The Night Olivia Fell

by Christina McDonald

  The tension in the air tightened a notch. Nothing tangible. Nothing concrete. In fact, on the surface everybody looked polite and pleasant. But it was there, snaking around us like a noxious gas.

  The men sized each other up, and I couldn’t help but compare them. Gavin with his clean-shaven face, his perfectly pressed suit, his athletic body; Anthony with his tousled curls, his three-day stubble, his casual canvas coat. He was so decent, so accepting of people and of life. Gavin had none of that quiet kindness in him. He was all bluster, no substance.

  “Well, I have complete confidence the police know what they’re doing. If you have any further questions, you’ll need to address them to my lawyer.” He had the air of someone who imagines he can negotiate with gravity. I hated him fiercely.

  “I invited them here, Dad.” The lie fell smoothly off Kendall’s tongue. She flipped her hair behind her ear. “I wanted to talk to them about Olivia. You know, Olivia’s brain-dead, and I want to help find out what happened to her. Do you know anything about that?”

  She batted her eyes innocently, and I realized she was baiting him. An undercurrent flowed between father and daughter that I didn’t entirely understand.

  Gavin clenched and unclenched his fists. It was the only indication he was pissed off.

  “Of course I heard about Olivia’s accident on the news. Absolutely tragic.”

  “Did you know Olivia?” I asked.

  “No, of course not.” He spoke too quickly. He was lying. He did it as easily as water flowing over a waterfall.

  Hot waves of anger washed over me; a high-pitched buzzing rang in my ears. He was involved in this. Somehow. I just didn’t know how to prove it. The police wouldn’t believe me—a grieving mother—over Gavin Montgomery, a successful, well-respected politician.

  Gavin shed his navy suit jacket and meticulously folded it in half, then draped it across the back of the couch.

  “Now.” He turned to face us. He was still smiling, but his eyes had gone wintry cold. “I presume you don’t have a warrant, so I suggest you rethink this line of questioning.”

  “No problem,” Anthony said easily. “But this isn’t going away. We’ll be back.”

  “Bring a warrant next time. And take it to my lawyer,” Gavin tossed over his shoulder as he left the room, as confident as any man who knew he was untouchable.

  × × ×

  Outside, rain had started to fall, fat drops pinging against my scalp as Anthony and I walked to his car. A wet leaf smacked against my shoe and I kicked it free.

  My phone rang.

  “Abi, it’s Brad. Have you seen Sarah?” My sister’s husband sounded stressed.

  “No. Not for a few days.” I cringed at the admission. “Everything okay?”

  “I don’t know. She texted earlier asking me to get Dylan from school, but I haven’t heard from her since. She still isn’t home, but Dylan’s sleeping and I can’t leave him to go look for her.”

  “Oh God.”

  “What’s wrong?” Anthony asked sharply.

  “Sarah’s missing.”

  “We’ll find her. Where would she go?”

  I thought hard, panic spinning in my chest. “To Olivia in the hospital. Or to her office.”

  “Let’s go.”

  I told Brad we’d call him back, and got in the car.

  Just then a shout sounded. “Wait!”

  Kendall was running from the house. She fell dramatically against my door, her face streaked with tears. I rolled my window down, and she thrust a crumpled piece of paper at me.

  “Olivia had this DNA test done on my dad. She asked me if she could have the results sent to me so nobody would find out. I got it right before . . . you know.” A tear rolled down her face. It hovered on the corner of her jaw, then splashed onto my hand, which gripped the car door where the window was rolled down.

  I took the paper and read it. It was unnecessary, really. I already knew Gavin was her father. “Did Olivia see this? Did she know for sure?” I asked urgently.

  “Yeah.” Her voice cracked like a piece of old leather. “I called her that day. She said she was going to talk to him about it. I think she confronted him. If the media found out about Olivia, or if my mom did . . .” Kendall snorted a laugh, even though she clearly didn’t think it was funny. “She’d leave him in a heartbeat, and take her money with her.”

