by Jamie Mason
On day five, Marcelline started practicing standing and walking on her own. Her legs trembled and her heart pounded her blood into a froth that carried not near enough oxygen up to her head. But she did laps to test her stamina when she heard Owen in the shower or on the phone. She couldn’t help but notice that he never left her alone in the apartment.
She wasn’t ready for it on the day she had to leave, but Owen had asked her if she needed anything.
“No.”
“Okay.” He turned to go.
The stabbing pains in the constant yammering ache were keeping her from deep sleep, especially at night, but she was trying to take less medicine. She was exhausted and stir-crazy, then just regular crazy on top of that from trying to hide that she was feeling well enough to walk around, count hours, and churn.
The urge to tip something over, to give a spur to the dragging clock, won out.
“Actually, I do need something,” she called out to him. He came back to her bedside. “I need to know what you’re going to do.”
The disappointment in Owen’s expression was the freezing part. He was furious. He was frustrated. But his reaction to everything had matured into a kind of acceptance. He was wounded, but somehow bored and ready to move on.
He sighed, but never raised his voice out of the soft near-monotone. “I don’t know. Losing cash by the quarter millions isn’t what I’m hired to do. Having not a fucking thing to show for it doesn’t help. No painting. No hint as to where it might be. Two dead people . . .
“If you won’t give up your partner, then it’s either you or me on the hook for this whole mess. But really, in the end, no matter what, it’s only me, isn’t it? I let this happen. I trusted you.
“Besides, everyone’s looking for you, so that’s a consideration. They’ll want interviews and press conferences. If they were to find you, in this—” He touched her cheek above the bandage. “I can’t be sure of what you’d say. Or what any of your family would say either. There’s not a lot holding this together.”
She didn’t let him trap her in a hard stare. Instinct warned that softer was better, shoulders dropped, eyes gently out of piercing focus on his. “I wouldn’t say anything. They wouldn’t say anything. I’d make something up about my face. You have to know that. You saved my life. You think I don’t know I’d be dead without you? Jonathan is not my partner. I’m sorry, Owen. I’m trying to remember something that will help us.”
She put a quiver on us for sparkle, then again on we and our and every word that made her part of a pair with him. “We will figure this out. It’s not our fault, neither one of us. He did this.”
She stopped babbling. He hadn’t relaxed into a single pleading word she’d said. The clock wasn’t plodding anymore. It was flying.
Owen ticked his head, only half a nod. There wasn’t nearly enough agreement in it to make her feel better.
Marcelline had forced her voice down to a pained rasp. “Actually, if it’s okay, can I have a couple of those Percocets? My jaw is killing me.”
She palmed the pills and fought to keep a grip on her fear, to keep the terror in its lane. She invented and discarded plans, burning through to a useless blank far too soon. She couldn’t think. Her ears strained at the quiet.
She watched the clock add minutes to her desperation. Owen didn’t come back in. Marcelline turned her head deep into the pillow so when the housekeeper checked, she saw her sprawled in the pose of narcotic oblivion.
Marcelline heard Owen walk past her room into his own.
But then the front door opened and closed.
When she heard the shower come on in the master bathroom, her fear whispered that she shouldn’t trust it, she didn’t know why the housekeeper had stepped out, or for how long. Marcelline was too weak, and where the hell would she go anyway? But then the plastic clatter of a dropped shampoo bottle bouncing off tile was like a starting gun. No plan necessary. Just go.
She peered from the open bedroom door, listening. All quiet except for Owen in the bathroom. She wobbled from her room out into the unfamiliar apartment. She was across from the laundry room.
Shedding the string-tied hospital gown that the nurses swapped out for a clean one each day, she ransacked the dryer for an enormous T-shirt. She yanked it down over her head and, in her rush, scraped over the bulky bandage at her jaw. It pulled free and the gauze dangled onto her shoulder. The air hit the wound and lit up the damp, tender wreckage, mapping the extent of the ruin that she hadn’t yet seen. Her stomach rolled. Suddenly, running seemed like a terrible idea. But she pushed the tapes flat, as best they would go, and swiped at the thread of fresh blood that tickled her neck. It didn’t hurt much. Terror was almost as good as morphine.
