One More Day (16 page)

“But the truth is I was just punishing you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. For refusing to have an abortion.”

“Ethan, that's—”

“Crazy? Evil? Yeah, yeah, it is. So you asked me if it was painful, my death? No. When I jumped off that bridge in Canada in the middle of the night? It didn't hurt at all. My life was what hurt, from the guilt and the stupidity and the cowardice. When I floated through the air, and when I hit the pure, clean water, I didn't feel a thing. But after all these years, I just needed to know. I needed to know if it hurt him. I needed to feel everything he felt. And what's really crazy? For years and years, I convinced myself that you knew all along what I did. That you were glad I did it.”

“Good God, Ethan—”

“There was a look on your face when I came back—”

“No!”

“A look of pure steel, like we'd crossed it off the list together.”

“I'm going to be sick,” Carrie said, leaning over at the waist. “I'm going to be very sick.”

“No, you're not, Carrie,” he said. “You're going to be well. Happy and well and loved your whole life. And forgiven.
You are going to be forgiven.
But not me. Never.”

Bile rose in her throat. He had done what no one could conceive of, and yet, here he was. Talking to her. Moving through the universe, seeing her, seeing her grandmother.

“But wait, Ethan,” she said, raising her head. “If you're with my grandmother, surely you've already been forgiv—”

“If you believe that crap, Carrie, then I have seriously misjudged you. I always thought you were smarter than the rest.”

Smarter? To have not seen what had unspooled that night before her very eyes? She retched into the edge of the path leading down to the trail's head. Behind her, she heard a small child say, “Ew!” and a mother shushing him, telling him that everyone gets sick sometimes.

When she turned around, she caught a glimpse of that little boy, his red hair, his blue pants, still staring at her.

But Ethan? The tree stood in the same place, moss crawling up the bark. Carrie walked over and brushed her hand against it, pressing her palm to where Ethan's had been, inhaling the green tang, more alive than the tree. But Ethan was nowhere to be found.

Carrie's hands gripped the wheel tightly. She headed home, but there was nowhere she wanted to go. There were reporters lining her street, detectives following her every move, a husband watching her like a hawk. And did any of that matter after what she'd just found out? Tears spilled from her eyes, trailing down her neck, evaporating down to nothing against her collarbone. All these years, she'd wondered why she hadn't felt more of a pull to locate that baby. Yes, she'd occasionally looked on the Internet, wondered what the process would be. But she'd never taken the next step. Why hadn't she wondered more about what he looked like, how he'd turned out? A few fleeting thoughts, when Ben was born:
Do they look alike?
But not the driving force that other people feel. Now she knew why.
He'd been gone.

She couldn't change the past; she couldn't look forward to the future. She couldn't even experience the full satisfaction of being angry at Ethan, to pound him with her fists, to show up at his door furious all over again. He was a true coward. He waited until he was dead and untouchable, floating in the air, to tell her the truth.

All she could do was drive home. Taking the curves along Vestry Road, winding past properties whose stone walls only hinted at their beauty, she didn't think, as her mother would have, about the people living in those houses—whether they were happy, if their families were growing, if they needed more space or light, if they felt a kind of wanderlust that might bring them to a Realtor's door. No. She thought instead of the work that went into the facades, how long it would take to carry the stones from quarry to truck to rolling green hill. How, depending on who you were, a stone or log was merely a weight and a building block, not a color or ornament or exclamation point. She had a worker-bee mentality. That was what her PR boss had told her in her first review, and the way she'd said it, with a taut, smug smile, Carrie had thought that, even though it had been stated as an attribute, it was definitely a flaw. That was why it was so easy for her to stay home with Ben at first. She knew she would never be fully appreciated in the workplace, but perhaps she could be in a home.

She understood that a million small acts kept the world spinning. She supported unions even when they went on strike, believed teachers and police were the highest callings. Sometimes at a cocktail party or even a coffee-cake gathering at church, Carrie would be caught up in a clutch of Republicans, trying valiantly to defend her position, and John would see her hands gesturing from across the room, a telltale sign she was debating someone, and come over to rescue her. He'd pretend to support her positions just so she wouldn't feel so alone. She always said the same thing:
you didn't have to do that
. But she said it while squeezing his hand, her eyes damp with gratitude.

And that was why, when Carrie finally got home and got out of her car and barreled toward John as he stood next to the Orkin truck, her hands balled into fists, her stride half running, like the cheerleader she used to be, about to launch into something fiery and spectacular, vaulted and soaring with a twist, his first thought was that there was something wrong with choosing that company. That they'd been unfair to their workers, that their policies or practices outraged her.