  23

  * * *

  ABI

  november

  Anthony pulled up at the hospital, and I dashed inside, up the stairs to Olivia’s room. But Sarah wasn’t there. I gave my girl a quick kiss on the cheek and told her we were looking for her aunt, but I’d be back soon.

  We drove to the strip mall where Sarah rented space for her counseling sessions. But as soon as we got there, I knew she wasn’t there. The lights were dark and the doors locked tight.

  I banged my hand against my forehead.

  “We’ll find her,” Anthony reassured me.

  “This is my fault,” I moaned.

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  But I knew he was wrong. The closer I got to the truth about Olivia, the more I’d pushed Sarah away. The one person who’d always been there for me, no matter what. I didn’t want to deal with how I’d feel if she left me too. Maybe that was why I isolated myself—not just from her, but from everyone. It was easier to hide.

  And suddenly, I knew where Sarah was.

  × × ×

  After our mother died, Sarah had spent a lot of time at her grave. We never talked about it—Sarah didn’t want to talk, which was ironic, considering she’d chosen counseling as a career. I only found out years later, when she admitted to me she went nearly every day after dropping me off at school.

  She said it was where she went to hide.

  When we pulled up to the cemetery, it was pitch black. Anthony grabbed a flashlight from the trunk and swept it along the pathway in front of us as I led him to my mother’s grave.

  After a few minutes, the flashlight illuminated Sarah’s face. She was sitting on the ground, her back against our mother’s headstone.

  “Sarah!” I rushed toward my sister and knelt in the grass next to her, the knees of my jeans immediately soaking through.

  Sarah started crying when she saw me, great, heaving sobs. She looked like she’d been crying all day. Her eyes were so puffy she peered at me through slits. An open fifth of whiskey was propped against the marble headstone.

  Anthony took my phone and texted Brad while I turned to Sarah, suddenly furious.

  “Jesus, Sarah! You scared me! Brad’s been worried sick! What were you thinking?”

  “Abi,” she sobbed. “I’ve fucked up. I’ve really fucked up.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Sarah never fucked up. She was perfect, selfless as a saint. When our mother died, she’d boxed up all my things and moved me in with her. She sat with me as I did my homework every night, papers spread across the wobbly veneered kitchen table, the smell of cardboard pizza and cheap TV dinners thick in the air. She’d worked evenings so she could watch Olivia during the days while I finished college. Sarah was relentlessly competent and infinitely proficient. She never made mistakes.

  “I didn’t know it would hurt you your whole life. I would’ve done it differently.” Sarah pushed the heels of her hands against her eyes, her mouth contorting on a sob.

  I glanced at Anthony. “What are you talking about?”

  “You said you never got any closure after Mom died. You said it broke you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Mom left a note!”

  I let go of Sarah and swayed backward as memories of that day rushed at me. . . .

  The day my mom had killed herself dawned bright and blue, but with a sharp chill to the air. Halloween was just a few days away, and pumpkins sat on the front porches of most of the houses in the neighborhood, their sinister mouths and jagged teeth grinning at me.

  I woke to the sound of her vacuuming her office, wher
e she only went when something was wrong. I huddled under my covers longer than normal, just to avoid her.

  She could be like that: happy one day, withdrawing into a shell the next.

  I got dressed, ate some cereal, brushed my teeth. But when it was time for her to drive me to school, she was still cleaning. I opened the door to her office, and she was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor.

  “Mom, I’m late for school.”

  “You’re not going.”

  “What? Why?”

  She didn’t answer. Just kept scrubbing.

  “Mom, why?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Her blue eyes were wide, veined with red. Suddenly she scrambled to her feet and shoved past me. In my room, she grabbed my backpack and filled it with dirty clothes from my hamper in my closet.

  “Get in the car,” she said. “I’ll take you to Sarah’s.”

  Her face looked weird, pale and stressed. She was sweating—not just a bit of moisture but actual drops that trickled down the side of her face and filled the dip of her throat.

