by Nicole Baart
“I’m sorry,” Jess whispered. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”
Max ripped the paper off his straw and stuck it into his drink.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this,” she went on. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
But when Jess drove past Evan’s town house, the windows were dark, heavy with drapes that had been pulled across the glass as if it were the dead of winter. Evan was not at work, not at home. And he wasn’t answering her texts or phone calls.
Mexico. The thought came unbidden as she pulled into the driveway of their renovated bungalow. They had bought it together only six weeks before Max was born, and Jess had painted his nursery on the second floor a cool, pistachio green even as she ignored the contractions that were coming more and more frequently. It was no-VOC, low-odor paint that the cashier at Home Depot assured her was safe for use during pregnancy. But Jess breathed shallowly anyway and powered through, leaning with her hands on her knees when the tightening around her abdomen threatened to snap her back in two. She was determined to finish the task before she let Evan take her to the hospital.
Jess did, and with plenty of time to spare, because the contractions turned out to be prodromal labor and she didn’t end up delivering Maxwell Thomas until ten days later. By that time she was a wreck in every possible way. There was a rib out of place and she hadn’t slept in days, but she had managed to also paint the dining room a deep, whale blue and apply fresh grout to the heirloom subway tile backsplash in the kitchen.
“When he’s old enough to stay with your parents, I’m taking you to Mexico,” Evan had said, crawling carefully onto the hospital bed beside her. She didn’t tell him that the movement hurt, that everything hurt, because she was so grateful to just be held.
“Cabo San Lucas. We’ll go scuba diving.”
“I don’t think I want to go scuba diving.”
“We’ll lie on the beach and drink margaritas.”
“Perfect.”
They had never gone on a honeymoon because medical school bills were already piling up, but though they regularly promised each other that they would right that particular wrong, they never did make it to Mexico. Instead, life got in the way. Not that Jessica minded. She loved their charming home with the black spindle rocking chairs on the front porch. She loved watching her boys toss a football in the front yard or ride their scooters up and down the sidewalk of their tree-lined neighborhood. But Evan brought up Mexico from time to time. Just the two of them, away, bright skies and turquoise waters and sun-kissed skin. He had wanted it more than she did, and so it never happened.
He had taken her there. Jess was sure of it. Evan had whisked Caitlyn Wilson to Cabo San Lucas. They were probably snorkeling together right now.
“Take your garbage out of the car,” Jess snapped as she turned off the car and stepped out.
“My nuggets fell on the floor,” Gabe told her matter-of-factly. He was already skipping past her toward the house, Superman held high overhead.
Jess would have called after him, but it was easier to just pick up the mess herself. Her throat felt tight, choked as she knelt on the concrete garage floor and leaned into the backseat so that she could scrape soggy french fries and fake-looking chicken nuggets into the Happy Meal box that Gabe had abandoned. It was nearly impossible to breathe around the disappointment that was welling up inside, threatening to drown her.
“Don’t forget your garbage, Max!” Jess croaked from the cavern that was the backseat, but the only response she heard was the slam of the door to the house. She was alone in the freezing garage with the remnants of a pathetic supper strewn in the car around her. And yes, a quick peek over the seat told her that Max’s bag, cup of Powerade, and Big Mac wrapper were still littering the floor where he had sat.
She could have cried. She could have sunk to the ground, put her head in her hands and wept. Jessica Chamberlain wasn’t much of a crier, unless you counted the way that she teared up at every life insurance and telephone company commercial. When it came to the real stuff, the big life events that would render most people a sobbing puddle, Jess held it together. Someone had to do it. Someone had to be brave. It wasn’t so much a conscious choice for her as it was a part of who she was. But now her son was mad at her, that precocious little boy who used to talk with a lisp and crawl into her bed in the middle of the night because he wanted to feel his mama’s arms tucked tight around him. Max was so angry he could barely look at her. Gabe was struggling in school and Jessica wasn’t sure who she was anymore, and Evan had defied her hopes and expectations and she was on the verge of a divorce.
Why wouldn’t he fight for her?
He was in Mexico with another woman.
Jessica squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, then she pushed herself up and dutifully threw the garbage she had collected into the bin by the door. She gathered Max’s remnants, too, and shouldered the backpack that he had left on the ground just outside the car. Apparently it was her job to pick up the pieces.
When headlights swung into the driveway, Jess paused with her hand on the door. Evan? But it was a sedan, not her estranged husband’s SUV. Jess’s stepmom drove a VW Beetle in a blinding pearl white and her father a sexy little Audi A4. Meredith wasn’t supposed to show up for a couple of hours yet. Jess had no idea who had just pulled up to her house.
She left Max’s backpack on the step by the door and walked slowly out of the garage to stand in the glare of the lights. It wasn’t truly black yet outside, but the sun was long gone and she couldn’t see past the opaque windshield to the interior beyond. The headlights flicked off as the engine went silent.
“May I help you with something?” Jess asked, watching an unfamiliar man step out of the unremarkable four-door sedan.
“Mrs. Chamberlain?”
“Yes,” she said, and felt the first drop of alarm hit her veins like a drug.
“Deputy Mullen with the Scott County Sheriff’s Department.” He held out his right arm as he walked toward her, and when she tentatively did the same, he enveloped her fingers in both of his hands. Jess was sure he was trying to be friendly, but his grip made her feel trapped, panicky. “We spoke this morning.”
“I remember. Can you please tell me what this is about?”
The corner of his mouth pulled up in a mournful half smile. “Is there somewhere we can sit down? Somewhere private?”
“My boys are in the house,” Jess said, her mouth suddenly so dry she could hardly form the words. She knew what was coming, or was beginning to guess at it, and there were warning bells going off in her head that made it difficult to focus, to breathe.
Deputy Mullen let go of her hand and ran his knuckles over the salt-and-pepper stubble that was growing on his chin. He looked like the kind of man who could shave once in the morning and again at night, but that didn’t detract from his wholesome appearance. A full head of neatly trimmed hair and a slightly rounded belly straining over the waistband of his dark-wash jeans made him look like someone’s young grandpa, the kind of person who would take his grandkids fishing and hunting and make them struggle to keep up with him. In some quiet corner of her mind Jess noted his plaid shirt and leather bomber jacket and wondered what kind of deputy dressed so casually, but he didn’t give her time to contemplate such things.
“Is there someone you could call? A family member or friend who lives nearby?”
And there it was: the truth hovering in the air between them. A specter so ominous, so immediately terrifying, Jess felt her legs buckle beneath her.
“Whoa,” Deputy Mullen said, catching her by the elbow for just a moment. “Let’s get you inside, shall we?”
“No.” Jess shook her head almost violently. “No. I told you, my boys are in there. Why are you here, Deputy Mullen?”
“Please, there has to be somewhere we can go. Someone you would like to call.”
“There isn’t.” Anger was forming like a crust over her fear, and Jess found hers
elf welcoming each sharp, jagged edge. “You need to say whatever you came here to say, Deputy Mullen, and you need to do it now.”
He sighed heavily and put his hands on his hips, looking over his shoulder to the car he had parked in the driveway, as if help might emerge from the passenger seat. But there was no one there. It was just the two of them in the dimly lit garage.
Jess could feel herself separating from the situation, floating away from her body and the moment, distancing herself from the words that he was about to say that would surely change her life forever.
“Is it Evan? The body you found?”
The deputy looked her full in the eye, pressed the palms of his thick hands together, and quickly, compassionately said: “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Chamberlain, but we believe your husband died in a hunting accident.”
“No,” she said, the sound somewhere between a harsh laugh and a growl. Everything inside of her screamed: impossible. “No, that’s not true. It can’t be. Evan doesn’t hunt. And why would he be in Minnesota? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“We believe that—”
“You said he had gray hair,” Jess interrupted, details of their conversation coming back to her as she strained away from his hateful words. She was shaking her head, the whip of her hair lashing her cold cheeks as if in punishment. “You said that the man you found had gray hair and was a hundred and sixty-eight pounds.”
“That’s true, Mrs. Chamberlain. But I’m afraid we’re pretty confident about our identification.” Deputy Mullen reached out and put a heavy, anchoring hand on Jessica’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, but we believe the body we found is Evan’s.”
* * *
June 2014
Happy anniversary.
Or something like that. Two years. Our boy (do you care if I call him that?) will be two years old by now (twenty-six months and four days at the writing of this letter). Is he talking? And walking? I read in a book that by two years old most children have 50 words and may have the coordination to pedal a tricycle. Does he kick a ball? Scribble? Have you cut his hair? I like it long like it was in the photo you sent me. And that’s exactly how I picture him, though a little taller and more narrow in the face. I think about him all the time.
I would love some more pictures and I’m eager for an update. Overeager, maybe, as I have thought many times about just picking up the phone and giving you a call. I know you work at Auburn Family Medicine and that is where I would contact you. So Jessica never has to know. Talking could be our little secret.
Sorry. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I swear I’m not a stalker and the last thing I want to do is disrupt your life. Gabe is happy, I believe that, and I have no regrets. But sometimes I would just like to hear about his day, you know? What did he do? Does he like peas? (I hate them.) Is he athletic? (I played varsity soccer for three years in high school and went to college on scholarship.) Of course, I know a two-year-old can’t be athletic per se, but I think you know what I mean.
In case he ever asks, you can tell Gabe that his birth mom did what she always said she would do. I graduated in May summa cum laude and am working this summer as an intern at a law firm in downtown St. Paul. I’m not going on in my education right now but have my fingers crossed for a position as a law clerk. I have a mind for details and a perverse love of research that may have something to do with the fact that I consider books to be better friends than people.
Speaking of books, I’m enclosing a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. I know Gabe is only two, but if you honor only one of my requests may it be this one: read him this book. Someday, when he’s older. When it will mean something to him. This particular copy is the one that my dad gave me when I was in sixth grade. I can’t say I fully understood it at that age, but I loved Scout like a sister. I hope Gabe will too.
Thank you.
LaShonna
Josephine (JoJo) V.
43, Latina, 2 years of high school
Short bob (pink highlights), brown eyes, short. Queen Bee, mother figure, 4 kids.
Family doesn’t know.
PROST, 75m, 29w pp
CHAPTER 4
JESSICA LEANED HER forehead against the window and let her eyes go soft and unfocused as the car hurtled down the highway. Her father—the formidable Henry Lancaster, retired attorney in little Auburn, Iowa—was in the driver’s seat, glaring through the windshield as if he could smooth the path before them with the ferocity of his gaze. Jess didn’t have to look to know that he was gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. His seat belt was carefully fastened, his mirrors adjusted to the perfect angle for his long torso. Henry was meticulous in everything from the careful part in his silver hair to the sharp crease in his dry-cleaned trousers. His argyle socks always matched the handkerchief he kept in his pocket, and that, too, was neatly pressed and immaculate.
The only indication that this nighttime drive was extraordinary was the fact that Henry was speeding. A good ten miles over the speed limit, or more. Jessica could feel the momentum in her chest, in the way that her stomach seemed wrapped around her spine. But maybe she was just being hollowed out by fear.
Evan wasn’t dead. Jess knew that. She knew it deep down in a place where she believed there was still a connection between herself and the man she had once called her home. Weren’t they one? Wasn’t their bond immutable, eternal? So what if they were separated, if promises had been broken and the covenant between them severed the day he walked out their front door.
But of course Jess was being idealistic. She was a hopeless romantic, Evan a clearheaded realist. She wondered if he had ever really felt the one-in-a-million love-for-the-ages that she had experienced with him. When she met Evan, love unfurled like a tender, winged thing. It had been a birth of sorts, a burgeoning that made her whole life seem both significant and just a little out of control. Evan’s love had been much more pragmatic, even in the beginning when they were still breathless with desire for each other. He could always turn it off, be practical. Not Jess. Never Jess.
“I can’t get enough of you,” she had told Evan once, straddling his lap while he sat at his desk and pored over a book that was so big it was almost comical.
He laughed, indulgent, and strung a line of kisses along her collarbone until she shivered. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close. Jess wasn’t done, not by a long shot, but Evan gave her one last squeeze and eased her off unceremoniously. “I have a lot of work to do,” he said, keeping one hand on her waist until she was untangled, her feet beneath her. His expression was a study in regret, but Jess could feel the sense of obligation pulled tight beneath his skin. She admired his dedication, his discipline. She just hadn’t realized at the time that there was little room for her in the shadow of his devotion.
“We’re just over ten miles away,” Henry said into the stillness of his Audi A4. It was built like a jet and so quiet that the sound of her father’s voice startled Jess. She turned toward him and the thought raced through her mind: I married my father. They were so similar, so grounded and cool. Jess bristled at her father’s tacit need for control when she was a teenager, but when Evan walked into her world and started straightening every crooked edge, it felt so right. It felt like home.
At first, Evan confined himself to things just within reach. They would be curled on the couch in her apartment, and when Jess got up for a drink, he would stack the magazines on her coffee table and then fan them so that she could reach for exactly the one she wanted. Pillows were arranged, water stains on the fading wood of her secondhand furniture smudged out with the damp edge of his thumb. Once she caught him in the act, but instead of being sheepish, Evan licked his thumb and rubbed out the ring with a series of enthusiastic squeaks. “Admit it,” he said. “You need me.”
And right now, her father was just what Jessica needed. She reached for him, grazing her fingers across the taut seam of his navy blazer.
The night was black, the sky cast-iron. It was hard and
cold and jealous, swallowing up the glow of their headlights so that they had to squint at the dark road. At some point, they had passed from prairie to forest, and the starless sky above them had filled with the shadows of twisted branches. They were bare and peculiar, gnarled fingertips that seemed to reach for them. But when Jess turned her attention to the gloom, they were nothing more than wood and wind, hollow with the echo of silence.
“When we get there, I want you to wait in the lobby.” The tone of Henry’s voice brooked no argument, and just like that Jess’s warm feelings toward her father chilled.
“I’m a grown woman, Dad. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“You don’t want to do this.” Henry cut his chin to the left: no. One sharp, definitive movement. When Jess had been a teenager, it was more than enough to set her straight. But she wasn’t sixteen anymore.
“He said—”
“Deputy Mullen said that I could make the identification,” he interrupted before she could go on. “I’ve done this before, Jessica. I’ve been there when family members had to identify a loved one. It’s not like the TV shows, but it’s still not something you can ever forget.”
“It’s not Evan.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” she said, but even as she spat the words, Jess realized that she had absolutely nothing to pin her hope on. What if she was wrong?
“We can turn around. Both of us. I’ll tell Deputy Mullen that we want them to use dental records or fingerprints.”
“He said this was the easiest way. The quickest way.” Jess whispered, “I have to do this.”