“I told you. I didn’t take any—”
“No, I mean you’d have to use words, of course, but if you told us what you remembered through . . . I don’t know what I mean. It’s dumb. Come on and I’ll drop you off at the motel.”
“The motel?” I looked down the hall toward the lobby door.
“We sent him home,” she said. “Your room at the motel is available again. Your stuff is there. Your clothes. On the way out, we’ll grab your camera. And your phone.”
“My phone? And my keys? When can I—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said. “Soon. Come on.”
We turned toward the lobby just as the door to one of the other interrogation rooms opened and an officer emerged. Behind him, inexplicably, Dev in rumpled clothes.
“Oh, my God,” I said. Finally, finally, some good news. “Are you OK?”
Dev’s black eyes brushed over me and away. He walked past without acknowledgment. The officer gave an apologetic shrug and followed him to the security door and through it.
“What was that?” I hadn’t anticipated a warm welcome or anything, but—what had I expected?
“I guess his, uh, feelings have changed.”
I shot her a look. “No feelings came into it. It’s fine,” I said. “Was he—poisoned or what? I suppose he thinks I did it and so therefore I did everything else, too? What was in that bottle?”
“Nothing’s back from the lab. Something nasty in that cup, though.”
“Nastier than the liquor we were drinking? I told—wait. Just the one cup?”
“Probably both, right? He might have saved your life by drinking first.”
“Who would—” But I had been trying to tell that story for a day now. Sam had been in my room. Hillary had been in my room. But I couldn’t take it past that. I couldn’t begin to accuse Sam of tainting the plastic cups in my motel room while he brushed his teeth, having stayed a gentlemanly distance from me while I slept. I couldn’t imagine a valid reason why Hillary had come all this way with Malloy only to kill him. She wanted a proposal, not a funeral. Neither of them had been at the railing when Paris crashed to the floor below.
None of the scenarios made any sense.
“Come on,” Cooley said. “He’s probably gone by now.”
Like he was some boyfriend I was feuding with.
Outside, my phone in hand, I waited by the back door of Cooley’s cruiser to be let in.
“You can sit up front,” she said.
It was a measure of trust I hadn’t expected. I bowed my head to hide the tremble at my lip. A tiny bit of friendship, after all this, was the feather drifting down on the scales that tilted everything toward a breakdown. “Thank you,” I said, my voice thick. I cleared my throat. “So, what kind of dog makes a good police partner?”
IT WAS ALMOST 8:00 p.m. by the time Cooley dropped me off at the motel office, where the man behind the desk hesitated to give me a new key. He finally handed it over, warning again of the extras. I had not eaten since Warren’s macaroni and cheese but didn’t have the energy even to face the clerk at the gas station. With the two bucks I found in my pocket, I went through the breezeway behind the stairs to the vending machine and leaned on the glass, sorting my options into food groups. Fruit group: candy-coated apple pie, fruit chews, cherry cough drops. Chocolate group: with or without nuts, without or without caramel. Dairy: Milk Duds. The potato chips constituted the first vegetable to cross my path in many a day.
In the end, I selected the cheese crackers to make up for the ones I’d brought with me from Chicago, the ones the others had swiped. I had just enough cash for a bottle of juice from the drink machine. Something with electrolytes, whatever that got me.
I turned to go up to my room. It was the golden hour again, the orange rays of sunlight shooting across the wall of the breezeway like a stab. It was beautiful. Beauty, right here at the Hide-a-Way.
I was staring at it when I realized someone stood at the base of the staircase out front, watching me.
The woman from Bix’s funeral. Colleen’s mother.
I wished for darkness. If only night would fall, click, in an instant, I’d be hidden here among the shadows.
She had seen me. It was too late to rely on the collapse of the solar system.
She wore flat-footed sandals and white capris, her tender, pale legs thick and exposed. Her bad hair was damp at the temples, curling and dark. At first I thought she would continue up the stairs and leave things as they were. Why break things that were already irreversibly broken? And then—
“You know who I am, right?”
