When Detective Barnes touched her hand, her breath caught in her throat at the pity in his hazel eyes.
She lifted her chin and met his gaze, “No. Just find Oliver and Jon... please.”
“Ma’am, we’ll do everything in our power to do just that, I promise. Do you have any pictures? As recent as possible, if you got ‘em.”
Of course Rebecca had pictures. She had hundreds of pictures, thousands of pictures. She lifted herself from the couch, feeling decades older than her thirty-five years should have felt, and went into the study to find their photo album. Returning, she placed it gently on the coffee table, careful to avoid the mugs of cooling tea and coffee. Her hands rested heavy on the cover as if the images of Jon and Oliver were the only things she had left of them. But they weren’t. The detective would find them, and everything would be fine.
Unless it wasn’t...
She opened the album and lifted each page with trembling fingertips, searching for the right picture. There was her and Jon’s wedding; a small affair with only the two of them and about twenty coworkers and cousins. Dressed in the requested white and khaki attire, the guests sat on wooden folding chairs facing the water. The loose sand on the beach made for an uneven surface, and the guests had laughed about the sinking and shifting chair legs. A small arch of baby’s breath and ivy kept watch over Jon and Rebecca’s clasped hands. They had both changed so much, had become such different people from the happy, beaming couple that stared back at her from the pages of the album. She turned the page to find birthday parties and vacations when it was still only the two of them. Sipping pina coladas on exotic shores, snow skiing in Colorado, and the much begged-for trip to New York for Rebecca’s 31st birthday. Next, there were maternity pictures taken by a friend of hers from college. Rebecca could barely remember her name... Veronica something. They sort of stayed in touch through social media since their days at the University. Mostly just liking each other’s posts, never meeting in person for coffee or a movie or anything like that. In the pictures, Rebecca was standing on a bridge. Her downcast eyes focused on her swollen belly, and a hint of a smile peeked out.
Rebecca’s hand went to her stomach, and she paused, the pages left open to those distant images of her. It had been a hard pregnancy. She was sick for most of it and had lost a lot more weight than their doctor was comfortable with. She could see it then, looking back at the pictures. Her cheek bones were more pronounced, and her green eyes were dark, covered in shadow. A weariness showed through the smiles. But it had all been worth it. As she kept turning the pages, there was Oliver. A tiny little thing swaddled with blankets and sleeping in the hospital bassinet. He was perfect. In the next photo, Jon held him close to his chest. He grinned ear to ear, beaming with pride. It seemed they had taken pictures of Oliver every day those first few years.
Then the photos showed Jon and Oliver at various parks, holidays, and the zoo. She remembered asking a stranger at the zoo to take one with all three of them in it, so there was one with her. Just the one. Otherwise it was all Jon and Oliver. That’s the downside of being the amateur photographer in the family, she supposed. She was always behind the camera instead of in front of it.
As she flipped the pages, a slow movie unfolded. Similar to the flip books you made in class when you were younger, except instead of a pencil-drawn horse running, it was their life. Jon stopped appearing in them as much, as their arguments behind the scenes increased. She stopped joining them on their outings, as work demanded more of her time. Towards the end of the album, scattered shots of Oliver alone stared out at her from the pages. She hadn’t realized how absent she had become until it was all laid out in front of her on the glass coffee table.
There he was at his first day of pre-school, so proud of his new lunch box. Jon had taken him because she had an important meeting at work that morning. When he printed the picture, Rebecca had hardly glanced at it before he shook his head and quietly placed it in the book. There on the couch with the detective, she lingered on the photo, caressing Oliver’s face. She should have gone with them.
She shook her head and pulled her hand away. There was no use focusing on that. She couldn’t change the past. But she couldn’t use that picture, he didn’t look like that anymore. His sandy hair was longer and parted to the side. She turned another page.
