The Last Thing She Ever Did
Page 19
“He can’t be disturbed, Liz.”
Liz balled her fists and pounded the surface of the receptionist’s desk, as if she needed to make some kind of gesture to show how urgent the situation had become. Words couldn’t be used because every sentence that carried the truth was an indictment.
“Look, I need him,” Liz said. “It’s important.”
“Sorry,” the young woman said.
“Everyone is sorry,” she said, raising her voice. “We’re all so goddamn sorry!”
The receptionist blinked. Owen’s wife was scaring her.
“You need to see someone,” she called after Liz as she hurried away. “You’re coming unhinged.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MISSING: EIGHT DAYS
The Liz drama lingered. Everyone at Lumatyx talked about it. After the off-site, the two partners returned to the conference room. It was after 8:00 p.m. Damon West shut the big glass door and turned around to face Owen, who sat at the end of the massive live-edge Douglas fir conference table.
“Thanks for sticking around,” he said.
“Fine. Seems serious. What’s up?”
“It is serious, Owen. Ordinarily it would be none of my business. I’ve got plenty on my plate right now. Now this . . . this needs addressing right now.”
Owen knew Damon enjoyed poking his nose in everyone’s business. He dug in deep like a tick. Always acting concerned. Soulful, caring eyes. In reality, Damon was no different from Owen. To be fair, he might have been at one time. But not now. Not when dollar signs replaced the work behind their ambitions. Owen studied everyone’s weaknesses. His arm around an employee’s shoulder was often a choke hold.
They didn’t know it, of course.
“What does?” Owen asked.
“This is hard for me,” Damon said.
You love this and you know it.
“What is it, man?”
“Just a reminder,” Damon said, looking serious and very concerned. “We have a lot at stake here. The VCs can get very touchy. They don’t want any trouble.”
“Trouble?” Owen leaned forward. He was not about to be pushed around by his backstabbing partner. “Why are you saying this to me? I get that. I know it as well as you do.”
“Do you, Owen?”
“Get to the point, Damon.”
“Your wife,” he said. “She’s becoming a problem. I know she’s wrapped up in the missing neighbor kid’s case. I’m sorry about that. Really I am. She scared Paula. She’s losing it, big-time, and people are starting to talk.”
“Talk about what? What do you mean? Get to the point already!”
“When she can’t get you on your phone, she calls the front desk. She’s always frantically trying to reach you. I don’t know what is going on with her, but it’s hit the office gossip circuit.”
Which you run like a side business.
“She’s devastated.”
“She seems to be unstable.”
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Owen said. Although you’re right, he thought.
“This wasn’t easy for me. We’re on the cusp of something big and I don’t have to remind you that if either of us makes a mistake that causes the money guys to have the slightest concern, we’re dead.”
“Not both of us, Damon. The one who causes the problem.”
“Morality clauses are vague. But yes. The one who gets in the way of everything we’ve fought for is out. Left with nothing.”
Owen quietly seethed.
“Just get her to pull herself together,” Damon said. “All right?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
MISSING: EIGHT DAYS
That night, Liz and Owen barely spoke. They sat in the living room for a long time. The sound of some last-of-the-season vacation renters roasting marshmallows a few doors down from the Millers’ leaked through an open window facing the river. Not a single word was uttered about what had happened at the office. Or what Owen had been doing when he was at his off-site meeting. It was hard to trust him when every time he spoke it was a suggestion on how to lie.
Despite his lies, Liz counted on Owen. She hoped against hope that everything would be all right—as he’d promised.
That night when they went to bed, Owen moved close to her as she lay on her side, facing the wall. He pushed his pelvis against her, a signal that usually indicated that he wanted sex. She wondered how he could even contemplate such a thing at a time like that. She could think of nothing but the couple next door and the little boy she’d accidentally killed.
Owen had told her that everything needed to be normal. Yet there was no normal anymore. She didn’t feel like making love to him. She wondered why he’d even want to touch her. She was poison.
Instead of tugging on her shoulder to roll her over, Owen leaned in and whispered in her ear.
“You need to toughen up,” he said. “If you crumble on me, I’ll kill you.”
Liz didn’t say a word. Didn’t breathe.
“I swear that I will, Liz,” he went on. “I’ll make sure your name is dragged through the mud before I do it, too. Your mistake is not going to cost me.”
He stayed close for a moment, feeling her body shiver under the sheets.
“You seriously need to get a grip,” he whispered before rolling over. “Tomorrow we need normal. Not drama.”
“Okay,” she said.
Liz didn’t view her husband’s words as a threat. She saw them as a promise. She’d earned each and every word. A silent tear fell onto her pillow, and she studied a blank wall as though there were answers there. She looked at her phone and watched the time roll by. She didn’t want to dream of Charlie. She was afraid that she’d see his face again. His eyes shut. The pinecones he’d so proudly collected scattered on the driveway. The tarp from her father’s old workbench, a plastic envelope in which to hide him. She wanted none of that in her mind. She willed herself not to think about it for a second. For two seconds. That was her record.
