The Stories You Tell

by Kristen Lepionka

  Thusly deputized, I rammed the Range Rover through the opening in the guardrail. Its jagged edges squealed against the passenger side of the vehicle and Jordy clutched my arm as we slid down the embankment until it gave way to a snowy field fringed with more trees along an elevated ridge. Elise’s SUV was still motoring away from us, but slower now.

  “What is she doing?” Jordy said.

  “Is there a road over there?”

  “Um, yes, it looks like there’s one on the other side of the—oh shit shit shit there’s a pond or a lake or something right in front of her.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Elise’s SUV stopped, skidded sideways. The snow under her tires seemed to dissolve as the ice below it cracked.

  I punched the gas and we jetted toward it. There were signs, I could see now, cautioning about the pond. I stopped just shy of them and the three of us jumped out of the car in unison.

  The back of the SUV was sinking.

  Brock sprinted toward the car as two small faces appeared in the back window.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Jordy gasped, clutching my arm again.

  “Rope,” I said. “Blankets.” I knew I’d seen both items recently. I threw open the back gate of the Range Rover and pawed through the crap I had back there. “Here.” I seized the coil of nylon rope that definitely wasn’t mine and thanked that sketchy individual who’d lost the vehicle to the impound lot.

  The SUV driver’s side door opened and Elise tumbled out, her boots skidding.

  As Brock lay down on the ice and shouted for his small son to put his window down, Elise stared—at the car, at me, her features hard and still.

  I leaned to the side to survey the situation. Brock was lying on the ice, lifting one of his sons out through the window. The other little boy was safely on solid ground, his face bright red and streaked with tears, his tiny, exposed hands balled into fists at his sides.

  Elise turned and headed the opposite way toward the ridge.

  “Jordy, get him. Put him in the car.”

  She nodded and ran over to the kid. I grabbed the pile of blankets and rope and went down closer to the car. The older of the two Hazlett kids was standing on the edge of the frozen pond and I scooped him up and handed him up to Jordy. I called, “Brock, what are you doing?”

  “Addy’s in the front. She doesn’t look too good—shit,” he said. The passenger side of the car plunged into the pond, taking Brock with it.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” I heard myself mutter. I walked as close to the edge of the pond as I could without stepping on it and tossed the rope toward the car. “Brock?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said through chattering teeth. “I got it. I got it. But Addy. She’s not opening the door—”

  I heaved myself up the slight incline that ringed the pond and tied the opposite end of the rope around the base of a fir tree into what I remembered was a sturdy knot, something my father had taught me when I was a kid; I tested it by yanking on it as hard as I could and it held. From this vantage point I could see Elise’s pink soft-shell jacket nearing the top of the ridge directly across from my vehicle. Brock was lying on top of the ice again, his clothes soaked through. Addison was in the front seat of the sinking SUV, reclined, still. The icy water was up to the bottom of her window now. But I saw a puff of air as she breathed through her mouth.

  I unholstered my gun. “Brock, stay down, and cover your ears, okay?”

  He looked at me. “Are you a good shot?”

  “The car has three windows on this side. I just need to hit one of them. Can I do this?”

  “Go. Go.”

  I dropped to one knee in the snow and aimed as steadily as I could and fired.

  My shot sailed through the top third of Addison’s window, leaving a small hole in its wake. Brock used his elbow to break the rest of the glass; as soon as he did, water began pouring into the car and Addison stirred.

  “Come on, hon,” Brock said. From his position on the ice, he slid his hands under her armpits and pulled just as the ice cracked under the driver’s side and the entire vehicle began to sink in earnest now. Addison’s hips cleared the window and she flopped onto the ice next to Brock, her head lolling. “What’s wrong with her? I don’t—”

  “Brock, just grab the rope.”

  He patted the ice almost gently, like he didn’t know what it was. Then he started to tie the end of it to Addison’s belt.