  At Sarah’s apartment, she dragged me up the stairs, her hand like a shackle around my wrist. She pushed me down until I sat on the muddy mat, then leaned into my face.

  “You stay right here,” she hissed. Her eyes were dilated, the blue edged out by a darkness so great I almost didn’t recognize her.

  “Mo-ooom!!!” I whined, angry and feeling the first whispers of panic at the thought of being left alone. “Where are you going? I don’t want to wait here!”

  “Sarah will be home soon.”

  “What if she isn’t?”

  “Trust me.” She started to walk away.

  “You are such a freak!” I scrambled to my feet. “You can’t just leave me here all by myself!”

  Mom came back fast. For a second I thought she’d hit me, but instead she hugged me so tight it hurt my rib cage.

  “What does Mommy always say?” she asked, kneeling in front of me.

  I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t called her Mommy in years. “ ‘Whenever, whatever. I’m here forever,’ ” I recited.

  “That’s my girl.” She touched her fingertips lightly to my chest, her eyes glistening. “Forever.”

  Then she straightened and walked away.

  “Mooom!!! Mo-om?” I stomped the ground furiously. I waited a minute, and when she didn’t reply I yelled: “Fine! Go then! I don’t care if you leave!”

  The only sound was the screech of the car wheels as she gunned it out of the parking lot.

  I waited more than an hour, my emotions veering between fear and anger. Finally Sarah appeared at the end of the hallway, home from college.

  “What are you—where’s Mom?” she asked, her eyebrows crumpling.

  “She left.” I scowled.

  “She left you here? When?” Sarah’s voice pitched high.

  “I don’t know. An hour ago?”

  Sarah’s fingers dug into my shoulders; her face had turned the color of old putty. “Think, Abi. Where was Mom going?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t say!”

  Sarah grabbed my hand, and we ran to her car. When we pulled up to our faded, two-story clapboard house, I burst out of the car, an acidic sensation wheeling in my stomach.

  I could hear the leaves we’d raked just yesterday crunch under my feet as I pounded across the yard to the front door.

  “Mom?” I shouted, flinging the front door open.

  “Abi! Come here!” Sarah was right behind me, but I darted out of her reach. She was always telling me what to do.

  I ran up the stairs to Mom’s office and pushed open the door. The first thing that hit me was the smell—as if somebody had lit off a firework.

  Mom was slumped over her desk, the wall behind her sprayed with something dark. Her fingers still clutched a gun. I’d never seen a gun in real life before.

  Sarah crashed into me, shouting my name, but I couldn’t hear anything anymore. Nothing registered. All I could do was wonder where that gun came from.

  I shoved Sarah away and turned to vomit all over my mom’s nice clean carpet.

  × × ×

  The peculiar numbness of psychological shock was settling over me.

  Suicide of a parent, that type of abandonment, it did things to a person. It didn’t take a shrink to tell me that I didn’t trust people to stay because my mom had promised she’d be there and then wasn’t.

  I was terrified that there was some deep flaw inside of me that had made her leave, that made everybody leave. That worry had clawed its way into me, cemented by life’s hairpin turns and sudden drop-offs.

  “Mom left a note?” I said, my voice a ragged whisper.

  Sarah nodded. “I hid it from you. I’m sorry.”

  “Where is it?”

  “You won’t get any closure from it,” she said. “Words on paper won’t make what she did logical.”

  I held my hand out.

  Sarah pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her coat pocket, smoothed it against her thigh, and handed it to me. When I opened it, I noticed dark flecks sprayed across it. There wasn’t really much to read.

  I don’t want this world. I don’t want to be your mother. I can’t handle it. I don’t want

  The note ended abruptly in the middle of her sentence. No final stop, no resolution, as if she’d realized midnote what she was going to do.

  I let go of the note. It floated like a feather through the air and landed gently in the mud at Sarah’s feet.

  I don’t want to be your mother.

  “Mom had bipolar disorder, Abi. She wasn’t well.”

