A Slow Ruin

by Pamela Crane

  Yes, I knew exactly how stubborn Vera could be. She got that from me.

  “You lied, Austin,” I said bluntly. “You told me you weren’t home the night Marin dropped her off in front of your house.”

  “Of course I lied. I promised Vera I would if anyone came asking. Snitches get stitches. All she wanted was to meet some relative before it was too late. I knew where she was coming from. My real dad died in prison and I never got to say goodbye.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us sooner? You’ve held on to this for six months, Austin.”

  “I…I was in a group home up until recently. No phone, no internet, no outside communication, so I had no way to get in touch with anyone. By the time I got out of there, I was dealing with my mom and psycho-stepdad, trying to get in touch with Vera, and when I didn’t hear from Vera through our usual messaging apps, that’s when I started to worry. That’s why I’m here now.”

  His tragic story aligned with what Blythe had told us. I had to trust his word…because it was all I had. And it seemed like it was all he had too. He knew what it was like to be a victim with only your word to save you.

  “Were you the one who ran her car off the road?” Oliver glared at Austin and pointed at me.

  Austin’s hands flew up in defense. “No, sir! You can even check my car. I would never do something like that. I only want to help bring Vera home.”

  It was getting late, and all I wanted was to sit down with Vera’s words and absorb them. Find the message within them. Austin left with an awkward goodbye, and I spent the rest of the night reading and rereading the entry, picking it apart, searching between the lines, interpreting it every which way. My answer was in here somewhere, right in front of my eyes.

  No matter what Austin thinks, morals are one of the few things I actually value in life. Personally, I believe in “always telling the truth” no matter the situation. Like Alvera did when she stood up to her husband for what was right. I wish other people valued that moral as much as I do. Like Mom and Dad, who lied to me about my past. Anyways, I guess I’m writing this as a release of my guilt. Honestly, I’m more ashamed of myself for breaking my morals than ashamed of what I plan to do. Running away isn’t as bad as lying to everyone. Maybe it’s justified, maybe it’s necessary to protect them. That doesn’t make me a bad person, right? I’ll worry about that later I guess, but right now, I have bigger things to worry about. Like meeting the family my parents kept from me.

  The Pittsburg Press

  Pittsburg, PA

  Friday, October 21, 1910

  MISSING WOMAN’S FRIEND TALKS

  Miss Cecile Cianfarra, friend of Mrs. Alvera Fields, who has been missing since April 16, came forward this evening sharing news of Mrs. Fields’ recent stay in a sanitorium in Pittsburg. Letters were produced between Miss Cianfarra and Mrs. Fields where Mrs. Fields requested Miss Cianfarra’s help in excusing her from her stay.

  Detectives were sent to the sanitarium in question and demanded to speak with the doctor in charge, who confirmed the rumor that Mrs. Fields had been admitted for a short time:

  “Mrs. Fields had a brief stay at the bequest of her husband, Mr. Robert Fields. Mrs. Fields was suffering from hysteria and needed treatment immediately.”

  Following a successful treatment, Mrs. Fields was sent home. But according to Miss Cianfarra, threats were made by husband Robert Fields, should Mrs. Fields’ hysteria return.

  “Her passion for the women’s right to vote should not be misinterpreted as hysteria,” Miss Cianfarra spoke out when interviewed by detectives. “Her husband is behind her disappearance, I tell you. I blame him, and him alone.”

  Fields denies any involvement in his wife’s disappearance, but detectives assured the public that they would investigate all leads and any suspect, be it friend, family, or foe.

  Chapter 30

  Marin

  All that glitters isn’t always gold. Sometimes it’s a diamond-encrusted turquoise bracelet.

  It looked gorgeous in the case. Even more so on my wrist. As the lady behind the counter handed me the black velvet box that it came in, I wanted her to snap it shut like Richard Gere did with Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when he gave her the necklace. When Cody did it upon my request, it wasn’t nearly as comical, as my reflexes weren’t quick enough and I broke a fingernail in the process.

  Cody always talked about how you should dress for the job you want, look the part you want to get. Except it only seemed to apply to him. As I watched him play rounds of golf that cost more than our car payment (sometimes on his dad’s dime, sometimes not), or buy athletic shirts that were finer than anything on my side of the closet, I couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t equal. He always had to look great, while I was “pretty enough that I didn’t need to wear fancy things.”

  Double-standard much, Cody?

  Today it was all about me. For once. Thank you very much, upcoming Mortimer inheritance.

  This morning, on the living room sofa, as dawn rose along with all our buried secrets—well, most of them—I had told Cody about the inheritance from Mortimer Randolph, who rested peacefully among the corpses at the Allegheny County Morgue. To celebrate Mortimer’s life—who am I kidding? we were celebrating his death—Cody insisted we go shopping. The first place we landed? The same jewelry store that sold Vera and Felicity’s bracelets.

  The one I’d chosen looked similar to theirs, minus the numerous multiple-karat diamonds. This one was a more modest version, more me, but still in the several-hundred-dollar price range that made me queasy. But I deserved it, damn it! I had worked my butt off for a boss who objectified me, took care of a husband who had cheated on me, and grew up in a family that neglected me. When my mother died, she left me a tangled pile of cheap costume jewelry and a plastic jewelry case from the dollar store. For once in my pathetic life I wanted something shiny and sparkly and beautiful and flashy.

