In the Deep

by White, Loreth Anne

  Konikova takes her seat and reaches for a glass of water.

  “Mr. Lorrington?” the judge, Geraldine Parr, says. “Do you have anything to add?”

  My barrister rises slowly. His height becomes evident. The atmosphere shifts. His is a commanding presence. Everyone is awaiting his performance, his rebuttal. He smiles. He goddamn smiles. And I almost want to smile, too—from silly relief, from the knowledge that this formidable legal presence has my back—along with a reputation of turning courtrooms and judges and juries into putty in his elegant, pale hands.

  “Something amusing, Mr. Lorrington?” Judge Parr peers over the tops of her reading glasses. “Or are we actually going to outline a defense?”

  I’m aware that my barrister’s opening will be extremely brief and general. It behooves the defense to hear the prosecution’s entire argument, and to hear all the prosecution witnesses before committing too rigidly to any specific version of events.

  “Your Honor,” says Lorrington in his booming baritone as he clasps the sides of his lectern. “It appears that Madame Crown here has taken the liberty of outlining my defense for me.”

  Laughter erupts from the gallery. I see smirks on a few jurors’ faces. The sketch artist hurriedly flips a page, works faster.

  “Order,” calls the court officer.

  “But indeed,” says Lorrington, turning to the jury, “Madame Crown is correct in that there is an alternate version of events. One that better fits the evidence. We shall demonstrate to Your Honor that all is not quite what the prosecution might have you believe. Madame Crown is also absolutely correct in something else—keep your eye on that ball. Read between the lines of her argument. And do not for an instant let your guard down, because your civic duty is to not send an innocent person away for a crime she did not do. That is your call to justice. That is the weight that now rests upon your shoulders.”

  With an elegant flick of his robe, he takes his seat beside his assisting solicitor.

  “Your first witness, Madame Crown?” says the judge.

  Konikova stands. “Your Honor, we call Detective Senior Constable Laurel Bianchi of the South Coast Police District.”

  The court door swings open.

  A female detective with frizzy orange hair and a freckled, sunburned face enters. Her cheeks are ruddy. She looks overheated in her dress pants, white blouse, and ill-fitting blazer. A tight fist forms in my gut as Lozza makes her way to the witness box. She’s stocky and walks with the swagger of confidence, her arms held away from her hips as though allowing for an imaginary gun belt. As she nears I see the scar across her brow.

  She takes her place in the witness box near the jury bench. She doesn’t look at me.

  The court officer calls out loudly to the court, “Silence, please.” He turns to Lozza, who has asked to swear by affirmation. “Do you solemnly, sincerely declare and affirm that the evidence you shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? To adopt this affirmation, say, ‘I do.’”

  “I do.”

  And you will regret it.

  My gaze is fixed on that scar across her temple.

  Because your past mistakes, your hot temper, your quickness to violence will help me, Lozza Bianchi. Lorrington is going to cut you down. So I can win.

  Too bad your little girl will see what her mother really is. A Monster.

  Adrenaline rides hot into my veins. It’s game on now. I can taste blood.

  Konikova’s hands flutter around her folder. “Will you state your full name for the court?”

  The cop leans toward the mike. “Detective Senior Constable Laurel Bianchi. Jarrawarra Bay. South Coast Police District.”

  “Detective Bianchi, can you describe to the court where you were on November eighteen just over a year ago?”

  Lozza flicks her gaze to me.

  Mistake. I’ve got you now.

  But as the cop’s gaze locks on mine, a thin, quiet blade of dread passes through me. Perhaps I’ve misread Lozza Bianchi, too.

  Just like I misjudged how badly things would spiral out of control between me and Martin from that cold January night on the other side of the world over two years ago.

  THEN

  ELLIE

  Just over two years ago, January 9. Vancouver, BC.

  It was a blustery day, a sharp wind ticking the bare maple branches against the windowpanes, when I finally folded Chloe’s party dress.