  “No, grab it—Brock—”

  I climbed the bank again and waved in the direction of my car, hoping Jordy was watching. She flicked the headlights and started driving toward us. I could no longer see Elise’s pink coat, but there wasn’t time to worry about where she’d gone. Brock’s teeth were chattering, his eyes slitted. Jordy stopped the Range Rover a few yards away and ran over to me.

  “What do I do?”

  “We have to pull them over. The ice will break if anyone stands on it. Brock,” I called, “grab Addison’s hand.”

  He patted the ice near her knee. “I miss you,” he mumbled.

  “Oh my god,” Jordy whispered.

  Brock and Addison were only four or five yards away from the edge of the pond, but there might as well have been an ocean between us.

  Addison opened her eyes now. They were red and puffy, her eyelashes matted together. But she looked at me and seemed to understand something. She hooked one wrist through the loop on the shoulder of his coat.

  “Jordy, you’re probably stronger than me but I’m heavier, so get in front of me—”

  We pulled on the rope in unison, the world’s most dire game of tug-of-war.

  Addison slid a few inches across the ice.

  “Pull,” I said.

  We pulled.

  “Pull,” I said.

  We pulled.

  Addison’s hips were almost to the edge of the pond.

  “Pull,” I said.

  We pulled. Jordy burst into tears, spots of blood appearing on the snow before her as her palms tore against the rope. I scrambled down to the water and grabbed Addison by the collar of her coat and dragged her safely away from the water.

  Brock was still lying there, arms stretched out, his feet kicking gently as if he was still in the water. “Brock. Come on. Come on.”

  I lay down on the snow. I was not entirely sure where the line between ground and water fell. But I grabbed his coat and pulled him toward me an inch at a time. Maybe less. Maybe I wasn’t even pulling anymore. My eyes were streaming. I’d told Tom I’d be careful, and I didn’t think this counted as careful.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard myself mumble.

  The rope felt loose in my hands, slack and wet. And I was so cold. When had it gotten so cold?

  Suddenly someone gripped my shoulders, jerking me back.

  A child’s voice: “Mommy—”

  Then a flash of bright pink, the terrible cracking of the ice as the pond became a gaping mouth full of jagged, frozen teeth.

  “Elise,” Brock whispered. He was next to me on the ground now, reaching one trembling hand out to the water. “You came back.”

  But she was sinking, sinking slowly in a wash of white teeth and blue lips and pink, until there was nothing left except the cold.

  FORTY

  For a second I thought I was back in Wyatt Achebe’s hospital room. But then I opened my eyes and realized I was in my own—I was horizontal, under what felt like ten pounds of blankets.

  “Hey, you,” Tom said.

  His fingers laced through mine.

  I cleared my throat but no sound came out when I tried to talk.

  I closed my eyes again.

  The next time I opened them, it appeared to be day and most of the blankets were gone and the visitor’s chair was empty and I was desperately thirsty. I sat up on one elbow and looked around for my coat, my phone, anything.

  Then the door swung open and Jordy came in, sipping from a paper cup of coffee.

  “Hi,” I croaked.

  She almost spilled
the coffee. “You,” she said. But she didn’t say anything else.

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  I thought about that. I remembered Brock paddling his feet against the ice. I remembered a piercing, startling cold. “I guess not.”

  I closed my eyes again.

  The sun cast strips of light from the dusty mini blinds onto the foot of my bed when I opened my eyes for real. Jordy was beside me now, doing a crossword. She had white bandages wrapped around both palms. She glanced up at me, saw that I was awake, and broke into a big smile. “Good morning, badass,” she said.

  “Is Brock okay? And the boys?”

  She nodded and set down her newspaper. “Hypothermia, same as you. But seeing as he kept his head above the water, he’s fine. And the boys are perfect. Not a scratch.”

  I pointed at my bed. “Can this sit up or something?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  Jordy pulled a beige remote out from a tangle of wires below my bed and fiddled with the buttons until I was halfway sitting.

