So she wandered the empty home, and wondered why her baby was killed, and knew Jon wasn’t coming back. She didn’t know how to be anymore. Some days she had to remind herself to breathe, to eat, to try to sleep. But she couldn’t bear to sleep in their bed alone, staring at an empty spot where Jon should have been. His shampoo faded from the pillow with each passing day. She took his pillow to the couch and lay on it face down, inhaling the cotton fibers in a desperate attempt to hold onto him. Wrapped in Oliver’s comforter, head resting on Jon’s pillow, tears would course down her face. Every few days, when her body couldn’t physically function anymore... she would finally fall into a fitful sleep. But even then, she couldn’t escape the pain. As soon as her eyes closed, a new nightmare would begin. Her husband in pain, her son crying out to her for help... until she would wake up, sobbing. She lost all track of time, and only knew the afternoons by the sight of the mailman’s shadow and the rustle of mail dropping into the box by their front door. Time didn’t matter, anyway. She no longer needed to know when Oliver would want his lunch, or when Jon would be home from work. No one needed her.
She went through the photo albums, skimming past the holes left from the missing pictures. Detective Barnes should return them soon, she needed to put them back. The empty sleeves screamed at her every time she turned the pages, showing a broken family. She stopped at a picture she had taken the previous summer, on a rare day when all three of them were at the beach together. Jon was lying down as Oliver poured buckets of sand on top of his body. They were both looking at the camera, their matching blue eyes twinkling as they laughed. She slid the photograph from the protective slip and touched Oliver’s face, catching a tear before it fell onto the picture. Her whole body ached with longing as she struggled to take a breath. She tucked the picture into her purse and grabbed her keys. She needed to see the place where her Ollie was last happy and alive.
11
Rebecca was almost to the bridge, almost to the spot where Oliver had died. She held her breath and stared straight ahead, pushing harder on the gas pedal. Her black Ford Escort rumbled past the side road that ended at the canal, the water that took her Ollie. She zipped up the bridge, going faster than she ever had, hoping no one was on the other side of it, going slower than they needed to. Her car cleared the top, and still she stared ahead, missing the fantastic view that she usually loved. No one was on the other side.
The guard leaned out of the small window of their shack to get a look at Rebecca’s beach permit stuck to the front windshield of her car. He nodded and she drove through, over the thickly packed sand, and took a left onto the beach towards their spot. On one side were the dunes, where the tips of discarded Christmas trees still poked up above the sand. The trees were the city’s attempt to build the dunes back up, after years of high tides had reduced them to small mounds. Dunes were critical to keeping the storm surges back from the beach houses and small businesses there on the waterfront. Some people chose to park there, close to the mound of trees and sand, but the Crows never did. It was too dangerous to let Ollie cross the road to the beach on her right. They usually backed up a few feet from the tide, with enough room between their car’s open trunk and the water to place their chairs, umbrella, and Oliver’s toys.
After scanning the water, Rebecca finally found what she was looking for. A partially submerged boat, about twenty feet out. There were a handful of local legends about how it got there, and what had happened to the crew. Part of their trips always included listening to Oliver come up with a new story. His eyes would light up as he described pirates, giant squid, and sharks. They never did look up the real reason for it, and she had a feeling she never would. She was happy to stick with Oliver’s imaginative versions.
She eased her car onto the loose sand near the sunken boat and stopped close to the water’s edge. Stepping out of her car, a burst of hot salty air and suntan lotion immediately hit her. Breathing it in, she blinked back tears. Seagulls immediately swept down hoping for the stray bits of food they were used to getting from the beach visitors. Oliver loved to fling his food up into their open beaks where they would gobble up the potato chips and small pieces of bread torn from his sandy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He would throw them as high as his little arms could launch, laughing as the birds hurried to see who would get to it first. Squealing with delight, he would watch them dart up and down, calling to each other.
“Did you know a group of seagulls is called a colony?” Jon would say, always eager for a teachable moment.
“Yes, we know. You say that every time we’re here,” Rebecca would respond, rolling her eyes.
Oliver would laugh and yell, “Seagull Colonly! Come here Colonly!”
Every. Single. Time.
Then, without missing a beat, Jon would lean in and whisper to Rebecca, “It’s better than being called a ‘Murder’, eh? Rebecca Crow?” and wink at her.
Every. Single. Time.
The birds flew around her as she stood there, zipping down before darting back up into the sky. If a seagull could be disappointed, she imagined it would look something like them at that moment. Rebecca wondered if any of them had been there that day, that awful day the last time Jon and Oliver were in that same spot. She leaned against her car and slipped out of her worn flip-flops, wriggling her feet and burying her toes into the soft sand. The sand was warm, but not quite hot. Not as hot as it would be later that afternoon, when you didn’t dare walk on it barefoot. They had spent many trips carrying Oliver back and forth across the sand after watching him hop-scream-hop across the steaming ground.