  My mind flashed back to my recurring dream of my mother and me on the roof. And I knew. It wasn’t a dream.

  Other memories assaulted me. Mom screaming at Sarah because she’d shrunk a sweater in a hot wash; waking after a bad dream and finding her furiously painting the bathroom after a 3 a.m. run to Walmart.

  “That night, on the roof.” My voice was weak with shock. “You saved me.”

  Sarah nodded. “Yes. Mom told you that you could fly.”

  “Why didn’t you call social services?”

  “I was a teenager. I couldn’t take care of you. And I was scared. I didn’t want you to go into foster care. Then she got better. She got some counseling. Took her meds every day. But then I started noticing little things. She’d forget to pick you up from school, or she’d go on manic spending sprees. I should’ve known she was spiraling.”

  Anthony had been listening to us talk, but now he turned off the flashlight and handed it to me.

  “I’ll be in the car when you need me,” he said quietly.

  I watched him walk away, then moved the bottle of whiskey and sat next to Sarah, our backs against our mother’s headstone.

  “I thought it was my fault,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my eyes. “That last day . . . God, I’ve never told anybody this. When she dropped me off at your place, I called her a freak. I said I didn’t care if she left. Next thing I knew, she was dead. I thought it was my fault.”

  “No, Abi. Mom was sick. I saw all the signs. I shouldn’t have let you go in there first. . . .” Her voice strangled, but she kept going. “When I saw her note, I put it in my pocket so you wouldn’t think it was your fault. I was selfish, thinking I could fix it for you. I wanted to protect you. And Olivia. God, I’ve been so arrogant! Maybe if I’d told you she knew about Gavin—”

  Sarah started crying again.

  “No. It isn’t your fault. None of it. I’m sorry I said it was. I hope you know I didn’t mean it.”

  Suddenly it made perfect sense. Mom hadn’t left me because she didn’t want me. She’d withdrawn, pushed me away, because she was more damaged than I ever knew.

  I didn’t understand her mental illness, but I knew one thing. Being a mother wasn’t something you just “handled.” Olivia had saved me, and if Mom had been mentally stable, I would’ve been enough to save her. Her death didn’t have
anything to do with me at all.

  I grabbed the fifth of whiskey and took a swig. Sarah had barely touched it. The liquor stung, but I swallowed it anyway.

  I didn’t want to be like my mom, hiding from the world, pushing the people who cared for me away. I wanted to connect and experience my life.

  “You have the truth about Mom. Now can you say good-bye?” Sarah said, her voice husky from crying.

  “I’m gonna try,” I replied honestly.

  “Once you get the truth about Olivia, you’ll still have to say good-bye to her. Nothing’s going to change that.”

  “I know.” I leaned my head against my sister’s shoulder and she put an arm around me. “I know.”

  Sarah brushed my hair off my face and kissed my forehead. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t pull away.

  24

  * * *

  OLIVIA

  july

  A loud knocking on the front door shook me awake. I blinked against the sun beaming brightly through my window, disoriented and half-asleep. The knock came again, and I jolted out of bed. I pulled a pair of shorts on over my underwear and hurried down the stairs.

  “Tyler!” I gasped when I opened the door. I hadn’t seen him since right after school got out, and other than a few texts we hadn’t even spoken.

  “Hi, babe,” Tyler said with a grin. He swept past me into the room as I stood speechless, the doorknob still clutched in my hand. He held his arms open.

  I hesitated. My still half-asleep brain reeled. I’d have to hug him, of course. But I didn’t move.

  His arms dropped to his sides and his face crumpled into that dejected, heartbroken look I’d seen so often since his parents’ breakup. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I hugged him quickly, then sat on the couch and pulled my knees to my chest, suddenly feeling underdressed. “I’m just still waking up. What are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean? I told you I was coming this week.”

  “You said the weekend.”

  “Oh. Well, I meant this week. It’s not a problem, right? You don’t have plans with your secret other boyfriend?”