by Greta Nelsen
That name is like a bad penny; no matter how many times I try to kick it through a sewer grate, it always ends up stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I squint. “What about him?”
“His name’s come up in several interviews that Rudy’s conducted in Rhode Island. People seem to think the two of you were having an affair.”
Is this what Rudy has told Tim? I attempt to stifle a sarcastic laugh but fail. “People are wrong.”
Somehow Paul finds this an opportune time to interject. “Who is he then?”
“He worked in IT. He had a reputation.”
Zoe straightens up. “For what?”
“Hitting on people. Sleeping around. Your average scumbag repertoire.”
Paul asks, “Did he ever hit on you?”
I’m done with this line of questioning. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Zoe pats my arm. “I know this is hard, but we have to do just as much digging as the prosecution. More, really.”
What I crave beyond anything is unconditional loyalty. “Fine,” I say. “What else do you need to know?”
* * *
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t tell Tim about Eric Blair, on the chance my words may come back to bite me. There is no guarantee that what I say on the phone or during a visit will not be recorded and bashed over my head in court.
This time when the door to the visitation area slides open, Tim enters without Ally, the stress of our situation visibly wearing on him. My once clean-cut, laid-back, GQ cover-worthy husband has morphed into a tense, shaggy-haired semi-stranger with a five o’clock shadow and the stink of a pack-a-day habit.
He settles in across from me, and I pin my gaze to the table between us, where it stays until he mutters, “We need to talk.”
I thought that taking Owen would soften the blow of Dukate Disease—on him and on us—but I was wrong. Instead, Tim, Ally and I are awash in a different kind of misery.
I lift my eyes to meet his. “I know.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” he tells me with a wave of his hand between us. “It’s too…” He sighs and absently taps his fist on the table, as if he’s trying to knock a cigarette loose of an invisible pack.
I didn’t mean to do this, I think. Shatter my rock. “I’m sorry. I wish I could…”
Tim averts his eyes. “I called Monica. The house is up for sale. And Ally’s at my parents’ for the rest of the summer. Maybe longer.”
He pauses but continues to avoid my gaze, a touch of mercy I don’t deserve. “Oh.”
“I’m gonna rent a place in Providence while my credit’s still good,” he says. “Hit the pavement and scrounge up a job.”
I once would have found this line of thought overly dramatic, but now nothing seems implausible. If we default on too many of our debts, the aftershocks will crash through our lives like a financial tsunami. “Do you have any leads?” I ask. A job would not only provide a foundation of stability for our family but would distract Tim from the reality of what’s to come.
“Not for anything in engineering.”
“What then?”
He shifts in his seat. “Toll collector.”
This is the wrong job for Tim, but not because it’s beneath him. My husband is every bit an engineer, a creative, problem-solving inventor down to his DNA. The only other vocation to suit him is that of father. “Doesn’t Kirk have something?” I ask. Out of college, Tim and Kirk Lawson, one of Tim’s buddies from Boston University, launched an engineering firm that still exists today, albeit in an altered form. Long ago, Tim cashed out his ownership stake.
“They’re downsizing,” he tells me, and I know not to ask anything more.
Until now, I have been able to ignore the elevated conversation taking place behind us, but suddenly my interest is piqued. There is another prisoner here charged with murder, and his case has just gone to the jury. I lean back and eavesdrop, catch a glimpse of my soon-to-be fate. And what I learn speaks more to the psychological toll of a murder trial than the logistics, the defendant and his visitor both plagued by agitation.
“I’m not bringing Ally here anymore,” I think I hear Tim say, the words so final they catch me. Reluctantly, I tune back in. “It’s too much.”
The selfish part of me wants to declare myself the ultimate victim, the one robbed of a brother and a father, a mother and a son, a husband and a daughter—and now my freedom, which matters little in the grand scheme. But Tim is right. “Tell her I love her,” I say. “And that I miss her. That I think of her every minute of every day.”
