Until the Day I Die

by Carpenter, Emily

  He holds up the tie. “What’s this?”

  Fear rips through me. “I took it off the package of bread this morning. I wanted to use it to tie my hair back.”

  He glances at my hair twisted into a bun with what is clearly a rubber band.

  “In case I lost the one I have now,” I add quickly. “Or it broke. Can I please keep it? It can be our little secret.”

  He lifts his eyebrows. Studies my face. I can feel myself starting to shake under his gaze, but I don’t look away.

  “Okay.” He gingerly tucks the tie back into my bra, pushing it slowly, purposefully too far down between my breasts. His eyes rise to meet mine, but I can’t bear to hold his gaze. And, great. Now Deirdre’s on her feet, scowling at us.

  Lach’s cell dings, and he releases me. He answers the call, spinning away from the campfire into the shadows. I drift away from the other two. The air is smothering me, and somewhere far away, thunder rumbles. I wish I could crawl in my tent and go to sleep.

  “Come on, Dee, dance,” Jessalyn says, but Deirdre doesn’t move.

  “I’m going to bed,” she says.

  Lach steps back into the firelight. “Chickadees! The party’s just starting.” He scoots up behind Deirdre and gives her a little hip bump. “Come on, darling.” He runs a finger across her chest, down her arm, and to her hip. She doesn’t stop him or pull away. She just stands there, letting him run his hands all over her.

  The hairs on my scalp and arms prickle. Something about this night is starting to feel very wrong.

  “I can’t go back to them,” she says vaguely. “They know it, and I know it.”

  Lach backs away from her, and Jess and I go quiet. For some reason, the jungle sounds have died too. The fire crackles between us, the only sound in the still, humid night besides Prince crooning about the rain.

  “I don’t even know what I’m doing all this for,” Deirdre says. “I mean, my God, what’s even the point?”

  “Come on, Dee. Buck up,” Lach says. “It’s a party.” He wanders around to the other side of the fire and plops back down on his log. He looks dejected.

  “Okay, Lach, honey, I’ll buck up,” Deirdre snaps. “Anything to make you feel better.” She sways toward him. “I’m just here to make you feel better. You and all the men of the world. Because God forbid any of you motherfuckers feels the least bit insufficient.”

  She pulls her shirt up and over her head and in her bra does a little shimmy for him. He watches her with his pale eyes. The firelight reflects off her skin.

  “How’s that?” she says. “Good enough? Because you know, it’s my mission in life to make a man feel better about himself.”

  She drops her arms and stumbles to the far side of the fire.

  Whoa.

  But she’s not finished. “I’ve been pulling down half a million a year, tax free, for him. Putting braces on my kids’ teeth, paying for their anxiety meds, their private tutors so they won’t get left behind at their private school my husband insists we send them to. But I’m the criminal here, right? Of course I am.”

  Her voice ratchets up a notch. “He gets to come home from his honorable job as a creative writing professor at a rinky-dink college and announce that we’re going to the Vineyard for the summer. Oh, and that we’ve got to hire a trainer for the nine-year-old because the kid’s showing some promise in soccer, and what if the colleges of America don’t take notice? Do you know how much an ex–navy SEAL charges to make your nine-year-old son do push-ups in his own front yard?”

  No one utters a word. We’re all frozen.

  “Half my savings, that’s how much.”

  Jessalyn, who’s now sitting on top of the picnic table and fiddling with Lach’s walkie, speaks up. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, getting a personal trainer for a kid. No dumb-ass kid deserves a trainer.”

  “Tell me about it,” Deirdre says. She downs the rest of her beer. Her pale skin shines in the firelight.

  “Okay,” Lach says. “Let’s get the dance party going again. Get up there and show me a Supremes thing.” He’s grinning.

  Jessalyn doesn’t budge from her spot. Her eyes are cold. “This is Prince. Somebody needs to explain the difference between Wendy & Lisa and the Supremes to you.”

  “What?” Lach says.

  “Fuck you,” Deirdre barks suddenly. Her eyes are like slits, zeroed in on Lach.