  I placed it carefully, gently, in a suitcase atop a few of Chloe’s other belongings I still could not bear to part with. I stared at the small clothes, listening to the wind, memories welling inside me. The dress had little dancing elephants on it. My daughter, for some reason, had loved elephants.

  Chloe had worn that dress on her third birthday. Just thirty-six months old and all of life ahead of her. Her limbs still infant-chubby. Her smile so full. Dewy skin. The sense of promise, of a future, vibrated around her. The memory of her infectious little chuckle when her daddy tickled her tummy filled my soul. In my mind I suddenly saw her fist clutched around wilting wildflowers offered up to me on a lemony-sunshine spring day. I could almost smell my baby girl, feel her body in my arms. A scraped-out sensation gutted my stomach, leaving a hollow of hurt. The sense of loss—it was still physical two years down the road. The accident had happened three months and two days after that birthday celebration. After she wore this dress. Thirty-nine months and two days was her life on this earth.

  For what?

  What in the hell did it all mean? Why bother to keep going?

  For a while I hadn’t bothered.

  Part of me died—drowned—with my child that day. And in the outfall of the tragedy, my relationship with Doug, our marriage, had withered like grapes never picked on a winter vine.

  I’d taken it out on Doug. I’d taken it out on myself. Doug’s ultimate betrayal was a punishment I’d brought down on myself, I guess. My therapist had said my lashing out at him was an outward manifestation of my own guilt. She’d said I was hitting at my husband to make him hate me as a way of punishing myself, and that I needed to let go of all that guilt because Chloe’s death was not my fault.

  I wasn’t so sure about that.

  Perhaps a buried side to me would never be sure.

  My therapist had helped me, but not in time to salvage our marriage. Our life together had been built around my falling pregnant, around prenatal yoga classes, celebrating ultrasound images, baby showers, baby shopping, a gender-reveal party, readying Chloe’s room, fretting over breastfeeding and introducing solids, reserving a preschool spot . . . just being parents. We were a family of three planning to grow into four, or maybe five. Then suddenly we weren’t. The mother, the wife, the me, no longer existed. I slowly lost my friends from my mom-and-tot groups. I had no one to read all those beautiful kids’ books to. Doug would never get to take the training wheels off Chloe’s little bike and teach her to ride like a pro. My job was illustrating children’s books, and I was suddenly no longer able to do it, and had to step away.

  I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. It was January. Winter. The hell that was Christmas was over. New year. Soon it would be spring. Fresh start. New me. New Ellie.

  Doug had remarried last fall. While it had cut me in two, Doug being with his new woman no longer enraged me. I no longer harbored feverish dreams of doing them both violence. Doug’s wedding had shaken something loose. I suddenly abhorred the idea of holding on to this shell of a house and what I’d shared with him and Chloe here while he was busy making a home and babies with someone else on the other end of town. I was suddenly free—desperate, in fact—to let it all go.

  I was moving into an apartment downtown next month. It was one of my father’s properties, so if it didn’t work out, it wasn’t as though I’d be committed to a long-term lease or anything. I’d picked up some freelance work to ease back into the illustrating business. I could eventually get more contracts, or I could take off and travel, do anything.


  I shut the lid of the suitcase and pulled the zipper closed. The sound was satisfyingly final. As I hefted the case off the bed, I glanced at the pillows on the side where Doug used to sleep, and I was slammed with a need to be held again. For a moment, as sleet pelted the windows and the clouds pressed down low and dark, I tried to recall the last time I’d actually had meaningful contact with another person—a lingering hug, a heartfelt squeeze of my hand. My heart twitched with an ache so basic and raw it made me think of abandoned dogs in cages at a pound, waiting to be adopted, to be touched and loved, and how they paced or pined and withered and died if they were not. A loving touch to an animal, a human, was like sunshine and water to plants.