There was his first (and only) day of swim lessons. Oliver was standing at the edge of the indoor pool in his new bathing suit. They had made a big deal of shopping for the suit, in an effort to hype up the swimming experience. There was an empty smile plastered on his face, but it didn’t fool anyone. His eyes were wide and worry lines wrinkled his forehead. They ended up leaving early, with Rebecca holding a shaking, soggy Oliver wrapped up in his old beach towel. She knew they should have started him in the ‘Baby and Me’ classes when he was younger, but life got busy and the time got away from them. It was at Rebecca’s insistence that they finally made the time. Living so close to the beach, with its tide pools and canals, and the river emptying into the Gulf, she needed to be able to relax knowing he wouldn’t drown. They left that day promising to give it another try soon. On another day, an arbitrary day in the never-ending string of days they expected to have together. That was two weeks ago.
Other pictures showed Oliver at his most recent birthday party, where he had turned four. Jon had picked him up in a bear hug and Oliver giggled that he couldn’t breathe. That was when Rebecca snapped the picture. Shortly after, Jon had released a laughing Oliver who immediately ran to join his friends. Purple and blue balloons had bounced on the breeze, anchored by twine to various chairs and table legs. She and Jon had stayed up late the night before, blowing up so many balloons that they became light-headed. It was a brief glimpse of the life they knew in the pre-baby years. They would stay up late talking and were blindly in love with each other. He was...
Rebecca caught herself already thinking about him in the past tense and started to cry. What could have happened to them? Why wasn’t he answering his phone? She sat on the sofa and stared at the pictures for what seemed like hours until she felt Barnes’ hand on her arm. She looked up, tears threatening to spill out, and realized he was waiting for her to hand him the picture she was holding – Oliver sitting at a table behind his birthday cake, smiling directly at the camera. This was silly, she told herself. It’s a picture, it isn’t him. She wasn’t letting go of Oliver by giving Barnes the picture. But that’s exactly what it felt like. As she handed Detective Barnes the photo, a heaviness settled over her chest, suffocating her.
4
Rebecca stood up from the couch and headed towards the kitchen, away from Detective Barnes and the painful photo album splayed on the coffee table. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked around for something to do. Anything but sit in that other room for one more minute. The pity in their eyes was horrible, the judgment; worse. They probably thought she was a terrible mother. Hell, maybe she was, but she didn’t need them looking at her like that. She needed them to find her family, to do their damn job.
They shouldn’t still be in her home, anyway. She’d told them everything she knew, at least six times. They should be out there, looking for Jon and Oliver. How many times could she walk through her day, going over every detail of what they were wearing, where they were going, and what he said in the phone call?
As many as it took, she supposed, until she remembered some small nuance or background noise. She wished desperately that she could remember something else. Their last conversation had replayed so many times in her head, the constant and steady buzz consumed her.
It was all so unreal. It was a dream that she would wake from any minute, with Jon snoring beside her in that annoying way of his, and Oliver asking for pancakes. Going through another growth spurt, he ate everything in sight. He was never a picky eater, not like Beth’s girl Kelly. Kelly somehow subsisted on only cheerios and hot dogs. “It’s a phase,” Beth had told her. “They all go through it.” Not Oliver, not yet anywa
y. Not ever? Rebecca frowned, she had to stop thinking like that.
Any minute they would walk through the door and wonder what all the fuss was about. Oliver would have fallen asleep on the way home, so Jon would carry him inside. Sometimes she knew he faked being asleep. She did that herself when she was a child. There was something about your parents carrying you into the house that made you feel safe and loved.
Jon would then pull Oliver’s flip-flops off, dusting the carpet with a fine layer of sand. He would lay Oliver down on his race car bed and pull the covers up to his chin. It was a new comforter, blue with red and white race cars on it. Oliver had picked it out just a month before when he decided he was too big for his old one, a ragged thing left over from his toddler days. Pale green and splattered with cartoon lions, elephants, and giraffes, it had put in its time and was ready to retire. Jon would then lean down and move Oliver’s unkempt curls off his sun-freckled forehead, clearing a space for a good-night kiss. He would close the door to Oliver’s bedroom and tiptoe to the couch where he would fall asleep with the TV on. Jon would leave the car and its contents for Rebecca to clean up, along with the trail of sand to Oliver’s room. She would need to wash his sheets the next day. Surely there would be sand and dirt on them. She never understood why Jon couldn’t give him a bath first, after those trips to the beach. After cleaning up their mess, Rebecca would retreat to her office to get a leg up on the next day’s workload.