The shorts she tried wouldn’t stay on her hips. She kicked them away in frustration and snatched up the discarded gown and tied it around her waist as a ragged skirt.
Her medicines were lined up on Owen’s bookshelf, and she raked the orange bottles into a fold of the giant T-shirt she wore and held it closed against her body. Straining her ears to both the front door and the steady rain of the shower, she pulled open the desk drawers in the office, looking for her phone, for money, for anything that would help her.
Near the top of a loose fan of business cards scattered in the center drawer was a plain white card, a silver stripe in the middle separating a phone number below from the embossed initials above: S.K.
Marcelline had taken the card, an empty manila envelope for the pill bottles, and a nasty-looking letter opener for just in case she ran out of alone time or strength in her legs before she got out.
The sound of water still hissed from the master suite. Marcelline closed the door to her room, tucked the laundry back into the dryer and eased it shut, and considered Owen’s gym shoes by the door. That would never work. They were way too big. But she took his socks, still grotesquely damp, from the pile of towels and gym-bag flotsam that he’d left on the floor by the breakfast counter. His keys were there, too.
She’d never given much thought to Owen Haig when they’d worked together. Rich people and their minions were a staple in her life; their polish and bling and attitudes were wallpaper to her. But Owen’s beautiful silver Mercedes, with its muted orange calipers, now that had caught her eye, she had to admit.
The silence thunked into place as Owen cut the water. Marcelline’s Jell-O heart tried to stop in her chest. She folded her fist around the keys to keep them from clanging, double-checked the room for anything obviously out of place, and tiptoed out the door in Owen’s sweat-soaked socks.
Adrenaline had gotten her down the elevator and through the garage in Owen’s building, first to find the car in a frantic, swivel-headed stagger through the gloom of the concrete cavern, then driving through the exit, trembling behind the tinted glass. The gate lifted with no alarm, and she turned onto the street, gripping the steering wheel until her fingers ached.
She’d burned through the last of her energy in only a few miles. She was exhausted and anemic, sweating and gasping for air—and all of that was before she’d even gotten out of the apartment. Her once-booming heart now limped along in her chest. Her teeth chattered. The car was conspicuous, and too much of her concentration was diverted to wondering if Owen had discovered her gone yet. A few days of confinement with too much of it spent being unconscious had warped her sense of time. She hadn’t looked at a clock on the way out. He might have showered more than an hour ago, or she may only have been gone ten minutes.
She’d ground the bumper of the Mercedes over a too-high curb when she’d pulled in between a dog park and a line of shops.
In her own wallet, wherever that was, Marcelline had the same business card that she’d taken from Owen’s desk.
S.K. was Samantha. Marcelline couldn’t remember her last name, something long, lots of letters. She didn’t know what the woman’s official job title was either, but the handful of transactions that had involved Samantha had been with the shadiest characters
Marcelline had ever seen in the gallery.
Whenever Samantha was part of the exchange, the layers of discretion were the answer to their own questions: Don’t ask.
Samantha’s personal style was changeable. A tousle of the hairdo and one accessory more or less and she’d blend into a school board meeting or an audience with the queen, a get-together in a pub or a church. It wasn’t hard to imagine her charming bikers and politicians alike. Her appeal was sparkle eyed and harmless, and Marcelline enjoyed it, but didn’t buy it for a second.
In the work they’d done together, Samantha was somewhere between an ambassador and a greased skid. She got things done. She erased negotiation and replaced it with introductions and efficient payments and everyone feeling like friends in the end. The last time they’d met had been with the Eastern European heavies who dealt with the Anningers through Owen.
Samantha would have been the next person Marcelline would have called if the Anningers hadn’t wanted the Flinck. As it was now, she seemed like the only person Marcelline could call at all.