  I shook the feelings and rolled the suitcase toward the door. The movers would be here tomorrow. I was ready for them. At my final therapist appointment she’d said that packing Chloe’s last things away was not a move toward forgetting my baby girl, but rather a sign that I was finally finding ways to cohabit with my loss. And I should not expect my loss to be an easy or forgiving roommate. The Grief Monster would still trip me up in unexpected ways, she said. Over and over. Unpredictable. Fickle. Mean. Beguiling. Deceptive. The thing, she’d said, was to try to recognize it for what it was when it struck—the Monster—and to be kind to myself and not expect others to understand what I was going through because there was no decreed chronology of phases or trials to pass through . . . it truly was different for everyone.

  Later, when I left the house to meet my father for a special birthday dinner, just him and me, I was dressed in new knee-high boots with very high heels, a black jersey dress I’d not been able to fit into for ages until now, and dark-red lipstick. My hair was brushed to a shine and fell below my shoulder blades. I felt solid. Bold. Confident.

  This time, I promised myself, things would go well between me and my dad.

  THEN

  ELLIE

  The lobby of the Hartley Plaza Hotel at the Vancouver waterfront was busy—mostly people in business attire bearing name tags, apparently all here for the AGORA convention being sponsored by the Hartley Group. AGORA was another of my father’s brainchildren. A pitch-fest that sought to match monied venture capitalists with dreamers who needed financial backing for their projects. I made my way through the throngs to the Mallard Lounge.

  The lounge was no less busy. Patrons sat deep in leather chairs around low tables with flickering candles. A bar of dark wood and mirrors ran along the far wall. A pianist played muted, jazzy tunes at a baby grand, and a fire flickered in the lodge-style hearth. Floor-to-ceiling windows afforded a view over the floatplane harbor, and outside the sleet was turning into fat flakes of snow.

  I waited at the hostess stand, trying to spot my dad among the patrons. I saw him almost immediately. Tall, with a shock of silver hair against a dark tan that screamed of yachts and travel and exotic locales. He was hard to miss, the distinguished Sterling James Hartley.

  The hostess took my coat, and I adjusted my sweater dress over my hips. As he saw me he surged to his feet, raising his hand. People turned. Looked. Always. Whenever my father moved, people watched. His was that kind of energy. He took up that kind of space. I felt a flicker of a thrill.

  “Ellie! Over here.”

  I smiled and wove eagerly through the tables toward him, conscious of his gaze upon me. I’d made an effort and hoped he’d approve, and at the same time I hated myself for even wanting his patriarchal nod. Then I saw the woman seated at his side—the woman who’d until this instant been hidden by the big winged back of her chair. Slender as a rake and maybe just ten years older than I, she had a perfect lob of platinum hair and pouty lips. My mood plunged. Darkness circled.

  “Ellie, this is Virginie Valente,” my father said. “She’s from Milan.”

  I gave a tight smile as he kissed me on the cheek, and I said softly in his ear, “Happy birthday, Father. I thought it was going to be just me and you.”

  “Oh, really?” My dad grinned, stepping back. “I thought it would be a great opportunity for you and Virginie to meet.”

  I sat.

  Virginie smiled. “So nice to meet you, Ellie.”

  “Right. Lovely.” I decided then and there not to give my dad the present I had in my purse for him.

  “What can I get you to drink, Ellie? Virginie and I are having a whiskey, and—”

  “Wine,” I said. “The Sloquannish Hills pinot gris. Thanks.” I named my choice of poison, suddenly thirsting for it and desperate to put my stamp of control down at this round low table where I was clearly the spare part and resentful for it.

  The server brought the bottle and artfully, obsequiously, held the label low for my father to read.

  “It’s fine,” I said to the server. “He’s not drinking it. I am.”

  My father’s gaze narrowed and fixed on me. My face went hot. Virginie shifted in her seat and reached for her glass to break the tension.

  The server poured a splash into my glass to taste.

  “Just leave the bottle. Thanks.”

  As the server retreated, I reached for the bottle and sloshed wine into my glass. Nice and full. It was beautifully chilled. Little beadlets of moisture formed on the outside of the glass. I took a big gulp. A familiar warmth branched out through my chest. Like an old friend. I felt better already. I took a few more swallows to get the buzz fully going. On some level I knew I’d been triggered. I knew little brain impulses were now flaring down neural channels that had been scored deep by addiction born out of grief over my lost child. Deep down I was already gone, lost to an old coping mechanism. At least for tonight.

