Dead Secret

by Ava McCarthy

  He shoved his chair away from the table and wandered over to the window, slouching against the wall, staring out at the dark. ‘We’ve lost him.’

  Jodie dropped her gaze to the papers in her hands. Tidied them up, slipped them back inside the file. Her gaze drifted over to the slim, blue folder and slowly, she reached out, slid it towards her and opened it.

  21

  The first thing Jodie saw was the newspaper article recounting her father’s death. She extracted it from the folder and scanned the familiar words.

  Storms in Ramsey County … three men drowned in Devil’s Lake … Peter Rosen (19).

  She felt a tug in her chest. Kept her face passive, aware of Novak’s scrutiny. She stared at the article. What the hell was Ethan doing with a copy of it in his file?

  She set it aside, then sorted through the next few pages in the folder, working hard to ignore the large white envelope of photos at the back. She flicked through reviews of her art exhibitions, the same ones Novak had read out over the phone. Beneath those lay a stack of envelopes: old letters addressed to her, most of them opened.

  Ethan had been intercepting her mail.

  She checked the dates on a few unopened envelopes: 2012, late June, early July. He probably hadn’t got around to opening them before the day of the fireworks. She extracted a sheet of paper from one already opened, dated February 2012. A rescheduled doctor’s appointment for Abby. Jodie went still, a cold wash of time flooding through her. Ethan’s voice: Jesus, Jodie, how could you forget to take her to the doctor? What kind of a mother does a thing like that?

  Jodie scrunched the paper up, shoved the stack of envelopes to one side. Novak wandered over to the bed and picked up the newspaper article.

  ‘So you never knew your father?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Never knew her either.’ Jodie removed another bunch of pages from the file, some of them stapled together. ‘I was brought up in foster homes.’

  She sensed him pause, felt his gaze slide her way. He was silent for a moment, probably re-thinking his view of her. She was used to that. She fixed her gaze on the pages in front of her. People never understood about foster care; they always assumed you’d done something wrong to get there. After a moment, Novak said,

  ‘Wow, that explains it.’

  Her head snapped up. ‘Explains what?’

  ‘The tough shell.’

  Jodie felt her face set. Novak nodded, gesturing towards her.

  ‘There it is again. That Keep-Out sign. Well, you know what? I’m a journalist. Trespassing is what I do.’

  Jodie broke off eye contact, focused instead on the papers in her hands. Her brows shot up as she took in the details in front of her: dates, times, locations, activities; a diary of her movements in the months before Abby had died. Novak was right. Ethan had hired someone to follow her.

  She flicked Novak a glance.

  ‘Have you been through all this stuff?’

  ‘Not really. It’s Ethan I’ve been investigating, not you.’ He gave her a steady look. ‘Until now, that is.’

  Jodie flipped through the pages, trying to ignore him. He sat across from her on the bed.

  ‘Ever try to trace your mother?’

  ‘No point.’ Jodie extracted the next set of documents from the file. ‘She died in prison soon after I was born.’

  That seemed to bring him up short, but not for long.

  ‘What was she in for?’

  ‘Drugs.’

  Jodie was aware her responses were becoming clipped, as though shorter sentences would give less of herself away. Her gaze slid over the page in her hand, not really seeing it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Novak said. ‘I guess that was tough.’

  A knot of guilt twisted inside her. The truth was, as a child she’d always hated her mother. Hated her for being a drug addict. Hated her for being in prison, for giving her up.

  Hated her for dying.

  Jodie flashed on the women she’d known in Framingham. Young Nate, hooked on crack; desperate to change, doomed to fail. Bleak-faced Orianne, recently pregnant; forced to desert her baby while she served another seven years. Jodie felt a sharp pang of regret. Maybe she’d never really given her mother a chance.

  Novak indicated the article in his hand. ‘So you managed to trace your father?’

  She gave a curt nod. ‘Now I wish I hadn’t.’

  ‘Because you found out he was dead?’

  ‘Because it’s how I met Ethan.’

