This Secret Thing

by Whalen, Marybeth Mayhew

  She hid the phone back in her purse, but that didn’t mean she stopped thinking about Jason. She thought about him as she worked in the yard, giving her plants borders in a way she couldn’t with her own children. She thought about him as she cleaned her already clean house, scrubbing away the things she didn’t want to see. She thought about him as she used the elliptical upstairs, sweating and pumping her legs up and down in an effort to get it all out—all the stress, all the worry, all the nagging doubt. Of course none of it worked.

  The more she worried about Jason, the less she worried about her daughter and what had happened to her. She felt the tug of guilt over that. She knew she should be thinking about Casey—about what she’d walked in on with Eli, about what had brought her home from college and why she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. But those things seemed so huge, so insurmountable.

  It was better, and easier, to worry about someone who mattered, but not that much. Someone who’d become important to her only recently, instead of nearly two decades ago. If she focused on Jason, she didn’t have to focus on Casey. If she could get ahold of him, if she could talk to him, maybe she’d tell him about Casey, about how worried and scared she was, how out of control she felt.

  Jason would understand. He would say, in that way he had, “Oh, darlin’, I’m sorry.” Steve never said things like that to her. And that was why she needed Jason now, more than ever. She went back to her purse, fished the phone out again, and dialed. She listened to it ring and ring and, when he didn’t answer, she finally, after a long and valiant effort to keep the tears at bay, ended the call and went to the shed to cry alone.

  Nico

  He stood at the outer edge, banished from the action because of his potential connection to whoever was in that body bag. They’d told him to go home and wait for a call, but he knew they didn’t really expect him to. More like they had to say it for the sake of protocol. He saw them cast sympathetic glances his way from time to time. And he tried to respond with what he hoped looked like a brave smile.

  He kept a safe distance, watching the investigators in an effort to keep his eyes from straying to that body bag, to resist the temptation to run over to it, unzip it, and see who was inside. The captain told him he didn’t want to see that. Matteo or not, whoever was in that bag no longer looked human after spending time underneath the water.

  When they were kids, Matteo used to put algae on his head and chase Nico around the pond near their house, moaning, his arms outstretched in a zombie-walk parody. “I want to eat your brains,” he would say. Now it felt like Matteo had eaten his heart, devoured it all for himself, leaving nothing for Nico or his wife and kids. Now it was Nico who was the zombie. He glanced over at the bag, half expecting Matteo to sit up out of it, eye sockets empty, his open mouth a permanent yawn. Nico shook his head and pulled his phone from his pocket to distract himself.

  Sure enough, he had a notification. Right on schedule, his daughter had come home from school. He clicked on the camera to watch her arrival, turning to walk a bit farther away so that he could listen. She usually sang as she ambled up the driveway and let herself into the house. Since the separation, Karen had been working part-time, gone when Lauren got home from school. He felt bad about another change for the kids, worse about the fact that his daughter was home without supervision, which made his monitoring of the family’s security cameras more important, he rationalized. And that wasn’t going to change.

  Karen had emailed him last night to tell him she’d been offered more hours and perhaps with “things the way they are,” it’d be best if she took the work. They were reduced to emails now. It was the safest, least emotional way to communicate. Phone calls could escalate; texts were easy to ignore. He couldn’t believe it had come to this, but he was powerless to stop it. In order to stop it, he’d have to know if it was Matteo in that bag, and if it was, he’d have to know who put him there. And then he’d have to see that person brought to justice. He knew himself, and he would not be satisfied if the mystery of Matteo’s disappearance had just been solved. One answer would inevitably lead to a whole host of new questions.

  He forced himself to focus on the camera, watching as a random bird flitted across its unblinking field of vision once or twice. He glanced up, scanned the scene in front of him again, and contemplated just leaving. But what if he missed something—some piece of evidence, a tip kindly passed on discreetly by a fellow brother-in-arms, a diver finding something significant in the submerged car. Anything could happen.

  He looked back down at the camera, hearing the sound of voices—not just one, and not his daughter’s. He watched as two boys appeared. They laughed low and mumbled things to each other as they approached the door, their heads ducked low and away from the camera’s eye like they knew it was there. He wondered where they’d come from. Were they from her school bus? But these two boys looked older than her. The week before, he’d seen her get dropped off by an unfamiliar car, but the windows had been tinted black, and he couldn’t see the face of the driver. He’d called Karen, tried to work it into conversation as to whether Lauren still rode the school bus to and from school. Her voice had gone up an octave when she asked why, in that way that told him he had better tread lightly lest she get suspicious.

  “Oh nothing,” he’d said. “I just thought she’d said something about getting a ride because of her piano practice.”

  “Lauren isn’t playing piano anymore. It isn’t in the budget,” Karen had said, using that tone that told him this was something he should’ve known, another failure on his part. But instead of getting angry in response, he’d expertly steered the conversation toward finances and away from why he was asking about how Lauren was getting to and from school. He couldn’t afford for his wife to figure out he was monitoring their comings and goings and take away his only means of keeping tabs on the family.