These words seem to soften the wall between us. “You can still beat this,” Tim says, a note of hope creeping into his voice. But I can’t help noticing that he has shifted from the collective we to the singular you, an unmistakable sign that I must now go it alone.
I smile and nod, blink back the tears that are starting to well.
Tim checks the clock, but this time instead of wishing it would slow, I imagine he’s praying for its speedy progression. The sooner he gets away from me the better.
* * *
Ricky has been on my mind lately—in my wakefulness and in my slumber, but especially in the space between. I remember his crooked little smile, how it pulled to the left where he’d lost three teeth in a row. I remember the playful way he’d taken to calling our father “Paw” after Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, Ricky’s favorite TV show for most of his short life. I remember the forlorn look in his eyes when I would rush off to school and he would stay behind, an education low on the priority list for a child who wouldn’t survive to make use of it. Back then, the powers that be didn’t appreciate how the peer interaction may have enriched Ricky’s life in ways we, his family, could not. But our mother knew this instinctively, and when Ricky was well enough, she’d bundle him up—overdress him, really—and haul him off to the baseball field to watch the healthy kids play. In the stands, Ricky would befriend the players’ younger siblings, who were too small yet for their own turns at bat.
These are some of the details that stick with me about my brother, memories I cling to for fear of negating him. What was Ricky’s life worth? I wonder. What is mine worth? And Owen’s? Is it length that matters? Or quality? The kind of person one was? One’s accomplishments? How much one has loved?
By now I am the last to remember Ricky. When I am gone, he will be too. But I will live on in Ally, at least for a while. And she in her children, if she should so choose, the path to immortality carved straight through the womb.
* * *
Jenna has been on my list of approved visitors since day one, but it takes four and a half months for her to brave the trip to the Genesis County Jail. In that time, we have not uttered as much as a syllable to each other. But I have wanted to, and now I can.
“How are you doing?” she asks with a hesitant smile as she sits, her gaze traveling from my skunky-looking hair to the pouches under my eyes.
I smile back with confidence, attempt to put her at ease. “Better than you’d expect.” I glance around the visitation area, which is now so familiar it seems like home. “It’s not so bad here.”
“The drive up was nice, except for the traffic,” she says. She rolls her eyes, and I can’t help wishing interstate traffic was my biggest concern.
“How’s work?” I ask. This is a sore subject, since I’ve been fired—justly or not. But Jenna and I relate to each other through our connection at Hazelton United, the birthplace of our friendship.
“They hired a real bitch to take your place,” she tells me. “Straight out of the Mean Girls’ Handbook.”
“That’s weird.” HR-types tend to be warm and fuzzy, relatively speaking anyway. “Where’s she from?”
Jenna shrugs. “Some manufacturing plant. A seafood processor, maybe? I haven’t really been paying attention.”
I don’t want to bring this up, but someone must. “I heard you talked to Rudy—and the State’s attorney.”
She nods. “I had to.�
��
“How’d it go?” I am not so much fishing for information as trying to reassure myself that the collateral damage I’ve inflicted does indeed know some bounds.
She picks at her cuticles, thinks a while before responding. “There was nothing I could do. They already knew about Eric.”
I search the visitation area for unwelcome ears. “What do you mean?”
“About Cincinnati,” she says, as if she has a clue. “And the photograph.”
But not about Owen? I think. They haven’t yet uncovered the truth about him?
“That wasn’t me.”
“I know. That’s what I told them.”
“What else?”
“They asked a lot about the baby,” she says. “The same questions, a million different ways.” Already, she sounds exhausted, but I need more.
“Did Rudy help?” I know from Zoe that her ex has been working with potential witnesses in Rhode Island, prepping them for interviews and, eventually, to testify at trial.
“Yeah. Especially with the stuff about that night.”