  My father watched me in silence.

  I gave a shrug. And I wondered if he’d bothered to tell Ms. Milan here about his daughter’s dangerous descent into booze and prescription medication after the death of his little grandchild.

  A depressed drunk just like her mother . . .

  Probably not. I took another swig of wine. Dad had probably forgotten he’d ever even had a granddaughter. He’d likely fathered kids and had grandkids all over the world that I didn’t know about.

  “Shall we take a look at the menu?” Virginie said in her Sophia Loren accent. A Continental femme fatale acting in an old James Bond movie. Made me want to puke. Expensive rings. Expensive French manicure. Perhaps she wasn’t even that young. Just well preserved. Cosmetic surgery? I leaned forward for a better look, the booze already making me forthright. Yes, cosmetically enhanced lips, I decided. In fact, I was certain of it. The upper one had been overdone. I hated augmented lips. They made women look like ducks. In fact, I loathed filled lips. They made me feel violent, to be honest. A vague image of Doug’s new wife shimmered into my mind, and I reached quickly for my glass and took another deep swig.

  “I’ll have the charcuterie board,” said Virginie.

  “I’ll have the duck,” I said, still watching her lips. I knew the menu. Doug and I used to frequent the Mallard with my dad before Chloe drowned. Doug and Daddy got along because Doug was like him and into real estate, and Daddy had funded some of my ex-husband’s big projects, to great mutual benefit.

  My father ordered. I made solid inroads into my bottle of pinot gris. The food arrived.

  Virginie picked up her fork. “So, Ellie—”

  “Excuse me?”

  She looked confused.

  I circled my finger near my ear. “Sorry, can’t hear—you’ll need to speak up. Music is loud. People behind me are noisy.”

  She glanced at the table directly behind me, where a brunette sat in a leather wingback chair silently scrolling through her phone. Across from her another woman silently worked on her iPad as she sipped wine.

  Virginie leaned closer to me so her lips got in my face, and she said loudly, “Your fatherrr tells me you’rrre moving into one of his aparrrtayments downtown.”

  I poured the last drops of wine into my glass. “Did Daddy also tell you he owned the whole building? All the aparrrtayments in it?”

  “
Ellie,” my father warned.

  I ignored him and raised my hand high to summon the server. I pointed to my empty bottle and made a sign for him to bring another.

  “Ellie,” he said again. “Look at me.”

  I glanced at him. Flint glinted in my father’s keen blue eyes. His white brows drew down. Danger sign.

  “Yep?”

  “Are you sure you should be drinking so much? After what happened before?”

  I glowered at him, my heart suddenly pounding. “You mean, what happened after Chloe died? Is that what you mean, Dad?”

  Virginie placed her manicured hand gently on my father’s forearm, staying him, and said to me, “I stay at a hotel right downtown when I’m in Vancouver. We should meet for coffee, Ellie, or a spa treat—”

  “Right, yep.” I reached for the new bottle of wine, poured, and plunked it back down. I picked up my glass and sucked back a mouthful. “Sounds fabulous. I’d love to hang out with you for a while before my father trades you in.” I spoke loudly. I felt the people at the surrounding tables listening, but I didn’t care if anyone heard the “Unhinged Hartley Heiress”—as one tabloid had referred to me—arguing with Daddy dearest in his namesake hotel. I’d had enough. Of my absentee father. Of his women. Of my old life. I’d had enough of the old Ellie, who just used to suck it all up like a sponge and go home saturated with toxic thoughts and emotions. I’d had enough of Daddy’s gold-digger arm candies in their designer outfits jabbering on about luxury cruises or adventure vacations and spa treatments. “He usually lasts about fifteen months per girlfriend, max.”

  “You should take Virginie up on her offer, Ellie,” my father said coldly, firmly. “She’s a fabulous weight-loss coach. Could give you some gym tips, too.”

  Wham. I stared at him, mouth open, glass midair.