  “Fuck me?” He presses a hand against his chest. “Why? What are you so mad about?” She turns away. “Don’t be selfish, Deirdre. You can’t get all the attention. Besides, you already got a husband, and Erin here, Erin’s husband is dead.”

  I point at him. “You need to shut your mouth.” My voice is unsteady, and I realize I’m quaking with anger.

  “You know what—” Jessalyn starts to say.

  Deirdre interrupts, pointing at Lach. “If you touch her. If you dare touch her—”

  “Deirdre,” I say. “Don’t listen to him. He’s messing with you. Being an asshole.”

  “You know,” Lach says to Deirdre, “I told Antonia I was gonna save you till last. Play with you a few days. But she said no. She said you’d be a problem, which indeed you have turned out to be.”

  Deirdre cocks her head.

  “Not a problem I can’t deal with,” he goes on. “But she called it, is my point. And that’s why she’s the boss, I suppose. So, I guess playtime’s over.”

  The air between them crackles, but it’s not because of the campfire. Even Jessalyn is quiet now.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Deirdre says.

  In answer, he pulls a gun from the back of his waistband—a gleaming black pistol that looks like something a cop might carry, except it has an extralong barrel. He points it at her.

  “Antonia says all clear,” he drawls. “All the mango and banana farmers are in their little houses, tucked into their comfy beds. We’re finally alone.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” Jess says.

  That’s not a long barrel. It’s a silencer. Instinctively I take a step toward Deirdre.

  “Bonne nuit, Dee Dee,” Lach says simply. Then one shot, a muffled thwack that sounds like nothing more than a firecracker, splits the air, and Deirdre drops to the dirt. I dart to her and fall to my knees, my hands out. Then I feel something warm and wet spurt onto me. It trickles down my chin, and I swipe at it, knowing what it is before I touch it. When I look at Deirdre I see blood arc up from her chest in short intervals. It’s in time to her heartbeat, I realize, sick to my stomach. He hit her artery.

  Everything around us slows—the droning of the jungle, the flames dancing under the moon, the sound of Jessalyn’s voice. She’s on her knees, too, on the other side of Deirdre, hands all over her, screaming something I can’t decipher. My body is frozen and so is my brain, and now Deirdre’s blood is spurting in lower arcs.

  She’s dying.

  There was no one to watch Perry die. He was alone . . .

  Lach points the gun at Jess. And then I hear a second thwack, and the screaming stops. She goes down, just like Deirdre.

  I leap up and step back. One step, two, then three. The fire spits and hisses, and Lach’s gun swings around to me. I think, No, no, no, no, no, and time stops. His pale gaze holds mine. He doesn’t smile, only looks deep in thought.

  A moan. He points the gun down at the ground just beside the fire, where Deirdre is lying. The third thwack makes me jump.

  Then, in a flash, Jessalyn is scrambling to her feet, running toward me. She yanks my shirt, nearly pulling me over, and screams at me to run. I do. I run straight into the jungle, Jessalyn crashing through the trees beside me. Behind us I hear Lach’s gun, firing shot after muffled shot.

  28

  SHORIE

  “Let me get this straight. You noticed something off in your parents’ company’s servers, and so you installed spyware in a Jax user’s account? And now you think they’re stealing money?”

  Rhys is studying my phone i
ntently, his legs splayed out on a saggy oversize chair in the main room of his house. It’s dark out, Rhys’s living room lit by a lone lopsided lamp. Outside on the porch, moths party around the fanlights. As much as I like the idea of being alone with Rhys in his house at night, we’re not. Lowell’s back in the bedroom, tallying up the week’s reports.

  Back at the restaurant, I’d grappled with the idea of confiding in Rhys without any proof that he was trustworthy. It was a risk, no doubt. But ultimately—even though I wasn’t completely convinced that Ben or Sabine hadn’t hired him to keep an eye on me—I decided to go for it. I had a couple of reasons. One: he seemed like someone who could handle big situations. He reminded me a little of Mom in that way. And two: pheromones.

  “Embezzling, to be more precise,” I say. “I think it’s an employee.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have access to identities on our servers, just anonymous UUID numbers.”

