by D. J. Palmer
One more step, one lean too far, and they’d both be gone.
The air stilled. The persistent whap-whap-whap of the hovering helicopter seemed to stop. Becky watched in horror as Nash leaned her body back, her toes coming up high enough to reveal the bottoms of her shoes. Meghan leaned backward as well, forced to follow Nash, who kept a tight grip on her. They were going over any second.
As she tilted, Meghan drove her elbow hard into Nash’s stomach. Stunned, Nash let the scalpel fall from her grasp as she stumbled away from the ledge. Police moved forward as a blue wave, piling on Nash before she could scramble for her weapon. But Becky darted forward, her focus on Meghan, who teetered off-balance at the roof’s edge.
There was a second when Meghan seemed suspended in midair, but she soon lost her footing and started to go over. Becky lunged, closing the gap between her and Meghan in a single stride. Becky’s feet left the ground as she stretched out her body, reaching for the blur of motion in front of her like an outfielder making a diving grab. She latched on to the sleeve of Meghan’s sweatshirt as she went over the edge.
Becky fell to the ground with a thud, somehow without letting go of her hold. Momentum and body weight dragged her perilously close to the ledge. She thought for a second she was going over, too, before someone gripped her ankles hard, arresting her forward slide. Becky spun her head to see Zach, hands latched to her legs, his feet braced against the rooftop, his contorted expression showing the strain of a weight lifter.
In the next instant, the burning, unyielding ache in Becky’s arm lessened as a group of police, Spence and Capshaw joining in, clambered over the ledge to pull Meghan up to safety.
A moment after that, Becky was on her back, chest heaving, eyes fixed on the night sky. Noises swirled around her like hurricane winds. Meghan broke from the crush of police to reach her mother. She landed on Becky’s body like a blanket, tears streaming down her face, blood dripping from her wounds. Becky hugged her daughter tightly, stroking her hair. She gazed disbelieving into Meghan’s eyes, awash with relief. It was then that Becky became aware of something wet and sticky painting the palm of her hand. Feeling around the small of Meghan’s back, Becky watched in horror as her daughter’s eyes rolled white.
The scream rising in Becky’s throat spat out a single word. “Medic!”
CHAPTER 59
MEGHAN
I visited my father’s grave two days after his funeral. He didn’t have a tombstone yet, but one was coming. Mom and I got a bit lost trying to locate his plot, but the guy who ran the place helped us out. The dirt covering Dad’s casket was like a scar on the green earth. I couldn’t believe he was six feet underground. Weeks later, it still seemed surreal to think he was gone forever. Mom and I put a bouquet of flowers on his grave—daisies and marigolds as bright and sun-filled as the cloudless sky. I asked Mom for some time alone, and she agreed to wait for me in the car, but only after I assured her I could find my way back.
That is how I found myself alone, on my knees, talking to my dead father, smoothing the dirt covering him with a lazy brush of my hand.
“Hi, Daddy … it’s me, Meghan.”
I laughed—who else would call him Daddy? I wondered if he could hear me. Was he watching? Was he one of the birds flying overhead? Was he the butterfly that flittered near my face? Or was he just gone?
“I hope it’s okay down there,” I said, struck by a rush of emotion that made the wound on my back flare up. “I got stabbed, in case you didn’t know—I’m assuming you don’t know—by your girlfriend, of all people. That bitch.”
I laughed again awkwardly. I was never comfortable cursing in front of my father.
“The scalpel cut only muscle. I’m going to have a nasty scar but, besides that, I’ll be fine. My injury wasn’t the reason it took so long to bury you, though.
“Sorry you had to be in the morgue, but the medical examiner had to figure out what killed you first. Turns out it was this thing called heartbreak grass—a fitting name because, you know, lots of heartbreak here. It’s a kind of Asian vine or something, and it’s, like, super poisonous. You have to test for it specifically, which is why it took so long to confirm what Nash said she gave you. I guess she bought it at an herbal shop in Chinatown, or at least that’s what she told the police. In small doses, it can be used for medicinal purposes, but she didn’t give you a small dose, did she?
