When the light turned green, she drove on, and her thoughts turned back to relationships. Failed relationships. Most of the men in her life hadn’t been a whole lot different from her brother. They acted considerate when they wanted something, then became self-centered after they got it. Or sometimes they were self-centered from the beginning. Peter, her last boyfriend, had been like that. He’d been too busy trying to further his career at any cost, and he’d resented her success. He should have been pleased that her research was going well and that her future was falling into place, but instead he dwelled on his rejected grant proposals and accused her of not being supportive.
Why couldn’t more men be like Chris? He didn’t have anything to prove. He was already a nationally recognized cardiothoracic surgeon. Yes, he had brain damage, but he was still intelligent, charming, and worldly. She thought about the fact that if he had fallen in love with Elizabeth, or anyone, just before the food poisoning, that love would have lasted forever. Any arguments would be forgotten as soon as they ended, and the excitement, the newness, of the relationship would never wear off, at least not for him. Maybe that’s the secret to making love last, she thought wryly—brain damage.
Snowflakes suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere, obscuring much of the view as she drove over the Harvard Bridge and the Charles River. Illuminated by her headlights, the flakes looked like shooting stars rushing toward the windshield. The scene took on an otherworldly quality, not unlike her evening with Chris.
The snowfall diminished as she drove past the cement pillars of the main building of MIT just beyond the Harvard Bridge and headed into downtown Cambridge. Housing was cheaper there, near Central Square, than it was in most of Boston. She’d had an apartment in that low-rent district now for longer than she cared to recall—thanks to debts from student loans and caring for her mother—but soon she would be able to move to Beacon Hill or anywhere else in the city. She would be able to buy a house on the Cape, too. She’d always wanted a cottage in Centerville, on the beach. Her mother could retire there, and Shirley would drive down to visit on weekends—it was only seventy-five miles. On sunny days she would lie on a blanket on the warm sand, reading a book or watching people play volleyball. Maybe she would learn windsurfing, too. Thanks to the GBF-complex-coated screws and to Jarrell Pharmaceuticals. Shirley and Elizabeth had signed a licensing agreement with the company, and in turn, Jarrell Pharmaceuticals had provided the funding they needed. After the FDA approved the use of the new product, Jarrell Pharmaceuticals would manufacture and market the screws. She and Elizabeth’s estate would split the royalties.
She parked her car on the street in front of her apartment building. Her next house would have a garage. An attached garage. No more walking through snow, slush, and ice every time she came and went in the winter. She hurried from her car to the front door, shivering in the cold. Things were going to change.
Chapter 26
After Shirley left, Barnes read the list in his pocket, to remind himself what had happened during the day. Denny had met him at the airport. Damn nice of Denny to do that. Taking time away from the hospital and fighting the traffic around Logan Airport couldn’t have been easy.
Barnes picked up the phone to thank him, unaware that the two of them had met earlier at the Ritz. Although he’d written a note about moving to the hotel a week before the conference, he’d neglected to add that Denny had told him this over drinks at the hotel bar.
“Hello,” Denny answered. But this wasn’t Denny. It was his answering machine. “If you know my number, then you’re probably someone I’ll call back. Leave your message after the tone.”
“Hey, Denny. It’s Chris . . .”
Denny picked up the phone. “Hey, buddy.”
“Hey, Denny. Just wanted to thank you for meeting me at the airport.”
“No problem. I assume you got home okay.”
“Yeah, I’m just trying to get situated now.” He suddenly thought about all of the mail that he would need to sort through. Carmen would have put it in boxes in a spare bedroom. That’s what she always did when he and Elizabeth went out of town. “That may take me a while,” he added.
“I can imagine.”
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m planning on stopping by the hospital tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll see you between surgeries.”
“Sure thing.” Denny sounded noncommittal. “What are your plans exactly, at the hospital?”
“I don’t have any yet. I just thought I’d see how everything feels, if you know what I mean. I’m curious what it’ll be like to be in the OR again. I feel as though I’ve been away from it for years.”
“Yeah, well, we can talk about that. I should probably go. I was just getting ready to catch some shut-eye. I’ll hook up with you tomorrow.”
Barnes thought he heard a woman giggle in the background. “Okay. Looking forward to it.”
“Take care, buddy. It was good seeing you this evening.”
“Yeah.” Barnes hung up. It was good seeing you this evening? Did Denny mean the airport? That was in the afternoon. Had they gotten together again in the evening? He had no idea. His notes didn’t help, either. They mentioned a police interrogation and dinner with Shirley at 8:00 p.m. but nothing in between. In the future he’d have to be better about writing down more information. He jotted a note that he and Denny had talked again.
After that, he began the task of going through his and Elizabeth’s mail. Opening her mail felt strange, like looking through her purse. But he had more of a right to it than anyone, and the information might shed some light on why someone had killed her.
Junk mail accounted for three-quarters of everything they received. Most of it went into the trash unopened. The rest ranged from water bills to bank statements to an occasional letter from a friend or relative. All the letters from friends and relatives had been addressed to Elizabeth, and he couldn’t help but realize she had considerably more people who cared about her than he did. He’d never concerned himself with that, not before now.
