Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  Diana didn’t move.

  “I don’t have your book—and neither does Jilly.” Molly handed Diana her purse. “I know that for a fact.” She grabbed Diana’s coat from where she had placed it over a chair. “I’m sorry if I got you here under false pretenses. Perhaps it was terribly selfish of me, but I just wanted to apologize to you. I had been feeling badly about the whole thing ever since the funeral. Although”—she scowled at Adam—“I suppose you have no better picture of our family after today.” She held Diana’s coat open, politely—and pointedly.

  Diana’s own politeness overcame her desire to stay. She stood and slipped into the offered coat. “Thank you for the coffee,” she said.

  “So do you think Jill could have done it?” Adam asked, then took another bite of his sandwich.

  “You have gone quite far enough, young man,” Molly said, glaring at Adam as she put on her own coat. “You know that I was up in Boston that day—”

  Adam raised his eyebrows. “Jill was always good at covering her ass.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Molly cried. Her son’s implication that she might be lying caused her voice to quiver with anger. “You yourself said how close Jill and James were—you know how much she loved him. She didn’t kill him anymore than I did!” Molly ripped her purse from a kitchen chair with such force that the chair toppled to the floor. She grabbed it and thrust it back into its original position.

  “Then how come she flipped when she found out that Dr. Marcus here got all of James’s money? Why is she planning to contest the will?” Adam asked, his demeanor growing increasingly calm as his mother’s became more agitated. “How come Zach had to give her those tranquilizers?”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking such nonsense,” Molly growled. “The poor thing had just lost her only brother. She was a complete wreck that afternoon. A complete wreck,” she repeated, twisting the strap of her purse around her fingers.

  “But my question is why?” He tilted his head and looked up at his mother. “Which brings me back to my original question: Who killed James?”

  “Don’t you see that neither of those questions matter anymore?” Molly snapped. “What matters is picking up the pieces and going on. What matters is for a family to stick together.” She pulled the door toward her and then turned and glared at her son. “Something you could learn a bit more about.”

  Diana caught Adam’s wink over Molly’s shoulder as she was ushered out of the house.

  22

  DIANA’S MIND WAS REELING AS SHE HEADED TOWARD Boston. With only one wrong turn, she found the two-lane highway that would take her north to the Mass Pike. The road was clear, and the sun hung above the bare treetops. Mitch had been wrong. She wasn’t coming back with anything. All she had gained was a conviction she couldn’t prove: Molly Arell was lying.

  Even her son knew it. And Molly’s agitated response to Adam was further testimony to her guilt. But the fact that Molly was lying didn’t prove Jill had killed James. It didn’t prove anything. And as long as Molly stuck to her story, Jill had an alibi that would eliminate her as one of the police’s suspects.

  Diana cranked up the heat as a thick bank of clouds streamed across the sun. Show that either one of these other jokers had equal motive and opportunity, Mitch had said. And you’re off the hook. While the fact that Jill had gotten upset after discovering she wasn’t the beneficiary of the will, and that her car had been repossessed, indicated a possible motive, the operative part of Mitch’s sentence was the word “and.” Without opportunity, all the motive in the world was useless to Diana.

  About half a mile ahead, Diana could see an overloaded truck dragging its way up a steep incline, slowing all the traffic behind it to a crawl. The double yellow line to her left forbade passing, but in any case, it was obvious that there was nowhere to go.

  Diana smiled ruefully to herself. She should have been clever, like Jill. She should have gotten someone to cover for her too. Maybe she could have talked Gail into claiming that they had had a late lunch that afternoon, or perhaps Sandy could have been confused into thinking she had been at Diana’s office for an appointment. Diana shook her head in frustration; she would never involve a friend or a patient—or anyone—in a lie. Adam would say that Jill was far better at “covering her ass” than Diana was. And Adam would be right.

  Diana was exhausted, her back ached, and she really needed to get to a bathroom. If only she were home. Here she had rearranged her entire day—and would have to make up the work over the rest of the week—and placed herself in an awkward and difficult situation, just to come home empty. Worse than empty. For now she knew there was no salvation for her in Jill.