“Looks like she was as crazy in love with you as she was crazy. It kind of broke my heart—there we go again with heartbreak, right?—when I found out you didn’t actually do any research on doctors who specialize in mitochondrial disease. I wanted to believe you thought I was sick enough to go searching on your own. But nope. It was Dr. Nash, your gal pal, who told you all about mito, and Dr. Fisher, and you just went along with it, not having a clue that she was going to try to set Mom up.
“Anyway, I figured you should know Dr. Nash’s plan in detail so that if you still have any feelings for her, you can let those go, because she is one evil bitch—oops, there I go with my mouth again. Sorry!”
I smiled, because I wasn’t sorry at all.
“So here it is in full, straight from her police confession, and that’s what I came here to tell you, because I think you deserve to know the whole story. When you described all my symptoms to Dr. Nash, she latched right on to mito and Dr. Fisher. She knew Dr. Fisher would diagnose me with mito because he did that a lot, I guess. She wanted Mom to think that I had a serious illness because she was eventually going to tell her the exact opposite.
“That’s where the heartbreak grass came in. Those strange and sudden symptoms I had at home happened because Dr. Nash put some extract of that heartbreak grass in my flask of vodka that I thought I’d done a good job of hiding. The police told me she found it one afternoon when you two were having a rendezvous at our house, which you cleverly timed around Mom’s workouts. God, Dad, how could you?
“Anyway, those new symptoms that didn’t quite fit with mito gave Dr. Fisher a reason to get a GI consult with her—which she knew he’d do. Now Nash could set up the whole Munchausen’s thing by telling Mom that my issues, everything I was feeling, were all in my head. She knew Mom wouldn’t buy it, and would refuse to believe a less dire diagnosis is a sign of Munchausen’s, which I suspect you already know.
“When Mom freaked, Nash’s plan got rolling. She got DCF to take me into custody, child abuse and all that, and then she’d poison me, just a bit every time Mom came to visit, by putting some heartbreak grass extract into the chicken soup. That was her way of establishing a pattern. Nash was going to tell the police that mom must have smuggled in the poison, you know like how they sneak drugs into prisons. She’d say there were plenty of chances for mom to have spiked the soup without anyone noticing. It’s also why Dr. Nash did the exam every time I got sick. I had plenty of real symptoms that could be measured by real medical instruments, but she lied and said I didn’t. She even forged the lab results so the bloodwork would come back normal. How crazy is that?
“Mom’s final visit, the one after you bailed her out, that was supposed to be my last day on earth. The soup would have killed me, too, but Mom ate it instead—and, lucky for her, the dose wasn’t fatal, because she weighed more than me.
“If it had worked out the way Nash wanted, if I’d died, the soup would have been tested and found to be poisonous. Eventually the police would have found the heartbreak grass Nash planted at our house, the same stuff she used to poison you, and Mom would have been put in prison for my murder. The motive? Munchausen by proxy. People cause illness or injury for their own weird needs, so that’s the only motive the prosecutor would need. They’d say that Mom messed up and put too much poison in my soup one day, and that’s why I died. She’d be charged with manslaughter, maybe. But Mom would be gone twenty-five years, I’d be dead, and then you and Nash could live happily ever after, because you weren’t going to leave us for her. That’s what you said to her. You couldn’t do that to your family. That�
��s why she took matters into her own hands.
“But you didn’t know what she was doing, did you, Dad? You didn’t know DCF was going to take custody of me. Which is why you broke it off with Nash. Which, by the way, was in Nash’s confession. It made me happy to hear, and it’s one of the reasons I’m still talking to you. I guess she figured you’d come around eventually, even though I know you wouldn’t have.
