Someone Knows

by Lisa Scottoline

“Dad, no.”

  “Don’t think. Just do. Now get the fuck up.”

  “Did you just curse?” Allie asked, so surprised that she finally looked up at him. His eyes were burning, his lips pursed hard, and his jaw set with determination. He was an orthodontist on a mission, and she felt a pang of guilt, knowing he was trying to help her. She needed help because she didn’t know what to do or how to live anymore. She didn’t want to come out of hiding to go to the store, school, or anywhere. She loved him so much, and maybe he was right. She wanted him to be right.

  “I’m not gonna let you sink, like I let your mother sink,” her father said, his eyes newly wet behind his glasses. He held out his hand. “I’m your life preserver.”

  Part Two

  —TWENTY YEARS LATER—

  It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

  —DAVID FOSTER WALLACE,

  Kenyon Commencement Address, May 21, 2005

  The tears I shed yesterday have become rain.

  —THICH NHAT HANH, “MESSAGE,”

  Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems

  CHAPTER 48

  Allie Garvey

  The morning sun rose in a cloudless blue sky, and Allie walked toward the green Gardens of Peace tent on the gravesite. Fifty mourners clustered underneath, holding red roses with droopy heads. An older priest stood before bouquets of white lilies and red gladiolas, and an enlarged photo of the deceased rested on an easel.

  DAVID PAUL HYBRINSKI read the caption, and the photo was a candid of David at a tennis court, showing him from the waist up. He was grinning, resting his hand on the net and dressed the way Allie remembered, in his red bandanna and white polo shirt. He looked in his early twenties, so maybe the photo was taken at college.

  Allie’s gut clenched as she approached, and she felt a deep wave of dread. She eyed the photo, and David’s warm brown eyes gazed back at her, telegraphing why she’d fallen for him, twenty years ago. Now she tried to see behind them. He had to have been miserable but hiding it, like she’d been, ever since the night Kyle died. He had to have felt the same guilt, and she sensed it was why he’d committed suicide. His obituary hadn’t specified how he had done it, and she knew that newspapers followed rules about reporting the details. Allie had a guess, because he had killed himself on the twenty-year anniversary of Kyle’s death.

  She walked forward, her heels clacking on the asphalt. She’d kept the secret about Kyle because she hadn’t wanted to get caught, back then. Now she didn’t know what she wanted. She knew only that she couldn’t go on this way. She’d never considered suicide, even as low as she got. Her punishment was to live with the shame and to wonder forever. To this day, she didn’t know how the prank had gone so lethally wrong.

  She drew closer to the mourners, who were divided into two groups, one on the far side of the casket, facing her, and the other on the near side, their backs turned. Then Allie spotted Sasha and Julian, who were standing together on the far side, and she could see them clearly. Her reaction was visceral; her gut twisted as if being wrung.

  She reminded herself to breathe slowly, in and out. Sasha looked strikingly beautiful, with her fine blond hair swept into a chignon, fancy gold earrings, and a black dress that looked like Chanel. She wore only light makeup, but she stood out, naturally stunning. Julian was next to her, tall and gym-trim in a well-tailored dark suit with a print tie. His hair was finely cut, and his thin lips pursed unhappily. His face had grown longer, but he looked predictably successful.

  Allie approached, suppressing her emotions. She’d long suspected that Julian had loaded the gun, but Sasha was also a possibility. She’d never believed for a second that David would have done such a thing. It had haunted her, and at night she imagined each step leading to Kyle’s death, visualizing someone opening the cylinder, loading the bullet, and firing the gun. She blamed herself for Kyle’s death, and now David was dead, another unimaginable thing she could take credit for.

  Allie reached the closer group of mourners. The priest was speaking, but she tuned him out, her thoughts racing. Something about seeing Sasha and Julian in the flesh made her doubt her suspicions. They looked like two normal people. How could they have murdered someone? Was she crazy to suspect them? But hadn’t Julian seemed jealous of Kyle? Hadn’t Sasha been angry that Kyle had tricked her? They had all known where the gun was buried, and the bullets, even David. Could his suicide mean he had killed Kyle? He was incapable of such a thing, wasn’t he? And why would David have wanted to hurt Kyle?

