The Moon Pool (44 page)

When they landed, she had half a dozen texts. One was from Brittany:
I love you mom call me when you get there

The rest were from Colleen:

1:52 I arrived. Will check in and meet yr flight

3:11 Saw yr flight delayed will check on app

4:44 Coroners office says they will stay open late for you

5:01 Says you're on the ground I am here. Have car

Shay shoved the phone back into her handbag, harder than necessary. She had told Andy everything she knew, that Chief Weyant would have someone meet her at the morgue, that there were papers she would need to sign before Taylor could be released. That since Taylor's death had been ruled an accident, and the coroner had stated the cause of death was drowning, she was free to take him home for burial.

She hadn't been prepared when Andy told her that Colleen was planning to come out. Andy's voice on the phone was reassuring, smooth, probably good for the lawyer business. When he explained that he had already contacted a mortuary firm and arranged transport to one in California, she knew that he meant that all the expenses had been covered, and she couldn't find the words to tell him not to let Colleen come.

While she was talking to Andy, she felt that there was a certain dignity to the proceedings. But the minute Colleen got involved, it stirred up the bitter resentment she'd been nursing since that night at the hospital. Shay knew it was irrational. Or maybe
displaced
was the right word. But still, why did Colleen have to barge into everything like she was in charge? Even if she was trying to be helpful, even if she and Andy were the ones paying for it—that wasn't
her
child lying on some cold steel table.

Shay spotted her suitcase on the luggage truck. She pushed her way through the crowd of passengers and yanked it off herself. No one stopped her. She had to watch herself, had to keep her temper under control. She knew the source of her simmering rage, but knowing didn't make it go away.

She stared at the cinder-block airport terminal. Inside that building was Colleen. Shay wasn't ready. She stood, hidden in the shadow of the plane, and called Brittany, but she didn't pick up.

Slowly, Shay put the phone away and walked toward the terminal, dragging the old suitcase behind her. The terminal was busy; another flight would soon be leaving, and the men were lined up, impatient to get home. They carried paper cups and duffel bags and stared at their phones and iPads. They paid her no attention as she walked past.

It took a moment for Shay to recognize Colleen. The last time she'd seen her, in the halls of the police station, she'd had her hair pulled back in an indifferent half ponytail. Her clothes had been slept in. Her lips were colorless and chapped, her eyes sunken, her jowls trembling.

The intervening months had brought Colleen back to life. Her hair was colored a rich chestnut with lighter highlights and cut shorter. She had on makeup: eyeliner and lipstick and foundation that evened out her skin tone. She was wearing a coral pink short-sleeved sweater with a scooped neckline that showed off her long, elegant neck, ivory capri pants, and the same unlaced canvas sneakers that Brittany wore, the ones with the little rectangular patch that Shay had teased her daughter about:
fifty dollars for a label?
Her bag looked a lot like the one she'd lugged around during the week they'd spent together, except a lighter shade of brown. She looked, Shay thought unkindly, like a magazine ad for a feminine product: competent, happy, even a trifle smug.

Well, to be fair, Colleen didn't look all that happy right now. Her brow was creased, and she searched the arriving passengers anxiously, twisting her hands on her purse strap. When Colleen saw her, a wealth of emotions passed over her expression before she smoothed it into a bland greeting: dread, guilt... and longing.

She rushed toward Shay with her arms outstretched. Shay wasn't sure if Colleen was going to grab her hand or hug her or what. In all of that terrible week that they had spent together, they had never hugged. They had touched only when it was made necessary by their close proximity. Even the terrible night, when Shay was being led to the police car, Colleen had stood apart, consumed by her relief at having Paul, and maybe that was forgivable, but Shay had ridden in that car alone. Shay had been alone when the policeman asked her if she was having thoughts of
hurting herself or others.

Colleen settled for an in-between gesture: she reached for both of Shay's hands, then stood there clutching them. Her hands were cold. “Shay, I don't even know how to begin to tell you...” she said, and then stopped. Shyly, almost, she stepped forward, closing the distance between them, but at the last minute Shay pulled her hands away and twisted out of Colleen's grip. She seized the handle of her suitcase and dragged it between them. A barrier—an emergency one.

“You didn't have to come,” she mumbled. She knew how she sounded and she knew she couldn't stop. Not yet. “Tell Andy thanks for the flights, the hotel—everything. We'd better go, right?”

She made a show of looking at her wrist, though she hadn't worn a watch in years.

“Yes,” Colleen said softly. “Of course. We don't want to keep them waiting.”

After that Colleen didn't try so hard. She led Shay out to the parking lot to a dirty white car. It had a crack in the windshield and smelled of cigarettes. Grime was crusted in the console. “This is a rental?” Shay said, not bothering to hide her disgust. “Hope you didn't pay much for it.”

She stole glances at Colleen as they drove toward downtown. Her face was pinched and tense. Good—that felt like a small victory. If Colleen was a smoker, she'd be wanting one now. As for herself, Shay had stayed off them completely since going back to California. She thought it would be hard to quit, but it wasn't. The idea of smoking held no more appeal than eating cardboard. She wasn't drinking much, either, and Brittany had to remind her to eat when she stopped by. Shay's only coping indulgence was Mack: seeing him whenever he could get away, taking him to bed without preamble, fucking him as hard as she could and crying after, his sweet bewildered face hovering over her in concern. But even that had died down. She hadn't bothered to let Mack know about Taylor.

