by David Bell
“It’s been on her bed every day and night at home for twelve years.”
“Okay. It just seems like . . . Never mind.” Paige tucked the bear against Summer’s side, securing it among the folds of the blankets.
“How would she even know the bear is there?” Bill asked. “She can’t see it.”
“She can feel it. If she doesn’t like the sensation, she might try to push it away.”
“This room is nicer, but I still just want it to feel more like home.”
“She keeps doing that thing with her mouth. You know, almost like she’s trying to form a word? Bill, it looks like she keeps trying to make an ‘M.’ She presses her lips together like she wants to say a word that begins with ‘M.’” She lowered her voice. “Do you think she wants Julia? In her state, maybe she doesn’t remember or know. Or it’s a primal thing. Or maybe she hears my voice and thinks—”
“Paige, we just don’t know.”
“Did she do that when Haley’s mom was here? Maybe a woman’s voice throws her off.”
“You know what, you should just go back to the house. Take a break. I’m here. Remember, the doctor said it’s all good.”
Paige studied him from across the bed, her forehead creased. She came around and reached out for Bill, taking him by the hand and guiding him away from Summer’s bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to ask you something.”
His sister led him to the two modern, leather chairs that sat in the corner. Bill’s body sank into the soft material, such a change from the other room. He felt like dozing off.
Paige scooted closer. Bill looked away, his eyes on Summer where she slept in the bed.
“What was going on with you and Julia when she died?”
Bill turned back but didn’t say anything. He hoped the look on his face was enough to silence his sister.
But it wasn’t. Nothing ever silenced her.
“Out there in the hall you said ‘husband’ instead of ‘father’—”
“I don’t want every slip of the tongue analyzed.”
“Come on, Bill. You guys visited us about a year before Julia died. I could see the strain then. I said something about it to Kyle when you left, and he agreed. It was not a happy marriage we witnessed that weekend.”
“I don’t even remember what happened that far back. But you know I hate to travel. I was probably just in a bad mood because of that.”
“Gee, thanks. In a bad mood because you traveled to see your sister.”
“Can we just drop this, please?” But his voice sounded unconvincing. He stared straight ahead, watching the steady rise and fall of Summer’s chest. “That was a long time ago.”
“Two and a half years?”
She reached out, resting her hand on his shoulder. But Bill jerked away, an act that felt childish even as he performed it.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let it go.”
Bill felt like his father in that moment. Cold. Distant. His father’s advice about hitting Paige with the stick echoed in his brain: “Just forget it.”
But nothing was ever forgotten. Was it?
“I don’t know if we would have made it, Paige. Julia and I. If she’d lived, I don’t know if our marriage would have survived.” He rubbed his hands together and kind of wished his sister’s hand still rested on his shoulder. But he couldn’t ask for her to place it there again, could he? Not after he snapped at her like an angry dog. “I thought she was cheating on me. I really did.”
Paige’s jaw dropped open. Bill saw her tongue and a silver filling near the back of her mouth. “No. No way.”
“I was working a lot. She was at school a lot. We were like two ships that passed each other sometimes, trading off keeping an eye on Summer but not really being together.” Bill tapped both of his feet, a rat-a-tat sound in the quiet room. “She made a lot of friends at school. People who shared an interest in the things she studied. We were losing the thread, losing a sense of ourselves as a couple. And then she died. She died alone on our kitchen floor because of me.”
“Oh, Bill.” And Paige rested her hand on his shoulder again. And he let it stay there, feeling the slight pressure and the warmth of his sister through his shirt. “She died because of an accident, the kind of thing that could have happened to anyone. It happens every day to someone, and it’s awful, but no one could have stopped it.”
“You don’t understand, Paige. The very last thing I ever said to her, the very last words we exchanged were me accusing her of having an affair. I did that, and I left, and then she died.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Do you want to go into the hallway?” Paige asked, sensing some larger revelation coming.
“No.” Bill looked to the bed, to Summer’s gentle sleep. Maybe he wished she could hear what he had to say as well. . . .
Maybe. Someday, if not right then.
Bill had come home for lunch the day Julia died, something he did from time to time as a cost-saving measure. With Julia in school part-time and with Summer growing out of her clothes and shoes seemingly every five minutes, they needed to spend as little as possible.
Bill brought in the mail, including the latest credit card statement. He promised himself he wouldn’t open it. Opening the credit card statement only made him unhappy, and he’d made a rule in his own mind that he wouldn’t open any bill until the due date grew closer. Why torture himself so far in advance? Maybe he’d win the lottery and not have to sweat it so much.
But he did open that one. And saw a $475 charge for registration for an academic conference. They’d talked about Julia attending, thinking that it could help her career when she graduated, but the cost was so high and it didn’t seem the time was right. They needed to do other things—get the furnace fixed, possibly buy a new car. And Bill hated the thought of her going away with the people from school, hated the thought that her academic life might be taking her away from him. From their marriage.
That maybe there was someone there. Another man.
But Julia had signed up and charged it without revisiting the subject.
