by E. M. Parker
By the time she had gathered herself enough to look back in the rearview mirror, Jacob and Kirk were gone.
CHAPTER FOUR
FIONA WAS MET WITH SILENCE as she exited the elevator and stepped into the sixth-floor hallway that led to her apartment. Her pace slowed as she approached unit 607, the one next door to hers. She would not admit to the fear that her normally heavy gait would be enough to alert the neighbors to her presence, opting instead for the more acceptable reasoning that the light footsteps would allow her to hear any noise that she would need to bring to the manager’s attention before she had been lulled into her apartment. Thankfully, she heard nothing as she walked past.
Party’s over. Drugs have worn off. Enough offending the world for one day. Fiona glanced at her watch. Three twenty-six P.M. She could only pray that the hellions were not resting up for a fresh round tonight.
The quiet would be necessary if she was going to plot out a successful course for her continued sobriety, find gainful employment, and acquire the thus far elusive skill of diplomacy, all in the eighteen hours before her scheduled meeting with Kirk. If her ill-advised detour to his house was any indication, she was going to have to address her chronic lack of judgment as well.
Fiona was under no illusion that this was going to be easy. At least that was her line to Paul Riley. But for the first time, she was beginning to feel the weight of the work that lie ahead. The road to redemption, she had already come to realize, was full of twists and turns, red lights, potholes, and traffic jams. Now came the truly difficult part. After what felt like millions of miles logged, the destination was finally in sight.
This was the home stretch, the last leg of the race. If she didn’t get this part right, all the work done up until now would amount to nothing. There could be no more improvised trips to Kirk’s house or emotional outbursts. She had to operate with precision. Cool and calm. Stability personified. Just the way a mother is supposed to be.
With her marching orders in place and her plan thoroughly diagrammed, Fiona felt a surge of adrenaline as she reached for her keys. But before she could put them in the door, they fell out of her hand and onto the ground, hitting with a clang that reverberated through the tight hallway corridor. Just as she bent over to pick them up, she heard the slow creak of a door opening.
Obviously, they’ve been waiting for me.
Fiona closed her eyes, bracing for the worst.
“Oh, hello there.”
Not the voice she was expecting.
“I’ve been wondering about my new neighbor.”
The voice was calm, comforting, motherly.
She opened her eyes and looked up. The woman staring down at her was smiling. Warm. Welcoming.
Fiona hadn’t felt genuinely welcomed anywhere in a long time. “Sorry, I’m a bit of a klutz,” she said as she stood up. “I hope I didn’t startle you.”
“Not at all, sweetheart. I suffer from an over-active hearing problem, an unfortunate side effect of being a single old woman in modern America. You have to know what’s going on around you at all times. And there is usually a lot going on around here.”
Fiona nodded. “It certainly has been active the past few hours.”
“Entirely too active if you ask me. That racket last night was getting ridiculous. I was going to have my son march over there to tell them to turn it down. But before he could make it, the music stopped.”
“They must have sensed he was coming.”
The woman’s gentle smile grew wider. “Perhaps. Anyway, I’m Iris. Iris Matheson.” She extended her hand.
“Fiona Graves. Nice to meet you.”
“Same here. You just moved in, right?”
“Yes, a couple of days ago.”
“I’ve been meaning to stop by and officially welcome you. Most people don’t have the manners to do that kind of thing anymore, especially around here.”
Fiona looked around the empty hallway in what seemed like an empty complex. Iris had been the first tenant she’d seen here, let alone met. “I’ve noticed.”
“Don’t get me wrong, there are some very nice people here. You just have to strain a bit to find them.”
Fiona smiled. Iris seemed nice enough. She was a slightly chubby woman with a round face and long gray hair that she wore in a ponytail. Her ocean blue eyes were fixed on Fiona, as if she were doing her best to get a read.
“Well, speaking of manners, would you like to come in for a cup of coffee? I just brewed a fresh pot.”
The offer was tempting, but Fiona had marching orders to carry out. “No thank you. Definitely another time though.”
“Okay, well, feel free to stop by whenever you’d like. My thirty-seven-year teaching career came to a long-overdue end recently and I suddenly have lots of time on my hands. Company is always nice. Besides, I have the lowdown on everyone in the building. I’d be more than happy to get you up to speed.”
Iris had the twinkle in her eye of someone sitting on juicy gossip that she desperately wanted to dish out, and Fiona could not deny that the possibility of learning more about the people here was intriguing.
“I’ll most certainly take you up on that.”
Iris placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Oh good. Well, I guess I’ll get back and straighten up the mess that my wonderful son left behind. He was helping me get rid of some things. Not much, just a small bureau, some old clothes, and a footlocker. But it apparently entitled him to every morsel of food in my refrigerator. All he left for me was a stick of margarine and a sink full of dirty dishes. He damn near killed himself trying to drag that footlocker to the elevator, so I guess allowing him to eat me out of house and home was the least I could do.” Iris smiled again, the thought of her son clearly warming her. “Anywho, it was certainly nice meeting you, Fiona. Sorry it didn’t happen sooner.”