“Stop!” she screamed. But her eyes weren't on John. She ran past him toward the backyard, heading for the man in uniform crouched at the back corner of her house. John wasn't fast enough to save her this time. Carrie grabbed the hose out of the gray-uniformed man's hand, twisting it loose from its backpack, and John imagined all the chemicals spraying across her, across the yard, instead of pointed at the base of the house, measured and remote.

The exterminator, apparently envisioning the same thing, fought Carrie for control of the hose, his protests muffled by the mask over his face. They tussled over it for a few long seconds before John reached Carrie, wrapped his arms beneath her, and pulled her away, the hose falling to the ground while she kicked and karate-chopped the air like a feral child.

“Shh,” John said. “It's okay.”

“It's not okay!”

“Let's go in the house.”

“No! No! He has to stop!”

“Fine, all right. We'll get someone else. We'll—”

“No! No more killing! No more death!”

John set Carrie down on the pavement in front of their yellow garage door. Her eyes were red, and a long piece of her hair was still stuck stubbornly across her lip. He pulled it away gently, tucking it behind her ear, as if the errant lock were part of the problem, blocking her true reasoning from being communicated clearly the first time.

“All right,” he said softly, sheepishly.
He should have known. Of course he should have known.

She nodded, then swallowed. Along the side of the garage, the man walked tentatively toward them, gripping his equipment tightly.

“I'll go ahead and cancel the contract then,” he said, and John nodded. He hesitated for a moment before opening the door to his truck, as if waiting for an apology, but none came.

They went inside, and John wrapped Carrie in his arms. “No more death in this house,” he whispered. “I get it.”

She hugged him back and apologized. “It's just…the thought of it. It's too creepy, John. I can't…I can't imagine.”

“The…carcasses,” he said. “Carapaces, whatever they're called. The idea of that under the house, buried in their hive—I understand.”

“No,” she said.

“No?”

He lifted his face from her hair.

“I mean, what if they all came back too, angry, buzzing, stronger than they were before?”

“What?” He held her at arm's length, searching her face like a dictionary. If he paid more attention, looked carefully, wouldn't it all be simple to understand?

“Murdered bees,” she said. “If they come back to haunt us, wouldn't they be the angriest, the most dangerous souls of them all?”

His mouth started to form a familiar sentence. That she was not making sense. That she needed to see Dr. Kenney. That something larger, and more profound, was wrong with her and needed to be addressed.

But he didn't. He closed his lips and didn't say anything more. He just hugged her as if he feared what she feared, as if they had, at last, another fear in common. They held each other for a long time until she pulled away and looked at him quizzically.

“Why are you here, John?”

He surveyed her eyes. Was it a trick question? His life's meaning being called on the carpet?

“Home,” she said. “Why did you come home in the middle of the day? And where—where are the news vans and all of their stuff: their trash, their—”

“I, uh, I have good news,” he said.

“Good news?” She screwed up her face as she said it, the opposite of how anyone else would have reacted. So unexpected and so wrong. Not today. He had good news. She had bad news. They canceled each other out.

“Come on,” he said, pulling her into the kitchen. He poured her a glass of wine, told her to drink it.

“Why? Why do I need to drink it?”

“Carrie,” he said breathlessly, “they're interviewing a person of interest.”

“What?”

“Forrester told me about it all, in confidence, of course, after the news con—”

“Not the dog guy. Oh my God! I stood next to him, side by side at that pond, and I never—”

“No. The parking lot guy.”

Carrie had almost stopped believing in him. He'd become a myth, a vague dark shape, like Big Foot.

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“The guy from the Y? How did they find him?”

“New info from one of the witnesses.”

“Who? What witness? From someone around here, or someone from the past?”

“The past?” He screwed up his face. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, is it a new witness or new information, someone who remembered something different?” She thought of the moms at the Y, how desperately they'd wanted to help. And all the footage from the surrounding businesses, the cameras tilted at exactly the wrong angle at precisely the wrong time. What had changed?

“Sounds like Forrester followed up on something. I sensed a big disconnect between him and Nolan.”

“Imagine the disconnect if he knew his partner was feeding you information.”

“No, sounds like Nolan didn't believe the person and Forrester did. So he followed up.”

“A hero,” she said quietly.

“Not really. Just a man trying to be heard, I think.”

“So they're interviewing someone else,” she repeated, chewing nervously on her thumb.

“Yes.”

“Well, it should be interesting to see what…details he even remembers,” she said softly. “After all this time. It's probably hazy, or—or—”

“Well, it's huge,” John said, smiling. “He was there.”