Near her toes was a small hole. Rebecca crouched down to dig out a hermit crab, wrapped tightly in its shell. She held it there in her hand until it became brave again, and tiny brown feet tickled her palm as it explored the air outside of the shell.
“Hey little guy, don’t worry, I’ll put you back.”
She eased the crab back onto the sand near the hole and stood up, brushing her hands off on her shorts. Oliver would have placed it in his jar and stared at it through the magnifying glass lid. He would have named it something silly like ‘Pickles’ and would have cried when she insisted he put it back when it was time for them to go home.
Her breath caught in her throat as she moved towards the tide. She shuffled in the shallow water parallel to the shore, trying to imagine what Jon and Oliver did there that Friday. The beach around her came to life as the sun moved higher in the sky and people poured out of vehicles, eager to enjoy their day. Kids sprinted towards the water as adults caught up with them, pulling them back to the cars and lathering their arms and legs with sunscreen. Chairs unfolded with a clank and bikini-clad bodies plopped down, pushing the plastic chair legs further into the sand. Some pulled out books to read in the shade of their umbrellas, while others helped their kids build sandcastles. Smaller children were carried into the water, their arms sticking straight out from their sides by the addition of inflatable swimming cuffs.
Everyone was smiling. Everyone was alive.
She turned her back on the crowds and eased into the shallow surf. The water tickled; first her calves, then her knees as she continued walking. Broken shells and sand shifted underneath her feet as something skittered against the edge of her heel. Gentle rolling waves lapped at the edges of her shorts before creeping up her thighs. Once she felt the shock of cooler water on her stomach through her thin shirt, she bent her knees and let herself drop into the water up to her neck. Echoes of happy families faded as she swam further out. She stopped once her feet could no longer touch the bottom. Rebecca rolled onto her back and stretched her arms out, facing the clouds above her. With the incoming waves to her right, and the beach to her left, she floated. Each swell caressed her as it passed underneath, before breaking as it moved closer to the shoreline. The sun had risen to its full height by then, and the rays beat down on her face as the water held her body up effortlessly. High above her, soft white clouds drifted by, and seagulls floated on the b
reeze.
The ocean had always been home for her. Its rhythms were her heartbeat. There was nowhere else she felt more at peace, but it wasn’t working that day. She pulled her arms back to her sides and let her body sink into the water, then pushed up to propel herself downward. It was murky, and too sandy to see very far in front of her. She held her arms out and kept pushing up to keep her body beneath the surface. A vast emptiness surrounded her while the tide pulled and pushed her body. In one direction were the beach, her car, and her empty home. In the other, miles and miles of nothing but the ocean.
The realization that Oliver was gone didn’t come in the heart-wrenching moment she saw his small arm draped on the back seat of Jon’s car. It didn’t even come at the funeral, when his pale little body lay surrounded by cold white silk. Rather, it came in the million little things that built up around her and swallowed her whole until she found herself in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by emptiness, and no idea how she had gotten there.
Her wedding ring slipped down her recently thinned finger as she continued to wave her arms to stay below the surface of the water. She pushed the ring back frantically and floated to the surface, her arms no longer able to keep her down. Her wet hair broke the surface first, then her face, with a loud gasp as her lungs filled with the much-needed air. Treading water with a crooked finger to make sure the ring didn’t slip again, she considered sinking back down into the peaceful abyss. But the weight of her ring pulled her back. She needed to be there for Jon, for when he came home. If there was even the smallest chance that he was still alive, she couldn’t leave him.
She turned towards the shore and started to swim.
Rebecca didn’t notice, or didn’t care, that sea water drenched her driver’s seat, or that her clothes clung to her thin body. She drove back towards the bridge with one mission, to trace their last steps and try to find some answers. She wondered what they would have talked about in the car on that same road. Oliver would have sung along with the radio, the windows rolled down and the wind drying his sandy blond hair as they drove. Sitting in the middle seat, even with his booster, he couldn’t see very far out of the windows, so Jon would announce when they were going over the big bridge. Oliver’s eyes would light up. He loved bridges.
Turning left, she pulled off the highway and turned her car around towards the water’s edge. A yellow piece of police tape was flapping in the wind like a beacon, snagged on a bit of driftwood. The water was choppy and murky, and as she got out of her car and walked to its edge, she couldn’t see very far down into the darkness. She tried to imagine Jon’s car down there, filling up with water while a frightened Oliver cried out for her. She had failed him.
Turning from the water, Rebecca scanned the area. The setting sun reflected a golden hue on everything, and the bridge rumbled as cars drove by. She could almost make out the top of a bait shop in the distance, positioned next to the old boat ramps. Jon would have gotten out of his car to check for the spare in the trunk. Rebecca shook her head, still angry at herself for not replacing it. She went to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. There was the spare to her own car, tucked away beneath the mat.