For the longest time, her efforts to find refuge from her thoughts proved futile.
Finally, after two in the morning, Liz fell into a restless sleep.
This time Charlie didn’t come to her. Instead, she dreamed she was in the station wagon with her brother, Jimmy, in the neighbor’s station wagon, heading out that morning to Diamond Lake. Country music filled her ears. The Egg McMuffin felt warm in her small hands. And then the roar of the flash flood as water poured over her, Jimmy, and Dan and Seth Miller. In her dream she could make out Dan Miller’s bloody face before he went after the car carrying his son away. His eyes met hers for what seemed like a very long time. The memory was freeze-framed. It was hard to know how long the doctor hesitated before he went after it. He was going to die saving his son, although it didn’t turn out that way. Seth died. Dan survived. She wondered what he would have given to trade places with his son. She’d give anything if Charlie could be home, warm in his bed with the Star Wars duvet, and if she were the one wrapped in a tarp and discarded off the highway in the howling cold of the high-desert night.
The accident when she was nine years old was no longer the worst moment of her life.
Something else had replaced it. It, too, had been an accident. That truth was something she needed to hold tight inside.
That night Liz had a second dream. She was sitting with Carole at the breakfast table. David was gone. Owen too. It was only the two of them. Carole wore white. Her face was lined, her eyes vacant and sad. Liz looked down at her own hands. Age spots. Liz felt a bump protruding above her left breast, just below her shoulder. What? Her fingers found an implanted port used to receive chemotherapy medications. Cancer? She was dying and before her was this sad angel, Carole. She moved her lips to tell Carole what she knew she should say, but nothing came out.
“It’s all right,” Carole said. “When you go, don’t worry.”
She tried once more, but again no words came out.
“I forgive you,” Carole said.
“It’s all right,” Carole said. “I would have forgiven you no matter what.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
MISSING: NINE DAYS
It was easy. The little boy and his mother had decided on the black-and-white terrier mix. It was love at first sight. The dog was a rescue picked up behind the Bend Walmart, fittingly dubbed Wally. He was one of those dogs that practically smiled when he looked up at someone, treat or no treat.
Usually those moments brought Liz Jarrett such joy. This time, however, tears came.
She’d been volunteering at the Humane Society of Central Oregon, just off Twenty-Seventh, for the past year. When she’d told the staff there she was studying for the bar, she laughed and said she was going to represent animal rights. “And if those dogs and cats in the kennel don’t get ten hugs a day,” she teased them, “I’m coming after you.”
The little boy was wearing blue jeans and a green and navy Seahawks T-shirt. His blond hair curled a little over his ears. Liz wondered how that mom with the dark hair could have a blond boy. And yet those two fit together the way Charlie and Carole had. Her eyes dampened a little, and the mom, a pretty woman with short black hair and a slender face, put her arm on her shoulder.
“What is it?”
Liz snapped out of her misery. “I’m sorry,” she said, drying her eyes. “There’s something truly beautiful about a boy and his first dog. A precious bond is being made right now.”
She watched as the dog nuzzled the boy and heard the belly laugh that came right along with it.
The mother smiled. “It is a beautiful thing.”
“Yes,” Liz said, easing herself from the joyful scene. “I think I’ll need to be excused right now. I’m really sorry. Wally is a great dog. I know he’s going to a good home. Sorry. I’m sorry. Tamara can help you with the paperwork.”
“Okay. Take care,” the mother said, surprised at the sudden departure of Wally’s adoption coordinator.
Liz hurried to the storage room and locked the door. She was grateful that there was no mirror in the space. She couldn’t stand the sight of her own face. Seeing that little boy laughing with that dog had been a knife in her heart. She sat on a pallet of dog food. She was numb. She was no longer a person.
If she could stay there forever, she would. Never come out. Curl up and die. Turn to dust. Any of that would be a relief from the agony she’d caused the Franklins.
Over and over, eyes closed or open, Liz kept seeing Charlie’s face. The tiny slits made by his eyelids. The blue of his lips. The bucket of spilled pinecones. The tarp. All of it. She had robbed Charlie of his life and she’d taken the coward’s way out. If anyone had ever told her that she could have done that, she’d have punched them.
A half hour later, Liz emerged from the storage room. She handed her key card and photo ID to Tamara, the woman in her fifties who managed the facility.
“What’s this?” Tamara asked.
“I think I need to take a break.”
“I know you’re close to Carole, Liz, and I can’t imagine all that they and you are going through, but animals are good therapy. For people. People hurting.”
Liz knew her manager was right. She’d seen it a thousand times. A widower coming in to get a dog after his wife succumbed to cancer. Empty nesters filling the void left by the last kid off to college. A young woman heartbroken over her breakup with a longtime lover.
“The animal part is fine,” she said. “Just kind of breaks me up when the little ones come in here. Makes me think of my friend and her son. I don’t think I can do this right now.”
“What about working in the back office? We could sure use some help back there. Paperwork doesn’t love you back, but it’s a necessary evil around this place.”