  Allie flashed to Sasha and Julian sharing the vodka, passing Kyle the gun, racing away through the woods. She had thought about it so many times, but even she had to admit her memories had been eroded by time and emotion. She remembered them talking, shouting directions as they ran away. She remembered them not being as hysterical as she was, but she could have been wrong. She’d learned since that memory could be warped by trauma. She’d never shaken the gruesome image.

  Allie wished she could run to Sasha and Julian, grab them, and shake the truth out of them. It took nerve to come to the funeral if David had killed himself over a murder one of them had committed. She even tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, wondering if they had come for the same reason she had. Maybe they’d felt drawn here by a guilty conscience, too. David’s suicide could have provoked in them the same reaction it had in her. An urge to return to where it all began. To each other, after twenty years. To a reckoning.

  Allie caught a glimpse of the casket, which was polished walnut with bronze handles. It was so hard to believe that David was inside. He’d become a freelance writer, and she’d read articles he’d posted online from literary journals like Granta, GQ, and tennis magazines. He would reference David Foster Wallace from time to time, and she’d felt so sad when David Foster Wallace had himself committed suicide. She could imagine how devastated David would’ve been.

  She’d never spoken to David after what had happened that summer. He wouldn’t look at her if she saw him in the hallway at school. He had taken all AP classes, like her, but was always in the other section. He’d dated a lot and stopped hanging with Sasha, who’d become prom queen. The Bakerite had published where seniors were going to college, and Sasha went to Wake Forest and David to Amherst, like his idol David Foster Wallace. Julian had gone to NYU.

  Allie had gone to Penn, where she buried herself in her classes, getting great grades even though she made only a few friends. She struggled with colitis, and lost more weight. Girls in the dorm assumed she had an eating disorder. The song “Fucked Up Girl” was popular, and Allie identified. She graduated magna cum laude and met a law student, Larry Rucci, an outgoing Italian-American from North Jersey, who was chubby, laughed easily, and asked her out. They made a classic pairing of opposites, got married, and now, five years later, were foundering. Opposites don’t attract, they divorce.

  Allie always thought of David as her first love, and that the night ended in such a horrific way burned him into her consciousness. The best night of her young life was also the worst, and kissing David would always be linked with killing Kyle. She couldn’t disentangle the two because she couldn’t tell her therapist about David without also telling him about Kyle. She hadn’t even told her husband about Kyle, or David. Their therapist said Allie had intimacy issues, and they were why her marriage was in trouble. No shit, Sherlock.

  A tall man shifted in front of her, giving Allie a view of David’s wife and family. She recognized them from photos on his Facebook page, since his settings were public. He’d married a painter named Martine Jocose, an artsy redhead whose delicate features were today masked by oversized designer sunglasses. She’d had gallery showings in New York, and they’d lived in Williamsburg. Suddenly Martine moved the handbag she was clutching in front of her, and Allie c
aught a glimpse of her pregnant belly. It took Allie by surprise, since David hadn’t mentioned it on his Facebook page. She felt sympathy for Martine, raising their baby on her own, and for David, who would miss out on becoming a father.

  The rest of David’s family stood next to Martine, and Allie recognized them from Facebook, too. His father, a stocky, spectacled man with wisps of salt-and-pepper hair, stood stoic with his arm around David’s mother. She held a Kleenex to her nose, her eyes spilling over with tears, her eyebrows sloping down, and her expression etched with deep grief. David’s brother, Jason, was next to her, somber in a dark three-piece suit, and looked like an older, corporate version of David. His pretty twin sisters stood on Jason’s other side, distraught as the priest finished his prayer.

  Everyone said a final amen, then it was time for the goodbyes, and everyone placed a rose on the casket, ending with David’s parents. They stepped up together, and his mother set a rose down, murmuring through her tears, “David, I don’t understand, I don’t understand.”

