by Kate Myles
“Grandpa?” She’s never asked what she’s about to ask. She’s been too scared of the answer. “Can I come home?”
Her grandpa doesn’t speak.
“Simon?”
“Chloe . . .”
“Please.”
“Chloe, honey, your grandma still can’t talk right. She can’t even feed herself.”
That was so long ago! Chloe is a different person now. It’s not fair. And the last thing she needs now is these images in her mind, not when she’s trying to get it together, get on with her life. She covers her ears and closes her eyes, trying to shut out the replay of the old lady howling on a dirty carpet, shielding her head from Chloe’s kicks and punches.
A police car slows as it passes. Chloe starts her engine. She gets on the road. The late-afternoon shadows talk to her—they say, Come closer. Come west. It’s not clear to her where she’s headed until she finds herself there, at the edge of a playground, a few spots away from where she parked last night. She watches the families through the windshield. The parents stick close to the littlest, the babies. Big kids run in a pack and pretend their fingers are guns. A mom walks over to them and shakes her head no.
The light turns golden and brilliant until it fades to blue and shadowless. The sun sets. The air cools. The last of the families pack up and leave.
Chloe waits until it’s completely dark. Then she gets out of her car. She crosses to the swing set and sits. She kicks off, pumping her legs and soaring as high as she can, back and forth, and for a second she feels it, the abandon, the sense of pure being, the feeling she’s had from dancing, from sex, from being the center of attention.
She looks past the soccer fields and baseball diamonds to the fence separating the park from the airport. She walks toward it. She doesn’t see any damage as she approaches. Maybe last night was a dream. She gets close to where they mended the wire with duct tape. You wouldn’t know the chain link was cut unless you were looking for it.
She lifts her eyes in the direction of Doug’s plane. Someone’s out there. She doesn’t recognize him at first. He’s just a figure, a man like any other, emerging from behind the hangar. He stops under a lamp and checks his phone. He’s more disheveled than usual, like the mess of his hair and bloat to his face aren’t on purpose anymore. He looks at the sky.
Chloe stands. He doesn’t notice her. It’s like she’s invisible, like she has superpowers. The low branches of the bush poke Chloe’s sandaled feet, but she remains still as she watches him walk toward his Cessna with a slouch, with the cautious steps of an old man. Chloe tries to remember what it was like having sex with him. But it’s like trying to recall what the flu feels like when you’re not sick.
He circles his aircraft, feeling the joints, shaking the wings. A corporate jet taxies to the end of the runway, flooding the air with the stink of fuel. Doug disappears in front of the prop, moving it from side to side.
Check the gas tank! Chloe wants to shout, but she can’t. It’s a nightmare how she can’t say anything, like she’s running down a hallway, and a trick of perspective is making it longer and longer, and she’ll never reach the end of it.
She’ll go to jail if she says something. But he’ll die if she doesn’t. She’ll be a killer.
She doesn’t feel invincible anymore. She steps farther into the bushes, to a palm tree that can shield her. She presses her hands into its trunk. It’s not a rational decision, the one she’s about to make. It’s not weighing pros and cons. She has no idea what’s going to happen, whether she’s about to save his life or not.
The corporate jet takes off. Chloe moves from her hiding place. Doug opens his pilot door. He takes a step up. Chloe starts toward the fence with her mouth open, her voice ready, but she hits something with her big toe. It feels like a corner, like cardboard. She glances down, not really thinking. At first it looks like a random piece of litter. But something about it is familiar.
It’s a sugar carton, scrunched up and beaten. Chloe reaches for it. She sees it, before she even uncrumples the box. A giant markered S!!!! for Sheralyn scrawled across the logo.
Chloe can hear a plane starting up, a propeller with a deep motor, sputtering, catching before rising to a higher and higher pitch. It sounds like insects, like a horde of angry wasps. It’s all she can hear as she falls to her knees and tears the bush with her fingers. What else? What else has Emily hidden there?
