You Can Never Tell

by Sarah Warburton

  Helen: Like Leave It to Beaver good.

  Julia: But we’re not that kind of show.

  CHAPTER

  3

  ON THE DRIVE home, I sneaked a glance at Michael’s face. His profile was absolutely composed. If I’d been thinking when I fled the dinner table, I would have run water in the sink or flushed the toilet, anything to cover up the sounds of crying. Instead, after I pulled myself together, splashed water on my face, and opened the door, there was an awkward hush over the table that made it clear everyone had heard. Michael must have made an excuse to keep our hosts from knocking on the door and asking the dreaded question: Are you okay in there?

  So I returned to a table where the hibachi had been replaced with a dark-chocolate cake dusted with powdered sugar and a room heavy with things our hosts were too polite to say.

  While Wyatt asked Michael about some work-related thing, Elizabeth offered me coffee. Caffeine was the last thing my shredded nerves needed, but I would have accepted anything to restore forward momentum to our evening. After Elizabeth served me a cup of coffee, a slice of flourless cake, and a halfhearted invitation to the next Bluebonnets meeting, Michael and I made it to the front door, thanking our hosts, promising to return the favor, and (in my case) avoiding direct eye contact.

  And Michael still hadn’t said a word since we’d left. Not one. He wasn’t angry, I told myself, just analyzing the evening, trying to find the trigger, the moment that had set me off. If he could figure out what had happened, he could fix it. That was the way he thought. And we’d been working through a whole list of solutions: time off, a therapist, medication, this entire move to Texas.

  But what if there wasn’t a fix? Maybe I was broken for good.

  Everything in this master-planned community had been carefully constructed, from the landscaping with its gently curved green spaces to the arching streetlights guiding us from one neighborhood to the next. Life should be this smooth, this easy. We passed under a light, and I could see how tightly Michael’s lips were pressed together.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if the apology was for the bathroom incident, the entire evening, or the disappointing person I’d become.

  He didn’t answer.

  I wrapped my arms around myself and leaned my head against the window. I knew his silence didn’t mean anger, and I didn’t expect him to change the way he processed things, but I felt so alone. This was why I needed friends.

  Only a few months ago, I’d have texted Aimee. Just a lightning exchange of one-liners and I’d have relaxed. Once I felt heard and understood, I’d have been able to give Michael the space he needed without making it personal. But now I hated myself, and I thought he probably hated me a little too.

  I wished it were all Aimee’s fault, but I’d been the one who trusted her.

  If I closed my eyes, there were dozens of memories waiting. The side of her face as she drove us through the heart of Manhattan. Sitting on the railing of a rooftop bar, toasting with vodka gimlets and then almost choking with laughter. Her hands, draping a light scarf around my neck and then turning me so the mirror showed us both. She made me feel smart, funny, beautiful.

  At the museum, standing in front of a piece by a new artist and knowing, just knowing that the two of us were feeling the same thing. I loved Michael so much, but art had never meant to him what it meant to me. What I’d thought it meant to Aimee.

  She and I had been hired at the same time, and there’d been a moment when we might have been rivals, when we were both the new girls at the museum, both about the same age, both polished and northeastern and trying to prove ourselves. And then she had leaned forward and whispered, “I hate this part, when we’re strangers on our best behavior. Let’s just be friends already. Are you in?”

  “Absolutely.” I felt the thrill of an unexpected windfall, something changing for the better.

  She’d looked me up and down. “Want to go clubbing after work? I’ll be your wingman …”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got a … I’m seeing someone.”

  “Are you seeing him tonight?” When I shook my head again, she grinned. “Good. Then you can be my wingman.”

  I’d been dating Michael for almost two years, but I’d never been the kind of girl who went clubbing. Quiet wine bars, book readings, gallery openings. But the club lights flashed like a dazzling interactive light installation, and my pulse got caught up in the beat of the music. We danced, and when a guy came up to us, I knew it was a test. Back in college, my friends and I had a policy—“no woman left behind.” Aimee and I were new friends. Would she ditch me for some guy?