  “Addison?”

  Another nod, this one a little more hesitant. “She has pneumonia. Which is why she was so out of it, I guess. But she’s going to be okay too.”

  I had a flash of Elise’s perfect white teeth, her pink coat, blue lips. I said, “Did she pull me out of the water?”

  “Addison?”

  “Elise.”

  Jordy’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone grabbed my shoulders, and then I saw her—the coat.”

  She rubbed her eyes, which were already raw. “She was in the water. But, um, she was gone by the time they brought her here. The ice must have broken when she was running away. I can’t—I just can’t believe any of this.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it must be like, being in Jordy’s shoes. I said, “I saw her on the other side of the pond, but then she came back.”

  My memory was hazy but somehow firm, like a mountain shrouded in fog. I was certain that Elise had come back to the pond. I saw her sprinting toward the ridge, and then I’d lost sight of her. Until I heard her small son’s voice, clear and scared in the dark, and I saw her in the water, framed by the jagged ice in front of me.

  Jordy’s features pinched. “It was all happening so fast, and I was focused on Addy and the boys … look, I’m barely keeping it together right now.”

  “Of course. I thought—never mind.”

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “There was a note,” she said. “In the shipping container. It was—she was—something was very wrong. I think she was unhappy for a really long time. But none of this was supposed to happen.”

  “Where were they?” I said. “Where were they coming from when we saw her pull into the driveway?”

  “She was trying to come here, to the hospital, for Addison,” Jordy said. Her eyes got shiny. “She wrote that she was going to leave Addison and the boys here and then go—end things. But the hospital told us that 664 was shut down because of a wreck for most of the afternoon and evening. So it seems like she must have turned around to go back. I don’t think she wanted anyone else to get hurt.”

  I didn’t believe that. Not with what she’d done to Wyatt. We’d never know what she was thinking when she made that phone call as soon as Wyatt said he’d arrived at Addison’s house. If she considered the implications of crying wolf from the comfort of her house in Blacklick, miles away, claiming that an armed black man was terrorizing someone. If her privilege led her to think that he’d just get in trouble, not get shot.

  Or if she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Either way, it was irredeemable.

  But she’d pulled me out of the water. Why would she do that?

  I closed my eyes, suddenly exhausted again.

  * * *

  When Brian Mahaney came by to see me in the hospital, he said that the other deputy had a broken leg but would be fine. “Damn lucky,” he said. “Everyone, really.”

  I supposed that was true on some level. On another, Addison and Jordy, Brock and his kids—there was no coming back from this, not all the way. I said, “Was Elise still alive when they got her out of the water?”

  “Barely. That ice cracked like a candy shell, the whole thing tore up. There wouldn’t have been anything for her to hold onto.”

  “Where was she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How far out into the pond?”

  He looked at me, quizzically. “Right by the car,” he said. “Whole thing’s no more than twenty feet across.”

  In my memory, the pond had been impossibly wide. But then again, it felt like we’d been pulling on that rope for hours when everything had really gone down in a matter of seconds. Time and distance had expanded, twisted, stretched, fell back on itself.

  I was sure of what I saw, though. More sure than I’d ever been of anything.

  Mahaney asked if he could do anything for me and I said he could get me a copy of Elise’s note.

  “Is that a good idea?” he said.

  I said, “It’s an idea.”

  Either he found this argument compelling, or I looked too pathetic to say no to. A while later, Tom came back in and sat down next to me and lay a manila envelope on my lap. “Brian asked me to give this to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He was drinking bad hospital coffee and I was drinking bitter hospital tea. My body temperature was, allegedly, back to normal. But I couldn’t seem to feel warm. “He also asked if you’d mind if he gave you a call sometime.”

  “To reminisce about this horror show?”

  “I think he had other ideas in mind. I told him you were attached.”

  I shook my head.

