Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  “Where are you going?”

  She turned to find him standing in the archway that led to the kitchen. He looked exhausted and sad.

  She took a deep breath and looked past him. “I’m staying overnight at a friend’s house.”

  “You are? Who?”

  So far she only had one “friend” who he had met.

  “Madison,” she said.

  She saw a flicker of relief in his expression. Madison had come by a few times during their first weeks in the house, acting nice enough to charm both of her parents. The budding friendship had faltered when Madison started grilling her about how her mother had died (“Doesn’t it make you feel weird Sara? I mean, people are saying she killed herself”), and had dissolved completely when Madison’s on-again, off-again boyfriend decided that Kenneth was a geek who had to be taunted at every opportunity. Embarrassed and angry and knowing it would only invite even more scrutiny than she needed, she had never told her father about the way things had ended.

  “You sure it’s okay with her mom?”

  “Yeah dad, she’s fine with it.”

  “It’s awful outside.”

  “We’re staying in. We’re going to watch a couple of movies and just unwind from the week.”

  “I’m making a pizza with seafood, the kind you and Kenny like.”

  “I already had a salad.”

  “I wish you’d stay home.”

  He looked strangely worried. Like he’s desperate to keep me here, she thought. Like I’m running away.

  She tried to laugh but faltered. “I’m only going to be a few blocks away.” She stepped forward and hugged him. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually lied to him but she remembered Kieran telling her a few weeks earlier that it was “natural that there should be a separation” between herself and her father. “You’re under his roof, but you can’t be a caged bird forever,” he had said. “You have to find your own voice, experience life on your own.” He had brushed her hair away from her face as he spoke, his fingertips lingering on her cheek. It was the first certain sign of where they were heading.

  “All right,” her father said. “Be careful.”

  She rolled her eyes, ridiculing the possibility that anything bad could happen during a simple sleepover at a friend’s house. “I’ll call you when I get there, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  There was an awkward moment of silence and a slight sway in her father’s stance. His eyes were glazed, and she caught the scent of liquor on his breath.

  “We need to talk about the fight Kenny got into at school today,” he said.

  She nodded, but looked anxiously toward the grandfather clock next to the stairs. Kieran had told her it would take at least forty-five minutes to get to his house on the mountain, maybe even longer with the snow.

  “Can we wait until tomorrow?”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “I promise I’ll tell you everything I know tomorrow. But it’s Friday and I’ll go crazy if I don’t get some time to chill out. Is that okay?”

  He sighed with resignation, but offered her a slight smile.

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  The look on his face made her feel even guiltier about lying to him. She felt a nervous twitch in her cheek as she slipped her hands into the pockets of her coat, and realized she had forgotten her phone.

  “Thanks—love you,” she said, and went upstairs without looking back. Her bedroom was cast in a vague glow from the streetlamps and she saw nothing but a blurry whiteness outside the window.

  She turned toward the bedside table where she had left the phone, and went back to the Facebook page she had been viewing moments before. It was a tribute to the teacher, Ms. Jenkins, who had been murdered in her apartment. There were already hundreds of postings, with students going on and on in typically tearful, morbid fascination.

  Can’t think about that now, she thought, and switched back to her own page and the photo she had taken after applying her makeup, an affirmation that it was one of her better days. And then she took one more look at the rest of her bedroom, appraising from a distance the pile of stuffed animals on the canopied bed, the ruffled teal curtains, and the girlish French provincial style dresser her mother had picked out in middle school.

  The room felt familiar yet foreign, like a snapshot out of her past as she thought about the night ahead.

  This is you before, but not now, she thought.

  Not after tonight.

  She opened the door and peered down toward the foyer to make sure her father wasn’t waiting with more questions. Then she went downstairs as quietly as possible and slipped out into the night.

  She was halfway there when she realized something was wrong. The Jeep Wrangler had 80,000 miles on it and it had always run a little rough. But now the rumble in the engine was louder, and there was a noticeable hesitation as she climbed the hills. She remembered that it had backfired several times on the way home from school. Both she and Kenneth had noticed the scent of burning rubber but neither of them had said anything to their father.

  She kept both hands on the wheel and thought about what a disaster it would be if she broke down and had to call him and explain why she was twenty miles away from Madison Reidy’s house. She realized then that it had been at least five minutes since she had seen another car. Kieran had given her “easy back road directions” that were supposed to save her time but as the snow began to fall faster she felt a growing sense of anxiety.

  The road up the mountain was getting steeper, and neither side had a shoulder. She slowed down, concentrated on the short stretch of pavement that was illuminated by the headlights, and reminded herself that four-wheel drive vehicles were made to grab the road even when it was icy and wet. She slowed again as she passed a sign indicating a sharp curve and a speed limit of 15 mph.

  She tapped the brakes as a gust of wind brought a sideways shudder to the Jeep, and for an awful moment she thought she might be pushed off the road. She gripped the wheel tightly and slowed to a crawl. She had never tried to find out exactly where her mother had crashed but knew from what her father told her that it had been near a major curve.