So she did.
She’d refolded her makeshift skirt to look a little less obvious and steadied her hands and breath. She’d checked the mirror and wished she hadn’t. At least the bandaged, hollow-eyed wreck that she was in the moment wouldn’t likely remind anyone of any photo the media might have used in the search for her.
Marcelline had fished the stream of passersby and went for a kindly, confused-looking older woman with a flip phone that had to be a decade old. She begged to borrow it. The call went through and Samantha remembered her.
Samantha had done three circuits of Holy shit! in the first moments of that call and never acted shocked about a single thing beyond that.
Once Marcelline described where she was, Samantha told her to get out of sight, directing her, with her keyboard clicking over the line, checking online photos and maps, to a row of trash and recycling containers at the far end of the run of buildings.
“Wait there. Oh, and delete this call from that woman’s phone before you give it back. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of the rest from this end.”
“How—”
“Don’t ask. Hang in there. Sit tight.”
When she was retrieved to Samantha’s office, then fed and medicated, Marcelline’s story, all of her regret and terror, flooded out past any good reason not to. She had no energy left to spare on defense.
“Let me just finish one thing, here,” Samantha said, looking from her keyboard to the screen. Marcelline’s story had wound down to exhausted silence. “Then I’ll take you home with me.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You need rest. Also, because I have an idea. This is interesting.”
Marcelline worked up a weak smile. “I’m not sure I can handle any more things that are interesting.”
“Don’t worry. I can help you.” Samantha looked away from her work. “Do you believe me?”
Relief filled up Marcelline’s throat. She could only nod.
“Good. All it will cost you is a little blood. Not that you look like you can afford to lose much more.”
Marcelline closed her eyes. It was work to even lift her lips into a better smile. She should laugh. It was the kind of thing people said as a joke. Why didn’t it sound like a joke?
Samantha noticed. “I’m not kidding, actually. Sorry. I’ll have someone come out to the house to draw a little blood tomorrow. It’ll be okay. We won’t need much.” Samantha emptied a small brown-paper shopping bag of its lunch leftovers and held open the sack toward Marcelline’s shoeless feet. “Put his socks in here.”
Samantha’s grin was adorable, mischievous even. A gray swoon of unreality threatened to tilt Marcelline out of her chair. “Why?”
“Why? Because you’re a missing person. And not just plainly missing. You’re gorgeous and well missed by good, upstanding photogenic people who pay their taxes. That’s why. It’s quite an opportunity. A little mingled DNA on some artfully hidden socks can be very compelling to police and juries. Did you never see anything about the OJ trial?”
“You’re going to set him up? But Owen didn’t do anything to me. I mean, I don’t even know that he would have. I might have overreacted. It might just have been his way of making sure I didn’t know where Jonathan is.”
“You think Owen Haig is all talk?”
Marcelline couldn’t bring herself to say yes, but no would have been close to a lie.
Samantha sighed. “I know it’s horrible and terrible. It’s also not fixable. And, no, I’m not necessarily going to set him up. He didn’t do anything to you, but he didn’t get the chance, did he? Let’s just say that your concerns for your well-being—and your family’s—weren’t ridiculous. He’s humiliated. It’s not safe to make him angry. You’ll have to trust me on that. Seriously.”
“But the socks . . .”
“Right. In our weird world I actually like Owen, for the most part. But he gets in my way. And I get in his. Being able to divert him, should I ever need to, is a gold coin. The police crawling up his ass over a missing person like you?” Samantha laughed, delighted. “I could drop that little bomb for years and it would still play.”
The guilt made Marcelline’s stomach lurch.
“Look. I probably won’t ever do it, but leverage is very important in what Owen and I do. It would probably be just as effective to send him one of the two socks and tell him what it is. It’s worth taking you on as a little side project just for this piece of rainy-day insurance.