Liz removed the white smock that she wore over her street clothes. She handed that over to Tamara too. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m not good for much of anything right now.”
“They’ll find Charlie,” Tamara said. “I just know that they will.”
Liz didn’t know what to say. It seemed that every word that came out of her mouth when she spoke about Charlie was a lie. She even questioned her own tears. She wondered if they were solely for her. If they had nothing to do with the death of a child she’d loved so much. She was barely hanging on. Lying to oneself is an exhausting task.
There was only one thing harder, she now knew: keeping a dangerous secret.
Liz stopped at Safeway on the way home. She moved quickly, as if she were a contestant on one of those shopping-spree shows. Her first stop was her most important. She filled her cart with bottles of wine. She didn’t shop labels. She didn’t look for the highest number of points. She grabbed whatever was at eye level. Then she plowed through the produce aisle and picked up some bagged salad. Grabbed some milk. Some chicken.
Her hands trembled as she swiped her debit card at the check stand. The cashier, a man with a penchant for small talk, asked her the question that genuinely kind people frequently do. “Are you all right?” When she didn’t respond right away, he paused in his scanning and studied her eyes.
Liz didn’t think there would be a time when she’d ever be all right again. No matter what her husband said.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered.
The cashier kept his eyes on her for another second. Then the conveyor belt started moving once more. “Okay, then,” he said.
When Liz got in her car and started to drive away, it took everything she had not to reach across the seat to twist off the top of the bottle of a hideous Riesling that had somehow found its way into her cart. It was a poor choice. She’d made plenty of those lately.
Before Charlie and the accident, she knew the biggest mistake she’d ever made was in the hospital after the flash flood, though she wasn’t exactly sure if she had been tricked or if she’d remembered correctly.
The officers and doctors were a blend of sympathy and accusation as they tried to determine what had gone wrong on the drive to Diamond Lake. Though no one could deny that the flood was an act of nature, there somehow was a need to lay blame. Blame made people feel better. Move on. Act superior. And maybe make them feel just a little safer.
An Oregon State Police officer, a woman with bright red hair and penetrating eyes, sat next to Liz’s bedside while her parents hung back just beyond the privacy curtain.
Later, Liz would find a transcript of the notes made the day after the accident. It was in her mother’s things, with the two newspaper clippings about the accident.
Officer: You like Dr. Miller, don’t you?
Witness: Yes. He’s nice.
Officer: Did you notice anything unusual about him that morning?
Witness: No.
Officer: Did he have anything to drink?
Witness: Coffee. We stopped at McDonald’s.
Officer: Did he put anything in his coffee?
Witness: No.
Officer: Did you smell anything on his breath?
Witness: No. He smelled real nice.
Officer: What kind of smell?
Witness: A good smell.
Officer: Can you describe?
Witness: Like my mom’s mulled wine. Sweet like that.
Officer: You smelled wine?
Witness: I guess so. Dr. Miller always smells like that.
Reading those words, Liz could see the officer’s green eyes roll over her, taking in everything she said, sizing her up and egging her on. The officer said she was after the truth, but when Liz said that about Dr. Miller and the woman’s eyes lit up, Liz knew that she’d just been looking for her to say something ugly about Seth’s father.
In the background, Liz caught a glimpse of her parents shak
ing their heads in disgust. The officer went to them while a nurse checked on Liz’s vitals.
“We’re pretty sure he was drinking,” she said, her voice low, but not low enough. “Blood tests were taken too late to get a reading on any alcohol. We waited too long. We won’t be able to prosecute, but I’d watch that one. He might seem like a good guy, but anyone that would take a nip in the morning wouldn’t be anyone I’d want my kids around.”
Dr. Miller had been drinking that morning. The police and her parents said so. They said so in a kind of whisper. A whisper is a very effective way of making sure everyone hears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MISSING: TEN DAYS
Carole was a nighttime migrant. She slept on the couch. In a chair in front of an infomercial on pressure cookers that played early in the morning. Finally, she found comfort in her son’s bed. It was as much to get away from David as it was to be close to the boy who had disappeared from the river’s edge. Questions from the police and innuendo she saw online suggested that David had been cheating on her. That hadn’t really been news. He’d done it before they moved to Bend. A leopard, her mother told her more than once, could never change his spots.
For the longest time Carole had been all but certain that her husband was seeing Amanda Jenkins. So pretty. So young. David’s type. She saw the way he touched her lower back at the restaurant one time when he was presenting the menu to the servers on opening night. It was a gentle touch, a pat that lingered too long. Carole had wondered if there was a lower-back tattoo in the place that he’d touched. If he’d seen it while he made love to her. Was it at the restaurant, in the pantry? Carole and David had done the same thing before they got married. Was it at the girl’s apartment? Or had they slept together there, in Carole and David’s home?
When she got to know Amanda, she decided she was too smart to fall for her husband. If nothing else, surely he was too old for her. And when it came down to it, it didn’t really matter. Carole had her art, and then Charlie. David had been little more than a distraction from the things at the center of her universe. At times, a fun and even sexy distraction. That was a while ago.