Lie Still (10 page)

“I don’t really know how I can help,” I told him. “I don’t know Caroline Warwick well. She invited me to a party at her house several days ago and then yesterday for a glass of iced tea with a few other women.”

“How did she seem?”

“Yesterday? Fine, I guess. Again, I don’t know her well enough to say. Her headache came on suddenly.”

“She didn’t say anything that indicated she was worried?”

“No, the conversation was … just small talk. Benign.” If you considered a puppy murder and sex toys under the mattress to be benign. Maybe Cody would. I wasn’t sure why I was lying, setting more traps for myself. But yesterday Caroline wasn’t the victim in that room. I wasn’t about to start my sentence in this town by ratting out the people who were.

The officer, tapping out his notes on an iPad, paused over the word
benign
, and I stopped myself from spelling it for him.

“What time did you leave Ms. Warwick’s home yesterday, ma’am?” He stuttered a little over the
ma’am
, and I began to sympathize that he had drawn the short straw to interview the wife of the new boss.

“Let’s see. I looked at the clock when I got home. It was three-fifteen. So I probably left her house around three.”

“Did you have any contact with the housekeeper? Maria Valdez?”

“Yes, Maria let us in. She let me out. I was the last one to go.”

He paused for a beat, as if that was significant. “Did she show any animosity toward Mrs. Warwick?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Do you know if she’s an illegal?”

“
Illegal
isn’t a noun.” My voice was clipped, not liking where this was going. “If you’re asking if she’s in the country legally, I don’t have any idea.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be checking on that.”

Patronizing. No more trace of a stutter. Maybe he’d faked it. You’d think at this point in my life I could read people faster. Like last month, when that New York plumber charged me twice what he should have, swaying any doubts about the price with a
story about being a single father who struggled to braid his daughter’s hair that morning.

People are adept at getting what they want these days, mingling the lies and the truth, fooling you, wriggling into your soft parts. Maybe people always had been like this.

I was beginning to think that underneath Cody Hill’s fresh-scrubbed face, a redneck bully thrived.

“That’s an interesting little club she’s got set up,” he drawled. “I’ve heard some weird rumors about it from my girlfriend. Like they all have special tattoos in a private place. A lot of pissed-off women in this town, both the ones who get in and the ones who get blackballed. My girlfriend, she’s still hoping for an invite.”

“I’m not her ticket,” I said. Tattoos that said
liar
or
whore
or
killer
? Nothing seemed too far-fetched at the moment.

Cody frowned, not liking my answer. “Did things seem normal between Ms. Warwick and her guests?”

“I don’t know them. I don’t know what normal would be.”

“Did anything at all stick out at you yesterday?”

“You’re just asking the same question different ways. Maria could surely tell you more about these women than I can. Did you ask her? She speaks English.”
You jerk
.

He flipped the iPad cover over his notes, and stood. “Mostly, I was just after a timeline.” The words flowed in a syrupy drawl. “I ’preciate it, ma’am.”

He towered over me as we walked to the front door. He stopped short, four inches from my stomach, invading my baby space, nauseating me with the smell of bitter sweat and an overdose of Old Spice deodorant.

“One more thing, ma’am. Your husband’s already thinking about calling in the FBI. It ain’t even the usual forty-eight yet. It’s tough being the new guy, trying to please the mayor. We all get that. But we can handle this. So maybe you could assure him, since you’re a friend of Miss Warwick’s, that wouldn’t be such a
good idea. Give her a little time to come home on her own. Prevent her some embarrassment.”

He glanced down, and I became distinctly aware of the paper bulge in my front pocket, and then the one in his pants. I realized that his eyes weren’t trained on my belly but on the sliver of bare skin showing above my jeans.

His gaze rolled up to my breasts, a C cup for the first time in their lives. My nipples tingled like he was physically touching them, and I felt the familiar flush of shame. The experts say the body is cued to respond, even under attack, even when we don’t want it to.

“Watch where you look.” My voice pulsed with anger.

“You seem a little on edge, Mrs. Page.”

He stepped over the threshold to the porch, and I slammed the door.

I
waited for Mike in his favorite armchair, facing the door, my feet propped up on a moving box. I pulled my grandmother’s afghan tight around my pajamas. When I was five, I liked to waggle my fingers like little puppet people through the crochet holes.

There is blood in my house
.

Staring at the door, I thought about how I could never survive Mike leaving me. About how ironic it was that I married a man immersed in violence when I can barely make it through a full episode of his favorite cop show on cable.

Mike takes my idiosyncrasies in this area in stride. He knows what’s off the table. Horror movies with the word
Saw
or a Roman numeral in the title. Torture scenes that involve fingers, clippers, knives, cigar cutters, or water. Children in peril.

The truth is, I was like this before Pierce raped me. Ever since Beth died in
Little Women
, I’ll check out the end of any book
that foreshadows the death of a character I love. As long as I know what’s coming, it’s OK. But don’t surprise me.

Yet I have no problem at all murdering Pierce Martin. I see him in my head right now, arms crossed, lazy grin. I’m pulling the trigger. One, two, three, four, five. Always five. This isn’t the first time I’ve killed him. It helps that I
know
he’s going to die.

His body lurches like a floppy fish with each blast until he crumples, finally harmless. I’ve never felt any guilt about making this bloody mess. I haven’t successfully reconciled that with my belief in a loving, forgiving God who asks me to reflect His image.

In my night dreams, when I’m not on guard, Pierce is alive. He lurks while I’m soaring through a happy, nonsensical plot, vanishing the second I turn my head.

While I sleep, my rapist is still my stalker, even though I’ve killed him over and over in the daytime. Even though I know he can’t hurt me anymore.

When Mike walked in the door, my Cartier watch said it was 3 a.m.