  Diana finally pulled onto the Mass Pike and around the slow truck, only to find the six-lane highway moving at a skulk that matched the road she had just left. What was the use of all the nudging and maneuvering? What was the point of her becoming Mitch’s detective? Did any of it really matter? Yes, she reminded herself: It mattered a lot. It mattered because she needed an alternative plausible suspect in order to clear herself. In order to keep the police from arresting her for murder. Diana saw all too clearly how the scenario would appear to Levine: She had both motive and opportunity, Jill had only motive.

  The traffic thinned, and Diana pulled into the passing lane. She wouldn’t allow herself to succumb to depression and self-pity. She had too much to lose, too much to fight for. If Molly’s statements destroyed Jill as a plausible suspect, then she would just have to switch to Ethan. She would call Mitch as soon as she got home and start focusing on the elusive Ethan Kruse.

  Diana tuned the radio to an oldies station and tried to cheer herself by singing out loud to the Beatles. The clouds thickened, and the sun dropped behind the Worcester hills. Although it was early afternoon, she turned on her headlights.

  A shiver ran down her spine and silenced her singing. She jacked up the heat, but it didn’t help. It was that feeling again. The eyes. She glanced nervously in the rearview mirror. She turned to her right, and then to her left. But no one was looking at her.

  No one had any interest in her at all.

  When Diana got home she wasn’t able to call Mitch, for Sandy Pierson was huddled in the alley waiting for her, hollow-eyed and scared. “I’m sorry, Dr. Marcus,” Sandy sobbed from her seat wedged against the cold brick of the house. “But I—I couldn’t help it. I did it again,” she wailed. “Even though I promised I wouldn’t, I did it again.”

  “Come on in,” Diana said, reaching her hands out to help the younger woman up. Even in her misery, Sandy rose gracefully. Diana waved Sandy into her office, hung up her coat, and went to the bathroom. When she returned, Sandy was still crying.

  “I wanted to be like you,” Sandy said. “For you to be a part of me …”

  Diana walked around the perimeter of the room, her hand pressed to her lower back, watching Sandy. It was almost impossible to believe that the stringy-haired, white-faced woman sitting before her was the same person who had smiled so alluringly out of a Filene’s “Night on the Town” ad in the Globe last week. Diana dropped heavily into her chair and swiveled so that she faced Sandy. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?” she suggested.

  Sandy hung her head, twisting a thick clump of hair around her finger. “I made a chocolate-chip cookie,” she whispered.

  Diana nodded.

  “I know chocolate-chip are your favorite,” Sandy said to her feet. “Your very favorite food in the whole world, you told us once. Full of wonderful memories that you could relive again and again. Every time you ate them. Smelled them even, you said.”

  When had she ever told Sandy that? Diana wondered. And why? Then she remembered a group session early on, when James had been so promising, before Ethan arrived on the scene. Everyone was telling a story about a positive childhood experience. When James asked Diana to tell them one from her own childhood, she had agreed. “Psychotherapy cannot proceed without empathy on both sides,” Adr
ian had pounded into her during her postdoc. “You must offer yourself as a positive, supportive figure. As a real person—with your own foibles and fantasies—for identification to take place.” So much for Adrian’s great advice, Diana thought. “You made chocolate-chip cookies …” she coaxed, glancing at the clock and wondering how late Mitch stayed in his office.

  “I only did it because I love you so much,” Sandy said sharply, as if somehow tuning in to Diana’s distraction. “If it weren’t for you”—she raised her head and stared at Diana, defying her to disagree—”I never would have done it at all!”

  “Is what you did really so bad?” Diana asked softly.

  Sandy crossed her arms over her chest. “I made a huge chocolate-chip cookie and I shaped it to look just like you!” she said, glaring at Diana’s stomach.

  “And?” Diana kept her voice soft and her emotions from her eyes.

  There was silence as the two women looked at each other. Sandy’s expression slowly shifted from defiant to confused, then settled into a sulk. “I ate the whole thing,” she finally said.

  Diana nodded.

