A Buried Past

by Alexandria Clarke

  “For how long?”

  “A few weeks at least,” she answered. “It’s going to take a while for this shoulder to heal. You don’t have to do it. Forget I asked.”

  “Ev, shut up,” I said. “I’ll totally do it.”

  She squealed. “You will?”

  Now that my worry had slightly worn off, I resumed cooking. “It’s a no-brainer. I get to spend quality time with my best friend and vacation in London? What a dream. When do you need me?”

  “I checked flights already. There’s an open seat on a red-eye tomorrow night. Is that too soon?”

  “Nope. All I have to do is pack.”

  With no connections in San Diego to bid adieu to, my only duty before leaving was to pay the rent on my apartment for the rest of the month. The next night, I flew to Heathrow Airport with excitement building in my stomach the whole way there. I hadn’t seen Evelyn since last Christmas.

  I arrived shortly before lunchtime, deplaned, and made my way out of the terminal. Luckily, Heathrow wasn’t a complete maze to me. Our old boarding school was a short drive from here, and I’d flown in and out of this airport, to and from the States, a hundred times. It was a trip Evelyn and I used to take together, until her career kept her on this side of the ocean.

  Evelyn met me in the terminal. Despite the thick, bustling crowd, I spotted her right away. Her blonde head stuck a good foot above most everyone else. She looked like she’d lost some muscle mass. Her shoulders weren’t as broad as I remembered, though that was understandable considering her recent injury. Her right shoulder was wrapped in a complicated sling that kept her arm at a certain angle to her body. Other airport-goers eyed the awkward appendage with apprehension. Evelyn, oblivious, waved her good arm with such enthusiasm that one of the airport security guards honed in on her with the intensity of a trained German shepherd.

  Rather than greeting each other with words, we screeched like wounded owls as we came together in a hug that almost took me to the ground. My head bounced off Evelyn’s muscled chest and clipped the plastic adjustable part of the sling.

  “Sorry.” Evelyn rubbed the red mark out of my forehead. “Got a little too overzealous there. All right?”

  One thing I would never get used to in England was that expression. To this day, I wasn’t quite sure how to reply to the quizzical greeting of “All right?” What exactly did that mean? Was I okay? Was I of sound body and mind? Existentially, was I all right?

  “Uh, yeah,” I ended up saying as Evelyn linked her good arm through mine and led me toward baggage claim. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Hurts like a bitch,” she replied cheerfully. “It’s practically sewn in place at the moment. Do you know how hard it is to drive with one arm?”

  “I’ll get us home.”

  Before my mother died, she’d lived in the countryside of Windsor, not too far from the Queen’s vacation castle. Between school and visiting her, I’d spent enough time in England to ace the driver’s exam, which came in handy when I visited.

  In the baggage claim, Evelyn refused to let me haul my suitcase off the conveyor belt. Like a one-armed goddess, she flexed her bicep and lifted my fifty-pound bag as if it weighed no more than a fluffy cat.

  “Remind me why you need me again?” I said.

  “To cook and stuff,” Evelyn answered. “Come on. Off we pop.”

  Evelyn lived in a cute flat right outside the city of London. I’d been there once before, when Evelyn first moved in, to help haul her belongings from her old flat to the new one. Turned out she didn’t need much help. She had brought the leather sofa up three flights of stairs all on her own.

  “Looks the same,” I said, dragging my bag into Evelyn’s bedroom. “God, that view never gets old, does it?”

  From the floor-to-ceiling windows, you could see all the buildings that made the London skyline famous, including the Shard, a striking skyscraper that looked like a piece of broken glass jutting into the air; the Gherkin, a many-windowed coned cylinder that resembled a pickle; and my personal favorite, the Walkie Talkie, which looked like an enormous version of a children’s toy. The Thames River cut through the middle of everything, and it was beautiful as long as you didn’t stare at the dirty water for too long. When the sun hit the city at the right angle, everything sparkled.

