Maggie turned and shrugged. “Maybe it’s easier just to disappear, wouldn’t you say?”
Alex met her eyes.
“To take a car, not registered in your name.” Maggie looked at the car parked next to the guesthouse, with the New Mexico plates. “No stopping at hotels, since they require a driver’s license, a license plate number.”
Alex forced herself to take regular breaths, to stay as even and centered as she possibly could. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.
“Applying for a job, an internship, perhaps. In a letter, written on a typewriter. No phone number, no e-mail address. The only contact information a post office box. To use only cash, no bank accounts. Cash your paycheck at the general store.”
Maggie turned and looked Alex in the eye.
“When I got your letter, back in November, I thought it was quaint. Old-fashioned. But now I wonder.”
Alex felt her hands begin to tremble. They were slick with sweat.
“It could be someone running away from an abusive husband. Or it could be someone who has something to hide. Running away from something else. The law, perhaps.”
Maggie turned and walked back to her desk. She sat down and looked up at Alex once more, straightening her glasses. “I am aware just how much you love research. But sometimes it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie. Don’t you agree, Alexandra?”
TWENTY-SIX
Like a prisoner of war, she managed to endure another five years as Daniel Frazier’s wife. Whenever he hit her, whenever he pushed on top of her, she let her mind go somewhere else entirely, as if none of this were happening to her. She let her mind go blank. And then she lay beside him, after he had gone to sleep, dreaming of the day when Daniel would be gone and her life would be her own again. It wasn’t a plan—but it was the only survival strategy she had. The only way she could keep getting up in the morning, putting one foot in front of the other.
During those five years, she managed to amass the sum of $1,500 in cash—just by taking a ten at the grocery store, not every week, but two or three times a month. When she had too many tens, she exchanged them for a larger bill, careful not to allow too much bulk to accumulate in the false bottom of her purse. Fifteen hundred dollars wasn’t enough; it would never pay a deposit and first month’s rent on a new place, but she was comforted by the thought that she could, at least, buy gas and food and maybe even a few nights in a motel, if absolutely necessary. She still had no real plan; like a prisoner, her salvation was based on waiting for Daniel to die, waiting for the torture to be over. But she had developed a strategy for survival and now had a little money, waiting for the day she found freedom.
And then everything fell apart. Her mother got sick. Alex lost track of everything else in her life—she thought of nothing but her mother in those few weeks after Frances’ diagnosis. She was swamped by the overwhelming regret she felt. All the mistakes she had made, all the time she had lost. If she had listened to her mother at the very beginning, all those years ago, perhaps the two of them would have been traveling together in Europe instead of living two miles away from one another, paralyzed by the jealousy and control of Daniel Frazier.
Even through that final illness, Daniel remained self-centered and demanding. “Again, Alex? You were just at your mother’s last night. You have a husband to take care of, you know. I haven’t had a decent meal in a week.”
She stared at him, anger flaming in every cell of her body. She forced herself to breathe, her anger piling up inside her. “I’ll make it up to you this weekend,” she promised, standing on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. He turned away, his jaw hard. “She has a different nurse every few hours. I just want to make sure that they take good care of her. She’s in so much pain.”
“That’s why they have those call buttons,” he snapped. “She can still press a call button, can’t she?”
Alex took a breath, as close as she had ever been to losing her temper with him. It took every ounce of will she possessed not to start screaming. “She’s in so much pain, Daniel. Sometimes I think she doesn’t even know where she is or that there is a call button.”
He jerked away from her. Fumes of anger swept her body in waves, like a heat mirage in the desert, as she drove to her mother’s house and the cadre of nurses and hospice volunteers. She forced herself to let the anger go, to leave it behind in the car. Her mother certainly didn’t need this.
She sat in the chair next to her mother’s bed, her hand on her mother’s arm, her forehead pressed to the blanket. The anger was gone; despair was back.
Her mother lifted a hand and brushed at the hair on Alex’s forehead. “Is there any ice?”
Alex sat up, and wiped her tears, and reached for the cup of ice, feeding her mother one slender chip.
“You can leave him now, you know.”
Alex turned to her.
“You won’t have to worry about me anymore. You are free to leave.”
Alex looked into her mother’s eyes, into the depths of pain and understanding that pooled there. Her first instinct was to deny. But she realized, sitting next to the mother who wouldn’t be here much longer, that she was sick of lies. Sick of trying to hide the truth of her life. She’d been lying for so long, to so many people. Lies about the bruises, lies about why she couldn’t attend a coworker’s baby shower. Everywhere, she was surrounded by lies.
“How did you know?” Alex whispered.
Her mother took a deep breath, wincing with the pain. “I knew it had to be something like that, or you would never have gone back to him after the . . . accident with the baby.”
Alex pressed her lips together and looked away for a moment. “That was no accident.”
Her mother smiled slightly and touched Alex’s hand. “I knew that, too. I was being kind. I know a lot more than you think I do.”
Neither of them spoke. They could hear the sound of the nurse, watching television in the front room. They could hear the beeping of the heart monitor, the slow drip of the IV that fed Frances a steady stream of morphine.