I nodded.
“And why I’m here?” she said. Her tone was tart.
I looked down at my dusty shoes and nodded again. I felt like a child being scolded.
“Look at me,” she said.
I did.
“That’s all I wanted,” she said. “Back at the funeral. I just wanted someone to see me. I just wanted to say her name again.”
I understood that.
“It’s just—it hurts so bad,” she said.
“I wish it didn’t,” I said.
Her head bowed. I felt myself holding my breath. I let it out.
“I wish that for you, too,” she said to her sandals. “I wish I weren’t so—angry? I suppose that’s all it is. Angry that she went around with a married man, angry that he was married. That’s fair. Angry that he bothered her, that he paid her any attention at all. I’m so mad . . . that he was so charming. I warned her about him, did you know? I always watch out for charming people.”
“Charm is the worst.”
She smiled, but her cheeks trembled. “I’m sorry I came to his funeral. I wish I could undo that. It was disrespectful to do what I did.”
All she had wanted was for her pain to be acknowledged, but what did I want? I wanted for my pain to be diminished. I simply hadn’t come across the remedy yet that might work. I couldn’t go around what had happened. Couldn’t leap over it or tunnel under it. The only thing to do was go through it.
“I’ve been wondering,” she said. “I don’t know who to ask.”
We both waited until she decided it was me.
“Did he—was he—I don’t know how to say it, and not break your heart,” she said.
I had to go through it. Was there any reason to take anyone else along with me?
“He was drunk.” I reconsidered. “He had a drinking problem. And PTSD, from the front line.”
She nodded. She wanted to believe that I had come to the end of the truth.
“I wish I’d made him get help,” I said. I could do this. Please. Let me get through this. “He loved her,” I blurted. “I mean, I don’t know, exactly. He never told me. But I think he must have. I think he would have made a life with her. With Colleen.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. She stood a little straighter. “You made her sound like a real person just then,” she said. “It’s been a while.”
We stood in place for another moment, but there was nothing left to say. The golden hour ticked down. I felt the shadows grow long around me. At last, she turned and heaved herself up the stairs, one at a time, trudging, weary.
I waited there by the vending machines, long past the sound of her feet shuffling overhead, of her door opening and closing. Long past, until I was sure of my own legs, and could follow and get out of the dark that was coming.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Edie, oh, my God,” Michele’s voice said when she picked up on the first ring. “Where the hell have you been? Emmeline, I know you didn’t just pinch your sister. I expect you to act like a grown-up, or I won’t ever treat you— Blythe, stop pestering your sister or so help me . . .”
Some part of me was disappointed that I had reached Michele at home, having a normal day. Even though I’d discouraged her, I’d been so certain she would come for me. Come for me and bang on the doors, the way Sheriff Barrows had said even murderers’ families did. An
other part of me was relieved. She hadn’t bothered. I wouldn’t have to make up for this. I wouldn’t have another rescue on the scorecards.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “They are testing my patience in a big way this week.”
Something about using up all the stockpiled school supplies while it was still summer. I listened for a while, trying to stay in the moment. I was calling from my motel room with my cell phone charging in the socket behind the nightstand. I had just enough battery for the screen to light up and about a half a bar of service. What did people use up here? Tin cans and string? My vending machine dinner awaited me and I had spent the weekend as a murder suspect, so I didn’t have much patience for stories that focused on the misuse of glue sticks.
“I think they’re letting me go home tomorrow,” I said, interrupting her.
“So they figured out you didn’t kill that guy?”
“Not sure. I think it’s more likely they haven’t figured out how to prove I did. I mean, I didn’t—you know that. Which is why they can’t prove it.” I sighed and rubbed at the headache forming behind my eyes. “You know what I mean. They don’t have anyone in custody for that and then—”
I’d told her about Paris falling when I’d called from the hospital, but it seemed suddenly ridiculous to add Dev’s near-death to the list. And how would I explain that I was the prime suspect for the act, since it had happened in my motel room?