  He gave her an enquiring look and she started to explain, beginning with how she’d wound up in Carrington, North Dakota, talking to old Mrs Blane.

  ‘She had a contact number for Celine Rosen, my father’s mother. My grandmother, that is.’

  Jodie paused. She hadn’t thought about her grandmother in some time, and felt a sudden rush of empathy for the woman she’d never met; a woman bullied by her husband; a woman grieving for both her son and her daughter. Jodie gave herself a mental shake and went on.

  ‘It was a contact number for her lawyers, Ives and McKenzie, but it was almost ten years old. They’d moved a few times since then, but I finally ran them down in Boston. They’d gone up in the world.’ She pictured the imposing, cylindrical skyscraper, forty-six floors of law firms and bankers. ‘By then, the original Ives and McKenzie were dead, and no one had a record of my grandmother as a client. I never found her.’

  She could still recall the sense of loss she’d felt as the last link to her family had melted into the past. She shrugged the memory off and said,

  ‘Ethan walked into the building as I was leaving it. Turned out he’d just opened his own law firm there.’

  She’d been lingering in the ritzy, impersonal lobby, feeling adrift, when he’d stepped through the revolving doors. She’d looked up. Felt the room undergo a subtle shift. As though the air had been polished. There was a vibrancy about him, an intense energy that contrasted with the casual, undone collar, the barely there beard, the longish hair. He’d greeted the security guard by name, seemed unaware of the man’s gratified look as he continued on towards the lifts. Then he’d slowed his pace, and settled his dark eyes on Jodie’s. Her senses had prickled with a heightened awareness.

  He’d hesitated. Asked if she was okay. His gaze had been probing. Tentatively, he’d offered to buy her a coffee. He’d seemed diffident. Shy, almost. She’d smiled up at him and said yes.

  Novak broke through her thoughts. ‘That’s it? What, he just walked in the door and swept you off your feet?’

  She shrugged and looked down at the papers in her hand. ‘Something like that.’

  She’d never known anything like it before. The bond had been immediate, locking them together like fast-acting glue. Captivating them, almost. At first, she’d resisted, too cautious to share herself or her past. But within a few months they were together all the time, discovering the same likes and dislikes, the same shared gestures, finishing each other’s sentences. The way lovers do when their world feels magnetic, every microcrystal aligned just to fuse them together.

  But in truth, at times it was overwhelming. A smothering brew of intimacy and claustrophobia that made it hard for Jodie to breathe. Magnets could repel as well as attract. More than once, she’d experienced the urge to surface for air.

  But of course, she hadn’t. She’d put the urges down to her own hang-ups about intimacy, and shut the warning voices out.

  Jodie’s gaze refocused on the pages in her hand. She let out a deep breath, expelling the memories. Then she flicked a glance at Novak. His expression looked cynical, and she didn’t blame him.

  She turned her attention back to the pages, flipping through them, scanning their contents. Then she frowned. Backtracked and read them again. Dates, names, institutions. Jesus. Ethan’s investigator had chronicled her pass-the-parcel upbringing. All the residential care centres; the dozen or so foster families; almost as many schools. Strung together it read like th
e résumé of a juvenile delinquent.

  Jodie stared. What had Ethan been planning to do with all this information?

  Novak reached ahead of her into the file, extracting the last loose sheet. He perused it for a moment, then handed it over.

  ‘I guess this must be your grandfather.’

  Jodie skimmed the single, short paragraph: a death notice dated ten years previously.

  Rosen, Elliot (Carrington, North Dakota). Died Feb 1, 2005. Survived by wife Celine, daughter Lily. Father of the late Peter. Funeral service Feb 4, 10:30 a.m., Holy Spirit Church, Fargo.

  The wording was stark, devoid of sentiment. No ‘deeply regretted’; no ‘sadly missed’. A death unmourned. Jodie read it again. Survived by wife Celine. So she hadn’t divorced him.

  She turned the page over, as though hoping for more. There was nothing else about her grandfather, but someone had scribbled an address and phone number slantwise on the back. She frowned at it for a moment, not sure it really meant anything. Eventually, she said,

  ‘That flight Ethan was meant to catch on the fourth of July.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You said there were only a few he could have caught at that hour of the night.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Flights to London or Zurich.’

