Better Left Buried (12 page)

The phenomenon, she guessed, wasn’t all that uncommon.

She yawned and stretched, tired from the search that had become as much about nostalgia as identifying anything to do with the mystery man. With an hour left and three-quarters of a year of volumes, she was beginning to lose hope. She tucked away the first couple of months, careful to keep them neat and in order, and grabbed the next stack.

She
hit pay dirt when she reached May 7, 1996. A brief headline in the local section told the story of a man called Tom who had mysteriously disappeared.

“
Gerald Thomas Shippee, known to his friends as ‘Tom’, was reported missing when he failed to show up for work on the Monday morning following a party at his home located at 6 Maple Avenue in Reston.”

She recalled the repeated sixes and wondered if she misinterpreted the spirit board’s message, mistaking an address for the sign of the devil.

“
Police are investigating what they refer to as ‘unusual circumstances’, but no official statement has been made. Anyone with information regarding this case is asked to contact Jim Jenkins of the Reston Police.
”

Uncle Jim.

All roads led back to the most secretive person she knew.

She snapped a photo of the article with her camera phone and, noting the voicemail indicators, listened to her string of recent messages.

Harmony had left
several, each more frantic than the one before it, and the most recent, from a half an hour earlier, with her sobbing so hard she bordered on unintelligible.

Brea’s heart broke and s
he hated herself for not answering.

Charity
was in serious condition at Reston Memorial Hospital and Harmony begged Brea to meet her there.

It figured.

Just when she’d clawed her way out of the quicksand with her mother and uncle, tragedy forced her to dive back in head first.

Some things were worth the trouble.

A bespectacled man, five-nine and balding, named Dr. Stanley Blake greeted Harmony outside one of the holding rooms. Dr. Blake was a psychiatrist, but unlike Bennett, he didn’t wear the beat-down look of someone whose patients’ troubles had become his own. He clasped his hands behind his back and displayed the calm demeanor of someone delivering happier news.

“I have to warn you,
your mother’s heavily sedated. Don’t be alarmed if she doesn’t acknowledge you.”

“She hasn’t acknowledged
me in years.” Adam squeezed Harmony’s hand and flashed her a look that said “Stop it”. She couldn’t help herself. Bitterness had found its way through the cracks. “What happened?”

“According to EMS, a neighbor reported an
argument. Police responded to the disturbance and found her unconscious, surrounded by empty prescription bottles. They called the paramedics immediately. Fortunately, most of the pills hadn’t digested and we were able to pump them from her stomach.”

“Yeah,
fortunately.
”

“It’s our policy to keep
her on a seventy-two hour hold and to keep visitation to a minimum. We don’t want her upset further while we’re waiting on an available bed.”

Harmony’s experience with the
seventy-two hour hold ended with an extended stay at Spring View. If the same happened to her mother, she’d be remanded to the Midtown Home by weeks’ end.

“If she can’t have visitors, why
did you want me down here? Why couldn’t the woman who called just tell me what happened over the phone?”

Dr. Blake shifted his weight and shoved his hands in his pockets. “We have some questions about your mother’s physical condition. Concerns, really, and we were hoping you could help us out.”

Harmony hadn’t noticed until Blake glanced over that a uniformed police officer was sitting in the lobby across the hall from them.

“What’s going on?” Her chest tightened. “Why are the police here?”

“It’s nothing to worry about.”
She formulated an escape route even as Dr. Blake said it. “The officer is only here to take statements, if necessary. Your mother sustained a significant amount of trauma and her records indicate a history of potentially domestic-related injuries. We’re hoping you might be able to tell us something that will help us help her.”

“If there is something, she’ll have to tell you herself. I don’t know anything.”

“I think sometimes people are afraid, or think there isn’t help available—” He took the familiar yellow domestic abuse sheet from the bin on the Emergency Room wall and held it out to her.

“No, thank you.” She could’ve recited
the thing verbatim. “Can I please see my mother now?” She let go of Adam’s hand and took a step away from him. For as much as she’d confessed over the years, she still had so many secrets. He had heard too much already. She had no idea what her mother’s records detailed, or what, if anything, she might’ve said up to that point, but she didn’t need Dr. Blake opening up this particular line of questioning.

“I
’m going in to see her alone,” she said to Adam. “She wouldn’t want you to see her like this.”

“I’ve seen her worse.
”

“Then
I
don’t want you to see her like this. It’s embarrassing. Please, go grab a cup of coffee or something from the cafeteria.”

Adam reluctantly agreed
, walking away with his head down.

Dr. Blake, who’d been watching the exchange, pulled the cu
rtain aside. “Fifteen minutes. She needs her rest.”

Harmony walked
through and waited for the drape to close behind her.

Things
had gone from bad to worse.

Her mother looked
small in the bed, helpless and not meant for this world. The heap of white blankets swallowed her frail body. Thick leather restraints held her wrists and ankles to the railing.

“Mom, can you hear me?” She
rubbed her mother’s hand, examining the tape on the IV. “Mom?”