“Nice meeting you too, Iris. I look forward to that coffee.”
With one last smile, Iris walked into her apartment and closed the door. Three lock clicks later, she was securely inside, leaving Fiona alone in the hallway.
The sudden quiet was unsettling. She turned to unlock her door, but as she did, she noticed something on the floor in front of unit 607. Two red splotches that clearly stood out against the light gray carpet. She bent down for a closer inspection.
The splotches were dry-soaked into the fiber, but she was almost positive they weren’t there before. She immediately looked around for more, but couldn’t find any.
Odd.
Bleak stillness hung heavy in the air. Why hadn’t she noticed this before?
Her thoughts were spitting out endless possibilities, none of which she wanted to give voice to. The dark red stains looked like blood.
Blood?
There of course had to be a reasonable explanation for its existence aside from the one in her mind. Iris’s son must have cut his finger carrying that footlocker.
That was it. Freak accident. It seemed a suitable answer. Perfectly logical.
And Fiona desperately wanted to believe it.
****
Her growing unease did not subside as she entered her apartment. If anything, it only increased. The space suddenly felt alien, cold and uninviting, just as it was when she had entered it for the very first time two days ago. Her furnishings were sparse – a futon couch, two nightstands, and a folding card table that doubled as a dinette – but they were hers, and as such should have provided at least the illusion of familiarity. Instead she felt like an intruder, forcing her way into a space that did not belong to her with the misguided notion of claiming it as her own.
She sat her coat and purse on the kitchen counter and made her way to the refrigerator. The bottle of Dasani water that she had opened the night before was still on the shelf exactly where she had left it.
See Fiona, you do live here.
She opened the bottle and took a drink. The cold soothed her warm throat. A familiar thirst had settled in since she left Kirk’s and it felt good to quench
it with something so benign.
It hadn’t always been this easy.
After finishing her water, she walked over to the card table – which in addition to the dinette had also functioned as her work desk – turned on her laptop and opened a blank Word document. She titled it Operation Jacob. She planned to begin with a to-do list, which would undoubtedly be extensive, followed by a brainstorming session that would include potential job avenues, twelve-step meeting sites, and a script of what she would say when she first saw Kirk (as there was no way that her spontaneous emotion could be trusted).
Before she sat down, she thought it best to change out of her blouse and jeans and into a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt. She may have been a wreck mentally, but at least she could be comfortable physically.
Fiona knew something was wrong the instant she walked into her bedroom.
The picture was of Jacob dressed in a Darth Vader costume, holding court during the celebration of his sixth birthday. It was Fiona’s absolute favorite; the one she made sure to protect with extra bubble wrap for the move; the very first one she hung on the wall.
Now it was face-down on the floor, next to the nail that she thought she had secured it to. A tiny hole in the wall was the only thing left where the picture had once been. As Fiona moved closer, she noticed something else: the paint around the nail hole was chipped, as if an adhesive had been carelessly ripped away from the wall. But there was no adhesive, not that Fiona had seen anyway. And if she recalled correctly, the paint was not chipped when she hung the picture. At least, she didn’t think it was. Prone to a chronic lack of focus on most everything unrelated to Jacob, Fiona had stopped trusting her memory long ago.
It stood to reason that the wall blemish could have been there all along. But what about the picture? The two-inch nail she’d hammered into the wall was secure, that much she knew. Whenever she had decided on a new spot to hang a picture that she had previously put up, she needed the hammer to pull the nail out, and on a few occasions, there was some major effort involved in extracting it, so it should not have simply come out on its own.
But apparently, that was exactly what happened.
Fiona’s mind suddenly fixated on the condition of the picture. A close inspection revealed no damage. Jacob had handpicked the black wood frame; the words Best Mom Ever inscribed on the front. Much like the photo, it held extraordinary sentimental value, and she was relieved that it was still intact.
Who’s to say that the laws of physics can’t be broken from time to time, she thought as she put the picture on the end table next to her bed. Accidents happen. No harm, no foul.
If it were merely an accident, why did she suddenly feel so nervous?
The question would haunt her for the rest of the day and into the night. There would be no work on Operation Jacob; no marching orders carried out. There were only thoughts about the falling picture and the blood stains and the apartment that suddenly felt as foreign and lifeless as the jail cell that had been home for the longest night of her life.
After a light dinner and a couple of fruitless hours staring at her computer, she re-hung the picture (making sure it was extra secure this time), settled into the uncomfortable air mattress that she hoped would be temporary, and fell into a restless, agitated sleep.
Her dreams were scattered, dark. A car accident. Jacob in the back with no seatbelt. No survivors. Iris Matheson in a hospital gown serving her coffee. Kirk in the shower with a woman she didn’t recognize.
Mostly, there was crying. Distant, pleading crying. Jacob in pain. Upon seeing him, Fiona reached out, hugged him, and the pain on his face went away, replaced with that patented dimple-filled smile.
But the crying persisted, so close now that Fiona could feel it. She woke up with a start, clutching her chest, realizing that the emotion had been hers. Tears clouded her vision as she sat up.
After allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness of her bedroom, she made her way off the air mattress and into the bathroom where she splashed cold water on her face. The dark circles that she took great care to conceal during the day were on full display, the result of a year’s worth of stress and worry and lack of sleep. A tousled mess of dark brown hair fell over a pair of even darker brown eyes that were stained red with the lingering emotion of her dream. She tugged at her cheeks, stretching the taut skin as far as it would go. It snapped back into place with barely a thought. “No wrinkles at least,” she said aloud, though that fact currently offered little solace.
Having seen enough of her two A.M. self, Fiona turned off the bathroom light and made her way back into the bedroom. The air mattress was just as uncomfortable as when she left it, but her eyes were heavy and she felt sleep coming on quickly.
The first thud of something hitting the floor caused her eyes to snap open. The second caused her to sit up. The third caused her to leap out of bed.
Through the dim filter of moonlight from her bedroom window, Fiona could clearly see the objects on the floor, but she still hoped that the late hour was somehow playing tricks on her mind. When she turned on the lamp beside her bed, she realized that what she was seeing was no trick.
Jacob’s birthday picture had fallen to the ground again, in nearly the same spot as it had before. The two pictures hanging on either side of it had also fallen. Just like before, the nails used to hang them had come out of the wall and were resting on the ground next to the frames. As Fiona inched toward the wall, she saw another familiar sight: chipped paint where the other two pictures had been.
Unconcerned with the laws of physics or logical explanations or the condition of the pictures, Fiona left the bedroom, closed the door behind her, and spent the rest of that endlessly long night on the futon.
She didn’t sleep a wink.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, FIONA SHOWERED, GOT DRESSED, left her apartment, and drove to her lawyer’s office without giving a single thought to the previous night’s events. She ignored the fallen pictures on her bedroom floor, the blemishes on the wall, the red stains on the carpet outside of 607, and the complete emotional and physical exhaustion that now permeated every cell in her body.
Denial was the most potent defense mechanism in Fiona’s arsenal, and more times than not, the most destructive. In this case, she didn’t have a choice but to employ it. The seeds of that denial were always sown eventually, and they probably would be here as well. But she would deal with that another time. Right now, she had to be one hundred percent present for her meeting with Kirk. Anything short of that could have end-of-the-world consequences.
Despite her better judgment, Fiona had extremely high hopes for this meeting. She had spent hours in front of the mirror, testing different hairstyles, applying, and re-applying make-up, all with the purpose of presenting the best version of herself possible.
Without much wardrobe to choose from, or time to buy anything new, she chose her favorite yellow sundress – the one that clung to her slender body in the perfect way – pairing it with a black cashmere cardigan to cover her shoulders. It was a comfortable look that wasn’t too informal. It didn’t hurt that the dress had always been Kirk’s favorite.
False hope. Paul’s words of warning echoed in her mind for the entire drive to his office. She did her best to ignore them.
Upon arriving, she was met in the parking lot by a young man in an exquisitely tailored pinstriped suit. He couldn’t have been more than a year out of college.
“Hello Ms. Graves. My name is Jason Guzman, Mr. Riley’s assistant. Mr. Lawson and his attorney have arrived and they’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
From the short tone in Jason’s voice, Fiona guessed she was running late. She had been hyperaware of the clock all morning and was sure that she had left herself plenty of time to get here before the nine-thirty start time. Why she hadn’t noticed until now that the clock in her car read nine forty-three was a question she could not answer.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her
eyes cast down in embarrassment. If she couldn’t look this kid in the eye, how was she going to react to Kirk?
She barely had time to think about it as Jason quickly led her through the spacious office and into the conference room.
When Paul stood to greet her, the look of exasperation on his face was unmistakable. He attempted to mask it with a forced smile.
“Good morning, Fiona. So glad you made it. We were getting worried.”
Based on the looks she received from the other two men in the room, Paul’s was not the majority opinion.
Kirk and his ridiculously stoic lawyer sat at the conference table. Neither had stood to greet her. Kirk, for his part, hadn’t even shifted in his seat, choosing instead to keep his hands tightly folded on the table.
Barely a year older than Fiona’s thirty-three, Kirk looked as if he had aged considerably. Patches of gray lined the edges of his thinning black hair. Lean and athletic during all the time Fiona knew him, he had put on a few pounds. Cheeks that were once defined by a chiseled, square jaw were now puffy. His eyes looked tired. Perhaps it was more weariness than exhaustion. Weariness of her presence. She felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for him.
It wouldn’t last.
“Hello Kirk,” she said, her voice cracking with nervousness.
“Fiona.” His tone was flat.
She took the seat directly across from him. Face to face. As she had feared, she was unable to look him in the eye.
“Fiona, this is Michael Stanley,” Paul said, motioning to Kirk’s lawyer. “And of course, you know the gentlemen to his right.”
An awkward hush filled the room. After what felt like an hour, Michael spoke.
“I’m sure Paul has already briefed you, Ms. Graves, but just to reiterate, this is an informal meeting. Nothing said here will have an impact on your custody status or the court’s ruling. My client was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to accommodate your wishes to meet, but legally, he did not have to do so.”