  Even if he didn’t live at home anymore, it was his job to look out for them, to protect them at all costs. He looked up at the body bag, now with a stretcher beside it. Then back down at Lauren, standing outside the door, talking to the two thugs. He would bet money that Karen never checked the security camera unless she was home and was looking out for herself, her safety. Though she loved and cared for the children, safeguarding them had always been his jurisdiction.

  “Tell them to leave,” he said aloud, as if Lauren could hear him. “Don’t you dare let them into my house.” From the angle they were standing, with their chins dipped low, he still couldn’t see their faces, and he wondered if they were boys from the neighborhood or if she’d met them somewhere else. Strangers. They were strangers, and they were with his little girl while she was home alone. Alone and unprotected.

  It was all he could do not to run to his car and speed back to his house. But he kept his cool; took deep, even breaths; and willed his daughter to be as smart as he’d raised her to be. He exhaled loudly when the boys finally said their goodbyes and ambled off down the drive. As Lauren safely entered the house and he heard the click of the lock turning behind her, he exited out of the security app in time to see the body bag hefted onto the stretcher. The attendants began pushing it over rocks and uneven ground up to the ambulance parked several hundred yards away, waiting to take the person—whomever he was—to be identified. Now Nico would wait to see if his questions would be answered, and whether those answers would spark a great many more questions.

  Polly

  She listened to the message a second time, making sure she had a handle on the situation, keeping the panic at bay a moment longer. This time it wasn’t Calvin calling, but Dwight, her personal banker, letting her know that her husband had been to the bank and would she please call him back because he had “some concerns.” She clutched the phone to her chest, rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if seeking heavenly aid, though she and the Lord had stopped speaking years ago. It was never too late to ask, she thought. She recalled her second husband, Paul Ferry, who had loved God far more than he’d loved her.
In the end, it had come between them.

  During that marriage, she’d carted Norah to church, well, religiously. Maybe that had done damage to the child, brought them all to this point in time. Norah had known Polly was no church lady, eyeing her with a knowing that made Polly so uncomfortable she had scolded the child. Polly had pretended to be someone she was not so that Paul Ferry would love her. Had this been a message she’d transferred to her daughter? That it’s OK to be duplicitous for the sake of a man?

  She’d been a bad mother. That was why she was here; that was why Norah was in jail. In that moment, guilt joined anxiety, a dynamic duo that could take her out completely if given the time. But she couldn’t give in to them. Not today, with Violet coming home from school and dinner to make. You worry about one thing at a time, she told herself. Now, you call Dwight. Later, you figure out where you went wrong with your only child. She hit the button to return the call.

  “Dwight?” she asked when he answered. “What’s going on?” She had intended to keep the panic out of her voice, but she failed from the get-go.

  “Well, Calvin was here. And we just about didn’t get him out. I thought he was maybe gonna pull some kind of siege until we got you here. Like a hostage situation?”

  “Uh-huh,” she agreed, picturing Calvin stalking back and forth in front of a cowering Dwight. In her mind he held some sort of automatic weapon, though Calvin possessed no such thing. He did own a shotgun, though. And a little pistol. She’d never bothered to consider what kind.

  “After he left, I had a talk with our manager about getting one of those scanners for weapons installed. I’ll be honest, Polly, he seems unhinged.”

  Dwight was also not able to keep the panic out of his voice.

  “Yeah, he keeps leaving me messages when I don’t answer his calls,” she said. “He’s getting angrier.”

  “And you’re sure he doesn’t know where you are?”

  She looked over her shoulder, as if Calvin might be lurking. “Pretty sure,” she said.

  “You better make certain sure. He’s looking hard for you. And hell-bent on finding you.” She shivered a little at his choice of the words hell-bent. Calvin had more than a little of the devil in him.

  She thought about calling the police, but to tell them what? The last thing she needed was questions about her money. And if she called the police, they might start digging deeper because of her connection to a suspected criminal. No. She was on her own with this one. “I’m somewhere he would never know to track me down at, and I’ve got the GPS turned off on my phone so he can’t see where I am. I think I’m safe.”

  “OK,” Dwight said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “Just one thought—I know it was your money that you brought into the marriage, and I certainly understand your desire to keep it. But in a court of law, he might be able to get half of it. You sure you shouldn’t just hand it over, issue him divorce papers, and turn him loose?”

  “Maybe,” she said to appease Dwight, to make him think she was being reasonable. The truth was, this was her money, brought into the marriage by her, and certainly not earned together. Calvin had already spent more than his share, helping himself with the entitlement that only a good-looking man could possess. She didn’t intend to hand any more over just because Calvin was potentially violent. She’d dealt with violent men before and lived to tell the tale. She’d take her chances with this one.

  “Well, you think on it, and contact me if you’d like to make some arrangements. I’d be happy to meet you somewhere, get the money to give him, and then you could be free to go on about your business, whatever it is.”

  “That’s kind of you, Dwight, and above and beyond the call of duty.”

  Dwight laughed nervously. “I’m just protecting my own neck, truth be told. I’d like to know that joker isn’t going to be a problem. I really don’t want to see him ever again.”