  “It’s the company’s,” Evelyn said of the flat. “That’s why it looks like a bachelor pad.”

  I liked the flat’s style. It was all black paint and exposed brick accents, with a loft for entertaining and a myriad of kitchen appliances Evelyn would never use. The furniture was Evelyn’s, but she had good taste. Everything was well made of leather or iron. She favored a heavy, industrial vibe that matched her bone structure. The bathroom, oddly enough, was my favorite room. Every surface was covered in silky black tile, and walking in felt like entering another dimension where time and light didn’t exist. Nothing separated the shower from the rest of the bathroom, save for a slight downward slope, so you simply walked over and turned the water on.

  “You want a shower?” Evelyn offered, reading the dreamy look on my face as I gazed through the bathroom door. “I know you don’t like the plane smell.”

  “In a bit.” I strolled to the kitchen and began opening cabinets. “First things first, breakfast. Have you eaten yet?”

  “I had a power bar.”

  “That doesn’t count.”

  She lifted herself onto a stool at the island counter, wincing when she accidentally jolted her shoulder. “I’m glad you agree. Might have to go for a shop, though. Not got much in there.”

  I frowned at the bare pantry and empty fridge. “What have you been eating?”

  “I told you. Curry.”

  I rustled up enough ingredients for eggs and toast. I also found a can of baked beans that survived Evelyn’s cooking attempt a few nights ago. While I whipped up a quick breakfast for the both of us, Evelyn chatted at me about work and her family.

  “And my sister’s getting married next year,” she went on. “You want to come? I could use a plus one.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “What about you?” she asked with a note of hesitation. “How are things in San Diego?”

  I sighed heavily as I buttered bread and fried it in a pan. “Expensive. You’ve seen my apartment. It’s miniscule. Guess how much I pay for it per month?”

  “Twelve hundred?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Christ on a cracker! How are you affording that?”

  “I put a ton of advertisements on my blog,” I told her. “It looks terrible, but I need the money. Occasionally, I get a P.I. job. Those are good cash.”

  Evelyn made a little noise in the back of her throat, as if she wanted to say something but convinced her vocal cords otherwise.

  “Spit it out,” I said.

  She attempted to fold both hands on the countertop, but the sling held her back. She settled for resting the good arm by itself. “I worry about this private investigator stuff. It’s not official, yeah? You don’t have any experience. What if you get hurt?”

  “Says the invalid.”

  “I’m serious, Jack. I have training. You don’t.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, cracking eggs onto a hot skillet. “The cases people ask me to track are years old. That’s why the cops have given up on them. Nothing bad’s going to happen.”

  “Then why did the police show up at your door?” Evelyn asked.

  “We’ve been over this.”

  She hopped off the stool and joined me at the stove. I kept my gaze on the eggs. A moment too long, and they would be overcooked.

  “I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” Evelyn said carefully. “I admire your dedication to this stuff, but I’m afraid the motivation behind it is coming from the wrong place. What happened to your mom—”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about what happened to my mom,” I replied, more sharply than I intended. Evelyn lifted an eyebrow. “Sorry,” I added. “But I’m
here to take care of you. That’s all.”

  Evelyn took me by the shoulders and turned me away from the eggs. Even with one arm down, she was hard to resist. “I’m playing hardball here,” she said. “Tell me you didn’t agree to come because the anniversary of your mother’s death—”

  “Murder,” I corrected. “My mother was murdered.”

  Almost ten years ago, on my eighteenth birthday, my mother had been walking home through the park despite rumors of a dangerous killer on the loose near Windsor. Her body was discovered the next day, mutilated with what the police believed to be a box cutter. The killer was never found, and my mother’s murder went unsolved.

  “Fine,” Evelyn consented. “Tell me you didn’t come because the anniversary of your mother’s murder is coming up, and you want to take another crack at the killer.”

  She wouldn’t let me go until I answered. “No, all right? I came here because you asked me to. I feel like I’m being set up. The eggs!”