  ‘There was a third one, wasn’t there? Some place in Oregon?’

  Novak paused, then nodded. ‘Yeah, I’d sort of discounted it. Some dinky little airport I’d never even heard of. I looked it up and you can’t even fly there from Boston any more.’

  ‘Was it Grants Pass?’

  His expression sharpened. ‘That sounds about right. Yeah, Grants Pass, Oregon.’

  She read out the address. ‘Marshall Lake Treatment Facility, Grants Pass, Oregon.’

  Novak held out a hand. ‘Let me see that.’

  ‘It mightn’t mean anything.’

  Novak frowned at the scribbled words. ‘You think that’s where he was headed that night?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Seems like a long shot. And why does it matter now, anyway?’

  ‘You were the one who said it matters. You said it matters because he lied about it. And I think you’re right. If it was important enough to lie about back then, maybe it’s still important to him now. Maybe we can get a line on him there.’

  Novak’s eyes lingered on the address. ‘Treatment Facility. Sounds like some kind of therapy centre.’

  He moved over to his laptop and hit a few keys, reading aloud from the screen. ‘Private residential centre. Depression, addiction, trauma, anxiety disorders. A Safe, Tranquil Place for Healing and Recovery.’ He reached for his phone. ‘Let’s see if they know anyone called McCall or Joshua Brown.’

  ‘Or Rosen.’

  He looked up and nodded, then made the call on loudspeaker, but immediately got stonewalled by the woman who eventually picked up at the other end. Impossible to discuss things of that nature over the phone, she said, and advised them to speak with their Director of Admissions in person in the morning.

  Novak cursed and disconnected. ‘Predictable, I guess.’

  Jodie nodded, and gathered up the documents on the bed, shuffling them together, squaring up the edges. Her eyes strayed to the blue folder. The only thing left was the envelope of photos.

  She set the paperwork aside and lifted out the envelope, resting it on her lap.

  ‘You don’t need to open that, Jodie.’

  Novak’s voice was gentle. He watched her from across the room for a moment. Then he moved back to the bed, sat down close beside her. He smelled of the sea and of fresh air, his rumpled hair still windswept from the boat journey.

  ‘You don’t have to look at them,’ he said. ‘Why do that to yourself now?’

  Jodie’s fingers rested over the flap. She opened her mouth to speak. Got cut off by a sudden congestion in her throat. She stopped and tried again.

  ‘You think I don’t already see her every day?’ she managed. ‘You think an hour ever goes by when I don’t picture her face?’ She smoothed a hand over the envelope, her fingers still oddly reluctant to open it. ‘Photographs can’t hurt any worse, can they?’

  Novak squeezed her hand. His was warm and strong, and she resisted the urge to cling to it with both of hers. He brushed a finger under her chin, tilting her face up. His eyes probed hers, as though asking permission for something.

  The air between them stirred like a warm current.

  His mouth found hers. Light and soft, his lips tasting of salt and beer. A shiver whispered through her, cleaving a wake of long-forgotten stirrings. Her insides melted, dissolved. Instantly felt vulnerable. Her guard snapped into place like a sprung mousetrap and, slowly, she pulled away.

  Her cheeks felt suffused with heat. Novak’s gaze searched her face, his eyes, always challenging, now filled with confusion.

  Jodie set the envelope aside and busied herself with tidying the documents back into the file.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Now’s not the time. I don’t need the distraction.’

  22

  The view of Oregon from the plane was a lot less colourful than the view of the Caribbean.

  Mountains and vast acres of forest blended together under a grey veil of snow and fog. According to the pilot, temperatures on the ground were in the sub-zero range, breaking record lows as a mass of Arctic air hovered across all the northern states.