Some of the envelopes contained Christmas cards. Elizabeth had always loved Christmas. To her it was a month-long celebration and an excuse to brighten up and transform the house. She left the exterior to him, but every year transformed the interior into an explosion of ornaments and other decorations, including large wooden nutcrackers, red and white candles, and even rocking horses. At one time they’d had an inflatable Santa, but Rex had punctured it and then chewed it beyond repair. Evergreen swags and garlands with artificial magnolia flowers would cover the soffits and banisters, and the mantel always became an overgrowth of ivy sprouting artificial apples, pears, grapes, and satiny blue bulb ornaments, with a large gold-and-white bow in the center. Beneath this display always hung two stockings, one with an attached cloth reindeer holding a sign that said “Be Merry”; the other—Barnes’s—with Santa sprouting a beard of white yarn and holding a sign that said “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Next to the hearth their Christmas tree, which they always selected and sawed down themselves, would stand like a work of art, complete with white lights, angels, candy canes, strands of gold beads, and hundreds of different ornaments.
This year there would be no decorations and no celebration. Barnes wouldn’t even display Christmas cards. Not without Elizabeth. There could be no Christmas without her, just as there could be no blinking bulbs without electricity. In so many ways, she was the source of his light. Now he would have to learn to live without that.
Barnes sorted through fewer than half of the letters and packages before putting the rest off until later. The mail worth saving he placed into a separate box and marked the lid “opened—save.” The rest he dumped into the trash.
Three other boxes contained all of Elizabeth’s papers and notes from work. He opened the largest box and sifted through the contents. Somewhere inside might be a clue to Elizabeth’s murder, but she had an intimidating pile of papers. Sorting through all of them would likely take days.
He selecte
d a manila folder at random and read its contents—a protocol and consent form for a clinical trial. Both documents were dated November 5, 1987, three weeks before Elizabeth was killed. The protocol was a ninety-five-page description of a proposed study in patients with scoliosis. Elizabeth had written comments in the margins—recommendations and concerns regarding the eligibility criteria and methodology. She’d never mentioned the clinical trial to Barnes, and nothing in her notes indicated that she had agreed to conduct the study, although more information about that might be filed somewhere else. No matter. Nothing in the protocol or in Elizabeth’s comments struck Barnes as noteworthy.
He put the file away and decided to go to bed early. The local news was about to begin on television, but what was the point of turning it on? By morning he would forget it all.
Despair settled over him. It was an alien feeling. Losing Elizabeth. Losing his ability to remember things. Losing control. Christopher Barnes, the great cardiothoracic surgeon, used to be able to do anything, have anything. Now all that had changed.
He wondered how long the neighbor across the street, Marshall, had grieved after the death of his wife. Elizabeth had spoken of him on a couple of occasions and had mentioned that a car had struck and killed his wife in a crosswalk. Barnes had never talked with him, although a few times he’d seen the man outside, walking a little fur ball of a dog. Elizabeth had suggested inviting him over for dinner, but Barnes hadn’t thought that was a good idea.
“We don’t have anything in common,” he’d said. “I’m not into poetry, and I really don’t want to talk about his dead wife.”
Now Barnes did have an interest in such a conversation. But it would do him little good. Any insight he gained would be short-lived.
Still, he couldn’t help but wonder. Does the despair ever end?
He rested a hand on one of Elizabeth’s boxes. Inside lay countless hours of her work, but that’s all it was. Work. He wanted her, or at least a personal connection to her, something that would help him conjure up her ghost, or plant the seeds of a dream. But he had no idea what might do that, if anything. Maybe he would figure that out tomorrow. Now he just wanted to be done with today.
He went to the master bedroom and turned on the lights. The room had never seemed so empty. Carmen had made the bed in her usual fashion, with fewer wrinkles than a sheet of metal, and for once he wished she’d left it messy. It looked overly sanitized, devoid of warmth. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to sleep in it.
Above the bed hung a large watercolor by Anatole Krasnyansky—a street scene from Prague, with the sun rising on old buildings and Orthodox churches, casting a bright reddish hue on the otherwise somber structures. He tried to remember a sunrise in Boston, or anywhere else. None came to mind. He must have seen hundreds of them, but he’d never committed one to memory. And now he never would. His recollection of it would vanish with the disappearing sun. Like his memories of everything else from the day.
He walked to the dresser along the far wall. This was Elizabeth’s dresser, and above it hung a framed photograph from their wedding. A photographer from the Boston Globe had taken a picture of her kissing him just after the judge had pronounced them man and wife, and Shirley had later called the newspaper and obtained the original. She’d given it to them, framed and matted, when they returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii. They’d spent nine days on the islands of Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii, and those had been as close to nirvana as anything he’d ever experienced. He and Elizabeth had begun each day by making love with the waves from the ocean thundering in the distance. One morning on Maui they drove the narrow, winding road east to Hana. They journeyed along the edges of bluffs and through tropical forests, then emerged at a black-sand beach where waterfalls cascaded down cliffs into freshwater pools. Later they found a more secluded stretch of sand and made love under the stars.
That now seemed a lifetime ago. They’d both looked forward to returning to Maui for their fifth anniversary. Without Elizabeth he would never go back.
He looked at the dresser under the photograph. He’d never opened any of Elizabeth’s drawers, but now he did with a sense of anticipation, knowing that each one contained a small part of her—items that had literally touched her.
Her second drawer was full of T-shirts that she wore to bed. He picked up one and smelled the fabric. Detergent. He put it back. The one beside it was a blue shirt with the words “BEACH BUM” across the front. Elizabeth had bought it in Maui. Hesitantly he smelled it. Elizabeth. Faint, but no doubt about it. He had found her.
He refolded the shirt and placed it back in the drawer. Soon he would forget about it, but tomorrow or the day after or the week after, he would probably look again for some trace of her, and he would find it there, in the second drawer down.
He walked to the bed and, from the drawer of his night table, took out a pen and a sheet of paper. In a letter to himself, he summarized his day, using notes from his pocket. Every event and every thought from before he’d entered the bedroom had already vanished from his consciousness, but not the fact that Elizabeth had been murdered. How many times had he forgotten and relearned that during the course of the day? Probably at least a few. Regardless, he would certainly forget it after falling asleep. But in the morning, this letter would reduce his confusion and emphasize the importance of not dwelling on her death all day long. Instead he would try to focus on what he needed to do, taking into account what had transpired the previous day.
He finished the letter and taped it to the center of the bathroom mirror at eye level, where he would be sure to see it the next day. He also taped a small note to the alarm clock on the night table beside the bed, telling him to read the letter on the bathroom mirror. Then he got undressed and crawled into bed. He always slept on the left side, with Elizabeth on the right and Rex on the floor. Sometimes Elizabeth would roll toward the center and take up more than half of the bed, and on those occasions a little prodding would be necessary to get her to relinquish the space that was rightfully his. But now that he had the entire mattress to himself, he didn’t want it.
He closed his eyes and pictured Elizabeth at a noon conference he’d attended shortly after they’d met. She had presented a lecture on the advantages of temporary rather than permanent bolts in holding together bones following surgical implantation of a plate to set a spiral fracture. Barnes hadn’t known enough about the topic to formulate an opinion, but he’d been impressed by her presentation. This woman, who wasn’t much taller than the podium, commanded the audience with authority. When other surgeons asked questions, they were merely searching for answers, not challenging her basic premise, as was often the custom with surgeons. Clearly they viewed her as an expert in the field, and that had attracted him to her even more.
Now with only memories of Elizabeth to keep him company, he fell asleep thinking of her standing behind that big podium. He hoped with all his might that this would transition into a dream about her—anything, just to see her again. Yet even if he did see her, even if he spent the entire night making love with her, he would never remember it in the morning.
Chapter 27
Barnes awoke to his alarm clock at six in the morning. He slapped it off with his left hand and turned to his right to kiss Elizabeth.
She wasn’t there. Not a trace of her, not even an indentation in her pillow. No sign of the dog, either, no sound of rummaging and no lingering smell.
“Rex. Biscuit! Rex!” The dog always came for a treat. But not this time. The house remained silent.
Something was wrong. Not just the absence of Elizabeth and Rex. The absence of continuity. Something had interrupted the normal flow of life. Clearly this was his bed in his bedroom, presumably in his house. But when was it? What day was it?
Could this be Saturday, and Elizabeth had taken Rex to the vet? That would explain their being gone, but it wouldn’t explain vanishing without a trace.
He tried to think back—when had they last been together? All that cam
e to mind was a dinner of escargot and mussels in a fancy restaurant. Large, black, hideous-looking mollusks served in white china on a white tablecloth. Canada, he remembered. But the woman across the table hadn’t been Elizabeth. Instead she’d been a blonde eating shrimp fettuccine.
He turned his head to look at the alarm clock. A note taped to the top hung over the front, its bottom edge just above the digital readout. A message from Elizabeth, he thought. But when he turned on the lamp, it revealed his own handwriting: “Read note on bathroom mirror.” His throat tightened. Why would he write a note to himself, and why couldn’t he remember having written it?
As much as he tried, he could recall nothing from last night. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t recall anything from the entire previous day. What was the last thing he could remember? The blonde in Canada. But without an anchor in the present time, he had no idea how long ago that was. It could have been days or weeks.
He hoped that a medication he’d taken last night was interfering with his memory. The alternative was much worse: a stroke or some other injury, or a disease, had damaged part of his brain. Could that have happened in Toronto?
He threw back the covers and headed to the bathroom mirror. A letter of some sort was written on a sheet of paper taped to the glass. He turned on the vanity lights to read it. But before he could focus on the print, he saw his reflection in the mirror. The sight made him gasp. His neck. The center of his neck. He moved closer to the mirror for a better look.
A circular, indented scar reflected back at him. A gunshot wound? That’s what it looked like, but a bullet there would have paralyzed him. Or killed him. No, a scar of that shape in that location could be from only one thing—a tracheostomy.
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