  Maybe right here.

  She heard a small backfire and then a gurgling sound from the engine as she headed up another steep rise. And then she saw the turnoff Kieran had told her about.

  She braked, and carefully made the turn. Kieran had never talked about the precarious nature of the roads that led to his house, but he had asked her a few questions about the accident—focusing mainly on whether all the “unresolved questions” made it difficult for her to “move on.” She had admitted then that the whole night it happened still seemed terribly surreal, and that she had to deal with a shaky, scary feeling every time she thought about her mother’s last few moments.

  She could have driven right past here that night.

  She knew it for certain by the sudden chill at the back of her neck.

  Could have passed that sign right before she crashed.

  A moment later she saw the landmarks—a dilapidated shed on one side of the road, the wreck of a backhoe at the entrance to a logging trail on the other—which Kieran had said were close to his house. Then after another bend she saw the lights in the front window of a building set far back amid the tall trees. As promised, Kieran had tied a bright red cloth around the mailbox to assure her she had arrived at the right place.

  Kieran O’Shea kept a close watch on his phone, anticipating at any moment a text from Sara telling him she had decided not to brave the storm, or that her father hadn’t believed the sleepover story, or that an attack of nerves or yet another slide into depression over her mother’s death had robbed her of the courage to be with him.

  With no message by 8 p.m., he knew that it was going to happen, and ma
de final efforts to make the house as presentable as possible. 4334 Rolling Road had started out as a trailer but it now had an addition built on a cinder block foundation that faced the woods at the back. There were two bedrooms and a common living area that Kieran and Aidan shared; space that had enabled both of them to get away from the monster who brought them both into the world.

  Nurlene

  She was supposed to be his mother, and by the blackness of her hair and pale blueness of her eyes Kieran knew it was biologically true. But he had never felt that way as a boy who grew up cowering and silent. In his younger years the violence had been sudden and quick—most often an open-palmed slap that would send him into a stunned silence. But later it became much worse. Eventually he learned how to separate himself from the pain; became accustomed to the sensation of being outside himself, watching from a distance every time she beat him. He started thinking about the addition the year he miraculously grew five inches and became big enough to fight her off, and worked with a manic intensity into the nights and on the weekends to build it to completion.

  He was sixteen when it became semi-livable, and from then on it became a place of security for himself and Aidan, reached through a solid wood door that he had deadlocked when he wanted to keep her away. He had always done everything possible to protect Aidan from his mother, and he had felt a certain solace in having the extra space. But in the end he could only do so much, and he was pretty sure the bitch would have killed both of them if luck hadn’t intervened.

  Nurlene was dead and rotting in the ground now, but they still spent almost all of their time in the addition despite the wear and tear of the years. He no longer had the energy to paint over the crayon and pen drawings on Aidan’s bedroom wall, and he was often too exhausted at the end of the day to clean the place up. Dealing with electricity had never been his strong point, so after ten years there were all kinds of glitches because of the way he had wired the space. Window air conditioners flicked on and off on hot summer days, and worries about a short igniting the portable heater had forced him to install a woodstove to warm the main room where he and Aidan spent most of their time.

  And yet tonight, after an hour and a half of cleaning, the space looked nice—the oak floors swept and dust-mopped underneath the colorful wool rugs; the pine table that he had built with his own hands polished and gleaming. There were Victorian candelabras mounted on five-foot tall pedestals on both sides of the large upholstered couch; black lace cloth over the side tables; more candles placed around the room. A cattail of incense burning a light and pleasant musk into the air.

  Almost perfect, he thought, and stepped toward the kitchen in the original front part of the house. The sink held the dishes from Aidan’s macaroni and cheese dinner. He filled it with hot water and poured in liquid soap, grabbed the sponge and began scrubbing…

  And saw the glimmer of light at the edge of his vision.

  The buzzing at the back of his head came next. A feeling of dread swept through him as he shut his eyes.

  Look…

  The voice was clear, and real, forcing him to turn around.

  Nurlene was there, translucent and shimmering in front of the plywood he had nailed over the old closet near the front door, looking exactly as she had looked on the last day of her life, her flesh-colored bra barely containing her huge, drooping breasts; milky white rolls of fat on her arms and bare stomach; black jeans that she had yanked on as she had stumbled hastily out of bed.

  He stared at her for several seconds, his breath trapped in his lungs as fat droplets of bright red blood trickled down her broad, pale face.

  Fuckhead!

  The plate slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor. He stood still, immobilized until she began to dissolve, the lights and darks reversing like a photo-negative image as she began to fade.

  When she disappeared completely he was suddenly able to move. Without thinking he ran barefooted over the shards of the broken plate and into the main room and Aidan’s bedroom at the back of the house.

  Aidan was there, lying stomach-down on the bed, drawing race cars on the sketch pad that matched the crayon and marker images that covered the walls. He was humming to himself, lost in concentration, the tip of his tongue between his lips.