  “It’s such a ballsy move,” Rhys says. Which is something, considering what he does.

  “You know,” comes a voice from the end of the hallway. It’s Lowell, dressed in an old bowling shirt and straw fedora. “Somebody did this with an Indian IT firm recently, the CFO. The technical word for it is defalcation. Basically, the updated version of a bank teller taking five to ten bucks from hundreds, even thousands of large customer deposits. Obviously, there’s a bigger payoff with as many accounts as Jax has . . . but because they’re microtransactions, hardly anyone notices.”

  Rhys hands back my phone. “Private conversation, Lowell.”

  “Sorry.” He hands Rhys a sheaf of printouts. “Milady.”

  “Is that the only way they do it?” I say.

  Lowell looks thoughtful. “They could also make up a fake company and charge small amounts through Jax that people don’t notice when they go through their monthly charges. So many people don’t review their charges carefully, especially if the balances are only off by a few cents.”

  “So who would do something like that?” Rhys asks.

  “I’m not sure. Somebody who can code.”

  Lowell settles on the opposite end of the sofa from me, and a cloud of dust poofs up around him. “So, who on staff at Jax can code?”

  Scotty. Or Ben.

  I sigh. “Well, some better than others, obviously. But most everybody, to some extent.” I think of Hank. “Some of the interns. The new database guy. For all I know it could be the guy who delivers lunch.”

  “Shorie, do you think your dad had any clue about this—before he died? About the skimming?”

  “If he did, he would’ve made a note of it. In the last journal he kept, the March one. But it’s missing.”

  Both of them bolt upright so fast, it’s almost comical.

  “Jeez!” Rhys exclaims.

  “Why didn’t you mention that earlier?” Lowell cries.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think somebody might’ve taken it?” Rhys asks. “The people messing around on Jax?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeat. “I’ve looked everywhere for it. But it doesn’t make any sense. None. My father was never without his monthly journal. He wrote everything in it. Everything—his weekly plans, his to-do lists. Even poems he thought my mom would like. He couldn’t function without his journal. I used to make fun of him.” I feel my face grow red, my heart throb. “An IT guy, toting around his analog diary.”

  We fall silent.

  After a moment, Rhys speaks. “If your dad noticed anything amiss in the servers, he would’ve made a note of it, right?”

  “Maybe. Hard to say for sure. That kind of thing wasn’t always important enough for him to deal with. A lot of times he’d get somebody else, another programmer or an intern, to deal with it. He might’ve even kicked it over to me, as an assignment.” My stomach does a little flip. “Wait a second. The message. Maybe he mentioned it there.”

  “What? He messaged you?” Rhys says. “Through Jax?”

  “Yeah, when he was setting up my budget. It was the day before he died, and I . . . I just couldn’t . . .” I shake my head, embarrassed.

  The room has gone silent, all except for the wheezing from the fridge back in the kitchen. I look down at my phone. Open Jax. Take a deep breath and click on the unread message.

  “Shorie, that’s a private thing,” Rhys says. “The last message from your dad. You don’t have to do this right now. Right here, with us.”

  “It’s okay.”

  I hope I’m right. I hope I won’t lose my shit right here in front of Rhys and Lowell. But even if I do, I’ve got to open the damn thing; avoiding the inevitable is just becoming stupid. And it may reveal something I haven’t thought of yet.

  Dated March 19, the message starts the way all Dad’s notes and cards and letters to me always do. Shorie, my sweet . . . And it’s long. I take a deep breath, lightheaded, terrified, and exhilarated all at once. I scan the first part.

  “He set up a couple of special allocations for me. Emergency, car, extra medical.”

  He’d also instructed me not to connect with men I didn’t personally know—fairly standard Dad advice—and gave me a mini-lecture about birth control. But I wasn’t about to reveal that.

  “It’s mostly details about Jax,” I say. “Working on my budget—a college student’s budget that includes a scholarship—has got him going back and tinkering with the original algorithm he created.”

  “Is that it?” Rhys asks.

  “No,” I say. There’s more.

  I feel myself going wobbly inside, and I order myself not to cry.