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
DOUG
Doug doesn’t like flying at night. But the traffic is bad. It would take him four hours at least to get to his parents’ house. He does one last check, mapping his flight plan against his pilot weather app. Partly cloudy skies all the way to San Diego. He switches on the radio.
“On the ground Foxtrot seven nine Delta Quebec ready to taxi VFR to the south.”
He steers his plane down the tarmac. He barely notices the din of his propellers, he’s so familiar with this machinery. He’s comfortable here. And he doesn’t know where else to go.
He checked into a hotel earlier. He had lunch at the bar and tried to make eye contact with a woman, a business traveler, sitting by herself. The look on her face. Doug can only describe it as revulsion.
He reaches the edge of the runway and turns around. “Foxtrot seven nine Delta Quebec ready for takeoff.” He gets the all clear and accelerates, relaxing into his seat as the plane bumps and dips, and then it’s as if God has scooped him up. The city shrinks below him. He needs this, to be in the air.
His parents. They’ll give him a place to hide. To plot his next journey. It will be a humbling one. He already knows that. There are moments, actually, when he thinks about it, where he’s almost giddy. Humility. It will be a new experience.
Doug maneuvers his plane over the Orange County shoreline, with the ocean to his right. He sniffs. He smells smoke. He looks from side to side, to both of his engines. It’s not coming from his plane. He glances out toward the ocean and sees a thin trail of darkness floating along a moonlit cloud. The smoke from a forest fire has blown out to sea. He doesn’t bother scanning the horizon for an orange glow. There’s always a fire somewhere.
Doug clenches his jaw, wondering what Emily is doing at that exact moment. Curling up on his couch, probably. Puttering around his kitchen. That’s his house. He should have made her leave.
He should do it. Kick her out. Apply for sole custody of Grace.
Little Grace. That little angel. She fussed when he picked her up from her baby swing yesterday. He cupped his hand around her fuzzy scalp and kissed her forehead. “Amazing Grace,” he called her, mainly because he knows Emily hates it. She wants them to agree on nicknames.
“What about Gracie?” she asked. “Grace-aroonie?”
He should have taken her with him this morning. It would have been easy. He could have just picked her up and run. Where does it say she’s supposed to live with Emily? She’s not even a good mom. She’s turning crazy, forcing Grace to exercise with that ridiculous tummy time. And today. When he called Emily. All he did was suggest, just floated the idea, that Grace fly with him sometime, that she could visit her grandparents. Emily had to start in with the histrionics, screaming, “Grace will never get on that plane!”
The divorce will be messy. He can already tell.
Doug is hit with nausea. Dizziness. It’s not just Emily. Something is wrong. He’s distracted. It was the smoke. His eyes were on the clouds over the ocean. He turns his head to the left, to where the lights of Orange County should be, but there’s only dark sky out his window.
“Jesus,” he says. He’s been banking to the right, not even realizing.
He concentrates on his instrument panel. His altitude indicator says he’s in a twenty-degree turn. He rolls his shoulders back and ignores the urgency inside him, the desperation to lift his eyes, restore his sense of balance by looking out the window. That will kill him. It’s a trick, his eyes and body telling him one thing, his instruments saying another. He keeps his head down as h
e guides the yoke gently to the left, until the lines of his indicator match the fixed horizontal horizon. He looks up. He’s now pointed due west, out to sea. Patience. He turns south, to get back over land. Only five degrees this time, making a wide circle.
He rejoins the coastline at Camp Pendleton. A high-pitched ambience signals the takeoff of a stealth helicopter below him. The black chopper glides away and hovers over the sea, invisible except for a single blue light.
He’s afraid. Of what, he doesn’t know. It’s almost like he’s just realized, after all these years of flying, that he’s up in the goddamned air. None of his knowledge or experience, the principles of flight or his accumulated hours, can help the fact that as a human, he’s not really supposed to be here.
The lights of Montgomery-Gibbs Airport appear ahead of him. He calls to the radio, requesting permission to land, half hoping they’ll say, No, stay there. We’ll come and get you. He circles the airport and has to remind himself that he knows what he’s doing. He knows how to land a plane. He approaches the runway from the south. He tracks his descent on his altimeter. He doesn’t trust his vision anymore.
