The Night Olivia Fell

by Christina McDonald

  “Abi,” he said dully.

  He turned, and I followed him inside.

  He was playing a video game on a massive wide-screen TV. It was one of those first-person-point-of-view games, someone carrying a sniper rifle. The sniper was perched on the edge of a cliff, the crosshairs fixed on a group of snarling zombies below.

  “Derek,” I said. “We need to talk about Olivia.”

  He ignored me and kept playing.

  “I know you’re the baby’s father.”

  It was just a hunch, but Derek paused the game and sat utterly still for a moment, his head hanging heavy on his neck. His rapid breathing was the only sound in the deep silence.

  “Why are you here?” he rasped harshly.

  “Did you push Olivia?”

  Derek spun to face me, his eyes wide. Now that he was looking at me, I could see they glistened with unshed tears. “What?! No! I love her!” He shook his head and blinked furiously. “Loved her.”

  “You are the baby’s father, though, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  I sat on the matching brown leather chair next to him, wedging my body sideways so I was facing him.

  He put the controller on the console between the two chairs. “Yeah. She told me at the barbecue. I didn’t know what to say. I’d had a few beers and I think it muddled my head. I was . . . in shock. We were careful, you know?”

  “Did Tyler know?”

  “I don’t know. She never said. They’d already finished by then.”

  “She broke up with him?”

  “I guess.”

  I froze. Tyler had never told me they’d broken up. Had he? I shook my head, unable to remember.

  “Why didn’t she tell anybody about the two of you?”

  “First because of Tyler—she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Then there was Madison. . . . I kept bugging her about it. I hated it being a secret, you know? When she told me she was pregnant, I—”

  He dropped his head into his hands and started crying, his shoulders heaving soundlessly.

  I watched him, feeling inexplicably disappointed. I wanted the culprit to be him. But could this broken, damaged person be to blame?

  “You knew she was trying to find her father, right? Why didn’t you stop her?”

  He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “It wasn’t my call. It was hers. Besides, I would never tell her what to do.”

  Whether it was intended as criticism or not, I felt his words slice like arrows through my heart. I held the pain inside, my body trembling.

  “Why didn’t you come forward when the police were investigating?” I said after a minute.

  “I gave them my statement.”

  “You didn’t tell them the baby’s yours!” I exclaimed.

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything!” Under the TV’s garish lights, his skin looked gray. “Anyway, I’ve seen CSI. I’m not stupid. They’d think I was the one who hurt her or something, and I didn’t.”

  I stared at the TV, the scope of an assault rifle frozen on the massive screen.

  “How did she even find out about Gavin?” I asked.

  “She met this girl on some school away day. Kendall. She looked just like her, only Kendall is crazy. Like, really just cuckoo. Kendall invited Olivia over to meet Gavin, but it turned out Kendall had set us up. Or maybe she was just trying to set Gavin up. That’s what I mean by crazy. She’s always plotting and sneaking around. When we got to their house, there were all these reporters there. It was weird.”

  I remembered the tension that had vibrated between Kendall and Gavin the day I met her. The girl had serious daddy issues.

  “A week later, Gavin called Olivia and asked if she wanted to go to lunch. I drove her to Laurelwood, and they met at that diner there. I waited in the car, and while I was there I saw Kendall. She sneaked up to the diner windows and watched them talk, then she went back to her car and just sat there staring at the diner. And a few minutes later she drove off.”

  “She followed Gavin there?”

  Derek nodded.

  “Did you tell Olivia?”

  “Yeah. Later.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me Kendall was in the hospital for a while after trying to kill herself. And she’d gone through drug rehab. Like I said—cuckoo.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Of course.” He seemed impatient with the question. “I told them they should talk to Kendall. I thought maybe, you know, she pushed Olivia. The guy who took my statement said somebody would get in touch with me, but they never did.”