There is no doubt that both Jenna and Carson will be called upon to deliver minute-by-minute accounts of our time aboard Lucy in the Sky. “I’m sorry about…all of this,” I say.
She waves the apology away. “You didn’t do anything. Don’t be silly.”
We fall into a spell of silence. Eventually, I say, “Tim moved to Providence.” She has been so supportive about everything else that I risk trusting her with my heart. “The house is on the market.”
Her expression reflects surprise but also something else: a kind of sad knowing. “Didn’t he tell you?”
I shake my head. “No. What?”
“It burned,” she lets me know gently. “Arson.”
“Our house?” I have managed to prepare for the loss of such a treasured place by way of the standard sales process, but this is different. If what Jenna says is true, we will never be able to buy back those happy memories, however slim the chance of such a thing happening may have been. “Someone burned it?”
She nods. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
“Who would…do that?” I ask, not expecting an answer.
But I get one. “They arrested two people, actually: a retired schoolteacher and her thirty-year-old niece. A bunch of witnesses spotted them fleeing the scene.”
Anyone who would commit arson in our neighborhood either wants to be caught or has acted so rashly as to qualify for a defense of temporary insanity. “How burned is it?” I ask, hoping these women have left my family something to claim, at least. Then again, maybe Tim has already emptied the house of anything worth a damn.
Jenna frowns. “It looks pretty bad—sort of like a crispy, hollow shell.” She winces. “Sorry.”
I have a good idea why these strangers have done this, but still I ask, “Did they give a motive?”
“Probably about what you’d expect. There’s some graffiti on the side of the garage that survived.”
There is no need for me to inquire further. Without an ounce of imagination, I know what these women meant to communicate. Something like: Die, baby killer—or a similarly worded equivalent.
I stare into space, let this turn of events sink in. Then I say, “It’s been cold outside lately, huh?”
Chapter 17
I have been in jail for eleven months now: summer; fall; winter; spring; and back around to summer again. But tomorrow is the beginning of the end, the first day of testimony in my murder trial. Whatever the outcome, I will be moving on from this place, the odds of my destination split between the Maine Correctional Center and home, wherever that may be.
I shuffle in for my final meeting with Zoe and Paul, the purpose of this visit to polish my story in case I should decide to take the stand. Zoe says the choice is mine, but I remain hesitant, unsure whether, in the long run, I may do more harm than good.
“You ready?” Zoe asks without looking at me, her nose buried in yet another colossal three-ring binder. She smiles at the papers and shakes her head. “Nineteen hours ‘til blastoff.”
It has not occurred to me to ask this before, but suddenly I must know. “Am I your first murder case?”
She chuckles. “Actually, yes. But I’ve done five manslaughters. They’re not all that different.”
“I’ve got one under my belt,” Paul informs me with a bit too much glee. “A domestic violence homicide up in Effingham. Guy kicked his wife’s skull in and blamed it on the dog. Said Fido tripped her down the stairs.”
“So you lost?”
“He was guilty.”
“But you lost?”
“Public defenders don’t get a choice,” he tells me. “They take what they get. There was no helping this guy. He wouldn’t accept a plea. And he was guilty.”
“That’s justice, I guess,” I say.
Zoe steers us back to the task at hand. “Let’s go over your testimony again.”
And again, I think. And again. And, for good measure, once again.
I sigh. “All right.”
This is Paul’s cue to outline what we have, after a lengthy process of elimination, settled on as our version of events in Owen’s death. And it goes something like this:
Following a night of heavy drinking, I awoke between three and four a.m. to the sound of Owen crying.
So far, true.
Not wanting to wake Tim, I took the baby above board for some air.
Also true.
Owen and I settled in on the aft deck, where I fed him.
Mostly true.
This is where the stories diverge. I am to claim that I likely passed out—although I do not remember doing so—and rolled onto Owen, inadvertently suffocating him. When I came to, still in a daze, I failed to notice he wasn’t breathing. On my way back to the stateroom, I slipped, and he went overboard.