“Promise me?” Her mother’s voice had dropped to a murmur, hoarse and dry from all the talking.
Alex looked at her, at the gray eyes heavy with weariness, heavy with the strain of leaving her daughter behind.
“Promise me that you’ll leave him now. Before it’s too late. Before he does something really crazy.”
A week later, Alex stood at the cemetery next to the shell of her mother’s body. Even as the horrible grief of losing her mother threatened to pull her under, hatred for Daniel seethed in her bloodstream. It kept her from buckling under the weight of the heartache. It kept her from giving in to the desire to fall on the ground and sob like a child.
She hated him. And that hatred had force to it, a power that she had never before experienced. Hatred made her stand a little straighter; anger gave her energy that her body could never have found, after the past month of watching her mother waste away.
She watched him, talking on his phone at the edge of the cemetery. Smiling. Was it Chanel No.5? Or Lolita Lempicka? Maybe White Shoulders. Far too many women, with far too many perfumes, the vague scents filling her bloodstream with hatred. Hatred. Hatred. HATRED.
There had never been a time in their relationship when Alex’s feelings or desires or needs were more important than his, and the night after the funeral was no exception. He pushed on top of her, despite the fact that they had just returned from burying her mother. Despite the fact that she was physically and emotionally exhausted, drained from the stress of the past few weeks. Despite the fact that he hadn’t had one word to say to her for the past several hours—not through the funeral or the graveside service or on the drive home. Despite the fact that tears flowed from her eyes even as he took what he wanted.
When he moved off her, Alex rolled onto her side, away from him, the tears still steady and relentless, as if she had developed a leak. But that night, when she turned away, sucked under a tidal wave of grief, was different. For five years aft
er they lost the baby, she had stayed with him. For five years, she endured the pain and humiliation, the constant assaults on her sanity. For five years, she dreamt of the day when Daniel would be dead and she could have her life back.
Now it was all flipped upside down. At least part of her dream was gone, vanished into the ethers along with the spirit of Frances Turner. She would not be able to spend any time traveling with her mother. All those visions of Paris and Vienna were gone, a puff of dust in a windy day.
She no longer had a reason to stay. She no longer needed to protect her mother’s life by continuing to live with this monster. She was finished. She would leave him, no matter what it took.
Alex put her grief aside, placed it on the highest shelf in her heart, knowing that someday, she would take it down and look at it, really allow herself to feel it. But not now. Now, right now, in the next few days and weeks, she would come up with a plan and make her escape.
She took a silent vow as she lay in the bed beside him the night they buried her mother. She was finished. She was done with his abuse. She would find a way out, even if it killed her. He would never hurt her again.
The list began to form in her mind. She would not be able to take her cell phone or computer. No e-mail or Facebook or Instagram. No bank account or credit card. Nothing that he could use to have her traced. She would use only cash. She would need to get rid of her car and find something else, something that would not be tied to her name.
And that was exactly when her mother stepped in and helped her out.
The call came while she was at work, on a university phone line.
“Alexandra Frazier? The former Alexandra Turner?” a male voice inquired.
“Yes. This is she.”
“My name is Forrest Rogers. I’m an attorney. I represent . . . I work for your mother.”
Alexandra went completely still.
“First, I’d like to extend my sympathies. She was a wonderful woman. I’ve known her for . . . thirty years, I guess. Since the divorce from your father.”
Alex leaned her elbows on her desk, completely pulled into the idea of someone her mother had known for so long and never mentioned.
“Your mother specifically requested that I not call you at home or on your cell phone. I hope this is suitable? Calling you at work?”
Alex looked around nervously, as if Daniel might be hiding in a corner. “Yes. Yes, it is.”
“I need to talk to you about your mother’s estate. Everything is yours, of course. But she left specific instructions about how it was to be handled.”
Alex nodded.
“Could we meet? If you are not comfortable coming to my office, I would be happy to meet you somewhere for coffee. You choose the time and the place, and I will make it work somehow. Your mother explained the difficulties involved. I will do my best to be most discreet. I’ll be wearing a blue scarf.”
That afternoon she had coffee at a Starbucks not far from the University. She left her cell phone and her purse at work, locked inside a desk drawer, knowing that Daniel had long ago downloaded an app that made it possible for him to track her whereabouts. She ordered a coffee, offering up one of her precious ten dollar bills, and then stood at the bar area. A man moved next to her with his own coffee, not too close, absorbed in his cell phone. He was wearing a dark blue cashmere scarf.
Alex looked at a magazine in front of her, one she had grabbed on her way out of the door of her office. The attorney kept his gaze on his cell phone.
“Alex?” he murmured.
She nodded, just barely, as if nodding at something she was reading.
In a very low voice, he told her that she should clean out her mother’s home, take whatever she wanted. He had been instructed to put the house on the market and to deposit the proceeds of the sale in a bank account that was held in the names of Frances and Alexandra Turner.
“Joint tenancy,” he muttered. “That means you can use that money like it’s your own account. No probate necessary. No forms. All arranged years ago.”
