to get involved as well.

  Oh, God. He needed a drink. He needed a shitload of drinks.

  He put the car in drive and headed toward Sam’s.

  CHAPTER 46

  Aubrey

  Three Years Ago

  The lines on her wrist weren’t natural.

  It was an interesting revelation. Aubrey stared at the thin white flesh, now marred, confused for the briefest of moments before she remembered.

  It was like this every day when she woke. The drugs they were giving her were too strong; they were numbing her brain, making her see flying things out of the corners of her eyes.

  The bandages had come off yesterday. The cut was a thin line demarcating the flesh, the inside of her delicate wrist scored. Forevermore she would be able to identify her wrist’s north from south, a permanent latitude etched into her skin.

  They didn’t understand.

  She rolled onto her side. That was an improvement. The restraints had been overwhelming; she’d been panicked the whole time she was in them. The idiots thought she was fighting to get out; they were wrong. It was the idea that she couldn’t that made her frantic. So they’d drug her, and she’d wake still tied and panic again. A vicious cycle, one that only stopped when one of the other patients, the one in the bed opposite hers, pointed out what the issue probably was.

  They finally unhooked her, and she calmed immediately, taking huge, deep breaths, moving her fingers and arms and legs. She didn’t try to get up, just moved all her parts, like a stunned fish finally put back into water.

  They added claustrophobia to her growing list of “issues.”

  Bipolar. Depression. Suicidal ideations. Antisocial personality disorder. Narcissism. Delusions.

  They sat with her in the afternoons with a wide, thick book called a DSM-IV and tried to explain all the things that were wrong with her.

  They were the ones who were insane, but Aubrey had to concede one point: she did have a problem with panic. Being tied down, being forced to do what others wanted—she had a major issue with that. And depression, well, shit, who wouldn’t be depressed if they were in her shoes? Her husband was dead. Missing. Dead. Whatever.

  Let her out, let her get her own clothes on her back and sleep in her own bed, however grim that might be, and she’d be right as rain.

  She hadn’t exactly been trying to kill herself. She didn’t think so, at least. She had been drunk. Rip-roaringly drunk. And she’d fallen, tripped over the dog into the kitchen. The beer bottle she was carrying broke into fifteen or so sharp green pieces, and since she couldn’t stand up, she managed to get herself seated Indian-style on the kitchen floor and, weaving, began picking up the pretty green shards.

  She was just drawing, the glass a permanent pencil. Pretty pictures, Christmas on her wrist. She told them that over and over, but they didn’t believe her.

  The glass was sharper than she expected, the flesh inside her wrist thinner. The blood that bloomed was so bright and red, contrasting with the dark green glass, a wreath tied in a bloody bow. It was fascinating, so she pushed a little harder to see if she could make the bow bigger.

  She wasn’t trying to kill herself.

  Not that she hadn’t tried that once before . . . but she was fourteen then. Fourteen and alone in the world and scared and dirty and not realizing what promise life held. Tyler had found her, saved her life. And things had gotten better after that. The kids at the group home had taken her seriously. She’d been mythologized. She was popular. Cool. She had taken a bottle of pills—not aspirin or Tylenol, like the poseurs did, but a bottle of codeine she found in her therapist’s purse. Turned out someone had herself a little pill-popping problem.

  And that same someone had realized her drugs were missing and returned to the group home in time to help Tyler get Aubrey to Vanderbilt’s emergency room for a stomach pumping.

  She shivered at the memory. The handcuffs, the tube full of charcoal being shoved down her throat, being forced—yes, that was her issue, anything or anyone making her do something against her will. Coming to just long enough to rush out of the bed, trying to make it to the toilet to vomit, the coal-black streams dripping from her mouth and nose, the ER staff screaming at her, grabbing her arms to force her back to the bed, tying her down.

  That lovely little incident cured her of ever trying something like that again. No, if Aubrey wanted to kill herself, she’d do it right. She’d have Tyler do it for her, with a needle full to the brim of the highest-grade heroin they could afford.

  She hadn’t tried to kill herself with the bottle glass. This had been an accident. A legi
timate accident. Just a mistake. A simple, stupid, drunken mistake.

  A simple, stupid, drunken mistake that cost her six fucking weeks on the psych ward.

  She didn’t think they’d ever let her go. It was day after day after day of pointless bullshit, of crafts and group and personal sessions and life coaching and career development—for fuck’s sake, people, she was a teacher, and a damn good one at that. She developed an aversion to being touched. She started smoking just for an excuse to see the sky. She’d never been a smoker before; it had a certain glamour to it. She pranced around outside during the breaks, puffing away, ignoring the ticklish cough that started after just a few puffs, just so freaking happy to feel the air and sun instead of the screaming buzz of the fluorescent bulbs and the pockmarked white cardboard ceilings.

  The last time, when she was fourteen, Tyler had come to visit her, and reamed her ass out good for her stupidity. “It’s never that bad, Aubrey. No matter what, it’s never so bad that you want to end it all. Do you understand me?”

  Sage advice from a boy who’d grown into a man with a drug habit so severe he had to live a life of crime to afford his fix. Poor thing.

  When she thought about that, she sobered up. Aubrey truly felt sorry for Tyler. He couldn’t come visit her now. He was with the last class up at Brushy Mountain doing a nickel for possession with intent.

  A tisket, a tasket, a gray-and-yellow basket.

  Fuck, she was still really high. The drugs they were giving her messed with the language center of her brain. She’d developed a sort of verbal dyslexia, and couldn’t make the words come out in the proper order, even though she was thinking them clearly. Green. Green, not gray.

  Where was she? Oh, that’s right. She rolled over and looked at her wrist again. She needed to get a tattoo on that scar. She wondered if they could actually draw the line down the scar itself, or if they could anchor it, the white streak surrounded on either side with black, a bit of living chiaroscuro to make the right impact. Oooh, that would be pretty.