The alcohol was responsible, primarily. All else was an accident. A tragedy, for sure, but one that defies blame. And if blame must be assigned, I am guilty of nothing more than child endangerment. Or perhaps felony neglect. Certainly not murder. Certainly not the premeditated killing of my own baby. Because why would I do such a thing anyway? It didn’t make sense. Or so the story went.
“What about Eric Blair?” I ask, because this is where the prosecution will trip me up.
“Let us worry about him,” Zoe says. “Okay?”
I wish it were that easy. “Shouldn’t I…?”
“No,” she says. “You shouldn’t. That cretin has enough skeletons in his closet to sink a saint. Any jury in their right mind would discount him at first sight.”
I wonder if my lawyer is truly this confident or is displaying false bravado for my sake. Either way, her tough talk puts me tenuously at ease. “Good,” I say, praying she is right. Because although I don’t know where the prosecution intends to go with Eric Blair’s testimony, the potential damage could be catastrophic. Not only could he serve up my motive, but in the process, he could reveal the truth about Owen’s conception. A truth that, even now, only he and I are privy to. A fact so disturbing it may be the final straw in my marriage, Tim already stretched to his limits and beyond.
* * *
If I had been able to sleep the night before my trial, I’m sure I would have had a nightmare. So the insomnia was a blessing, in some strange way. A blessing that left me foggy-minded and in the grip of a migraine by the time the jurors filed into the courtroom.
The judge in my case is the Honorable Merle Parsons, or so the engraved nameplate that stares out from the bench proclaims. Charlotte Tupper, the young assistant attorney general who interviewed me at the state police barracks, is my prosecutor. Beside her at the prosecution table is her helper-monkey—a rancid, old deputy State’s attorney with an alligator-skin face and highwater trousers.
My position at the defense table seems unnecessarily exposed, too much the center of the battle about to transpire. But Zoe displays no discomfort whatsoever, her posture as impeccable as any West Po
int grad’s, her charcoal-gray dress nipped and tucked in all the right places, her spirit exuding an aura of calm control. “Relax,” she tells me with a little pat of my hand. “We’re in good shape here.”
I offer her a weak half-smile and steal a glance over my shoulder. The first day of trial is crucial, evidenced by the fact that a number of Tim’s relatives have trekked up from Rhode Island to sit in support of me. The benches behind the prosecutor overflow with law clerks, reporters, and the morbid curiosity of strangers.
Part of me wishes to switch sides, join the quest to punish the guilty party in my baby’s death. But who would that be? Me? Eric Blair? The farmer who sold Bob Evans that tainted cantaloupe? Or maybe the God who allowed this whole evil thing in the first place?
As the formalities get under way, I pick a volume from the seemingly endless shelves of law books ringing the courtroom and nail my gaze to the gold lettering on its spine. Then I concentrate on a low-level hum that emanates from the bowels of this building—probably a quirk of the ventilation system—until it washes almost everything else away.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Charlotte Tupper begins, “good morning.” Even my migraine is not enough to overcome her incisive voice, its cool certainty poised to demolish me. “This is not an easy case. I will tell you that at the outset. But it’s an important one. Important because you good people have the chance to deliver justice for Owen Fowler, an innocent nine-month-old baby who was heartlessly murdered at the hands of his mother, the defendant, Claire Fowler.”
In my peripheral vision, I notice the prosecutor pointing my way. But I doubt the jurors need such visual direction. Already, I feel their eyes on me.
“As this case progresses, you will hear from witnesses who will explain what happened to baby Owen in the early morning hours of May 28, 2011. And what those witnesses will tell you is this: Baby Owen was alive until approximately three-thirty a.m., at which time he was asphyxiated. Suffocated, the State will prove, by the defendant, with a simple deck pillow aboard a yacht belonging to the defendant’s coworker, Ms. Jenna Dearborn.”