  Shorie, my sweet, one last thing. I’ve been trying to write you a letter . . .

  The air in my lungs whooshes out of me, so fast I nearly faint.

  “Are you okay?” Rhys asks me.

  I nod, inhale deeply, and read silently. . . . but I’ve been having trouble with it. I know at some point, I’ll give up on trying to say the perfect thing to you before you leave home and go off to school. But the damn thing’s like a wonky piece of code that I just can’t get right, and you know how I am about those . . .

  My vision is suddenly obscured. When I wipe my eyes, my fingers come away wet.

  Anyway, one day I’ll finish, but I wanted to tell you, if the letter is lame, it’s because there’s no way to express exactly what you mean to me. I’ll keep trying. Love, Dad.

  I sit quietly, staring at the message.

  Rhys finally speaks. “Shorie?”

  I look up. Unbidden tears swim up and spill out; then to make matters worse, my nose starts running. Rhys’s expression changes, but I can’t tell if he’s feeling awkward or regretful that he didn’t push me to wait—or if he’s just remembering how much he misses his dad too. It doesn’t really matter, I think. The only thing that feels important right now is what I just read.

  “He was writing me a letter,” I say. The tears are overflowing now, and I can’t care. I just can’t.

  “I’m so sorry, Shorie,” Rhys says. “But I’m glad too.” And he does seem really sad and also glad. Not like someone who’s been tasked with spying on me.

  I start crying even harder.

  Rhys touches my hand. “We’ll help you figure this out. We’ll do what we can.”

  29

  PERRY’S JOURNAL

  Sunday, March 10

  TO DO:

  Haircut—ask for Cindy this time, NOT GARRETT

  Mercedes Marathon with Layton?

  $5,000—transfer to Mom’s bank account (Set up lunch or dinner with them to talk about finances)

  New Error Message—Shorie assignment—take a look at it and write up fix? New process? Glitch?

  WORK ON SHORIE LETTER!!

  Drink to me only with thine eye-openers,

  And I will pledge with minicab;

  Or leave a kitty but in the curate,

  And I’ll not look for winning.

  (for Erin—or Foxy Cat, Ben Jonson, “Song: To Celi
a,” N+7)

  I’ll not look for winning . . . nice.

  30

  ERIN

  I stumble forward on shaky legs, thrashing through giant banana tree leaves and furry vines, ordering my body—my mind too, while I’m at it—not to collapse. Jessalyn’s close behind me. I can tell, because she won’t stop crying. I think about turning and shushing her, but we can’t afford the delay. Lach could be right behind us.

  It’s pitch dark, and even though there’s a watery half-moon overhead, I still trip over or hit every root and branch in my path. Eventually we come to a clearing with tall grass. But my heart plummets when I take in the strangely familiar shape of the field. Shit. We’ve just been following the trail we used earlier today. The one that leads to the meadow with our shelters and eventually to the waterfall.

  As Jessalyn runs past me, I grab her shirt and yank her off the path. She yips as I pull her deeper into the thick screen of leaves. A half dozen yards farther into the cover of the jungle, I push her down into a depression in the ground. We’re hidden, but I can still see the path, and there’s no sign of Lach. Not yet.

  Jess is trembling violently, breathing too loudly. I put a hand over her lips, and she gulps, quieting. In the scant moonlight, I see her face is coursed with sweat and tears and flecks of blood.

  Then I hear the crashing. I throw my arm around Jess, flattening us both into the dirt and rotted leaves, willing us invisible. I strain my ears, expecting him to continue past, but he stops, yards away from us.

  I can’t see him, can’t hear him now either, but he’s just standing there. I hold my breath, squeezing my eyes shut.

  Go. Gogogogogogo . . .

  I need to be thinking, planning a way out of here if this asshole spots us, but all I can think of is Shorie. My sweet, smart, stubborn Shorie, who painted a starry sky with the words Make a dent in the universe. Why do I always think I have to be the one out front, leading the charge? My daughter knew better than me. She didn’t want to go to school. She wanted to stay home, with me, watching TV and eating ice cream and healing from the cruel blow life had dealt us.