  The mourners reacted with sniffles, and Allie felt her heart wrench, the pressure building inside her. She couldn’t stand to see David’s mother suffer, wracking her brain about why David had done it, when Allie knew at least one reason. She couldn’t be sure that it was the only reason, and she wondered if anyone committed suicide for only one reason.

  Suddenly David’s father looked away, and he scowled deeply. He pointed to the right, his arm a straight line of accusation and his anger so sudden, swift, and undisguised that the mourners turned to see what was the matter. Even the priest turned around, and a tall, thin man in a black suit was walking toward them. He had dark, good-looking features, but he was grief-stricken, his head down, eyes puffy, and his expression drawn. He was obviously a mourner who’d come late, and Allie didn’t understand why David’s father was getting so angry.

  “Get out of here!” David’s father shouted at the mourner. “You’re not welcome here! You have no business here! No business!”

  The mourner stopped in his tracks. His eyes flared in defiance. “I have every right to be here! David would’ve wanted me here!”

  “I don’t want you here! No, no, no!” David’s father erupted, letting go of his wife and storming off toward the mourner, wagging his finger. “Get out or I’ll throw you out! I’ll throw you out!”

  Allie’s mouth dropped open, aghast. The mourner started walking toward the casket again. David’s father charged toward him, shouting. Jason ran after his father. The funeral director and his assistants raced to intervene. It looked as if a fight was about to break out. The funeral erupted in chaos. The priest and mourners surged forward to see what was going on. Allie moved to the front of the crowd.

  “Dad, no!” His father ignored him, continuing to advance on the mourner.

  “You have no business here! Get out! Right now!”

  “I have every right! He was my boyfriend, whether you like it or not! We loved each other!” The mourner kept advancing, on a collision course with David’s father.

  “Get out! Get out right now!”

  “This is a public place!” the mourner yelled, and as soon as the two men got close enough, David’s father lunged at the mourner, clamping down on his shoulders and tackling him. Jason leapt into the fray, yanking his father backward. Funeral assistants rushed to restrain the mourner, then pushed him back toward the street.

  Allie felt dumbfounded, trying to process what was happening. The mourner was David’s boyfriend. She’d had no idea from his Facebook page that David was gay. She’d had no idea from his kiss, either, way back then.

  Meanwhile Martine had collapsed, sobbing. David’s mother led her from the scene. David’s boyfriend was being ushered off in tears. David’s father headed after his wife, flustered and infuriated. Jason looked stricken, and the twins hurried crying to the limos.

  The priest looked this way and that, bewildered. The funeral, completely disrupted, ended. Some of the mourners talked among themselves, their heads bent together, and others dispersed, placing their roses atop the casket before they left. The funeral director dismantled David’s photograph and easel, and his assistant ushered mourners to their cars.

  An elderly mourner turned to Allie, her hand at her chest. “Goodness, what a scene! I couldn’t hear much, but Bill’s not himself. How could he be? I assume we’ll still go back to the house in Brandywine Hunt, don’t you? For the reception?”

  “I guess,” Allie said, trying to recover.

  “Good, I’ll see you there.”

  “I wasn’t . . .” Allie started to say, then stopped. She hadn’t known David was gay, and it had obviously caused drama in his family. She wondered if it had something to do with his suicide. “Yes, I’ll see you there.”

  Allie felt a hand on her arm and looked over, startled to see that it was Julian.

  “Wanna catch up, instead?” he asked with a tight smile. “I know a place we can talk privately. Sasha’s coming, too.”

  “Yes,” Allie answered without hesitation. It was a conversation she had waited twenty years for.

  CHAPTER 49

  Barb Gallagher

  Barb stood alone at Kyle’s grave, near the top of the hill at Gardens of Peace cemetery. She still couldn’t believe he was really gone, even now. She could remember the stretch marks on his back, from growing by leaps and bounds. It was hard to believe he wasn’t growing anymore. He stopped growing twenty years and three days ago, exactly.