  Your imagination, he thought.

  She wasn’t there.

  He’s okay.

  But the uneasiness stayed with him as he backed away, his balance wavering as he stepped into the bathroom. He leaned against the wall and pulled a sliver of the broken plate from his foot. Several drops of blood fell onto the linoleum floor before he grabbed a towel and pressed it against the wound. He took a series of measured breaths, and concentrated:

  Have to control this.

  Make it stop.

  He looked into the mirror; saw a doubled, vibrating reflection of his pale face and the long black hair that framed it. A wave of dizziness forced him to lean forward, with both hands on the sink to steady himself until the two images of himself slowly melded into one.

  The good one.

  He took another deep breath, remembered the 4 p.m. dose of Ativan, which usually quieted the voices even though it did nothing to help the lapses of memory, which had stolen several hours from the night before. He had admitted as much to John Caruso, who had surprised him with a visit to his office at school, asking him questions about Cherilynn Jenkins and how well they might have known each other, and looking skeptical when he had answered “hardly at all.”

  Caruso had stared at him then, tilting his head slightly forward, waiting for him to fill the silence.

  He had resisted, saying nothing more, but Caruso’s obvious suspicion stayed on his mind as he stepped back out into the original living room, testing his weight on the wounded foot, wondering if there would be yet another scar to add to all of the others that came from the worst of his childhood punishments—the raised lumps under the skin of his calves; the puckered skin from the surgery that repaired the compound fracture in his right arm; the clearly defined shape of a hot iron pressed against his back as he lay pinned, stomach down, on the floor.

  All leading to the darkness. He looked toward the old closet, where he and Aidan had spent countless hours as little boys, their screams and cries ignored. Years ago Nurlene had affixed heavy metal brackets on either side of the closet, which held a 4 × 6 plank that kept the doors closed tightly enough to withstand their frantic, violent kicking. The doors were gone now. He had replaced them with a sheet of plywood, rough and slightly warped, a constant reminder of the old days in the original part of the house.

  He heard the rumble of an engine, the sound of tires crunching the snow. He tensed at the thought of Caruso coming back to question him again. But the worry disappeared as he looked out and saw Sara, not Caruso, pulling into the yard and missing most of the driveway, which was completely concealed under the snow. She stepped out of her Jeep. As usual she was wearing all black, clad in a coat that looked a bit like a cape, and boots that went up past her knees. From twenty feet away he could tell she had ramped up the make-up; had probably freshened it right before she got out of the car.

  Turning it all on for her big night with you.

  He flipped off the overhead light in the front room to hide the old furniture and scarred walls and squalor of the old house, with its memories of darkness and pain, and thought about the best way to get her quickly to the newer rooms at the back. The happy places that brought out the good side of him, the one who would do her no harm.

  Stephen switched from bourbon to Merlot and drank most of his first glass as he looked out through the family room’s French doors at the rapidly falling snow. He was still unsettled by the icy commute home and felt a nagging sense of worry as he recounted the conversation with Sara. Her heavy makeup and tight clothes had set him off balance and he couldn’t help the feeling that she wasn’t being completely truthful with him.


  His concerns intensified as he looked at his watch and remembered her promise to call him when she arrived. He picked up his phone and found a text message from her instead:

  Got here fine. C u 2morrow.

  He sighed, and relaxed. His daughter had yet to give him one single reason not to trust her, and he didn’t want to start now.

  His thoughts turned to Kenneth next. The distance between them had been growing for months and it had broadened into a chasm as the questions about Lori’s death remained unanswered. On the way home he had decided to say nothing to Sara or Kenneth until he had another conversation with Detective Caruso about the mysterious addendum that may or may not have figured into the insurance investigators’ verdict.

  But you do have to find out what happened to him today, he thought. Let him know you’re in his corner, no matter what.

  He kept that thought at the front of his mind as he prepared Kenneth’s favorite meal and headed upstairs. He knocked on his bedroom door twice before he was answered with a grudging “Yeah.”

  “Hey buddy. How about some dinner?”

  He heard the squeak of bedsprings, and Kenneth clearing his throat. “Okay.”

  I guess that means I have permission to enter. He balanced the pizza on his forearm and grappled with a twenty-ounce bottle of Diet Coke, a handful of paper towels and his wine glass as he reached for the doorknob.

  Which of course was locked.

  “Ken, can I get a hand here?”

  There was a long pause before Kenneth opened the door. He appeared to be free of bruises and cuts but his skin was mottled, as if he had been crying with his face pressed against a pillow, reminding Stephen of the Raggedy Andy doll that he had carried around until his first day of kindergarten.

  Fortunately, Kenneth’s eyes brightened at the sight of the pizza, topped with basil and broiled shrimp and clams from the gourmet market.

  “I assumed you’d want to eat in your room,” Stephen said. “God knows I’d never get you out of here.”