“But when Mom got sick, you got suspicious, so I’m proud of you, Dad. Nash told the police you invited her over to our house to confront her, but somehow, she got to your favorite whiskey and, well, you tried to warn us. Mom figured it out—Angi and all—but that came a little too late.
“Your Angi was going to tell the police that I’d broken away from her as she was taking me to see Mom, and that I’d run up the stairs like a crazy person and jumped off the hospital roof because I was emotionally damaged. She wanted me dead because she wanted Mom to suffer for messing everything up.”
Tears poured out of my eyes. My shaky breath came in sputters.
“But I want to tell you something else. Something Mom said was important to say. It’s something she needs to say to Grandma Cora, who miraculously is still alive.
“I want to tell you that I forgive you. I know you never meant to hurt me. I know that you loved me. And I love you, Daddy.”
I got up, brushed the dirt from my hands, and used them to wipe my eyes dry. I walked away feeling better until I realized there was one last thing I’d forgotten to tell him.
I got the results from that second biopsy.
CHAPTER 60
BECKY
Waves lapped against the sandy edge of the Pacific Ocean. Becky and Sabrina sat on a plaid blanket, sipping beer from red plastic cups, watching the shimmering sun descend gently into an endless horizon. Sabrina had on a white sweater and light-colored jeans, clothes Becky remembered borrowing a dozen years ago. With Sabrina’s dark hair and olive complexion, a passerby would have no reason to think the two were sisters. But hours earlier they had been at the Wayside Funeral Home, paying their last respects to Cora—dear Cora, who had clung to life far longer than any doctor had thought possible.
“What now?” Sabrina asked, taking a sip of beer.
“Now we treat her,” Becky said. “And hope for the best. There’s a drug that might help. We’re going to try to get her into a clinical trial.”
“‘We’?” Sabrina’s eyes twinkled.
“Yes, Zach Fisher and me.”
“Are you two…?” Her sister’s voice trailed off.
“Sabrina, please, I just buried my husband. The last thing I need is a man. But if I were to try one out again, I’m pretty sure it would be someone like him.”
“Take your time. You’ve been through quite a trauma, not to mention your husband’s betrayal. How did they meet, anyway, Carl and Amanda? I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Believe it or not, he renovated her apartment,” Becky said with notable sadness.
“Isn’t that how you two met—when you sold a place he built?”
“Yeah,” Becky said, now with a slight smile. “I guess I’ll have to talk to my therapist about that one.”
“She’s one crazy lady,” Sabrina said. “I read in the paper that she confessed to killing the psychiatrist—Dr. Levine, I think his name was. But the article didn’t say why.”
“She did it because Levine started to believe that Meghan might be sick with something, which would have screwed up everything,” Becky said. “If Levine suggested Meghan get treated for mito, and if the tests came back positive, it would have meant I didn’t have Munchausen, and Nash’s big plan would go up in smoke, so she took care of him by, you know, killing him. And then she got one of my earrings so the police would focus on me. I guess Carl had shown Nash where the damn key was and never changed the locks after the two of them broke it off.
“That might have been it, her last hurdle, but Zach got his biopsy thanks to Meghan, and so she had to go and sabotage that. I guess she messed with the data entry so that the lab techs would do the wrong stain or something.”
“So twisted.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But I thought Carl didn’t want the second biopsy done?”
“He didn’t. He had broken things off with Nash after the kidnapping, but he still trusted her medical opinion because he didn’t trust me. He had no idea what she was up to, but somehow she had convinced him that for Meghan’s mental health, he had to do anything and everything in his power to prevent that second biopsy from taking place. That’s why he paid off Kelly London from his corporate account and told her to betray me. I guess everyone has a price, even lawyers.”
“How’s Meghan taking it?”
Becky knew Sabrina was talking about the results from the second biopsy that showed the ragged red fibers that were a clear marker of mitochondrial disease.