From the living room, a loud squawk pulled Rebecca from her thoughts and into the present. It wasn’t the sound that kept her attention; the thing had gone off intermittently all evening, but a drastic shift in the air. Serious and anxious to find her family all evening, the officers spoke as if their lungs had deflated. Unable to make out exactly what they were saying, she crept closer to the door to the kitchen. Fear kept her from running out to demand to be told what was going on, but she knew it wasn’t good. She knew the minute the squawk of the radio sucked the hope out of the room. Unable to face whatever had happened, she stood frozen in the doorway, unnoticed by the officers gathering their things and heading towards the front door. Only Detective Barnes stayed behind.
He stood there for a minute with his back to Rebecca, still facing the closed front door. The departing officers’ headlights swept back across the window as they pulled out of her driveway and headed down the street. Barnes’ broad shoulders drooped, and his gaze stayed on the welcome mat in front of the door. He took a deep breath and turned around, not surprised to see her standing there.
“It could be nothing, ma’am, but some kids skinny dipping found a vehicle that matches the description of your husband’s over in the canal. The officers are headed there now. It’s probably nothing, vehicles get dumped there sometimes, but we have to go check it out. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”
Her chin quivered as she struggled to hold it up, “Where?”
Hesitation swept across his face as he answered, “The bridge, ma’am, over the canal.”
A thousand questions beat at her throat while she wrestled to stay calm. After all, it was only a dream and everyone was safe, and she just needed to wake up.
She held his gaze and said, louder than she meant to, “Okay.”
“Okay? Ma’am, are you sure there isn’t anyone I can call to come be with you?”
“No, I’m fine. Let me know as soon as you hear anything, please.”
He walked with her to the front door, asking again if he could call anyone for her. Rebecca didn’t like the sound of that at all. She didn’t need him to call anyone because everything was fine. What she needed was for him to leave. She ushered him out and shut the door behind him.
She grabbed her purse and keys and peeked out from the front window, making sure his car was no longer in her driveway before slipping through the door and following him. She knew exactly where the bridge was. Rising high over the Intra-coastal Canal, it was hard to miss.
White knuckles gripped the wheel and her foot was steady on the gas. Stopping at every red light and using her blinkers at every turn, Rebecca tried to stay calm. Trying to convince herself that she wasn’t in a hurry, that this was a normal trip down to the beach. She knew it wasn’t, but pretending was so much easier than the alternative.
Rebecca was almost to the bridge when red and white beams pierced through the darkness ahead. They grew brighter as she pulled closer, illuminating a handful of officers, a tow truck, and other vehicles parked too far underneath the bridge to identify. She eased onto the side of the road, just beyond the circle of light. Her grip on the wheel tightened.
“Everything is fine, it’s not his car, this is all just a mistake.”
The intense weight of lingering summer heat hit her square in the chest as she left the coolness of the car, though the sun had long since set. The wind brought with it the smell of the sea and all its normalcy. It should smell different. It should smell like smoke, or rotten eggs, or anything else that would make more sense. But it didn’t, it smelled like every other day at the beach. Except it was night, and she was walking towards flashing lights, hoping her life wasn’t about to shatter into a million tiny pieces.
Rebecca saw the divers first. One was struggling to remove his tank while the other, already tankless, sat on the tailgate of a truck. They didn’t speak, their eyes staying fixed on the ground in front of them. They didn’t even glance up as she ambled past, her own eyes locked on a group of officers near the edge of the water. Transfixed, she continued forward, relieved that the nightmare was finally starting to feel like one. Everything was hazy and there was quiet where there should have been chaos. Relieved, because it was so clearly something she would wake up from any minute, and her family would be safe…
“Hey! You can’t be here!” A hand reached out and grabbed her elbow, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her arm. Detective Barnes hurried over and released Rebecca from the grip of the young officer.