  The thought slid into me like liquid mercury. Maybe Kendall had sent the pictures to Olivia. A mentally unstable teenager, jealous of her father paying attention to his other daughter. The childish scribblings on the pictures; the repeated threats: die, kill, bitch! It would make a disturbed sort of sense.

  I stood, and Derek did too. His voice, when he spoke, sounded weary and hollow. “Is she—will she really never wake up?”

  I shook my head, my throat thickening.

  “No. She doesn’t have any brain activity.”

  The words were like a million knives scraping across my throat. It was the first time I’d said it out loud. The first time, I think, that I’d really let the truth settle on me.

  “The doctors have only kept her alive because of the baby. That’s what they’re focusing on now.”

  I heard the sharp intake of breath, and I wrapped my arms around Derek as he sobbed.

  “Is it . . . will it . . . ?”

  “The baby’s fine,” I assured him. “It’s a little girl. She’s healthy and growing fast.”

  Derek turned and walked to his chair, collapsing like a pile of laundry. His face was stark and angular, with none of the softness I remembered. He looked at me, his eyes sunken pools of anguish. “Can I see her?”

  “Derek, she’s your daughter. You don’t have to ask.”

  Knowing I might lose Olivia’s baby to Derek was a crushing realization: another loss to endure. But a child needed its father. I knew that better than most.

  I turned to go, my hand on the door handle, when my eyes skated over something that made my heart stop. It winked at me from the edge of his dresser. Something silver and instantly familiar.

  I stared at it, my mind scrambling to piece together its meaning.

  Olivia’s bracelet.

  My mind flashed to that last day at the barbecue. It had sparkled on her wrist as she ran a hand through her newly cropped hair. Detective Samson had said they never found it. I’d thought it had gotten lost when she fell, the clasp perhaps snapping somehow.

  I reached for the bracelet, my legs like jelly, and picked it up. I held the cool, slippery metal and fingered the clasp. It wasn’t broken. That meant it had been taken off Olivia’s wrist. A chill whispered over my skin and goose bumps sprang up along my arms.

  I spun around to Derek.

  “Where did you get this?” I said, something awful coiling in my brain, like a snake, tongue darting and ready to strike. “Why is this in your room? Did you take it from her?”

  Derek’s eyes widened, horror filling the white spaces there.

  “No!” He lifted his palms. “No, I swear! I didn’t take it. My mom gave it to me. The day after Olivia fell. She said it must’ve fallen off Olivia’s wrist at the barbecue. She told me to keep it for her.”

  “It didn’t fall off! Look! The clasp isn’t broken!” I shook it at him. “And Olivia would never take it off!”

  Olivia had been wearing the bracelet at the barbecue, but it was gone by the time I saw her in the hospital. I flashed back to that moment when Jen was in Olivia’s room, her fists gripped tightly together, pressed against her stomach.

  A spike of fury rose inside me, sharp as a knife stabbing into the soft skin of my stomach. It was weird, anger this intense. Maybe it was just my brain’s way of coping with it. I couldn’t h
andle it all at once, so instead it came in waves, swirling like a hurricane.

  I lunged for the stairs and threw myself up them two at a time.

  “Jen!” I roared. I barreled past the kitchen’s gleaming hardwood floors, the neatly arranged dining room, to the den at the back of the house. Jen was curled into a corner of the pale leather couch, a book in hand. Mark had his legs out, eyes on the TV.

  “You conniving bitch!” I shouted, rage filling every fiber of my being, making me feel suddenly huge and powerful. I was no longer the meek and timid woman intimidated by their wealth, their status, their self-assurance. A crazed sort of fury had burned that woman up, turned her into ashes that disappeared in the wind.

  Jen and Mark jumped to their feet, confused by my sudden appearance.

  “Abi—” Jen said, her eyes darting behind me.

  “You took this from her, didn’t you?” I crossed the room in giant strides until I was directly in front of Jen.

  “Was it you? Did you push her? You couldn’t stand the thought of a new woman in your son’s life. Or maybe you just didn’t want her ruining him. She was pregnant, after all. So you thought you’d get rid of her.”

  I was pulsing with anger. Nobody knew what I was capable of, least of all myself.

  Jen paled and shrank away from me. Mark put a protective arm around her and addressed me.

  “What are you talking about, Abi?” he demanded. “Jen had nothing to do with what happened to Olivia.”

  I dangled the bracelet in the air between us. “This is Olivia’s bracelet. She’s worn it every day since I got it for her, but when she was brought into the hospital, nobody knew where it had gone. And now I’ve found it in your house. Derek said Jen gave it to him after Olivia fell.”

  I pointed at Derek, who’d trailed behind me and was now leaning, pale and shaken, against the arched entryway. Next to him Madison stood blinking sleepily, her hair in disarray.

  “Jen?” Mark turned uncertainly to his wife.

  Jen covered her face with her hands and started to cry. “I’m sorry, Abi,” she wept. “They took it off at the hospital when they gave Olivia an MRI. One of the doctors handed it to me and told me to give it to you. I know I should’ve, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I saw that charm in Derek’s room a few days before.”

  I looked at the bracelet, wondering what she was talking about. But there it was, a small heart-shaped charm hanging from the bracelet. On either side were the initials: OK, DS.

  “I knew as soon as I saw that charm on Olivia’s bracelet that Derek had given it to her. But that meant the police would know too. They would think it was his fault. They’d blame him. You know my son. He’s not a murderer! So I gave the bracelet to Derek and told him to hold on to it for her.”

  “Mom!” Derek gasped.

  Next to him, Madison’s mouth fell open. Mark’s arm dropped from Jen’s shoulders and he took a step away from her, as if she were now contaminated.

  Sensations crawled up and down my skin: heat, as a furious flush crisped my cheeks; itchiness, as anxiety fluttered between my ribs. All the emotions I’d learned to hold in since I was a teenager were suddenly being laid bare, open and exposed as a nerve.

  “You lied to me,” I hissed. “You betrayed me.”

  “No.” She shook her head, her curls swinging wildly around her pale face. “I—I didn’t betray you.”

  “You think omission isn’t a betrayal?”

  “I was only trying to protect my child!”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  For a moment my rage was so huge I wanted to hurt her. I imagined putting my hands on her neck and squeezing. . . .

  And then the rage disappeared, as fast as it had come, and I felt nothing but an aching, hollow sadness that tightened like a fist, knuckles digging into my heart. I looked at them, this family I thought I could trust, and I had that feeling you get when you look at the rainy puddles on the ground and see the reflection of the sky above you, and for a second you can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t.

  I wanted to say something, but just then my cell phone rang, bleating into the stillness.

  “Hello?” I answered sharply, holding my other hand in the air.

  “Miss Knight?” Dr. Maddox said. “I need you to come to the hospital right away. The baby . . .”

  32

  * * *

  ABI

  november

  I drove west from the Stokeses’ house, cutting through the old part of town and emerging by the sea. I turned left, racing along the water’s edge as waves pounded the rocks, reaching toward me like arthritic fingers.

  I skidded into a parking spot and hurried to the hospital entrance. The line of trees that separated the hospital from the beach huddled shivering against the inky waves. Wind whistled noisily through their branches.

  Sarah was already waiting for me inside; she’d beaten me to the hospital in the few minutes since I’d called her. Dr. Maddox emerged as if by magic from the swinging white doors on the far side of reception. She was wearing jeans under her white scrub coat, a pair of white tennis shoes on her feet. She had a stethoscope draped over one arm, a chart in the other. She looked calm, serene, totally poised.

  Dr. Maddox took us through the swinging doors to a room behind reception—not the same one where they’d told me about Olivia, but similar. She shut the door, and the click was so absolute that a crashing familiarity rushed over me. I inhaled sharply.

  “You should know right away that the baby is fine.” Her eyebrows crinkled inward, her eyes kind and comforting.