Alex felt her eyes go wide, but she kept them on the magazine in front of her. She could focus on none of the words, but she did notice the pictures of orcas.
“Her car is the same. Both names. Yours to take at any moment. If you need protection, I can work on getting a restraining order against him.”
Alex shook her head. “No. No. A restraining order would never stop him. I want to leave. I want to go somewhere where he can’t find me.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Okay. If necessary, you can get to wherever you are going, and I can wire you money. Just let me know what I can do to help.”
He moved away from her, taking his coffee and his cell phone. He put on sunglasses and headed out into the November sunshine.
She turned a page in her magazine, and that’s when she really noticed the article. Dr. Margaret Edwards and the forty-year study of orcas. Alex began to scan the article, her eyes skimming over the words Saratoga Island, state of Washington, Copper Cove. She stared at the pictures of the orcas, traveling in groups. One line in particular jumped out at her, blazing in her brain. They stay with their mothers for as long as the mother lives. Without thinking, Alex took a knife from the counter and carefully removed the pages from the magazine, folding them into quarters and putting them in her pocket.
She picked up the magazine and her coffee, and headed back to the office. It wasn’t until several hours later that she realized that the magazine belonged to the University, and that she had just defaced and stolen University property.
Over the next two weeks, Alex moved as if in a fog, completely lost in the tasks that needed to be done, completely absorbed by the need for secrecy. She took more time off from the University to clean out her mother’s house. It was not an easy task, sending furniture and bedding and most of Frances’ clothes to the Goodwill. Every object she picked up throbbed with memory, beat with the heart of her mother and of the years they had lived together in that house. As much as she wanted to hang on, to take her time, to keep at least some of the things, she knew she couldn’t. Not if she planned on leaving.
She managed, in a solid week of working at the house every day, to give away most of the evidence of Frances’ too-short life. There were times when it felt like tearing her own heart out, picking up her mother’s reading glasses or her favorite earrings. Alex held those favorites, for just a few minutes, absorbing whatever cells of Frances Turner were still left in those objects. And then she wrapped them and put them in a box, marked for Goodwill.
There was one exception, only one small box of items that she allowed herself to keep. She had not known of its existence. Alex was cleaning the top shelf of her mother’s closet and stumbled across a small box. When she pulled off the lid, her hand rose to her mouth, her breath forgotten as she stared at the pictures inside.
Shortly after Alex’s father had left, shortly after they had moved to this tiny two-bedroom house, her mother had started to draw. She had loved art, way back in her youth, and had left it all behind to become wife and mother. But she brought it back after the divorce, the antidote to a broken marriage and crushed ideals.
Alex remembered coming home from school and seeing her mother sitting in a chair on the patio, drawing wispy representations of petunias, and phlox, and baby’s breath. Eventually, she even tried drawing people. There were several small portraits of Alex inside that box: Alex at ten, with her first pair of glasses. Alex flopped on the couch, her nose in a book. There was a portrait of a kitten that her mother had given her, the year her father left.
It was as if every memory of her childhood were tucked inside that box. Alex held the paper to her nose, sniffing, searching for some scent of her mother buried in those drawings, some trace of her mother’s cells. She sat there for over an hour, looking at each drawing, letting each small slip of paper take her back.
This box she would keep. This box she would protect. This box would go with her, wherever she ended u
p going. She took it home with her that afternoon and tucked it into her closet. Waiting for the moment of her escape.
A week later, she finished cleaning out all of her mother’s things. She had talked to that woman on Saratoga Island, and now Alex knew she had at least part-time work, starting after Christmas. Her plans were in place. Daniel had a job at a remote location in the southern part of New Mexico starting the day after Christmas, and he would be gone for three days. And that was when she would make her escape.
She took one last look around her mother’s house, running her hands along the counter in the kitchen, now completely empty of everything. Every dish, every plant, every piece of art that used to radiate her mother’s taste, her mother’s personality, was gone. And before long, she would be, too. Alex locked her mother’s house and headed home, with no idea that it was all about to fall to pieces.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Maggie was watching her. Alex could feel it, every moment of every day, as she sat at her table, directly across the room from Maggie’s desk. She could feel the woman’s eyes, burning into her scalp every time she had her head lowered to look at a report. She could feel the woman’s glare, boring into her back when she got up to get a cup of coffee.
She wasn’t sleeping. Her nights were plagued with dreams, plagued with vague memories fighting to come to the surface, fighting for her attention. And then there was that moment, in the middle of the night, when she would wake and hear the back door, hear the click of the lock, the doorknob turning, the door swinging slowly open. Some vague, nameless ghost that would not leave her alone.
Alex was falling apart. Inside and out, she felt as if her mind and body were crumbling, no longer able to handle the day-to-day requirements of existence. Her stomach was tied in a hard, tight knot. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her hands seemed to have a life of their own, one that was not tied to the rest of her body. They shook almost constantly, from the moment she entered Maggie’s cabin in the morning until she left in the afternoon.
The Music of the Deep: A Novel Page 20