  “Me neither,” said Polly.

  She promised to call Dwight once she’d made her decision, even though her decision was already made. She would hunker down and hope that Calvin would eventually give up and move on to some other sugar mama. She tried not to think about how relentless he’d been in his pursuit of her, how determined he’d been, wearing her down like water wears down a rock. Eventually she’d just given in. But she was done giving in to men, letting go of things she valued—her money, her pride, her daughter—to keep them happy. She thought about Norah, staying in jail instead of giving in and producing her client list. She would take a page from her daughter’s book and stand her ground, despite her fear. What was that quote someone had posted on Facebook? “Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.” Something like that.

  “One more thing,” Dwight said as she was about to hang up. “You never told me you had a daughter. All this time I thought you never had children.”

  Her blood went from hot to cold in an instant. “What makes you say that?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

  “Calvin mentioned it. He said you were probably hiding out with your daughter. Is that where you are?”

  She swallowed, her heart flopping wildly inside her chest. She wondered how in the world Calvin could’ve found out about Norah. And if he knew she had a daughter, then he might also know her name, or where she lived. She’d underestimated Calvin.

  Polly chose her words in response to Dwight carefully, hoping she sounded far calmer than she was. “I prefer not to say where I am,” she said. “You understand.” A feeling came over her: the feeling that Dwight might not be entirely on her side. Never trust a man, her gut told her. Even one as benign as Dwight Richards. “I better go, Dwight,” she said. “Thanks for your concern.”

  “I’ll wait for your call,” he said.

  “OK,” she trilled, forcing herself to sound unconcerned as she hung up the phone. “Don’t hold your breath,” she said aloud as silence on the other end told her Dwight was no longer there.

  She jumped at the sound of the doorbell ringing, her body jolting like she’d been shocked. She crept out of her room and tiptoed down the hall, ignoring Barney’s wild barking. She peered around the corner to where she could see the door. She couldn’t see anyone looking through the glass panels on either side, so she tiptoed to the peephole, working to stay out of sight.

  Just as she put her eye to the peephole, the doorbell rang again, as if the person on the other side knew the exact moment to depress it for maximum effect. The call from Dwight had gotten to her, made her paranoid. She needed to calm down. Just because Calvin knew that Polly had a daughter didn’t mean he knew Norah’s name. It was different from hers, after all. And Norah, for her own reasons, had stayed off the radar and wasn’t easy to find herself. Overreacting would only make things worse. Just because Calvin knew she had a daughter didn’t mean he was at her door.

  And he wasn’t. It was a lovely thin blonde woman with one of those sassy short haircuts—a pixie, Polly believed it was called—and the kind of wide, certain smile featured prominently in toothpaste commercials. Polly deemed she was safe, unless Calvin had employed this person as a decoy. “You’re being ridiculous,” she breathed as she opened the front door.

  “Yes?” she asked the woman, who immediately thrust out her hand. Beside her, Barney checked out the guest, sniffed the air, and walked away. So different from his response to that detective. Barney was a good judge of character.

  “You must be Violet’s grandmother,” the woman said.

  Polly nodded and shook the woman’s hand and gave her her most winning smile. It was a veritable smiling contest. But Polly couldn’t shake the feeling that neither smile was genuine.

  “I’m Polly Cartwright,” she said, then instantly regretted using her last name. If Calvin came sniffing around—if he got this far—the name might tip someone off. She would not make that mistake again.

  “I’m Bess Strickland,” the woman said.

  Ah, Polly thought, you’re the one who kicked out my granddaughter in her time of nee
d. You’re part of the reason I’m here. I should thank you.

  “We’re neighbors of Norah and Violet.” The woman hitched her thumb to the left. “We live up the street.”

  Polly nodded and said, “That’s nice,” because she didn’t know what to say.

  The woman stooped down and lifted a large vase of flowers that Polly hadn’t noticed till then. She’d been too busy scanning the street for a glimpse of Calvin’s truck. Bess thrust the vase into the space between the two of them. “I brought these for you.”

  “Did you carry these all the way down here?” Polly asked, the shock obvious on her face. “That vase is about as big as you are.”

  The woman grimaced. “Stupid, I know. It was an impulse. A foolish one, I guess.”

  “Well, they’re lovely,” Polly said, and reached to take the vase out of the woman’s—she’d already forgotten what she had said her name was—hands. She held the vase awkwardly, flower petals tickling her chin and the earthy scent of gardenias filling her nose. “Thank you so much,” she said, a cue for the woman to leave. But she stayed right where she was.

  “I wanted to check on Violet,” the woman said, an earnest look on her face. Her name came to mind just then: Bess, an old-fashioned-sounding name, but it suited her. “How’s she doing?”

  An honest reply formed in Polly’s mind: Your guess is as good as mine. She stays in her room most of the time and doesn’t talk much. Last night she snuck out with a boy in the middle of the night, and I have no idea if that kind of behavior is normal for her. I mean, I wasn’t comfortable with it, but what can I say about it? I barely know the child.