  It seems like yesterday, Barb thought, though she knew that was a cliché. She felt like he’d grown up in the blink of an eye, too, another cliché. She decided that clichés ring true for a reason. She knew because she’d lived them. Kyle would be fifteen forever, in her mind. She was fifty-five. She’d put on a nice outfit from Chico’s, because she dressed up whenever she went to visit his grave. She wanted to look nice for him. It was the least she could do, since she had failed him, in the end.

  Suddenly Barb heard shouting behind her, at a distance. She turned around and saw a commotion at a funeral in the new section of the cemetery, closer to Scattergood Road. A fight had broken out among the mourners. Some men were shoving each other, and others were trying to break up the fuss. It was too far away for Barb to hear or see much, and it wasn’t her business.

  She turned away. She came here often enough to witness more than a few family fights at funerals. Last month, the police had to be called to the columbarium to break up a scuffle, and two mourners had been taken in handcuffs to police cruisers. It happened more than people realized, and Barb understood why. She would have thrown a fit if her ex-husband had been allowed to attend Kyle’s funeral. He hadn’t been, since the prison officials wouldn’t give him bereavement leave. He was rotting behind bars, which was fine with her.

  Barb bent her head and linked her hands in front of her. She scanned Kyle’s grave now that she had finished tending it, and it looked nice and neat. His memorial plaque was bronze, recessed in the green brushy grass. It read KYLE GALLAGHER, BELOVED SON, which Barb thought he would have liked. It was simple but did what needed doing, like Kyle himself. He did what needed doing, like packing boxes, unloading groceries, cutting the grass. Even on the basketball court back in Columbus, he’d done what needed doing. A three-pointer in the clutch, a foul shot, even a dunk. He’d had more than one buzzer-beater in his high school career. That was her Kyle.

  He was always in the back of her mind. She would see Kyle as a baby, grinning to show his first tooth, his gums wet with drool. Or Kyle as a little boy, shooting a foul shot in a jersey that hung to his knobby knees. Or Kyle as a teenager, wrestling on the kitchen floor with their old yellow Lab, Buddy. The poor dog had died a year after Kyle, and Barb told herself it wasn’t from a broken heart. But she couldn’t deny that for months after Kyle’s death, Buddy would go to the pantry and sit in front of the cabinet where they kept the leash. Barb would take him out, but he’d pull her back to the house and plop down in front of the cabinet again. The d
og seemed to think that sitting there would bring Kyle back. Some nights, Barb folded her hands and prayed that Buddy was right.

  She let her eyes fill with tears. She knew not to hold them back, though they didn’t bring her to her knees like they used to. The pain was still fresh, and the grief. She never got over it, though she’d gone back to work and resumed her life. Sometimes she felt like she was sleepwalking, but she couldn’t end it all, like Kyle had. Sharon made sure of that, anyway. They met every other week for dinner or a movie, and Barb watched Sharon’s son and daughter grow up and clapped at their high school and college graduations, weddings, then their children’s christenings, thinking every time, This could’ve been Kyle, too. Should’ve been Kyle, too.

  Barb still felt so surprised that he’d committed suicide. It just didn’t seem like something he would do, no matter how unhappy he was. It was Buddy that made her question it, too. She couldn’t imagine him taking the dog with him if he was going to kill himself. It didn’t square. But the autopsy report and blood tests showed the police had been right. Kyle had had alcohol in his blood, and that was why he hadn’t thought about Buddy. The case was closed. She had to face the facts.

  Still, all the what-ifs kept her up at night, to this day. What if she’d made a stink about his drinking on the sly? What if she’d found him a therapist sooner? What if she’d known how down he was? Since then, she’d gone to therapy, where they told her she was beating herself up, but she knew it was her fault. She blamed herself for not seeing the signs. She’d let Kyle down. She should have known. She should have stopped him. A mother is supposed to protect her child, and she had failed to.

  Barb wiped her tears away. Every time she came, she apologized to him. She begged him to forgive her. But Kyle was silent. It wasn’t he who blamed her; she blamed herself. She was her judge and jury, and she deserved the punishment she’d given herself. She was behind bars, too. She was serving a life sentence.