  “But it didn’t fill me with wonderful memories—and it didn’t fill me with you,” Sandy said sullenly. “So I stuck my finger down my throat and threw it all up.”

  Diana closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, Sandy was standing, facing the back wall. Diana watched Sandy square her shoulders and turn with the fluid motions of an experienced model during a photo shoot. The woman from the Filene’s ad stood facing her.

  “I guess you’re right,” Sandy said, as if she had not just told Diana she had vomited her into a toilet. “Now that I’ve actually said it, it doesn’t sound all that bad after all.”

  Diana watched warily as the self-confident model approached and sat gracefully in the chair, throwing one of her long legs across the other. “You feel better now?” Diana asked.

  Sandy leaned back in an overly nonchalant manner. “Yes,” she said as if she wasn’t all that sure. “Yes,” she repeated more loudly, but with no more certainty.

  Diana looked at the beautiful but terribly damaged woman before her. How could people do these things to their own children? she wondered, not for the first time. How could Sandy’s father have locked her up in a dark closet every day after school? How had Uncle Hank brought himself to photograph his nephew being sodomized? Resting her hand protectively over her stomach, Diana thought of her new research data: If it actually was these horrendous—but isolated—events that caused the disease, then there really might be hope for a therapeutic cure. And then maybe Sandy wouldn’t have to relive—and relive and relive—her fear of abandonment; maybe she could be freed to put her trust in another human being. “Does this remind you of anything that’s happened before?” Diana asked softly.

  Sandy shook her head. “No, not that I can—” Then she stopped and her eyes widened. “The time I called everyone and canceled group?” she asked. “To have you all to myself?”

  Diana nodded.

  “James and Ethan said I was selfish and spiteful. Terri and Bruce too.” Sandy stared over Diana’s shoulder, through the window beyond, but Diana knew from the pain in Sandy’s eyes that she was not seeing the alley. “They didn’t want me in the group anymore.”

  “And do you remember what I told you at the time?”

  “You—you mean,” Sandy began, her eyes welling with tears, “you mean after my binge?”

  Diana nodded.

  “You told me a good expression of love might make me feel better,” she whispered.

  “And did it?” Diana asked, handing Sandy a tissue.

  Sandy nodded, wiping her cheeks. “Remember?” She smiled through the tears. “I did something nice for everyone. I cleaned James’s apartment and loaned Bruce my car.”

  Diana returned Sandy’s smile, remembering very clearly how good she, Diana, had felt when the group reconnected, how proud of herself she had been. Until Ethan had caused it all to fall apart by fighting with James. Her smile disappeared.

  Sandy sniffed and raised her chin. “I did it even though I was really pissed off at them.”

  “You did giving things,” Diana said. “Loving things.” She flashed to James’s sweetness during her ectopic pregnancy; she could almost feel his hand covering hers as he sped toward the hospital, almost hear his soft, crooning voice. Even Ethan had helped her once when her jeep broke down—shrugging off the fact that it made him late for a date. How much could be salvaged? she wondered. How deep did the damage have to go before the true person was irretrievable?

  “And they decided that I could stay.” Sandy played with the wet tissues. She shredded them and then molded them into a ball. She clenched the ball tightly in her fist. “So I should do something for you?” she asked without raising her eyes.

  “That’s not necessary, Sandy,” Diana said. “Just remember that things can be undone. That people who care about you are willing to accept you—even if you’re not perfect.” Diana rested her arms on her desk and leaned closer to Sandy. “None of us is perfect.”

  Sandy glanced up, then quickly looked out the window. She twisted her hair around her finger and inspected her nails. Then she clutched her hands together and looked straight at Diana. “I want to give you something because I love you.”

  Diana nodded.

  “But I don’t have anything to give,” Sandy wailed.

  “It’s really not—”

  “There were a lot of things about the group that you never knew,” Sandy blurted. “That we kept from you. Especially James and Ethan. James’s sister too.”

  “Oh?” Diana gripped the edge of her desk, her surprise at the mention of Jill catching her off-guard. She carefully folded her hands and forced herself to relax in the chair.