  Sarah gasped and reached for my hand. Tears of relief bubbled in my throat, and I didn’t bother to hold them back.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Olivia had a dramatic drop in blood pressure due to compression of the vena cava by her uterus. Basically, she was lying on her back and the weight of her uterus pressed on one of the main veins to her heart. As a result, the placenta and the baby suddenly weren’t getting enough oxygenated blood. This usually doesn’t happen until a bit later in pregnancy, so we weren’t looking out for it just yet”—Dr. Maddox touched my arm and smiled gently—“but now that we know what the problem is, all we have to do is have her propped up or lying on her side and she’ll be fine.”

  I wiped my eyes. “But the baby’s okay?”

  I noticed immediately the glaring emptiness in that sentence: I hadn’t asked how Olivia was. Somewhere over the last few weeks, my priority had shifted from my daughter to her baby.

  I closed my eyes as a crushing realization swept over me. I was already letting go of Olivia.

  “The baby’s fine,” Dr. Maddox reassured me. “In fact, we can do a scan, if you like?”

  “Oh,” I breathed. “Yes, please.”

  We followed her down the labyrinth of halls to the private room Olivia’s mysterious donor had provided. The room was warm, humid. Sarah and I stripped off our coats and hung them on the back of the door, then stood silently sweating as we looked at Olivia.

  Olivia lay motionless. I crossed the room to touch her hair, a sudden memory hitting me.

  Once when Olivia was about six or seven, she woke in the middle of the night crying. I ran to her room and held her tight, pressing my face into the dip of her neck and stroking the silk threads of her hair with my fingers.

  Gradually her body relaxed and her sobs turned to snuffles. After a while she told me she’d dreamt that she died. She was buried under the Eiffel Tower looking up at all the people walking over her, continuing on their journeys as if it didn’t even matter that she was just beneath the skin on their toes.

  “It scared me,” Olivia said, “because even though I was dead, everybody else just kept right on going, like it didn’t even matter that I wasn’t there anymore.” She nuzzled into me. “Don’t leave me, Mommy.”

  “Oh, my darling.” I gathered her close so our hearts were pressed together, inhaling her st
rawberry scent.

  And for some reason my mother’s words had come back to me, floating on the breath of a long-broken promise:

  “Whenever, whatever. I’m here forever.”

  The memory was so vivid it was like a jolt to the heart when I opened my eyes and realized where I was. I wished I could go back to that moment and tell Olivia not to worry, that she wouldn’t be forgotten. No matter what, she would still be here. I would feel her in the garden as it bloomed in the spring. I would see her in the crystal air as my breath fogged in winter. I’d smell her when I inhaled the soft, baby scent of her daughter.

  She would always matter.

  Dr. Maddox positioned the bulky gray ultrasound machine next to Olivia. The head of the bed was elevated so her upper body was raised a bit. Under the white sheet a new roundness pushed out from her abdomen. A few seconds later I heard the rapid thud, thud of the baby’s heartbeat. The map of the baby slowly took shape on the screen, and I felt a rush of pure love, a realization of the gift Olivia had given me.

  “Look.” Dr. Maddox traced the shape of the baby’s spine as she spun around slowly. “She’s doing somersaults in there.”

  Just then Dr. Maddox was paged on the intercom.

  “Excuse me a moment,” she said, standing and leaving quickly.

  I stared after her for a minute before turning to Sarah. “Derek, Jen’s son, is the baby’s father,” I told her. “I talked to him before you called.”

  “What?” Sarah looked stunned. “Are you kidding?”

  “Not even a little bit.” I raked my hands through my hair and groaned, a low growl of pain and frustration. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, if he’ll want the baby or if I’ll raise her. And, to be honest, I’m scared of having a baby again. Remember Olivia? Remember when . . .”

  In a rush of emotion, I recalled those first difficult months after Olivia was born. Motherhood with its colossal responsibilities and weeks of little to no sleep with a colicky infant turned me into someone I didn’t recognize. I loved my daughter with everything in me, but it was more complicated than that.