“I was furious,” he told Paige. “I threw the bill across the room. And I yelled. And I’m sure I stormed around, looking and sounding a lot like Mussolini.”
“I’ve seen that act before.”
“Right,” Bill said. “Thank God for family. They remember all the stuff we want to forget. You know, it’s funny. You remember me whacking you with a stick. Do you remember all the times I drove you places? The times I helped with your homework? The times I let you sleep in my room when you were scared?”
“I remember those too,” she said. “And, thanks.”
“But you don’t bring them up.”
“The stick is much more dramatic.” She smiled. “I bled.”
“Anyway.” Bill looked down at his folded hands and the gold band he still wore on his ring finger. “I accused her of having someone else, of being involved with another man, and being distracted from me and Summer and our life together.”
“My God. If Kyle ever did that to me—”
“Yeah, sure, she ended up denying it. But when the words first came out of my mouth, she looked guilty. Her face just froze for a second like she’d been caught. And then she denied it. I saw it, Paige. I saw that look. So I left the house. I didn’t eat. We didn’t talk. I just left and went back to work. I sat at my desk, eating those stupid orange peanut butter crackers you get out of the vending machine.”
“You remember that?” Paige asked.
Bill did. Peanut butter crackers and a Sprite. He remembered because—
“The wrapper was sitting on my desk the first time Julia called. That was at one thirteen.”
“She called to apologize? Or to ask you to apologize?”
“First she called to say she wa
s going ahead and painting the kitchen. She’d been planning that project for a while, but we were going to do it that weekend. Instead, she started right then, without me.”
“I see.” Paige lifted her hand to her mouth. “So if you hadn’t fought, you might have done it together that weekend. And maybe she wouldn’t have—”
“I didn’t answer her calls.” He played with the ring, sliding it up and down his finger. “I didn’t answer that first call, and I didn’t answer the second. And she said when I got home she’d tell me something, something that would clear up everything we’d been going through. I guess about the affair. Or the possible affair. See, here’s the weird thing. There was an open bottle of wine in the kitchen. And a half-full glass on the counter. She never drank during the day. Never. It made her sleepy, lethargic. If she drank wine, she did it at night.”
“Maybe that’s why she fell.”
“Right. Maybe. Hell, maybe the wine combined with being up on the ladder. Maybe fumes from the primer. Or maybe she was drinking for another reason, like someone was coming over. Or she was going somewhere. It was a mess. Paint everywhere. Spilled wine. When she fell, everything went with her. Hell, it doesn’t matter. What matters is she fell, and maybe she wouldn’t have been on that ladder if we hadn’t fought. If I’d just picked up the phone instead of freezing her out. I ignored her. You know that’s what I do, right?”
“I lived with you. I just let you cool down and then you come around.”
“Well, I did it to my wife on the day she died. Instead of talking to her more about my accusation, or offering to help that weekend, I ignored her. I sat at my desk at my stupid job while she fell to the floor in our kitchen, banged her head, and died. Alone.” Bill continued to play with the ring, but he stopped and looked over at his sister. “What do you think of that?”
Paige had tears in her eyes. Her face radiated pity for her big brother. She scooted her chair even closer and placed her arm around Bill’s back. “But you can’t think that made a difference. With an accident like that . . . she could have just as easily fallen with you there. Or if you hadn’t had a fight.”
“Summer found her, you know. She came home from school, and there was Julia on the floor. Stone dead. Bleeding. Summer called me at work.” Bill shrugged. Helpless. A fool. “None of it had to happen. At least not that way. You see, even if Julia had to die, at least if I’d picked up the call, I could have spared Summer the experience of seeing her mom that way. Of finding her mother’s body when she was just fourteen years old.”
Something went by in the hallway, a cart with squeaking wheels. The noise seemed to find a nerve in Bill’s inner ear, and he shivered.
“Did you ever—”
“No, I never told Summer about why I missed the phone calls. She saw a shrink right after Julia’s funeral, someone the school recommended. I went a few times, but the focus was on her. And she has a guidance counselor at school. She had some bad dreams, I know. She slept with the light on for a few months. But since then, nothing I could see. I’m sure she thinks about it every day. I know I do. If I could wish for one thing besides her getting better right now, it would be that I could erase that memory from her brain. Forever.”
“I’m sorry, Bill. Really, I am. I wish I could make you forget it as well.”
“About a week after Julia died, after the funeral and everything, I was picking up the house. Trying to be normal, I guess. I found this balled-up piece of paper behind the trash can. A note, or the start of one, in Julia’s handwriting. It just said, I can’t do this anymore. But then it stopped. Like she started writing and then changed her mind and threw it away. Maybe she was going to leave me. Maybe when I came home that night, if she hadn’t died, she was going to tell me she was leaving.”
“Or maybe she wasn’t,” Paige said. “More likely she wasn’t.”
“I guess I’ll never know.”
Across the room, Summer stirred under her covers, a quick jostling. It was the most movement they’d seen from her since she’d been in the hospital.