  Plus, it was part of the deal. I’d keep my mouth shut about Cody and Felicity’s kiss, and this was my reward. Looking between the bracelet and the credit card in my hand, I inhaled a shuddery breath. I had worked hard to get us out of debt, and this would be a setback until the inheritance came through. But setbacks were okay once in a while, right? Especially when we needed something shiny and sparkly and beautiful and flashy to pull us out of a depressive slump.

  I glanced back at Cody, who had wandered across the mall, lingering at the mouth of a men’s athletic wear store fingering a designer polo shirt. He was wearing the Heath Miller Steelers jersey I had bought him as a surprise gift just because. He looked up. Our eyes met. He nodded—get the jewelry, the gesture said.

  And yet…

  And yet that was one of the things I hated about him. Always having to have the best clothes while our house fell apart. Always looking like a million bucks while our bank account shrank down to pennies. Always about appearance, but never true depth. He dressed up his shallow personality with beautiful things…and yet he was the same narcissist underneath it all. A self-loathing man who doused himself in Ralph Lauren cologne and charm to get people to like him, to buy his used cars, then he insulted these same people the moment they were out of earshot. These were people he looked down on because they were never good enough or smart enough. People like me. People like him.

  I refused to be like him.

  I refused to allow stuff to define me.

  I set the bracelet back down in its black velvet home and thanked the associate for her time, saying, “Maybe later.” There would be no later. I had a dream that needed this investment more than my wrist.

  I was going to finish writing that thriller screenplay with Brad, start my theatre venture, and work my butt off to lift my production company dream off the ground. Hollywood wasn’t it; I was it. I had something way better in mind for me than LA could ever offer. Something I could control, something I could nurture, something all mine.

  As I met Cody in the middle of the aisle between a
hair station and a row of massage chairs, he pointed to my empty hand.

  “Decide not to get the bracelet?”

  I shook my head. “Not worth it.”

  He pulled me to his chest, and I rested my cheek on his shoulder as he hugged me tightly. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

  My nod was blocked by his neck. “You remind me every day,” I murmured.

  “I mean it every day, Mare.” He parted slightly from me, looking at me, adoring me. “Now that you have all that money coming, do you even want to be with me anymore?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Not so much because of his kiss of betrayal, which did hurt me but oddly didn’t break my heart like I had expected it to. I wasn’t sure I liked who my husband was anymore, certainly not the head-over-heels-in-love guy who once upon a time wanted to rescue me. Maybe that was the whole problem. I used to be someone he needed to rescue. He lived to be my savior, but now that I didn’t need to be saved, I served him no purpose. I had become expendable.

  We were already walking out of the mall entrance before I finally answered his question.

  “I need time to figure things out,” I said honestly. “So much has changed, Cody. Felicity hates me, Debra doesn’t trust me, you’ve hurt me…there are so many lies and secrets and resentments. It’s all suffocating me, and I haven’t even had a minute to process everything.”

  Cody’s pace slowed, then stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the tide of shoppers flowed around us. I saw curiosity in his expression. He wanted to know what lies and secrets I was referring to.

  “Then let’s start by being honest with each other—about everything.”

  I had been too honest with him already. About killing my mother. About being the last one to see Vera alive. But there were some things I could never tell him. Some sins I had to take with me to the grave.

  “I have been honest with you, Cody.”

  I sprinted for the car with Cody clinging to my heels like a stray mutt.

  “Have you, though? Because there are a lot of holes in your past that were never quite filled in. I never asked for details about what happened with your mom, because you’re entitled to your privacy, but what else haven’t you told me? You’re saying secrets are killing our marriage. So let’s get rid of the secrets and keep the marriage.”

  It took the entire drive home before I found the words that had been lodged in my throat. I didn’t want to lose Cody. Or my family. He had accepted me after my confession about my mother. And again after withholding details about seeing Vera that night. Maybe he’d forgive everything else I never told him.

  I was afraid to ask, but I did it anyway: “What do you want to know?”

  We slid into our driveway and got out of the car a moment before a sheriff’s department cruiser pulled up behind us, hemming us in. A deputy stepped out of the vehicle, hands on hips, and walked straight toward me.

  “Are you Marin Portman?” he asked.

  I was hesitant to answer, but he obviously knew I was. “Yes.”

  “I’m Deputy Levine, ma’am. I need to bring you down to the sheriff’s department.”

  “Whoa, what’s this all about?” said Cody, getting in his face. “You got a warrant? If not, you can get the hell off my property.”

  The deputy put his fingertips on Cody’s chest and lightly pushed him back. “Mrs. Portman is not under arrest,” he said, “but you will be, sir, if you don’t calm down.”

  Cody swallowed his pride and shut up.

  “If I’m not under arrest,” I said, “why are you here?”

  “We need to question you about the murder of Mortimer Randolph.”

  Chapter 31

  Felicity

  Today was the day, Oliver decided.