“I know you think this is a disaster. And from where you’re sitting, it is. For me, though? This, dear M, is easy. And maybe even worthwhile.”
Samantha called everyone she liked by the initial of their first name. She’d started calling Marcelline M the second time they met in the gallery, and Samantha picked it up again now, automatically, in the moment of taking her on as a pet project.
After a few weeks of lying low at Samantha’s, they’d come to a decision. The two of them together, S&M, was a joke—funny because it was a little bit funny on its own, and funny because their situation demanded honesty that was true to the point of pain.
M couldn’t stay. It wasn’t safe to be so close. She couldn’t hide there forever. Marcelline’s family was frantic over her disappearance. Owen Haig was on a rampage. And no one knew where the painting was.
When Samantha was prepping Marcelline for her next life, far away as someone else, picking her new name had been the hardest part. Well, not the first name. That had been easy. M—Em—Emma.
S had been typing, her ever-present purple manicure flashing quickly over the keys, the clicking a soothing white noise over Marcelline’s anxiety. It sounded sure. And competent. And not crazy. This was crazy.
“Okay, for the last name, just pick one of someone you love. A name that always means good things to you. You’ll answer to it quicker that way. That’s the hard part, responding naturally when your new name is called. So, what do you think?”
The prospect of not seeing her sister sprang to Marcelline’s mind. “Bethany.”
Samantha sighed. “I know. But Bethany is a weird last name. Emma Bethany? That won’t work.”
“Okay.”
“And you have the same last name as your sister. So, that won’t work either. What else?”
They settled on O’Connor after Marcelline’s third-grade teacher, a woman she’d adored and who had let her take home the class rabbit over the summer as her first pet.
“I assume you were fingerprinted for the gallery?” Samantha asked.
“Yes. They had to do everyone.”
“That’s what I thought. So a life of crime is out. Got it?”
“Probably should have told me that a couple of months ago.”
Samantha smiled and kept typing. “No, really. Don’t get arrested. Okay, now all that’s left is—” Samantha had stopped short, hands hovering above the keyboard.
All that’s left had drawn a hiccuping sob
from Marcelline.
“It’s going to be okay, M. I know how to do this. I know you’re scared, and I am, too, which is weird. I’ve never had to do this before for someone I care about. And I don’t have a lot of friends. But I’m good at my job. I never get to save the day. I’m not going to screw this up. Okay?” They’d stared into each other’s tears, a pin in the map of their odd new friendship. “It’s going to be good. You’re going to be fine. We’ll work this out. I promise.”
Samantha scratched her nails over Marcelline’s shoulder. A friendly, reassuring grand gesture from the least touchy-feely person Marcelline had ever met.
“And now you need to pick a birthday that’s a holiday— What? It makes the date easy to remember. And it makes good stories that are easy to come up with. Fourth of July, Christmas, Halloween, something, any of those. And”—Samantha snapped her fingers—“you need a trauma, a reason not to talk about things, a reason not to be on social media.”
Marcelline had looked at Samantha as if she’d turned into a beetle on a path straight across her foot, and cupped her hand over the sunset palette of scars at her jawline. “How will we ever think of anything?”
Samantha shook her head. “Right.” She looked Marcelline over. “Okay. Simple. You’ve got a psycho ex-husband. You ran. He’s cut you off from your family. It’s PTSD and you won’t even say his name.” Samantha looked unselfconsciously at the scar when Marcelline dropped her hand. “They’ll believe you.”
So in her new life, whenever she talked about herself at all, Emma O’Connor said she loved having a birthday on Halloween. The story was that all her life there was always a masquerade that no one had to go to any extra trouble for. And she was effectively a refugee from a horror that would be cruel to prod. It was the exit to any conversation she didn’t want to have.
Her official paper trail was shallow, but reliable. Marcelline Gossard was gone. Some people, a lot of people, thought she was dead. Knew she was dead. Counted very much on her being dead. Samantha stayed close, always there by phone and text, and kept a watch for who looked for Marcelline online.