“Do you think they'll believe him?” she said suddenly. “Believe every last little thing he says, even though they don't know him?”

“Uh…I don't know, Carrie. All I know is it's good news. Extremely good news.”

“Does Susan Clark know this?”

He nodded. “I called her right away. Forrester said Nolan is being a prick, trying to undercut the significance, saying he's still investigating other leads, which probably means you. But Forrester says he never lost faith.”

“Well, that would make him the only one, wouldn't it, John?”

John paused, wounded. He'd told her; he'd shared. And hadn't he pretended to understand what the hell she was talking about with the Orkin man?
This was his doing! It was his buddy-buddy relationship that brought them the inside scoop. Wasn't he the true hero? Didn't Carrie want to cheer him now?
But he swallowed it; she wasn't herself. Hadn't Danielle warned him to give Carrie lots of rope, lots of slack? To leave her alone, to let things slide a bit? Hadn't she told him that stress could undo a person, make anything happen?

“No, honey, of course not. It's just—the stress. The stress of everything is getting to you, that's all. And all that time you've been spending at church. It's…putting ideas in your head.”

Her lip quivered. Ideas in her head? She knew. She
saw
. She was more observant than anyone! If she hadn't had her face buried in her purse, this all would have been solved long ago! Because she remembered
everything
. She remembered how her grandmother looked before she'd gotten sick. She remembered the flat way Ethan ended his sentences. She remembered the contour of a bald divot under a dog's snout. She remembered the tiny head of a newborn baby with its pale blue veins. She could pick up the details of the dead, their shadings, their timbre and lilt and loamy potpourri, after years had passed. She remembered—only her.

Detective Nolan's stance at the press conference—feet wide, hands grasped in front over his wide belly, jaw locked, eyes straight ahead—conveyed confidence. As if he'd been the one to figure it all out. As if he were the smartest man up there, and not just the oldest. As if he were the one at the podium, flashing the stripes of the chief, charming the female reporters. Forrester, standing off to his right, was a collection of slack limbs, lowered shoulders, cocked head, soft knees. He looked like he was lying down even when he was standing up. Was that his trick? He relaxed people, made them trust, even when they shouldn't?

“We're pleased to announce a major development in the Benjamin Morgan case,” the chief said, his eyes working the room as though he was already the politician some assumed he would someday become. If he handled cases like this right, maybe. Not that he wished for more crimes, more homicides, but still. The spotlight. The challenge.

Microphones raised, cameras poised. Not just the local affiliates anymore—not after all this time, and all the strangeness of this case. The woman from
24/7
was there, right up front, in a row of her contemporaries from CNN,
60 Minutes
, and others.

The boy's reappearance had reignited the imagination of everyone who had heard about it. And they didn't even know the half of it.

“We have a person of interest in custody at this time,” he continued. “Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Lower Merion Police Department, who don't believe in cold cases. They only believe in cases that need perseverance, judgment, and close, careful attention.” He used a hand gesture to separate each word, clear as commas. “Now, we have time for just a few of your questions before we get back to it.”

“Has the suspect been charged?”

“Person of interest. Not a suspect.”

“But—”

“Not at this time.”

“Do you anticipate—”

“No comment. See, I anticipated what you were going to say.”

A few titters of laughter from the room, a rueful smile from Forrester. Nothing from Nolan.

“Is this a new suspect or someone you already interviewed?”

“New.”

“Was the suspect apprehended as the result of a citizen's tip or a witness?”

“Not a suspect, as I said before. And it was a witness who came forward with new information.”

“Not a new witness, but someone you interviewed before?”

“We are not prepared to discuss the witness at this time. Thank you all for helping us shine a spotlight on this important case and the hard work of our police officers. Good day.”

He turned and led the way, followed by Nolan, then Forrester. If any of the reporters saw John standing quietly at the back of the room, upright behind all the people leaning forward with the weight of their microphones, notebooks, and cameras, they didn't acknowledge him. Nor did John try to do anything more than blend in. He didn't even make eye contact with Forrester, not daring to. All he knew for sure was that his wife was not the suspect in custody, because his neighbor had already texted him and told him she was at home, safe at home.

And later, when he got the next phone call from Forrester and they arranged a place to meet for a beer, he would find out for sure that his wife was not the witness either. After he finished his beer and felt the relief of the last swallow going down, that small consolation would spread across his head and heart. He could not bear the thought of Carrie suddenly recalling a perfect, incriminating piece of information. Something that floated up and shimmered, proud of its shape, the missing, interlocking piece. The guilt, the shame Carrie would feel, of her memory burying it for so long, too long to be helpful. It was too late for that. It was just too late for anything but justice.