Her eyes
remained closed, the shiner under the left one having turned from deep purple to green. There was no indication, not even the flutter of her lids, to say that she could hear her. Harmony brushed the halo of dirty blond hair away from her mother’s face and stared at the vitals monitor she had no frame of reference for. What she knew was that there was a heartbeat, which was more than her mother would have wanted. As much as she tried not to think about it, she understood the inclination. With no one watching, Harmony let her pained tears fall for the hell of a life that, no matter what she did, no matter what her mother did, neither of them could escape from.

“Harmony?”
A small hand touched her shoulder. She’d have known the voice anywhere.

“
Thank God.” She wrapped her arms around Brea’s neck. “I can’t believe you came.”

Brea was crying, too, and holding
Harmony so tightly it was hard for her to breathe. “We’re best friends, right?”

“You’re mother’s really going to be disapp
ointed.” Harmony let out a half-sob, half-laugh and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “About yesterday morning. I shouldn’t have pushed—”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” Maybe she was over-apologizing, but in that moment, having Brea there was the closest thing to comfort she’d felt in a while. “I know the whole thing sounds nuts and maybe I am—”

“Stop
. You’re not crazy.” Brea turned on her phone, called up a photograph, and handed it to her.

The picture was grainy and the words were too small for
Harmony to read. “What’s this?”

“I went to the library. I went through the papers from ’96 and I found an article—”

Charity’s heart monitor raced.

Harmony pressed the call button for the nurse. “What did it say?”

“It said a man went missing in 1996 from a house at 6 Maple Avenue. There weren’t a lot of details and I couldn’t find more about it. When I heard your message, I called a cab and came right over.”

“And his name was Tom?”

“No, his name was Gerald. Gerald Thomas Shippee. According to the article, his friends called him ‘Tom’.” Harmony clasped her hand over her mouth. “What’s the matter?” Brea asked.

A young woman wearing a white lab coat with the name Dr. Evelyn Campbell
embroidered on the pocket silenced the alarm.

Charity mumbled something under her breath
then started screaming.

“I need
two milligrams of Ativan, stat. I’m sorry,” Dr. Campbell said to Harmony, “I have to ask you two to leave.”

A nurse came in, syringe in hand, and plunged the needle into
her mother’s bicep. Charity stopped screaming and her body went limp.

“Mom?
Are you all right?”

“Please, I need you girls to go.” The doctor
shined a light in both of her mother’s eyes.

“I tried to keep you safe,
” Charity mumbled.

“
Safe from what?”

“Please leave,
” Dr. Campbell said, “before I call security.”

“Keep me safe from
what
, Mom?”

“Harmony,
come on.” Brea pulled her into the hallway. “You’re scaring me. Please, what’s wrong?”

Harmony’s
hands were shaking so hard she had to cross her arms to steady them. “Gerald Shippee. That’s the name you came up with?” Brea nodded. “Gerald Thomas Shippee?”

“Yeah
, why?”

“
Because, Brea, that was my father’s name.”

A lot of bad happened in 1996, none of it
well-publicized and all of it too close to Brea’s family for comfort. She closed her web browser and scribbled out the few details she was able to dig up before calling Harmony’s cell.

“Did you find anything
else?” Harmony said.

“
And good morning to you, too.” The long silence said Brea’s sarcasm was wasted. “There really wasn’t much. I found a follow-up article that was published in the Mason paper about two weeks after his disappearance. It was about your mom and a car accident.” The headline had read: “Tragedy Strikes Local Family a Second Time.”

“A
ccident? My mother’s never even owned a car.”

“
Then maybe she borrowed one? I don’t know. There was a picture, but I couldn’t make it out. It was some kind of sports car, I think.”

“Red
, an old Camaro maybe?”

“
Could have been. The photo was black and white, why?”

“
Long story. Anything about me?”

It
had mentioned a three-year-old, briefly, but the fact that Harmony remembered nothing about it made Brea second-guess telling her. With her mother in the hospital and Bennett about to throw her back in the group home, it didn’t seem like the right time.

“No, I told you, the article was short. I did a search using one of my mother’s programs and found out something interesting about the 6 Maple Avenue address, though. Title search says it belonged to
Tom and your mother. Best I can tell, she still owns it.”

“My mother owns
an actual house? That doesn’t make
any
sense.”

“None of this makes sense, Harm.”

“Is that it?”

“Pretty much.
I found a bunch of Gerald Shippees online, but none of them are the right age and none of them, as far as I can tell, are from here. Maybe you can ask your mom.”

“
‘Um, excuse me, I know you just attempted suicide, but can we talk about when Dad left you? You know, re-live the worst time of your life?’”

“I get the point.”

“Besides, she’s drugged, on a psychiatric hold, and really, she’s the last person I want to see right now. I have three days until my appointment with Bennett. Whether I end up going to Midtown or not, that doesn’t give me a lot of time.”

“Time to do what?”

Brea’s mother called up from downstairs. “Come on. You’re going to be late!” The sharp edge to her tone said she was still angry.

“Things sound tense around there.”

“To say the least. She’s irate.”

“At least she cares enough to be angry.” It
was the most complimentary thing Harmony had ever said about Brea’s mother.

“So, what’s the plan? You said you don’t have a lot of time.
To do what?”

“I’m g
oing to check my mother’s place and then I’m going to that house.”

“Harm, do you think that’s a good idea?”

“You said my mother owns it, right? What’s going to happen to me? It’s not trespassing.”