  They hadn’t burned, but overcooked eggs were no less disgusting than burned ones in my book. I groaned and made to flip them into the garbage, but Evelyn slid a plate beneath the spatula and caught them out of thin air.

  “I’ll eat those,” she said. “Runny ones make me gag.”

  I served her a piece of toast, to which I added the last dregs of fruit preserves from the bottom of a glass jar, and then poured coffee from a moka pot for both of us. After frying my own eggs, I sat next to Evelyn at the island.

  “I wasn’t thinking about my mom,” I muttered. “At least not until you mentioned it. I’d forgotten about the anniversary.”

  Evelyn chewed slowly and kept quiet. She knew me well enough to know I’d only take one moment to open up to her. If the moment was interrupted, I’d lose my nerve.

  “As for my investigations,” I went on, “the people who come to me are at the end of their rope. They’ve gone through all other avenues, including real investigators. I’m the last resort, and I’m the only one willing to dig deep enough to get answers for them.”

  “All of your clients think their cases are copycat murders?”

  “Most of them. They know it’s where I specialize.”

  “But you’ve never solved a case.”

  I sopped up my runny egg with a dry piece of toast. “I’ve gotten close. Sometimes, that’s all anyone needs for a bit of closure.”

  Evelyn read between the lines. “You lie to them.”

  “It’s not a lie if all the evidence points in the right direction.”

  Her breakfast had already disappeared. I’d forgotten how much and fast she ate compared to me. “Far be it from me to tell you how to make money,” she said, “but one day, someone’s not going to be satisfied with ‘close enough.’”

  “I’ll confront that day when it comes.”

  “What about your dad?” Evelyn asked. “Does he know what you’re doing? Does he know you’re here?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him in five years.”

  “Still?”

  I nodded. “As far as I know, he lives in DC with his new wife and her two kids. It’s like he doesn’t care that Mom’s gone. He got himself a whole new family.”

  Evelyn patted my hand. “Sweets, he couldn’t mourn her forever. He moved on. So should you.”

  “I have,” I insisted. My gaze wandered to the window again. Somewhere, past all the buildings and smokestacks, was the park where my mother had been killed. Her murderer, for all I knew, still wandered the streets. “I have.”

  3

  The jet lag caught up with me that afternoon, so after a glorious shower to rinse the plane smell off me, I fell asleep in the black satin sheets of Evelyn’s bed. Hours later, the soft drizzle of rain against the windows drew me out of my slumber. The early morning had faded into a gray afternoon, with all color drained from the city. Evelyn sat in a leather armchair, tea in one hand and a book balanced against her shoulder brace. The shadows from the raindrops drew patterns across her pale face as she crossed one leg over the other, bumping the book out of place. She swore quietly and tried to readjust, but the tea spilled, and the book refused to stand on its own again.

  “I got it,” I said, rolling off the bed to help. I pulled the side table closer to Evelyn’s side for her to place her tea, so she could hold the book.

  “Thanks. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Probably better than I did.” I yawned and stretched, ligaments popping back into place. Mounted into the far wall was a metal pull-up bar. With a running jump, I grabbed hold of it and hung limply. My spine elongated as I gently rotated my trunk. The stretch did wonders for my back. “Couldn’t sleep all day, you know?”

  “Do a pull-up,” Evelyn challenged.

  Lips pressed together, I pressed my shoulder blades down as Evelyn had once taught me and pulled with all my might. I got about halfway up before my muscles shamed me into dropping from the bar. I shook out my arms.

  “I’m more of a yogi,” I said. To combat Evelyn’s answering chuckle, I kept the conversation moving. “We should go to the store. If you want me to cook for you, we need to fill up the pantry. Are you up for it?”

  Evelyn rocked to her feet and tossed the book aside. “Let’s do it. No curry, though.”

  I pouted but promised, “No curry.”