The Ford dipped down as she sat on the edge of the open trunk and watched the cars speed by. “The man who killed Ollie is out there, right now,” she thought. “He’s alive and breathing and living his life while I sit here, picturing Jon and Oliver’s last day together.” It wasn’t fair. Something had to happen soon or she would go insane. He was free. He wasn’t missing his family, he wasn’t waiting around for anything. He was free. He should have been suffering as much as she was.
He shouldn’t get to be free.
As she watched the cars go by, her eyes locked on a white van. It was old, and Jon said it had looked rough. What if that was the van that stopped to help him? What if that was the man who killed them? It clearly wasn’t AAA who stopped that night. That van was responsible, she just knew it. Jon’s guard was down because he thought it was AAA and that van was carrying the man who killed them.
Jon was still missing, Oliver’s killer was still out there, and it was starting to look like he would get away with it.
She was tired of waiting for the police. She slammed the trunk and got back into her car. Pulling up onto the highway, she headed for home. For the first time in a long time, she knew exactly what she needed to do.
12
James had only been to see his mom’s landlord, Martin, a couple of times. A few years back his mama had stepped in a hole in her backyard and broken her ankle, so he offered to deliver rent for her. A hole that happened to be dug by her new dog, Cooper. The dog was a damn nuisance. James told her it wasn’t a good idea to get the mutt, all he did was bark at nothing and dig holes. With tan wiry hair, and a tail permanently tucked between his legs, the thing even looked useless. But his mama thought having a dog made her safer, in case anyone wanted to break in and steal... what? Her social security check? Everyone in the Third Ward knew she didn’t have anything worth taking. James told her she didn’t need another mouth to feed, and she really didn’t need all that barking. That fucking dog yelped at everything, night and day. It’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t poison it.
He took care of that before they ever had a chance to.
When he got back home from taking his mama to the emergency room the night she broke her ankle (and spent most of that week’s paycheck), he helped her into bed, careful not to jostle the boot on her left leg and waited for her to fall asleep. She was doped up on painkillers, so sleep came quickly. Then he went to her garage and found a spool of rope. It was pretty old, and there was no telling what she had originally bought it for. She always had ideas for shit around the house, most of which James ended up doing. But he figured it would do. He cut a few pieces off the spool and headed to the backyard. There was the damn dog, staring at the fence and barking into the night air at absolutely nothing.
“Come here Coop! Come here, boy!”
The dog stopped barking and turned to look at James, ears pointed straight up and his body stiff. The damn thing had never liked him, and hell if he knew why. Well, he wasn’t gonna wait around all night for him to get over that. James stood up and walked to the stake in the ground holding the dog’s chain. He picked up the chain and followed the end of it all the way to the dog, stopping when he had his hand on Cooper’s dirty blue collar. James wrapped one piece of rope around the dog’s muzzle first, so he’d stop the goddamn barking. He didn’t need his mama waking up, she needed her rest. It wriggled and whined the whole time, but he was finally able to tie the front legs together next. James sat on the side of the dog’s chest while he tied up the rear legs. He stepped back to observe his work, feeling pretty good about the knots. Fuck the boy scouts, he didn’t need to sit around a circle jerk to know how to tie a knot.
Leaving the dog lying in the grass, whimpering and wide eyed, James headed back to the garage. The shovel was there, leaning against the wall behind the door. James grabbed it. If the dog wanted to dig holes, he would be more than happy to help him out. He found a soft spot of ground and dug down a few feet. The dog was heavier than he thought and by the time he got it over to the loose dirt, he was out of breath. He dropped the dog into the hole where it landed with a thud and a muffled yelp. He had to admit, the thing had spunk. It kept fighting those knots and moving around, whining through closed jaws with wide eyes.
James checked his watch, it was almost time to meet up with Tommy over at Mikel’s and he didn’t want to be late. He took one last look at the dog as he jumped to his feet and dusted the dirt off the knees of his jeans. It was kind of cute, he could see why his mama got the thing, but it was just too much damn trouble.
Cooper’s moves became more frantic as James shoveled dirt back into the hole on top of him. With each shovel full, the dog moved less and less, until he was completely still. It didn’t take as long to fill the hole as it had taken to dig it, especially with the damn dog taking up most of the room.
He put the shovel back in the garage and wiped his hands on his jeans. No more barking, no more holes for his mama to trip in.
The next morning, James told his mama he accidentally left the gate open, but she knew her son well enough to know there was more to the story. She let it go, as she was used to doing, and ignored the freshly dug hole in her backyard. He had to deliver her rent checks for a few months until her ankle healed up, but she never got another dog, and he hadn’t seen Martin much since then.
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