“
Here?
” Shay snorted. They were back at the police station. Behind the brick-and-glass box was a building Shay had taken for the utility plant: pale cinder block with a ramp leading up to the entrance.

Colleen parked and waited for Shay to get out of the car before she did. They walked together toward the entrance, Shay keeping some distance between them. A dozen yards from the ramp, she stopped.

“I don't think I want you there,” she said, but then it hit her, and she suddenly had trouble breathing. Inside this building were the poor tattered remains that were all that was left of her beloved, her best loved. She would gather him in her arms if she could, she wouldn't mind the condition of the body, she had already endured the worst. Except, what then?

Tomorrow she would fly home, and in the plane would be a sealed casket packed in a plain brown box provided by the airline. It had been explained to her by the man from the mortuary Andy had made arrangements with. He had been patient, repeating himself several times until Robert gently took the phone from Shay and wrote everything down neatly on a sheet torn from the grocery list pad on the fridge. So yes. She knew the logistics.

But that wasn't what made the terrible hole inside her. What, then? After he was transferred to the casket Brittany and Robert were picking out today, after the service, after he was lowered into the plot next to her mother—it had been purchased long ago by her father, but he ended up being buried with his second wife—after the stone was laid and the flowers placed there and everyone had gone home and Shay finally took off the black dress and Brittany and Robert took Leila home—what
then
?

“Oh, God,” she said, stumbling against Colleen. And Colleen caught her.

INSIDE WAS AN
officer Shay vaguely recognized. “I made sure they waited,” he said. “I talked to your son-in-law. The papers are all ready. You only have to go as far as this front office. Tomorrow everything's going to be taken care of for you, you can get back on the plane and then on the other end the other company is going to handle it from there.”

It took only about ten minutes. The staff, one woman and one man, didn't meet her eyes as they guided her through where to sign. The officer stood beside her. Colleen stood against the wall, clutching her purse like her life depended on it, a strange little grimace on her face. When Shay pushed back her chair, finished at last, she realized that Colleen was trying not to cry.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly on the way back to the car. She let Colleen open the passenger door for her.

“You must be tired,” Colleen said falteringly. “Coming all that way.”

Shay shrugged.

“I was thinking... would you like to have dinner? We could go somewhere quiet, where we could talk.”

“Like Swann's?” Shay barked out a harsh laugh. “That would be great. We'll invite Kristine to sit down with us after her shift.”

“No, no, that isn't—” Shay could see how uncomfortable she was making Colleen, but it was too hard to care. “I just thought, somewhere that we could take our time. I mean it wouldn't even have to be, we could stay in the room, get room service.”

“Which room, mine or yours? Since you guys got two. What did that cost, anyway? What's my tab up to?” She had heard that the cost of transporting a body could run as high as five thousand dollars, a figure that made her mouth go dry. Robert was trying to deal with the insurance company, to see what might be covered, and Shay had backed completely away from the details.

Maybe that was what was making her feel guilty: between Andy and Robert, the two of them were handling everything. Shay was used to taking care of herself. She'd been on her own since she was eighteen. Sometimes she screwed up, but she was usually as proud of surviving the mistakes as she was of her successes.

She turned away from Colleen, suddenly stiff. She had pushed too far. She was—at least the fragile part of her that still experienced normal feelings, that still participated in the world around her even while the rest of her drowned in grief—sorry for what she was doing.

And grateful. Yes. She could still do gratitude, though it was a rusty tool, degraded from lack of use.

She watched the town go by outside her window. There... the gas station where she'd left Colleen on the curb. In the concrete planters were marigolds and petunias. An old man in a greasy white apron tied over his jeans stood outside, washing the windows with Windex and crumpled newspaper. Shay knew that trick—best way to clean glass with no smears. There, on the left, was the lumberyard. The shack in the middle had been demolished, and in its place was a sign announcing
COMING SOON LUXURY 1– AND 2-BEDROOM APARTMENTS ALL THE AMENITIES LEASING THIS FALL
. It was hard to believe that an apartment complex would go up in the next six months—around Fairhaven, there were half-finished projects that had been abandoned after the housing crash, weeds growing up between the lots.

Soon Colleen pulled up at the Hyatt.

“For old times' sake?” Shay said. Making the joke was an effort. An olive branch.

Colleen glanced at her, eyes wounded, looking for the barb. Ready for the blade. “Andy just wanted you to have somewhere comfortable,” she mumbled. “Listen, whatever you need, I'm here. If all you want is”—her voice hitched, and she coughed in an effort to cover it—“is to be left alone, I understand. Maybe in the morning, you might... I mean, if you want to talk, you have my cell number and I'll just be in my room. And of course I'll take you to the airport. I've got all your flight details and—”

“Colleen.” Shay cut her off, then didn't know what else to say. “It's okay,” she finally managed. “Give me fifteen minutes to splash some water on my face, maybe we can find a place in this town where no one knows us.”

That was supposed to be a joke too, but it was clear Colleen didn't get it. She nodded and ducked her chin. When she got out of the car she held onto the doorframe for support, like an old woman.