  “We all knew it was against the rules.” Sandy’s words came out in a rush. “We knew it was dishonest and not fair to you. But Ethan made it into such a fun game. You know, like when you were a kid and there was a substitute teacher?” Sandy’s eyes begged Diana’s forgiveness. “He—he made it exciting—like, to see how far we could go.” She hung her head, shielding her face with her hair and kneading her wet wad of tissues.

  “How far you could go?” Diana prompted. The rules of the group were that anything that transpired between members outside group hours would be discussed at the next session. Diana knew that this was virtually impossible, as James and Ethan had been friends prior to Ethan’s entering the group—and that had been one of her many reservations about Ethan joining—but Sandy’s words made it sound much more sinister than the few undisclosed pranks Diana had suspected.

  Fright crossed Sandy’s face and she shrugged and looked down at her feet. “I promised never to tell,” she mumbled. “Ethan said he’d find out if I ever did.”

  Diana bit her lip and stared at the fearful woman in front of her, caught between her own needs and those of her patient. Maybe Sandy knew something that could help her—but maybe she, Diana, knew something that could help Sandy more. “Thank you,” Diana finally said. “It means a lot to me that you shared this.”

  Sandy jumped up and looked around the room as if she thought it might be bugged. “I can’t,” she said, grabbing her coat. Then she leaned toward Diana and tilted her head, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We used to go to Ken’s Pub in Cambridge. All together. All the time.”

  “Sandy—” Diana began, standing also.

  “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Sandy said, shaking her head. “Nothing matters anymore.” She began to cry softly. “They’ve both left me. Everyone’s gone.” She shrugged into her coat and, shoulders drooping, walked out the door.

  Diana sat back down, knowing that Sandy had said all she was going to say, that it was best for Sandy to work this through by herself for a while. Diana swiveled her chair and watched as the lonely, beautiful woman climbed gracefully into her car.

  Sandy had offered her a gift: a “good expression” of her love. Ken’s Pub. But before Dia
na could fully take in the information, before she could figure out if Sandy really wanted to help her or hurt her, before she could consider how—and if—Sandy’s information could be of any use, she felt a gush of warm dampness. She jumped from the chair and a bolt of terror highlighted every nerve in her body. She was bleeding.

  As she lunged for the phone, nauseated with fear, Diana imagined herself lying within a softly billowing curtained enclosure, lost and empty and crying, her dead baby leaking from her body. James was holding her hand.

  23

  CRAIG SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE BED AND BRUSHED the hair from Diana’s forehead. “How are you doing?” he asked. It had been a long, stressful afternoon and evening in the emergency room, and they both looked it: pale and drawn and droopy. But the news had been good, and the doctors had sent Diana home to rest for a few days, optimistic that she could resume her regular schedule on Monday with the expectation of a normal delivery—and a healthy child.

  “Now that I’m home, I feel much better,” she said, although what she felt was exhausted. Completely and totally drained. All she wanted was sleep. But Craig looked so much like a little boy who had been lost and finally found, the fear and relief equally mixed in his tired eyes, that she didn’t have the heart to ask him to leave.

  He picked up her hand and kissed her palm and then pressed it between his two. “We’ll get through this, Diana,” he whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “All of it. Whatever it takes. Even if there’s only the two of us, we’re still a family.” He squeezed her fingers so hard that they hurt.

  She gently extricated her hand. “They said everything’s going to be fine.” According to the doctors, she had had a “minor bleeding episode,” a not-uncommon event. They had quickly determined that she wasn’t miscarrying, that she didn’t have placenta previa, and, in answer to her repeated questioning, that this pregnancy was not ectopic.

  An ultrasound had been performed, and she and Craig had watched the screen, breathless and grinning, as the technician focused first on the baby’s face, then on her legs, pressed tightly to her belly. At one point, the baby had turned and popped her thumb into her mouth. They even had a photograph: an eerie but beautiful grainy black-and-white reverse image of a perfect nose, a perfect mouth, and two perfect eyes, widely spaced and wide open. Their daughter appeared to be smiling at them.