“How’s that woman?” she said. “The one who fell down the stairs?”
“Not great, I think. They suspect someone fixed the railing to crack, though. It wasn’t an accident.”
“Shut up—are you serious? Why are you still there?”
“I was needed for hours of interrogation, Michele, what do you think? Hours. Multiple days. If I could leave, I would.”
“Oh, yeah? Right now you would?”
I glanced toward the windows. It would be dark behind them soon. “Thanks for reminding me of my shortcomings. You’ve always been so helpful that way.”
“You know I love you, even with all your crazy. If you could get over that particular phobia, I would love you more.”
“Why?”
“So you could babysit . . .” she said coyly.
“Really. You have a hot date or something?”
“Maybe,” she said.
“You do?” I said. “Who?”
“Just someone. I met him through my friend Belinda at work, you know Belinda . . .”
Michele always assumed I knew everyone she knew. I had never heard of Belinda, or of my sister having any interest in dating again, not since she’d split with her husband right after Blythe was born. More than ten years. A long time to be alone. A long time to be stuck. I could easily see the years stack up for me.
Instead of telling Michele about seeing the woman from the funeral, about Bix’s intentions, his plan and how much it had backfired, but on me, I found myself wanting to tell her about Warren. I couldn’t admit to the temptation Dev had presented, but I also hesitated to speak Warren’s name. It was nothing. It was all nothing. I’d be home by this time tomorrow, and I’d get back to the business of being a widow. Hillary would have to do something similar. Dev would have to figure out his new life, with or without Paris. Sam would have to find a job. Me, too. I would have to sell the house, and then stretch whatever I made in the sale to last as long as possible. Life would have to go on. Oh, and Martha. Martha would have to get back to lawyering or whatever, and maybe raise a dead man’s child, too.
“Sorry, what?” I said.
“I said I gotta run, OK? They’re killing each other—I mean. I need to go break up a battle. Got to go.”
“OK, I’ll call you when—”
She hung up. I put the phone on the nightstand to charge and reached for my bag of cheese crackers. Hillary, Dev, Paris, Sam, Martha—there was something there in the way I had been thinking of them that made me feel uneasy, nervous. What was it?
I took a cracker out of the bag and popped it into my mouth. In my head, I saw Hillary nibbling at the same kind of snack, like a rodent. And then shoving a handful into her mouth to keep from answering some question from Sam. He would have been on to her cover story by then, or at least suspicious.
They’d eaten the entire box of crackers that day. They hadn’t come prepared at all, had they? Except to drink and maybe paddle out onto the water, the exact kind of people Warren must have to pull out of the lake on occasion. No food, no initiative to go get any. No one in charge. No one with any plan.
I’d forgotten how young they seemed that day. Ducklings, hoping someone would lead them somewhere.
Huh. I held a cracker up to the light. It worked just like Cooley suggested. If I could call up an image from my memory, a photo I hadn’t taken, the image gave me access to some of the finer details I couldn’t call up under the glare of Barrows’s questions.
Is that what she’d meant? But—what? I was supposed to tell the story of the weekend’s events through images? Would that work? I felt a little insulted, as though someone had slid a picture menu across the table at me and asked me to point to what I wanted. But I had to admit that it might work. I sat back and pulled out my camera, and pointed it at the foot of the bed, where I’d sat with Dev, so recently, so long ago. Click.
Chapter Thirty-Three
After a few hours, I took a break and had a shower. When I got out, I turned on the radio on the alarm clock and scrolled around until I heard Warren’s voice. Space again, this time a new planet.
“The biggest sky news we’re likely to get in our lifetimes—those of us that just missed the moon landing—is the announcement of Planet Nine. Sounds like a sci-fi movie title, doesn’t it? Well, get to writing that story now, because it shouldn’t be too much longer before we track down Planet Nine—within our own solar system. How do I know Planet Nine is out there? Well, scientists can tell something’s out there past Pluto—now demoted to a dwarf planet, by the way—way past Pluto, actually, nearly 45 billion miles next door, something big is pulling on the gravity of other planetary bodies. They’ve got the world’s strongest, most precise telescope trained on a sliver of the night sky right now, but even with all the technology and all the top minds we have on the problem, we don’t yet know where it is.”
I had not had a chance to listen to Warren doing his thing, knowing it was him. I opened my suitcase to find it in disarray. Ransacked. The clothes there seemed like remnants from another life, dinosaurs unearthed. My pajamas, long-lost treasures. I changed into them, noting that the copy of Malloy’s will I’d swiped from Martha had been confiscated. Martha’s colleagues—I hated that word, too, and hadn’t blamed Paris one bit for telling Martha to use another one—would have to be consulted. But would Barrows think of it? Not my problem anymore. It had never been my problem. As long as they were handing over my car keys soon, I could cut out the curiosity. Malloy’s killer could go unpunished. It was no matter to me.
I folded a few things and put them away into the suitcase. Tomorrow was the day.
“What does it matter, if we find Planet Nine or not?” Warren was saying. “Why do we do all these explorations, anyway? Why can’t we just be happy with the paint spatter of the Milky Way, as it appears Wednesday, weather permitting, at the reopening of our own Straits Point International Dark Sky Park? I’m not going to lie, folks. When I hear about some of the deep space explorations we are doing, with unmanned craft, with that little dune buggy we wrecked on Mars, with the Hubble telescope, which brings us back photos of things we can’t comprehend, I feel . . . I mean, have you seen a photo of a nebula? The Eagle Nebula has these vertical pillars of dust that make it look like a castle made of clouds. But what it is? A cradle. Honest. A cradle for newly formed stars, seven thousand light-years away. We don’t fully understand the things that our explorations tell us. Even with all the science there is, we are still feeling our way through the universe, inching our way forward like, like . . . like someone in the dark.”
I shivered and sat on the edge of the bed, remembering the way I felt in the viewing area, small and alone. I had the rest of my life to feel that way. I didn’t need Warren telling me. My hand reached for the dial.
“It’s a scary thing, our world,” he said, his voice quieter. I stopped and listened. “And beyond it, a limitless, uncomprehending, unknowable—forever. And that’s scary, too. The more you understand how vast it all is, how small we all are—but I don’t get on the radio to give you fuel for your insomnia. I guess I happen to think that it’s just fine to stand out at the park and look up at the sky without aid of a telescope, to enjoy the view, not even bother with the names of things, the shapes of the constellations—who cares? Those are just stories someone told once. What’s real is that people just like you and me have been looking up into the sky for as long as humans have walked this rock. All that matters is that we are here. But it’s only a minute or two. It’s a blink of the eye.”
His voice was less comforting, more direct. Direct, as though he spoke to me. I could picture him at his desk, frowning a little into the laptop, headphones in place. It all meant so much to him. It all scared me so much.
“Planet Nine is out there,” he said, almost a sigh. “All the math tells us something big is out there. Something big, if we only keep watching. Who would look away, when the capacity for—I don’t think I have the right word for the magnitude. When something comes along that could change life as you’ve understood it, why would anyone deny that gravitational pull?”
I held my breath.
“You have your reasons, I suppose,” Warren said, and then signed off.
THE IMAGES CAME to me in no particular order. When I remembered something, I jotted it down. The notations would mean nothing to anyone but me, but after I was finished and sat back, I felt as though I had captured the chaos of everything that had happened and pinned it to a board, shapes built from nothing by connecting a few dots.
Tomorrow, I could lay it out in front of Barrows, and he could do whatever it was he would do with it while I collected my keys and headed home.
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