“What are you doing here?”
“Is it them? Is it his car?” she implored. Tears threatened, but she held them back with a few quick blinks and searched his face, hoping he would say no.
Before he could answer, the crowd of officers parted enough for her to see a car parked on the gravel. His car. Jon’s blue Chevy, hooked up to a tow truck. The flashing lights of the patrol cars reflected in bursts on the glistening wet surface. She followed the trail of mud and water that led from the tires to the edge of the canal. Confused, she peered into the darkness that lay just out of reach of the light. Why weren’t they smiling? Where were Jon and Oliver? If that was his car, they had to be there. They had been found. Everyone should be smiling.
She jerked away from the detective and ran towards the Chevy.
Rebecca was a few steps away from the car when she saw it. Through the open back door of Jon’s Chevy, a small hand rested on the seat, its pale white skin a stark contrast to the dark interior of the car. A small hand, attached to a small arm, too still and bloated to be Oliver’s. Ignoring the hands on her shoulders, she moved closer. It couldn’t be her Oliver, her Oliver would never be that quiet. Her Oliver was safe and dry somewhere with Jon. This child was swollen and – her outstretched fingertips touched his hand – cold. Oliver’s unruly blond curls stuck out at every angle, impossible to tame. This child’s hair was darker, dripping water onto the brown seats. It couldn’t be her Ollie. His eyes…
Detective Barnes tightened his grip on her shoulders and pulled Rebecca away from the car. Oliver’s hand, lying there so innocent and so very cold, disappeared from her view as she collapsed onto the hard gravel. Rocks and dirt dug into her hands just before her world went dark.
5
Rebecca stood alone in a sea of black-draped mourners. The service was over and she was near Oliver’s tiny white casket, numbly shaking hands while people shuffled by, their eyes averted. Funerals were always a bit easier when the deceased was old, or had a long-suffering disease. Those people were expected to die, to be put on displa
y in front of everyone, to be lowered into the ground. Not children. You weren’t supposed to bury children; everything about it was unnatural and horrific. No one knew what to say. Nothing could relieve the emptiness in her soul, the yearning to hold Oliver one more time, or to have Jon beside her, to lean on through the grief. She’d always been the strong and steady one of the two, but she didn’t want to be that anymore. Couldn’t be that ever again. She wanted to melt into the hard, white tile floor of the church and never get up. Oliver was a part of her. It wasn’t fair, and no amount of bullshit platitudes of, ‘well, he’s in a better place,’ or ‘God needed another angel,’ would change that.
Amy and Laura walked up to her with their pitiful faces drawn in, claiming to know what she was going through. Amy, as usual, wore a beautiful designer dress, solid black with delicate lace around her neck. The dark material contrasted with her pale white skin and striking black hair. Her small feet were tucked into modest heels, and she clutched a matching handbag to her side. Laura stood tall beside her, towering at least a foot over Amy. She was also wearing a long black dress, but you could bet she had purchased hers at Walmart, not at a designer store like her wife’s. Laura never cared about things like that. They had buried their own child last spring, a daughter named Alexandra who had been diagnosed with leukemia just the year before. Laura held Rebecca a little longer and patted her arm with a knowing smile, like she was now in the ‘dead baby’ club with them. Rebecca replied with the minimal amount of socially acceptable responses. A stiff hug, a murmured answer, and they were on their way. They couldn’t know what she was going through, or what her baby had gone through. How could they? They could say goodbye to their child and hold her a little tighter, knowing it would be the last time. Alexandra had passed in her sleep, surrounded by people who loved her. People who had time to wrap their minds around what was happening and had each other to lean on. Oliver had drowned, scared and trapped in a car at the bottom of the canal. There was nothing they could say to bring her any ounce of comfort. She wasn’t in a club. She wasn’t burying her child, and she wasn’t walking away from his small white casket to go back to a small empty house.
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