  “Speaking of, I called Catherine but—”

  “She said I’m a narcissist and she regrets I didn’t narcissistically drown?”

  Tom’s eyebrows went up. “But she didn’t answer. Has she been here?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s not going to come. So you can tell Brian I’m not attached, but I’m also never answering my phone again and fully intend to die alone, so.”

  Tom looked a little bewildered.

  “Sorry. I’m still working through some things.”

  “Hey, I get it.”

  “Distract me. Give me some good news.”

  “Your pal Wyatt made a statement, about Mickey Dillman.”

  I sighed. “That’s good. Unless it means he violated his parole.”

  “He did.”

  Maybe it wasn’t so good, then.

  “He’s cooperating though. Against Shane Resznik, who’s of major interest to the organized crime bureau.”

  “He turned up?”

  Tom nodded. “He went home. His girlfriend finked on him.”

  I laughed. It hurt my ribs and my ears. “Good for her.”

  “Hopefully he’ll cooperate re: Vincent Pomp. But that’s going to take a bit longer to settle. That’s confidential, by the way.”

  “Don’t worry, my days of halfway trusting someone like Vincent Pomp are over.”

  I wondered if my days of trusting anyone were over. I hoped not, but at the moment it sure felt like it.

  Tom glanced down at the envelope. “What’s in there?”

  “Oh,” I said, my stomach twisting, “nothing, just some paperwork.”

  * * *

  I waited until he was gone to read it.

  Brock,

  I suppose you want to know why.

  I don’t have to tell you, but I want you to know why too.

  Remember the first time we made love? We were sixteen, in my parents’ waterbed. You said it wouldn’t hurt but it did, a lot, and I thought there was something noble about not letting on. It was winter, like now. The snow outside made a sound like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

  Then you told me about your first time, with her, and you ruined everything.


  Every time she opened her mouth all I could think about was her closing her lips around your cock. Then, and now. Knowing that she knows what I have, that she’s had what I have. I thought it would go away if I got everything. Your babies, your name. You swore you never thought about her again, not after we got together. But I’m not an idiot. I have eyes. I see the way you look at her. Like she’s still a mystery to you. Then how you look at me, like you’ve solved the mystery already and forgot you ever wondered at all.

  Meanwhile, I did everything for you. I became the thing you needed. I stayed ninety-five pounds and Brazilian waxed, tight pussy and polite, good cook, hostess chauffeur, perfect mom, well-dressed and WHY? So you can make me look like a fool? Sit across the table from me chatting with her? Say, “Oh just playing Words with Friends” when I ask you what you’re doing?

  You never ask me what I’m doing.

  God knows you don’t notice anything, either. Oh, the secrets I can keep! Meanwhile, you’re so intrigued by her. Your word. INTRIGUED. She’s about as mysterious as a world almanac, Brock. She thinks she has secrets, but she’s an open book, she just lays it out, heart on sleeve, and that’s supposed to be VULNERABLE? It’s fucking weak. She gives it all away, up front, but pretends she’s deep just because she got a tattoo and is “in recovery” from some eating disorder she invented to make herself sound special?

  Being a woman is an eating disorder! Doesn’t she know that everyone is hungry?

  It’s snowing now like that day you screwed me for the first time. It doesn’t sound like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh anymore. More like screaming.

  I thought it was an old wives’ tale, that you could catch your death from being out in the cold. But maybe it isn’t. Her breathing sounds wet. Her car wouldn’t even make it up the hill. Stupid little red car. Exactly the kind of car someone like that would drive.

  Inconsequential.

  Why would you love someone inconsequential instead of me?

  I could lie down in the snow and just go to sleep. I might. I thought I wanted to hurt her, but now I just want to be free. Of her, of them, of you. I just want quiet. I want to slip away into the quiet. I’m taking her to the hospital. I can’t listen to this death rattle anymore. I’m leaving the boys there too. Then I’m disappearing—so who’s the mystery now?