“She’s doing remarkably well given her diagnosis, not to mention all that’s happened,” Becky said. “But we have a long road ahead of us. Mito is a terribly, terribly debilitating disease. We’re still not sure how many of Meghan’s organs are affected. A lot depends on the severity; we just don’t know yet. But she’s taking it all in stride, going day by day, because that’s all we can do.”
“Meghan’s an amazing girl.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Becky said.
“I should know,” Sabrina said tellingly, and Becky understood. Sabrina needed to come east. They were family. They were all each other had now.
“Can I confess something?” Becky said.
“Anything,” Sabrina said.
“I’m not sure they were wrong.”
“Who?”
“Nash, Singer, Carl, the whole lot of them. There’s truth to what they said about me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been talking a lot to Veronica, a friend from my online group, about my past, what happened, and it got me thinking. Part of me wanted Meghan to be sick.”
Sabrina did a poor job of hiding her “I told you so” face. “That’s not easy to admit,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” Becky replied assuredly. “When Meghan got sick, I think I understood Cora better than I ever had. She didn’t just get money faking her disability. She got attention. That was how I connected with her. Attending to her fantasy. With Meghan, I felt like … like…”
“Like you got to be Cora? You got the attention finally, not her—is that it?”
Becky nodded. “I think you were right, Cora’s cancer brought up a lot of issues for me. With Sammy, you know. There’s a lot of loss in me, and as I was losing Mom, a part of me felt that loss of Sammy all over again, which made me hold on even tighter to Meghan. So I think part of me secretly wanted her to be sick. I think what Carl said was true, that I thrived on it. I became like Mom, filling up on the attention.”
“Our mom was not a healthy person,” Sabrina said, stating the obvious.
“Maybe I wasn’t healthy either.”
“Honestly, I think you were confused, struggling, but I don’t believe you have Munchausen, if that’s what you mean,” Sabrina said. “At least not a typical case.”
Becky exhaled a weighty sigh. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I am sure I don’t have it now. With Cora gone, I feel like I can finally move on. I feel a million pounds lighter—and before you judge, I know that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Don’t feel bad for not feeling bad,” Sabrina said. “It’s unbecoming of you.”
Becky leaned in so that their shoulders touched. “Ironic, isn’t it, that Nash’s plan to use Zach to get me out of the picture might have helped to save Meghan—that is, if the doctors can ever find a cure for that damn disease.”
“They will. Have faith.”
Becky fixed her gaze on the rolling waves. “Cora loved the ocean. It was one of the gentlest things about her.”
“You can let go now,” Sabrina said. “She’s gone.”
Becky focused on a seagull lazily riding the draft of the steady ocean breeze. “Nobody is ever really gone,” she said. “We leave marks on this world, as invisible as the trail of that bird out there. Cora, Carl, even Amanda Nash, will always be a part of me. But there’s a difference between letting someone into your life and letting them define it. I know that now. And, yeah, I finally feel free.”
EPILOGUE
ZACH
Dear William:
Dad here.
I’m writing you on what would be your nineteenth birthday to let you know that I’m getting married. I met her two years ago, through some rather unusual circumstances. You’d love her, Will, and I know you’d approve.
I want you to know that I miss you every single day. I never stopped fighting for you, same as I never stopped blaming myself for your death. But I have to stop now. If I’m going to be a husband again—and a stepfather to her amazing daughter, Meghan—I have to move forward with my life. I can’t stay stuck in limbo anymore. So that’s why I’m writing you this letter, which I will put in an envelope but sadly never mail, to let you know that while I’ll never forgive myself for what happened to you, I won’t use it as an excuse to stay trapped in the past. You were dealt a bad hand in life—the worst. Sometimes life simply isn’t fair. But good can come even in the darkest times if you keep your heart open.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’m opening my heart again. I’m moving forward, one small step at a time. Your mom is going to be at the wedding. She’s married, too, did you know? And I hope that you’ll be there as well, a smiling angel looking down on us all. I love you always.
—Dad
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS