Beneath Her Skin

by Gregg Olsen

  Kim Lee shook her head. “No, no forgiveness is needed. You did all that you could.”

  “Did I? Really, Kim? Really?”

  “I’m sure you did. No one knows how they will react in a moment like what happened on that bridge. No one. You did the best you could in a terrifying time.”

  “I don’t know,” Sandra said, looking for something that maybe Kim could finally give her.

  “I know you did,” Kim said.

  The women talked a while longer. They cried; they hugged. Kim didn’t tell Sandra that she had questioned why Katelyn had been spared, when Christina was taken. And even so, in that very moment in the Berkleys’ house, no two women were ever closer, a bond so deep, born of such tragedy.

  The Port Gamble gossip line, thought by many to be sublimely accurate, had failed miserably when it came to the true trouble reverberating in house number 23. The Berkleys’ rows were not about a marriage crumbling because Sandra was drinking. It wasn’t about a restaurant failing, or settlement money that had been squandered. It was a marriage falling apart because Sandra Berkley could not face what had really happened on the Hood Canal Bridge and the shame and misplaced guilt that came with it. Booze had been her medication. Anger had been her weapon against a husband who had wanted to help her work through her guilt.

  * * *

  After she was sure Sandra was going to be all right, Kim Lee left for home, shaken and relieved by the meeting. She composed herself before ducking inside. Beth was watching TV, texting, drinking a sugar-free Red Bull, and reading a book.

  “You look completely trashed,” Beth said, glancing at her mother. “What did they make you do now? Re-add everything five minutes before shift change? Your job so sucks.”

  Kim had hoped the short walk in the night air would take some of the puffiness from her eyes.

  “Nothing ever adds up,” she said, going into the kitchen. “Pizza tonight?”

  Beth looked back down at her phone. “All right. I’ll call it in. You always get thick crust because you think it’s a better value because it weighs more. I like thin crust.”

  “Fine,” Kim said, heading into the kitchen. She braced herself on the counter a little and steadied herself by taking in a deep breath. She unfolded the letter and read it one more time. After seeing Sandra, it no longer seemed like a suicide note.

  I want you to know I’m so sorry that I didn’t save your daughter or the other girls. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to that day and do it all over. I’d do things differently. Please forgive me. I don’t know how much longer I can live with what I did. Sandra

  Kim shredded the note and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. She turned on the water and, as the noisy contraption did its thing, she wondered if it was worse to lose a child or live with the guilt that yours had survived. She was glad that she never had to face that. Sandra’s cross to bear weighed a million pounds.

  Later, after a couple of slices of thin-crust pizza and some distracted conversation between mother and daughter, Beth excused herself to her bedroom and texted Hayley and Taylor.

  Beth: Mom is stranger than normal 2nite. Boss prob yelled @her. Wish i had her probs. Her life is so easy.

  Hayley: Tell me about it. They keep saying that things r harder in the “real world” but they have no idea how f’ed up it is @kingston.

  Taylor: def the worst.

  As Kim Lee placed her head on the pillow, she was transported back to that day almost ten years ago, standing on the Hood Canal Bridge as the sirens wailed and all the mothers cried. Seeing Sandra hadn’t brought it all back because it had never really left her. She, like all the other moms, hated that damn bridge. Just hated it.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Some bridges, like the nearby Tacoma Narrows or its far sexier cousin, the Golden Gate in San Francisco, are a marvel for their stunning beauty, arching over dangerous waters or defying gravity as they connect two high points over a deep chasm.

  The Hood Canal Bridge is a marvel too, though not for how it looks. It literally floats atop the water for which it is named as it carries Washington State Route 104 across Hood Canal and connects the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas. At the time of its construction in 1961, depths of more than three hundred feet made it impossible for a suspension bridge to be built there. So it floats. Concrete pontoons hold up the roadway just above water level.

  Fifteen thousand cars cross it every day, its drivers and passengers thinking nothing more than how beautiful the Olympic Mountains are, with the eagles soaring overhead, and the occasional submarine cruising for the navy base in Bangor.

  A few families cross the bridge and remember the darkest days of their lives. The Ryan family was one of those. Valerie Ryan in particular couldn’t stand driving over the span. It was the primary reason why she went back to school to complete her psychiatric nursing degree. All of those jobs were on the Seattle side of the bridge. She didn’t want to find herself crossing Hood Canal for the mundane reason that her job was there.

  The girls knew about the accident, of course, but traversing the bridge on those rare trips to Port Townsend or Port Angeles brought the occasional questions about what happened that rainy, windy March 21 years ago. For some reason, the girls sought clarity of only one detail—not of what happened but of exactly where it had been.

  Taylor, in particular, seemed to hone in on the spot where the draw span connected with the main bridge deck.

  “It was here,” she said when she was seven and they were heading home from a visit in Port Townsend.

  “Somewhere around here, yes,” Valerie had said.

  “No,” Taylor said, “it was right here.”

  Hayley looked at the water. It was glass that late afternoon.

  “She’s right, Mom. Right at that spot where those birds are floating. That’s where it happened.”

  Valerie glanced in the direction of gulls bobbing on the surface as their car sped past. She didn’t like to think about it at all. She wanted everyone to just forget it.

  “I don’t remember,” she lied. “But yes, right around here.”

  Kevin’s eyes met his daughters’ in the rearview mirror.

  “Look at the snow on the mountains,” he said. “Must have had a storm last night.”

  The girls turned their attention to the view on the other side of the bridge. It was a distraction, and they knew it. Inside, both understood that their mother and father were as damaged by the events of the crash as they were.

  For as many people who’d lived and died in Port Gamble, the number of the dead buried in the Buena Vista Cemetery was exceedingly tiny. Among the more notable was Gustav Englebrecht, the first member of the United States Navy to be killed in action in the Pacific. His death was less heroic than foolish. He met his maker during an attack at Port Gamble in 1856 when he hoisted himself up over a log to get a better view of the battle at hand only to be finished off by a young man from the S’Klallam Tribe.

  There were older graves there too. Early settlers, workers who died at the mill, and so on. And, mixed in among many, there was also a modest plaque—one so small, worn, and faded that unless one knew of the legend, you’d never be able to decipher the inscription:

  PETER O’MALLEY, 15,

  was interred in the sea on April 22.

  He is now in God’s hands.

  May he rest in eternal peace

  According to the story, which had been passed on for generations, poor Peter had died from cholera and was laid to rest in a salt-cod crate coffin that had washed atop a sandbar. However, when three young S’Klallams forced open the mysterious crate, all that was inside was a silver crucifix, a tornado of flies and an acrid, hideous odor. The smell of death. Soon after, the oyster beds died and the seabirds stopped nesting there. People began to say that the site was cursed. They called the place Memalucet, or empty box. Those with a more twisted frame of mind called it Empty Coffin. Decades later Port Gamble was plotted there.

  On a day that many als
o consider cursed, Buena Vista Cemetery received a row of little girls’ graves, under a gigantic maple tree at the edge of the bluff looking toward the floating bridge across Hood Canal. Christina Lee was first, then Sarah Benton, Violet Caswell and Emma Perkins. Other than the obvious differences of the dates of their births and their names, all gravestones were identical in their design. Carved in relief from the black and white granite was a sleeping lamb and a phrase in simple script:

  Only a Short Time Here

  With God Forever

  For years after, visitors came to the cemetery and left toys and flowers for the little girls. One time, someone left a complete Barbie dream house and a Ken doll. Another deposited a tiny porcelain tea set. All of those things were gathered up and stored in the museum’s archives, with the understanding that no display would be made until the youngest of the survivors turned twenty-one years old. History was full of tragedy, but, as the archivist pointed out, it didn’t need to be shoved into the faces of the living.

  Although it never faded from the memory of those who lived in Port Gamble, people did find ways to move on.

  Visitors who came to the Buena Vista Cemetery to pay their respects never knew that one of the little girls’ graves was empty. Kim and Park Lee refused to bury their daughter Christina there. It was too cold and windy, and its location was too much of a reminder with that awful bridge off in the distance.

  Instead, they had Christina cremated and kept her ashes in an urn in their living room.

  Park Lee was among those who could never forget the loss of his firstborn daughter. The mill supervisor died when shrimping in the choppy waters of Hood Canal the year after the tragedy on the bridge. The sheriff’s investigation closed the case as an accidental drowning. His wife, Kim, knew better. When the county authorities returned his personal effects, Kim noticed something missing from his wallet—Park’s fishing license. She knew there was no way he’d have gone shrimping without that. Park was very strict about doing things the right way, the legal way.

  At thirty-four years old, Park Lee simply could not face his hurt anymore.

  Kim arranged photos of her husband and daughter on a shelf above the TV in the living room. On either end of the shelf, she placed two turquoise and gold cloisonné urns. One held the remains of her daughter; the other, her husband.

  They’d been up there so long that Beth no longer begged to spread the ashes on the shore because she thought it would be fun and dramatic. After a time, weeks would pass before she even noticed that the urns were there.

  It was just her and her mom and that was all it was ever going to be. And while Kim tried hard to make her daughter feel special, Beth never really felt it.

  Once, in a moment of deep introspection and personal clarity, Beth admitted to Hay-Tay that the reason she never stayed with anything very long was because “none of it seems to work.”

  “What do you mean?” Taylor had asked as the three of them walked across the field by the wedding pavilion. It was summer and a bridal party was being photographed along the edge of the bluff overlooking the water.

  “I’m not blaming my mom,” she said. “I guess I get that the love she has for Christina and my dad is stronger because they’re dead. It isn’t like she gets any do-overs with those relationships. She can fantasize and romanticize.”

  “People do that, sure,” Hayley said as the girls sat in the freshly mowed grass, not caring that their butts would turn green.

  “Sometimes I just want to tell her, ‘Hey! Look at me! I’m still here!’”

  Taylor touched Beth on the shoulder. “She knows that, Beth,” she said.

  They watched as a young eagle tussled with a gull overhead.

  “On some level I get that,” Beth said. “It’s just hard when half your family’s in urns, you know?”

  The parents of the dead girls and the husband of the bus driver received financial settlements from the state, though each of them would have traded the money for their loved one’s life any day of the week. After lawyers’ fees, the sum was nowhere near the hundreds of thousands reported by the Seattle media.

  Kim Lee squirreled away every dime and watched her nest egg grow, like the accountant that she was. She could have cashed it out any time she wanted and moved away. Anywhere—even Fiji. But she stayed put because Park and Christina considered Port Gamble home. Though they were completely portable, they weren’t going anywhere.

  The Berkleys used their windfall to finance and refurbish the Timberline, a restaurant that they’d never own because no historic buildings in Port Gamble could be sold to anyone.

  When Katelyn was in seventh grade, Sandra and Harper confessed to her that the college fund she’d thought she’d have for her pain and suffering had been spent on a new car and the first restaurant.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” Sandra said. “Your grandparents are going to take care of your college education. They’ve promised.”

  The disclosure had brought some relief. Katelyn was sure Starla would get some fabulous scholarship to a top-tier school, while she’d need to pay her way to get there.

  “I trust you, Mom,” she had said. “I know you’d never let me down. You or Dad.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The morning after Colton found his way into Katelyn Berkley’s computer, he drank a glass of orange juice and ate two thick slices of cinnamon toast that his mother made. Shania James slathered on the butter and sugar nearly to the point of complete calorie overload, but that’s the way her son liked it. He’d been thinking all morning about Katelyn, her mother and whatever it was that was on her laptop that Sandra had wanted to see. As he ate, he watched from the window for Hayley and Taylor to emerge from their house so they could huddle at the bus stop.

  He left Katelyn’s laptop and a Post-it note with her password on the kitchen table. Sandra Berkley said she was going to come by later in the morning to pick it up.

  “Did you look at any of it?” Shania asked.

  He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t. “Seemed a little invasive to me.”

  Shania nodded in the direction of the Ryan girls and Colton got up.

  “Yes,” she said, “I think it would be. But I think if something happened to you, I’d probably do the same thing.”

  He zipped up his coat, grabbed his backpack, and went for the door.

  “I guess I should start deleting all the bad stuff I’m into when I get home tonight,” he said, deadpan. “You know, so you don’t have to dig through all that ugly.”

  “No need,” she teased. “I’ve already installed a secret Net Nanny on your PC. I’ve caught up with all your ugly already.”

  Colton was fifteen, too old to hug his mom, but he wanted to just then. He never had any doubt that she was always on his side.

  “Bye, Mom,” he said.

  The sky had cleared overnight, which brought temperatures down to well below freezing. Hayley, Taylor and Colton met in the alley. The girls were zipped up and prepared for the Arctic. To humor her mother, Taylor wore what Colton knew was Aunt Jolene’s vomit scarf. Hayley had on a bright red scarf with a four-inch black leather fringe. He’d been with her when she bought it, and she had told him it was both cool and functional.

  “Which is very difficult to achieve,” she had said.

  Colton handed over the thumb drive. “All of Katelyn’s info is on this,” he said. “Emails, saved chats, Word docs.”

  Hayley took the thumb drive and zipped it into her pocket.

  “Now are you going to tell me what’s up with that?” Colton asked.

  They were nearly at the bus stop, where a few other kids were waiting.

  “I have a feeling that Katelyn would never have committed suicide,” Hayley said, thinking about how she was going to say the next part.

  “We both do,” Taylor said, cutting in. “It’s either an accident—”

  This time it was Hayley’s turn to cut off her sister. “Or a homicide,�
� she said.

  “You’ve been reading too many of your dad’s books.”

  “Maybe so. But suspicion is a good thing,” said Taylor, the daughter who had never cracked a Kevin Ryan paperback in her life.

  The bus came into view, and the space between the kids tightened as they lined up to get on board out of the cold.

  “How’s that?” Colton asked, hoisting his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Keeps things interesting. And we need that in Port Gamble,” she said.

  Colton nodded, but deep down he knew that was far from the truth. Port Gamble was a small town, certainly, and those who didn’t live there might think it was a sleepy little place. Yet the truth was almost every household had been the victim of something. Starla’s dad, Adam, left town without so much as a word; Beth’s father drowned; Katelyn was dead; and then there was what had happened to his own mom.

  Exactly what it was had never been a topic of conversation around the James’ household. And as much as he loved his mother, he loved her enough not to say a word about it. Whenever he saw the scars on her neck, he pretended they weren’t there.

  Later at school, between algebra and history, Colton ran into Starla—a rare occurrence because they spent most of their passing time in their separate pods, his orange, hers blue. It was even more unusual that Starla was alone, away from her usual group of mean-girl admirers and the straggler or two who wanted to be part of the group—until Starla had the poor girl picked off like a weakened zebra.

  “Hi, Colt,” she said.

  “Hi, Starla.” Colton tried to remember the last time she had spoken to him privately. Was it seventh grade? When she pretended to like him, when all she really wanted was for him to do her computer science homework? Like the biggest idiot in the universe, he had done it.