  “I will take full responsibility for everything. I’ll do jail time, whatever it takes to protect you and the kids, but we can’t hide the truth anymore, Felicity. We’re out of options. It’s the only chance to bring Vera home…if she’s still out there.” Oliver had finished round one of his argument. I sat at the kitchen counter feeling like I’d been knocked out, waiting for a boxing bell to ding.

  “What if she isn’t? What if she’s…” The question died on my lips, because it was unspeakable. Any suggestion of Vera being…gone…was as unfathomable today as it was six months ago. “I still feel like we should wait until we hear about the body they found.”

  “What if it takes as long as last time? That took weeks, Felicity! I don’t want to wait any longer. I just want to come forward and take my chances with the justice system.”

  “But if you tell the police what we did, and Vera’s not coming back, you’ll go to jail for nothing, Ollie. Sydney needs us both.” Round two goes to the challenger, ding.

  “At this point I don’t care what happens to me. Insurance will still cover everything with Syd, and you can live off of savings until I get out of jail. Mom and Dad will help with the kids until I’m out. It’ll be fine.”

  My husband going to jail for my crime was absolutely not fine. I didn’t understand how telling the cops that we found a baby on the side of the road, and decided to keep that baby, would then help find that baby who grew up to be a fifteen-year-old runaway named Vera. We had no name for her biological parents, no original birth certificate, nothing but a verbal confession that we picked up a nameless orphaned newborn girl swaddled in a car seat and took her home and fell in love.

  At first it didn’t sound so bad, certainly not criminal, to rescue an abandoned child. But over the years I’d read countless news reports on women who stole babies and went to prison for twenty-years-plus. I scoured the internet for the worst-case criminal implications of taking an abandoned child. In one situation, a mother was charged with infant abduction and sentenced to twenty-two years for rescuing a child she found in an abandoned car in a parking lot. Another woman was charged with kidnapping and sentenced to twenty years for not reporting the baby she found in a Dumpster to the authorities. Twenty years in the pokey seemed to be the average penalty. Two decades of missing out on Eliot’s middle school science projects, high school graduation, college campus tours, meeting his girlfriend, maybe even missing his wedding. If I was lucky and got out early on good behavior, I might get to be there when he had his first baby.

  Then there was Sydney. What three-year-old could survive without her mama? Especially a child with kidney failure? Not being there to remind her when she needed to rest, monitoring her diet, taking her to doctor appointments, mommy kisses to distract her from the many shots, fighting her way up the organ transplant list…not being there for Syd scared me more than anything.

  “How are the cops going to be able to find something out of nothing?” I argued. “We literally have no idea where Vera came from, so without a past to trace her back to, what good will involving the police do?”

  “How did Vera find out? If a teen can do it, certainly the cops can too.”

  “I wish I had your faith. It sounds like we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment.”

  “Listen, Felicity, we have to at least try. We won’t know what the cops can find out until we tell them everything. What if they’re able to find something out through a DNA match? If she’s got a relative who’s in the criminal system, they might be able to use that.”

  “And then what, Ollie? If that’s where Vera went—to find her long-lost relative—then what? They find Vera, great. But they’ll take her from us because she’s not legally ours! Even though she was abandoned, a biological relation might want her back. Even if no one stepped forward to claim her, there’s no way they’d give her back to us after we kidnapped her. You’re not even considering the fact that one, possibly both, of us ends up in jail while some other family gets Vera. According to the law, regardless of which one of us confesses, we’re both complicit! Do you really want to risk losing her for good?”

  “We’ve already lost her, Felicity! Don’t you see that? Sh
e’s gone! It’s been six months. I’d rather find her and give her up than never find her at all.”

  Fifteen years ago, Oliver and I had made a pact. We had decided never to tell Vera the truth about her past, which quickly spiraled into our past. Back then it seemed like the only option, keep the baby and keep it hush-hush, because it was the only way we kept Vera with us and kept us out of jail. But now we were backed into a corner, down to one option: coming clean.

  I had considered the DNA match possibility many times, weighed the pros and cons. But if a match was discovered through the criminal database, did I really want to surrender my daughter to a family with a criminal history? Present company excluded, of course.

  I even wondered if perhaps Vera had obtained her own ancestry DNA report—they were easy enough to order online. I even dared to mention it to Detective Montgomery, asking if there was a chance Vera might have found some long-lost relative through a DNA database. When they scrubbed her computer and found no internet history or purchase transaction that would suggest a DNA search, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “The decision’s made,” Oliver stated bluntly.

  It was a decision we had debated numerous times, and every time we circled back to the conclusion that one had nothing to do with the other. Vera’s biological past had nothing to do with her disappearance. Period. Because there were no dots to connect. No names to look up. Without facts, no good would come from telling the cops I had stolen a baby and never bothered to report it.

  But now suddenly Oliver disagreed. And he demanded to take the fall for me. Oliver was a survivor; it’s what he did best. Let’s say Vera went looking for her biological family, who knew what danger she was in? I knew nothing about the family, other than that they left a days-old newborn baby on the side of the road. If Oliver was going to do this, he couldn’t go in blind. There was something I had never told him, and it was time he knew.