She Wouldn't Change a Thing

by Sarah Adlakha

  “That sounds like it,” she said.

  “It’s from the first book of John.”

  His voice was apologetic, almost empathetic, like he understood the humiliation of being the only kid in Sunday school class to forget his Bible verses, but Maria was impressed by his knowledge, if not a bit jealous. By ten years old, and taking her father’s lead, she was a Sunday school dropout, and whatever paltry knowledge she took from those classes didn’t survive past year fifteen. “You sound like a biblical scholar, Detective Andrews.”

  His laughter filled the air, spiraling around them as the tension began to unravel. “My wife would have a field day with that one. She’s been trying for over twenty-five years to get me to church.” He leaned over his desk as the laughter died down and lowered his voice. “The only reason I know that is because it was in the letter. And please, call me Walt.”

  A kinship wound its way around them as she got a glimpse into the detective’s private life; the adversities of their professions were more similar than she could have imagined. They both saw people at their worst, sometimes damaged beyond salvation, and their stories were woven into their cores, making them who and what they were as much as the diplomas and awards that hung from their walls.

  “I’m sorry about this, Dr. Forssmann. I know it’s unpleasant.”

  “I understand,” she said. “And you can call me Maria.”

  His smile was tinged with an unexpected sadness as he nodded his head and straightened the notebook on his desk. There was something itching at the surface of his thoughts, something he knew better than to say. He jotted something down in his notebook, the blue lines disappearing under the black strokes of his pen, before he pulled his eyes up to meet hers.

  “I have a personal question for you, Maria, if you don’t mind. Do you and Rachel share a storage unit somewhere?”

  It was such a trivial bit of information, and had Sylvia not mentioned it one day earlier, on the very day she killed herself, Maria might have brushed off the question. But it had gnawed at her deep into the night and right through her dreams the previous evening, long after she’d crawled into bed alone, wishing her husband good night over the phone from their bed to his hotel room.

  “She put that in the letter, didn’t she?” Maria said. “I still can’t figure out how she knew it, though.”

  “So, she was right?”

  “Not exactly. My husband and I have a unit that we gave Rachel a key to a while back. Her boyfriend at the time had racked up some credit card debt in her name, and he took off shortly after the baby was born. We felt bad for her because she couldn’t afford the apartment she was in and had to downsize to a studio, so we let her put some of her furniture in there.”

  “Has she been there recently?”

  “I have no idea. I never go there, and she has her own key. Is there something in particular you’re looking for?”

  She already knew the answer, of course: the laptop. It must have made its way into the letter, along with other things the detective wouldn’t be divulging. Did he know that she’d been instructed to get the laptop to him, or that she’d been warned to stay away from Rachel, or that the fears she’d been having for her unborn son were seemingly validated by Sylvia? She was hoping she might get her hands on that laptop, if it even existed, and she had a feeling that if the detective got to it first, she’d lose her chance.

  “There’s nothing in particular that we’re looking for,” the detective continued, “but I wouldn’t mind taking a look through the unit if you’re okay with that.”

  “I guess,” Maria said. “But I don’t have a key on me.”

  “Do you think you could get it to me by Monday?”

  “Sure,” she muttered, certain there would be no time to go snooping through the storage unit before the end of the weekend. There was never any time.

  “That’d be great. I’ll be out of town this weekend, but I’ll go through it early next week if you can get the key here by then. The lady at the front desk can get you a consent to search form on your way out. If you could just sign that for me now, that’d make it easier.”

  Despite the flippancy of his request, it seemed like something she should discuss with a lawyer, or at least her husband, but the hour was growing late, and one glance at her swollen ankles was enough to convince her she didn’t have the energy to argue logistics.

  “Just one more thing,” he said, “and then I promise I’ll let you go.”

  Maria nodded for him to continue.

  “Did the police ever question Rachel, or anyone, about her son’s death?”

  “Of course not,” she said, remembering that the coroner who’d performed Jonathan’s autopsy had called it a classic case of sudden infant death syndrome. There had never been any mention of foul play. “Why would they investigate that?”

  “Sometimes the police will do a preliminary investigation into accidental and natural-cause deaths. I didn’t see one when I checked the case file, but I just thought I’d ask.”

  “I guess I can’t be sure, but I think Rachel would have told me if she was investigated.” Maria couldn’t think straight. Had Rachel been investigated? She couldn’t even remember what she’d had for breakfast that morning, let alone what Rachel had told her six months earlier about her son’s death. Maybe she’d just assumed there was no investigation because, in addition to being her secretary, Rachel was also her friend. She could never believe her capable of hurting her own child.

  “What about the baby’s father?” the detective continued. “Was he around? Or did Rachel have a boyfriend around the time her son died?”

  “Nick,” Maria said. He’d been just one in a long line of on-and-off relationships that defined Rachel’s adult life, a tradition that ended shortly after her son’s death. “Nick Turner was the baby’s father. He was in and out of Rachel’s life, but he went back to New Orleans, where he was from, before Jonathan died. You don’t think he had something to do with it, do you?”

  “No,” he replied. “We’re not investigating anyone for anything at this point. I’m just trying to be thorough.” He paused as he studied Maria’s face, the same itch surfacing in his thoughts and tempting him to scratch it. “I’m sorry I can’t let you read the letter, but I want you to know that Sylvia thought very highly of you. She didn’t blame you for any of this.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Do I ever get to read it?”

  “Of course.” The detective rose from his chair and made his way around the desk. “It’s yours. We’ll close the investigation in a couple of weeks, once we get the autopsy report and finish up with the details, and then I’ll give you a call, so you can pick it up.”

  He was by her side with a hand extended before she could attempt to hoist herself from the chair. There was a gentleness to his strength that she’d missed when they first met. “Looks like it could be any day now,” he said, glancing down at her belly. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s a boy.” She rubbed the bulge of baby beneath her maternity dress. “We already have two girls, so I think we’ll have our hands full.”

  The pained smile that broke across his face didn’t escape her. “Do you have a name picked out yet?”

  “Not that I’m telling anyone.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, winking as he helped her from the chair. “I won’t leak it.”

  Maria had known her son’s name since the first flutter of his existence, like the universe had named him long before he was given to her, but she hadn’t even shared it with her husband yet, certain he would veto her choice. Only the journal in her nightstand drawer knew that secret.

  “I’m sorry. My lips are sealed on this one.”

  Walt steadied his frame against the fake mahogany desk, another battle taking shape in his mind.

  “It’s Blaise,” he finally said. “Isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BLAISE.

  How could the detective have known? How could Sylvia have kn
own? Had she been in Maria’s house, snooping through her drawers? It was the only logical explanation, but it was a terrifying explanation, and one she couldn’t even bring herself to share with the detective for her own selfish reasons: she didn’t want her husband to find out. She didn’t want to be reminded that her job could potentially be putting her own children in danger, a belief her husband had carried for years. Couldn’t any job do that?

  Maria needed to get to the storage unit before the end of the weekend if she was going to get a head start on the detective and find out what Sylvia had meant with the warnings about her unborn son. Maybe the answers to her questions were on the laptop, or maybe Sylvia had been to the storage unit and left her another clue, or maybe Maria was putting too much credence in the psychotic ramblings of a sick woman whose ghost she needed to stop chasing.

  Too many scenarios swirled through her mind as a brisk chill churned through the night air, brushing over her skin like the breath of winter. Spring had never felt so cold. Maria shuddered before she curled up on the backyard lounge chair, the seams of her sweater screaming as she pulled it over her belly. With her daughters tucked safely into bed, dancing through dreams of princesses and ponies, she sipped her caffeine-free Coke from a scotch glass and waited for her husband to return from his conference.

  Blaise was fighting for his freedom, kicking more fervently now than just hours ago, and with each kick Maria was saddled with guilt. Was he trying to punish her? Did he know she once considered letting him go?

  It was a Thursday morning when she’d learned about her pregnancy. She’d viewed those double blue lines from every angle and in every light. Not even running water could wash away that blue. Then she’d gone back to the drugstore and bought two more pregnancy tests, just to be sure. When it was six dark blue lines staring back at her and no time to run back to the store, she wrapped the sticks in toilet paper, secured them in their boxes, and bagged the boxes with double knots before dropping them into the garbage bin by the street. Weeks slipped by before she finally confessed to her husband, utterly mistaken in her certainty that he would not be on board with having another baby. He was thrilled.

  You’ve been lucky in love.

  Those had been her mother’s words. Maria last heard them two years earlier, just days before her mother lost a hard-fought battle to breast cancer. She’d been right. Maria had been lucky in love, lucky to find her husband halfway across the country, far away from her home in the middle of Alabama. Medical school in Ohio would have been a lonely venture if not for the boy from Toledo.

  But that was a long time ago, and while Maria loved her husband without fail, their relationship and their roles looked far different today than they had all those years ago. Every day they crossed paths in a monotonous routine of life, with stolen kisses between breakfasts on the go. Finances were handled while laundry was folded, kids were discussed while dishes were washed, and futures were contemplated while children were bathed. They had become masters of efficiency and multitasking out of necessity, but she wondered if perhaps they were missing the point. She would never admit it to him, but she was heartbroken by his response when she asked him how they were going to manage the chaos of their lives when baby number three arrived. Words she never could have imagined him saying so nonchalantly left his mouth.

  You don’t have to go back to work.

  That was his solution. As if her work was meaningless. As if she hadn’t given the most significant years of her life for this career. As if she alone would be the one to balance these burdens. Will didn’t see it that way, of course. He thought he was doing her a favor. But Maria could only see it as a sacrifice she was being asked to make. She wouldn’t engage him in that conversation, though, because she could never admit to what she had really considered sacrificing: the beating of her own son’s heart. How was it possible that she’d ever considered letting him go? It was one of the few secrets she didn’t dare put in the journal beside her bed, one that she would have shared only with her mother, had she still been alive. What wouldn’t she give to see her mother again, to curl up into a ball on her lap and let all of the stress and worry and anxiety of her life wash to the ground in a shower of tears?

  Maybe her patients were right. Maybe there was catharsis through tears. It wasn’t that she didn’t have her own yearnings to weep; she did. They had been shadowing her for weeks, becoming too familiar, popping up at all hours and surprising her with their insistence and bravado. There was just never time to indulge them. Some of her patients admitted to crying in their cars because it was the only place they could find the time and privacy, but Maria couldn’t remember the last time she was alone in her car, except on the short hop between school and work, and she certainly couldn’t show up to either of those places with red-rimmed and swollen eyes.

  The plastic table beside her buzzed as her cell phone vibrated across it. She blinked back the tears that were threatening to surface and then picked it up. It was a text from her husband:

  b home 10 min

  She replied:

  OK-out back

  Her eyelids drifted shut and her skin shuddered beneath another crisp breeze, as the tension that had been coursing through her body started to ease. Despite the stress of their lives, Will’s presence was as comfortable to Maria as her own skin, and as the garage door started to groan, her pulse quickened. She didn’t open her eyes until his lips brushed the top of her forehead.

  “Hey, you,” he said, caressing her cheek with the palm of his hand, the cobalt blue of his eyes penetrating the dim light. A warm smile broke across his face under the shaggy brown hair that was matted to his head from a long couple of hours of sleeping on the plane. He was the same handsome man she’d married fifteen years earlier, with the same charming smile, but time had started to carve out the first hint of crow’s-feet around his eyes.

  “I’m so glad you’re home,” Maria said.

  “I’m so glad to be home.” Will’s smile broadened before he scooped up her empty scotch glass. “It’s cold out here. Let’s go inside and I’ll fix you another drink.”

  “Jack and Coke,” she said. “Hold the Jack.”

  “I bet you could use it tonight. I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you.” Will led her to the kitchen, placed her cup on the counter, and pulled the caffeine-free Coke from the refrigerator.

  “It’s not your fault.” She hoisted herself onto a bar stool at the counter, wondering when their lives had reached this blistering pace. Had it always been this way, or had it, unbeknownst to her, been picking up steam along the way until it reached this breakneck speed? “Duty calls,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re here now.”

  The spaghetti she’d made for dinner and eaten with her daughters two hours earlier still sat in a lidded pot on the stove, looking more like a congealed science project than supper. Will dumped the entirety of it onto a plate and stuck the hardened blob into the microwave, a punch of nausea striking Maria as the aroma of melting marinara sauce hit her nostrils. The thought of rehashing Sylvia’s death and her meeting with Detective Andrews only made it worse.

  She’d been through this before, the loss of a patient, but this one felt different. This one was more personal. As Will downed the reheated spaghetti, Maria started in on Sylvia’s ill-fated final appointment with an awkward mishmash of words and phrases and pauses that took them down the rabbit hole of her psychosis. She told him all about the time travel delusions and the letter that was waiting for her at the police station and the consent to search form she had signed for the detective to enter their storage unit.

  What she didn’t reveal were Sylvia’s warnings about Rachel or her instructions to get the laptop to police or her knowledge of the secrets in Maria’s journal, about their unborn son. There was danger linked to those things. They were personal, specifically connected to Maria, and at least one of them involved Sylvia sneaking into their home. She wasn’t ready to discuss the inherent danger of her job with her husband, who w
as so eager for her to quit it.

  “Can you imagine having to make a decision like that?” Will said, poised on the edge of his seat by the time she’d finished speaking, ready to dive back in. “On the one hand, it’s your husband and your kids and your entire life. And then on the other it’s the lives of all these other people. You’re going to suffer either way. It’s like the ultimate test from God.”

  “From God?” Maria stammered. “This wasn’t real, Will. She was psychotic.”

  She spoke with a confidence she no longer possessed. She had to believe that Sylvia was psychotic and had broken into their house, because if that wasn’t true then Maria was dealing with something that defied logic, something impossible.

  “Did you search online for the people she mentioned from the tornado?” Will asked.

  “Why would I do that? I can’t spend my life trying to disprove the delusions of my psychotic patients. What makes her any different?” It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but the answer was glaringly obvious between them, even if Maria refused to admit it: Sylvia’s delusions had names. “Are you suggesting I misdiagnosed her?”

  “Of course not. I’m sorry if it came off that way. You know how I am, I just have a soft spot for people who are … I don’t know. What would you call them? Spiritual?”

  How many years had it been since they’d had one of these conversations? How many lifetimes ago did they stay up all night drinking wine and debating the presence of God? How many times had she listened to her husband recount dreams of his dead sister, who he swore visited him in his sleep? And now, after all those years and all her headstrong certainty that God and spirits and the supernatural were for people who weren’t strong enough to shoulder their own burdens and grief, there was a crack in Maria’s armor. But she would fix it. Before her husband could drag her down that path, she would mend the opening and put a stop to his words.

  “She wasn’t spiritual, Will. She was sick. And I was her doctor. She came to me for help and I didn’t give it to her, so she killed herself.”