Emily flashes in his mind. He has an urge to abort the landing, race back to Malibu, protect his daughter. From Emily? He’s not sure. But something isn’t right. He feels it in his torso, in the set of his jaw.
He lands, hitting the ground harder than he wanted. He’s unnerved. That’s all it is. He’s going through a lot. Air traffic control directs him to park outside a hangar. He calls Emily’s cell. It goes to voice mail. He tries the landline. She doesn’t answer. She’s letting it ring out of spite.
He orders an Uber. His parents are expecting him. But he directs the driver to the beach instead. He wants to be alone.
Emily is on his mind. So is Grace. And Chloe. And Harper. Everyone he’s ever hurt. The dog, Bella. Dr. Maryn’s customers. The driver stops at the entrance to the pier. Doug gets out. He can see the ocean from here, but he can’t hear the waves, not with the noisy restaurants on the strand. He takes off his shoes and socks and walks down the beach, past the hotels, to a dark stretch of sand.
He walks to the shoreline. He lets the tide run over his feet. Random people push into his thoughts, people he’s never seen before, people he doesn’t know. But he can picture them. He sees them when they realize their mental health data is no longer private.
He scratches his arms, suddenly overwhelmed. A question dances, hovers over him. What did it feel like? That moment when Dr. Maryn’s customers realized that data brokers knew everything, that their most vulnerable selves had been sold. Was it panic? Shame? He wades deeper into the surf, not caring that he’s soaking his pant legs.
No. He can’t start worrying about how other people feel.
Because it’s not enough. Because seeing things through someone else’s eyes has never been the point. Because the truth is he’s a smart guy, and even though he pretends differently, he’s always known what other people go through.
The horror is that he doesn’t care.
No one knows me, he thinks. There isn’t a single person on this earth who does. He lies. He steals. He steps farther into the ocean. The water is above his knees now. He has a brief urge to continue fully clothed. He can float or even sink. The thing is to let the cool drench his skin.
“I’m an asshole,” he says. A large wave breaks across his thighs.
He backs up onto the sand and sits.
A pigeon flutters down, landing a few feet away. It folds its wings against its sides. “What are you doing up?” Doug asks. The pigeon steps toward him. Doug gives a little laugh. He throws a handful of sand at it. But the bird stands its ground, cocks its head to the side, and eyes him before flying away.
“Come back,” Doug whispers.
Shush, go the waves, and in the lull between breaks, he swears he can hear a new sound. Footsteps. He turns. The sound stops. No one is there. He looks back at the water. It starts up again. It’s unmistakable, the soft crunch of feet. He looks back. The beach is empty, but he can hear it still. It’s getting louder. A single pair of footsteps in the sand. It comes closer and stops next to Doug. An awesome, hovering presence.
Of course, Doug thinks. He’s having an epiphany. Just like the one he had decades ago, on this very same beach. Only this time he has the words. He knows how to move forward.
Organized religion.
He won’t even have to do much work. Just some research. He’s a good speaker. All he’ll have to do is start talking. He’s spent so much energy, goodwill, his whole goddamned life, building his business, his worldview, all of it from scratch. But religion. It’s set up already.
Doug gasps and buries his face in his arms. “Oh Jesus,” he says. And a warm creep of forgiveness trickles in, oozing and soothing, a balm inside his body. “No,” he cries, resisting. He doesn’t want this. He wants things to be like they were before.
But that’s impossible. There is only this. He has to do it. He has to make it real. And then he’ll tell the story of this moment for the rest of his life.
He drops his arms in surrender. “I’ve done some terrible things.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
EMILY
Chloe rang my doorbell. “What are you doing?” I called through the door. She wasn’t supposed to show up like that.
“I was at the airport,” she said.
Shit. I opened the door and pulled her inside. She shrank into the wall, all narrow and shivering, clutching her hands to her chest like a frightened rodent. I stepped out to the driveway, looking for potential witnesses, neighbors or stray paparazzi still trying to get a shot of Doug. I didn’t see anyone.
“Chloe, we can’t see each other. I told you this.”
“Doug took his plane,” she said. She was shaking.
I took a sharp inhale. So this was it. At every instant in this process, I kept thinking, There’s no turning back. But now there truly wasn’t.
“What do we do?” she asked. She looked terrified. Her eyes stood out, round and pitiful, like the waif from the Les Misérables poster.
“Come with me,” I said.
She followed me down the hall and slowed as we neared the open door to the nursery. The nanny was in the rocker with Grace, the tinkling notes of “Brahms’ Lullaby” sounding from the mobile above her crib. Chloe stopped. She pointed to the mobile.
“Is that a real Calder?” she asked. She sounded caustic. I’d never heard that tone from her before.
“What?”
“At your office,” she said. “I asked you about the Calder.”
“I don’t remember that,” I said. I closed the door to Grace’s room. “Come downstairs.”
I went to the couch. Chloe stood behind me as I opened my new laptop. I pulled up the KTLA and Fox 11 pages. There was no news of a plane crash. “Shit,” I said. “I wish I could google this.”
Chloe cocked her head. “Why can’t you?”
“They can get a warrant for your searches,” I said and shut my lips tight.
I realized what I’d just done. I’d had Chloe google everything for me. I kept my eyes on my computer a few moments, hoping she wouldn’t put it together.
“Have a seat,” I said. I offered her space on the couch. She considered it a few moments before strolling to the breakfast bar and perching on a stool.
Fuck.
“Do you want something to drink?” I asked. “Water? Tea?”
She said nothing but looked at me so strangely. Her eyes were glassy. She seemed like she was suppressing a smile.
“Chloe?”
“I’ll have wine.”
“There’s no wine,” I said.
“That’s not true,” she said in a low, bursting register. She pointed to the pantry behind the refrigerator, where Doug had installed a wine locker. “You have a whole room of it back there.”
I stood, suddenly aware that she was different, confident. She seemed to have gathered strength on the walk from my front door. Sh
e slapped a hand on the counter and kept it there. “I get it, what Doug saw in you,” she said. “You’re both hard people.”
“Ms. Markham?” The nanny was coming down the stairs. She stopped a few steps from the bottom. She frowned in Chloe’s direction before raising her eyebrows at me. “It’s okay?”
“Yes, Gloria, it’s fine, thank you. Is Grace asleep?”
“She’s asleep.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Gloria glanced at Chloe, took one step up, and hovered. I wanted her out of there. I had no idea what Chloe might say, how she might incriminate me.
“You need, I can stay,” she said.
“No need. You have a good night. Thank you.”
I waited until I heard the front door open and shut. I turned back to Chloe. She’d moved farther into my kitchen, walking the perimeter and touching everything: my toaster, my spatula carousel, my knife block, my faucet.
I pushed my hair away from my face and cleared my throat. “I didn’t think about the internet searches until tonight,” I said.
She ran her fingers along the vertical dowels of our cold drip coffee maker.
“How much did this cost?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
“It’s funny,” she said. “In the back of my mind, I’ve always hoped for some huge disaster. Something that would plunge the world into chaos. You know, level the playing field? Like, if we could all start from scratch, then maybe I’d have a chance. But people like you, people like Doug, you’ll always be the first ones out of the muck.”
Something dark and heavy dropped in my chest. All this time, I’d assumed Chloe wanted me on her side, wanted me to like her. She opened my refrigerator. She opened my freezer, peering in with one hand on the door. My kitchen had somehow turned into a seat of power.
“There was this lady today,” she said. “I was backing up to parallel park, and she scooted in behind me. I told her. I got out of my car and told her that was my spot. And you know what she said? She said, ‘I don’t care.’”
I needed to get her out of there. I needed my phone. It was in my purse. Somewhere. Upstairs or on the floor in the living room. My landline was in the office.