They both stood up, watching.
Summer jerked her right arm and knocked Winnie the Pooh back onto the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Paige walked over and picked up the stuffed bear. When she straightened, she looked back at Bill.
“She really doesn’t seem to like the bear,” he said. “But that’s a good sign. She’s moving. She’s expressing something.”
“I know she’s been doing that thing with her mouth. Is that all you’ve seen from her like that?”
Bill hesitated, his eyes fixing on the stuffed animal in his sister’s hand. “Why are you asking me this?”
“I’m just—I’m wondering about something.”
“What?”
“Can you just answer the question? Has she tried to say anything else?”
No. No. No. No. No.
“She made some sounds, something that sounded like ‘no’ the other day,” he said, the words emerging from his mouth as though they were covered with glue. He relented. “In fact, there’ve been a couple of times when I’ve been close to her or talked to her when she’s acted that way. Like she wanted me to go away.” Bill moved closer to the bed. “I figured she was having some kind of flashback to the attack. You said she might be saying ‘mom’ because she hears a woman’s voice. Maybe the sound of a man’s voice, even mine, sends her back to the attack. You have to figure it was a man who did this to her.”
Paige stared down at her niece, but her face was just a cover for the swirl of thoughts racing through her mind. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”
“Paige, you seem to be implying something. I know you. I know when you have something on your mind, so what is it?”
Paige took a deep breath. She touched her hair even though nothing appeared to be out of place. “Okay, you’re going to think I’m nuts. But Summer doesn’t like the bear, which you say she sleeps with every night. And when Haley’s mom was here, she started doing that ‘M’ thing, kind of like she wanted to say the word ‘mom.’”
“She did that to you too.”
“I’ve noticed something else over the last day. When I say her name, when I call her Summer, she . . . reacts. But she reacts negatively. She scrunches up her face like she smells something bad.”
“She’s in pain. You heard the doctor.”
“From hearing her own name?” Paige held up her hand, asking for patience. “Okay. What’s the deal with Haley’s dad? Where is he? I read something in the paper. He doesn’t live here, does he?”
“Arizona. But he came for the funeral. He’s here today.”
“But Haley hadn’t seen him in a few years. It sounds like he’s not on the scene. At all. Reading between the lines, the guy seems like a total dick, does he not?”
“I had that impression of him, yes. A lot of people have that impression of me because I grabbed my daughter.”
Paige came around the end of the bed. She tossed the stuffed bear onto one of the chairs, where it bounced once and then tumbled onto the floor. She came up to Bill, her face full of sympathy, and reached out, placing both of her hands on his. She took them in a firm grip and stared into his eyes.
“You’ve got to listen to me, Bill,” she said. “You’ve got to listen, and you can’t get mad at me for what I’m about to say. I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong.”
“Don’t start the ‘Don’t get mad’ crap again, Paige.”
“Listen.”
“You’re acting crazy.” He pulled his hands out of her grip.
“She hates the bear and throws it on the floor. She tries to say ‘mom’ when Candy is here. She makes a face.”
“I thought she moved her mouth that way when you spoke to her? You’re not her mother.”
Paige ignored him. “She’s skinnier, Bill. She is. And she has that piercing. And i
t sounds like Haley’s dad is a turd, and when you get close, she acts like she doesn’t want you there.”
Bill shook his head and backed away more. “She can’t see me. She doesn’t know who I am.”
“She hears a male voice. And I’ve heard you. A few times you’ve said to her, ‘It’s Dad. I’m here.’ If she hates her dad, she might react that way.”
“Who might?”
Paige pointed at the bed. “Haley. I’ve seen the pictures, Bill. Hell, the girls said it themselves. They’re like twins. Like sisters. Haley’s a little thinner, sure, but they have the same hair, the same clothes. They’re the same height. And if you can’t see their faces, how could you really tell them apart?”
“Summer’s ID. They found Summer’s ID on that girl’s body. Right there. That girl. Summer. My daughter. She had her school ID with her name on it. Okay? What do you say to that?”
Paige looked stumped, but only for a second. “Girls trade clothes all the time. Friends carry each other’s IDs sometimes. Remember our trip to see R.E.M? You carried my ID the whole time because you thought I would get drunk and lose it. Remember?”
Bill had backed away so far that he was almost to the wall. He let his body go a little slack, slumping so that the wall held some of his weight.
He felt tired. Just tired.
And he didn’t want to hear anything else that Paige had to say.
“Just go back to the house, Paige. You’re worn out. You’re cooking up another crazy theory.”
“Look, look.” Paige went over to the bed and stood close to Summer. She leaned down, her voice a whisper. “Summer? It’s Aunt Paige. Can you hear me?”
Summer’s face contorted. The left side of her lip curled, and she turned her head, slowly, first one way and then the other.
Paige looked up. “You see, Bill.”
“You’re torturing her. She can’t speak.”
“Do me one favor,” she said. “Walk over here and let’s look at one part of her—a part of Summer’s body that we can really identify as being hers.”