“I have to tell you about the box,” I said.

Except that when I woke up, I wasn’t wearing a Cartier watch. I didn’t own one. A pillow from our bed was tucked under my head. I hadn’t put it there.

When I woke up it was morning, and Mike was already gone again.

T
he sign near the receptionist’s desk had promised
WOMEN CARING FOR WOMEN
, as if that was worth bragging about, and so far, so good.

Dr. Gretchen Liesel’s waiting room was like a giant womb, bathed in warm red tones and indirect light, without a harsh fluorescent bulb in sight. Somehow, I hadn’t expected Texas to be like this.

After filling out a little paperwork, my body nestled itself into one of six overstuffed chairs as a classical music station played faintly, the way I imagined the baby could hear music in his insulated cocoon. I dug into the Sunday Arts section of
The New York Times
, a treat, because I’d started reading it on Mike’s iPad since we moved, and it just wasn’t the same. I had taken exactly one bite from a chocolate chip granola bar from the loaded snack basket when a sweet-faced nurse named Anna called my name.

I obediently followed her into an exam room, outfitted with the same soft lighting, a couch, and custom oak cabinets that hid the cold, glistening tools that made every muscle in my body clench. Or maybe they used those awful disposable plastic ones here. Surely women caring for women knew that, for some reason, cheap, hard, disposable plastic hurt more than steel. Anna left the room, and I shed my clothes and pulled on the cuddly, high-thread-count, blue cotton gown folded on the exam table.

I lay back on it and thought about my sole reason for being here.

Paranoia.

Paranoia about an ache in my belly this morning that was either a sign that I was losing my baby or that I shouldn’t eat red Doritos every day.

Paranoia about Caroline’s ridiculous fortune-cookie secrets. About yesterday’s vile package on my doorstep and whether the missing Caroline could possibly be responsible. I wanted to believe that Dr. Liesel had the answers to all of these concerns, all of it covered by doctor-patient confidentiality.

When I called several hours ago, the receptionist heard my first sentence about pain in my lower abdomen and immediately plugged me in as a new patient at 4 p.m.

Two raps on the door. Dr. Liesel stepped inside, dressed in pale green scrubs.

“Hello, Emily.” She gave my shoulder a gentle pat before heading to the sink to wash her hands. The pat. It changed the entire dynamic of the doctor/patient relationship. Perfecting the patient pat should be a medical school graduation requirement.

“So what’s going on?” She dried her hands on a paper towel and rolled her stool over, unhooking the blood pressure cuff from the wall.

“It hurts all across here. Probably something I ate?” Hopeful.

“Don’t talk.” She pumped up the cuff.

The blood pressure machine hissed like an angry snake, the only sound in the room. I thought about Mike, who had no idea that I was here, or that something might be wrong. My worry was all I could carry this time. He was more afraid of losing me than of losing another child he didn’t know.

But
I
knew this child. He had wrapped his little fingers tightly around my soul. So had all the ones before him.

I breathed deeply and tried to focus on the cool and gentle fingers pressing on my wrist, feeling my pulse.

“150 over 90.” Dr. Liesel ripped off the Velcro cuff. “Not ideal. Your pulse is a little fast. When did you last see Dr. Herrera?”

Why was this always a surprise to a doctor? That pulses race faster and blood pounds in the presence of someone who could rock your world with a few words of irrefutable science?

“Several days ago. Everything checked out fine.”

“Lie back and let’s untie your gown.” She flipped a switch on a screen above my head, pulled out an ultrasound wand, and squirted warm jelly on my stomach.

Searching, searching, searching for that elusive heartbeat. I squeezed my eyes shut, and wondered where women caring for women heated up the goo.

I tried not to imagine a tiny, curled-up form perfectly still on the screen above my head. Too still. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I heard horses galloping through a stream and almost choked on air. My baby, beating away.

“From what I can see so far, your baby looks and sounds perfect.” She gently wiped the jelly off with a soft washcloth.

“Lie back for a second.” Careful hands massaged my stomach. From my angle, it appeared to be protruding about two more inches than yesterday. She pressed a stethoscope to my belly before pulling it out of her ears and adjusting the exam table into a sitting position. “It’s noisy in there. Maybe eat some plain yogurt. Do you know the sex?”

“Yes.” Overflowing with gratefulness, indebted, as everyone is to a doctor who delivers good news, as if they’re somehow responsible for it. “A boy.”

“Relax, OK? You’ve made it well past the first trimester this time. I see here in your paperwork faxed over from Dr. Herrera that you’ve had a number of miscarriages. The percentages are with you at this point.” She paused, frowning at my paperwork. “Is this right? A glass of wine a day?”

“More like every other day.”

“Cut back. One a week.”

“OK.” Timid. With doctors, always timid, whether they were assholes or angels, ones who patted my shoulder or ones who coldly told me that my future adorable first-grader who cut out construction paper butterflies was now a dead fetus that needed to be harvested by a machine.

“Do you take someone … like me? High risk?” The words rushed out unexpectedly.

She studied my face. “You want me to follow this pregnancy?”

“I think so.”

“My first delivery was twin calves in my uncle’s barn in Massachusetts. Sticking my arms up that poor cow at age sixteen prepared me for just about anything. I’m not worried if you aren’t. Still, Dr. Herrera is an excellent doctor and her facilities are a little more impressive. So what will it be?” She glanced up for confirmation, and I nodded.

You. I don’t know why I trust you, but I do
.

She started pecking with two fingers into a small laptop on the counter. “I could do a full exam, but I don’t like to bother the baby unless it’s absolutely necessary. My nurse will set up a schedule of appointments. Call me anytime you’re worried. No big deal.”

Eat some yogurt. No exam. No big deal.