  But as the music shifted seamlessly from one track to another, she shrugged him off like a jacket and came over, breathless, with beads of sweat along her hairline. And she kept choosing me, after each meeting at work, for road trips to see performance art, in her lightning-quick replies to my every text.

  Together we had been so powerful.

  I hadn’t just lost my best friend. I’d lost my best self too.

  Michael slowed down, and I opened my eyes to a blur of blue and red lights. Before I even wondered if we were going too fast, I saw the cop car was already stopped behind the pickup he’d pulled over. Somebody else was having a bad evening too.

  We crept past, and the dark asphalt streets ahead of us were empty under the steel streetlamps. Everything was quiet, each neighborhood locked behind a matching brick wall like separate kingdoms. Somewhere behind us the curved highway vibrated with oscillating traffic, but looking ahead, you’d think the entire world was intent on getting a good eight hours of sleep.

  Michael kept driving about ten miles under the speed limit, even as the red and blue lights retreated in our rearview mirror.

  “You need to find a doctor here.” His voice was definite, and it snapped my attention back.

  “Dr. Johnson said—”

  “Dr. Johnson isn’t here. You’re not getting better.”

  “It takes time. The medicine—”

  “Maybe you need a different dose.”

  I bit back my answer, but my eyes filled with tears. You’d have thought I was all cried out. Michael didn’t want to hurt me, but he did want to fix me. And any reminder of my brokenness stung. Besides, what if he couldn’t engineer this problem away?

  The silence between us was expectant, and I realized he was waiting for me to say something. “I’ll call tomorrow. For a referral.”

  “Thanks,” he said quietly. I knew he was disappointed, just like me. This evening should have been easy. We could have been at the start of something really fun, a new friendship.

  Instead Michael would still see Wyatt at work, maybe they would even be friends, but Wyatt’s friendship would be tinged with pity. He and Elizabeth were probably already talking about it while they loaded the dishwasher and wiped down the counters. “He’s a nice guy, but Kacy … what do you think is wrong with her?” Maybe they’d think it was drugs, or a death in the family, or just call me crazy.

  And they’d look at each other and shrug, glad to forget about my problems. But Michael would forever be “poor Michael” in their minds.

  A nice guy with a messed-up wife.

  * * *

  The next day Michael was back at work and I was home alone, stuck with my own company and a shame hangover from the previous night.

  I attacked the last of the moving boxes as if I could redeem myself. This house was bigger than our old apartment, and our furniture looked as unmoored as I felt, with just a little too much space between a chair and its end table. Our bookshelves were filled with my art books and Michael’s engineering texts as well as the history books we both loved. But the shelves themselves sat isolated, like a single painting in the middle of a wall.

  Maybe I just hated open-floor-plan homes. Even when I tried to fill the empty spaces, it didn’t work.

  The kitchen cabinets were uncrowded, each glass set inches away from the next. Our master closet was the size
of a loft in Manhattan, every article of clothing dangling untouched by the one beside it.

  And as I stood in the middle of all that space, the only box left was the one Michael didn’t want me to see.

  The one with any reminder of Aimee.

  When you break up with a guy, there’s sometimes that dramatic scene where you dump his stuff into a cardboard box and meet up for a hostile exchange of goods. Your crappy T-shirt for my water bottle. My second-best running shoes for your favorite CD. And maybe I cracked the case on the way over, because who even listens to CDs anymore?

  But there’s no protocol like that for ex-friends. And we hadn’t broken up, not exactly.

  I had known she’d started seeing a new guy. There were long gaps between texts I’d sent and her replies. Aimee would show up at work not quite as put-together as usual. And she wouldn’t tell me who it was.

  Now I pulled the box forward and plopped down on the floor next to it with a sense of inevitability. Unless I threw it out, this box wasn’t going anywhere. I worked my fingers underneath the packing tape and peeled it back. Inside, there was a jumbled mass of memories—exhibition catalogs and rolled promotional posters, a handful of random postcards and Polaroids, bits and pieces from my life in the museum. I couldn’t help reaching for the photos, fanning them out like a losing hand of cards. One showed the placement of an alabaster statue, another had a grouping of oil paintings, and in another a woman stood with her arms spread wide. I knew she was showing how much space to leave between installations, but she looked like she was waiting for an embrace. I’d trusted her. I’d loved her.

  But by this time she had begun sleeping with the museum director, a bald-headed guy twice her age who was also the CEO of the North Atlantic Museum Trust. And she’d been embezzling. And taking a few pieces of art. Which I had learned when the theft was discovered and Aimee framed me for it.

  Some part of me felt like I was still standing in the director’s office, trapped in the nightmare. On one side of the room, the director, the museum’s lawyer, an insurance adjuster, and Aimee—all with identical frowns of cold judgment.

  On the other side, me.

  If there had been any more proof than a suspicious email trail Aimee had created and her own lying testimony, I would be in jail. But after the only truly valuable piece of artwork mysteriously reappeared and the money was written off, I had been dismissed with a permanent mark on my reputation. A local reporter had shared enough details to blacklist me socially and professionally. If I had been guilty, I could have understood being fired, even being made a pariah in print and online. But I knew I was innocent. And so did Aimee. She was the part I just couldn’t understand.

  Had we ever been friends? Why had she driven me to the ER when I cut my hand on a sharp piece of tile and then waited while I got stitches? Those late-night calls, the little “just thinking of you” gifts—from an article torn out of a magazine to a funky piece of artisan jewelry to a bizarre flavor of chocolate to postcards addressed, stamped, and mailed even though we saw each other daily (our private running joke). None of that had been necessary if all she needed was a fall guy. It was like the man who meets your parents and talks marriage only to ghost you after sex.

  I looked at Aimee’s glossy lipsticked smile, her dark arched eyebrows, the angled bob framing her face, the face of a liar, and twisted the photo in my hands.

  A knock reverberated through the house, filling the empty spaces. I dropped the picture and stood, tensed for flight, even though I knew it was probably a delivery or something. But as I hurried out of the bedroom, the knocking continued and the doorbell rang, one sound, then the other, frantically, relentlessly alternating.

  I opened the door as a young woman in a light-pink hijab pushed past me. With one hand she pulled me back into the house; with the other she clenched a cell phone. She had a small white dog yapping in the crook of her arm, and she still managed to elbow the door shut behind us. She was frantic, her eyes wide.

  I recognized her as the woman who had walked past me the other morning with the same small dog prancing on the end of a leash in one hand and a little boy with a huge backpack clinging to her other. She had smiled at me, and for a second her whole face had been a perfect circle under her sky-blue hijab. Today her eyes were round with fear. She dropped the dog, who began spinning as well as barking, and her fluttering hands were everywhere, clutching at my arm, raising her phone to her ear, motioning me to lock the door, to move away from the windows, until finally we sank into chairs at the kitchen table.

  “I’m sorry.” She gestured to the front door. “But I couldn’t go home.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” My thoughts raced. Could it be an animal in her house? An abusive husband? A home invasion? “I’ll call the police.”

  I half rose from my chair, because my phone was still in the closet, but she stopped me. “They know. The police are at my house now.”

  She spoke a stream of words into her own cell phone, a language that to my ignorant ears sounded like water spilling over stones.

  “What happened?” I asked, my fear subsiding a little. If the police were already there, someone was handling the crisis, whatever it was. But I didn’t understand why she was here instead of there, talking to the cops.

  She lowered the phone. “I’m sorry, so sorry. These boys, they stole a car and drove it all over, the police chasing them right past the school and where the children play. I got the neighborhood alert about it on my phone while I was walking Bibi. But when I got home, my garage door was bent like this”—she held a flat hand angled sharply over the phone—“and the car was still right there in my driveway. The policeman said the kids crashed the car and ran away. ‘Joyriding’ ”—she made one-handed air quotes—“but they know the kids and it’s not the first time, so they are looking for them, and I could go into my house, but with my garage door like that, how do I know—” She paused again, listening to the phone, and then spoke another run of that beautiful language into it, becoming more emphatic near the end. She repeated one word that sounded like hasana three times before holding the phone out to me. “My husband.”

  I took it and a male voice with a slight British accent said, “I apologize for the inconvenience. I am on my way from work, but it may be thirty minutes before I arrive. May I ask a favor of you? If you will wait, I will pick up Rahmia there.”

  Rahmia lifted Bibi and smoothed the little dog’s ears back. The edges of her headscarf fell forward, obscuring her face, but her hands trembled slightly.

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s no trouble at all.”

  “You are very kind. Rahmia does not want to be alone right now. I will be there promptly, and I greatly appreciate your generosity.”

  I handed the phone back to Rahmia. She spoke softly into it and hung up, rolling her eyes at me. “My husband is such a worrier. But it’s just me at home until school lets out. And the police, they say my house is safe, but how do I know?”

  Rising to my feet, I asked, “Would you like some tea?” The electric kettle gleamed on the counter, because I’d unpacked and put away all the kitchen items, but then I remembered I hadn’t bought any tea. Texas was so hot.

  Rahmia said, “That would be very nice, but I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.” I opened the pantry, hoping for a miracle. And there, on the nearly empty shelves, was a small cardboard box with spices, matches, toothpicks, and mercifully a few random tea bags.

  “I only have green tea,” I said apologetically.

  Rahmia smiled at me. “You are so kind.” Her hands kept moving, ruffling Bibi’s fur, then smoothing it back down.

  I took two cups from the cabinet, dropped in the tea bags, and filled the kettle. The ordinary routine of hospitality was calming. I found it much easier to be a hostess than a guest. Just remembering last night made me flush, and I fiddled with the kettle a little longer than necessary until my face didn’t feel so hot.

  “W
e’re new to the neighborhood. Have you lived here long? Does this kind of thing happen often?”

  My questions sounded abrupt, but Rahmia didn’t seem to mind. “My son, Emir, and I have been here almost two years, but Ali has been here longer. We had trouble selling our house in Detroit. This is a nice neighborhood, but you have to be careful. Not just here—everywhere. I thought it might be safer here, but right after we moved, there were home invasions, where people come and”—she slammed a fist into her other hand—“just knock down the door. That’s what I thought when I saw the car smashed into my garage. If a person is home, they get shot. Ali says it’s drugs and it happens closer to the city, inside the ‘loop,’ he says, but strange things have happened here too.”

  I was having a little trouble following her. “Like what?”

  She leaned forward, tipping Bibi onto the floor. “Twice the police have found cars on the side of the road, the keys still in them, engines running, but the people”—she opened her hands wide—“gone.”

  My confusion must have shown on my face, because Rahmia lowered her voice and spoke with exaggerated slowness. “The drivers are missing. When the police go to their homes, they are not there either. They were driving their cars; they pulled over and disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. Empty car, empty house, just gone.”

  The kettle squealed. I was suddenly glad it was a bright sunny morning and my front door was locked.

  C2C TRANSCRIPT

  3

  Helen: Let me set the scene. Then we’ll get to the crime. This area of Sugar Land has a large number of planned communities, entire neighborhoods often designed by a single builder with their own schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, grocery stores, and aesthetics. Really manicured landscaping, wide sidewalks, and those little sprinkler parks—

  Julia: Splash pads.

  Helen: —and these planned communities have stringent homeowners’ associations. They set the rules like whether you can have a basketball hoop or when you need to mow your lawn.