  The plane banked into a steep descent, and Jodie’s stomach dipped. They’d been travelling for a gruelling eleven hours, apart from a brief pit-stop in Mexico, and her body dragged with fatigue. She stared at the dark, advancing hinterland, and Reuben’s warning about her passport looped through her head:

  ‘Leaving the US isn’t a problem. But you try and re-enter, that’s when they’ll take a closer look.’

  She shivered, and glanced over at Novak. He’d been keeping his distance since their encounter the previous night, generating an Arctic air mass all of his own. She suspected it was less about injured feelings and more about a protest at the trip to Oregon.

  ‘It’s a waste of time,’ he’d said, following her out into the hotel corridor and watching while she let herself into her own room. ‘That paperwork of Ethan’s was impounded right after his death, it’s almost three years old.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that address in Oregon is from a few years back. How could it possibly tell us where Ethan is now?’

  ‘Look, if you’ve got any better ideas, just say the word. I’m all ears.’ She’d paused, her door half-open. ‘You don’t have to come with me to Oregon, you know.’

  At that, he’d moved closer, one forearm raised to lean against the wall, his face bending in towards hers. Her insides had fizzed, and for an instant she’d felt reckless. But the impulse had passed, and Novak had said,

  ‘Push me away all you like, Jodie, but right now, you’re my story. Where you go, I go.’

  The aircraft swooped and Jodie’s innards lurched. She felt Novak watching her. His eyes flicked to the window. Back to her face.

  ‘You think we’ll have a problem down there?’ he said.

  Jodie averted her gaze. ‘Why would we? It’s not like anyone’s looking for me in Oregon.’

  ‘Show me your passport.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just show it to me.’

  She rummaged in her bag, handed the passport over. He flicked to the photo page, examining her new identity of Clara Philips.

  ‘Where’d you get this?’

  ‘Friend of a friend.’

  ‘Will it get you through immigration?’

  She looked at her hands. ‘It got me out.’

  He riffled through the pages, then handed it back. ‘Just how well did you cover your tracks before you got to Logan Airport?’

  Jodie flashed on her drive through the snow in Reuben’s truck, and on the cab driver who’d sounded the alarm not far from Reuben’s place. For all she knew, Reuben was known to the cops in the ar
ea. Maybe they’d already talked to him. Maybe by now she had bigger problems than the risk of immigration spotting a forgery. Maybe by now, airport security around the country was on the lookout for Clara Philips.

  She stared at the looming, grey terrain, her pulse racing. ‘Nothing’s foolproof.’

  Novak rolled his eyes. ‘Shit.’

  Jodie shuffled along the packed queues at immigration, holding herself rigid against the crush around her. Passengers were crammed together like fish in a dragnet, and beside her, Novak was using his elbows to carve out a space.

  From the plane, Portland Airport had looked small and compact, too modest to handle a crowd of this size. People started bellyaching, and behind her, somebody complained to one of the ground crew.

  ‘Holiday weekend, sir.’ The steward looked tense, trying to herd in the swarm of passengers. ‘Lots of delays with the snow, too, bunch of arrivals all in at the same time. Keep moving, sir, please.’

  The queue pressed forward, carrying Jodie with it. A holiday weekend. She flipped through a mental calendar. Presidents’ Day? Her gaze drifted across the hemmed-in crowds. These people were travelling home to share a family weekend: squabbling kids and in-laws; fancy dinners and leftovers; bedtime stories and kisses.

  Normal lives.

  Jodie’s chest felt hollow. She looked across at Novak, at his woolly hair and burly frame. She recalled his touch, his soft kiss. Felt a whisper of regret. She smothered it and dug her passport out, clutching it tight.

  The queue stalled. Immigration checkpoints barred the way ahead, and the crowd jostled towards the glassed-in cubicles, security guards snapping at them to get back in line. Jodie craned her neck, her heartbeat jumping. The area beyond the checkpoints was just as congested, passengers cleared for entry still clogging the way through to baggage claim.

  Novak squeezed in beside her, his bulk reassuring. ‘You okay?’

  Jodie nodded, stiffening against the pack of bodies. New arrivals were still flooding in from behind, jamming the crowds tight. Novak stretched his neck, watching the checkpoints.