  For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Evelyn and I experimented with how much help she needed from me. Cooking and cleaning were pretty much my sole responsibilities. Evelyn kept her place spotless, but with one arm down for the count, she couldn’t wield a broom or spray cleaner as often as she liked. Grocery shopping also landed on my to-do list. Though Evelyn was happy to tag along, reaching for things on the top shelf or kneeling down to grab something from the bottom made her woozy. The painkillers for her shoulder were no joke. Furthermore, Evelyn had inherited the Irish habit of inhaling meat and potatoes on the nights she didn’t order takeaway curries. Variety was a new concept for her.

  “What’s that?” she asked every time I placed something new in the cart. In London, you had to pay twenty pence for a shopping cart, or a buggy as Evelyn called it. Additionally, you had to bring your own bags to load your items or pay for ones from the store. Evelyn’s pockets jangled with “just in case” change. She always forgot her bags.

  “Sun-dried tomatoes.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fresh oregano.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Have you ever been to a grocery store?” I retorted as I dropped a bushel of bananas into the buggy.

  Evelyn grinned. “I was kidding about the bananas. Are we almost done? It’s getting late, and my arm’s starting to ache.”

  As I cooked dinner, I set Evelyn to tasks she could accomplish. She washed tomatoes while I chopped garlic and herbs for a fresh marinara sauce. She set the counter with plates and utensils and a single wineglass for me.

  “I’m not supposed to drink,” she explained when I lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “Bad to mix painkillers and alcohol.”

  While I worked, I kept an eye on Evelyn, noting the recent changes in her manner. She didn’t baby her shoulder. Rather, she seemed to forget she was injured, often reaching for something with her left hand before remembering that it was immobilized by the brace. Each time it happened, she visibly winced. That was the biggest tell of her injury’s severity. Evelyn rarely responded to pain. Once, she’d broken her wrist during a game of field hockey in school. Another girl had swung the stick directly into her arm, but Evelyn carried on playing. Not until after her team had won the game did she bring the swollen limb to a medic’s attention. Paper cuts and everyday bruises went unnoticed by her. She had a superhuman tolerance for pain. Because she was so used to taking care of herself, asking for and accepting help had always been a weak point of hers.

  “Can you…?” She trailed off, staring hopelessly at her plate of spaghetti. The spoon lay off to the side, useless. She couldn’t spin the noodles around her fork without it.

&nb
sp; “Ah, sorry.” I picked up a forkful for her. “I should’ve made penne or something. Here, try like this.” I dumped her meal into a bowl instead and showed her how to twirl the fork one-handed against the side of the container. She got the hang of it quickly, and her slight frustration wore off when she became independent again.

  “How long ago were you injured?” I asked.

  “Almost a week,” she answered. “I’ve been stuck inside ever since. They don’t want me back until I’m fully healed.”

  “You must be bored out of your mind.”

  “You have no idea. Please, Jack.” She set her big gray-blue eyes against mine and pouted. “You’ve gotta get me out of this flat. If I spend one more day here, I’ll lose my head.”

  I couldn’t help but grin, though I knew my teeth must be full of herbs and tomato bits. “Oh, I have plenty of plans to keep us entertained. I intend to convince anyone in our vicinity that we are tourists through and through. You better get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

  Before we could drift off to bed, we had to get through a few more challenges. One of them was that Evelyn hadn’t had a proper bath since her injury. She’d been wiping the parts of herself she could reach with a soapy washcloth, which did the trick temporarily but didn’t count as a real bath. I drew her a bath that night. While the water warmed up, I turned my attention to the complicated array of buckles that secured Evelyn’s brace to her shoulder.

  “Pull there, yeah,” she instructed as I fiddled with the straps. “That goes under. There ya go. Lift it off. Gently!”

  I unwrapped the black polyester from her arm and, as carefully as possible, maneuvered it away from her arm. Halfway off, the brace got a bit stuck, and I accidentally pulled her shoulder. Her face scrunched up, and a small squeak made its way past her tightened lips.

  “Sorry!” I set the brace aside and returned to her hastily, checking the shoulder for damage. “Are you okay? Did I dislocate it again?”